Passacaglia: la via della musica | Gabriele Cervia | TEDxYouth@AlberghieroRosmini
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5bXKTp1XUo Video ID: L5bXKTp1XUo ============================================================ Translator: Matilde Giusta Reviewer: Michele Gianella Music is a passage. Let's start with this crucial statement that we'll try to argue, and tell you the reason why, together with Amedeo. It's a passage, as it's a passage in time: and this is the reason why today, in 2024, we're able to play and listen to music that was written centuries ago, in the first millennium. The music: it's a passage in space. And it's what allows us to gather together in a concert hall, in a theater, in many hundreds, thousands of people, listening to what's happening on a stage in front of us, and spreads through space coming out of the vibrations of singing, of an instrument, of an entire orchestra. It's also a passage of language, because we start from an idea that turns into a writing, which is then mediated by a musician who reads it, decodes it, interprets it, performs it. A listener who perceives the final result and who in turn metabolizes it, creating, as we said before, a landscape, something that music leaves behind, an emotion, an idea, an image. So, it's an infinite journey that crosses different languages. And it's certainly a passage in that direction, too. We'll try today, together with Amedeo, who is on my right, to tell you in words, and also with musical examples, what history shows with regard to this topic, namely the fact that music is truly, from all points of view, a passage. Let's begin. Chapter One. (Music) The year is 1676. And an Austrian composer named Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, a very complex name, publishes a collection of 15 compositions entitled "Mystery Sonatas": "Le sonate del mistero" or "del Rosario", too, in Italian. There are 15 compositions depicting 15 different scenes, 15 iconic moments in the life of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Each of these sonatas, compositions, is preceded, in the printed publication, by a miniature, a small illustration inside a circular outline depicting the scene which is then described in music in the following pages. All these sonatas are violin sonatas, accompanied by an organ, as a rule, except for one, the last one, the fifteenth sonata. The fifteenth sonata, which is for solo violin, so not accompanied by anyone: it accompanies itself, in a way. And it's the sonata inspired by an image, which is the one we see - and you also have it in the postcards you were given earlier this morning - of an angel, the guardian angel who is, in fact, the one who gives this sonata its name, accompanying a child. Biber chooses, to represent this image in music, through sounds, an ancient dance, called "Passacaglia". Let's listen to the beginning of this composition. (Music) An ancient Spanish dance called "Passacaglia". Literally "pasar por la calle", "passing through the street", a passage down the street. A journey dictated by a slow, normal gait, like a leisurely walk. And these are the first four notes you heard. These four notes - which are a scale of notes put in sequence, close to each other with a "descending" motion, that is, from higher to lower sounds. These four notes follow one another with this steady, inescapable motion, from the beginning to the end of the composition. And they are the baseline - the "ostinato", as it's called in music - above which everything else takes place. Above which are born and developed melodic lines that are decidedly more complex, more articulated, full of rhythms, interlocking parts, and polyphonies. The violin can play up to three, even four sounds at the same time: and so the instrument is expressed to its full potential, in this composition. Probably, this idea of these four notes, that walk inexorably throughout the composition, are a bit like the idea of this guardian angel who holds this child's hand and leads him along a path, making sure that everything goes well, despite everything that's happening around him. May this path be safe, and may he protect the child. Chapter Two. (Music) Let's take a step back: back to 1620 in Milan, where a certain Francesco Rognoni publishes the first book of a collection entitled "Selva de varii passaggi." It's a treatise on ornamentation. Ornamentation in music, as in art, is when you start with something simple and embellish it by adding smaller, sometimes more complex elements, thus starting from something elementary, and arriving at a richer, more complex, more interesting structure. Here then, after the very first pages dedicated to a few warnings to readers, and thanks to the dedicatees of the work, of course, there are immediately practical examples for singers and instrumentalists to learn, by playing and singing, how to ornament a very simple melody. After that, the melodies gradually become larger: instead of two notes, as at the beginning, they become three, four, or five notes, like the ones you've just heard. In this case too, a sequence of five notes. Within the space of a page - and you have a taste of it from the second postcard you have in your hand - there's exactly the whole sequence of ornaments of the same melodic line, of those same five notes that are gradually enriched by other notes that are introduced in between, and that connect them together. Let's listen. (Music) We started with five notes, and ended up with many more. The rhythms have also changed, in the meantime; however, if you've noticed, the basic structure is still the same. It's still those five notes that, as in Biber's "Passacaglia", which we listened to earlier, are repeated, this time embellished. Here, in music, the passages, at least in the early music of that period, the seventeenth century, are precisely these. Two books by Francesco Rognoni entitled "Selva de varii passaggi", and many other treatises, examine this technical aspect which then becomes, in reality, expressive of the music. That is, really, how to manage to connect the notes together, starting from something very simple and transforming it into a real path. Chapter Three, 1747. A slightly better-known composer, named Johann Sebastian Bach, is invited to the court of Prussia by King Frederick II the Great, for a stay during which he wants to show the great master Bach, already well known in the field and already a little elderly, his new collection of instruments: harpsichords and fortepianos, the ancestors of the modern piano. At one of these, the King sits down and plays a melody that would later be called "Thema Regium." Let's listen to "Thema Regium." (Music) On that occasion, the King will then ask Bach to write a composition based on this melody. We immediately notice that, unlike everything we've heard so far, this melody gives a harsher, darker feeling to the ear. And that's because, within it, it contains what in ancient music was called the "passus duriusculus", or the "hard step", that is, a passage made up of notes even closer to each other than those we heard before, which thus create a sound situation, that is, we might say, slightly dissonant, not exactly harmonious, lacking in apparent balance. This was a sequence of notes used for moments of great dramatic and theatrical intensity. In this case we find it with a scale that descends, here too, from acute to grave. So, a very complicated melody, which, however, doesn't intimidate Bach at all and immediately improvises on the harpsichord a composition for three "voices," namely, three different lines, played by the same harpsichord player. A few months later, in July 1747, Bach publishes, with a dedication to Frederick II the Great, a work entitled "The Musical Offering:" one of his last and greatest pieces. In fact, if you like, it's somewhat his testament, in which he leaves the King, and all of us, a decalogue, so to speak, of exercises in compositional style of the highest level, all based on this melody. Let's listen to one of them, called "crab canon." (Music) What is special about what we've just heard? There's a riddle within it: and those who know a little more about musical language can grasp it. This text, exactly in the middle, becomes mirrored, that is, all the notes that you heard in the first part come back, in retrograde motion, from the last to the first; so, the composition is actually divided into two parts that are mirror of each other, and that can therefore also be played together by two different voices: one starting at the end of the text, the other at the beginning. They'll meet in the middle, creating a two-voice composition. This is extraordinary, like all the other compositions we find in this work, each of which contains its own stylistic puzzles, which are also very mathematical and very intellectual. One of these, the most interesting, contains a riddle that isn't revealed by the title, which, in fact, is in Latin "Quaerendo invenietis," "Seeking, you will find": and, thus, lets us understand what's the riddle that's contained within. Fourth and final chapter, 1725. In Amsterdam works are published - or rather, a work is published, a collection of sonatas entitled: "The Contest Between Harmony and Invention." The author is Italian, Antonio Lucio Vivaldi. What is so special about this work, this collection? It contains the first four sonatas that named after the seasons... "Spring," "Summer," "Autumn," and "Winter." But that's not all. In the text of these four sonatas, above the musical stave, there are sonnets probably written by an anonymous author. Some say that he wrote them himself. These sonnets describe, in verse, some scenes from each of these seasons. There's a very strong correspondence between what we read in the verses and what we hear in the music. Let's take a few examples, starting with the first sonata in the collection, which is entitled "Spring." I'll now read the verses that we find written in the first printed edition. "Springtime is upon us, (Music) The birds celebrate her return with festive song, (Music) and murmuring streams are softly caressed by the breezes [...]" (Music) In "Summer": "Beneath the blazing sun's relentless heart heat men and flock are sweltering, pines are schorched [...]" (Music) These are just a few of the many examples we could give of these four works, where there's a great passage: that of language, which we talked about earlier this morning and, that is, the passage from the idea of the seasons, from the image, in this case, translated into music, which then, once again, returns to the listening. We hope, together with Amedeo, we too have passed something on. That we've conveyed to you the fact that indeed music, like art, is something fundamental because it's what truly bears witness to the passage of humanity here on Earth. And it's thanks to this step that we're able today to present to you this wonderful music and so much more, that thanks to the time and thanks to the musicians who have persisted, and to artists in general, we can hear and appreciate today. Thank you all. (Applause)