Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
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Liszt’s experiments with literature
Full text linkLiszt’s aspiration to create his own musical language and to find new tools of musical expression was unusually strong almost from the very beginning of his artistic career. Not only did the artist gladly spend his time among writers and read numerous texts, but he also turned to the technical and expressive means originating in literature. Among the most important attempts to work out new musical means on the basis of literary devices we may list: a strong emphasis on the sound factor, formal freedom and mixing of genres, composing a musical cycle on the basis of a poetic one (a narrative whole, leitmotifs), appealing to emotions by means of the appropriate selection of an oeuvre’s parameters, in particular articulation and dynamics, poetic quotations preceding the score, transposition of literary genres into the field of music, or synthesis of poetry and music in songs, symphony choruses, and piano transcriptions of songs. Album d’un voyageur is an excellent example of Liszt’s borrowings from literature and a very individual cycle with literary value. It is a story of a voyage across a small part of Europe in search of self-understanding; it is also a history of rebellion and the doubts which come as its consequence, as well as finding peace through contact with nature and through searching for God. Liszt created here an unusual oeuvre that combines poetic images and sounds. In 1884 Liszt declared that the most perfect form of synthesis of poetry and music is transcription of songs. It is here that music interprets poetry with its own means, which are often invented for the purposes of this synthesis. On the basis of the transcription of the song Ich liebe dich from 1860 we may observe how music becomes a language capable of imitating the intonation of the human voice, expressing emotions and, symbolically, relying on a programme, also expressing ideas
An unknown source concerning Esaias Reusner Junior from the Music Collection Department of Wroclaw University Library
Full text linkThe Music Collection Department of Wroclaw University Library is in possession of an old print that contains the following inscription: ‘Esaias Reusner | furste Brigischer | Lautenist’. This explicitly indicates the lutenist Esaias Reusner junior (1636-1679), who was born in Lwówek Śląski (Ger. Lówenberg). A comparative analysis of the duct of the handwriting in this inscription and in signatures on letters from 1667 and 1668 shows some convergences between the main elements of the script. However, there are also elements that could exclude the possibility that all the autographs were made by the same person. Consequently, it cannot be confirmed or unequivocally refuted that the inscription is an autograph signature of the lutenist to the court in Brzeg (Ger. Brieg). The old print itself contains a great deal of interesting information, which, in the context of Silesian musical culture of the second half of the seventeenth century and biographical information relating to the lutenist, enable us to become better acquainted with the specific character of this region, including the functioning of music in general, and lute music in particular. The print contains a work by Johann Kessel, a composer and organist from Oleśnica (Ger. Ols), who dedicated it to three brothers of the Piast dynasty: Georg III of Brzeg, Ludwig IV of Legnica and Christian of Legnica. It is a ‘Paean to brotherly unity”, which explains the reference to Psalm 133. Published in Brzeg, for the New Year of 1663, by Christoff Tschorn, the print also includes two poetic texts: a sophisticated elegiac distich in the form of a tautogram and a New Year’s ode. It is beneath these texts that we find the above-mentioned inscription relating to Esaias Reusner Jnr. Regardless of whether the autograph on the print is ascribed to Reusner or not, it does indicate his connection with this print, and probably with Kessel’s composition as well. Consequently, we can discover what kind of repertoire the Silesian lutenist played besides familiar lute pieces by his teachers, his own works, and arrangements of his works for chamber ensemble
Contemporary Music in Central Italy: an Overview of Recent Decades
Full text linkThe present article tries to make thematic the geographical plan of the present volume, by examining the major focal points of Contemporary Music in Central Italy which act as centres disseminating compositional trends through a long-established interest in recent music, as well as didactical structures and important teachers. Clearly, Rome is a more influential centre than Florence (where the endemic tendency of Florentine culture towards a sense of order, the settlement there of Dallapiccola, and the rise of a pioneering activity in the field of electronic music since the ‘60s are noteworthy); this is due to the teaching - through different generations - of Petrassi, Guaccero, Donatoni, Corghi and now Fedele, as well as the presence of many musical institutions, and the availability of artists and writers involved in exchanges and collaborations with composers. For this reason, many composers who were educated or active in Rome developed an outstanding - often prophetic - predilection for mix-media or theatrical works. After Bussotti, Guaccero, Macchi and Bertoncini, Giorgio Battistelli is a pivotal figure representing this trend in the next generation of composers; nonetheless an aptitude for it can be perceived also in other composers from both generations (Clementi, Pennisi and Renosto; Sbordoni, Lombardi, Rendine, D’Amico and De Rossi Re), including among the younger ones Silvia Colasanti, Roberta Vacca and Francesco Antonioni. In parallel, electronic music has been cultivated by Evangelisti and Branchi, as a way of renewing musical thought and language from their foundations: researches in the musical application of digital processing have been remarkable in Rome, along with experimentation in real time sound-generation and -transfoimation (Nottoli, Lupone, Di Scipio). On the whole, the generation born in the 1950s seems to tend (in aesthetics as well as in poetics) towards a change of thinking about musical form, integrating paradigmatic (structural) categories, typical of serial music, with syntagmatic (fictional) ones. Such an integration is perceivable as early as in the works of Donatoni, which have widely influenced many younger Italian composers, whether they have studied under him or not. The compositional horizon in Central Italy will be examined, with a special focus on that generation, with regard to two issues: 1) Has this change been determined (or helped) by post modernism? Before post-modernism became widespread during the 1980s, some composers from Rome had already elaborated a language which included heterogeneous sound materials and playing with musical codes, even if they did not deny the necessity of historical progress of musical language. Furthermore, postmodernism doesn’t suffice to explain the music of many composers, for whom the stratification of musical language and the sphericity of internal relationship inside a work is a result of the theory of complexity. 2) What is the aesthetical and poetical tendency in the youngest generation of composers, since a radicalization between a fictional and a visionary approach seems to have been established in their music
Naive Love and Mature Art - Two Consistent Testimonies. A Study on the Philosophy of Life
Full text linkThe place of musie in thepoetry of Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer
Full text linkYoung Poland poetry was dominated by artistic imaging, but its associations with music are also quite often mentioned. Many examples of its “musicality” can be found in various layers of poetic works, starting with their phonological aspect and versification, through the simple usage of lexical resources, descriptions of instruments and concerts and listeners’ impressions, up to attempts at finding appropriate means for transposing particular genres or specific musical works into poetry and even creating a poetic language modelled on music. The characteristic phenomenon of poetry challenging music can be observed during that period. The oeuvre of Fryderyk Chopin is especially important, as there are many sets of works concerned with Chopin’s music or the composer himself (about 150). Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer was one of the Young Poland poets to show an interest in this subject. The images created by Tetmajer’s specific artistic imagination were often defined by elements of a musical character. The best-known “musical” set of works by Tetmajer is the Preludes, considered to be his “calling-card”. Tetmajer used sounds in many different ways. Besides attempts at shaping this poetical cycle in the image of Chopin’s preludes, one should mention here the role of the music and songs of the highlanders, the repetitive distant chime of church bells, the various musical instruments, notes and tones reverberating in many poems, and the specific role of the music of nature. The works directly inspired by Fryderyk Chopin’s music (Mazurek Chopina [Chopin’s mazurka], Cień Chopina [Chopin’s shadow], Zamyślenia XVI [Thoughtfulness XVI]) are a good reflection of Tetmajer’s way of thinking and writing about the sounds of nature. They are part of the tum-of-the-century mood, since they use impressionistic, symbolic and pre-Raphaelite poetics. The poem Zamyślenia provides a sort of conclusion to Tetmajer’s poetical thinking about Chopin, and about music in general. The poet agrees here with the modernist vision of Chopin as a bard of the nation. Almost all the leitmotifs favoured by the poet and connected to his perception of music appear here: the effect of “listening” to sounds from afar, a soul filled with grief (reminiscent of the sad tones of the music), a mood encompassing the whole universe and moving deep layers of human sensitivity, specifically among Poles
The ‘Faust’ or ’Lucifer’ Sonata? On Liszt’s idea of programme music as exemplified by his Piano Sonata in B minor
Full text linkThe musicological tradition places Liszt’s Sonata in B minor within the sphere of compositions inspired by the Faustian myth. Its musical material, its structure and its narrative exhibit certain similarities to the ‘Faust’ Symphony. Yet there has appeared a different and, one may say, a rival interpretation of Sonata in B minor. What is more, it is well-documented from both a musical and a historical point of view. It has been presented by Hungarian pianist and musicologist Tibor Szasz. He proposes the thesis that the Sonata in B minor has been in fact inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost, with its three protagonists: Adam, Satan and Christ. He finds their illustrations and even some key elements of the plot in the Sonata’s narrative. But yet Milton’s Paradise Lost and Goethe’s Faust are both stories of the Fall and Salvation, of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. The triads of their protagonists - Adam and Eve, Satan, and Christ; Faust, Mephisto and Gretchen - are homological. Thus both interpretations of the Sonata, the Goethean and the Miltonian, or, in other words, the Faustian and the Luciferian, are parallel and complementary rather than rival. It is also highly probable that both have had their impact on the genesis of the Sonata in B minor
Federico Incardona and Giovanni Damiani
Full text linkTogether with Sciarrino and Casale, Incardona and Damiani are the most important composers trained at Palermo University’s Musicological Institute. Federico Incardona (Palermo, 1958-2006) reconciles the social commitment of Berg and the political tension of Nono with the sublimated eroticism of Szymanowski. If Nono’s works, like those of Evangelisti in a different way, blend dodecaphonic dialectic with the corporeity of the sound of Varèse, Incardona blends Evangelisti’s sonorous cosmogony with the erotic immediateness of Bussotti. But his principal reference point is Mahler. His music is rich in meaning and strong emotional intensity, concentrated and sublimated: it is like “processes of denuding of the melody, carnal embraces between the parts, dodecaphonic series modelled on the body of the loved one” (Spagnolo). Its “new linearity and temporal tension”, is wedded to the “absolute primacy of expression and emotion”, in full awareness of the “deep unity of emotion and knowledge” (Lombardi Vallauri). Indeed, in the intense expressionism of his music, dodecaphonic construction is always at the service of a dialectical discourse which is dense and deep, but - in his last works - clear and fluid like a melody by Bellini. “Infinite melos”, Marc Crescimanno defines it: harmonic richness and dense hétérophonie complexities are blended; the counterpoint is based “on the superimposition of manifold variations on the same figure, with precise control of the vertical encounters on its melodic-harmonic hinges”. Born into a dynasty of engineers and architects, Giovanni Damiani (Palermo, 1966) is himself an engineer and architect, but in sound space. Rather than music, his works are organized Sound: “embodiment of the intelligence inherent in sounds themselves”, in the manner of Varèse, and specifically “sound vegetation”, in the manner of Bartok. His most important work, Salve follie precise (1998-2004: on a libretto in verse by Francesco Carapezza, based on Semmelweis et l’infection puerpérale that Louis-Ferdinand Céline wrote between 1924 and 1929), represents precisely the germination of life (of algae from water, of grass from rock, of man from woman, of sounds from Sound) and the threats of death that surround it, that is to say of regression of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to the mineral kingdom. In it Damiani exclusively uses, as previously in the great symphony Matrice/Organon (1995), natural harmonic sounds. We thus assist at harmonic germination; Sound generates sounds, the Note generates notes. If Damiani as a musicologist follows on from Réti, as a composer he follows on from Schenker. For him the note, seen as pure Sound internally structured a priori, is everything: the universe of artistic creation in sound space is only unfolding of the tension internal to the note itself. Everything (melody, tonality, polyphony, harmony), as Cesare Brandi wrote, “comes from the very nature of the note, which is, in the stratification of harmonics, tonic, isolated note (of a melody), vertical chord and horizontal encounter of polyphonic lines”