Caos apparente e struttura dissimulata nei «Responsori di Settimana Santa» di Carlo Gesualdo

The aim of this essay is to go into certain aspects of the formal conception of the Holy Week Responsories by Carlo Gesualdo that have yet to be considered in musicological literature. The analysis of them focuses particularly on two instances that present a dense, unexpected succession of effects of suspense and of harmonic mobility, in spite of the structural significance of where they are positioned.

The musicological perspective takes into account the techniques involved in these compositional processes. In the passages concerned, their complex and subtle interaction signals a manneristic game that suggests a musical structure disguised by irrational effects of suspense and of openness. An aesthetic approach raises questions as to the artistic sense of the elements that lead to this “inquietude of form”. It further raises the problem of identity underlying its difference vis-à-vis Renaissance harmony as a model of the form of a musical ars perfecta.

In turn, the profound intermingling of Gesualdo’s new solutions with the semantic dimension of the text, its expressive, rhetorical treatment at the service of the institution of a symbolic, theological dominion are integrated in the composition of a great whole which creates an immense theatrical and sacred realm.

The combination of these aspects with the composer’s ‘material imagination’ and his visionary furor confers on this Responsorial cycle a sublime condition which affirms a new artistic awareness in the era of the Counter-Reformation.

(traduzione di David Cranmer)