The 16 craftsmen who take up their positions on stage are real coopers, carpenters, pavers, masons, smiths, stonemasons and pastrycooks. The mature side of middle age, bald or silver-haired, stocky to stout, they soon fill the house with tapping, clinking and rasping, their sounds filled out by a percussionist (Nicola Raffone) and four female singers whose lips patter together soundlessly, whispering almost inaudibly. A conductor directs what emerges as a meticulously organised score, as calculated in its effects of varied dynamics, pace and texture as any symphony.

It may be a back-handed compliment to Giorgio Battistelli, but the sounds of everyday work are right up the Italian composer’s viale. Experimentum Mundi has toured the world. I saw it at the Almeida Festival in 1985 and if memory serves, the performance that enlivened Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre last week was more persuasive.

There comes a point of no return when you realise the dramatic impact, even wit, of Battistelli’s arrangement of work-sounds: the Rossinian crescendo, the Mahlerian hammer-blows as the coopers complete a barrel big enough to drown Shakespeare’s Duke of Clarence, the abrupt still silence highlighting the grinders stolidly pedalling at their treadles, shooting out sparks like flamethrowers. (A smith heats an iron bar to glowing redness: do health and safety know about this?)

Others play their role in silence: after the amplified scrunching that fills the auditorium – eggs cracking – the pastry cook soundlessly rolls his dough to make raw ribbons of pasta. Some workmen stand immobile for long stretches, stoically awaiting their cue; others, such as the cobblers, never stop.

Artisans from Battistelli’s home region – in some cases family has succeeded the original performers – are joined by actor Hilton McRae reading descriptions of craftsmen’s tools from Diderot’s Encyclopédie – verbal repetition and varying speed and volume as carefully scored as an instrument – and the four ladies from the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union who journey sure-footedly from hushed mouthing via muffled, almost under-water vocal sounds to little yelps and yowls.

Running for an hour, the piece is long enough to be hypnotic and short enough not to wear thin, which is more than can be said for, say, John Adams. ★★★★☆

At The Space, Dundee on Tuesday, tel +44 1382 834 934