Relationships between music and poetry in the arias of Giovanni Legrenzi

Abstract

This paper presents in detail part of a project set up to analyze the arias of Giovanni Legrenzi. Its aim is to study the relationship between poetry and music. By means of a metric-syntactic tree describing the structure of the poem, it is possible to formulate the rules which govern the form of the arias and their tonal organization. A computer program verifies the completeness and self-consistency of the twenty-eight generative rules used in the analysis. This project on Legrenzi's arias is part of a wider project developing a theory of European melody.

KEY WORDS:

• Computer-aided analysis
• generative grammar
• music-poetry relationships
• musical form
• tonality
• Legrenzi