 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(March 2015) |
Canti di prigionia (Songs of Imprisonment) is a setting for chorus, two pianos, two harps and percussion by the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola.
Dallapiccola sets three texts of imprisonment: a prayer of Mary Stuart, an extract from Book Three of Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy and Savonarola's unfinished Meditation on the Psalm 'My hope is in Thee, O Lord'. Composed in 1938–1941, the first song was premiered on Brussels Radio in 1940, weeks before the Nazi Invasion of Belgium. Dallapiccola himself wrote that the work was a direct response to Benito Mussolini's speech introducing race laws to Italy:
I should have liked to protest, but I was not so naive as to disregard the fact that, in a totalitarian regime, the individual is powerless. Only by means of music would I be able to express my indignation. [1]
Dallapiccola was to develop the material (and some of the musical ideas) in his 1948 opera Il prigioniero , in which he further explores the ideas of personal as well as ideological imprisonment. Canti di liberazione followed in 1955.
