Row construction and accompaniment in Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero

Abstract

Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-75) invested his art with personal responses to dire social injustices. Because of the dangers surrounding any attempt to protest the repression of individual freedom, hate crimes, and anti-Semitism before and during World War II, he turned to composition to express his outrage. The second of his three protest works is a one-act opera, Il Prigioniero (1949). In it, Dallapiccola uses a unique approach to twelve-tone composition. Following discussion of compositional influences and a plot summary, this thesis explores the types of rows used throughout the opera. Rows are analyzed in terms of intervallic relationships, hexachordal content, and aural cues for their identification. Several types of accompaniment materials - octatonicism, chromaticism, accompaniment by same and different rows - and the impact of these compositional choices on the dramatic elements of the opera are surveyed. Though he used multiple rows and several types of accompaniment in this twelve-tone composition, Dallapiccola created unity in his own distinctive way.