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The ‘Day of Wrath’ as Musico-Political Statement in Dallapiccola's Canti di Prigionia

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07494467.2010.535355

1477-2256

Peter O Roderick,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

One of the most interesting modern ‘borrowings’ of the famous ‘Dies irae’ chant comes within the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di Prigionia of 1938–1941. Written at a time of extreme political tension, the Canti were—from the composer's own testimony—a protest against Mussolini's introduction of the infamous racial laws in 1938. But while the composer's own hermeneutic proposes the ‘Dies irae’ as a symbolic representation of oppression overlaid onto a ‘purely’ dodecaphonic work, one senses that this will not do: politically, this viewpoint is problematic, and musically, it is simply not borne out by analysis. In this article, I offer a new reading of this work as a ‘confessional’ piece, and in interrogating the relationship between the very old (plainchant) and the very new (a natal serialism), suggest that the Canti evince a sophisticated type of musical ‘paradox’.