via sammartini runs alongside the west side of Milan's central train station. I spent a fair bit of time there in Winter of 2004-5. I was in Italy to study the legacy of composer Luigi Nono, at Venice's Archivio Luigi Nono, but I made the trip to Milan frequently, as my wife was conducting her own research in the Ambrosian city. Her apartment was in a tenement on via sammartini, a tenement populated for the most part by relatively poor and relatively recent immigrants to il bel paese, such as ourselves.

The street is filled with the sounds of traffic for just about 24 hours out of every day. And not just the sounds of the trains coming into the station, but also the buses, cars, motorcycles on via sammartini itself. Contributing also to the din were the sounds of people on the street, which to my ears seemed to tend towards either carousing or arguing. All in all, it was a difficult sonic environment in which to live and work.

Sometime in December 2004, I placed two microphones out the window, onto the via sammartini, and took a sonic snapshot. The piece via sammartini is a reworking of material from that snapshot, an attempt to capture the deeper ambience of this characteristic place, where neighbours would make dark humour out of the supposed arrival at the door of the carabinieri (Italy's national police).

David Ogborn. [email: david.ogborn (at) utoronto.ca]