Rossana Dalmonte

Relationships between music and poetry in the arias of Giovanni Legrenzi

This paper presents in detail part of a project set up to analyze the arias of Giovanni Legrenzi. Its aim is to study the relationship between poetry and music. By means of a metric-syntactic tree describing the structure of the poem, it is possible to formulate the rules which govern the form of the arias and their tonal organization. A computer program verifies the completeness and self-consistency of the twenty-eight generative rules used in the analysis. This project on Legrenzis arias is part of a wider project developing a theory of European melody.

Signification in the minimal units of musical discourse

Signification processes are focused by analyzing the minimal units of musical discourse, i.e. the note and the interval. After discussing the theoretical difference between verbal semantics and musical signification, a table is drawn in which “note” and “interval” are related to corresponding units of signification. The theoretical presupposition underlying the process is that the musical parameters (pitch, duration, intensity, timbre) and the position covered by the note in the metrical, tonal, and chordal systems activate in the mind of the listener not only emotive impressions, but also aspects of extramusical experience. Since the latter are associated with cognitive categories (time, space, dynamics) and with sensorial common experiences, such as brightness, roughness, sweetness etc., it is possible to bring out a stable and non-ambiguous relation between units of the signifier and units of the signified.