Luigi Dallapiccola's first twelve-tone work : an analytical study of compositional techniques in cinque frammenti di saffo
Julie Crosson · NC Digital Online Collection of Knowledge and Scholarship (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro) · 2007
"Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975) is considered the foremost Italian composer of twelve-tone music. While the culmination of his efforts resulted in masterpieces such as Quaderno musicale di Annalibera, in which the transformation of a single row is the basis of the entire composition, earlier efforts in the technique show that Dallapiccola first viewed the twelve-tone technique as an aid in crafting melodies and a tool for delineating formal boundaries. Cinque Frammenti di Saffo, from the triptych Liriche greche, is Dallapiccola's first composition in which twelve-tone techniques are a primary component, but the cycle demonstrates a different view of dodecaphony than is evident in his later twelve-tone works. While twelve-tone rows serve as major components of the composition's overall framework, they are not the sole pitch elements in the work, and they illuminate the role that dodecaphony served in Dallapiccola's earliest use of the technique. This paper examines the melodic, harmonic, and formal outcomes of the incorporation of twelve-tone techniques in the Cinque Frammenti, also noting the setting of text in each movement and motivic cells that help to make the work cohere."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.