Le Liriche su Verlaine di Bruno Maderna. Disposizione, testo poetico, occasioni di un'opera giovanile e luoghi critici della sua fortuna postuma

Paolo Dal Molin

2020-01-01

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Abstract

It is not unusual for a discovery to meet with a first uncertain evaluation which needs to be reassessed with the passage of time. This is exactly what happened for a significant part of Bruno Maderna’s work and sources, including his early production, to which the three Liriche su Verlaine belong. The article will discuss the issues that are raised by some significant moments in the posthumous edition, recorded performances and existing criticism of the Liriche. It will examine their grounds, trying, where necessary, to fine-tune or modify them so as to enable a better future understanding of this Verlaine cycle in Maderna’s work and in the Italian music of the 1940s. The following topics are focused on: the internal ordering of the collection; the salient features of the three poems and the linguistic problems of the vocal part composed by Maderna; a certain resistance of the musical result to analytical immediacy; and the reasons that led the composer to set Verlaine to music in late 1946.