Moonlight… or the music of the night (2/2)
Whether romantic and gentle or eerie and dark, night has been a source of inspiration for musicians of all eras. Its music is composed to express feelings, and comes in infinite forms.
The serene night is expressed in musical forms such as the Serenade, the Berceuse and, above all, the Nocturne.
The first piece of music to evoke peace, in this case sleep, is the Berceuse, fundamental to the aesthetics of the night with its The Berceuse has a slow tempo and rhythm, and the peaceful timbres normally played by string instruments. You can’t imagine a Berceuse on a trumpet, can you? Examples abound, in all the world’s languages and civilizations. We need look no further than our childhood.
Another model is the Sérénade, music sung at night to pay homage. This is an instrumental or vocal entertainment in which short pieces follow one another, like the Suite. An example of all, the Serenade no. 13 in G major Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” (K. 525), a pleonasm in this way of expressing it, given that the Serenade is a little music of the night. In the 20th century, the Serenade also found its way into popular music, and in 1939 Glenn Miller recorded the unforgettable Moonlight Serenade with its famous theme dubbed on clarinet and saxophone.
The Nocturne remains the form par excellence evocative of night. A form with a definite meditative dimension that encourages introspection. Originally, it was a kind of quiet Romance frequently sung as a duet, accompanied by guitar, harp and then piano. In all likelihood, the vocal Nocturne became an instrumental Nocturne once it began to be accompanied on the piano. Little by little, this instrument took over the composition. The composer most naturally associated with the piano Nocturne is Frédéric Chopin. But the real father of the Romantic-era Nocturne was Irish pianist and composer John Field. We know of 21 Nocturnes written by Chopin throughout his compositional period: music at a slow tempo, guided by a melody that is almost vocal (a legacy of bel canto), harmonious and ornate.
But night can also be a source of great agitation. The second movement of Debussy’s Nocturne for orchestra, “Fête”, shows that the general atmosphere of the Nocturne is not so univocally meditative and serene. And there are even Berceuses that turn dramatic, like the “Berceuse” from Stravinsky’s L’Oiseau de feu. Evil elements, witches and devils, dark, inhabited nights, also stir the imagination of composers: Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Berlioz’s Faust , Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, are just a few examples.
In the twentieth century, more and more wind and percussion instruments were added to scores, allowing for sounds of absolute fury. Satanic rock and techno music, with their use of electronics and computers, exploit the full range of audible sounds, reaching the apogee of violent music.
Federica, Musicology Manager, Riponne site
