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Lux In Tenebris: La Commedia di Dante - Cantica I: Canto I (Lost In A Dark Wood)
SM-000161579
| Composer | Ennio Paola |
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| Publisher | Significant Music |
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| Genre |
Classical
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| Instrumentation |
Piano |
| Scored for | Solo |
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| Type of score | For a single performer |
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| Duration |
1'50" |
| Difficulty |
Medium |
| Year of composition |
1974 |
| Description |
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Re: LUX IN TENEBRIS: La Commedia di Dante: Cantica I, Canto I (Lost In A Dark Wood), Cantica III, Canto XXXIII (Dante Beholds The Universe)
"Paola's two intimate piano pieces, Cantica I: Canto I (Lost In A Dark Wood)
and Cantica III: Canto XXXIII (Dante Beholds The Universe), beautifully convey Dante's personal reactions to the beginning and end of his extraordinary journey through the intimacy, beauty, and creativity of his musical themes."
Maria A. Roglieri, Author, Professor, St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, N.Y., U.S.A.
DANTE AND MUSIC: Musical Adaptations of the Commedia from the 16th-Century to the Present, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., Gover House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, U.K
“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 appropriately-selected letter notation pitch in it’s 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
The ‘lost’ theme called for frantic ‘speed swings’ that give the listener the sense of moving forward, towards a peaceful state, rather than questioning one’s 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 Dante’s 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." |
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