Liszt, Sonetto 47 del Petrarca
Una lettura narratologica
Keywords:
Narratology, focalizer, Liszt, Genette, music/textAbstract
My proposal intends to provide new contributions to the Sonetto 47 del Petrarca, a piano piece (albeit parallel to a version for voice and piano) that Liszt published together with the poetic text, as if to emphasize its close expressive link. The narratological approach seems to have the most suitable requirements to intercept the semantic complexity running through a piece like this. Indeed, it offers a plurality of perspectives, starting with the concept of focalization [Weaver 2014] and the mimetic/diegetic dichotomy. It also regards a piece as a place where different and independent temporal shifts coexist, forwards as well as backwards [Genette 1972]. In the present case, the question becomes critical due to Liszt’s choice to work on a 14th century sonnet because of its distance from the 19th century musical idiom [Dalmonte 2013].
In the Introduction (bb. 1–10), where the composer’s voice emerges on a mimetic level [Cone 1974], two different expressive registers are highlighted: a) the outpouring of feelings in the passionate and multifaceted gesture of a major 3rd-cycle (bb. 1–4), and b) a recitative style conveying the thoughtful and mournful side of falling in love, also intended as prolepsis [Genette 1972] with respect to a subsequent re-proposal, on the mimetic side, by the narrator-singer. In addition, there is a recurring main melody, elegiac in colour [Dahlhaus 1997], which — thanks to an off-beat piano writing and an evocative simplicity of structure — suggests ecstatic purity and religious contemplation. The proposal also argues the difference between the discourse vs fabula level, on a temporal scale, to be found when, in correspondence with the shortest stanzas of the Sonetto, the music expands at greater length.
