Luigi Dallapiccola, Massimo Mila, and the Journey of a Manuscript: An Analysis ofTre poemi(1949) in Context

Abstract

Tre poemi (1949) marks a key moment in Luigi Dallapiccola’s oeuvre and biography: for the first time, all movements of a work are unified by a single 12-tone series; the work’s dedication to Arnold Schoenberg led to the first personal contact with the master; Dallapiccola dedicated a fair copy, with serial analysis, of the first movement on James Joyce’s ‘A Flower Given to my Daughter’ to his own daughter Annalibera; and the composer gave the complete vocal-score manuscript, with analytical annotations, as a gift to the music critic and close friend Massimo Mila. As no sketches for Tre poemi have come down to us, this recently discovered manuscript constitutes the only surviving draft of the work. This article analyses the 12-tone techniques of Tre poemi in their historical, cultural, and biographical context through a study of the Dallapiccola–Mila correspondence, the published writings of the composer and critic, the discovered manuscript and other primary sources. Integrating archival research and post-tonal transformational analysis, we take clues from the manuscript to show how Dallapiccola developed his particular brand of 12-tone technique with its emphasis on invariant pitch-class collections, recurring rhythmic motives and pitch polarities inspired by literary techniques (especially assonance) in Joyce and others. Furthermore, we situate our analysis in the aesthetic discourse of the time, as discussed by Dallapiccola and Mila.

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