EUTERPE'S REED - Giovanni Pasqualino

THE REED OF EUTERPE

This collection of essays is a three-cornered hat: music, literature, Sicily. Poetry set to music has long been the subject of a separate branch of musicology, and in this sense Pasqualino has made precise choices: narrators, librettists, critics, musicians, writers in the broadest sense, from novelists to poets. The figures are often well-known, from Boito and Verga to Montale and Vigolo via Pirandello, but rarely are they equally well-known for their interest and musical expertise. The author has abundantly quoted from the figures he addresses, from excerpts from prose to passages in verse. Thus, writers and music: those who loved it, those who knew it almost by hearsay, those who had a clever idea for it, or those who approached it to exploit it or develop it; even those who practiced it as musicians, amateurs or professionals. Bruno Barilli, a fine penman and a difficult man, was a musician, and Eugenio Montale was not exactly a musician, although, having studied singing as a young man, he could have become one (a baritone!!). Massimo Bontempelli was very afraid of certain "nonsense": harmony and counterpoint, while Vitaliano Brancati exaggerated a bit, but he wasn't entirely wrong: music is something sensual, corporeal, visceral, that captivates you in the bass but perhaps leaves you indifferent in the alto. Federico De Roberto placed his trust only in the symphonic poem, in a multi-instrumental music that refuses to fornicate with vile words, while poor Giuseppe Vannicola, a native of the Marche who lived between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and who switched from the bow to the pen, wanted music to be absolute, different from the other arts and superior to all. This is a volume full of curiosities waiting to be discovered. All one had to do was go looking for them, and with his good will and excellent culture, Giovanni Pasqualino set out.

p. 290

JOHN PASQUALINO
Born in Catania, he graduated in his hometown with a degree in Philosophy and History, and simultaneously earned a piano diploma from the A. Corelli Conservatory in Messina. In 1990, he won the fifteenth edition of the Casentino Prize, nonfiction section, chaired by Carlo Bo, with his unpublished work, Antonio Bruno: un maudit siciliano. He has published the following essays: The Devil's Trill, The Demonic in Art (Solfanelli). The Gallus Cantavit, A Bellinian enigma (Tabula Fati). Vincenzo Tobia Bellini. From Abruzzo to Sicily and Giacomo Sacchero, A Sicilian Librettist at La Scala in Milan (Bastogi). Collaborate with the Newsletters of the Donizetti Society of London and has been editorial director of the online magazine of music, culture and entertainment since 2006 Bellini news founded by him.