VINCENZO DE MARTINO

A CASE-STUDY OF CREATIVE CATEGORIES: THE “PRIMITIVISTIC” STYLE IN PIANO MUSIC

VINCENZO DE MARTINO

Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre vince.dema92@gmail.com

The paper will delve into some specific aspects of the author’s thesis Interpreting Primitivism in Piano Music of the 20th Century, inherent to the classification of the phenomenon of “Primitivistic” piano music through purposebuilt creative categories by the Italian musicologist Dario Martinelli, which are the following: geographical/anthropological, historical, ontogenetic, and formal. The artist-researcher also intertwines them with the key concepts deduced from the theory of topic (Ratner, Monelle, Agawu, etc.), thus disclosing a broad array of musical signs indicative of a “Primitivistic” style on its own.

The continuous cross-reference between the two theoretical backgrounds mentioned above leads to a consistent and organic approach to the topic of Primitivism in twentieth-century piano music, aiming at identifying its most distinctive features, differently implemented by the diverse composers a part of this genre but also equally ascribable to a framework of recurring patterns and marks.

The ultimate common thread is represented by clearly ascertainable stylistic features, mostly influenced by their counterparts in the field of visual representation and summarized by the author as: percussiveness and rhythmical emphasis; exiguousness and repetitiveness of music material, that is, patterns; and reference to non-Western sources. As revealed, their presence in a musical work conveys an authentic Primitivistic penchant and also implies quite focused pianistic tasks at once, thus corroborating the idea of the oneness and peculiarity of this style of music.

Keywords: Primitivism, piano music, style, topics, creative categories.

Vincenzo De Martino was born in Cagliari, Italy, in 1992. From 2011 to 2015 he studied at the G. P. da Palestrina State Conservatory of Music, where he was awarded a bachelor’s degree with the highest honor. From 2015 to 2017 he studied with Prof. Jurgis Karnavičius at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius, where he was awarded a master’s degree. In 2021, he was awarded an artistic doctorate degree by the same institution (supervisors Prof. Jurgis Karnavičius and Prof. Dr. Lina Navickaitė-Martinelli). He has been a finalist and laureate of several international piano competitions, and he regularly gives concerts in Italy and across the Baltic States. As a researcher, he has taken part in several artistic research conferences (Doctors in Performance, 2018 and 2021; LMTA Annual Conference, 2019) and published a few articles.