Italian Music

Music of Ennio Porrino-- Continued

Bio from composer website (Machine Translation, I've bolded works in this collection for emphasis):
(Cagliari, Roma, 1/20/1910/9/25/1959)

Followed classical studies until the age of seventeen, he devoted himself exclusively to composition later under the guidance of the masters Mulé and Dawson, graduating in 1932 in Rome, at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia. He attended for three years also the advanced course taught by Ottorino Respighi, which soon becomes the favourite pupil. "His master treats your best: the great skill of the colorist, the technique of orchestration, the capacity of adhesion to the substrate harmonic chant. Everything a plan preserving intact the lyrical quality that comes from pure emotions "(Nicola Valley).

Porrino do you know Roman musical environment in 1931, winning a contest for a Newspaper banned from the lyric of Italy with Traccas and in 1933 another difficult contest, that banned from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia for the 25th anniversary of concerts at the Augustan with the Overture for orchestra Tartarin de Tarascon which Bernardino Molinari heads the 30 April of the same year at the Augustan.

In January, ' 34, the same Augusteo and with the same Director, will take place on a more complete statement with the symphonic poem Sardinia, followed by numerous performances in Italy and abroad under the guidance of the most prestigious conductors, such as Patel, Gui, Stokowski. Sardinia is also included, representing the Italian music programmes of the International Festival of Hamburg ' 35. The work represents, as several following compositions, a tribute to the homeland that has left child Porrino and that will directly only later, but continually felt revived in nostalgic memories of his mother.

After composing the songs of slavery for violin, cello and piano (' 33), seasonal carols for soprano and small orchestra (' 34), the vision of Ezekiel, prelude, choral and orchestral adagio (' 35), cantata for reciter, Proserpine female chorus and small orchestra (' 37) and Three Italian songs for small orchestra (' 39), Porrino, commissioned by the Casa Musicale Sonzogno, he for the first time-with the opera Gli Orazi (libretto by Claudio Guastalla)-with what he believed to be the highest art form and complete: the theatre. So Porrino himself expressed about his work: "this job is not melodrama, in the traditional sense and the 19th century Word, but a modern play between the profane oratorio and sporting spectacle: the approximation to the profane oratory is to define the dryness of the musical language, while the parallel with the sporting spectacle stands for dynamism and passion of the story and the music that arise from the contrast of two warring parties". The Obi should be staged at La Scala in Milan in February of ' 41 with a warm success.

Meanwhile Porrino, became Professor of composition at the Conservatory in Rome, he was appointed a member of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Accademia Luigi Cherubini of Florence.

From The Orazi Porrino, passes to the nostalgic tones and painful atmosphere of songs of exile, a collection of fifteen poems fruit of painful experience of war and of ' exile ' in the city of Venice, where he was transferred, in ' 43, at the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello.

After the war, and after a period spent in Naples, first as Director of the library of music s. Pietro a Majella, then as Professor of composition at the same Conservatory and as music critic of the Corriere di Napoli, Porrino returned to Rome in ' 47, taking possession of his professor of composition at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Meanwhile, his art is enriched with new works: in ' 47 dramatic Sonata, composed a one-act play based on a text by The Banerjee, for reciter and piano; in ' 48, he met the Abbot Ricciotti-author of the life of Jesus-which proposes the idea of creating a musical work of the Gospel which will be accomplished subject the following year under the title Christ and process will run for the first time in April of ' 52 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. It is a "symphonic-choral fresco which can be regarded as perhaps the most challenging of his substantial symphonic production" (Tito Aprea), a work characterized by the sharpness of the music, drawing from an airy melodic line and a strong rhythmic pulse. "The composer has managed once again to synthesize his thoughts into a work of considerable assumed, well balanced and firmly built" (Renzo Rossellini). "Next to the traditional ecclesiastical style, we have a modern tonal concept involving sometimes strong dissonance" (Felix Karlinger). "The speech flows wide melodic, sometimes invokes the Gregorian chant and it is flourishing richness of melismas. The instrumentation is rich, varied, colorful "(Ceccherini). "Porrino felt highly the drama of Christ and in his every sound element, in addition to being in the service of a faithful musical interpretation of the text, is blended into a unitary conception in which the artist's spirit lifted from technical engagements, sings, from his mystical religious emotion" (Tito Aprea).

After returning for the first time as an adult in Cagliari in ' 37, on the occasion of the III Congress of SNFM Porrino in 1949, looking for a direct contact with the cultural and musical heritage of his island, he for the first time a real journey in Sardinia. The drama of the landscape and its people, the legendary beauty of the coastline and especially the Interior, with its legacy of ancient cultures and beliefs, the inspiration for the three dances of the Earth, water and fire, collected in the composition for orchestra Nuraghi (' 52). Many will be the performances of this work: among the most important are those of Leopold Stokowski and Claudio Abbado.

Inspired by the sea and a rocky islet at the coast of Monte Argentario, Porrino writes, on Commission of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, the Argentarola concert for guitar and orchestra, which premiered at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, in January ' 54. In the work there is a clear finding "current use" of the instrument, in addition to a sophisticated, fingering the tambora, blocked any measures, stopped, vibrato, the metal, the harmonic, rasqueado and sounds on ' bridge ' and ' hole ', going by the typical Cadence to the twelve-tone series "(Mario Rinaldi), which the composer enters for the first time in his work without sacrificing his own melodic vein.