In his first quartet, Rispetti e strambotti, Malipiero uses an obsessive repetition of a theme, deforming it in a seemingly unorthodox way, giving it a 'picaresque' or street-music character.
Composition History
The third and fourth quartets, Cantàri alla madrigalesca and the Fourth Quartet, served as a 'laboratory' for the symphonies Malipiero began writing around the same period in the 1930s.
Composer Biography
Gian Francesco Malipiero, an Italian composer, wrote eight string quartets between 1920 and 1964, a rare chronological span for a 20th-century musician.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Malipiero's fifth quartet, Dei capricci, is explicitly linked to his opera I capricci di Callot, drawing inspiration from the imaginative engravings of painter Jacques Callot and the story 'Capriccio nach Jacob Callot' by E. Th. A. Hoffmann.
Performer Biography
The Quartetto di Venezia has performed for Pope John Paul II and the President of the Italian Republic, and has been a 'resident Quartet' at Pisa's Scuola Normale Superiore and the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice.
Compositional Technique
Malipiero's second quartet, Stornelli e ballate, explores the radical idea of music 'without any theme,' reducing the theme to a mere attack figure at the beginning of each section.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Malipiero's anti-romantic stance in his early quartets aimed to challenge the content and forms of bourgeois art, akin to the anonymous romantic author Bonaventura.
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