Piero della Francesca in musica. Luigi Dallapiccola e la 'Storia della vera Croce'

Abstract

The topic of this research project is the correspondence between different disciplines, between geographical spaces and distant historical times, between the category of time, specific to music, and that of space, specific to the visual arts: the starting point for this research are two different masterpieces: one, from the figurative arts of the Renaissance, the fresco cycle of the Legend of the true cross by Piero della Francesca, the other a modern musical masterpiece, Luigi Dallapiccola's Ulisse. Twentieth-century musical theatre is a privileged place for a well thought-out dialogue between music and the figurative arts because in it the two disciplines fully demonstrate the close proximity of their respective expressive modes and worlds, both in methodology and spirit. Syncretisms between the two arts become obvious: the perspective purity of Piero della Francesca and the melodic essentiality of Dallapiccola find their common points in mathematics, a medium that connects Renaissance figurate art with twentieth-century music. The mirrored structure of Piero's scenes for the Legend of the true cross is paradigmatically evident in the structure of the scenes in a work such as Ulisse, just as the contraposition between the elegance ofThe encounter between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon and the violence of The battle between Heraclius and Chosroes finds its perfect musical correspondence in the Two Studies for violin and piano, then developed into Two Pieces for Orchestra, composed by Dallapiccola as a musical transposition of these specific images. The thematic unity that finds in the “Sacred Wood” the perspective focus of two so diverse scenes is repeated in the musical composition, with themes that join and intersect each other, as well as with dynamic colourings of pianissimo and fortissimo that resonate perfectly with elegance and violence. But there is another fundamental aspect that joins together these two artistic experiences: their spiritual universe. The “serial” organization of the frescos and the “figurative” organization of Ulisseare metaphors for research that goes well beyond the specific semantic demands of the two respective disciplines, because it goes past knowledge of humankind and pushes research towards what can be hypothesized and what cannot.