Italian-born classical guitarist Emanuele Cintura Torrent is unique in his approach to art. For him, music has a reverential quality that extends beyond the notes--free from sharps, flats and meter. Yes, his approach looks past the music. To maestro Torrente, music is thought.
Apropos, Classicalite recently sat down with Torrente to discuss both music and thought.
It's a concept born of thought, itself, but his is a tune that needs a beginning.
And that beginning is as follows...
"I was born in the city of Cassino, Italy in 1978. Located in the middle of Italy, it was the site of one of the biggest battles in World War II. My parents moved from Sicily when my father got a job with Fiat," he says.
Music drew in Torrente from the very beginning, as if he were destined to play a part in revamping its image from centuries of misconception. Who better, then, to lay to waste the false image of music than himself?
"I always thought I had a 'musical' mind, but society forced me to study things I wasn't interested in," says Torrente.
So, it was that curious mind that led Torrente to study music first at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence. From there, he continued to develop as a citizen of the world--and a student of Bach, Mozart, and the like--at the Universities of Palermo and Florence.
While enrolled, he sharpened his most important tool: his mind.
Studying philosophy, psychology, pedagogy and even psychoanalysis, one may wonder why maestro Torrente branched out so far from his true passions.
According to him, "music is a unique instrument. It provides an avenue to express your most dangerous thoughts about the world around you. You can say things that [the politicians] can't understand."
In an effort to be understood, Torrente outlined his beliefs in the form of a manifesto. But unlike most affected doctrines, his remains neither revolutionary nor incendiary; it is epidemiological truth.
A love poem to thought, indeed, the essence of the man.
No, Maestro Torrente doesn't rewrite the rules or demand a new agenda for the sake of starting over. His urtext approach respects the language of the past masters, while restoring true intent to modern, informed performance--not merely tapping your foot in time, but understanding why our feet tap at all.
"It was deeply needed," Torrente says. "Music is a very young discipline of humanity. To me, a lot of people, both musicians and the public, have no concept of what [music] is."
"And," he says further, "what it isn't."
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