Bluebeard’s Castle by Béla Bartók. A reading hypothesis

Bluebeard’s Castle (A kékszakállú herceg vára), composed by Béla Bartók on a libretto by Béla Balázs, is one of the most significant musical works of the early twentieth century and a masterpiece of Hungarian modernism. The opera deals with “the eternal tragedy of the dualism between man and woman” from an original point of view, divergent from the widespread one in Western European thought and art. The essay investigates Bartók’s musical dramaturgy according to this topic

"Between structuralism and postmodernism". The musical dramaturgy of Azio Corghi in light of his artistic collaboration with Saramago

In this essay the author reconstructs Azio Corghi’s path to conquest of musical theater and the importance of the confrontation with José Saramago for the development of a personal musical dramaturgy. In addition, the author investigates the main dramaturgical processes adopted by Corghi in the works Blimunda and Divara and finally, he clarifies Corghi’s position towards the aesthetics of postmodernism.In this essay the author reconstructs Azio Corghi’s path to conquest of musical theater and the importance of the confrontation with José Saramago for the development of a personal musical dramaturgy. In addition, the author investigates the main dramaturgical processes adopted by Corghi in the works Blimunda and Divara and finally, he clarifies Corghi’s position towards the aesthetics of postmodernism

Da Saramago a Cechov: il teatro musicale di Azio Corghi e il “teatro epico” del ‘900

Since his debut, in Gargantua (1984, by François Rabelais), and even more in the works composed in collaboration with José Saramago (Blimunda, 1990; Divara, 1993), Azio Corghi has pursued an idea of drama characterized by a marked ‘aesthetic presence’ of the author and by his vision of the world, typical of the ‘epic’ theatre of the twentieth century. In 2000, composing Tat’jana Repina (2000) by Chekhov, with his ‘open’ theatricality and tormented existential problems, the musician was forced to rethink his musical dramaturgy: the landscapes of History designed by Saramago are replaced by a psychological story, which takes place in a ‘community’ of individuals marked by loneliness and despair; and the choral, ‘collective’ dimension, which in Blimunda and Divara arose from History, is converted into a ‘monological’ chorus which is typically Chekhovian and shows the crisis of communication typical of the modern theatre. To convey the bleak pessimism of Chekhov, in Tat’jana – going beyond Blimunda and Divara’s predominant symbolism – Corghi pushed his writing to the highest level of abstraction, used only at the beginning, during his structuralist period, no more in accordance with the strict determinism of post-Webern avant-garde but according to a free choice, dictated by inner artistic necessity

Nuovi approcci per godere la musica d’oggi. Un progetto didattico

This article presents the first results of the project “Nuovi approcci per godere la musica d’oggi” (New approaches to enjoying today’s music), developed within the SagGEM workgroup with the collaboration of composer Alessandro Solbiati. The aim is to fine-tune coherent, well-planned didactic modules based on the 20th and 21st-century repertory, through very close interaction between the acquired knowledge and tools of musicology and music pedagogy, and field work based on direct interaction with students. In particular, the article reconstructs didactic activities carried out on the compositions of György Ligeti, Poème symphonique pour 100 métronomes and Lux aeterna. These pieces belong to the early maturity of the Hungarian musician, and require that listeners develop new perceptual strategies, since they are conceived and built around music parameters that used to be regarded as secondary, such as ‘texture’, timbre and sound gesture

Per una didattica della musica del Novecento: un percorso possibile

Questo percorso didattico è concepito come ‘guida’ all’ascolto e all’analisi della sezione introduttiva e del primo quadro (Les augures printaniers. Danses des adolescentes) del Sacre du printemps di Igor Stravinskij: l’opera stravinskiana, annoverata tra le grandi partiture del Novecento, presenta infatti caratteristiche sonore immediatamente percepibili, che consentono anche all’ascoltatore non esperto di costruire con agio una propria ‘mappa mentale’ della composizione.Il percorso si sviluppa come riflessione a vasto raggio, articolata in una serie di suggerimenti che potranno di volta in volta essere declinati in approcci didattici differenziati, calibrati sugli stadi d’età e di competenza dei discenti; al di là delle specifiche considerazioni sull’Introduction del Sacre e sugli Augures printaniers, con questo percorso si intende altresì avanzare un’ipotesi di lavoro: la pratica dell’analisi anche di poche pagine di una partitura come occasione per sviluppare un discorso di più ampia portata sugli elementi costitutivi del linguaggio musicale e sui procedimenti del comporre.Dopo l’individuazione dei parametri principali della scrittura stravinskiana – ritmo, timbro, tessitura sonora – si ricostruiscono le ragioni storiche e culturali del radicamento della partitura del Sacre nelle tradizioni folkloriche dell’Europa orientale (russa bielorussa lituana) e si approfondiscono quindi taluni fondamentali stilemi del comporre di Stravinskij: dal ricorso all’ossessiva ripetitività dell’ostinato alla costruzione di percorsi formali di tipo paratattico, fondati sulla frammentazione e la discontinuità, sino al conseguimento di una nuova organizzazione del tempo musicale, sottratta alla direzionalità propria della musica di tradizione classico-romantica.Il percorso si chiude con la proposta di ulteriori possibili approfondimenti, che vanno dalla considerazione del ruolo determinante della scala ottatonica per la costruzione stravinskiana di un inedito ‘sistema’ sonoro al confronto tra il sostrato mitico del Sacre e quello messo in atto da Thomas Eliot nel poema The Waste Land in cui il tema del risveglio della natura si tramuta nei temi opposti dell’impotenza e della morte e l’immagine della ‘terra desolata’ si fa cifra poetica della crisi del mondo moderno

Tra ricerca e memoria: Leggenda di Alessandro Solbiati

The article examines Alessandro Solbiati’s second theatrical work, Leggenda, which takes inspiration from the tale “The Grand Inquisitor” included in Dostoevsky’s novel The Karamazov Brothers. After presenting the meaning of this tale in the novel of the Russian writer, it reconstructs the genesis of the opera and the structure of the libretto. Then it analyses the musical forms, the vocal language and the composer’s ‘pensée sonorielle’ and considers them in the light of his musical dramaturgy. Finally, it outlines Solbiati’s aesthetical conception, his relationship with the musical tradition and his personal stance on postmodernism and postwebernian avant-garde.The article examines Alessandro Solbiati’s second theatrical work, Leggenda, which takes inspiration from the tale “The Grand Inquisitor” included in Dostoevsky’s novel The Karamazov Brothers. After presenting the meaning of this tale in the novel of the Russian writer, it reconstructs the genesis of the opera and the structure of the libretto. Then it analyses the musical forms, the vocal language and the composer’s ‘pensée sonorielle’ and considers them in the light of his musical dramaturgy. Finally, it outlines Solbiati’s aesthetical conception, his relationship with the musical tradition and his personal stance on postmodernism and postwebernian avant-garde