Music analysis in the theoretical, interpretative, historical and didactic study of music:
the Fourth Convention of Analitica (Istituto "G. Lettimi", Rimini 2006)

From 16-18 March 2006, at the Istituto di Alta Formazione Artistica e Musicale “G. Lettimi” in Rimini, the Fourth Research Meeting of Analitica was held, organized by the G.A.T.M. (Group of Music Analysis and Theory), in collaboration with the Province and the Municipality of Rimini. The Scientific Committee of the Convention included: Mario Baroni, Antonio Bertozzi, Rossana Dalmonte, Gianluca Gardini, Enrico Meyer, Susanna Pasticci, Egidio Pozzi, Lorenzo Rinaldi, and Giorgio Sanguinetti. After the greetings warmly expressed by the Councillors for the Arts of the Province and the Municipality of Rimini (Marcella Bondoni and Stefano Pivato) and the generous welcome on behalf of the Director of the Institute, Prof. Enrico Meyer, the participants immediately got down to work. The four intense study sessions, spread over the three days of the Convention, were organized according to the following thematic areas: Tonal Repertories (pres. Giorgio Sanguinetti); Twentieth Century Music I (pres. Loris Azzaroni); Twentieth Century Music II (pres. Susanna Pasticci); Round Table on Luciano Berio’s “Rounds” (pres. Rossana Dalmonte).
Whereas some of the contributions presented at the Convention will be published on Analitica, the proceedings of the last day (concerning the analyses of Rounds by Luciano Berio), in addition to the works of Stella, Bollella, Alberti, Russo, Affortunato, Verzina, and Moiraghi, were selected for publication on the Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale (RATM).

First Session: Tonal repertories (pres. Giorgio Sanguinetti)
The study presented by Nicolò Maccavino (The “tonal structures” of the Madrigali a cinque from the Libro Ottavo by Pomponio Nenna, Rome 1618) underlined the fundamental contribution of Nenna, alongside composers such as Gesualdo di Venosa, to the «rich blossoming of Neapolitan madrigals» which came about between 1590 and 1620. The analysis put forward was based, among other compositional aspects, on an assessment of the relationships between the “tonal structures” present in the madrigals, and furthermore proposed an interesting hypothesis concerning the foreshadowing, within a fundamentally contrapuntal language, of emerging “baroque” musical expressiveness.
Piero Venturini based his contribution (Beethoven revisiting his own past: some considerations on the relationship between the last two Sonatas and Op.10 n.1) on the analysis and comparison between the second movement of Op. 10 n. 1 and the first movement of Op. 110, and between the first movement of the same sonata and the first movement of Op. 111. Making use of Rudolph Reti’s methodology, the techniques of thematic transformation were identified, while on the basis of the “implication-fulfilment” scheme, re-elaborated by Eugene Narmour, it was possible to compare the potentialities present in the material of Op. 10 n. 1 with their concrete expression in the more mature works. In the latter Venturini saw the will to surpass the concept of space (connected to the idea of classical formal and phraseological structure), combined with the structural use of counterpoint, as the unifying element of the compositional construction.
In Gaetano Stella’s work (The Quartets of Pietro Platania: a genre poised between Opera and Symphony), the two quartets written by Pietro Platania (1828-1907) were put into context with respect both to the prolific output of the composer himself, and to the music of his period. The approach to the two works made use of diverse analytical models: from those based on formal analysis – William E. Caplin, James Hepokoski, and Warren Darcy – to the study of rhythm found in the writings of Friedrich Lippmann. An comparison was then carried out, involving both Italian (Mercadante and Pacini) and foreign (Beethoven, Mozart, and Mendelssohn) composers, from which the image of a Neapolitan school of composition appeared, that in the mid-Nineteenth century united its traditional models with the elaboration of foreign examples.
The research of Mimma Leonora Bollella (Wandering or determination in Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 n. 1), on the contrary, was based on schenkerian analysis. In particular, the impression of unity and coherence that came out of this analysis (which diverges from the preceding readings of Belotti and Chominski) was linked to an approach to composition that seems, in its improvisatory characteristics, to constantly try to evade tonal affirmation.
The essays written by Tovey in the first half of the Twentieth century, as figures such as Charles Rosen, Joseph Kerman, and Richard Goldman have pointed out, can rightly be considered among the most important Anglo-Saxon contributions to music analysis. In his contribution (Aspects of Donald Francis Tovey’s theoretical and analytic thought: the ‘explanation of the beautiful’), Giuseppe Sellari undertook an interesting comparison between Tovey’s analytical approach and that of his elder colleague Heinrich Schenker with respect to the Finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The correspondences and analytical affinities that emerged might encourage research into the motives that were later to lead the two analysts towards outlooks and results that are sometimes quite divergent.
The analysis presented by Nastasja Gandolfo (Irregularity in the Ursatz of the Lieder of Johannes Brahms: An eine Aeolsharfe and Die Schale der Vergessenheit) pointed out some peculiarities in the configuration of the Ursatz, in correlation with the meaning of the text. By way of such correspondences, both pieces were recognized as significant examples of Kunstlieder in which several of Brahms’ “progressive” techniques are employed. With respect to the current state of research, this study went further in depth into some considerations expressed in a preceding Schenkerian analysis by Carl Schachter, while, as far as Die Schale der Vergessenheit is concerned, it offers a completely new contribution.

Second Session: Twentieth century music I (pres. Loris Azzaroni)
The objective of the analysis of Eine blasse Wäscherin from Pierrot lunaire, carried out by Alfonso Alberti (Eine blasse Wäscherin: an analysis of strategies in timbre) was to identify the criteria used in its instrumentation. Following an investigation into some of the problematic aspects of timbre analysis, Alberti on one hand took into consideration the study of the melodic lines and the harmonic content of the chords, and on the other referred to the mathematical concepts of combination, disposition, and rotation, the latter indicating a succession of two dispositions. This choice of formalized methods lead to an analysis of the parameter of timbre, which however raised some doubts concerning its own validity a propos of an atonal repertory which, far from dodecaphonic rigour, must also take into account purely instinctive choices.
The merit of Marco Russo’s contribution (Webern neoclassicist? Form and structure of the Trio Op. 20) was in its examination of a work that is rarely “visited” by analysts, whose place moreover in Webern’s production lies in the delicate period of transition from atonal expressionism to dodecaphony. The analysis aimed to shed light, contrarily to the bulk of the analytic tradition regarding Webern’s works, intent on valorising the more innovative and radical aspects of his language, on the “conservative” contents of the form of the two pieces that make up the Trio Op. 20. Once a certain number of “tonal” mechanisms had been identified, they were interpreted as musical expressions ascribable to the category of “neoclassicism”, in such a way as to re-evaluate the output of Webern in relation to a less progressive sphere than that in which, perhaps reading too much into the text, it had been collocated by the avant-garde.
The forty compositions that Paul Hindemith gathered under the name of Sonatas involve both traditional (solo piano, violin and piano, etc.) and novel chamber groups (bassoon and piano, bass tuba and piano, four horns, etc.). The analysis presented by Marco Moiraghi (The Hindemith Sonatas: harmony, form, style) offered a reconnaissance of the entire corpus of the Sonatas, in order to explore their specific style. The analytical method employed was modelled upon the one used by David Neumeyer in his 1986 study The Music of Paul Hindemith. This method is based on an attempt to describe the form of a composition through the identification of its fundamental tonal centres, approach put forward in turn by Hindemith himself in the first two volumes of his Unterweisung im Tonsatz. After having singled out the formal idea at the root of each single Sonata (identified first and foremost with the analysis of its thematic-motivic recurrences and the organisation of its tonal plan), Moiraghi formulated a tentative definition of the evolution of a style proper to the sonata which, in Hindemith’s mature years, achieved a fusion between structures that at first sight appear incompatible.
The study of the treatise Armonia di Gravitazione written by Roberto Lupi (1908-1971) was the principal point of interest in the presentation of Tiziana Affortunato (The natural way of harmonic relations: Roberto Lupi’s Armonia di gravitazione (1946)). The text was defined as one of the last products of the theoretical tradition that determined the laws of music on the basis of acoustics (the so-called physicalist theory), that was subsequently supplanted when serial thought took hold. At the centre of Lupi’s system is the "attracting” or “tonal note", and the three chords made up of its harmonics; around it “gravitate” (metaphor for the solar system) the “harmonic halos”, whose root notes generate series of harmonics in which the attracting note is found one or more times. The account offered by Affortunato concluded with an analytical application of the treatise, as suggested by Lupi, to a few passages from the Cinque piccoli canti for piano by Lupi himself.
If transcribing the solos of famous jazz musicians has long been a consolidated practise in Afro-American musicology, it has now become an indispensable means of comprehension in the study of interpretative style. Giuseppe Di Nardo’s presentation (Enrico Rava, the “tale-teller”: a study in the style of improvisation) belongs to this second area, considering the characteristics of the improvisation style of Enrico Rava through the analysis of some of his solos. The results of the analysis (carried out using Ruwet’s method) brought to light, notwithstanding the virtuoso melodic elaboration generated by harmonic successions, this Italian musician’s strong lyric and narrative sense, which suggests a melodic-formal dimension fundamentally dependant on a rhetorical conception of musical discourse.
The analysis of the Potential complexities in the interpretations of Aguas de Março by Antônio Carlos Jobim, offered by Enrico Bianchi, was undertaken on the basis of three interpretations of this piece: Jobim’s original 1972 version, the 1974 interpretation of the duo Elis Regina-Jobim, and Rosa Passos’ sophisticated 2003 rereading. Taking into account the fundamental role of repetition, the analysis focused first of all on the analytical methodology of Ruwet, and secondly on the general method of melodic segmentation, re-examined in detail by Fabio Cifariello Ciardi (in RATM vol. 2003/2). The micro-variations of the melodic unities were analysed in relation to the text, which was evaluated not only in function of its semantic importance but also its special timbre qualities.

Third Session: Twentieth century music II (pres. Susanna Pasticci)
The session dedicated to the second half of the 20th century opened with the presentation of Elisabetta Piras (Pre-existing music in Satyricon by Bruno Maderna and Le Grand Macabre by György Ligeti), which studied the musical citations and the stylistic allusions present in two works of the 1970s: Satyricon, composed by Bruno Maderna on the multilingual libretto written by the composer himself, and Le Grand Macabre, composed by György Ligeti on the libretto by M. Meschke and Ligeti. The model proposed in 1994 by J. Peter Burkholder for the study of music in the compositions of Charles Ives was taken on by the present investigation as an example. The analysis underlined, both in relation to the context in which the citation is placed and in consideration of its musical elaboration, the processes which allow the original functions to be transformed, taking furthermore into account the dramaturgical structure.
Nicola Verzina’s presentation (Time and sense of death in Hermann Broch and Jean Barraqué. Some analytical reflections on the technique of the “proliferating series”: Le temps restitué – … au delà du hasard… - Chant après chant) began with a reflection on the two central themes of Hermann Broch’s novel The Death of Virgil, “time” and “death”. The analysis, an immanent scrutiny of serial technique which is quite appropriate to the entire production of Barraqué, allowed an evaluation of the musical transposition and stylisation of the two above-mentioned themes. The importance of this composer emerged by way of an accurate evaluation of the “proliferating series”, that while remaining in the sphere of serialism breaks with rigid techniques of permutation, in order to achieve the musical realization of a temporality that is in continuous becoming. Lastly, the analogies put forward with Maderna’s “technique of serial mutation” confirmed the importance of studying a composer until present neglected by musicological research.
The analysis of Lied for solo clarinet by Berio (Lied by Luciano Berio: proposal of an analysis between sets of pitches, durations, and dynamics), carried out by Fabio De Sanctis De Benedictis, made use of Allen Forte’s set technique in addition to other analytic approaches, above all in the initial phase of formal segmentation and description, which essentially relied on semiological analysis. In this sense the presentation went beyond its initial aim, exploring not only Berio’s piece but extending the analytical methodology of sets, by applying it to parameters (such as duration) that go beyond the mere level of pitches.
Taking Ofanìm – for female voice, two children’s choirs, two instrumental groups and live electronic elaboration – as its starting point, the presentation of Andrea Cremaschi (Ofanìm by Luciano Berio: a fresh approach to live electronics) worked towards a concrete analytical methodology applicable to this kind of musical production. The multidisciplinary approach put forward called for an analysis of the "text" (the instrumental score and the electronic score) that stood alongside the analysis of its interpretation, given the "open" nature of the electronic medium. Live electronics for Berio is not simply an addition to pre-existing technical-compositional resources, it is above all an occasion in which to elaborate new reflections on the concepts of time and space (the virtual environment in which sound is transformed) which characterize his mature musical output.
Dario Maggi’s contribution (I colori del rosso, for string orchestra (2000). Techniques of creation, perceptive control, and formal analysis, using pitch class set theory) described the way in which both analysis and composition can make use of Allen Forte’s pitch class set theory. I colori del rosso is based upon 5 pitch class sets (3-4, 4-16, 5-24, 6-34, 7-24) whose cardinal number increases from three to seven, generating the form of the piece, which consists in 5 sections of increasing length, in relation to the increment of the available material. Set theory in this sense offers the composer a systematic preparation of the material, while leaving him free to chose and to organize, on the basis of the interval vector, the acoustic/perceptive result of the different groups of pitches.
The composition analysed by Gabriele Becheri (The use of “rhythmic modules” in Smorfie by Fausto Razzi), to a text by Edoardo Sanguineti, is written for two speakers, soprano, flute, piano, violin, and magnetic tape. The analysis emphasised the use of the technique of “rhythmic modules”, thus indicating «schemes that are inherent in the parameter of time, whose goal is to define the lapse of time which must pass between the initial point of a musical event (for example a note or a chord) and the initial point of its subsequent repetition, without however providing information on the duration of the event itself». Moreover, the rhythmic module, adopted by Razzi as early as the Seventies, is always used in correlation with the text: in fact, the formation of suspended sonorities or musical events without temporal consequentiality seems to adhere quite well to the dreamlike atmosphere of the narration, bereft as it is of any logical connection between cause and effect.

Fourth Session: Round Table on Rounds by Luciano Berio (pres. Rossana Dalmonte)
In the last session, dedicated to Rounds for piano by Luciano Berio, two alternative analytic approaches were contrasted: the first, organized on the basis of listening, was implemented in the single contributions of Mario Baroni and Jean-Marc Chouvel, while the second, on the basis of the score, was undertaken in a duple perspective offered by Ivanka Stoianova and Egidio Pozzi.
In his analysis of Rounds, Baroni applied two analytical categories: salient aspects (in line with Fred Lerdahl’s 1989 model) and continuous aspects (following Roman Jakobson’s concept of the linguistic continuum). He demonstrated that the former represent the principal perceptive points of reference (dynamic energy, timbre, single notes, densities, repetitions of similar events) whereas the latter are organized according to the law of "improbability". An analysis was then put forward that attempted to establish, on the basis of these two aspects, a possible hierarchical construction in the mind of the listener. In this way, important considerations both on the medium and on the macro-formal level emerged.
The analysis offered by Jean-Marc Chouvel instead proposed a study of pianist Andrea Bacchetti’s performance of the piece (CD Decca, 2004). The entire performance was examined using sonograms, from which one can identify the intensity of the single sound events as well as other specific aspects, such as clusters, registers and melodic figures. Chouvel’s study furthermore traced a segmentation of the piece based upon the rests that separate the diverse sections.
Ivanka Stoianova’s study began with a historic-stylistic reflection. During the Sixties and the Seventies, a fundamental change that came about was the end of structuralism, rational thought, and linear unidirectional motion, giving way to a new symmetrical organisational principle of a circular nature. In this sense the version of Rounds for harpsichord, which calls for a physical rotation of the score, brings it near not only to experimentation on “open forms”, but also indicates a will to organize the material derived from the principle of “renewal” of the same elements. Stoianova’s lecture then focused on a search for connections between Rounds and other works of the same period; in particular Zyklus (1959) and Refrain (1959) by Stockhausen, Dritte Klaviersonate (1957) by Boulez, Variations I (1958) by Cage, Odissee (1963) by Logothetis, and Circles (1960) by Berio himself.
The analysis put forward by Egidio Pozzi, based on a survey of the sets identified using the method of Allen Forte, gave special emphasis to the ties between the three parts of the composition (ABA') and the episodes into which these parts are subdivided. The description was accompanied by tables regarding formal aspects, structural relations, figures and dynamic indications within the single episodes, and variations due to the retrograde reading of the beginning of the second part. Among the results of this work, some formal aspects seem to be particularly interesting: the renewed exposition, after the close of the B section, of A which is marked by a "weak" conclusion, suggests an «essential re-opening of the form». In this sense, notwithstanding its "da capo", Berio’s piece is a kind of «open form, a form which constantly defers ahead, in search of its ideal “close”: rounds, to be precise, like circles without end.»
Subsequently, an ample discussion took place between the participants and the speakers, stimulated by the observations of Susanna Pasticci and Antonio Rostagno, focusing on the methodological, theoretical, compositional, and interpretative aspects that had been studied in the preceding sessions. The meeting concluded with a brilliant performance of the piece by the pianist Paolo Wolfango Cremonte, accompanied by an in-depth comment on its interpretative problems.

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