Born in Catania, he started studying piano at the age of seven. He took a degree in Arts at the University of Catania and he attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. He studied under Roberto Bianco (Piano), Franco Donatoni (Composition), Salvatore Enrico Failla (Musicology) and Ferdinand Leitner (Conducting). He is professor of History of Music and Assistant Headmaster at the Catania Musical Institute Vincenzo Bellini, and Headmaster at the CEU. In 1988 he was awarded the international prize ?Council of Europe?.
His composition have been played all over the world by famous musicians and orchestras (Claudia Antonelli, Giovanni Sollima, Marco Betta, Tonino Battista, Riccardo Risaliti, Aldo Bennici, Vera Beths, Henk Guittart, Maurizio Ben Omar, Gidon Kremer, Graziella Concas, Marina Leonardi, Giorgio Magnanensi, Daniel Schweitzer, Logos Ensemble, Octandre Ensemble, Ensemble Modern, Groupe de Musique de Musique Electro-acoustique de Bourges, Klami Ensemble, Calamus Ensemble, Keldisc Group, Kronos Quartet, L'Offerta Musicale Ensemble, Soloists of Santa Cecilia Academy, Soloists of Teatro La Fenice, Soloists of ORT, London Chamber Group, Ensemble Foriani, Ensemble Belliniano, West Chester University Orchestra, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Ploesti Philharmonic, Vilnius State Orchestra, etc.).
He is known for his use of multiple styles or techniques of music, sometimes within the same composition, and is seen as a postmodern characteristic. He explores a number of different areas of style and tone alongside the glittering, intricate, sonically alluring idiom that announced itself so strikingly in the I miei orologi (1995) for trio, an example of his flair for an openly mediterranean approach to instrumental sonority, articulated in cascading figuration and complex metres. His music of the 1990s continued to emphasize complex mechanical rhythms, often in a less densely chromatic idiom (tending to favor displaced major and minor triads and polymodal structures); his scores make huge technical demands on performers; sometimes, as in the case of Huaco for orchestra, creating parts that are so detailed they are likely impossible to realize completely. He views compositions as reification and formal structures of abstract ideas; but «he realizes in a use of isolated sonorities, extended playing techniques, frequent silences and ironic quotation of previous music». Carnevale?s actual compositional approach, rejects serialism and other generative methods of composing; he prefers instead to use systems only to create material and formal constraints. Carnevale's music combines the influences of serialism and American minimalism. His harmonic writing eschews the consonant modality of much minimalism, preferring post war European dissonance, often crystallised into large blocks of sound. Carnevale's music is published by LIM (Lucca), Verlag Neue Musik (Berlin), Suvini Zerboni (Milan), TEM-Taukay Edizioni Musicali (Udine), NEN (Palermo), CULC (Catania). His recordings appear on the Edizioni Carrara (Bergamo), Pongo Records (Paris), Suvini Zerboni (Milan), CIMS (Palermo), Pagano Editore (Naples), Union-Records (New York), NEN-CD Classica (Florence), etc. (Retracter)...(lire la suite)
