Forme di felicità

For a long time after Romanticism had come to the fore, it was generally agreed that Brahms somehow “did not get it”: History and Progress – it was thought – were proceeding along one clear path and Brahms – who was composing sonatas and symphonies instead of nocturnes and symphonic poems – had taken the wrong way. Almost one century later, Schönberg wrote an essay, Brahms, der Fortschrittliche (Brahms, the progressive) , in which he explained that it wasn’t like that at all.

Fully assuming the risk to appear somehow irreverent, I have to confess: Over the years, I came to the conclusion that the present – and the future – can be created only by loving the past. As Brahms had shown us, it is only by accepting the challenge of taking our heritage into our own hands, that we can create something new. We cannot avoid engaging with the past. Therefore, starting with my Sinfonia n. 1 , I began to flirt with such a strong and effective musical structure like the sonata form. I re-read and freely transformed it, because it is a sturdy and resilient structure, but also a theatrical and colorful one. For me, it is a happy structure. And I think that today more than ever we need something like this: We need to find places – even imaginary ones – where we can give happiness a form of its own.

(Nicola Campogrande, December 2020)