Valeria De Lucca

Una silloge strumentale per Francesco II d'Este: analisi iconologica e considerazioni sullo stile

The collection of Sonate per camera violino e violoncello di vari autori contains twelve sonatas for violin and cello by ten composers from the Bolognese area. Notably, every page of this collection is richly decorated with engravings by the Bolognese artist, cellist, engraver, and stage designer, Carlo Antonio Buffagnotti.
The absence of bibliographical information or of a dedication makes it difficult to identify the cultural milieu of this extraordinarily elaborate artistic creation. Through a comparison of the iconographical topics of the engravings and archival documents and Bolognese chronicles of the late seventeenth century, it is possible to reconstruct pivotal events of the war between the Sacred Roman Empire and the Turkish in 1683. Buffagnotti decided to use iconographical topoi concerning this victory to make homage to the noble dedicatee of the collection, whose coat-of-arms, a trophy with a lily in the middle appears in the last engraving, Francesco II of Este. The musical forms and stylistic features of the sonatas provide further evidence that the collection originated in Emilia, thus documenting a critical connection between Bolognese musicians and the court of Francesco II.
In addition to establishing a methodology for the study and interpretation of sources containing both music and images, this article poses new historical and musical questions on the role fo Francesco II of Este, and on the intense cultural exchange between the two capitals of Emilian music of the late seventeenth century.

Piero Gargiulo

Ancora su Verdelot-Savonarola: il madrigale 'con lacrim' et sospir''

Often viewed as late evidence of adherence to the climate of the Florentine Republic and at the same time as a religious-political reflection of the revival of Savonarolan ideals, the well-known Newberry-Oscott manuscript collection [NO] (c. 1526-29) includes a setting of Con lacrim' et sospir' among the 22 madrigals attributed to Verdelot. Though the piece is sometimes confused with another setting of the same text and has also been ascribed to Arcadelt, the attribution to Verdelot is confirmed in the two illustrious printed editions (the incomplete Roman Serena editions, which appeared in 1530 and 1534) which constituted the first substantial nucleus of madrigals by the Franco-Flemish composer.
Taking into consideration the area of Verdelot's formation (prior to his arrival in Tuscany in 1521) and his successive admission to the historical-artistic environment that inspired the compilation of NO, this article assesses the grounds for a Verdelot-Savonarola link also in the secular field (as already conjectured and discussed for certain motets). And it does so through objective data and analytical findings: the manuscript unicum of the madrigal surviving complete in NO; the restricted circulation of the piece and the fact that it was less successful than the other setting of the same name; and the actual stylistic features of the madrigal, judged to be «the most consistently and ingeniously imitative among Verdelot's madrigals». Finally, to complete the enquiry, the article also considers possible influences of the Savonarolan lauda: for example, the metaphor of the incipit and final distich (a sort of suggestive allusion to the spiritualism of the Piagnoni) and the affinities in polyphonic texture between the madrigal and the two-voice lauda Padre del cielo, included in MS Venet. Marc. It. IX, 145 (fols. 1450-60) together with four other poetic texts set by the frater.

Linda Maria Koldau

'Non sit quid volo sed fiat quod tibi placet': i 'contrafacta' sacri del 'Lamento d'Arianna' di Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi's «Lamento d'Arianna» was not only sung and imitated widely by 17th-century musicians and composers, but it served also as model for sacred contrafacta. In the article, three contrafacta are discussed, two of which have not been known yet. While the Latin contrafactum «Pianto della Madonna» was created under the auspices of Monteverdi himself (he included the piece in his church music collection «Selva morale e spirituale» of 1641), the two «Lamenti della Maddalena» are anonymous, Italian contrafacta, in which the saint and sinner Magdalen substitutes the Theban princess Arianna. The article discusses the decisive changes of meaning that are caused by the sacred substitutions and shows that at least the second, considerably expanded «Lamento della Maddalena» gives evidence of a later, more operatic recitative style.

Enrica Lisciani-Petrini

'Belle catene in cui s'avvolge il dio nella carne sperduto…'. La riflessione di Merleau-Ponty sulla musica.

In the Phénoménologie de la perception Merleau-Ponty makes some observations on music that raise radical issue and fundamental points of debate. Music, he says, shows that 'the signification' of a composition lies not only in the signs specific to musical syntax, but also in the concrete sonic execution - to the extent that it is utterly incomprehensible without or beyond it. This peculiarity of music also suggests (again according to Merleau-Ponty) that conventional verbal language in reality alludes to a phonic gestuality on which it was originally grafted - and indeed still is grafted (though hidden). Hence the interest - a philosophical interest - in musicians like Schönberg and Berg. In such figures the discovery of 'polytonalism' is in some respects like the recovery of that 'poly-relationality' that also stands at the centre of Klee's research of painting. It is a recovery of a language that is capable of expressing that invisible 'modulation' that occurs between things: that 'between', that silent background - that elusive state of 'immanence', to use Klee's famous word - that can never be stated, but out of which we receive things, words and music. With the result that sounds, figures and signs become - to use the image in Valéry's poem La Pythie - the 'fair chains' in which a 'lost' movement is silently confined.

Maurizio Padoan

Dalla 'Potentia auditiva' all'universal genio de' spettatori. La ricezione della musica nel pensiero teorico tra Rinascimento e Barocco (I)

This survey proposed in this study aims, at an introductory level and from an inter-textual angle, to identify certain fundamental aesthetic conceptions of the Baroque cultural environment. These conceptions that have a genuine point of intersection in the implication of audiences and hence in the recourse – in music (as in the other arts) – to every possible resource to conquer the public's attention. The poetics of the marvellous, of psychological effect and of imaginative enticement are all traits that effectively belong to a rhetorical project, in which the ultimate end is the persuasion of the recipient. In this perspective the dominant motivation – in every field of experience (even the liturgical!) – is movere, often to the extent of eclipsing docere.
Subsequently, with the benefit of selective texts, the article examines certain instances of Renaissance theoretical thought (from Tinctoris to Vicentino) that are important precisely for how they aim to go beyond the abstract, intellectualistic and speculative approach of the tradition, and instead adopt a more pragmatic orientation by acknowledging the fundamental role of reception in the aesthetic event. Implied is a marked accentuation of the demands of hearing, of delight and above all of the effects of music on the mind. The significance of this is evident, if only for the light it throws on the importance the early Baroque was to attribute to such themes as aesthetic pleasure, the translation-impression of the affects and the alteration of the passions.

Giovanni Piana

La scala universale dei suoni di Daniélou

This article outlines the general reasons that induced Daniélou to propose a division of the octave into 53 intervals as a universal scale of sounds, within a more general reflection about the idea of a natural scale. In particular, it illustrates Daniélou's criticism of its naturalistic foundations, accentuating the presence of an empirical interest, in connection with the issues relating to the tunings of extra-European cultures. This interest, however, is reinforced by a mathematizing approach, which can be seen as a revival of neo-Pythagorean tendencies but which also, in a way that is perhaps extravagant though rich in interest, would seem to betray the influence of modern computer science. The aim of the article is twofold: on the one hand, to bring to light the main theoretical threads of Daniélou's research, which are often buried and not clearly visible; on the other hand, to show that mathematizing apriorism is clearly dominant, as shown by the fact that the entire universal scale can be derived from an elementary algebraic formula.

Alessandro Rigolli

'Einstein on the beach' di Philip Glass e Bob Wilson: caratteri di una 'non-opera'

Einstein on the beach, the opera Philip Glass wrote in collaboration with Bob Wilson in the mid-Seventies, can be viewed as a summa of the experiences generated by the Baltimore-born composer in the theatrical sphere from 1965 onwards. If we attempt an assessment of the work's dramaturgical structure, through a selection of reports and chronicles of the performances, we find structural elements that can be traced to the genre of 'melodrama' (which we know to have assumed innumerable forms in the 20th century), together with the inevitable differences of a historical, sociological and aesthetic nature. However, melodrama – at least as it was originally conceived – was a means of narration, its aim being to express, relate and project the story represented as clearly as possible. In Einstein the programmatic aim is diametrically the opposite, as its authors themselves declare at various times during the work's creation, and as the work itself confirms in performance. All possibility of narration is most definitely denied by the freezing of space (obtained by the extreme slowness of the gestures and the looming immobility of the images) and by the freezing of time (which is expanded by the way the music continually curls back on itself). What emerges, therefore, is a sort of new anti-dialectic, anti-narrative melodrama that makes no attempt to relate anything at all. Suspended in a kind of a-temporal stasis, it is a purely symbolic theatrical expression, conforming to the expressive demands of the minimalist current of the musical avant-garde of the second half of the 20th century.

Francesco Spagnolo

'Se il violinista cade dal tetto…'. L'Italia nel 'revival' della musica 'klezmer'

Over the past decade, a new genre - «klezmer music» - has surfaced in the music world. Rooted in easter European Jewish instrumental music and Yiddish song, klezmer has become popular throughout the world, even in countries where Jews are note (or are no longer) present, and where this form of music originally did not exist. Italy - where the extreme popularity this music enjoys has overshadowed local Jewish traditions - presents an interesting study case. «Klezmer» has become a synonym for «Jewish», and denotes a (musical) culture that is believed to live in a transnational and multicultural world outside history. This article reviews recent scholarship on the definition and history of traditional klezmer repertoires, explores general trends in the klezmer revival, and shows how the Italian «klezmer scene» tends to present a repertoire devoid of traditional and Jewish content, while at the same time shaping a «usable tradition» and a new «aesthetic of the old».

Sabrina Trentin

Seneca fonte di 'Médée' di Luigi Cherubini

The scholars who have considered the relationship between François-Benoît Hoffman's libretto for Cherubini's opera Médée and ist sources have numbered among the latter Euripides and Corneille, and recently also the French theatrical tradition. Only indirectly or occasionally and marginally, however, have they included Seneca. Nonetheless, a thorough study of the original libretto and the Roman tragedy, combined with a detailed comparative reading of the texts hitherto recognized as sources, have brought to light a different state of affairs, which is also supported by textual findings. Seneca turns out to be not only a direct source, but also an important model as regards the conception of the libretto, the characterization of the work's protagonists and the actual staging itself.