Variazioni canoniche: sulla serie dell'op. 41 di Arnold Schoenberg (1950) - Nono, Luigi 1924-1990 (Milan Ricordi, 1950)
Nono made his debut at the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt in 1950 with his work No. 1, the Canonical Variations on Arnold Schoenberg's Op. 41. The long piece for orchestra of strings, percussion and wind enriched by the particular timbre of the soprano saxophone, whose 'narrative' tone in many places recalls the Sprechgesang from Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon, is divided into four distinct sections: Largo veramente, Andante moderato, Allegro violento, Lento. The Schoenbergian series is presented in its entirety only in the final movement (bars 244 ff.) where the saxophone articulates a long recitative over a string counterpoint based on the transposed inversion of the series. Apart from this episode Nono uses only fragments of the series which, having become semantic units in their own right, give rise to autonomous figurations. But above all, the salient feature of this series, namely the regular alternation of only two intervals - the minor second and the major third - and the many possibilities of forming major and minor triads, is not taken into account by Nono. Rather, he works on the expressive characters of the original, translating the layers of meaning created by Schoenberg into his own semanticity. For example, the opening movement Largo vagamente, with its micro-melodies that creep in, struggling to form a true musical fabric, recalls the severe beginning of the Ode. The third movement Allegro violento reproposes through the disturbing presence of the percussion the theme of war and the triumph of irrational brutality.However, there is one fundamental aspect of the Ode to Napoleon that is preserved and enhanced by Nono: the technique of variation. In this central work of Schoenberg's last phase, the rigorous serial décors give way to the principle of 'evolving variation' that the Viennese musician had studied in Brahms and Mahler: the main motifs consist of intervallic cells marked by certain general characteristics but open to continuous modification. Nono uses this principle to construct canonic plots that can sometimes also involve minor elements such as a colour, a trill, a rhythmic structure regardless of pitches. (Translated with Deepl.com)
Keywords: Orchestral music