Naples As Seen by Musicians : Intus Et Extra Cultura

The influence of Neapolitan culture on the work of G. Donizetti and F. Poulenc is the main issue and purpose of this paper. Peculiarities of the southern region of the Apennine Peninsula, distinguished by the beauty and poetry of nature, mild climate, richness of the folk song tradition that arose at the crossroads of various ethnic groups and languages, inspired the creative imagination of artists, musicians, and writers from different countries. The artistic heritage contains many examples of works dedicated to Italy and Naples, in particular. In contrast to the processes of mixing heterogeneous elements and continuous renewal, universalism remains a permanent feature of Italian self-identity. Having been formed in antiquity, it was actualized in the era of humanism in a number of creative projects. One of them is the spread of the essentially regional genre of villanella (or Canzone alla napolitana) throughout the entire European music area in the 16th century. The cycle "Nuits d’été à Pausillipe" by G. Donizetti becomes a kind of "response" to the processes of the past, demonstrating the sustainability of the Neapolitan song traditions in view of romantic vocal music and romanza genre. The composer’s deep comprehension of the features of national melos and character, with its characteristic poetry of experiencing nature and emotionality, determined the psychological mood of the composition. The hymnal praise of love and joys of life, the exaltation of the lyrical expression testify to the high degree of G. Donizetti’s immersion into the atmosphere of the city, which became his second small homeland. A different view of Naples appears in the piano suite "Napoli" by F. Poulenc. It is remarkable for the picturesque language and the immediacy of emotional expression, determined by deep interpenetration of the Italian and French cultures. The position of an onlooker is seen in composer’s praise of natural beauties of the city, liveliness and energy of its population, theatricality of events. The study makes it clear that the differences in the individual perception of Naples by G. Donizetti and F. Poulenc, who represent two types of Neapolitan images retranslation in music, are predetermined. The involvement of G. Donizetti tradition, acquired at the genetic level, is expressed in the choice of vocal type of expression, a special sense of musical and verbal intonation. F. Poulenc, representing a different national culture, focuses on the external representativeness of Neapolitan life, capturing it in a series of instrumental sketches.


Introduction
Italy is, without exaggeration, a world treasury, where magnificent nature and bewitching architecture are woven together, and the innate flair of beauty is characteristic of the inhabitants. Not only native Italians drew their inspiration here and created their imperishable masterpiecespainters Michelangelo, Rafael, A. Modigliani, composers A. Vivaldi, G. Rossini, G. Verdi, architects A. Fioravanti, G. Bernini, poets Dante and Petrarch, but also craftsmen from all over the world who come for this creative insight into this cradle of culture. It is enough to recall I. Aivazovsky, who lived for a long time in Rome, Venice and embodied his impressions in the canvases "View of the Venetian Lagoon", "The Coast at Amalfi" and others. The inspiring impact of Rome was experienced by F. Liszt. The images of Italy, eagerly absorbed by the composer, were embodied in his many piano compositions. Among them are Fantasy-sonatas "After a Reading of Dante" (based on Dante's "Divine Comedy"), "Betrothal" (inspired by Raphael's painting), "The Thinker" (inspired by Michelangelo's statue), "Dance of Death" (inspired by A. Orcagna's fresco "The Triumph of Death"), transcriptions of Caprices by Paganini and "Sonnets of Petrarch".
The romanticized visage of Italy as a "country of art", the "earthly paradise" began to take shape from the end of the 18th century due to the numerous responses to the Italian travels of literature and art workers (J. Goethe, G. Byron, Stendhal, Сh. Dickens, F. Mendelssohn, F. Liszt, etc.). The formation of the artistic and aesthetic myth had strong grounds for the Italians themselves to believe in the greatness of their history (especially the ancient Roman period), as well as in their special civilized mission -"<...> to bring the light of law and statehood to the 'barbarian' peoples, the idea of the universal mission of The Roman Catholic Church <...>" (Shevlyakova, 2011: 441). Along the same lines is primacy in the dissemination of humanism ideas; creation of universities as autonomous educational institutions in order to achieve true nobility through study; popularity of the synthetic genre of opera which combines art. "The positioning of the nation as the bearer of the foundations of European civilization has become possible due to the universal nature of the Italian culture, the message of which is understandable to different peoples in different eras. The universalism of culture is <...> the dominant of national identity" (ibid.: 442).
Paying a well-deserved tribute to the inspiring effect of such cultural giants as Rome, Venice, Milan, it is important not to forget about the hypnotic power of the influence of smaller and less modern cities, where the antique sometimes prevails over the modern, and progress recedes from the established cultural traditions. According to N. Kuzmina, "the megalopolis phenomenon threatens trust and openness in relations between people" (Kuzmina, 2016: 117). This does not mean in many cases loss of the feeling of "being linked to 'fellow citizens'". It appears, according to the researcher, when a person participates in the cultural processes of a big city, "begins to share their meanings and values, giving a higher sense to its being" (Kuzmina, 2016: 118). Such a place is Naples, a city in southern Italy, a metropolis in terms of area and population density, but a kind of "province" in terms of lifestyle, where the involvement of local residents creates a feeling of a single living organism. P. Muratov with delight talked about the ability of Neapolitans to merge into one stream of joys and passions, to enjoy every moment of their life: "All these people are in no hurry, but at the same time they do not kill time indifferently to despair. Neapolitans live only when they enjoy it. They know how to enjoy their lazy and light walk, their bright ties, a shining sky above <...>. And no other human being loves the world with such strong, stubborn, animal love" (Muratov, 1923). Naples rejects another stereotype attributed to the metropolis -dullness, uniformity, strict topography. According to I. Gaidukova, the space of rectangles characteristic of most cities turns into many psychological problems, creating "aggressiveness and depression" (Gaidukova, 2016: 24). From this point of view, Naples denies well-established cliches. P. Muratov draws attention to this, describing narrow passages, blind alleys, stairs, a web of streets in which an outsider can easily get lost. Naples astonishes with its special openness, absence of the closed home space, since the whole life of its inhabitants flows as if in front of everyone (Muratov, 1923). Today, tourists can still be surprised to see the Neapolitan washed laundry hanging behind the numerous windows.
The pride of the locals, which distinguishes Naples from any other metropolis, is its enchanting nature. It can explain the amazing unity of the Neapolitans, so different in temperament and way of life. It is no coincidence that P. Muratov devotes it such poetic expressions as "fabulous beauty", "panorama of mountains and the sea", "an immense view of the city, Mount Vesuvius and the bay": "The Neapolitan is proud of this view as their best possession" (Muratov, 1923).
The attractive power of Naples has more than once become an inspiring stimulus for the creation of works of literature and arts. So, the world knows the picture "Naples. On the embankment Riviera di Chiaia" by S. Shchedrin, "View of Naples from the Sea" by N. Bryullov, "Naples" by V. Surikov, "Naples at Moonlit Night. Vesuvius" by I. Aivazovsky; travel notes "Journey of P. Tolstoy's Stolnik (Inspector of the Imperial table) around Europe 3 "; piano cycle "Venice and Naples" by F. Liszt. In this series, the chamber-vocal cycle of G. Donizetti "Nuits d'été à Pausillipe" (1836) and a piano suite by F. Poulenc "Napoli Suite" (1922)(1923)(1924)(1925), on the one hand, embrace the previously created tradition, and on the other hand, they allow us to compare them not so much in terms of historical distance and genre differences, but in terms of world perception of artists from different national schools.

Literature Review
There is a limited number of works relating to the influence of Italian inspirations on creativity. Among them is the study of Yu. Veksler "Alban Berg and Italy", which describes the relationship of the newcomer with Italian musicians and gives a periodization of his compositions in various cities of Italy (Veksler, 2011); N. Buslayeva's publication on the "synthesis of arts" phenomenon in piano pieces by F. Liszt caused by his travels around Italy (Buslayeva, 2011); T. Sidneva's work related to Umberto Eco's concept of "open composition" and its extrapolation to the musical structure which predisposes to blurring boundaries (Sidneva, 2011). Despite the increased scientific interest in Italian influences, many pages of the musical culture of this country remain on the periphery of research thought. First of all, this concerns the chamber vocal work of G. Donizetti, who went down in the history of world classics as an outstanding opera composer. Finding grains of useful information about his vocal lyrical pieces can be considered good luck. They appear in the collections of G. Donizetti's songs, in the preface to which, apart from the author's creative biography, one can find brief characteristics of his vocal style. An example of such collections (available today) is "20 Songs by Donizetti" 4 compiled by John Glenn Paton in 1996(Gaetano Donizetti, 2005. Against this background, the piano cycle "Naples" is perceived as the antipode, which has repeatedly become the object of attention of national and foreign researchers. So, Ye. Zhukova, recognizing the specificity of the composition, sees this as a composer's characteristic craving for exotic themes, which, along with the suite, appeared in the "A Negro Rhapsody", "Toreador Song", and in the music for the film 3 Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy (1645-1729), a diplomat and statesman, wrote his work "Journey of P. Tolstoy's Stolnik (Inspector of the Imperial table) around Europe" after two years of training in maritime affairs in Italy. In it, the author, usually not prone to epithets in superlative degree, is not ashamed to use the words 'predivny (the most wonderful)', 'prechudny (the prettiest)', 'preudivitelny (the most amazing)' in relation to Naples that he liked (Lebedeva, 2007). 4 An introductory article to the collection (Gaetano Donizetti, 2005) indicates that this collection of songs, prepared by Professor John Glenn Paton, includes a number of sources that were published in several editions during the composer's life and after his death, as well as those that has never been printed. J. G. Paton also made efforts to translate a number of G. Donizetti romances into English. Among them are "The Crusaders" -No. 2 from "Nuits d'été à Pausillipe". "Journey to America" (Zhukova, 2009: 86). V. Mellers considers "Napoli Suite" as an attempt of F. Poulenc to "reconfigure" a native Frenchman in himself, to allow the internal rivalry of the patriot and cosmopolitan, a man open to the world (Mellers, 2003: 36). I. Medvedeva only briefly mentions the role of Italian impressions, which inspired F. Poulenc to write his Suite (Medvedeva, 1969: 57). As you can see, scientists note the general vector of composer's interest in the direction of foreign influences, but the peculiar artistic reflection on the specificity of Italian traditions remains out of their sight.

Methods
The research methodology is based on the comprehensive approach which involves historical, theoretical, structural, functional, and comparative methods of music analysis.

Discussion
Naples played a significant role in the creative biography of Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), a native of Bergamo (northern Italy). Since 1822, when the composer was invited to prepare for the performance of the oratorio "Atalia" designed by his teacher Simon Mayr, this city, along with Rome and Milan, becomes one of the main points on the map of his creative geography. Here the 25-yearold musician met his rivals -G. Rossini and V. Bellini; almost half of his opera works (a total of more than 30) premiered with tremendous success on the stages of theaters Teatro Nuovo, San Carlo, Teatro del Fondo. In the period from 1822 to 1838 G. Donizetti was in charge of the musical part of San Carlo, and from 1834-1839 he held the post of professor at the Conservatory, combining it with the position of the director (1837-1839). The maestro himself spoke warmly of the Neapolitans' affinity to his music: "<...> they are very favorable to me here, everything that I stage is a success" (Donatti-Petteni, 1980: 49). This remark was true because the operas which got applause in Naples invariably "failed" in Milan unless the performance "Anna Bolena" (1830), unanimously accepted by critics, changed the situation.
Naples became almost the second small homeland for the composer, giving him recognition, the possibility of creative realization, a sense of home, years of family happiness. The impact of the picturesque nature and warm climate of this region turned out to be beneficial, having determined the extraordinary softness of music, full of joyful, bright feelings. The Neapolitans' predisposition to humor, a sharp joke probably indirectly affected G. Donizetti's interest in the comic opera, which was always welcomed by the southerners. One cannot ignore the fact that the melodic-intonational aura of Naples, a region with a rich folk song culture, affected his musical language. Neapolitan folk song culture has origins in ancient times (the history of the city can be traced back to the 4th century BC), its originality is in the mixture of melos of the peoples that had long inhabited the south of the Apennine Peninsula (among them Greeks and Etruscans, Italians / Romans and Gauls). Being a crossroads of languages and cultures of various nations, Naples served as a "melting pot" in which a new whole was formed from a combination of various elements, like a mosaic. Starting from the Middle Ages, migration processes were superimposed on continuous geopolitical changes: the city passed under the rule of Byzantium (VI-VII), then the French Bourbons (XIII-XV), then Spain (XV-XVII), then Austria-Hungary (XVIII-XIX). The consequences of these political and cultural expansions were the enrichment of local ethnic song traditions with French, Spanish, Arab influences.
Particularly noteworthy is the impact of the French courtesy culture, which led to the crystallization of both 'high' poetry (Dolce Stil Novo) and 'low' "poesia giullaresca", parodic in its sense, mostly common in the southern regions of Italy. Those complex genre metamorphoses resulted in the appearance of Villanella. The first collection of these pieces "Canzone villanesche alla napolitana" was created and published in Naples in 1537, giving impetus to the rapid spread of this regional genre throughout the peninsula under different names (canzona alia padoana, canzona alia veneziana, bergamasca, romanesca, siciliana, etc.), as well as in other countries, up to England, acquiring a macro-genre status for all European music (Bedush, 2007: 13).
Many author's villanelles simultaneously became the property of both folk song tradition and musical theater practice of the New Age, being involved in the emergence of chamber vocal forms of a later time, in particular, romanza in the 19th century. In general, this was not just a "living" sound context in which G. Donizetti's hearing and musical taste formed. It was akin to musical DNA, revealing its belonging to the great song tradition of Italy and the Kingdom of Naples.
The composer knew and studied song folklore of different countries -a fact that eluded the attention of those who perceive G. Donizetti exclusively as an opera composer. That is why his participation in the development of the Neapolitan song, the lyric miniature of love content in the Neapolitan language, which forms a separate genre branch in the European music of the late 19th-20th centuries, seems quite logical. In particular, the victory of G. Donizetti's canzoni "Te voglio bene assaje" ("I love you so much") at the song festival Festa di Piedigrotta in 1835 was the starting point for the official history of Canzone napoletana. The song "Te voglio bene assaje" itself was picked up by the Neapolitans and sung as a native folk song, which caused a long debate about its authorship. That is how maestro creatively responded to the culture of the southerners, which nourished his musical imagination.
The composer's love of vocal miniature was implemented in more than 270 solo songs and 48 vocal duets, in the intonational nature of which Neapolitan influences are refracted. For a long time, this material remained in the shadow of the composer's operas, in the position of terra incognita of musicology. Meanwhile, the musical style of G. Donizetti, appreciated by lovers of his operas, is fully manifested in the chamber-vocal work of the composer. The vocal cycle of 12 songs "Nuits d'été à Pausillipe" / "Summer Nights in Posillipo" (1836), which has already been considered in one of the articles written by the author of this paper 5 , serves as a vivid confirmation of the above.
The originality of the composition of this romantic cycle is determined by the chronotope, which organically combines poetics of the toponym with the symbolism of the night. Posillipo is a rocky peninsula in the northern part of the Gulf of Naples, marked by the beauty of nature, artifacts of ancient culture: ancient villas, amphitheaters, grottoes, in one of which, according to the legend, Virgil himself is buried. The experience of this beauty, coupled with the reconstruction of paintings of the past, poeticizes the lyrical feeling. This property of the area is described by P. Muratov, who connects the happiness of the ancient world with the direct breathing of nature that surrounded a man. According to the traveler, the whiteness of the road, solidified lava, the salty taste of the sea wind, bitter olives, and pomegranates -all this makes up a geographic and taste idea of the Neapolitan landscape: "<...> maybe in such a way some truth about the antique reaches us through the nature that once used to grow on this land, about strong juices and sea salts that used to nourish it, about its primeval bitter grain" (Muratov, 1923).
The night theme made up its own line in the development of art. It is enough to recall the numerous nocturnes of P. Rubens, H. Rembrandt, C. Lorren, and other masters. M. Kostyr sees the origins of this phenomenon in the mystical tradition of the Middle Ages (Kostyr, 2004). And if at that time night paintings were shrouded in a fleur of gloomy mystery, then in the Renaissance, "landscapes of catastrophes" or lyrical scenes of a pacified night are associated with them. It is logical that a romantically inclined consciousness continued the development of this theme, which is reflected in the stable literary headings-formulas: "Hymns to the Night" by G. Novalis, "Nachtstücke" by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1815-1821), "Tsaritsyn Night" by I. V. Kireevsky (1827), "My Evenings in Little Russia" by A. Pogorelsky (1828), "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" by N. V. Gogol (1831-1832), "Florentine Nights" by H. Heine (1833), "Egyptian Nights" by A. S. Pushkin (1835), "The Night Given by Cleopatra" by T. Gauthier (1838), "Nights" by A. de Musset (1835A. de Musset ( -1837, "Russian Nights" by V. F. Odoevskiy (1843), and others. The very list indicates a steady interest in the semantics of the night. And this is no coincidence. According to M. Stern, this genre "<...> has deep roots in the world literature and folklore tradition. Its origin as a specific form of the prosaic cycle is extremely complex, polygenetic. Ethical or entertaining epic collections of antiquities ('framed novels'), early Platonic dialogues, Latin medieval collections of short stories, "The Decameron" by Bocaccio, "Night Vigils" by Bonaventure and "Die Serapionsbrüder" by E. T. A. Hoffmann -this is the shortest list of texts adopted by the Russian literary tradition" (Shtern, 2012: 403).
Expanding the information provided by the author, we will present the "Attic Nights" by Aulus Gellius (130-170 AD) as the primary model of such a composition. The multivolume work of the ancient Roman writer, which included quotes from the works of ancient philosophers-predecessors and commentaries on them, is estimated as one of the first examples of creating a cyclic composition from an essay and implementing a chronotope in literary composition. Numerous copies of the manuscript preserved in the monasteries of Europe, as well as the fact of their distribution among educated people of the Middle Ages and New Age, speak of the influence of this work on subsequent generations. In 1787, "Attic Nights" by Aulus Gellius was published in Russian. The reasons for the appeal of musicians to such topics do not require special explanations, since music has always gone alongside the word. Because of this, a common feature of many night cycles is the short story, which generates the fundamental 'openness' of the work as a whole, the inability to " 'limit', 'frame' it. This is an incompleteness of the lyrical context. You can continue the chain of 'nights' and stop it at any moment <...>" (Shtern, 2012: 406). The interest of composers from different national schools is confirmed by R. Schumann's "Night Pieces" (1839) and Hector Berlioz's vocal cycle "Les Nuits d'été" / "Summer Nights" (1841), created in a single time continuum with the G. Donizetti's cycle "Nuits d'été à Pausillipe" (1836).
At first sight 12 of his songs are not perceived as a single composition due to the independence, novelistic exhaustion of each of them. Indeed, songs vary in composition, timbre characteristics, poetic sources, and verbal language. So, the first six miniatures (Nos. 1-6) are intended for solo performance, the other six (Nos. 7-12) for various duets, including two sopranos, soprano and mezzo-soprano, soprano and tenor, tenor and bass. Variability becomes one of the distinctive compositional principles of the cycle. The author employs the verses of four Italian romantic poets: Leopoldo Tarantini, Carlo Guaita, Michele Palazzolo, Francesco Puoti, Frenchman Victor Marie Hugo, an anonymous author, and folklore text in Neapolitan language.
In "Nuits d'été à Pausillipe" the theme of love dominates, being sometimes romantically refined or earthly full-blooded. On the basis of figurative-semantic analogies between the numbers, a poetic plot is born, associated with the idea of its hymn glorification. The tone is set by No. 1, depicting a couple in love during a boat trip. Its mood is picked up by No. 3 "At Midnight", No. 6 "Twilight", No. 8 "Aurora", where different times of the day do not just indicate the hour of the meeting but reflect the ongoing process of the development of their feelings -a three-time prayer for a meeting. A peculiar result of love-longing is the repeated declaration of love confession in No. 7 ("Oath"), No. 9 ("Bice's Breath"), No. 10 ("Love, a voice from heaven"), No. 11 ("A Glance and a Voice"). A bit apart are Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 12, which implements the principle of contrast required in a cyclic composition. But even they logically fit into the general outline. In particular, No. 2 and No. 4 are brought together by the ballad type of narration. A sketch from medieval life in the "Crusaders"the farewell of the Knight and the Lady before distant separation, the early death of her loverreceives an unexpected semantic continuation in "mystical" No. 4, where the images of sorcerers, witches, ghosts living in the ruins of the tower are perceived as some kind of materialization of the afterlife world mentioned before. In comparison with the gloomy symbolism of these miniatures, No. 5 ("A Spindle") performs the function of a ligament-transition to a lyrically light state in the cycle. The situation of acquaintance with a young man that took place in the imagination of a young heroine gives the whole cannon traits of dialogues and genre scenes at the same time, bringing to mind the principle of the comic reflection of the main lyrical couple characteristic to the opera and realized by G. Donizetti in the vocal cycle. The glorification of the fullness of life with the awareness of its transience determines the content of the final number. Thanks to this, the finale "closes" main ideological messages of the whole composition: Love and Death as two sides of the stream of Life, the all-conquering power of the one and the greatness of the other, complementing each other and therefore reinforcing the severity of the experience of every moment.
The unity of the composition "Nuits d'été à Pausillipe" is achieved thanks to melodicintonational connections. According to the type of melodic core, the thematic of 12 songs can be divided into three groups. The first one is formed by the initial themes of vocal parts Nos. 1, 2, 5, 8, and 10, in which the inversion of the sounds of the tonic triad becomes the starting point of melodic development. The second group includes romances No. 3 and No. 6, which have a similar gamma-like motif with tonic-dominant supports. The third group combines duets No. 7 and No. 9. Their melodies become related in structure due to the predominance of melodic idioms sung in the upward motion, which creates a whirling effect. The fact that G. Donizetti's romances belong to the "intonational dictionary" of the romantic era is indicated by the presence of numerous allusions to melodic works by his contemporaries -M. Glinka ("Farewell to St. Petersburg"), F. Schubert, and works by later composers such as Reynaldo Hahn.
We cannot but mention the diversity of the genre filling of the cycle. In the first six solo numbers, in addition to the author's remarks in the musical text , there are also features of an opera monologue (No. 1), chivalric romance (No. 2), serenade (No. 3), as well as its "morning" variety -alba or alborada (No. 6). On the contrary, five of the six duet songs (Nos. 7-11) are defined as nocturne, while No. 12 ("The Drinkers") has a subtitle -brindisi, which means toast in Italian and a table song in music. It should be noted that there is a fundamental difference between vocal nocturnes of G. Donizetti and generally accepted characteristics of this genre, for example, in instrumental music. The samples under analysis have no lyrical reverie, immersion in the state of refined melancholy, peace, and silence inherent to the similar pieces by J. Field or F. Chopin. The duets from "Nuits d'été à Pausillipe" are joyfully lyrical, quite dynamic (the pace is Allegro, Andantino affettuoso), virtuoso in the concert sense, not without signs of theatrical effect. They sound like the hymn of love, a glorification of life and earthly pleasures. They have the spirit of a brilliant ballroom in the candlelight or carnival, rather than the solitude of merging with nature in the silence of the night.
The predominance of vocal genre nature in the first six miniatures is offset by the interweaving of the song with dance, starting from No. 7: signs of polka are evident in the coda of No. 8,polonaise in No. 10,waltz in Nos. 11 and 12. This gives rise to the feeling of dividing the entire macro composition into two parts, in which quasi first part (solo) is akin to Adagio, and the second one (duets) -to Scherzo.
Perhaps such a "genre polysemy" is dictated by the specific features of the composer's thinking, as well as the consequence of his experience in the field of musical theater, since in the proposed interpretation the romance goes beyond the framework established by the tradition of salon music-making, acquiring features of a small theatrical and scenic form. This idea is confirmed by observations on the structure of songs. Remaining within the bounds of the verse-stanza form and repetition as obligatory attributes of song-romance genres, G. Donizetti seeks to overcome this task by all possible means: introducing odd structures, varying the stanza, updating the verse, rethinking the role of coda, etc. Essential is the combinatorial principle of melodic constructions, in which the motives -fragments of the theme -change places like cubes, forming new patterns, often of a calland-response kind. Of particular interest are situations when a single thematic line is broken up by including motives of a different, contrasting emotional content. The selected techniques contribute to the creation of an unusually flexible internal form, a structure that 'lives', 'breathes', naturally unfolds in time, obeying the laws of vocal music. This approach, on the one hand, reveals the originality of G. Donizetti's creative solutions in the genre of romance, on the other hand, indicates the closeness of the tradition of the lyrical Neapolitan song, demonstrating a high degree of the composer's involvement in the cultural context of the city.
A different kind of engagement, a peculiar third-party look at Naples appears in F. Poulenc's piano suite of the same name, which reveals the composer's creative personality from an unexpected perspective. If in his chamber-vocal lyrical works he strives for clarity, simplicity, and transparency, and in the piano cycle "Promenades" he demonstrates accuracy, refinement and some graphicness of the score, then in the "Napoli Suite" the author amazes with the brightness and richness of colors. This kind of metamorphosis becomes understandable if you put it into the long-existing system of cultural interactions. Here we should mention the main milestones of the artistic interference of Italy and France. It is known that even in the Baroque era, the difference in the mentality of spontaneous, sensual, direct Italians and restrained French, pragmatic "admirers of forms", determined the appearance of stylistic differences. Italian music was full of ornamentation, the forms were prompted by the content and rich imagination of the composer; performers with great phantasy added spontaneity, enriching the works with free improvisations. The French, on the contrary, rejected freedom in ornamentation; their forms were extremely strict. All genres, including the predecessor of the opera -music drama ballet de cour, were based on dance, and the extrovert expression inherent in Italians was regarded as slapstick. Moreover, the music of southern neighbors was often compared to a coquette striving to attract attention, while the French manner of musical expression generated associations with natural female beauty.
The interweaving of musical cultures of France and Italy took place in parallel with similar processes in the field of fine art. Information, which has become an asset of numerous studies on the history of painting stored on library shelves, comes to life thanks to a journey through the labyrinths of the Internet. In particular, it is known that the impetus for the establishment of inter-ethnic cultural ties was the creation by decree of King Louis XIV of the French Academy of Arts, which was located in the Villa Medici in Rome. To become a pensioner of the Prix de Rome, and at the same time to get the opportunity to live and study in Italy for several years, was the pinnacle of achievement for French painters. Many artists competed for the right to receive this "happy ticket", but this was not an easy task -it was necessary to win the first prize among numerous applicants. Amid the winners of the Prix de Rome were Jean-François Pierre Peyron (1773), Jacques-Louis David (1774), Charles Persieux (1784), Joseph-Théodore Richomme (1806), Jules Eugène Lenepveu (1847). Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres -one of the most famous pensioners of the French Academysettled down twice in the Villa Medici (1806)(1807)(1808)(1809)(1810)(1811)(1835)(1836)(1837)(1838)(1839)(1840)(1841), and for the second time as its director. Needless to say that after returning from Rome, French masters were so saturated with the atmosphere of the eternal city that their works acquired the Italian flair, and themes included images and views of this country. Thus, Francois Boucher (prize winner of 1723) was heavily influenced by Italian artists Pietro da Cortona and Giovanni Lanfranco, collected works of Giovanni Tiepolo, a great representative of the Venetian school, and his own paintings "View of Tivoli" and "View of Farnese Gardens" were painted under the influence of Italian landscapes. Laureate of 1894, Auguste Leroux, who painted "Carnival in Venice" and "Venetian Gondola in the Moonlight", gained popularity thanks to his illustrations to the book of the Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova: among others we will name "Casanova, kissing the hand of the Russian aristocrat" and "Giacomo Casanova. Italian adventures with a beautiful nun". The winner of the Prix de Rome in 1752, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, paid tribute to the Italian masterminds by creating engravings from the paintings "Supper at Emmaus" by Sebastiano Ricci, "The Circumcision" by Giovanni Tiepolo and "The Presentation of Christ in the Temple" by Jacopo Tintoretto.
Let us return, however, to Villa Medici, a place that became a landmark not only for French artists but also for composers who joined the struggle for the Prix de Rome. From 1819 until its closure in 1968, Georges Bizet, Jules Massenet, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel competed for the highest award. In 1922, representatives of the group "Les Six", Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, also got into this peculiar Italian Mecca. Being invited by the French scholarship holder Claude Delvincourt they met many local composers -Francesco Malipiero, Vittorio Rieti, Mario Labroca. The impressions of visits to Naples, Tivoli, Frascati, and Sicily were embodied, in particular, in the ballet "Salad" by D. Milhaud and the piano suite "Napoli" by F. Poulenc. The latter, according to I. Medvedeva, was recognized by outstanding performers Arthur Rubinstein and Claudio Arrau as "a significant pianistic achievement of the author" (Medvedeva, 1969: 57).
Minds of French writers, artists and musicians were shaped under the influence of other cultural events, among which a special place is occupied by the 1889 World Exhibition. Thousands of sculptures, paintings and prints were presented in the art pavilions of different countries; this enabled the creative intelligentsia of France to see new horizons that had previously been concealed. However, the greatest resonance was caused by the exposition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the photography invention. "Hardly any other invention was as highly recognized as a picture painted by sunrays", -exclaimed admiring eyewitnesses (Shpakov, 2000). Indirect evidence of this effect is the piano suite "Napoli" (1922)(1923)(1924)(1925), three pieces of which evoke vivid synesthetic associations: luminous beauty, photographs imprinted by the Italian sun. So, the radiant "Barcarole" is written in golden tones, if we rely on the perception of D-dur by M. Rimsky-Korsakov, or in yellow, if we take into account the vision of the color of this tonality by A. Scriabin. The languid "Nocturne" Des-dur is as if created by the colors of the sunset sky -purple (A. Scriabin), dark scarlet (N. Rimsky-Korsakov) and the color of the red glow (B. Asafiev). The outer sections of the festive-flirtatious "Italian caprice" are painted in cold dark and light blue shades of E-dur (N. Rimsky-Korsakov saw it as blue-whitish, and A. Scriabin -as blue, azure) (Vanechkina & Galeev, 1987). The dominancy of major results in the appearance of light images, but in each piece, they acquire an individual coloring, as if in photographs, when differently caught refraction of the sunlight is colored by new tones.
Clarity of the color sound recording is most striking in the first piece of the suite "Barcarole". The emerging synesthetic associations turn out to be close to the tonal sensations of B. Asafiev, who saw in D-dur "sun rays, shine (if you look at Tiflis from David Mountain on a hot day)" (Vanechkina, 1987: 98), with the only difference that instead of Georgia views F. Poulenc's pictures here the Gulf of Naples filled with light. That is why in the miniature one can hear not a melancholic and dreamy minor song of the Venetian gondolier, but a temperamental, full of life hymn to the endless South Italian sea. "Daytime, yellowish, sunny, royal, imperious" -such tonal semantics of D-dur, declared by M. Rimsky-Korsakov, comprehensively describes the character of F. Poulenc's piece. The composer managed to preserve characteristic features of the genre, presenting them in different, juicier colors. Thus, the melody has typical for barcarole melodiousness and cantillation, however, it sounds in full voice, with an indefatigable thirst for life, passion for adventure and love, peculiar to southerners, in the dynamic range from mf to f. In the accompaniment, instead of muffled bursts of oars or silent sliding of the gondola along the calm surface of the Venetian canal, one can hear the seething power of the sea surf and the irrepressible energy of a sailing ship aspiring to get to the open sea. "Despite the framework of a two-part structure, F. Poulenc was able to create amazing wateriness," -W. Mellers writes about the miniature (Mellers, 2003: 36). Really, the music is so flexible that it seems that it is spread in zero gravity, levitates out of shape and capacity, which is facilitated by the play of major-minor and polymetry -6/4 in melody coexists with 12/8 in accompaniment. The picturesque musical miniature which gives rise to visual images is limited in sound space to the final glissando. Backed up by a magical pedal effect, it sounds like a click from an invisible photographer who captures memories of an experienced sense of happiness.
"The viability and veracity of the picture will largely depend on how expressively it conveys these familiar characteristics of the real world. It should evoke accurate associations in the viewer and direct them to the reality", writes L. Dyko in her book "Fundamentals of Composition in Photography" (Dyko, 1989: 27). This statement opens the way to understanding the artistic meaning of the images of "Nocturne". The atmosphere of half-sleep, stiffness and numbness of softly enfolding Neapolitan night is created through the use of a minimal set of means: frequently repeated harmonic figuration on the unchanging dominant bass accompanies a static and at the same time extremely expressive melody, which the author asks to "sing uniformly and without nuances". This conveys the state of fragility, purity, and transparency of night air: music seems to be suspended in the air, it barely moves, it is immobilized. There is a feeling as you are looking at the photo where a static fixed moment reveals the signs of inner life, when the observer can become part of the depicted microworld, feel smells, hear sounds, experience imaginary sensations.
The lazy, melancholic image, presented in the miniature as a particular feature, turns out to be concordant with the Italian worldview as a whole, about which Italian experts say the following: "When mentioning the Italian national character, most foreigners have the first standard association: local people are lazy. The reason for this peculiarity, which causes condemnation in word, but at the same time slight envy somewhere at the bottom of the heart, is seen by residents of other countries in the climate. The rays of the southern sun help to relax blissfully, get rid of worries and everyday problems, plunge into a state called dolce far niente" (Rome -the city of love and Dolce far niente, n.d.). This cute feature of Italians touched not only F. Poulenc. It is believed that the first mention of "sweet idleness" belongs to the ancient Roman writer Pliny the Younger (61-113): in one of his letters he used the word iucundum (pleasant), which was later replaced by Italians with dolce (sweet). In painting, this philosophy was embodied in works of the same name "Dolce far niente" by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and John William Godward (1861-1922. Cinema gave an exhaustive explanation of the concept of "doing nothing" in the film "Eat, Pray, Love." Doctor of Psychology C. Long finds an impressive scene when "one of the men begins to criticize the way Americans understand rest and relaxation <...>. He introduces the concept of 'La Dolce Far Niente' to the audience and explains that Italians can take a walk home after hours of work to get some sleep, they can be attracted to a nearby cafe where they can go for a glass of wine, or they can just go home" (Long, n.d.). In this context, F. Poulenc's piece "Nocturne" is seen, on the one hand, as a kind of live picture of a viscous, enfolding with languid veil, Neapolitan night, and on the other hand, -as the quintessence of the philosophy of attitude of a native Italian resident.
rooted Neapolitan folk song tradition. F. Poulenc sees Naples from the side, with the eyes of an admired traveller: admires nature, gets acquainted with local customs, looks into the backstage of the national theater. The multiplicity of his impressions is heard in the vibrant, temperamental, energetic, theatrical miniatures of the piano suite "Napoli". The richness of the sound palette, the inspiration with which the composer uses colors of the registers, the emotional fullness of pieces from the cycle make it possible to judge the strength of the impact of this noisy, lively, beautiful city, which strikes with its inner strength under gentle rays of the Italian sun.