ARTIST STATEMENT
Composition, contrary to its etymology, is not a mere assembly of parts. Rather, it is a discovery of what must exist – through intuition tempered by craftsmanship.
As a European, I am rooted in the Western tradition: the ethics and aesthetics of Classical antiquity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment. Virtually all of humanity's progress has come about through recovering an earlier era's mastery, then refining and re-applying it to break into previously uncharted territory. A good composer is neither a hysterical iconoclast nor an obsequious custodian of relics, but a solidly-grounded, proficient architect of what comes next. He understands how music will progress, because he has seen and understood where it has naturally gone before.
My entire catalogue is tonal because I see atonality as a social and intellectual aberration that will be recognised as a pretentious fad by more civilised generations. The true artist differentiates himself from the fantasist by creating works that are novel, yet intuitively comprehensible to others. This principle unites all genuine pioneers through different fields and ages, be it Mozart, Titian, Gauß or Rimbaud. In their works lives and breathes a continuous, unchanging spirit which naturally resonates with the human soul. An artist's duty is to submit to this perpetual principle and to act as a rational medium, not to subject audiences to egotistical displays; when done right, the artist's self is dwarved by the art, not aggrandised.
At no point in history has this been less risky than now: in many places, the value of art is no longer decided by political elites, but by everyone who happens to come across it. And as our century increasingly intertwines human and computational intelligence, there is hope that art past and present will begin to be judged by quality and thought, and not by the artist's ability to win over public opinion during their lifespan – a lifespan that is already too short even for art alone.
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BIOGRAPHY
Rina Furano, known by the mononym Furano, is a Viennese composer and writer living in Paris, France. She is the author of over 500 musical works spanning multiple genres, many commissioned. Her classical compositions, the majority of her oeuvre, cover nearly every instrumentation from solo lied to symphonies. Other inventions include a novel double-pedalling technique for the piano and the expansion of the traditional sonata form (more here).
Currently, she is working on both a didactic book and custom software formalising the Music Visual Scale, an idiosyncratic mental technique that allows for instant-yet-comprehensive representation of musical processes, principles and proportions.
Since early 2023, Furano has been professionally involved in the training, research and development of Artificial Intelligence, working on multimodal machine learning projects by leading technology companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta. She has served as a music consultant and contributed 400,000+ words of original writing to over a dozen projects.
Furano has been published in various international newspapers and magazines, such as Die Presse (Austria) and The Critic (UK), writing about music, technology and the culture business. Since 2017, she has been active as a consultant for various record labels in Europe and in the US.
The beginnings were traditional. After completing her studies in the UK, she returned to her native Vienna in 2011 to found the Neue Wiener Klassik movement. Its aim was to restore craftsmanship and beauty in contemporary composition through the production of new serious music capable of sustaining itself in the free market. The movement caused a stir in the Viennese cultural scene and beyond – not least through the composer's energetic pianism in concert and the music's innovations. In 2023, Furano moved to Paris to recentre her work around creation rather than performance.
She lives with an elderly, tame pet goldfinch and enjoys solitude, reading philosophy, cooking, and events requiring uncomfortable attire.