Frank Martin e la dodecafonia

Abstract

The most part of literature has underestimated Frank Martin’s relationship with the dodecaphony, perhaps deliberately. In reality, dodecaphony concerns a significant part of the production of the Swiss composer and cannot be reduced to a sporadic occurrence of twelve-tone series within thematic functions. The essays aims to analyze Martin’ s personal use of some instances of Arnold Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic method, particularly in the 4 Short Pieces for guitar (1933), in the first Concerto for piano (1933/1934), in the Trio pour violon, alto et violoncello (1936) and in Der Schrei , the eighth song of the cycle Der Cornet (1942/1943). While in these pieces, one might observe Martin's tendency to exploit the series especially as chromatic enrichment of the melodic line (usually without recourse to inversion or retrograde) predominantly in tonal harmonic contexts, there are, however, moments in which the series takes the control over the vertical dimension, thus becoming the real Grundgestalt of the composition. Nevertheless, also in this case Martin avoids to drive his music toward a complete atonality, building its series with a clear predominance of consonant intervals and triadic groups. In general, Martin’s relation to dodecaphony shows personal features, that should however be assimilated to the broader context of the reception of Schoenberg’s method in the Thirties and Forties.