Le 29 juin 2017
de 15h00 à 15h30
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3203
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Massimiliano Locanto
Italian theoretical writings on post-tonal harmony have so far been rarely (if ever) taken into account as a whole in musicological literature. Most of them are little, if at all, known outside of Italy. Only a few cases have been occasionally discussed in some Italian articles and books. This is probably due to the seeming lack of a distinctively Italian tradition in this area of music theory, and to the relative scarcity of this type of studies in Italy, if compared to other national traditions. In this paper, however, I will deal with a number of Italian authors – from the beginning of the twentieth century to very recent times – whose nontraditional approaches to harmony, albeit very different with regard to historical context, purposes and methods, seem to share some distinctive traits. They also seem, to some extent, to be aware of each other’s thought, as their quotations sometimes show. Several aspects of their theories address, implicitly or explicitly, specific Italian repertoires of modernist and avant-garde music. My paper will address these questions: can we speak of an « Italian tradition » of harmonic post-tonal theory, and if yes, what are the common elements and the distinctive traits of this tradition, also as opposed to other, more consolidated and formalised music-theoretical traditions? What types of music and repertoires are they intended for?
