Anno 2017/1

This article examines Johann Sebastian Bach’s Canon triplex á 6 voc., BWV 1076, focusing on the programming strategies used by the composer and the logical-mathematical assumptions at the basis of this famous canon. More in detail, it analyses the conditions of existence of the contrapuntal procedures used by Bach and the rules which allow to pre-define their outcomes.

Although dramaturgy has been the focus of study in historical musicology, analysis of opera has received scarce attention, with music analysis mostly devoted to instrumental music. Moreover, recent studies have highlighted the role of performance in opposition to that of the score. The main aim of the present article is to propose a specific analytical method for opera, based on the convergence of three analytical parameters: analysis of the score, of the singers’ voices and of their gestures.

Rossini’s crescendo is a sort of trademark of its author, an expedient copied – and abused – by generations of composers, because – apparently – it is easy to imitate and it has a strong impact on the listeners. The mechanism that allows the real working of Rossini’s crescendo is much more ingenious and sly than we could think, absolutely not comparable with the famous aphorism “simple melody – clear rhythm” with which Rossini himself described his own way of composing.

Like other composers of his generation, Luciano Berio recognized Luigi Dallapiccola as the central figure who brought younger Italian composers in closer contact with the twelve-tone technique. In 1952 he spent six weeks at the Berkshire Music Festival (Tanglewood) to attend composition lessons with Dallapiccola. The two shared a common interest in James Joyce, the writer who had a major impact on both composers and about whom Dallapiccola had already written in 1950, illustrating the “musical” aspects of Joyce’s prose; Berio’s radio documentary Omaggio a Joyce (1958) was one of the outcomes of his reading of Dallapiccola’s text.

In this article the paradigm shift which musicology underwent between the 1980s and ’90s in the United States – the so-called New Musicology – is described in terms of an expression of protest towards the conservative politics to which post-war American “old” musicology was said to be linked. In the first section the system of consent against which the new musicologists reacted is described. Subsequently some rhetorical strategies used in their critique of “old” musicology are highlighted.

Abstract not available