Abstract

A deep link between the music of Vincenzo Bellini and that of Sicilian and Mediterranean cultures has been long hypothesized and suggested by musicologists.

A discussion and a synthesis of the central interpretations of the issue is made throughout the paper, in order to find affinities and points of contact between different studies, mostly independent of each other. According to them, such assumed relationship can be identified both through element of similarity between Bellinian and Sicilian melodies—arch like structure, metric irregularity, tendency to melismas, harmonic texture based on modal elements in a well defined total harmony—and through an auratic approach to their emotional dimension.

Expanding the analytical range in respect of Bellinian and Sicilian melodies will enable us to redefine the whole question, acknowledging as its basic principle a certain liquidity between purely poietic moments and others that are essentially receptive.

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