{"id":1813,"date":"1949-08-10T12:26:24","date_gmt":"1949-08-10T12:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qa-www.rivistapirelli.org\/selezione_antologica\/musica-e-macchine\/"},"modified":"2019-05-15T15:55:09","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T15:55:09","slug":"musica-e-macchine","status":"publish","type":"selezione_antologica","link":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/selezione_antologica\/musica-e-macchine\/","title":{"rendered":"Music and Machines"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":1354,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-1813","selezione_antologica","type-selezione_antologica","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-art"],"acf":{"edizione":"N.4, 1949","autore":[{"ID":463,"post_author":"1","post_date":"2019-04-09 10:47:34","post_date_gmt":"2019-04-09 10:47:34","post_content":"A great animator of the Milanese cultural life (1906-2006). After entering Pirelli in 1939, in 1947 he was one of the founding members of the Pirelli Cultural Centre, a point of reference for many leading musicians in that period. Presenter of the musical appointment every Friday in the former \u201cBrusada\u201d plant, from 1953 he was the animator of the Circolo della Musica housed in the new premises in Corso Venezia. After inaugurating the Alfa Romeo Social Centre, he was invited by Paolo Grassi in 1973 to the Teatro alla Scala to head its Cultural Promotion division. Awarded the Ambrogino d\u2019Oro Prize in 1977, he was the true driver behind the theatre\u2019s renewal. He authored the work Invito all\u2019ascolto di Puccini <\/em>(1984) and the four-volume work Alla Scala con...<\/em>","post_title":"Silvestro Severgnini","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"silvestro-severgnini","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2019-04-30 10:54:58","post_modified_gmt":"2019-04-30 10:54:58","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/internal-pcons-be-fondazione-fr-dev-elb-1449244171.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com\/?post_type=autori&p=463","menu_order":0,"post_type":"autori","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"riassunto":"","composizione_articolo":[{"acf_fc_layout":"composizione_articolo_testo","composizione_articolo_testo_testo":"

Today\u2019s musicians are no longer taking inspiration from babbling brooks or the trill of birds. Their inspiration comes from locomotives, lathes, and farm tractors that rumble, whine, and moan, drowning out the voices of nature and man<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the early 19th<\/sup> century, Ludwig van Beethoven refused to take a flat in Baden due to the lack of trees near the house. At the time he said, \u201cI love trees more than men\u201d. The result of this spiritual side of his was Symphony no. 6<\/em> (Pastoral) in F major, composed in 1808 to celebrate his fascination with nature.<\/p>\n

A little more than a century later, in 1923, Arthur Honegger wrote the following words on the title page of the musical score for Pacific 231<\/em>: \u201cI have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses\u201d.<\/p>\n

In these two affirmations \u2013 which, actually, with a curious rigour, exclude any interest in man \u2013 we see how the orbit in which certain musical predilections moved was established between the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> centuries. Because Beethoven, in the last season of his life, wandered the fields from before dawn into well into the night, writing: \u201cNobody loves the countryside as much as I do\u201d. A friend of Honegger\u2019s tells of how the musician\u2019s flat in Rue Duperr\u00e9 had an entire wall covered in images of his majestic \u201cfriends\u201d: hundreds of trains, and Honegger was an expert on all of their characteristics and technical details.<\/p>\n

\"\"Therefore, today\u2019s musicians are not taking inspiration from a \u201cwonderful spring morning with the babbling of a brook and the trilling of birds\u201d. They begin their pieces with the rumbling beat of a machine at work. \u201cNow\u201d, as Georges Auric wrote about the \u201cballet r\u00e9aliste Parade<\/em>\u201d (music by Erik Satie; scenario by Jean Cocteau; staging, sets, and costumes by Pablo Picasso; choreography by L\u00e9onide Massine) \u201cmusic humbly subjugates itself to reality, drowning out birdsong under the rumble of a tram\u201d.<\/p>\n

In fact, in Parade<\/em>, put on at the Ch\u00e2telet in 1917, the music, condensed into pure mechanical movement, was conceived to serve as background noise to the drums and stage noises in the foreground.<\/p>\n

After Satie, it was Arthur Honegger\u2019s turn. In 1918, he composed an exceptional musical piece featuring machines that rumble, whistle, and roar, along with the many elements and \u201cvoices\u201d of cities at night. All of this with the sparest of music\/noise, entrusted, for the most part, to the drums, which, in many cases, work alone to support the spoken word. With this work, Honegger took a leading role among avant-garde musicians, and this was established definitively in 1923 with Pacific 231<\/em>. This symphonic representation of a train, a \u201cPacific-type engine \u2013 known as 2, 3, 1\u2013 for heavy, high-speed trains\u201d.<\/p>\n

With this, the composer attempted to translate into music the \u201cvisual impressions and physical sensations\u201d that one gets from the spectacle of a 300-tonne train travelling at 120 kilometres per hour in the night.<\/p>\n

These themes are full of essential lyricism \u2013 themes that are isolated at first, then more persistent, in other words repeated mechanically fully or partially, then alternated with different groups of instruments, resulting in the creation of a magnificent polymorphous counterpoint. They are developed and concentrated with enormous energy, creating the \u201cengine\u201d upon a solid rhythmic foundation. From the quiet respiration of an engine in repose, to the effort in starting, to the progressive \u201ccrescendo\u201d of speed, the rhythm of the machine increases until it reaches its \u201clyrical\u201d state of continuous motion.<\/p>\n

And here are two musicians, a \u201cromantic\u201d from the 19th<\/sup> century, and a \u201cneo-realist\u201d from the 20th<\/sup> century, that meet on common ground and are evenly matched.<\/p>\n

The first is the explosive Hector Berlioz who, in 1883, was commissioned by Paganini to write Harold in Italy<\/em>, a symphonic poem for viola and orchestra. The third movement included a pastoral song that was both playful and poignant. It was meant to be the \u201cserenade of a rugged mountaineer from the Abruzzo region singing to his beloved\u201d. This merry zampogna<\/em> song had a country dance rhythm, evoking tenderness and joyous rustic notes.<\/p>\n

The second is the more understated Darius Milhaud who \u2013 less than a century later \u2013 wrote a series of pastoral songs for voice (mezzo-soprano) and ensemble. It was entitled Machines Agricoles<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In fact, the six songs represent six different types of agricultural machines and the words put to music were taken, verbatim, from farm-machinery catalogues. Therefore, Milhaud, whilst he creates a rural atmosphere, mainly focuses on describing, with lucid precision, the selection of machines, therefore imitating the rhythmic throbbing of engines, the beating of belts, and the din created by pulleys. For example, in Lieuse<\/em> (the \u201cBinder\u201d, song no. 3), every inflection, even the slightest, of the voices and instruments, seems to get into gear, like a wheel in the precise construction of an engine, and this polytonal design creates a curiously lively and new effect. In Dechaumeuse-semeuse-enfouisseuse<\/em> (the \u201cThreshing machine\u201d, song no. 4), the string instruments, with the mechanical movement that is like a murmur, support and bolster the human voice, with street cries like blasts of fanfare, celebrating the machines. In the background of the pastoral sound of the flute, which whispers the sweet, dreamy melody of a zampogna<\/em> song, the voice says: \u201cThe combined thresher costs, including four ploughshares, 1,000 francs!\u201d.<\/p>\n

An examination, even an abbreviated one, of modern music inspired by machines would require much more attention and a great deal more space. We shall touch upon \u2013 and only to briefly mention them \u2013 the Ballet M\u00e9canique<\/em> from George Antheil and the automobile-inspired parody entitled Filling Station<\/em> by R. Thomson; Telescopes<\/em> meant for a large orchestra and the music for piano entitled Magnets<\/em> by Leonid Polovinkin; to Poem of Space<\/em> in which Marcel Poot sings the aeroplane, to G.M. Scelsi\u2019s Rotary Press<\/em>, to Train<\/em> by Alexander Kastalsky, all the way to Gian Francesco Malipiero\u2019s music for Ruttman\u2019s film Steel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"In terms of the relationship between man and machine, this problem of our times has already made its way into the deepest, most despairing music from the most important contemporary musicians, such as Paul Hindemith\u2019s Kammermusik<\/em>, featuring the mechanical movement of an engine. Then there is Die Zwingburg<\/em> by Ernst Krenek, as well as Jonny Spielt Auf<\/em>, the most famous jazz-inspired piece in our era, in which mechanics and motors \u2013 radios, automobiles, trains, and jazz \u2013 are represented musically as a function of the relationship between man and machine. Another German, Kurt Weill, in the melody Der <\/em>Lindberghflug emphasises the social value of machines (and, in its essential rhythmic nature, the conversation between the pilot and his machine over the limitless ocean, is touching), <\/em>while the Italian Luigi Dallapiccola celebrates the intensity of aeroplane engines and radio-telegraphy machines in Volo di Notte<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Music by Sergei Prokofiev takes inspiration from the modern myth of mechanical civilisation in the ballet Le pas d\u2019acier<\/em>, written by Diaghilev in 1925. The work takes place in a factory, and the dancers are levers, gears, and pulleys. Half-nude men wearing leather aprons link arms in undulating circles, women contort their elbows, rotate their hand, and bend at the thigh like drills gone mad. \u201cThe music makes them move\u201d, writes Coeuroy, \u201crumbling like an engine\u201d. Russian composer Alexander Mosolov referred to his symphonic poem Iron Foundry<\/em> as \u201cmachine music\u201d. He owes his fame to this composition. In his own way, he\u2019s a \u201cromantic\u201d in this area, a lyric poet who offers his impressions with a performance featuring a foundry in movement. This stylisation of life in factories is obtained, according to Roncaglia, with astonishing instrumental skill. The turning of wheels, the screech and squeal of metal, hammer blows in a cadenced rhythm, the hiss of metal casting, puffs of steam: it is all beyond imitation, reproduced to perfection, but within rhythmic parameters.<\/p>\n

We saved the first of the modern musicians for last. He who can mould sonorous matter into incomparable symphonies of movement, with a piece that, more than any other, is linked to the present, with that mechanical rhythm suggested by the sense of dynamism of the automobile itself: Igor Stravinsky. But we\u2019d need an entire essay for him alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cAssez de nuages, de vagues, d\u2019aquarium, d\u2019ondines et de parfums la nuit; il nous faut une musique sur la terre, une musique de tous les jours<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

So wrote Jean Cocteau thirty years ago, and music for this world, for every day, exists today.
\nOf course this isn\u2019t music that will appeal to those who are scandalised when the tenor takes the high C-sharp down a semitone in the romanza of I Puritani<\/em>. Let them repeat with Don Bartolo of Rossini\u2019s immortal Barber<\/em>: \u201cMusic in my day was something else entirely\u201d.<\/p>\n"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selezione_antologica\/1813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selezione_antologica"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/selezione_antologica"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}