Abstract

The article describes and analyzes an experiment in guided listening using Elliot Carter's "Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi for solo violin" that was carried out in the Theory and Solfeggio lessons of the middle school attached to the Sassari Conservatoire. The teaching unit described was part of a wider general syllabus for the development of listening skills which was intended to enhance of the structure of musical language. The method was inspired by an overall gestaltic approach towards the understanding of musical structures. The guided listening, therefore, focused on the main principles of perception (similarity, difference, continuity, closure, symmetry, parallelism and temporal proximity) and their role in determining the fundamental aspects of the formal and syntactic structure of the composition in question. Largely based on Maurizio Della Casa's theory of musical comprehension, the teaching was divided into four operative phases: a) "intoductory overall listening" (observation of the overall sound characteristics of the piece in relation to the range of possible sounds available to the instrument; premiliminary orientation in the interpretation of the overall sense of the work at the level of symbolical meaning); b) "overall comprehension" (first suggestion for the breakdown of the entire structure into its formal units; identification of the overall characteristics of the musical ideas that are the basis on which the piece is built); c) "more extensive comprehension" (detailed analysis of each single episode in the compositional structure; hypotheses for grouping episodes into more extensive sequences on the basis of the logical cohesion recognised between them; the representation of the musical structures analysed in a visual/graphic form); d)"final considerations" (more general observations, working towards an understanding of the overall sense of the work and an interpretation of symbolic signification within the music).