Luigi Dallapiccola Quaderno musicale di Annalibera, ed altro

Quaderno musicale di Annalibera, for piano

Description by Andrew Lindemann Malone [-]

The children of composers often have dedications bestowed upon them, and the pieces so dedicated are normally simple, appropriately childlike works. Luigi Dallapiccola‘s Quaderno musicale di Annalibera (Annalibera’s musical notebook), however, — dedicated to his daughter Annalibera on her 8th birthday — is a dense 12-tone work whose name, form, and content all pay tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach. The work was written (during a 1952 journey across America) for the Pittsburgh International Contemporary Music Festival. Its sixth movement, “Ornaments,” would go on to serve as the basis of Dallapiccola‘s Songs of liberation, leading some to suspect that the Quaderno was a preparatory work for the later piece; the whole notebook was later transcribed as the Variations for orchestra.

This is music of no mean interest — strictly constructed, and sharply characterized — but it may have left young Annalibera a little bewildered. A movement titled “Symbol” opens the work, and within its first five bars it openly states the B-A-C-H (in English notation B-A-C-B flat) over an exaggeratedly regular bass line. The 10 short movements that follow alternate between freely expressive movements with names like “Accents,” “Shadows,” and “Colors,” and various species of canon titled with a term Bach used in the Art of Fugue, “Contrapunctus.”

Some of the free movements are lyrical, like “Lines,” which spreads a serene melody over a bass line of broken chords. Others explore rhythm, like “Accents,” in which the irregular meter is smashed out in chords. “Shadows” is particularly interesting, as it juxtaposes different pianistic colors simultaneously, so one can hear the ghost of something quiet while a rugged chord is played.

The contrapuntal pieces are complex; the second is in contrary motion and the third is a crab canon, in which the two parts are played together, one the reverse of the other. Yet Dallapiccola manipulates the textures in a way that maintains their nonacademic interest and expressivity. For example, the “Contrapunctus secundus,” which is marked Poco allegretto; alla Serenata in the score, takes on an almost nocturnal aspect, with staccato notes that recall the strumming of mandolins. Dallapiccola‘s Quaderno is an interesting and personal tribute to and assimilation of Bach and some of the most difficult music ever dedicated to an 8 year old.

Parts/Movements