La lirica di Saffo sullo sfondo delle tragedie belliche

Abstract

During the fascist years, classical culture (in particular the Latin one) was an essential element of the dominant ideology. In the musical field, the ideal of Classicity was realized both in the choice of the song texts or the subjects for the operas, and in the reevaluation of Italian ancient musical traditions. In the early Forties, instead, the reference to the Classical culture (in this case to the Greek one) in Due liriche di Saffo , for voice and piano, by Goffredo Petrassi (1941) and in Cinque frammenti di Saffo , for voice and chamber orchestra, by Luigi Dallapiccola (1942) had completely different effects. These songs, which set music to Salvatore Quasimodo’s translations into Italian of some Greek poetry, far from introducing archaizing elements and emphatic tones in the writing, delivered a rarefied and fascinating atmosphere, thus becoming a test-bed of audacious experimentation. Establishing the historical context, sifting through the documentation of Petrassi and Dallapiccola and analysing the poetic texts and some meaningful passages of the songs, this paper tries to recognize and interpret the new and intense relationship that the two young composers established with the Classical culture, against the backdrop of war tragedies.