Dante in Musica

It cannot and should not be thought that the relationship between Dante and Romantic music is limited to large-scale orchestral works or the most sonorous of vocal compositions. The chamber song (as evidenced by this collection, in which all vocal types find space, and which covers a time span of about a century) in fact reveals a notable variety of approach to Dante’s poetry that, although “in una parte più e meno altrove” [“In one part more, in another less’’, Paradiso, I: 3], demonstrates a profound interconnection between literary language and musical language.