A Nono mystery

[guest2]

While preparing the next rarity from an old tape, I have come across a work of Nono which the B.B.C. announcer twice calls Le Terre e la Campagna (which means something like "The Lands (plural) and the Countryside."

Now in every reference book I can find, that same work (from 1958) is called La Terra e la Compagna (meaning "The Land (singular) and the female Companion")!!! Three differences in five words.

Yet in 1965 the B.B.C. had a reputation for accuracy, and the announcers read from scripts prepared by musicologists.

The work is said to be based in some way upon a series of nine poems by Pavese, with the collective title "La terra e la morte." I cannot find the complete series to see whether the phrase occurs therein.

It is possible I suppose that the announcer when he said "campagna" was reading the printed word "compagna" in the way that some people say "Cuventry" and "cunstable" - that is possible but quite unlikely, especially since it does not explain his "le terre."

So who is right in this important matter - the B.B.C. of yore or every one else?

[Roehre]

<quote>Now in every reference book I can find, that same work (from 1958) is called La Terra e la Compagna (meaning "The Land (singular) and the female Companion")!!! </quote>

This is the correct title, with "Canti di Cesare Pavese" as subtitle.

See the score as published by Schott in Mainz http://www.schott-music.com/shop/9/show,154430.html

[guest2]

Thanks to member Roehre for taking the trouble to look that up. It is in fact a little strange that the B.B.C. announcer did not supply an English translation of the title; perhaps in those days it was assumed that listeners to the Third Programme would be fluent in Italian.

Here is a paragraph from Reginald Smith-Brindle concerning this work:

He calls having the "choral melody" on the top line "an old concept"; old it may be but I hope he does not mean to imply that therefore it has been entirely superseded. And all those septuplets seem a bit over the top don't they.