Tre Studi sulla linea (for violin and piano)

Colori della linea

La linea e la massa

Prospettiva liniale

As a composer and chamber musician, Giovanni Bietti is naturally fascinated by the problematic relationship between the piano and string instruments. The combination of piano and strings doesn’t seem to have been a problem in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as he has observed, but modern composers of music for violin and piano - Stravinsky, Bartók, Debussy and Ravel among others - have had to come to terms with what is perceived as the incompatibility of strings stroked by a bow and strings struck by hammers. “There is not merely an acoustic problem,” he says. “There are many purely compositional difficulties such as balance, counterpoint and, above all, the combination of linear and vertical writing.” The Tre Studi sulla linea (Three Studies in Line) were written in 1993 in an effort “to offer three different answers to the problem, three different ways of matching violin and piano.”

Colori della linea (Colours of the Line) is a study in pure colour. In the absence of a metrical pulse and the near absence of harmonies and rhythms which are not immediately negated by direct contradictions, colour is the predominant element in the composition. Drawn initially by the violin in a rapid triplet figuration on the E-string, the line varies in density according to how many colours are applied to it and is shaped by the rise and fall in the pitch level of the three-part texture.

La linea e la massa (Line and Mass) is the antithesis of the preceding study in that line is brought into contact not with strands of similar material but with chordal masses. At the beginning of the piece melodic flourishes on the piano are set against chord clusters on both instruments. After passing to the violin, the line is absorbed into a succession of chords in the piano part, emerges on violin again and is then carried on a long crescendo and accelerando into a reverse progression of gradually slower, quieter and ever higher chords on the piano.

The third movement is intended as a reconciliation between the opposite extremes in violin-and-piano relationships represented by the other two. As its title Prospettiva liniale (Linear Perspective) suggests, it is a study in setting line against line and, as its subtitle per un omaggio a Leonardo indicates, it is a homage to a master in the theory and practice of perspective. It is also, it seems from the way in which it is written - offering the instrumentalists material to be repeated over an approximate length of time and sets of pitches to be shaped at their will - a homage to Witold Lutoslawski. However that may be, and whatever linear perspective can mean in purely musical terms,Prospettiva liniale neither blends violin and piano in lines of colour nor sets line against mass but joins the two instruments in a linear counterpoint which leads to a vanishing point in the closing bars.