Technique - Emanuele Rastelli - Official Home Page

by Ferdinando Muttillo

Director of the Conservatory "L. Perosi" of Campobasso

As Director of the Conservatory "L. Perosi" of Campobasso - and deeply feeling the responsibility of being the first accordionist in the history of Italian conservatories to hold this position - I feel compelled to highlight a work that I would call epochal for our instrument. I am referring to the "Technique" trilogy by Maestro Emanuele Rastelli, with particular praise for the recent third volume dedicated to advanced technique.

We must look honestly at the history of the accordion: very few authors, not only in Italy but worldwide, have had the courage, dedication, and scientific vision to structure a technical journey through three volumes of such depth. If we analyze past teaching literature, we often find fragmentary methods or short collections of studies. Rastelli, however, fills a historical gap, bequeathing to posterity a complete and systematic work. This is an editorial and pedagogical achievement that elevates the accordion to the highest levels of international instrumental treatises.

For decades, we accordionists have borrowed our training from piano treatises, laboriously adapting them to an instrument with a diametrically opposed mechanical and phonic nature. Rastelli's Volume 3 represents the definitive emancipation: here, technique is born from the physiology of the accordion. It's not a matter of "adapting" the fingers to a keyboard, but of developing a specific biomechanics that takes into account the vertical position, the response of the valves, and, above all, the symbiotic relationship with the bellows.

One of the absolute strengths of Rastelli's work is the masterful attention paid to both hands. Too often, literature has focused on the virtuosity of the right hand, leaving the left hand in an almost ancillary role. In this third volume, the Maestro elevates the technique of the Standard Basses to a new dignity. Rastelli analyzes the left hand with extraordinary analytical depth, proposing technical solutions that allow for a fluidity and speed of execution in traditional basses previously thought unthinkable. The independence and coordination between the two manuals are treated not as separate elements, but as a single motor organism.

A fundamental aspect that distinguishes this work is its universal nature. Maestro Rastelli has successfully codified a technique that is not limited to a single field, but embraces all musical genres with the same academic dignity. Volume 3 provides the tools to tackle the highly elaborated aspects of so-called "dance" music, ennobling it with refined virtuosity, before moving seamlessly into Variété music and the harmonic and phraseological complexities of jazz. This 360-degree vision demonstrates that great technique is the foundation for any high-level artistic expression.

The value of these texts is confirmed by practice. We had the honor of hosting Maestro Rastelli for two important masterclasses at our Conservatory. On those occasions, I observed how his methodology radically transformed the students' approach: technical difficulty ceases to be an insurmountable obstacle and becomes a logical step, solvable through an understanding of movement and the economy of gesture.

Volume 3 of "Technique" is the culmination of a project that honors the Italian accordion school worldwide. It's a text that every teacher and advanced student should consider the "Bible" of modern technique. I thank Emanuele Rastelli for putting his extraordinary experience as a world-renowned concert performer at the service of teaching, giving us a work that will undoubtedly remain a milestone in the history of the accordion.