Sergio Maltagliati


Sergio Maltagliati is an Italian Internet-based artist, composer, and visual-digital artist.
His first musical experience with the Gialdino Gialdini Musical Band was in the early 70s.
WWW visualmusic.it

Biography

On 04/10/2023 he was elected Honorary Academician of the Accademia delle arti del disegno in Florence. Historical Academy founded in Florence in 1563 by Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany at the suggestion of Giorgio Vasari, as a leading exponent of the Florentine artistic current known as Musica d'Arte.
Sergio Maltagliati an artist from Florence Italy; studied music at the Florence Conservatory, then he began to paint. Thus creating a new method of writing music where the score becomes a visual composition.
The relation between the sound and color creates a living feeling that art is not dead. It does not stop at the artist's last attempt at the canvas, but goes beyond to the viewer. It is the relationship between artist and viewer, one is no different from the other. Now the viewer can take the step that the artist may dare not to across. It is the point of translation a fear to most artist that want to create and let their work go. This kind of art allows the viewer to create with the artist and create so much more. Sergio Maltagliati has always been deeply interested in a multimedia concept of art. His education, in both music and the visual arts, has placed him in the position to incorporate sign, colour, and sound into a unitary concept of multiple perception, through analogies, contrasts, stratifications, and associations.
He's a composer who joined, at the end of the eighties, the Florentine artistic current, that has been active since the end of World War II up to the present, including Sylvano Bussotti, Giuseppe Chiari, Giancarlo Cardini, Albert Mayr, Marcello Aitiani, Daniele Lombardi, Pietro Grossi. These musicians have experimented the interaction among sound, sign and vision, a synaesthetics of art derived from historical avant-gardes, from Kandinskij to futurism, to Scrjabin and Schoenberg, all the way to Bauhaus.
In 2021 the Luigi Dallapiccola Study Center made him official in the Florentine Music Archive of the 20th century, recognizing him as one of the most significant composers of the 20th century, active in Florence.In 2021, the Luigi Dallapiccola Study Center officially included him in the Archive of the Florentine Musical Twentieth Century, recognizing him as one of the most significant twentieth-century composers active in Florence.
His work in the eighties is also based in involving, with didactic-educational projects, students as executors of performances in the example of the Music Circus carried out in 1984 in a High School in Piemonte by John Cage. And it is the American musician who appreciates this aspect of Maltagliati's work, because he is able to involve young people as performers. These works, besides building approach to music and, specifically, developing a different way of listening, aim at expanding the concept of artistic creation to the executor, till it reaches just the user, often unprovided with a traditional artistic formation.
Since 1997, Sergio Maltagliati has dealt principally in music on the Internet and one of his first compositions intended for the network, netOper@ a new, and the first Italian interactive work for the Web starting in the spring of 1997. The interactive work will be presented simultaneously in real and cyberspace. The Opera is realized with the collaboration of Pietro Grossi,
the legendary father of Italian music informatics. The essential aspect to Sergio Maltagliati's approach is the idea that art is not just the fruit of the composer, the creation is always the fruit of collaboration. Two of his works are strongly based on this concept: neXtOper@_1.03 a work for mobile phones, and midi_Visu@lMusiC music and images on I-Mode mobile phone. In 1999, he writes the program autom@tedVisualMusiC, software from experiences of the visual HomeArt programs designed by Grossi in the '80s, written in the language BBC BASIC with computer Acorn Archimedes A310, a project that creates abstract designs and sound by using programming to make the piece interactive and adds movement. This artwork not only has visually pieces, but also is interactive.
In 2001, he has participated in the project Interview yourself by Amy Alexander.
In 2023 he was selected for the first international Virtual Exhibition on the island of Venice Viral Human' / 'Public Art and the Metaverse. By means of a specially created App, it is possible to move virtually among the palaces and squares of Venice, where one can see or hear an inspired work, linked to the location. Scala Contarini del Bovolo, is a 15th century palace with a spiral staircase of steps that winds around the outside of the palace. The spiral of the chicciola brings to mind the golden spiral, many 20th century composers chose it as a model for their music. The work Battimenti created by Maltagliati for this place makes us reflect on the deep connection between science and art.
He currently uses a personal computer to set up interactive sound and graphics works, open compositions where the listener has a predominant and decisive role.

More significant works

Since the end of the 1970s, his catalog includes instrumental compositions, performances, together with paintings, digital and interactive graphic and musical works which are often the result of conversion into images and vice versa of a precise musical thought, transposed in an innovative musical writing.

Instrumental compositions

  • 1980 Fogli di Diario lyric for mezzo-soprano-flute and piano .
  • 1983 Iridem for trombone and clarinet.
  • 1984 Inciclo for trombone solo.
  • 1987 La Luce dell'Asia for white voices choir.
  • 1980/89 Sintassi in Rosso e Nero for voice and piano.
  • 1991 Sinfonia.
  • 1991 Iridem 2 for clarinet and trombone.
  • 1993 Aria48 for canto and orchestra.

Computer Visu@lMusiC

autom@tedVisualMusic, generative visual music software, creates images and sounds in relation to precise correspondences sound-symbol-color, producing multiple variations.
  • 1999 Circus 5.05.
  • 2001 Net Surfing 3.0.
  • autom@ted MusiC 1.02
  • Sound Life 3.01
  • 2002/2003 PIxeLs
  • Oper@pixel.This project which generates continually diverse audiovisual compositions utilizing images and sound frequencies borrowed from the universe of cell phones, chat rooms and e-mail. And also logos, ringtones, banners and small designs in ASCII code.
  • 2003 Goldberg Variations .
  • 2005 MIDI_Visu@lMusiC. An example of artistic-creative use of Cubase midi software on the Atari Mega STE platform. The image is drawn directly in the Key window of the software, on a large virtual musical keyboard. Research began in the early nineties, and all the work is anthologically documented in an exhibition entitled Scores for floppy disck in 1997 at the Il Gabbiano Gallery in La Spezia. The catalog published by the City of La Spezia-Department of Culture contains an introductory text by the musicologist Renzo Cresti and theoretical writings by the author. In 2005 the MIDI_Visu@lMusiC project was re-proposed for the i-mode mobile phone.
  • 2008 Circus 8 consists of eight pieces and is based on Pietro Grossi's HomeArt programs, which automatically generated sound. Maltagliati has expanded Grossi's principle with software programs and added visual graphic variations. The visual data generated by the computer approximates the graphic score for a sound composition.
  • 2012 autom@tedVisuaL, is a software which generates always different graphical variations. It is based on HomeArt's Q.Basic source code. These graphics are going to be sampled into the HomeBooks, a unique kind of book, which Pietro Grossi planned in 1991. This first release autom@tedVisuaL 1.0 has produced 45 graphical single samples, which have been sampled and published.
  • 2014 autom@tedMusiC 2.0, generative music software. This program can be configured to create music in many different styles and it will generate a new and original composition each time play is clicked.
  • 2019 Battimenti, autom@tedMusiC 2.5. Beat-musical score of the painter Romano Rizzato, with frequencies of the original waves by Pietro Grossi. In this project Rizzato realizes a graphic work, inspired by his Optical art-Kinetic art period of the 60s-70s, but conceived with the sole purpose of being able to be read as a musical score. Maltagliati uses 11 sound frequencies, from 395 to 405 combined as suggested by the calligraphy of the score of Rizzato. The sound material is then modified by the software autom@tedMusiC Generative music which generates a fully automatic music that is always different.
  • 2023 Color Variations by the graphic programmes of HomeArt by Pietro Grossi..
  • 2025 Circus_8_8 The project Circus_8_8 uses a graphic program originally developed for HomeArt, one of the experimental platforms created by Pietro Grossi, a pioneer of Italian electronic art and generative music.
Later, through the integration of the software autom@tedVisualMusiC 5.0, interactive features were introduced: each user can draw directly on the screen and generate unique and unrepeatable visual and sound compositions, which can be saved on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
This experience combines Generative art, Artificial intelligence, and active user participation, effectively realizing Grossi’s early vision of using the computer as a creative artistic tool.
  • 2026 Agenda Perenne, an intermedial and generative art project based on an automated system for the daily production of images and texts, in dialogue with practices of automatic composition and indeterminacy associated with the research of Pietro Grossi and John Cage.

Performance

  • 1985 Musica intorno alla Gabbia for music, art of mime and zoo-anthropomorphous pictures with 170 performers-actors. In the structure of the work, the traditional role between audience and stage has been reversed on purpose. The interpreters have occupied, geometrically, the vast space of the room putting the public first on the stage and causing them, then, to move around the sound and visual groups. The musical part is based on the interdisciplinary value of music, inspired by John Cage's research on the principle of capturing and controlling the noises as musical elements. The choreographic and scenic part of the work, made by painter Edoardo Salvi was an uninterrupted dynamism of forms and spatial situations, connecting image to signs and sound.
  • 1989 Revolution The visual part of the work is composed of a big painting, of about three hundred square metres, on which two hundred high school students have worked. The painting, divided into sixteen big strips, came together slowly, in synchronization with the music during the performance. The musical part assembled four different sound situations: instrumental music, words, sounds and noises.
  • 1990/91 K.1-626M. for chorus, orchestra, magnetic tape, and objects. Mozart's works are transformed into words, sounds, noises and colors. It is the Requiem, unfinished and cataloged at number 626, which becomes a graphic visual elaboration, then fragmented and reassembled into 626 pictorial visual works, like the total of works written by Mozart.
  • 1993 12 free improvisations with stones and branches of river .
  • Alla ricerca dei Silenzi perduti for 10 magnetic tapes, 7/10 audio tape with 10 performers.
  • 1997 netOper@ an Italian opera with an international cast of performers on the Net, authors and performers of the work more than thirty artists, among others John Dunn, Pietro Grossi and Caterina Davinio.Variazione Cromatica cinque2 for instruments and Magnetic tape.Invenzioni Cromatiche 16/44 graphic work music of 100 children on musical stroke of 16/4.
  • 2001 neXtOper@ for cell.phones, interactive/collaborative work through Internet and GSM networks with an educational project involving the children of Middle State School "Giusti-Gramsci" Monsummano Terme Italy.
  • 2019 Alla ricerca dei Silenzi perduti 2 for flute chorus and sounds of nature, is a performance involving two hundred young performers. During the happening, the music that orbits around a traditional tonal system, comes out of its designated place: the concert hall, thus becoming only a component of a larger universe of sound.
  • 2023 Color Variations Installazione e live performance, XIV Florence Biennale.
  • 2025 Homage to John Cage 4’33’’. In 2025, Maltagliati took part in the 15th Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art with the multimedia performance Homage to John Cage, a tribute to the composer’s 4’33’’. The work explored Cage’s concepts of attentive listening and chance, integrating sound, image, and public interaction.
According to the Italian newspaper La Nazione, the performance also addressed issues of cultural individualism and the normalization of art, proposing an experience based on participation and the unpredictability of the artistic event. The performance was filmed and documented by Marco Mazzi.

Exhibitions

CD / DVD

The path of more than fifty years of musical culture in Florence, since the end of the Second World War, is documented in these two audio CDs. This audio recording contains the meeting of composers and pianists who are the protagonists of the Music of Art in Florence, a significant phenomenon in the history of the second half of the twentieth century.
  • CIRCUS_8 DVD video Quantum Bit Limited Edition QuBIT 005
  • The Wave Structure of Matter Quantum Bit Netlabel QuBIT 007
  • CIRCUS_5.1 DVD Quantum Bit Netlabel QuBIT 013
  • BATTIMENTI 2.5 audio Cd – numbered copy of limited edition CD

Audio tape

  • 1992 Trasparenze
  • 1993 Alla ricerca dei silenzi perduti
  • 1995 Serie di colore per flauti
  • 1996 Per una sola nota work homage to Giacinto Scelsi.
  • 1997 Partiture per floppy disk
Recorder from original tape Quantum Bit Limited Edition