ALC 0043 Carlo Farina Mantovano

Carlo Farina’s language makes use of models that had already been tried and tested during the second Renaissance, but it is innovative on an aesthetic level, since within them he displays a very strong lexical and expressive identity. The main features of Farina’s work well describe his frequentation of the different schools and musical languages that he had the good fortune to practice, sharing the music stand with the most diverse origins musicians. In total harmony with his German contemporaries, he nevertheless remained of Italian ‘mother tongue’ and his five collections represent a very successful synthesis. It can be said that, like any great artist, the Mantuan violinist chose to use old means to announce new ideas, publicly displaying his own poetics. First of all, those of a figurative nature are striking, whether they be the affections that pervade the Pavane or the images of environments, animals, and street instruments in the Capriccio Stravagante: an exceptional page that is most often included in the category of so-called ‘program music’.