In Praise of Convention: Formula and Experiment in Bellini's Self-Borrowings

Author:

Smart Mary Ann

Abstract

In the 1880s, the realization that Bellini had extensively reused melodies from early or unfinished works in his most famous operas provoked a small aesthetic crisis in Italy. Although today such reuse of material is no longer looked upon as a scandalous breach of compositional integrity, scholars have been slow to examine Bellini's self-borrowings for clues to the evolution of his style or to his attitudes toward the relations between melody and drama. Most of Bellini's self-borrowings show the composer simplifying his melodies, reducing harmonic and melodic variety as if to distance himself from bel canto convention. At the same time, melodic convention is essential to understanding the borrowings, a fact that becomes particularly obvious in those cases where dramatic parallels between the two contexts of a melody are obscure or nonexistent. For example, the recasting of a cheerful cabaletta in Zaira as a lament in I Capuleti e i Montecchi relies on a resemblance between melodic figures conventionally used to imitate tears or laughter-but also critiques those conventions. An allusive relationship between refrains in Il pirata and I puritani similarly derives its logic more from a shared musical evocation of solitude and empty space than from any overt dramatic resemblance between the two scenes. The article argues that for Bellini self-borrowing was entangled with the looser techniques of allusion and reliance on melodic convention. For this reason, study of the self-borrowings provides a model for engaging with the musical language of early nineteenth-century Italian opera, redressing the tendency to dismiss its musical detail as "merely" conventional and thus unworthy of analysis.

Publisher

University of California Press

Subject

Music

Reference73 articles.

Cited by 6 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Musical Self-Borrowing in Ottocento Opera and the Composer's Toolbox;Nineteenth-Century Music Review;2023-02-14

2. Donizetti's Self-Borrowings as an Artistic Practice;Nineteenth-Century Music Review;2023-01-23

3. Self-Borrowing in Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera: A Reconsideration;Nineteenth-Century Music Review;2023-01-10

4. Bellini's Idyllic Endings;Cambridge Opera Journal;2022-03

5. Bellini’s Gothic Voices Bellini, ‘Un grido io sento’ (Alaide), La straniera, Act I;Cambridge Opera Journal;2016-07

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3