In Italy, the lack of training in musical hearing...
...is due to our school system.
Our school trains for musical illiteracy.
There are teachers who teach history of art,
who explain the importance of a shadow in Canova,
the importance of the light in Caravaggio's work,
or teachers that would talk for hours...
about Dante's hendecasyllables or Manzoni's prose works,
but then they listen to bad music,
they don’t even know who Wagner or Haydn were.
The country of music has the most illiterate music school possible.
Neurological studies have shown
that musical memory starts before logical memory.
Therefore, we should train and listen to good music
since nursery school.
For many random reasons,
music has always been present in my life.
At 5 or 6 I had already studied accordion, I could play it,
I played it while my father played the mandolin.
Music in that sense.
The turning point,
when I became passionate about music, the history of music,
about the great music of the past, came when I was about 13,
when I received 3 albums as a gift,
2 musicians I didn't know: Bach and Beethoven.
Bach's “Goldberg Variations”
and 4 sonatas for piano by Beethoven.
I consumed those albums by listening to them.
No other piece of music will ever amaze me that way,
as those 3 albums did.
I then became passionate about music.
Before that, Italian pop music was usually playing in my house.
I listen to any kind of music,
now my head is rather overwhelmed.
In music, I look for what I was looking for at 14,
I want to be amazed
and I realized that it is more difficult now.
However, as a truffle-hunting dog, I still look for that amazement.
Fame and success depend on many factors,
first of all on luck, I think.
Seneca once said that luck is when occasion meets talent.
I have some musician friends who are extremely talented,
but they don't have great visibility occasions.
One of the best pieces of luck I had was meeting the right people.
Then I started considering visibility, results and success...
as a secondary matter in what we do.
By secondary I mean that they come second,
it doesn’t mean that we should despise them.
This doesn't mean that success is not important,
but the greatest works of mankind weren't conceived to be successful,
success came later.
Some days I find the things I write very beautiful,
I feel like...
like the sculptor who told the marble: "Why don't you speak to me?"
But sometimes I listen to that piece the following day
and I find it useless, banal, insignificant,
and I wish that the others won't notice.
I called my first book "Music is Dangerous",
quoting a sentence that Federico Fellini used to say.
Music is dangerous because things that truly move us,
that really amaze us, are dangerous.
What truly moves us will change us, we won't be the same anymore.
It contains a share of risk, of danger,
as there is a share of danger any time we fall in love.
If you fall in love, you experience something wonderful,
an experience of feelings, sensitivity, beauty.
But you must consider the risks, the probability of the wreck,
like Ulysses sailing beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Anything that helps us go beyond,
beyond what is visible, beyond routine,
beyond habits, beyond the things you know,
anything that amazes us has its share of danger,
and that is the real meaning of life.