Works

Francesco Pennisi
Canzona da Sonare (1984)
for Piano

Together with Aldo Clementi and Salvatore Sciarrino, Francesco Pennisi is one of those Sicilian musicians who aftr the war contributed so largely to the development of Italian culture.
An extremely refined musician, his art has been compared to the skilled minature works of the Norman mosiacs in Sicily.
It is indeed this affection for the miniature, for the particular, which constitutes one of the most interesting features of his compositions for solo instruments and, in particular, for the piano. Canzona da Sonare, like all his works for piano, is a short, concise composition; the piece is the harmonization of an old popular Sicilian song. The composer maintains harmonic and melodic staticity, but at the same time gives rein to frequent and virtuoso melismata in the same manner as the poets of the "recitar cantando" poetic tradition of thirteenth-century Sicily - "telling without the intention of telling".
The result is the creation of a little jewel of precious chromatisms which seems to rest on the baroque domes of his Sicily.