Claudio Ambrosini’s (b. 1948) unpublished work for unaccompanied flute, A guisa di un arcier presto soriano (1981), although virtually unknown to the musical public and to connoisseurs alike, represents one of the most dazzling and impressive displays of extended techniques in the repertoire of solo flute music. The title, A guisa di un arcier presto soriano, comes from the seventh line of a sonnet by the Italian medieval poet Guido Cavalcanti (ca. 1250-1300) and translates as “just like a fast Syrian archer.” The archer in question is Eros, the Greek god of love. By the composer’s own admission, the form and expression of this piece is closely linked with the form and expression of Cavalcanti’s sonnet. In particular, Ambrosini intimates three elements specifically drawn from the poem: 1) moments of tension and suspense, as Eros silently approaches his target with bow and arrow in hand; 2) moments of love, even to the point of suggesting a love song; and 3) moments that suggest the fast passage of arrows. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore these three elements in Ambrosini’s work and to trace the correlations of the same elements in Cavalcanti’s sonnet. The expression of such concrete poetic imagery in Ambrosini’s music is at times easily deciphered through clear programmatic gestures or wordless madrigalisms; and at other times the symbolism of the poetry is developed in a hidden and metaphorical manner in its musical iteration. Further, Ambrosini’s use of a particularly colorful and vast array of extended techniques serves as the impetus for the formal structure that the music embodies, and I will show that this formal structure is itself a symbolic and metaphorical representation of the poetic significance of Cavalcanti’s sonnet.

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2004

This thesis examines the role of dialogic processes in representations of conversion narratives and expressions of poetic subjectivity across the works of four poets: Guittone d’Arezzo (c.1235-1294), Guido Guinizzelli (c.1230-1276), Guido Cavalcanti (c.1255-1300) and Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The introduction proposes a definition of ‘dialogic processes’ drawing on theoretical models of performativity and dialogism. It presents the usefulness of these approaches to the analysis of narratives of conversion and accounts of subjectivity in poetry. Chapter 1 analyses Guittone’s conversion poetics in light of these processes and seeks to complicate the teleology of his narrative of self. Chapter 2 examines the poetry of Guinizzelli and Cavalcanti, first establishing the ‘poetic conversion’ of Guinizzelli in dialogue with his own and others’ poetry. It then examines Cavalcanti’s physiological performance of a polyphonic subjectivity and how far this poetic expression partakes in the dialogic processes previously discussed in relation to religiously inflected writing. Chapters 3 and 4 will explore the manifestations of these phenomena of dialogue and performance in Dante’s oeuvre with particular focus on the Commedia as a key site for intertextual interaction both with his own earlier texts and with the texts (and figures) of the other poets under discussion. These chapters will seek to reopen the teleological closure which Dante tries to impose on his vernacular predecessors, as well as on his own works. The weight of critical engagement with Dante’s predecessors has treated them as sources or reference points for Dante’s own praxis. I aim to consider Guittone, Guinizzelli and Cavalcanti on their own terms and in dialogue with one another before approaching Dante through these poets, thus reconstructing the networks of poetic dialogue in late medieval Italy, and situating Dante firmly within a dialogic tradition of narratives of self and conversion.