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The
reviewed music and cultural message concept that saw the light in the
early part of our century contains a further element of discussion -
the piano, the heir of a nineteenth-century reality but still able to
offer researchers and listeners new and unexplored tone, rhythm and
sound opportunities. Any account of the evolution of the piano in contemporary
music, besides Debussy and Ravel, must also consider Erik Satie, who
reviewed piano literature by overturning, or better, refusing the concept
of virtuosity to leave room for emotion, purity of sound and a taste
for the single notes. Melody loses the role of protagonist, leaving
room for other choices outside rules and academism. Returning to Satie,
in his work we notice a deliberate link with an archaic world, with
the elimination of polyphony, thereby depriving the sequence of notes
of the traditional relationship between the common ones required by
rules. In Ravel, the approach is different. The French musician attempts
to discover a transparent, liquid sonority, diluting the sound and avoiding
an accumulation of notes. Thus we have a procedure in contrast with
that of Satie. The melody once more acquires importance and the piano
again becomes the absolute protagonist, especially in “Jeux d’eau”.
And what can we say about Claude Debussy? His piano playing undeniably
reflects anti-romantic taste, even though his experience was initially
close to the theories of Chopin and the cultural atmosphere that surrounded
these. Virtuosity is experienced as a further piece of a puzzle added
to a precise structure. It was no accident that in 1918, the composer
wrote: “Melody and harmony, here are two aspects of a principle”. Not
least in terms of importance was Arnold Schoenberg, who devoted a lot
of time to piano music production, working and managing the instrument
starting with the geometric construction of the piece. Virtuosity is
not expressed through speedy messages but rather through polyphonic
writing and with an introspective reading of the page. His works contained
a detailed preface that perfectly introduced the interpreter into his
compositional “iter”. Apart from the dodecaphonic technique, he was
not interested in following fashion and the directives of the latest
music “guru”. His desire was to find a conjugation between his thoughts
and the resulting sound. If the piano had been his ideal, the product
of his thought would have been written for the piano. This aspect is
made clear by something Glenn Gould said, “Schoenberg did not write
against the piano, but neither can he be accused of writing for it”
Writing was the most important part, the keyboard was only a final sound-testimony
phase of his experiments. Here then, we have the concept of “miniaturist”
of brevity, of “flashes”. A decision that was soon to find followers
among his pupils. On the piano-playing scene of our century, Igor Strawinsky
was a precise symbol of renewal. For example, in his 1925 “Sonata” for
piano, the spare, essential writing abandons the romantic theories,
adding to the present of the tone, already mentioned, also a rhythmic
monotony that enriches the musical vocabulary of the composer, consisting
of rhythmic sequences, broken phrases, verticalised writing. To conclude:
the instrument has managed to pass through time unharmed, conceding
everything it could. A perfect cooperator capable of becoming chameleon-like
and exploiting the thousand facets of the same coin. It has managed
to coexist with the various moods and with electronic music, frontier
of our contemporaneousness. A symptom of long life that continues today
to maintain a rightful place on concert bills. (Traduzione: Interpres
sas - Giussano)
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