94491 CARISSIMI The recent experience of the Ensemble Seicentonovecento with the oratorios of Giacomo Carissimi has illuminated ADDITIONAL LINER NOTES some interesting, and hitherto never thoroughly explored, aspects of the complex relationship between music and PICTOGRAPHY OF SOUND painting established in the first half of the 17th century, first in the Roman school, then at Bologna, and then, Medieval and baroque frescoes may show different degrees progressively, in all the major Italian centres. of preservation, but the approach to the objects themselves is the same. However, the interpretations of medieval and The vastness of Carissimi's expressive range becomes baroque art are certainly very different. An expert on 13th always clearer with the systematic exploration of his works, century art might not understand Pietro da Cortona at all, which are partly known to philologists, but little frequented and viceversa. But on one point there is no doubt: the two by a wider public of enthusiasts and scholars. works of art can be set in front of us to examine together. It is almost as if in the history of 17th century painting One is older, the other younger, and they represent points personalities such as Domenichino or Guercino were known of view and philosophies that are far apart, but in their only through a limited number of works. Carissimi is at a physical reality they are equally present. There is only one similar level ‐ the level of an extremely subtle and ardent means of observation, while there is knowledge relevant to poet touching with the same creative energy all the chords the one but not to the other. It is of course also possible to of a compact and solemn universe, in a continual widening verify, even to interfere with, the material of which a work of his expressive horizon. Reflection on this vast conceptual of art is made. range, which was gained by the master from his concrete With music, it is different. A 17th century piece is experience in the environment of the Roman school, makes incomplete, at least in the present state of knowledge, it seem permissible to compare different artistic techniques while a 19th century one is complete. Nor does the remark on the basis of the fundamental concept of the intellectual about interpretation always hold good. The attitudes outlook which is concrete image, but also ideal form of a necessary to interpret Carissimi certainly differ from those compositional structure ‐ traceable with equal legitimacy in needed to interpret Schumann. the space of sound and in the figurative space. The point is a different one. In a Schumann text there is The fatal century opened with an event, in the first days of enough for the planning of an interpretation, but not in a the year, that could not better render such an idea: the Carissimi text. The resulting conflicts about correct, or if you Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo by Emilio de' prefer, reliable performance, of a piece by Carissimi, Cazzati, Cavalieri, which many historians of music have wished to Perti, or Monteverdi, cannot be resolved in the absence of recognize, not totally wrongly, as the first manifestation of unequivocal documentary evidence, of which there is none. what was later to be the oratorio. While it is very easy to demolish critically performances that Here the term "representation" has a double meaning. On lack any philological depth, it is very difficult to judge as the one hand it is an echo of the theatrical performance, exact that which should remain open to question and is in since the composition is true theatrical action: it is not any case subjective. It is not that a secret substructure is playing, but just 'staging", in a synthetic and convincing lacking; there are simply no defining concepts. manner, allegorical ideas and concepts that the public must That is why a comparison between different artistic perceive with visual immediacy. On the other hand, techniques of the same period may help the maturing of a "representation" means a portraying, in the pictorial sense critical conscience. This does not mean that it is legitimate of the term. That is, the music has a "visual" ambition, in the absence of any real basis to propose comparisons or almost intrinsic to its language. Of course this is only a parallels. In fact, careful study shows that each period has metaphor, but its ultimate meaning is not so far from that its paradigm art forms and its minor ones. The reason for all of today's movie sound‐tracks: there are conventions that this surely cannot be explained once and for all on principles make it unnecessary for us actually to see the images on the valid for all periods and all artistic techniques. The truth is screen to understand, from the music, which "genre" of immediately clear. To take a canonical example, the Italian movie it is. For example, a horror movie has sound elements 15th century was a giant of the figurative arts, but it is that could never be transferred unaltered to a comedy. The difficult to remember even just one great writer of the same conventions are so engrained in the mind of the public that period. And if 19th century Opera has enjoyed extraordinary such a transfer would immediately be interpreted as having triumphs, the same cannot be said about most 19th century an ironic significance. paintings. This is logical: there is no Art without further But in the case of the movie it is obvious: music must not determinants. There are artistic techniques, and it is have so much visual ambition, but should merely constitute obvious that their developments and vicissitudes cannot a track along which run images already overloaded with constantly run in parallel. However, if this is true, it is also meaning. This procedure is completely distinct from the true that certain comparisons between different techniques procedure of 19th century lyric Opera, where the staging is might yield illuminating results, when one of them refers based on abstract conventions and subordinate to the either implicitly or explicitly to the others. Reasoning of this requirement that the voices be audible at all times and in all kind is applicable, with high confidence, to the Italian 17th circumstances. century. Thus Emilio de' Cavalieri's Rappresentatione is a kind of Here, confronted with an extraordinary and most energetic "pictography of sound" in which the music is intended to be period in the field of figurative art, we still have today a the true equivalent of the visual representation, and builds feeling of a rather uniform musical culture, undoubtedly of up an image that is interesting for its clarity and a high level, but its articulations and crucial personalities are completeness. not very clear. 94491 Giacomo Carissimi: The Complete Oratorios ‐ Revised and edited by Flavio Colusso 1 There is a striking similarity between the pictorial work of a When, in the time that is now ours, the criterion of work as genius such as Caravaggio, and de’ Cavalieri's musical the efficient functioning of a machine reached a crisis, the allegories. The common ideal is that of vision, which implies whole great machinery of the symphony also reached a that the musician must take the radical step of abandoning crisis, at least from the creative point of view. Whole the polyphonic idea and arranging the music in the generations of musicians have composed by the criterion of harmonic arena, where the melodising settles down in an the functioning machine, following not an expressive unwavering melody. Blocks of sound are closed in on contour, but one of performance. themselves and provided with an internal coherence. The Logically, the notion of demonstrating function lies also at ensemble that emerges is really spatial, resembling the the base of the work of a Frescobaldi or a Monteverdi, but pictorial spaces in which the old idea of fullness at each without one fundamental element: production of a socially point has disappeared, and in contrast the dimension of useful object a role that could be played, for example, by a emptiness, of that which is commensurable only by the Brahms symphony, destined to the concert hall and criteria of the imagination, starts seeping through. therefore to the public. After all, this was the legacy of late 16th century The problem of correct performance praxis of a 17th polyphonism, always more oriented, with the Roman school century oratorio is linked not only to the fact that not of Palestrina and Animuccia, towards tranquil everything that should have been written actually was contemplation, saturating the density of the sound. This written, but also to the fact that its performance praxis was in seeming contrast with the expectation, carried to the cannot any longer belong to us, because we are "by excess" limit by Orlando Di Lasso, of the difficulty of moving outside the world that ignored the idea of performance as a forward, of researching in the contrapuntal space, in a kind work co‐ordinated by a leader who guides everyone of fatal movement that seems to reject final conclusion as involved toward a socially relevant production, just as the the inevitable end of human endeavours, sublime as they great polyphony of the 15th and 16th centuries was outside might seem. "by defect". From this derives the margin of objective But at the beginning of the 17th century, song could have incomprehensibility when one confronts the solution of the appeared to be the very place for figurative sound, while problem of performance, of which the congruent usage of untiring and often bitter research invaded the dominion of period instruments, correctly identified and rebuilt on a the keyboard, envisaging the prospect of a musical philological basis, is only one aspect, although a defining cathedral.