Written at the time of the death of the composer's first Piano Teacher, Paolo Ballarin (2013), the piece represents an ascending and devotional procession.

The seven violins perform a rigorous canon entering one after the other for a total of five minutes, creating a dynamic and emotional wave. From the elegiac to the intimate to the reflective, to the spiritual, up to the momentum of the question of death and the pain of the incomprehensibility of separation.

This continuous upward motion reaches an acute apex like a door in the sky, to bring the listener to knock and return step by step to the ground, filled with new questions and our limited human measure.

the modal flavor of the first entrances leaves room for a repetitive and obsessive cadenced perception. The seven voices therefore begin as pure counterpoint, and while following horizontal lines they end up amassing themselves in vertical columns of sounds rich in harmonic weights.

Since the piece is a very long pure canon, it can be performed by arranging a group of seven arches in a semicircle. But it was also easily performed by a solo violinist through the use of a machine capable of acting as a loop machine.

This work is an intimate musical-philosophical research born from an etymological reflection:

if we think of life as a game (in latin, ludus), we discover from the words we use four main ways to play the game of life.

The first is 'illusion' (in-ludus): being so deeply into the game that we don't realize we're just playing.

The second is 'delusion' (de-ludus), suddenly discovering the deception and finding oneself out of the game.

The third is the 'prelude', (pre-ludium): always staying one step before the starting line for fear of playing (you don't win, you don't lose.)

The fourth way is elusion (ex-ludus): voluntarily leaving the game or moving within it so as not to be subjected to the rules of the game but to elude them to create a new game space.

In this sense, the nine pieces of the collection are to be considered halfway between Etudes and Preludes, which is why we will call them Eludes. They are the study of the laws of sound and harmony in order to gradually move beyond them.

Like nine pages of the diary of an escaped prisoner, they must be read without stopping at what is written, but trying to find the secret passages to get out of prison as you approach them. In fact, the fugitive says everything always leaving something out, so the interpreter

tends incessantly towards the music in pulling something invisible out of it.

The nine steps, starting in the total darkness of 'Crypt', move counterclockwise following the tonalities on the circle of fifths, leading to a progressive illusion-illumination. As everything will start from the incessant tolling of the crypt bell (B?), at the end of the journey you will be able to hear a single tolling.

The title refers to the famous work by René Magritte, Ceci n'est pas une pipe. In this case, instead of representing a pipe and opening a metaphysical riddle, it alludes to the border between quotation and freedom. The small collection includes three short works (Dunhil, Ardor, Winslow), for a total of 10'. The style is close to Satie's Gymnopedie and Gnossiennes, while exploring a different melodic and coloristic identity.

The technical and reading difficulty is not high, which makes this triptych very attractive to pianists in the study phase.

The character of the music is mystical and transcendent. Yet, at the same time, it is intimate and palpable, like the smell emanating from a lit pipe. Indeed, the titles of the three pieces denote three types of pipe. And although the music is mainly between pianissimo and piano, the composer urges to strongly enter into it. That is, not to leave it evanescent, but to give life and flavor to the music, thus taking a puff at Magritte's pipe.