Music and words, an inseparable binomial

 

1st Half

Richard Strauss, Capriccio 

Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht Op.4

 

​

2nd Half
Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, Souvenir de Florence

​

​

​

​

Kairós Project presents the program "Music and words, an inseparable binomial".

​

In his opera Capriccio, Richard Strauss takes the texts by Stefan Zweig to dichotomize on an eternal question: what is more important, the music or the words? Who can choose between any of them? The answer will probably be that they cannot be detached from one another.

​

Strauss begins his last opera with a string sextet that represents music in itself, as the maximum representation of beauty. The composer tries to confront music to words in order to make this dichotomy explicit.

​

We can see that both words and music are chained, and one cannot be understood without the other in Arnold Schoenberg ́s “Transfigured Night”. Schoenberg recreates the most intimate emotions of the human being while the poem by Dehmel conveys with words one of the most romantic story ever written.

​

After having composed the “Queen of spades” opera, a genre that by definition unites music and literature, Tchaikovsky seems to decide to switch to a smaller format. He wants to express his gratitude to the Saint Petersburg Chamber Music Society by exploring the wonderful world of the sextet creating a piece that portrays his memories of Florence in the always present nationalistic romantic style.

​