“What I love about instrumental music is how much imagery the artist can create with it, and there’s no doubt that Edoardo Gastaldi emphasises this on ‘Grandfathers’.”
Venice based pianist and composer Edoardo Gastaldi decided to release another spellbinding piece in April after the Spotify success of his previous two singles Jóhann’s Flight and Negative Entropy. Grandfathers parades stunning piano melodies that allow listeners to drift through a variety of feelings.
The tempo begins as somewhat slow in the intro, hinting at a sorrowful atmosphere. A few notes later and the piano sequence becomes a lot more complex, uniting a high pitch and a low pitch and allegro and adagio. The delicate arpeggio interlude right in the middle of the song sound like footsteps – later speeding up the rhythm into a fantastic arrangement of chords; leaving the symbolism up for many interpretations such as hopefulness, admiration or nostalgia.
Analysing the production and concept of the song, Gastaldi says “My latest release, ‘Grandfathers’, sees several variations in the melody, speed, dynamics, and intensity. However, the composition maintains an overall intimate, soft and subdued tone. The multiple musical variations are meant to symbolize the ways through which people interpret, personify or implement the teachings and inheritances received as a gift from the figure of the grandfather. This figure itself eventually becomes a metaphorical means to refer to the broader concept of (role) model.”
The incredible flow of notes gradually becomes slower, Grandfathers now reclaiming the mood created in its intro through a lower timbre and steady cadence. After hearing the entirety of this musical illustration of emotion and storytelling, the concept Edoardo described makes a lot more sense to us, and has been demonstrated beautifully by a cleverly crafted accumulation of chords.
You can listen to the song here:
And here: