Tre poesie di Montale (1978) for baritone and piano by Roman Vlad is, by his own admission, particularly representative of the composer's poetics: it was conceived at a crucial moment of Vlad’s reflection on the role of music in contemporary poetry. It manifests itself in a constant attention to the intrinsic musicality of the words, for the structure of the verse with its own tonic accents and its own breaths, for the peculiarity of the lexical choices. The article, based on the study of the preparatory materials, presents some considerations on Vlad’s attitude towards these themes by examining part of the correspondence between the composer and Montale, author of the three poems. In particular, the technique of correspondence pitches-phonemes is examined, alongside its application in Tre poesie and in other vocal compositions.
