AESTHETIC AND STYLISTIC GUIDELINES OF CHORAL ITALIAN MUSIC OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

The article examines the aesthetic and stylistic orientations of choral Italian music of the first half of the 20th century. After the First World War, the idea of reviving ancient national music and the associated goal of restoring the pan-European significance of Italian art became leading in Italian culture. The search in the realm of ancient music provided composers not only with a national ideological base, a mental source of music, but also with an awareness of the great heritage of Italian masters of the 16th – 18th centuries, whose art dominated the European musical Olympus in the Renaissance, Baroque and Enlightenment eras. The idea of resurrecting the past greatness of national art united Italian artists of all generations. Increased attention to religious themes, eternal themes, revival of choral and symphonic-choral genres – a general trend in Italian music of that time. The 1920s are an important stage in the development of national musical culture, which is defined in Italian musicology as the first wave of national musical renewal. At this time falls the mature work of a generation of composers who are called the "generation of the 1880s". Their work was one of the most important musical reference points for the next generation of Italian composers, whose names are associated with the second wave of Italian musical renewal (1930–1940). The brightest artists of this generation, G. Petrassi and L. Dallapiccola, were the founders of the Neo-Renaissance and Neo- Baroque trend in Italian music, associated with the revival of the madrigal tradition of vocal art of the 16th and 17th centuries. The logic of the musical unfolding of madrigals, contrapuntal freedom in the development of vocal voices - became a real discovery, a treasure of revelation for artists who sought to renew the stylistic and stylistic base. In the choral works of the composers, intonation and semantic elements of pre-classical music (Gregorian chants, ancient modes, rhetorical figures), principles of ancient polyphony are organically combined with elements and methods of avant-garde techniques.