Mattia Malzani (b. 2002) began to develop a passion for music and the sound of bells while studying the humanities at the schools of the Salesians of Chiari, in province of Brescia. Since 2014 he has played and collaborated with various bell organizations, from Brescia to Milan and Verona. Since 2020 he has studied the art of playing keyboard bells with Prof. Mario Castelli (former trumpet player in the RAI symphony orchestra) and Fabio Rinaldi of Gandino, learning the first rudiments of composition and becoming passionate about writing for bells. Since 2022 he has collaborated with Maestro Mathieu Daniël Polak. It was from this collaboration that the first compositions for Carillon were born. Thanks to Polak some of Malzani’s works have been performed in Amsterdam, Chicago, and Perpignan. He is currently studying Musicology in Cremona in the Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali of the University of Pavia.

The notation uses two staves: the upper staff represents the “keyboard”, played with the fists, while the lower staff indicates the “pedalboard”, played with the feet. The idiomatic writing used for the latter is extremely simple (as is traditional for Carillon music), due to the significant physical difficulties involved in playing it.

At the compositional level, a relevant aspect is the search for coexistence between various elements of fine art music and a popular tradition. Furthermore, the traditional rules of part-writing are frequently disregarded; this is due both to the evolution that Euro-classical musical language has experienced since the 19th century, and to the unique sonic peculiarities of the bells themselves.

In particular, for my personal taste, on bells, fifths do not sound “empty” as they do with other instruments. This makes it unnecessary to avoid parallel motion. With these compositions, I want to demonstrate how parallel fifths have great expressive potential for this instrument.

The absence of C#/Db and D#/Eb in the lower octave, in the majority of Northern European carillons further limits the rigorous application of contrapuntal rules. Additionally, the maximum hand span on the keyboard covers an interval of a fourth/fifth, a factor that complicates the use of open harmony. These conditions necessitate a freer musical writing style, adapted to the concrete possibilities of the instrument.

Note that in the two “Folk Suites,” parallel octaves also appear. In this case, this is not due to the sonic peculiarities of the carillon, but because the construction of the bass line is entirely based on mechanical melodic constructions dictated by the leg movements of the players, rather than solely on musical construction.