composer
Robert Heppener was born in Amsterdam in 1925. He died on August 25, 2009 in Bergen.
He studied piano with Jan Odé and Johan van den Boogert at the Conservatory of ...
related works
Genre:
Chamber music
Subgenre:
Piano; Violin and keyboard instrument
Scoring:
pf pf4h 2pf vl and pf
Septem Verba Christi : for mixed choir / Kris Oelbrandt
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Mixed choir
Scoring:
GK4
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Mixed choir; Electronics and singing voice(s) with or without instrument(s)
Scoring:
GK4 tape
Songs for the living : for mixed choir a cappella, 1991 / Willem Duyn
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Mixed choir
Scoring:
GK8
composition
Canti carnascialeschi : per coro da camera a cappella / Robert Heppener
Other authors:
Allamanni, Antonio
(librettist)
Guggiola, Guglielmo Detto Il
(librettist)
Machiavelli, Niccolo
(librettist)
Medici, Lorenzo de'
(librettist)
Poliziano, Angelo
(librettist)
Contains:
Trionfo di Bacco e d'Arianna / tekst v. Lorenzo de' Medici
Canto de' diavoli / tekst v. Niccolo Machiavelli
Canto di lanzi allegri e canto di lanzi che andarono a papa Lione / tekst v. Guglielmo detto il Guggiola
Il carro della morte / tekst v. Antonio Allamanni
Ben venga maggio / tekst v. Angelo Poliziano
Description:
Program note (English): "...and the culminating-point was certainly that enormous Cart, pulled by coal-black buffaloes and painted with dead men's bones and white crosses. On top of the Cart sat a gigantic figure of Death, with the Scythe in his hand, surrounded by a circle of coffins which, every time the procession stopped for singing, opened ...; and at the dull sound of the muffled trumpets, and the hoarse and deadly moaning of the dead - dressed in black suits painted with skeletons - who came out and sitting or leaning on the lids of the coffins sang sadly and wistfully that magnificent song: 'Dolor, pianto e penitenza...". - Such was an eye-witness's account, by the painter Giorgio Vasari, of one of the scenes at the Fiorentine Carnival during the reign of Lorenzo 'Il magnifico' de Medici (1449-1492). Something of this grandiose Carnival, with its triumphal processions, its masquerades and floats, with its gray, bold, horrible or obscene symbols, all of them accompanied by songs in texts by
simple popular poets as well as poems by the great poets of the time is what I have tried to include in this 'fresco', chosen from the hundreds of Carnival poems of those days which are still accessible. In various places all the voices are treated as solos. In approaching these poems I wished to keep aloof from smart stylistic or learned principles. I have treated them rather freely. None of these poems has been used in its entirety; many of them only partially. I also did not care much about the musical forms on which they were based (frottola, balletto, villanella). And to demonstrate my 'barbarism' even more cleary: I rounded off the entire work with a poem not really a Canto Carnascialesco at all, namely the May dance-song "Ben venga Maggio" by a poet in the immediate neighborhood of Lorenzo: Angelo Poliziano. I have tried to 'translate' into adequate musical form the direct, primary expressiveness of the Carnival poems - both by the 'real' great poets (Lorenzo, Macchiavelli) as
well as those by popular poets like, for instance, Guglielmo dello il Giuggiola (William nicknamed Thumb). From the exuberance in the first scene and the infernal scherzo in the second scene, this five-part cycle brings us via the boisterous, jigging drinking-song in the third scene (actually two lansquenet-songs combined into one by me, written in a German-Italian dialect typical of the mercenaries from barbaric Germany) to the sudden appearance of the Cart as its culminating-point. As a conclusion to the work, there is the May Day song by Poliziano, which on account of its return to the first scene (both as regards the text as well as the archaic style of the music) suggests a certain continuity and leaves the end inconclusive. - ROBERT HEPPENER