Listening Journal

Kevin Sweet
Music History
3-18-08


Listening Journal


For my sixth entry, I chose Vivaldiana by Gian Francesco Malipiero. When I saw the title, I did not think much of it. Within the first few moments of listening, I thought to myself, “Wow...I should have known.” Vivaldiana is a group of works for small orchestra, similar to the core group of instruments that Vivaldi composed many of his concertos, which consist of strings, flutes, oboes, bassoons and horns.

Gian Francesco Malipiero was born in Venice, also the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi, on March 18, 1882. Early in Malipiero’s musical training, he would copy the scores of composers like Claudio Monteverdi and Girolamo Frescobaldi, providing the musical blueprint for his career.

Vivaldiana is constructed of three movements in fast-slow-fast plan which was taken from the Italian opera overture. This format became the standard pattern for concertos, introduced by the Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni. Vivaldiana’s first movement has a slow introduction, utilizing imitation and harmonic movement of going up a fourth, down a fifth. This harmonic progression is similar to approaches to harmony throughout the eighteenth century. The opening ritornello is composed of fast small units, establishing the key to which the music will later modulate. A great deal of imitation is utilized throughout the movement.

The slow movement entitled Adante piu lento un poco, is my favorite movement of the three because it has expressive, long breathed melodies. Similar to Vivaldi, Malipiero is made the slow movement equally as important to the fast movements. The movement modulates to the relative minor strengthening the return to the tonic.

The last movement is playful and has the strings using coloristic effects like pizzicato and muted strings. The ritornello contains segments of two or four measures that are varied by repeating in different instruments with altered dynamic levels. Malipiero makes use of short motives that are stretched by taking them through strong chord progressions, linking them together with sequences.

The works utilize rhythmic vibrancy, clear formal structure and skillful use of variation by grouping different sets of orchestral instruments. This recording of Vivaldiana is performed by the Veneto Philharmonic Orchestra and the movements come to a little under fifteen minutes long.

Vivaldiana by Gian Francesco Malipiero is rightfully not a part of the standard canon because it does not reflect the attitude of the twentieth-century. Composers of the time reacted to Romanticism, trying to develop to new ways and concepts of expression. Malipiero does represent a school of thinking that grasps on to past traditions and nationalistic claims which could be viewed as against the grain, but the clear formal structures and assured harmonies are more representative of the eighteenth century rather than the early twentieth.