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DANTE AND MUSIC ...

Lux In Tenebris
LA COMMEDIA DI DANTE

HONOURING THE GREATEST POET ...

The Divine Comedy "Commedia" in Italian, later christened "Divina" by Giovanni Boccaccio), was written by Durante Dante Alighieri between 1308 and the year of his death in 1321.

As a source of inspiration for musical composition, La Commedia makes for a fascinating study that begs to have the following question answered:
How is one to translate such a timeless masterpiece into another art form without losing its resonance and enduring meaning?

Cantica I : Canto I
(Lost In A Dark Wood)

E N N I O A . PA O L A Composer / Director of Music

Cantica III : Canto XXXIII

(Dante Beholds The Universe)

LU X I N TE NE B RI S
La Commedia di Dant!

Significant Music

ENNIO A. PAOLA, COMPOSER / DIRECTOR OF MUSIC

Dante and Music

Musical Adaptations of the Commedia from the 16th-Century to the Present
-

Ever since its completion in the 14th century, Dante's great epic poem Divina Commedia has been adapted in a wide variety of musical forms by composers across the world. Drawing on primary research in sources and recordings and on interviews with contemporary composers, Maria Roglieri provides here an introductory survey to the types of musical adaptation that the Commedia has attracted, including symphonies, chamber pieces, operas and ballets. Three categories of adaptation are examined: adaptations of the entire poem, works that focus on a particular character, and pieces which adapt an individual passage from the poem. Roglieri offers some possible motivations for the composer's choice of a particular passage or character, and examines the ways in which these choices influence the musical form of adaptation. Common characteristics between works are also identified.

Dante and Music is an important springboard for future scholarship on the relationship between music in Dante, and Dante in music. Most importantly it demonstrates that works like the Commedia give us a unique opportunity to chart differing musical styles over the course of the centuries, with each generation of composer adapting the work to the favored style and medium of the time. Contents: Introduction; The music of Dante's Hell, Purgatory and Paradise; Francesca da Rimini: Romantic and Modern Heroine in Music; Dramatic musical tales of Dantean Characters; The Antimusic of Hell: Screams and Lamentations; Purgatorio: Songs of a new dawn; Heavenly love songs and la dolce sinfonia di Paradiso; Some concluding remarks on Dante and music; Appendix: Tables representing the compiled data on musical settings of the Commedia; Bibliography; Index.
Incudes 42 b/w illustrations

Maria A. Roglieri, St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, New York, USA.
ISBN: 1-85928-255-5 2000 304 pages Hardback Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR United Kingdom Tel: (0)1252 331551 Fax: (0)1252 317446

Email: info@ashgatepub.co.uk http://www.ashgate.com

text excerpts from Chapter 2; pages 53 to 57: Dante and Music

by Maria Ann Roglieri

... Another series of small instrumental pieces written to convey Dantes emotions as he travels through the afterworld is comprised of two piano pieces, La Commedia di Dante: Cantica I: Canto I (1974), and Cantica III: Canto XXXIII (1981), by twentieth-century Canadian composer Ennio Paola. The composer chose to create piano pieces because he felt that the intimacy of the medium would best represent Dantes inner feelings: I strongly view Dantes work as a highly personal diary that we have been privileged to participate in with each reading. As such, I feel the focus of any musical adaptation should remain with a single artist (a soloist) capable of the widest range of pitch possible (the piano) to portray the characters and emotions of this dramatic progress in understanding as it circles the spheres toward God. The two pieces were designed to complement each other and to represent the beginning and the end of Dantes journey. As such, they represent the extremes of emotion that Dante feels on his journey through the afterworld, including both the confusion and terror he feels when he finds himself lost in a dark wood confronted by three horrible beasts, as well as the sense of rapture and love he feels when granted the vision of God in Paradise. The two pieces are related not only in subject matter but in terms of their attempt to portray the two extremes of Dantes music, the antimusic of Hell and the extraordinary music of Paradise. Paola does this by inventing different kinds of tonality that allow him to move musically from an expanded tonality in Cantica I: Canto I toward a more melodic and tonal one with Cantica III: Canto XXXIII.

For the first piece, Cantica I (subtitled Lost in a Dark Wood), Paola rejected an atonal approach, favouring instead an expanded tonality that would permit the use of the appropriatelyselected letter notation pitch in its natural, sharp or flat form. This expanded tonality offers greater flexibility to remain tonal while making allowances for the use of accidentals or even expanding towards experiments with atonality. Paola successfully achieved this kind of extended tonality by developing a leitmotif based on the phrase lost in a dark wood (Inf. I, 2) and by exploring, as a basic cell, pitches arising from the word lost. Notes for the lost in a dark wood theme (and in variation) were assigned as follows:

L = G# O = D S = D T = B I = C# N = C A=A D = D A = A R = E K = F# W = Eb O = D O =D D = D

Original alpha / pitch association draft (on paper towel) created to establish Lost In A Dark Wood theme.

The lost theme called for frantic speed swings that give the listener the sense of moving forward, towards a peaceful state, rather than questioning ones present surroundings in a state of sin. The theme is played at various tempos throughout the piece: Largo - poco a poco stringendo - accelerando a tempo - ritard - a tempo - subito vivo, martellato, con fuoco feroce - poco accelerando - grand ritard. The tempo variation illustrates the mixed feelings of caution, fear, excitement, nervousness and dread that Dante feels as he is in the dark wood. Weaved through the lost theme is a love theme, characterised by tied notes over the bar line on a melody which is moving by diatonic seconds. This love theme refers to Dantes love for Beatrice which is recalled in the text of Inferno I when Virgil says that he has come to guide Dante through the afterworld until they reach Beatrice. (See Figure 2.10 for main themes of the piece.)

Figure 2.10 Main Themes from Ennio Paolas Cantica I: Canto I (1974) Reproduced by permission of the composer.

Gustave Dor - The Forest

Used by permission as granted 6/16/81, The Dor Illustrations for Dantes Divine Comedy Dover 0-486-23231-X Rights and Permissions, Dover Publications Inc., 180 Varick Street, New York, U.S.A. 10014

The principal musical theme of Paolas second piece, Cantica III, meanwhile, is introduced immediately and is designed to portray the extraordinariness of the music of Paradise (Figure 2.11). It is set in a beautiful and lyrical cantabile style. As the melody increases in speed, it increases in intensity only to slow down, as if in a state of reflection, before returning to an a tempo on three occasions which allude to the Christian Holy Trinity. This meter is in a 12/8 time signature in order to provide a larger sound canvas and to maximise the musical depiction of the heavens.

The two piano pieces are linked by an overall tonal relationship. Throughout the first piece, Paola anticipates this connection by using mirrored seconds, rhythms and dynamics to create tension between good and evil, being lost and being found, and the physical and emotional states of ascending and descending. Thus, while the listener is experiencing Dantes terror at being in the dark wood, he is also hearing a musical hint of the more pleasant experience that is to come, when Dante experiences the vision of God.

Gustave Dor - The Empyrean

Used by permission as granted 6/16/81, The Dor Illustrations for Dantes Divine Comedy Dover 0-486-23231-X Rights and Permissions, Dover Publications Inc., 180 Varick Street, New York, U.S.A. 10014

The two pieces are also tied together through the note A. Canto I ends with the note A in octaves (m. 55-59). This, however, is left inconclusive by the final tone-cluster in the next measure, which is played by both arms and pedaled to fade to act as ghost notes. These ghost notes are intended to suggest that an entire sequel of cantos is to follow. In Cantica III, measure 29 ends in the key of A major, thus creating a Plagal Cadence IV-I between the unresolved ghost notes at the end of Canto I. There is a final resolution on the very last chord of the piece, but only after a long musical journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.

Figure 2.11 First page of the original score of Ennio Paolas Cantica III, Canto XXXIII (1981) Reproduced by permission of the composer

text excerpts from Chapter 7; pages 275: Dante and Music

... Very few musicologists or composers through the centuries have thought about the best musical forms for musical adaptations of the Commedia. Only two nineteenth-century musicologists (Bonaventura and Arner) even attempted to theorise about the most appropriate musical form, and their attempt was very limited. Only a few twentieth-century composers (such as Paola or Standford), meanwhile, gave this question any thought before composing their works. This may be because the question of form is such a difficult one; perhaps the best way to discover the most suitable musical form for Dantes poem is through experimentation, through actual musical compositions rather than theorisation. A look at the actual musical compositions written suggests that perhaps the most effective musical form for a Dante adaptation was a twentieth-century multi-media piece because of its newness and freedom of form. It successfully created, furthermore, the effects that Dante would have wanted for his antimusic of Hell and his extraordinary music of Heaven.

text excerpt from Chapter 2; page 21: Dante and Music

THE DANTE FESTIVALS

The rst adaptations of the entire poem were composed in the middle of the nineteenth century, a time when Dante was widely celebrated in Italy. The 1860s saw the beginning of a cultural and musical awareness in Italy of Dantes Commedia, an awareness promoted by the numerous festivals in the year 1865 celebrating the 600th anniversary of the poets birth. Many Dante-based pieces were composed specically for these festivals. Although not all of these pieces were based on the entire Commedia, they were all loosely inspired by the entire poem and are representative of the rst two, and ultimately typify, nineteenth-century approaches to Dantes poem. The rst of these approaches was to offer homage to the author and to celebrate his lyrics more than to closely illustrate his work. The second approach was to present a symphony-type work that corresponded to the poems three canticles.
Maria Ann Roglieri

Cantica I : Canto I
(Lost In A Dark Wood) Lux In Tenebris: Cantica I:
Canto I (Lost In A Dark Wood) opens; Cantica III: Canto XXXIII (Dante Beholds the Universe) closes this North American Dante Festival of Century XXI.

E N N I O A . PA O L A Composer / Director of Music

Cantica III : Canto XXXIII

(Dante Beholds The Universe)
Part Two: DANTE IN THE VISUAL ARTS Works by Gustavo Dor, Salvador Dali & others including a display of Rare Published Editions of Dante from the Middle Ages to Century XX.

Part One: A DRAMATIC VOYAGE INTO LA DIVINA COMMEDIA With selected readings by Paola Gassman, Ugo Pagliai (in Italian), Jennifer Dale (in English) ... Sunday, Oct. 2/05

Ennio A. Paola
with ! ! ! with ! ! ! with

actress Paola Gassman

actor Ugo Pagliai

actress Jennifer Dale

HONOURING THE HIGHEST POET: HOMMAGE TO DANTE ALIGHIERI

Sunday, October 2, 2005 - Tuesday, November 15, 2005 Jopseph D. Carrier Gallery - Columbus Centre, 901 Lawrence Ave., W., Toronto