Beatus Conradus

In the works of Antonio Magarelli (composed from 2009 to today, but to understand the stylistic canons of Magarelli it is useful to remember also a brief motet from 2007, Pater si non potest, an icon of his style) it seems to be latent, a timid but pervasive curvature towards dissonance, which nevertheless assumes the appearance of a philosophical construct, since such is the prudent use of it that shines through the pieces. As for Schönberg, there is the awareness of the emancipation of dissonance: «eternal fall [...] and backwards, from the side, forward, from all sides [...] is the rejection, even in music, of hierarchies, of centers of reference, of the schemes that become absolute. This means that no sound is fundamental, but every sound can be fundamental» (A. CAPUTO, L'arte nonostante tutto, Roma 2012, p. 65). Magarelli, even when taking up obsolete and outdated compositional canons from the late-nineteenth-century aesthetic (for example in Domine, tu mihi lavas pedes?) unexpectedly becomes postmodern due to the wise taste of quotation and erudite contamination, for the sound layers and I would say historical layers that come from his active assimilation of music history, understood as a history not only of monumenta, but also of documenta.