Goffredo Petrassi

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Goffredo Petrassi

Goffredo Petrassi (born July 16, 1904 in Zagarolo , † March 3, 2003 in Rome ) was an Italian composer .

Life

In his youth, Goffredo Petrassi was a choirboy in the Roman church of San Salvatore in Lauro . He initially acquired his musical skills self-taught by studying all available scores as an employee of a music store. He then took private lessons from Alessandro Bustini and Vincenzo di Donato . Eventually he entered Bustini's composition class at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecila . In 1936 he became a member of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and in 1939 composition teacher at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia , where he finally took over the master class for composition in 1960.

From 1937 to 1940 Petrassi was general manager of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice , from 1947 to 1950 artistic director of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana and from 1954 to 1956 president of the International Society for New Music . In 1957 he became an honorary member and in 1977 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1978 he was awarded the international Antonio Feltrinelli Prize and accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Stylistic questions

In his music, Petrassi started from neoclassical approaches and found his own style through the encounter with serialism . His eight orchestral concerts were written between 1934 and 1972. They thus span almost the entire spectrum of Petrassi's stylistic development. In the first concert he was still clearly under the influence of neoclassicism. But echoes of Paul Hindemith and Alfredo Casella were already evident here.

Petrassi's path of development towards the ever stronger development of a personal and free language took place relatively slowly. It is noteworthy that this change was analogous to Petrassi's approach to the twelve-tone music of the Vienna School . The early works are under the influence of Igor Stravinsky and Hindemith. Casella led him back to the Italian vocal and instrumental tradition of the Renaissance and the early Baroque . In the thirties Petrassi wrote music that is characterized by a lively, musical, concerted style . This music is based on expanded tonality , on mixture sounds, it tastes empty fifths and convinces with freshness and luminosity.

The vocal music

Petrassi had a great impact with his vocal music. His deeply felt humanism can also be felt here. In an effort to revive the madrigal style , he assumed a central position. Petrassi found a personal language in particular with the atmospherically impressive cantata Noche Oscura from 1950. But Stravinsky's style-defining influences, reminiscent of his Oedipus Rex or the psalm symphony , cannot be ignored.

The second creative period

With the main work of his second creative period, the dramatic madrigal Coro di Morti for male choir, three pianos, brass and percussion (1940/1941), his language assumes the attitude of a message that aims in transcendent areas. This work becomes one of the most important stations in Petrassi's life's work. The change in expression naturally involves a modification of its musical elements in general. This becomes clearest in the harmony , which is becoming more and more differentiated. The extended tonality is still retained; the sound ideal remains linear and melodic; Renewals from the Renaissance and Early Baroque are combined with contemporary ideas. But then in 1945 Petrassi discovered movement and incorporated it into his music: his ballet The Portrait of Don Quixote is proof of this and is proof of a richer, more imaginative relationship to timbre.

In his cantata Noche oscura for mixed choir and orchestra, Petrassi has even more consequences than before in the cantata Coro Morti . If Petrassi's theme in the early works was mainly diatonic , he now classifies the pitch space chromatically . This extends the harmony, but veils its tonal ties. The will to express is in the foreground; the approach to twelve-tone music is complete, not entirely real, but virtual. But twelve-tone music is not yet the basis of his design, but it is playing an increasingly decisive role. The twelve-tone music is applied more strictly than before, the contrapuntal entanglements reach a new climax.

In 1977 he published Alias , a composition for guitar and harpsichord.

Major works

  • Partita for orchestra (1932)
  • 1st orchestral concert (1933/1934)
  • The 9th Psalm for mixed choir and orchestra (1939/1940)
  • Piano Concerto (1936/1939)
  • Magnificat for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra (1939)
  • Coro di Morti for male choir, three pianos, brass and percussion (1940/1941)
  • Quattro inni sacro for tenor, bass and orchestra (1942)
  • La Folia di Orlando , ballet (1942/1943)
  • The portrait of Don Quixote , ballet (1945)
  • Il Cordovano , opera (1950)
  • Sonata da Camera for harpsichord and ten instruments (1948)
  • Morte dell'Aria , opera (1950)
  • Noche oscura , cantata for choir and orchestra (1950)
  • 2nd orchestral concert (1951)
  • Nonsense for a cappella choir (1952)
  • 3rd orchestral concert Récréation concertante (1956/1957)
  • 4th orchestral concert (1954)
  • 5th orchestral concert (1954)
  • 6th orchestral concert Invenzione concertanta (1956/1957)
  • Serenata for five instruments (1958)
  • String Quartet (1958)
  • String Trio (1959)
  • Suoni notturni for guitar (1959), Petrassi's first atonal and athematic solo work
  • Flute Concerto (1960)
  • Propos d'Alain , cantata for baritone and 12 players (1960)
  • 7th orchestral concert (1961/1964)
  • Estri for 15 instruments (1967)
  • Tre per sette for three players on seven wind instruments (1967)
  • 8th orchestral concert (1972)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ ISCM Honorary Members
  2. Honorary Members: Goffredo Petrassi. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 18, 2019 .
  3. ^ Andreas Grün: Guitar music around 1960. Part 1: Goffredo Petrassi: Suoni notturni 1959. In: Guitar & Laute 8, 1986, Issue 1, pp. 59–63.