Adriano Bassi

The compositor Nino Rota belongs to that class of musicians having lived during a particular and intensive moment of manipulations and revolution of a society in a never ending crisis both in the culture and music worlds. He was born in Milan in 1911 and he dead in Rome in 1979, he passed through all the artistic upsets of his times, founding his way of intending music over an immediate expression with an exact component related to the resuming of the nineteenth century music, keeping himself very loyal to melody and avoiding harmonic elaboration. For that critics has never been favourable to him, since he did not follow the fashion and the stylistic features decided by the trends of thought. It is easy to find in his production reappraisals of past worlds, with insertions of dissonant harmonies giving the fragments that taste of veiled desecration, without getting to extremes not belonging to his character. This aim we can quote the “Variations and fugues “ on J.S. Bach name in 1950 and the “The Circus Waltz” and the “The Carillon Waltz “ in 1976. They are the soundtracks of the “Casanova” picture, finding as his natural harbour the image and the deep acknowledge Rota had of the picture image. Standing still in the classic compositions we can remember the Symphonies and the Oratorios outlining his style and the noble taste for orchestration joint to the undiscussed love for colour. This is the case of the Symphony n. 1, composed between 1935 and 1939, summing up the typologies of the two musical views fluttering between the sense of bucolic and the idea of time passing. Gianandrea Gavazzeni himself wrote regarding this symphony: “So here it is, the balance, all things made, revealing that the Symphony by Rota, at least for its three-fours, is a well made composition, living by itself, without neither formal nor immediate references”. Just for the inventive enunciation in relation with the requirements among which this time we find ourselves, the first theme of the first tempo gives the exact idea, a lexical nucleus that seems to be the purpose of composing. A graceful theme, legato, made of intervals of a fourth, (featuring Rota) and then the close notes, beating out the rhythm by a sort of fluent simple song, landscape and spiritual, as belonging to whom looks at things only for an inward dictate of feelings and words. The Rotas' usual glance, his meagre glance, his immediate view.” (1) And what's about the Sonata for violin and piano of 1939? It is a direct witness of the new sonorities reflection, where two diametrically opposite worlds take place, that means splintered rhythms, fragments and romantic melodies, soft, where the sense of the item and that of the “deja vu” contrasts the tensions of the two instruments dialoguing each other. Another surely not minor element was the part devoted to the opera theatre, the great challenge of the Maestro against himself and the whole very rich existing literature. It is to notice that in the opera typology pursued by Rota there are some details having made the musician an absolute pioneer, since it's easy to find inside his investigation an unique world, and the most meaningful example is identifiable in the work: “The leghorn hat”. 4 acts libretto comedy just in collaboration with his mother Ernesta, where he finds a style based on nineteenth century vaudeville featured by an intensive web of scenes, plenty of a deep melodic vein, march rhythms, waltzes and dance tune alike Offenbach's lightness. Rota chooses exact formulas of thinking getting far from the hard sonorities of the Vienna School, throwing into Rossini's quotations and more in general those of the comic opera. Passing from the opera theatre to movie there's a short step, since giving musical colour to dialogues and shot with the telecamera feelings, evocations and stories of the melodrama could seem natural, as it has been later for our Nino Rota. It seems to me opportune and due to underline that the sound digging, deepening and stripping sense facing images has been perfect and incisive at such an extent to create an inseparable whole. In short the Maestro has made of simplicity a “modus vivendi” that starting off from the first youth experiences has gone on unchanged in older years, passing through a myriad of different situations and going on coherently researching the essence of music, beyond fashions and traditions of market or hazy power games.

 

Leadership Medica^®
  Mensile di scienza  medica e attualita`
 Copyright 1997© All Rights Reserved