Mozart said that the deepest music is the one that hides between the notes. The mystery is there in that space which encloses the Universe.
It is from this axiom that the deepest Music has spoken to the souls of men since the most remote times.
From the marble arenas of Greek classicism, between Phidias and Apollo God of the Sun, of the Arts, Music and Poetry, up to the landing on the shores of the Ionian and the Aegean with a new Orpheus (Monteverdi) arose madrigals, festive hunts, spontaneous songs , solemn hymns, mighty prayers.
Like inseparable sisters, Music and the visual arts, from Guido d'Arezzo to Stravinsky, from Giotto to Michelangelo, to Van Gogh, to Andy Warhol's Pop Art, have traced a millennial journey for men paved in a mosaic of beauty.
PASSION and MUSIC
Claudio Monteverdi
Coronation of Poppaea
In the duet between Poppea and Nerone "pur ti miro, pur ti godo" which concludes Claudio Monteverdi's masterpiece, there is the synthesis of passion and love.
The words exchanged between the two lovers, sublimated by a song wrapped in a poignant fluctuating melody ideally rest on the abandoned bodies among the white marbles of the imperial bed.
A light breeze, pierced by a silver olive tree, breathes the beat of their hearts, getting lost in the fiery sunset of eternal Rome.
“I look at you, I enjoy you, I stingo you, I knot you, I don't suffer anymore, I don't die anymore, my life, my treasure…. I am yours, yours is me, my hope, tell me! You are my idol, yes my heart, yes my life! Words and Music for a very refined Image "scarlet of Greek classicism" and of incomparable sensuality.
WINTER
Claudio Monteverdi
Magnificat (from Vespers of the Blessed Virgin 1610)
On the twilight page of the "Deposuit" in Claudio Monteverdi's masterpiece, the mournful notes of a violin respond to a heartfelt sorrowful chant that accompanies the deposition of Christ on the laid stone.
Claudio Monteverdi's music evokes the image of a snow-covered place, with roads erased by winter, in an unlimited space with trees and branches stretched out to embrace Heaven, and seek in the ritual of the "beautiful hidden death" of Nature, a spring of resurrection that is perpetually renewed.
The music of this unattainable musical page is an act of faith that transforms human miseries and uncertainties into dust.
SPRING
Antonio Vivaldi (from Four Seasons)
Sandro Botticelli (Birth of Venere)
In the evanescent air there is already spring, still barren from the sun. Among the slight shadows that belong to no one but the earth, I see in Vivaldi's Music, the awakening of nature, with blades of grass dewy with dew, festive water flowing to announce the happy song of the birds, the shepherd's rest , the breath of the zephyrs, the dance of Creation. Music translated into the iconographic image of Venus, her golden hair that covers her modesty and enhances her incomparable beauty.
Vivaldi and Botticelli, rebirth, perfection and harmony of Creation!
May
Robert Schumann
Hymn to Nature (from Diechtelieber op.48 – text by Heinrich Heine)
“Im wunderschonen Monat Mai, Als alle Knospen Sprangen, Da ist in meinem Herzen, Die Liebe aufgegangen. Im wunderschonen Monat Mai, als alle Vogel Sangen Da hab'ich ihr gestanden, Mein Sehenen und Verlangen”
"In May, a wonderful month, when every bud is in bloom, then love has opened up in my heart"
The words of Heinrich Heine and the music of Robert Schumann belong to the mosaic of a courteous and elegant world, where in silence, even roses bend their petals under the weight of a drop of dew and recall to earth a paradise that only 'Art can give back.
In Schumann's wonderful notes and Heine's words, May becomes a hymn to summer, in an orgy of colors that paints the earth and our soul.
THE MOON
Far away, silvery and so beautiful, indifferent to human passions, but always reciprocated in daily perceptions by man's affection and love. She is sublimated in the images of the great masterpieces of music, poetry and pictorial arts.
From Turner to Magritte, Chagall, Van Gogh. From Rusalka by Antonin Dvorak in the poignant "Canto alla luna" to the prayer "Casta Diva" from Norma by Vincenzo Bellini or even in the unrivaled notes of the piano marked with sidereal solemnity in the famous "Chiaro di luna ” from Ludwig Van Beethoven's Sonata no.14.
The beloved silvery face, in children's tales, songs, musicals, becomes in the collective imagination, a trusted guardian of our daily lives.
Astro friend, so far and so near.
MUSICAL BAROQUE
Friedrich Nietzsche
Johann Sebastian Bach
Nietzsche affirmed that Music in its boundlessness does not need the Image, the Concept, but only tolerates it next to it.
Music for music certainly, but in the apparent numerology inherent in Johann Sebastian Bach's music, the subject, the moment, always become the sum of humanity and concrete vision.
At the beginning of the Christmas Oratorio, angels, cherubs and seraphim descend from Heaven to color the "great beginning" in the small arms of the Child Jesus in an apotheosis of sound, reaching out to embrace the World and the Stars.
UNIVERSAL JUDGMENT
Sistine Chapel - Michelangelo
Requiem Mass –Giuseppe Verdi
From the vision of the monumental fresco of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, the deepest emotions and reflections emerge on the earthly transit of Man, in the presence of the beyond.
The dynamism of the figures depicted by Michelangelo, with the immense, powerful Christ next to the Virgin, who condemns sinners and saves the blessed, transforms, but only apparently, the depiction of the musical invisible.
In the pictures of the Sistine Chapel, figurative art and music ideally join in the extraordinary vision of man in transit in the underworld, so perceptible at the beginning of Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem Mass in the hammering "Dies Irae" and beyond, in the most intense profound act of faith never expressed in music by a song suspended in space, punctuated by the slow sixteenth notes "Hostias et Preces Tibi Domine" And here, nothing can be added to the sum total of the Genius of Michelangelo and Verdi.
