| Tre Canti di Leopardi | |
|---|---|
| Orchestral songs by Wilhelm Killmayer | |
 Portrait of Giacomo Leopardi who wrote the poems | |
| Text | poems from Canti |
| Composed | 1965 |
| Duration | 14 min |
| Movements | three |
| Scoring |
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Tre Canti di Leopardi (Three songs by Leopardi) is a series of three orchestral songs composed by Wilhelm Killmayer in 1965 for baritone and orchestra. He set three poems in Italian from the collection Canti by Giacomo Leopardi.
Interested in poetry and the voice, Killmayer composed more than 200 Lieder. [1] He wrote Tre Canti di Leopardi in 1965 as a setting of three poems in Italian from the collection Canti by Giacomo Leopardi. He wrote the work for baritone and orchestra. The songs take about 14 minutes to perform. [2]
From the expansive collection, Killmayer chose three poems from different periods. For the first song, he selected the early L'Infinito (The Infinite, 1819), which begins "Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle" (It was always dear to me, this solitary hill,). He marked his setting "Moderato, tranquillo". [2]
For the second song, he selected the later A se stesso (To Himself, 1833), which has been described as a "suicidal assessment", [3] written in concise lines of sometimes only one to three words per line. Beginning "Or poserai per sempre" (Now you will rest forever), it talks about the death of the ultimate illusion. [3]
For the third song, he selected another early poem, Alla luna (To the Moon, 1819). The beginning, "O graziosa luna, io mi rammento" (O lovely moon, now I am reminded), has been described as an address to a light both ideal ("graziosa luna") and beloved ("mia diletta luna"). Killmayer marked his setting "Tranquillo". [2]
The work was first performed on 11 July 1967 in Munich as part of the festival Allgemeines Deutsches Musikfest München 1967. The soloist Barry McDaniel sang with the Münchner Philharmoniker, conducted by Reinhard Peters. [2] A recording was chosen in 2006 to represent orchestral songs for the sound documentary Musik in Deutschland 1950–2000. It was performed by Thomas Mohr and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, conducted by Georg W. Schmöhe . Other songs of the collection were Henze's Neapolitanische Lieder, Reimann's Lines, and songs by Reiner Bredemeyer, Hanns Eisler, Siegfried Matthus, Ernst Hermann Meyer and Manfred Trojahn. [4]
Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. He is considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of the most important figures in the literature of the world, as well as one of the principals of literary romanticism; his constant reflection on existence and on the human condition—of sensuous and materialist inspiration—has also earned him a reputation as a deep philosopher. He is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century but routinely compared by Italian critics to his older contemporary Alessandro Manzoni despite expressing "diametrically opposite positions." Although he lived in a secluded town in the conservative Papal States, he came into contact with the main ideas of the Enlightenment, and, through his own literary evolution, created a remarkable and renowned poetic work, related to the Romantic era. The strongly lyrical quality of his poetry made him a central figure on the European and international literary and cultural landscape.
A song cycle is a group, or cycle, of individually complete songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.
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Italian poetry is a category of Italian literature. Italian poetry has its origins in the thirteenth century and has heavily influenced the poetic traditions of many European languages, including that of English.
Wilhelm Killmayer was a German composer of classical music, a conductor and an academic teacher of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München from 1973 to 1992. He composed symphonies and song cycles on poems by Friedrich Hölderlin, Joseph von Eichendorff, Georg Trakl and Peter Härtling, among others.
Barry McDaniel was an American operatic baritone who spent his career almost exclusively in Germany, including 37 years at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He appeared internationally at major opera houses and festivals, and created roles in several new operas, including Henze's Der junge Lord, Nabokov's Love's Labour's Lost, and Reimann's Melusine. He was also a celebrated concert singer and recitalist, focused on German Lied and French mélodie. He was the first singer of Wilhelm Killmayer's song cycle Tre Canti di Leopardi. He recorded both operatic and concert repertory.
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"L'infinito" is a poem written by Giacomo Leopardi probably in the autumn of 1819. The poem is a product of Leopardi's yearning to travel beyond his restrictive home town of Recanati and experience more of the world which he had studied. It is widely known within Italy.
Canti is a collection of poems by Giacomo Leopardi written in 1835. The Canti is generally considered one of the most significant works of Italian poetry.
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Reinhard Peters was a German operatic conductor, violinist and an academic teacher at the Folkwangschule Essen. He was the Generalmusikdirektor for the opera companies Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Theater Münster and Deutsche Oper Berlin. He premiered music in opera and concert, such as Giselher Klebe's Die tödlichen Wünsche, Aribert Reimann's Melusine, Nicolas Nabokov's Love's Labour's Lost, and Wilhelm Killmayer's song cycle Tre Canti di Leopardi.
Wilhelm Killmayer, a German composer, wrote several song cycles, which form a substantial part of his compositions. The earliest cycle dates from 1953, the last was completed in 2008. He set poems by German romantic writers such as Friedrich Hölderlin and Joseph von Eichendorff, but was also inspired by French, Greek and Spanish poems, and by texts from the 20th-century poets Georg Trakl and Peter Härtling. He used mostly piano to accompany a singer, but also added percussion or other instruments, and scored some cycles in a version for voice and orchestra. His Hölderlin-Lieder, setting poems from the author's late period, were performed at major festivals and recorded.
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