Aldo Clementi musicus mathematicus
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Date
2012
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Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
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Abstract
Like that of Liszt and Stravinsky, the composers by whom he was attracted in his
adolescence and early youth, Aldo Clementi’s (Catania 1925-Rome 2011) musical production went
through various phases, greatly changing on the surface and in appearance, though not in depth and
substance. He himself suggests a division into fi ve phases:
1. Preliminary (1944-1955), juvenile and apprenticeship works.
2. Structural (1956-1961).
3. Informal material (1961-1964).
4. Non-formal optical (1966-1970).
5. Polydiatonic (1970-2011): groups of letters indicating musical notes (for example: B-A-C-H), or
canti dati (modal or tonal – monodic or polyphonic – compositions of the western tradition, from the
Stele of Sicilus to Stravinsky), but most often segments of melodic lines inferred from them. But – in
the polyphonic counterpoint that derives from it – they are simultaneously intoned in the different
voices in different tonalities: hence their superimposition restores the chromatic dodecaphonic total.
Clementi himself proclaims the constitutional continuity of this development. The substance of his
music consists in the direct transposition of a fi gurative project into a sonorous structure. Geometrie
di musica: the title of the 2001 book by Gianluigi Mattietti refers fi rst of all, as the subtitle says, to
The <poly>diatonic period of Aldo Clementi, but it perfectly defi nes his whole musical production, all
pervaded by dense polyphonic counterpoints.
For Clementi construction is a goal, not a means to articulate discourse: indeed, he was even to do
without discourse in his three central creative periods; and when in the fi fth and latest one he has
returned to it, he has enslaved it entirely to construction: he draws fragments from it, to be used as raw
material, i.e. the diatonic subjects, of his dodecaphonic counterpoints. After the different phenomenology
of the eruptions of sound matter of Varčse and Stravinsky, Clementi’s music represents a further
peak of pure construction in the sonorous space. His counterpoint however, like Webern’s, is limpid,
subtly articulated, and dominated by reason: but here construction reigns supreme, and the composer
in accordance with his requirements uses discursive melodic segments as raw material, as bricks
(“modules” he says, and he describes them as mosaic tiles). “The idea of a construction achieved with
the dovetailing of mirror-like images is also at the base of the fi gurative research of Escher, hinging on
the concept of division of the plane, through repeated fi gures, mirror-like and congruent” (Mattietti).
Indeed, Clementi’s music is “disciplina quae de numeris loquitur” (discipline that speaks of numbers),
according to the defi nition by Cassiodorus, rather than “scientia bene modulandi” (art of singing well),
according to the defi nition by Augustine; and it is, more precisely, paraphrasing the famous defi nition
by Leibniz, “exercitium arithmeticae manifestum coscientis se numerare animi” (evident arithmetical
exercise of the mind aware of counting).
Three compositions of Clementi’s polydiatonic period are here thoroughly considered: two canons
for string quartet, the very simple four-voiced Canone on a fragment by Platti (1997) and the very
complex eight-voiced Tributo (1988) on “Happy birthday to you!”; and a de-collage, Blues and Blues
2, “fantasies on fragments by Thelonious Monk”, for piano (2001).
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Keywords
Aldo Clementi, polydiatonic, constitutional categories, discourse construction, modules, canon, de-collage, Cassiodorus, Augustin, Leibniz
Citation
Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology 12, 2012, pp. 58-72.