Francesco Di Giandomenico : The Dragonfly for 4 guitars : DOz

Francesco Di Giandomenico

Les Productions D’Oz: Score and separate parts (18, 5, 4, 5, and 5 pages respectively)

If you want a taster of this piece, there is a very grief 58 seconds section on YouTube, and that will show you part of the first section only, but it does give you an idea of what sort of music it is.

After a slow, expressive opening on guitar 4 an accelerando leads to the Con Fuoco, which is the main theme, and where guitar 4 now plays a low  fast and furious mainly two note idea which is full of pull – offs that create a really strong opening idea. Then guitar 2 comes in with a different idea but similar in style, as it alternates between a heavily accented top note and a lower down E that is constantly there .After that guitars 3 and 1 come in with their own repetitive accented ideas, all slightly different from each other but all creating this strong off beat two note repetition idea. This all continues for a while, with some occasional and momentary long chords while the other players continue their patterns. This is all obviously meant to imitate the relentless flying of the Dragonfly. At bar 74, the tempo and the mood drops considerably, and guitar 4 leads in with a gentle arpeggio idea with the other players entering after a few bars of this with a more relaxed section  that is soon taken over by a return , albeit a varied one of the initial relentless patterns of the opening. This time all four players really do have to play even more accented ideas, including 3 guitars hammering away on the very top string in alternation with their open 2^nd and 3^rd strings, leading to the final page where all the guitars playing six string chords in semi – quavers with many dissonances along the way. Then the final bar marked is fortissimo, and everyone plays two fast connecting 6 – string chords of all the open strings.

This is a very unusual piece that requires some very good players and has many moments that will surprise by the manner in which the piece is written, but if the sound of this appeals and you do have a very talented quartet, then this could be a good piece for you.

Chris Dumigan