Tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pasolini’s Johann Sebastian Bach
from poetry to cinema
Giuseppe Gibboni violin
Ermanna Montanari voice
Sonatas and Partitas Johann Sebastian Bach
texts by Pier Paolo Pasolini
dramaturgy Marco Martinelli
Violin sonata no. 1 in G minor BWV 1001
Adagio, Fuga. Allegro, Siciliana, Presto
Violin partita no. 2 in D minor BWV 1004
Ciaccona
Violin partita no. 3 in E major BWV 1006
Preludio, Loure, Gavotte en rondeau
original production by Ravenna Festival
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s first musical love were Bach’s Solo violin works, which the Slovenian violinist Pina Kalc introduced to him during her stay in Friuli, in 1943. Pasolini even briefly considered the idea of learning the violin, but desisted. His passion, though, resulted in the Studies on Bach’s Style, a musicological work inspired by the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin BWV 1001-1006, and left unfinished. Pasolini, however, leaked his fascination with Bach into his films, from Accattone to The Gospel according to St Matthew. The “Unaccompanied works” are the other side of Bach: not the rigorous organist, but the sensual, refined master of the bow who could infuse his “voice” with both light and shadow, abstract thought and the materiality of speech. Flesh and heaven, as Pasolini termed it.
