Goffredo Petrassi, Nonsense no. IV. Ideational Subtlety, Sound Expression, and Solutions for Conducting Approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47451/art2024-10-01Keywords:
Goffredo Petrassi, nonsense, conducting approach, analysisAbstract
The music of the twentieth century is characterised by stylistic diversity, given by “the unprecedented complexity of structural composition, the extremely heterogeneous character of artistic creation and the fast change of writing technique” of “...ardently searching for the new, based on the development of tradition, sometimes on its denial”, such as the trend of scientific substantiation of the creation process. One of the features of each European musical culture faced with the pressing trends of modernity was to keep a balance between assuming a “high level of writing technique and the appeal to national and universal traditions.” In this context, the secular choral composition of Goffredo Petrassi offers a synthetic picture of the infiltration and adaptation of the composing options of modernity in the Italian interwar and postwar musical space. The conducting approach of the songs dedicated to vocal ensembles is influenced by many factors, including the understanding of the sound language used by the composer, the compositional and writing techniques, or its reference to the poetic background to which it appeals. The present study proposes several solutions for the conducting interpretation of the madrigal Nonsense IV by Goffredo Petrassi, starting from the stylistic analysis of the score and the reporting of music to the semantic content of the text.
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