Il Mazapegul di Corghi: dall’analisi del compositore alla partitura
Keywords:
Azio Corghi, Mazapegul, compositional techniques, formal analysis, harmonic fields, popular songAbstract
Azio Corghi’s Mazapegul, set to dialect poems from Emilia-Romagna, is a ballet for vocal octet and oboe. It was commissioned and performed by Aterballetto in 1986 under the conduction of David Garforth, with New Swingle Singers and Pietro Borgonovo’s oboe. In many ways it can be considered one of the most representative works of this composer’s style.
This contribution is based on some anastatic copies in our possession of typescripts and manuscripts by Corghi himself, consisting of annotations and compositional schemes. The purpose of this paper is to describe how we move from the preparatory material to the realization in score. Then, after a summary description of the material received, we proceed with the description of the form of the work, the pitch materials used, drawn precisely from the melodies of the folk songs utilized, showing how they generate harmonic fields, according to different compositional elaborations, and finally showing their use in some parts of the work. Only a few of the vocal movements of the Mazapegul will be considered, both because it is impossible to give a complete analysis here and because we have chosen those parts on which Corghi was most generous with explanations. In summary, given the palindromic character of the form, the Introduction and Finale will be considered, followed by the second and penultimate movements. Of the part reserved for
the oboe, some features of the first and last movements are examined.
A full formal analysis is made of the vocal movements under consideration, and some more representative examples of how the preparatory material is translated and used in the score are isolated and discussed in detail.
In the conclusion, the compositional techniques presented are summarized, and the more willing are invited to take cues from this contribution for the analysis of the missing parts, reporting a list of possible features to be analyzed, so that in time we can fill the analytical gap on Corghi mentioned at the beginning of this paper.
