WORKS
CAPRICCIO LOMBARDO
“chromatic” fugue for harpsichord
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CAPRICCIO LOMBARDO
instrument: harpsichord
year of composition: 2016-2017
publisher: Preludio
first performance: May 5, 2018, Milan, Castello Sforzesco
Third edition concert “Nuove musiche per clavicembalo”
(Simone Pietro Quaroni: harpsichord)
dedication: a Francesco Rossi
duration: approx. 8′
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The idea for Capriccio lombardo (2017) rises from the desire to pay tribute to three great composers: Frescobaldi, Bach, and Ligeti. The first for his fantasy and compositional extravagance; the second for his contrapuntal rationality; and finally, the third for having merged both approaches into his music.
This work has therefore the form of a fugue, but a “capricious” one, since the succession of sections and tempos is more similar to a frescobaldian fantasy than to a rigorous “scholastic” fugue. It is also a chromatic fugue, both for the use of chromaticism and third-relations, and for the reference to that baroque idea of chromaticism, that is to say to those colours of passions that composers of the past tried to imitate through music. I have therefore tried to render the dynamics of these feelings, that is, the dramatic action, through the contrast of the different parts of the Capriccio, which nevertheless remain well set within the rigorous mechanism of the fugue that proceeds in a ruthless manner.