No. 1: Tempi assai lontani

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Reinild Mees

He has also taught at the B. From the Miniature to Lyrical Poetry Compositions for Voice and Piano between and This CD takes the listener on a tour of chamber music for one voice from the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, showing the wide variety of forms and compositional styles used. It begins with short, traditional pieces of the little-known composer Donaudy and ends with works by Respighi characterized by their stylistic eclecticism and greater scale.

In a nutshell, these pieces demonstrate the evolution of 19th century tonal language in Italy until its assumption of modern European elements.

But simply looking at the dates of these compositions does not prove this assumption. This opera premiered in in the Teatro San Carlo in Naples — but was never played again. Among his compositions for chamber ensemble are the 36 Arie di stile antico, published in , which were successful with audiences, but not well received by critics. The texts of the seven romanzas on this recording were also written by Alberto Donaudy. The compositions contain no harmonic surprises; the piano often accompanies the voice in thirds.

Time long past

More unusual, however, are the structures of these pieces, as they often stand out from traditional verse forms. The structure of this romanza is also based on verse form. Such general features — symmetric phrases and verse structure — enable comparison of these two pieces with similar Lieder composed in German-speaking countries. Sorge il sol The sun rises is a Maggiolata May song in which images of the rising sun and the springtime try to wake a sleeping soul.

About this album

This textual and musical repetition is followed each time by different musical development of the melody. In the second verse, it becomes apparent how this simple musical language can suddenly become very sophisticated. In this song, the pain of the rejected lover is expressed directly, without intellectual artifice. The conclusion, in which a passionate melody with no thematic relationship to the rest of the composition springs from the depths of the piano, contributes to making this romanza an almost completely through-composed work.

In this song, the metric changes and asymmetrical sentences are combined with a verse-structure. His feelings are so strong that every rational attempt to leave the unfaithful beloved is in vain. This time, however, it is not simply an indirect mention, but literal repetition in which the identical piano introduction and first vocal entrance are heard once again, now in reverse order. In comparison to the short beginning and end of this piece, its middle portion forms the actual core, due to its length and thematic contrast. The subject of this text is the seductive charm of a female beauty who seems to have sprung from the natural elements.

With the two romanzas by Verdi, Ad una stella On a star and Brindisi Drinking song , we go back seventy years in time. Here, the poems in both compositions lead to the corresponding musical structures: The original version of the Poemetto lirico little lyrical poem by Ottorino Respighi — , entitled Il tramonto Sunset , was composed in for mezzo-soprano and string quartet or string orchestra.

The dreamy musical expression reminiscent of Debussy is combined with late 19th century harmonic language. The flowing triplets sometimes stop in order to make room for passages requiring a much simpler sound. One example is the moment when the boy desires to see the sunrise together with his beloved — a wish he will no longer live to experience.

Cinque liriche~Tempi assai lontani

The balance between modernity and late-romantic musical language seems to be more successful in the two compositions from the Cinque Liriche Five Poems, The free verses of Tempi assai lontani express an all-consuming longing for past times. The musical form, however, is not as free. It has three parts, the first of which is repeated at the end. While the middle section consists primarily of a series of sometimes unrelated triads, reached directly and not via modulation, the first part features delicate, atmospheric sounds with a clear musical language.

La fine expresses the parting of a child from this world. The child turns to his mother and tries to reassure her by telling her he will always remain with her.

This text, conceived as lyric prose, slowly develops into a through-composed piece. The compositional line faithfully follows the images conjured up by the text. This last passage is supposed to evoke a town festival. Elsewhere I have documented the difficulties lawyers face in defending irregular migrants in detention. These difficulties are multiplied when migrants are removed to a place like Libya.

Presumably the fact that Hirsi emerged at all is due to the UNHCR having been able to act as an intermediary between the applicants and their legal representatives. The Court understood these problems. This may prove a crucial opening for future cases. The Italian government had the cheek to argue that the applicants had been rescued in the high seas because they were in distress, so that they had never come under Italian jurisdiction para The Court responded that the applicants, who had indeed never reached Italian soil, had nonetheless been transferred to Italian military ships.

These arguments may appear risible after the Arab spring. It is important to measure, however, the difficulties which applicants threatened with deportation from a European country the most common scenario in the Strasbourg migrant case law encounter as they seek to demonstrate that their removal would subject them to a personal risk and thus contravene Article 3. Significantly the Court did not go through these reports in detail, simply summarizing their major findings.

This way of proceeding is very different from the approach in other cases, notably Sufi and Elmi v. The Court found a violation of the Convention of Article 3 on this count, without any recourse to information detailing the exact fate which the applicants actually met. This is a crucial point. All but six of the applicants had lost contact with their legal representatives who thus would not have been in a position to provide this kind of precise, individual information.

Belgium and Greece , must be welcomed. The Court also brushed aside as irrelevant the allegation by the Italian state but disputed by the applicants that none of them had requested international protection on board the military ships. In other words, it is not just in the face of formal requests for asylum that the obligation of non-refoulement arises. This has the potential of considerably enlarging the obligation of protection.

We are decidedly a long way away from the idea that the only risk which can engage Article 3 is one of individualized persecution as under the jurisprudence started with Vilvarajah and Others v. The Court found a second violation of Article 3 on account of the fact that the applicants were exposed to the risk of arbitrary repatriation to Eritrea and Somalia.

The fact that none of the applicants appear to have been actually returned to these countries was immaterial; it was the existence of the risk of repatriation at the time of the return which mattered.

This acceptance that a risk of a violation of Article 3 exists without requiring that it be proved beyond reasonable doubt is again welcomed. For the second time in its history the first being Conka v. Belgium , the Court found a violation of Article 4 of Protocol no. This conclusion is supported by a long reasoning which suggests that although the seventeen judges who formed the Grand Chamber agreed on the outcome, they may not have agreed on its foundation.

Here suffice it to note one determinant factor: By contrast, in Conka , the deception was established as it was in writing — a letter inviting the applicants to the police station supposedly as part of the procedure to regularise their stay. The Court finally found a violation of Article 13 as a result of which the applicants could not be said to have failed to exhaust domestic remedies, as these did not exist.

This of course is exactly the problem! The applicants were all returned to Libya without Italy having given them access to an effective asylum procedure conducted by a competent authority or a fortiori any procedure which would have checked the legality of their removal more broadly para The Italian Government submitted that the applicants could have brought criminal proceedings in Italy against the responsible military authorities — and could have done so from Libya.

Ottorino Respighi

The Court did not scorn this idea for its lack of realism. It did, however, stress that a posteriori criminal proceedings would have failed to put a stay to the execution of the refoulement measure para This lack of suspensive effect meant that the applicants had had no remedy available to them satisfying the requirements of Article In case this needed to be spelled out, this conclusion on Article 13 puts into question the very idea and practice of intercepting irregular migrants in the high seas and summarily returning them to their point of embarkation.

Taken literally, Hirsi is exclusively directed at Italy. Interestingly, the Court does not cite in part III of its judgment — listing relevant European law — the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum adopted by the Council of the European Union in which, by contrast, is referred to by the Italian Government para Let us not be fooled, however. This is the more so since Hirsi was adopted by the Grand Chamber and unanimously.

Hirsi has undoubtedly much to offer for the defence of irregular migrants. As such it deserves the qualification of ground-breaking. Its ruling on reparation, however, is strange, to say the least, and makes clear that the Court is not ready to go all the way in the protection of migrants. This can be contrasted to the resolutely principled concurring opinion by Judge Pinto de Albuquerque. This will be the object of a separate blog. It is telling how different boat people are treated differently by Italian authorities: It is ground-breaking not only for declaring interception-at-sea as […].

Italy Strasbourg Observers, March [part 1] [part 2] Source:

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