24 Ariette

Published here for the first time in modern times are the 24 salon vocal compositions composed by the Venetian nobleman Giovanni Battista Perucchini (Bergamo 1784-Venice 1860) and published in Milan in 1825 (in four fascicles containing various opera numbers) by Luigi Scotti. They offer one of the best examples of the typology of the Italian "lirica da camera” of the early nineteenth century, which shares with the better known contemporary Lieder genre (Schubert first and foremost) a style and manner of composing and music-making.

Taken as a whole, the 1824 liriche da camera show a plurality of morphological form, articulated in strophic ariette, durchkomponiert pages, singing that approaches the form of recitative and arias (“In quei poggi erbosi…Deh! fra queste colline felici”).

The writing is partly indebted to the classicizing style of the late eighteenth century, but in some pages it has great emotional effect, as in the arietta at the end of op.6 (“Odi di un uom che muore”), where the use of the tremolo and interrupted style of accompaniment comes close to being in the nature of a fantasia for keyboard in the Sturm und Drang tradition.