MUSIC
FRANCO PAOLANTONIO Rediscovery of a composer
by Andreina Di Girolamo and Bernadette Tripodi
piano Op. 19; 4th Mazurka for piano Op. 23 n ° 1; 2nd Waltzer for piano Op. 17 n ° 2; Allegro for violin and piano Op. 12 n ° 3; 2nd Mazurka for piano Op. 8 n ° 1; Scherzino for piano Op. 8 n. 2; 3rd Mazurka for piano Op. 16; Allegretto for violin and piano Op. 12.
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t was therefore decided to present an editorial project at the Lorenzo Perosi Conservatory of Music in Campobasso, where we both taught, focusing on his entire piano work at the time known and on the two pieces for violin and piano. These compositions were published in December 2019 by the publishing house “Il Setticlavio” with the title “I Manoscritti di Franco Paolantonio” and enclosed a CD with the first recording of all the pieces object of the work, interpreted by Bernadette Tripodi on the piano and by Michelangelo Massa on the violin. The following are the titles: Melody for piano Op. 1; 1st Mazurka pour piano Op. 5 n ° 1; Serenade for
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I’M ITALIAN - SPRING - 2022
The compositions of Paolantonio were proposed in concert in the First Modern Execution in Campobasso, for the concerts of the conservatory, in March 2016 and subsequently in Agnone, the composer’s hometown. In September 2021 the scientific publication was presented in concert at the Licinio Refice Conservatory of Music in Frosinone. Everything happened by chance: at the end of a concert (8th April 2015) of Italian authors of the early twentieth century in the interpretation of Bernadette Tripodi and Michelangelo Mass, I, Andreina Di Girolamo, told Bernardette Tripodi that I had some unpublished manuscripts by a composer from Molise, I had rediscovered. Bernadette said: “Interesting, I’d like to see them.”
And so the manuscripts of Franco Paolantonio, from the private collection of Ada Labanca, began their pilgrimage from one’s home to that of the other to be promptly transcribed. As we proceeded with this meticulous work, with numerous discussions on how to interpret the various signs of expression and while the obvious errors were corrected, the enthusiasm for this young composer grew stronger in us, not only for “human” interest in his short but intense life as an artist, but also from having grasped his original creative vein and his great talent combined with profound sensibility. After a long and tiring effort, the work was completed with great satisfaction. The research on the composer’s life, who died prematurely at the age of twenty-two, was also long and exciting, through the archives of the municipality of Agnone and the Conservatory of Naples; in the first all the personal documents were found, in the second the documents of his scholastic path.
