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Franco Donatoni
Arpège (1986)
for 6 Instruments

"Milan, 3 December 1986": the proximity of Arpège to the earlier Refrain is not solely chronological. Written for six instruments, commissioned by Contrechamps-Musique du XX Siècle and dedicated to Philippe Albèra and Ensemble Contrechamps, this later page of Donatoni is contiguous to Refrain for various reasons, both compositional and for number of players. Reasons which, in the end, seem to converge on a single general reason, identifiable perhaps in the peculiarities of the three families of instruments - woods, strings and percussion - combined to produce a tone mixture of extreme transparency and capable of passing abruptly from a sharp and highly indented tessitura to medleys ot amoebic indefiniteness. The colouristic range of Arpège appears to be more contracted; although retracing the subdivisions of Refrain, this composition limits the percussion section to two instruments only, vibraphone + piano (in Refrain there are four: mandoline, guitar, harp and marimba), together with flute + clarinet and violin + cello. Similar, too, is the presence of chains of semitones (in 4/4), rhythmic units whose unwinding proceeds with, in a sense, analogous density. However - although it may be just an impression - Arpège appears to begin where Refrain ends, inheriting the increasing instability of the instrumental ensembles that gradually becomes apparent. In Arpège, everything develops with less mechanicalness, with an inquietude that rises more to the surface; the tremolios of strings and winds, which here become pervasive, permeate the page always more insistently, blurring its outlines, although however on the whole always dangerously sharp. The science of permutation, of which Donatoni is master, has here the opportunity for further developing his combinatorial tricks, both cryptic and vital. The initial quiet tangle of chords held simultaneously by vibraphone and piano involve for each instrument seven sounds which are then made to explode into an unexpected arpeggio of them all that imparts a brusque acceleration to the metronomic tempo. The reverse of the situation which occurs in Refrain. In the motorial frenzy of Arpège, in the proliferating of the figurations, in their quasi-imitation of the jerky movements of a mime, there is inscribed a constant variegation of the sonorous scenarios that can be visualized, scenes for the most part taking the form of sardonic carillons which would have captivated Cocteau, a sort of opening and closing of communicating doors behind which are concealed always new surprises. A sequence of pictures in which some of the well-known stylistic features of Donatoni find a way to introduce themselves, including certain Bartókian reminiscences that appear almost to re-emerge from the distant pre-Darmstadt years. Each concession to eventual private recollections seems however to remain far from the extremely lucid, detached irony of Donatoni's jest, from his disenchanted glance of the spell-binding actor who conceals with the skill of a virtuoso the pangs of a conscience that, behind the impassable mask of the "Puppenspieler", is traversed by a thousand age-old apprehensions.