Roberto Roganti and The Classic Month
– A column on great and lesser-known composers –
Interview by Maria Teresa De Donato
Dear Readers,
Today I have the great pleasure of hosting a dear friend and
fellow Author and Blogger: Roberto Roganti.
Roberto was born in 1957 in Modena and is a former freelance
physiotherapist who deals full-time and as a hobby with cultural promotion,
starting from classical music.
There are many activities into which Roberto has ventured,
including collaborations as a web radio speaker, but, as usual, I prefer to
leave the floor to my guest.
MTDD: Hi
Roberto, and thank you for agreeing to participate in our interview.
RR: Thanks
for proposing it to me; finding someone interested in what you do is always
nice. I like making culture, whatever it is. Indeed, I have many hobbies, and I
enjoy sharing them with others…
MTDD: Roberto,
we started with your very brief presentation. Would you like to elaborate on it
by telling us more about yourself?
RR: I'm
approaching my 70s… not long now, but as my wife says, I'm still ten years old
and often act like a kid. I'm certainly not here to bore you with my life... it
would take a book to describe only a part of it, but I prefer to move on to the
last few years... the last... almost twenty, in short, those that have seen me
blossom as a cultural informant. First, I dedicated myself to the study of
Medicine and Surgery to become a heart surgeon. I got stuck due to various life
factors, and after a year, I lived in Bordeaux to learn the physiotherapy art,
as well as the wine, culinary, linguistics, and … French. I won the competition
to become a physiotherapist, an activity I have carried out for over thirty
years in my private studio and as FKT in the Handball sector (handball), from
Serie A to the minor ones. Around 2007 I started pulling the oars on a boat, so
I don't even know how; I started frequenting a site where I reviewed the
restaurants where I happened to go to eat. Come on and come on, the passion for
poetry jumped on my finger, first in the language and then in the vernacular. A
new life has begun for me, made up of revelries, writings… and publications;
unfortunately, these have sold out; they are no longer on the market. I went on
with books of poetry and three volumes of eno-gastro-culinary chatter, where I
put together my cooking recipes and chats with over 200 reviews of the
restaurants where I had eaten in the three years of my affiliation with that
site. Out of that circle, I continued with poetry, doing some competitions and
placing myself well. I started to like this…, that is, writing short stories,
and I realized that most were mystery thrillers; almost always, someone died.
My boyhood detective readings were finally paying off. One morning I woke up
with a strange idea: to transform a three-page short story into a mystery novel
but with precise characteristics! But maybe it would be better to talk about
this thing in another context… man, I got caught up in the enthusiasm of a
writer…
MTDD: Although you deal with culture at 360˚ today, we want to focus
on your commitment to the musical field.
For those who might not know, we have been collaborating on
drafting articles on our respective blogs for over two years. On mine, you have
your column entitled The Classic Month, in which you regularly present
composers, some famous and others less known but who nonetheless have
considerable importance in the panorama of classical music. In each article,
you explain in a rather detailed way not only the life of these characters but
also the peculiarities of their musical productions by presenting us with some
of their works.
I am delighted with our collaboration and the information you
provide through this directory. Not having any preparation in this sector, but
only a great passion for classical music, inherited from my father Vincenzo, I
am learning a lot thanks to you. I invite our readers to follow your articles
with enthusiasm.
RR: This makes me very happy. It all comes from the places where I
was born. Here in Modena, or rather, in Emilia Romagna, there is an excellent
cult for this type of music, let's say above all for opera, but having studied
the piano since I was a child... this celestial music pervades my soul every
time that I feel it. By scheduling posts on your blog and especially on mine,
where I post three a week, I also discovered a myriad of classical composers I
had never heard of or something had come to my ears. So I feel joy in my heart
when someone compliments me on the chosen playlists. Lately, I have adopted a
more "Melinda" explanation, loose and fast. I put only one passage
targeted by the author; if interested or liked, it would be suitable for the
reader to do their research to find out. It is a way, like any other, to give
many a reason to do constructive research.
MTDD: I
hope many people will accept this invitation.
Going back to your activities... You have landed in cultural
promotion, writing, and music as a freelance physiotherapist.
How did this transition happen, and how was your passion for
classical music born?
RR: In a
sense, I have already answered this question. We could simplify by saying that
I was pretty good at writing even when I was young, but I cultivated it very
little, and then as I said, it came out predominant when I had to describe the
lunches and dinners I attended; for music, I had it inside from birth… my
mother is from Parma, and Parma means Verdi; I'm from Modena, and Modena means
Pavarotti, Freni, Kabaivanska... all opera, it's true, but opera is there
because classical music is the background. Let's say that the final blow came
from my profession. In my studio, I listened to music all day long... a
background for my patients while they were being treated... and listen to this
and listen to that, I've become mega cultured. Take a tour of my blog,
poetineranti.blogspot.com. You will see that I have a series of sections
dedicated to music: Classical, AcidJazz, Blues Jazz, ProfressiveRock,
ItalianProgrRock, and NewAge… the rest is literature.
MTDD: How
did the idea of the Classic Month column come about?
RR: I
confess that when you asked me, I was delighted. I would have liked to do it
weekly, but we agreed on a couple of posts a month, and of course, we called it
Classic Month… however, I'm always ready to leave for a weekly publication if
your readers ask for it…
MTDD:
Thanks, Roberto, for your availability. I shall let you know.
How important is it in our world, always looking to the future,
to modern technology, to Artificial Intelligence, and continuous
experimentation and research for the new, to approach classical composers and
their productions? Can they still inspire, and if so, why and how?
RR: Good
question. Many don't know that a few years ago, all possible combinations of
musical chords ran out. So in today's world, there is a substantial risk of
plagiarism. This is why particular and strange genres were born. Sometimes they
may seem dissonant to us, but instead, they have their precise connotation;
that is, they try to get out of those canons by giving us sounds opposite to
those to which our ears are accustomed. Do you know Arnold Schönberg? He wrote
music outside the rules of the tonal system and was, with Josef Matthias Hauer,
one of the theorists of the dodecaphonic method, based on a sequence, serial
music, including all twelve sounds of the tempered chromatic musical scale. I
realize that the discussion is difficult, as it is difficult to approach these
compositions, but by listening to them more than once, one can understand their
actual value. I remind you of Alban Berg, whom we talked about on Maria Teresa's
blog, but there are also a couple of Italians we'll talk about later, okay,
I'll mark it; for the month of July, I'll suggest Malipiero and Dallapiccola.
MTDD: Among the classical music composers – major or even the
least known to the general public – which were considered 'revolutionary' or at
least highly 'innovative' for the era in which they lived? Can you give us some
examples of those who represented a departure from their contemporaries?
RR: This
is a complicated question. I spoke a little about it in the previous one as
regards the dodecaphony. Still, there are other genres almost forgotten over
the centuries, which have been revived, Baroque-style music from the end of the
1600s, reborn with compositions called Partita, above all by some of our
composers: Casella, Ghedini, Petrassi, Dallapiccola; or there is the Group of
Six, which was a musical circle that arose spontaneously in Paris around 1920
which included the French composers Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Francis
Poulenc, Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric, and Louis Durey. They collected,
in summary, the musical legacy of Erik Satie and had the writer Jean Cocteau on
their side. They carried on a nationalist spirit, which tended towards the
re-foundation of French national music.
Let's not forget the Group of Five, non-professional classical
composers (some had embarked on a military career, for example) led by Milij
Balakirev, who, starting around 1856, gave rise to a typically Russian musical
trend in St. Petersburg.
In addition to Balakirev and Cezar' Kjui, from whose meeting the
group originated, it included Modest Musorgsky (who joined in 1857), Nikolaj
Rimsky-Korsakov (1861) and Aleksandr Borodin (1862). Before them, Mikhail
Glinka had worked to define a typically Russian musical style and had written
operas based on Russian subjects, but the Group of Five was the first attempt
to develop such a musical style.
MTDD: How
were they seen in their time? Have they been appreciated, mocked, or even
condemned for having in some way wanted to break with the past?
RR:
Let's say that it wasn't always the public who cheated them, but they cheated
themselves, for envying each other, for unregulated life, and for diseases
contracted around the world. These characters traveled much more than us and
with much poorer means... often they didn't earn well and then died miserably
in poverty. Whoever is the cause of his pain mourns himself.
MTDD: That’s
very sad!
What advice would you give someone who wants to approach
classical composers? Where or from whom should they start?
RR:
Easy… I would start with the unknown who lived between 1850 and 1950; if you
take one and listen to them, it doesn't matter who they are; standing there
with your eyes closed while the music caresses your ears is the most crucial
aspect. Then slowly, you want to hear from someone else.
MTDD: Is
there any aspect of classical composers and/or their music that we still need
to mention and would be helpful to talk about instead?
RR:
Honestly, I would say no... ah yes... don't get caught up in fashions and
listen to everyone... There are no borders in music, wars don't play any role,
and enemies don't exist.
MTDD:
Indeed. It is good to remember this. Art, in this specific case Music, has no
nationality, borders, or barriers... but is, on the contrary, a World Heritage
Site.
Should someone wish to follow your activities or even contact
you, How can they do so?
RR: You
can find me on the blog: https://poetineranti.blogspot.com/ or look for me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/roberto.roganti.52/ - if you want, you can also write
Roberto Roganti in Google; if there appears one next to the nickname Grog, it's
still me.
MTDD: Thank
you, Roberto, for taking part in our interview. I look forward to our next one.
RR:
Thanks Maria Teresa, it was an absolute pleasure.
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