SUSANNA PASTICCI USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY: GOFFREDO PETRASSI AND THE HERITAGE OF MUSICAL TRADITION In the musical panorama of the twentieth century Goffredo Petrassi’s work is notable for its significant lack of avant-garde aspirations and ideological tensions.1 A craftsman’s rigour, intellectual curiosity and creative imagination are the main ingredients of a musical thought that finds its own identity by drawing on a constant dialogue with a variety of stylistic models both recent and remote. An authoritative teacher, as well as maestro to some of the protagonists of the most daring experiments of the post-war avant-garde, Petrassi is remembered by his pupils at the Conservatory and the Academy of Santa Cecilia as an ‘enlightened empiricist’ who preferred to encourage analysis and historical reflection in his students rather than teach methods or theories, inviting them to combine knowledge of the tradition with the need to grasp the present-day world if they were to find their own authentic, personal space there.2 In transmitting to his pupils the procedures that directed his own creative practice, Petrassi passed on to us a small seed of wisdom that was particularly valuable: the idea that a composer’s bent for picking up elements taken from various moments of musical history in his own language need not necessarily be interpreted as a symptom of creative immaturity or lack of originality. As is well-known, the question of the relation with tradition takes on a highly problematic aspect in the cultural context of the twentieth century, dominated by the terms of a modernist thought that identifies the aim of art not so much in approaching beauty or truth, as in acquiring 1 This article is in memory of one of Petrassi’s most distinguished pupils, the composer Mauro Bortolotti. 2 DOMENICO GUACCERO, Petrassi: l’empirismo illuminato nella didattica contemporanea, «Quaderni della Rassegna Musicale», I, 1964, pp. 81-94; rpt. in Di Goffredo Petrassi. Una antologia: 1983, Rome, Nuova Consonanza 1983, pp. 213-227:220. On the interaction between teaching and composition in Petrassi cfr. also SUSANNA PASTICCI, Un maestro e i suoi maestri: didattica e composizione nell’esperienza musicale di Goffredo Petrassi, forthcoming in the proceedings of the International Conference Il secolo di Petrassi, Latina, 16-19 June 2004 (ed. Gabriele Bonomo, publ. Suvini Zerboni). 2 SUSANNA PASTICCI new experience, in creating new territories and in discovering new models of the world projected towards the future.3 The need for the ‘new’ is certainly not exclusive to the creativity of the twentieth century; nevertheless, what defines modernity, compared with previous periods, is the tendency to affirm the new as a value, and as a fundamental value, in the name of an «ideology of progress» elevated to a fundamental model of artistic action and thought.4 In music the problem of the relation with tradition is much more marked than in other art forms: whether due to the slow emergence of the canon, which in music emerged only in the nineteenth century, much later than in the other arts, or to the widespread broadcasting of recordings on disc, which encouraged a wider and wider knowledge of the classical repertoire.5 Even though the twentieth-century composers were not the first to develop a profound knowledge of the tradition, there is no doubt that for them the music of the past was a greater challenge and a much heavier burden than it had been for their predecessors: a weight that risked becoming so oppressive as to inhibit the very possibility of the creative act. The experimentation of the musical avant-garde early in the century and the gradually spreading disquiet and tension at the renewal, took place in a context wholly dominated by the music of the previous centuries: and it was precisely at the moment when the tradition was studied in depth and appreciated that the relation with the past was seen as the most complex, but at the same time inescapable of problems in twentieth-century thought and aesthetics. Not only for the composers, but – as Arnold Whittall suggests in an essay entitled Fulfilment or betrayal? – also for critics who might want to express a judgement on their work – a judgement that obviously cannot refrain from careful analysis of the ways in which knowledge of the tradition reflects on an artist’s creativity and is concretely evident in his works. The opposition between fulfilment and betrayal expresses a rhetorical exaggeration that is both reductive and ambiguous. It would be misleading, or at any rate unproductive, to use these 3 GIULIO FERRONI, Dopo la fine. Sulla condizione postuma della letteratura, Turin, Einaudi, 1996, p. 115. 4 GIANNI VATTIMO, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, p. 99 (it. trans. La fine della modernità, Milan, Garzanti, 1985). Such a lucid and sharp analysis of modernity, Vattimo notes, is only possible today, in an age when the driving thrust of the modern is exhausted, replaced by reflection and the post-modern condition. 5 JOSEPH N. STRAUS, Remaking the Past. Musical Modernism and the Influence of Tonal Tradition, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1990, pp. 3-5. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 3 two terms to restrict the work of the individual composers to the circle of one or the other category, on the basis of a classificatory bent that brings to mind Adorno’s shop-worn, and much misunderstood, opposition between progress and restoration. More than as fundamental categories of value judgements, the concepts of fulfilment and betrayal remain useful for interpretation only if they are understood as extreme polarities of a many-sided continuum, within which the relation of the composers with the past can take on the most elaborate and complex forms.6 Indeed, despite appearances, it is often precisely those composers who were most experimental who actually succeeded in activating the most fruitful dialectic with their historical consciousness, in many cases managing to seize, amplify and develop certain unexplored values that can multiply the levels of reinterpretation of the tradition. The study of Petrassi’s music – as an artist, he was a leading figure in the events and anxieties of both the first and the second half of the twentieth century – may prove decisive in setting off wider reflections on the dynamics that regulate a twentieth-century composer’s relation with tradition. He is a figure who seems particularly emblematic today for at least three reasons: his profound historical knowledge, which is unequivocally evident in his way of composing and in his works; the spirit of exploration and experimental tension that feeds his creative thought; and his essential extraneousness from the ideology of technical progress perpetuated by the avant-garde, reflected in his dissociation from theoretical discussion and his reticence at formalising his compositional practice. In the following pages, the theory that Petrassi’s relation with tradition is the best key for interpreting his musical poetics will be examined more closely in a series of reflections that follow different lines of investigation. While the first section reconstructs the image of the composer that emerges from the reception of his work, the second concentrates on the question of compositional techniques, examining some hitherto unpublished documents that allow us a rapid foray into the ‘secrets of his workshop’. The last section takes us into his creative laboratory to inspect the expressive means and tools by which his historical knowledge emerges in the concrete work of composition. 6 ARNOLD WHITTALL, Fulfilment or Betrayal? Twentieth-century Music in Retrospect, «The Musical Times», CXL, 1999, pp. 11-21. 4 SUSANNA PASTICCI Goffredo Petrassi, eclectic composer Although the point has been made in various ways and with different ideas of the value of his work, critics have often started from the fact that Goffredo Petrassi’s creativity draws on a variety of stylistic models. The image of the composer that emerges from the literature, and which Petrassi himself helped confirm in the interviews he gave in the course of his long career, is not that of an artist dominated by an obsession with the ‘new’, but, if anything, that of a patient craftsman working towards a continual reinvention of the expressive means and tools inherited from the tradition. The number of styles that critics have found converging in his music is decidedly heterogeneous, ranging from Gregorian chant to Webern. These influences would be numerous and powerful enough to crush the strongest personality: «or reduce him to the smiling, and perhaps slightly bitter, feebleness of eclecticism, an eclecticism ‘receptive’ to the point of cynicism».7 The question was particularly important in the first decades of his career, when critics were markedly more prone to interpret music in terms of the degree of stylistic originality. Rather than leading to a negative judgement, the search for stylistic antecedents was in the main balanced by a tendency to consider his stylistic ‘recourses’ as an epiphenomenon that required less and less attention.8 The image of the «fervent shop assistant [who] devoured mountains of scores», coined by Mario Bortolotto in 1964 in support of the view that «genius is no more than patience»,9 epitomises one of the most deep-rooted topoi in the early criticism of Petrassi, which interpreted stylistic references as an inevitable means for defining the boundaries of a musical civilisation in which his own activity could be defined: Non è difficile, a proposito della sua Partita per orchestra, come per qualunque lavoro di un giovane, fare dei nomi: Casella, Hindemith soprattutto. […] E del resto non sarebbe il caso di insistere troppo sui due autori citati: che a Pe- 7 CARLO MARINELLI, La musica strumentale da camera di Goffredo Petrassi, «Chigiana», XXIV, 1967, pp. 245-284; rpt. in Di Goffredo Petrassi. Una antologia cit., pp. 151-187: 158. 8 CLAUDIO ANNIBALDI, Trent’anni di critica petrassiana, «Quaderni della Rassegna Musicale», I, 1964, pp. 111-132: 116. Gavazzeni too insists on the ‘accents’ that will be part of the atmosphere of a whole musical period, for which the composer who is influenced by them will not always be classifiable as an ‘offshoot’; GIANANDREA GAVAZZENI, Cronache Musicali, «Letteratura», October 1937, p. 179. 9 MARIO BORTOLOTTO, Il cammino di Goffredo Petrassi, «Quaderni della Rassegna Musicale», I, 1964, pp. 11-79: 11. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 5 trassi servono solo come punto di partenza per camminare per conto proprio alla realizzazione di un suo linguaggio.10 Quello che di Hindemith, di Casella di Berg o di Honegger […] può aver assunto il Petrassi, significa essersi voluto porre in condizione di attuare e dar forma compiuta al proprio pensiero, volto completamente allo sfruttamento d’ogni minimo accenno di quella che potrà esser domani la sua integrale personalità, e di quella che è oggi una natura musicale già percorsa di linfe proprie.11 In his early works then, the references to models borrowed from the recent or distant past were interpreted as the sign of a healthy tendency to assimilate the values of the tradition so as to forge his own expressive language. One could ask no more of a young and talented composer with solid technical bases and genuine intellectual curiosity, as Fedele D’Amico points out with reference to Salmo IX: A un primo aspetto, si direbbe che la presenza di Stravinsky si rilevi dai molti imprestiti che Petrassi trae da alcuni suoi moduli […] o addirittura da disegni tematici determinanti. Già nel ’42 il sottoscritto ne segnalò, a titolo d’esempio, una dozzina abbondante […]; e nel ’42 Bortolotto ne stese un elenco esauriente. […] E in verità la presenza di Stravinsky, nel caso nostro, non tanto è importante all’interno quanto a monte della composizione: cioè come potere maieutico. In che senso? Petrassi voleva celebrare – e così congedare – il mondo affascinante della sua adolescenza musicale. […] Questo appunto impressionò Petrassi: la dimostrazione che celebrare un passato era possibile, e senza ipocrisie né nostalgie.12 The debate on stylistic influences does not only concern Petrassi’s early work. Later the references become less strident, the confines of the 10 «It is not difficult, in the case of his Partita for orchestra, as for any young man’s work, to make a list of names: Casella, Hindemith above all. […] However, it would be wrong to over-insist on the two composers mentioned: they are of use to Petrassi only as a starting-point for proceeding on his own to the creation of a language of his own»; FEDELE D’AMICO, La Mostra del Sindacato Musicisti a Roma, «L’Italia Letteraria», 16 April 1933. 11 «What Petrassi took over from Hindemith, Casella, Berg or Honegger was a means for him to be able to express his thought and give it a finished form, completely intent on exploiting every slightest hint of what would tomorrow be his whole personality, and what is today a musical nature already fed by its own sap»; GIANANDREA GAVAZZENI, Musicisti nuovi: Goffredo Petrassi, «Bollettino Mensile di Vita e Cultura Musicale», May 1935, p. 116. 12 «At first sight, one would say that Stravinsky’s presence is evident in the many borrowings that Petrassi makes from some of his forms […] or even from decisive themes. As early as 1942 the present writer pointed out a good dozen by way of example […]; and in 1942 Bortolotto drew up an exhaustive list. […] But actually in this case Stravinsky’s presence is not so important within the work as earlier in the process of composition: that is, as a maieutic force. In what sense? Petrassi wanted to celebrate – and, in doing so, bid farewell to – the fascinating world of his musical adolescence. […] That is what struck Petrassi so forcibly: the demonstration that celebrating a past was possible, with neither hypocrisy nor nostalgia»; FEDELE D’AMICO, Le opere sinfonico-corali, in Petrassi, ed. Enzo Restagno, Turin, EdT, 1986, pp. 74-93: 78-79. 6 SUSANNA PASTICCI mediation gradually more vague, but they are still present and more or less identifiable. The promising young man was now a mature composer, and the critics found themselves obliged to adjust their hermeneutic tools to interpret practice that, with the passage of time, could no longer be justified as an inevitable transitional phase that was preparing the way for defining a personal language. And so in the 1960s criticism of Petrassi took up the topos of the ‘archetype’: the stylistic features in the mature Petrassi’s music were no longer pointed to as retours, or direct references, but as extremely decided attempts to bring out the meta-historical nature of certain musical archetypes. Because the sense of Petrassi’s development, his real and deepest lesson lies precisely «in this slow corrosion of the links, ties and relations of the inherited language to arrive at his own elaboration of the pan-chromatic universe».13 In this perspective, Petrassi’s musical development was interpreted in terms of a «work of successive purging of experiences»: a slow progress of liberation from the influences that happens only after profound assimilation, «a veritable testing with fire and the sword of the resistance of those musical archetypes».14 This interpretation was to become more or less dominant from the late 1960s, both in the critical literature and in popularising works like Massimo Mila’s on the Concertos in 1984. Conceived as a listener’s guide for the Fonit Cetra recording of the Otto Concerti, the essay retraces Petrassi’s creative development from his juvenilia to his mature works.15 The analysis of the first four Concertos, composed in the twenty years from 1934 to 1954, is once again centred on the search for references and stylistic allusions: to describe the expressive climate of these works, or even to explain some specific passages, Mila brings up certain effects typical of the Baroque tradition or some twentieth-century composers. Of the Second Concerto of 1951 Mila writes: Il riferimento che viene subito in mente è il contrappunto germinale, che si espande a macchia d’olio, di certi capolavori di Bartók; […] non sarebbe forse improprio pensare all’eleganza di Debussy. Ma è naturalmente Stravinsky il nuovo polo che s’instaura nel “Molto mosso, con vivacità” e tende ad espellere il cantus planus bartókiano.16 13 14 MARIO BORTOLOTTO, Il cammino di Goffredo Petrassi cit., p. 15. CARLO MARINELLI, La musica strumentale da camera di Goffredo Petrassi cit., pp. 161- 162. 15 MASSIMO MILA, Gli otto Concerti per orchestra di Goffredo Petrassi, Milan, Fonit Cetra, 1984; rpt. in Petrassi cit., pp. 94-181. 16 «The reference that comes immediately to mind is the germinal counterpoint that suffuses some of Bartók’s masterpieces; […] it might not be unreasonable to think of Debussy’s USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 7 Or again, of the Third Concerto of 1953: Sin qui la Récréation concertante potrebbe anche passare per un autonomo duplicato dell’universo stravinskyano. Ma qui [nell’ “Adagio moderato”], in queste zone di fissità, Stravinsky viene gentilmente estromesso, e con lui Hindemith. […] L’originalità assoluta, unica, di Petrassi, sta in queste oasi di mistero.17 From the Fifth Concerto onwards (1955), Petrassi’s reference points gradually become more and more blurred, and, in describing a music that seems more abstract, shifting and so not immediately referable to clearly identifiable models, Mila’s listener’s guide abandons the search for direct stylistic kinship. Echoes and citations of Bartók, Beethoven and Debussy can be glimpsed in the Fifth Concerto too: Mila scrupulously notes them, but without giving them any particular importance for understanding the musical processes. The few, blurred references to the ideal ‘places’ of Petrassi’s musical civilisation are dismissed as simple assonances, to be interpreted as further proof of the fact that «in his immense musical awareness» the composer «is certainly not afraid of possible meetings with History».18 Mila’s analysis of the last concertos concentrates on the gradual stripping of the music of any semantic connotation, which would lead the composer to the non-thematic structuralism of his maturity: writing of the Seventh Concerto (1964) he underlines the draining of the sound of any external expressive reference,19 while the Eighth Concerto (1972) is indicated as one of Petrassi’s supreme achievements, in that the composer «arrives at the idea that musical truth is essentially a freeing of musical language of any content and historical-semantic reference».20 Non-thematic structuralism, the destination of Petrassi’s expressive and technical-compositional journey, experiments on the potentiality of sound that is centred on parameters like tension, rhythm, timbre, intervals, dynamics and so on: a sound understood as pure fact, freed of its historical and linguistic references and explored in its material and informal qualities. elegance. But, of course, Stravinsky is the new pole that takes over in the Molto mosso, con vivacità and tends to expel the Bartókian cantus planus»; Ivi, pp. 109-111. 17 «So far the Récréation concertante might even pass for an independent duplicate of Stravinsky’s universe. But here [in the Adagio moderato], in these areas of fixity, Stravinsky is gently set aside, and with him Hindemith. […] The absolute, unique originality of Petrassi lies in these oases of mystery»; Ivi, pp. 124-125. 18 Ivi, p. 176. 19 Ivi, p. 159. 20 Ivi, p. 177. This phrase is taken up by GIULIANO ZOSI, Ricerca e sintesi nell’opera di Goffredo Petrassi, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letterature, 1978, p. 116. 8 SUSANNA PASTICCI Even in his abstract mature works remains of languages with historical connotations continue to rise to the surface: they are, as Boris Porena noted with reference to the Sixth Concerto and the later chamber works, almost imperceptible citations that quickly «dissolve in an abstract figural game».21 The presence of this wreckage of musical memory is part of a use of materials that is analogous to certain procedures in the figurative arts, where pre-formed objects are placed in a new context following an openly informal interpretation. A particularly lucid account of his relation with tradition can be found in an essay by the composer Guido Turchi, who underlines how Petrassi’s work, examined retrospectively, shows a discontinuous course, marked by sudden deviations, «as if he were following the adventures of a shifting talent». If his position towards the technico-linguistic innovation that is so important a part of the agenda of the twentieth-century avant-garde may seem elusive and digressive, that is simply because in his works expression often prevails notably over technique. His music does not conform to an a priori ‘poetics’, but is solicited by the restless development of a creative imagination that is fired by contact with stimuli and solicitations in sound from various historical and stylistic sources.22 But what survives of those stylistic models in Petrassi’s most mature music? Simply «the germ, the hint, the cause»: the idiomatic and lexical data, claims Turchi, are stripped of their roots, whether ethnic or cultural or intellectual, and absorbed in a discourse «dominated by the sovereign power of the primordial emotion of sound, its sensuous pleasure, and the synthetic intuition of form». Petrassi’s re-creative work is not the fruit of intellectual calculation, because what he takes from his models is never a prototype or a compositional system. He simply seizes some lexical features and gathers them into a language that is always non-systematic, in which the adoption of external elements is simply a direct and immediate means for reaching his expressive goals. And it is precisely this capacity always to put the expressive ends first that gives an «unmistakably Petrassian» accent to all the materials that he decides to accommodate in his compositional laboratory.23 Confirming the image of a composer always driven by deep expressive urges, the standard critical account has deployed the only possible 21 BORIS PORENA, I concerti di Petrassi e la crisi della musica come linguaggio, «Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana», I, 1967, pp. 101-119; rist. in Di Goffredo Petrassi. Una antologia cit., pp. 107-150: 121. 22 GUIDO TURCHI, Profilo di Goffredo Petrassi, «Terzo Programma», 1964/3, pp. 266-279: 266-268. 23 Ivi, pp. 275-277. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 9 parameter of judgement for interpreting the practice of a shifting and unpredictable composer, who never shared the obsession of many of his colleagues of finding himself ‘at the limits of the fertile earth’. He is a decidedly ‘awkward’ composer compared with the trends of the dominant twentieth-century avant-garde movements, both for the radically unsystematic nature of his linguistic choices, and for his tendency to work on materials with strong genre or historical associations, even though this brought the difficulty of providing a clear-cut definition of the contours of his artistic personality, if not the risk of actually moving on the treacherous terrain of mimesis. Petrassi showed he was fully aware of this risk when, in the interview he gave to Luca Lombardi in 1980, he claimed with conviction that the concept of style was an idea of the past: «Stile che cosa significa? Significa caratteri peculiari, caratteri specifici di un autore o di un’opera. Quindi caratteri ben individualizzabili e che denunciano immediatamente l’autore».24 That a composer be identifiable, in Petrassi’s view, is not necessarily positive: in many cases, indeed, the recognition is linked to the tendency to use a limited range of stylistic features, which become mannerisms. Rather than style, in these cases one should speak of a ‘personal characteristic’. Here Petrassi cites the case of Capogrossi: invented an extremely distinctive visual style to which he remained true all his life, but that does not make him a great painter. However, there are certain composers, particularly in the modern age, whose style has various different components: in this sense, claims Petrassi, «io mi ritengo un musicista eclettico».25 Faced with the mare magnum of creative stimuli on the contemporary scene, the composer needs to be able to choose: Il compositore deve saper filtrare tutte le possibilità attraverso la sua persona, attraverso il suo pensiero, e quindi attraverso la sua sensibilità, e attraverso quello che vuol dire e far dire alla musica secondo i suoi caratteri. Sarà un musicista eclettico, ma in questo eclettismo si impone una scelta e una responsabilità, altrimenti noi arriviamo al muscista eclettico e irresponsabile e, in un’altra accezione, al musicista cinico.26 24 «Style, what does it mean? It means particular characteristics, specific characteristics of a composer or a work. So easily identifiable characteristics that immediately reveal who the composer is»; LUCA LOMBARDI, Conversazioni con Petrassi, Milan, Suvini Zerboni, 1980, pp. 169-170. 25 «I regard myself as an eclectic composer»; Ivi, p. 170. 26 «The composer needs to be able to filter all the possibilities through his person, through his thought, and so through his sensibility, and through what he wants to say and make music say, following his characteristics. He will be an eclectic composer, but in this eclecticism a choice and a sense of responsibility is imposed, otherwise we would end up with an eclectic and irresponsible composer and, in another sense, a cynical composer»; Ivi, p. 174. 10 SUSANNA PASTICCI The ‘cynical’ composer is one who drifts along: he swoops down uninhibitedly and indiscriminately on the most varied models from the tradition, without ‘filtering’ the musical material, without adapting it to his own poetic needs. The essence of Petrassi’s relation with his models lies precisely in this kind of categorical imperative: one should approach one’s models with an attitude of profound ethical responsibility, which means being guided by a strong inner motivation. Because the capacity to ‘filter’ material inherited from the tradition is not a purely technical fact, the result of craftsmanship, but rather an attitude that should always derive from an intimate expressive need. The ‘secrets of the workshop’ Petrassi was far from being a shy and isolated artist. He collaborated fruitfully with major exponents of the cultural scene. But he was always decidedly sparing of information on his compositional techniques and working methods. The idea that this reticence, displayed with conviction in the public sphere, also extended to more friendly and private situations, is confirmed in Petrassi’s correspondence with Massimo Mila: È vero, sono avarissimo di dichiarazioni perché le reputo inutili o vanitose. Ho alcuni complessi morali che mi impediscono il salutare esercizio della confessione. Se la musica non riesce ad esprimersi da sé, non c’è surrogato verbale esplicativo che possa aiutarla. Insomma, rimpiango che non ci si veda più spesso per poterti parlare con più confidenza. Nonostante le apparenze sono molto solo, e per di più timido. Tu sei uno dei pochissimi ai quali mi sento fraternamente vicino.27 However, it would be improper, and also limiting, to interpret Petrassi’s reserve as just a matter of personal inclination: his refusal to divulge his workshop secrets derives from a deeper artistic motive, which is explained by his essential mistrust of the idea that explaining compositional techniques can really provide a useful key to understanding music. 27 «It’s true, I am extremely sparing of declarations, as I regard them as useless or vain. I have some moral complexes that inhibit the healthy exercise of confession. If the music does not succeed in expressing itself, there is no explanatory verbal surrogate that can help it. In short, I am sorry that we do not see each other more often, so as to be able to talk more intimately. Despite appearances I am very lonely, and also shy. You are one of the very few to whom I feel fraternally close»; letter from Goffredo Petrassi to Massimo Mila dated Rome, 4 March 1957, manuscript. Unpublished document held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Mila Collection. I am grateful to Ulrich Mosch, curator of the Berio, Carter, Petrassi and Mila Collections for allowing me to consult Petrassi’s letters and sketches for this article, as well as authorising them to be reprinted here. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 11 This was a fairly isolated position in the cultural context of the twentieth century, in which, particularly in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, musical reception was heavily conditioned by the introductions and comments of composers on their work: and since these comments inevitably tended to shift the axis of the discussion onto the technical aspects of composition, critical and historiographical commentary too gradually began to follow an interpretive practice that considered works of music as documenting technical-compositional development.28 Glancing through Petrassi’s correspondence, however, one can see that in at least one case he decided to break his normal practice: in a letter to his colleague Elliott Carter in January 1960, he expatiated at length in a detailed explanation of his poetics and his compositional techniques.29 After a brief mention of the difficulty of talking about his music, Petrassi described the fixed points of his creative practice with an analytical lucidity and intellectual rigour that make it a document of particular interest for understanding his musical poetics. Before discussing this letter, we need to consider the reasons that led him to this unusual effort of self-analysis of his creative practice. Above all, we should not underestimate his friendship with Carter, whom he deeply admired, and whose name recurs particularly insistently in the interview with Luca Lombardi in 1980: Io ho parlato di Carter, non soltanto perché c’è un legame di amicizia personale molto intenso, ma anche perché mi pare che la sua musica contenga quei caratteri che a me hanno sempre interessato: caratteri di moto, caratteri di invenzione timbrica, caratteri di vitalità, infine forti caratteri intellettuali. Posso dire così in termini molto semplici che è una musica di movimento, non una musica di stasi, e quindi posso azzardare a dire che è una musica attiva e non una musica passiva; e così ritengo che in fondo anche la mia sia musica che sollecita a una certa attività. Sarà l’attività dello spirito, ma è anche un’attività che mi sembra vitale. Non c’è una sollecitazione all’ipnosi, ma c’è una sollecitazione a muoversi, a dialogare. A dire e pensare qualche cosa.30 28 CARL DAHLHAUS, Geschichte und Geschichten, in Die Musik der fünfziger Jahre. Versuch einer Revision, ed. C. Dahlhaus, Mainz, Schott, 1985 («Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung», 26), pp. 9-20. 29 Letter from Goffredo Petrassi to Elliott Carter dated 25 January 1960, typewritten. Unpublished document held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Carter Collection. 30 «I mentioned Carter, not only because there is a very strong tie of personal friendship, but also because his music seems to me to contain those characteristics that have always interested me: characteristics of movement, characteristics of inventive timbre, characteristics of vitality, and strong intellectual characteristics. So I can say very simply that it is a music of movement, not a music of stasis, and so I can dare to say that it is an active music, not a passive music; and in the same way I think my own music is one that incites one to a certain activity. 12 SUSANNA PASTICCI His friendship with Carter dates from the early 1950s, when Petrassi was President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM): even at the foot of the circular newsletters, containing news on the association’s activities, Petrassi always added a personal touch to the missives for his American colleague with a brief greeting or short updates on what he was working on.31 In a review of the ISCM Festival in Rome in 1959, published in the Music Quarterly, Carter spoke enthusiastically of Petrassi’s Serenata.32 In later years Petrassi took steps to make Carter’s music known in Italy, and to have it performed and broadcast: for his part, Carter proposed Petrassi for election as Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1977.33 The possibility of sharing ideas and intellectual stimuli must have had a certain impact on the parallel developments in their creative work. In many cases, the opportunity of hearing a piece by the other encouraged more wide-ranging reflections, as emerges from a letter of 1968, in which Petrassi writes about Carter’s Piano Concerto: La presentazione sul disco mi ha aiutato a capire le tue intenzioni e, da queste, il valore della tua musica. Ma mi ha posto anche alcuni problemi di estremo interesse che avrei desiderato discutere subito con te, se l’Oceano non lo impedisse. Uno soprattutto: l’a-temporalità che mi sembra un aspetto, forse inconscio, della tua ricerca.34 In the context of a particularly rich and lively exchange of letters, the one of January 1960 remains unique precisely because of the unusually systematic way in which Petrassi explicates his compositional ideas, giving his friend a genuine spiritual ‘manifesto’ of his poetics. His reason It may be activity of the spirit, but it is also an activity that seems to me vital. There isn’t incitement to hypnosis, but there is an incitement to move, to converse. To say and think something»; LUCA LOMBARDI, Conversazioni con Petrassi cit., p. 47. 31 Goffredo Petrassi’s letters to Elliott Carter (written mainly in French, but sometimes in Italian or English) are held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Carter Collection; this large collection also contains some copies of Carter’s replies to Petrassi in the period 19541988. 32 ELLIOTT CARTER, Current Chronicle: Italy, «Music Quarterly», XLV, 1959, pp. 530541. 33 In 1984 Carter also composed a piece in Petrassi’s honour, Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi for solo violin, first performed at the Pontino Festival in 1984 (concert on 15 June, violinist Georg Mönch). 34 «The sleeve notes helped me understand your intentions and, from these, the value of your music. It also posed some extremely interesting problems for me that I would have liked to discuss with you at once, if the Ocean did not prevent it. One above all: the timelessness that seems to me an aspect, perhaps unconscious, of your experiments»; letter from Goffredo Petrassi to Elliott Carter dated Rome 27 April 1968, typewritten. Unpublished document held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Carter Collection. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 13 for drawing up this document is mentioned in the first lines of the letter: Carter had accepted an invitation to write an article on Petrassi for the review «Incontri musicali», edited by Luciano Berio, and so he had asked his friend for some comments that might help him prepare his text. This is Petrassi’s letter entire: Caro Elliott, scrivere una lettera difficile diviene ancora più complicato scriverla in una lingua straniera. Dato che tu conosci abbastanza bene l’italiano, e puoi leggerlo, mi decido a scrivere nella mia lingua abituale. Mi hai posto, e te ne rendi conto, una domanda alla quale non so rispondere. Ma prima di entrare in argomento lascia che ti dica quanto ti sia grato per aver accettato di collaborare al numero di «Incontri» a me dedicato. È un onore, ne sono fiero e lusingato. Te ne ringrazio profondamente. Ho scritto a Suvini Zerboni che ti mandasse per qualche giorno il manoscritto del Trio. Quello di Suoni Notturni non te lo faccio spedire da Ricordi perché è un piccolo pezzo che, pur riflettendo i miei interessi attuali, considero come operetta marginale. Il Trio, invece, è la logica conseguenza della Serenata. Serialità – i miei rapporti con questa tecnica sono cominciati con la Récréation Concertante del 1953, e hanno proseguito con più o meno elasticità fino alla Invenzione Concertata, del 1956. In questa opera la tecnica è usata più largamente e, salvo alcuni tratti, più radicalmente (vedere ad esempio i vari canoni cancrizzanti e il trattamento seriale a partire dall’ “Adagio sostenuto” di pag. 35 ecc.). C’è già un principio di trasformazione del modo di “essere” della musica che mi porterà al “superamento” seriale. Nel Quartetto la serie compare soltanto nell’Adagio finale a partire da pag. 59. Nella Serenata e nel Trio niente più serie. La liberazione dalla disciplina è, almeno per quel che mi riguarda, compiuta; ora potrò tornare o non tornare all’uso seriale, ma certi principi attivi sono per sempre assimilati e la musica che verrà dopo tale disciplina sarà necessariamente diversa. Ciò non significa cambiamenti o conversioni radicali, che nell’arte non significano nulla, oppure … è un lungo discorso. Mi illudo di aver conservato una certa unità dilatata con quanto ho composto prima. D’altra parte alcuni principi strutturali sono rimasti i medesimi che in opere precedenti. Hai già notato come nel Quartetto il noyau sia rappresentato dalle prime quattro note, ed è vero. Nella Serenata il noyau sono le prime tre note (già in Noche Oscura erano le prime quattro note) e così nel Trio il “motto” è rappresentato dall’esordio del violoncello. Ciò mi conduce a parlare della FORMA. Aboliti i rapporti tonali la diretta conseguenza è la progressiva abolizione del tema e dei suoi derivati (sviluppi). A questo ho sostituito le cellule di poche note, come ho detto. Così anche la costruzione generale dell’opera è modificata. Dal Secondo Concerto in poi non ho più usato movimenti distinti. S’intende che nei precedenti lavori lo schema classico (Allegro Andante Largo Adagio Presto ecc. …) è ancora presente, sia pure in maniera concatenata. In seguito tale forma si è dissolta in una maggiore unità, rappresentata appunto dal lavoro sui microorganismi cellulari, e in luogo dei vari movimenti c’è, soprattutto nella Serenata, 14 SUSANNA PASTICCI un seguito di avvenimenti (events) musicali che si auto-generano secondo le necessità della fantasia. Ecco la parola: fantasia – invenzione. Completa disponibilità formale, materiale completamente inventato su pochi elementi di base continuamente variati nei rapporti ritmici, di intervalli, timbrici, ecc. Anche se come larva sussiste ancora il ricordo dei mouvements, essi non sono più determinanti per assicurare la forma. Evidentemente non si può applicare il concetto di frase: ogni cellula ha in sé la propria organicità: la costruzione generale deriva dalla concatenazione delle cellule. In opposizione alla teoria della strutturazione totale ho cercato di realizzare quella della liberazione totale rivalutando appunto la donnée fondamentale, di cui non si parla mai, cioè la fantasia. Vedrai nella Serenata alcune cadenze, così come ci sono nel Trio; non è soltanto virtuosismo strumentale, ma piuttosto meditazioni individuali. Ho tentato di sciogliere il ritmo da una certa rigidità che mi infastidiva nelle opere precedenti. La pertinenza timbrica è stata sempre la mia preoccupazione. Infine il contenuto. Pur riconoscendo che il termine di astrazione è il più adeguato, mi sembra di poter affermare che questi eventi musicali esprimano ciò che ho dentro di me, ciò che avviene in me stesso e, forse m’illudo, nel mondo odierno. Come definirlo? Non so se da tutte queste parole confuse tu possa estrarne qualcosa di utile. È la prima volta che mi lascio andare in confessioni del genere, e ci voleva l’occasione, l’affetto e la stima che ho per te a farmi decidere. Se risulteranno inutili allora scusami per aver abusato della tua attenzione. (Le ottave! credo di averle abbandonate dalla pagina 34 del Quartetto e non ne ho più adoperate. In realtà ora cerco di evitarle per quanto possibile. C’è la ragione). Per altri dettagli, se dovessero essere necessari, sono pronto a risponderti. Che lettera lunga: troppo lunga. Saluti molto affettuosi, tuo Goffredo.35 35 «Dear Elliott, writing a difficult letter becomes even more complicated if it is in a foreign language. As you understand Italian fairly well, and can read it, I have decided to write in my usual tongue. You realise that you have asked a question I cannot answer. But before coming to grips with the question, let me say how grateful I am to you for agreeing to contribute to the number of “Incontri” devoted to me. It is an honour, and I am proud and flattered. I am profoundly grateful to you. I have written to Suvini Zerboni asking him to send you the manuscript of the Trio for a few days. I shan’t have Ricordi send you that of Suoni Notturni as it is a short piece that may reflect my present interests, but which I regard as a minor and marginal work. But the Trio is the logic consequence of the Serenata. Serial music – my relations with this technique began with the Récréation Concertante of 1953, and continued with more or less elasticity until the Invenzione Concertata, of 1956. In this work the technique is used on a greater scale and, apart from some features, more radically (see for example the various retrograde canons and the serial treatment starting from the Adagio sostenuto on p. 35 etc.). There is already a principle of change in the music’s way of “being” that led me to “leave behind” serial writing. In the Quartet the series appears only in the final Adagio starting from p. 59. In the Serenata and the Trio there are no more series. My freedom from the discipline is now complete; now I can go back or not to using series but certain active principles have been assimilated forever and the music that will come after this USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 15 The number of «Incontri musicali» that was to include Carter’s essay on Petrassi was never published. The review closed with the fourth number, printed in September 1960; 36 already in late 1959, following some difficulties with the publisher Suvini Zerboni, Berio had made contact with another publisher in Milan, Bompiani, that was to guarantee a larger print run: but the plan came to nothing, and the magazine folded in 1960 although the following numbers were already in an advanced discipline will inevitably be different. That does not mean radical changes or conversions, which in art are meaningless, or … it’s a long story. I flatter myself that I have kept a certain broad unity with what I composed before. On the other hand some structural principles have stayed the same as in the preceding works. You have already noted how in the Quartet the noyau [core] is there in the first four notes, and that’s true. In the Serenata the noyau is the first three notes (before in Noche Oscura they were the first four notes) and in the same way in the Trio the “motto” is there in the exordium of the cello. This leads me on to talk about FORM. When tonal relations have been abolished the direct result is the gradual abolition of the theme and its by-products (developments). I have replaced this with cells of a few notes, as I said. In that way the general construction of the work is modified too. From the Second Concerto on I have no longer used distinct movement. Obviously, in the previous works the classical scheme (Allegro Andante Largo Adagio Presto etc. …) is still present, though linked together. Later this form is dissolved in a greater unity, represented by the work on cellular micro-organisms, and in place of the various movements there is, above all in the Serenata, a series of musical events that are self-generated according to the needs of the imagination. That’s the word: imagination – invention. Complete formal receptiveness, material completely invented on a few basic elements continually varied in the relations of rhythm, intervals, timbre, etc. Even though the memory of mouvements survives as a larva, they are no longer decisive in ensuring the form. Evidently the concept of phrase cannot be applied: each cell has its own organic structure in itself: the general structure derives from the interlinking of the cells. In opposition to the theory of total structuring I have sought to achieve that of total freedom by revaluing the fundamental donnée, which is no longer mentioned, that is, imagination. You will see some cadenzas in the Serenata, just as there are in the Trio; it’s not just instrumental virtuosity, but more like individual meditations. I have tried to free the rhythm of a certain rigidity that irritated me in the previous works. I have always been concerned that the timbre should be relevant. Finally the content. While recognising that the term abstraction is more adequate, I think I can claim that these musical events express what I have inside me, what happens inside me and, perhaps I flatter myself, in the present world. How can one define it? I don’t know if you can extract something useful from these confused words. It is the first time that I have let myself go in confessions of this kind, and it needed the occasion, my affection and esteem for you to make my mind up. If they are no use then I’m sorry for wasting your time (The octaves! I think I gave them up from page 34 of the Quartet and I have never used them any more. Actually, I try to avoid them whenever possible. There’s a reason). I am willing to answer any other questions that may be necessary. What a long letter: too long. Warmest good wishes,yours, Goffredo.» Letter from Goffredo Petrassi to Elliott Carter dated 25 January 1960, typewritten. Unpublished document held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Carter Collection. 36 The first number of «Incontri musicali. Quaderni internazionali di musica contemporanea diretti da Luciano Berio» was published by Suvini Zerboni in 1956. A short note on page 2 of the first volume explains the aims of the magazine: «questi quaderni di musica contemporanea sono nati nel desiderio di stabilire un colloquio fecondo fra quei compositori che vogliono chiarire a se stessi e agli altri la sostanza artigiana e poetica del loro lavoro»; («this review of contemporary music was founded with the aim of setting up a fruitful dialogue between those composers who want to explain to themselves and to others the art and craft of their work»). The three following numbers were published in the years 1958, 1959 and 1960. 16 SUSANNA PASTICCI stage of preparation.37 Berio had planned two numbers devoted to the two great composers of the previous generation, Petrassi and Dallapiccola: 38 the plan, as emerges from his correspondence in that period, had been much discussed with Massimo Mila, who proved once again to be the main reference point for Italian musical life in the post-war period. For Berio too, as for Petrassi, Mila was not only an authoritative critic, but also a trusted collaborator with whom he could discuss in depth the most delicate and controversial aspects of his plans: Certo però che un discorso sul Dallapiccola di oggi è difficile a farsi, per tante ragioni. Io non so ancora come me la caverò. Di Petrassi mi interessa il Magnificat e la Noche oscura e in genere tutti i suoi lavori corali (a parte il Salmo IX che mi fa l’effetto di una trascrizione della Sinfonia di Salmi di Stravinsky). Comunque parlare di Petrassi è assai più facile e stimolante: un po’ perché è un musicista in continuo movimento – gli piace rischiare – e un po’ per la simpatia umana che desta. In fondo, a guardare le cose da vicino, mi sembra che proprio la scrittura corale di Dallapiccola non è di per sé così interessante e significativa come talvolta giunge ad essere quella di Petrassi, o come può essere invece la scrittura strumentale dello stesso Dallapiccola.39 Berio had asked the two men concerned, Petrassi and Dallapiccola, to indicate some Italian and foreign composers who would be willing to write about their music.40 In giving Berio a list of foreign names – Regi37 An account of the difficulties of the magazine in 1959 and 1960 is contained in two letters from Berio to Dallapiccola, dated 5 December 1959 and 29 August 1960 (unpublished manuscripts held in copies in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Berio Collection). 38 Some years later the idea that a number of the magazine devoted to a single composer might be a discussion forum on the work of the two most representative Italian composers of the period was taken up by Guido M. Gatti, who gave the first and second number of «Quaderni della Rassegna Musicale» (published by Einaudi) over to Petrassi (no. 1, 1964) and Dallapiccola (no. 2, 1965). Similarly, in 1964 the review «Terzo Programma» of ERI-RAI, which published the most important historical, artistic and cultural texts broadcast by the Third Programme of Radio-Rai in the previous three months, gave extensive coverage to contemporary music, publishing in the same number a Profilo di Luigi Dallapiccola (by Roman Vlad) and a Profilo di Goffredo Petrassi (by Guido Turchi); «Terzo Programma», 1964/3, pp. 257-279. 39 «But, of course, talking about the Dallapiccola of today is difficult, for all sorts of reasons. I still don’t know how I’ll manage. Petrassi’s Magnificat and Noche oscura interest me, and in general all his choral works (except Salmo IX which strikes me as a transcription of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psaumes). But talking about Petrassi is much more easy and stimulating: partly because he is a composer who is in constant movement – he likes risk – and partly because I like him as a man. At bottom, looking at things more closely, Dallapiccola’s choral writing doesn’t seem to me to be in itself as interesting and significant as what Petrassi’s achieves sometimes, or as Dallpiccola’s own instrumental writing»; letter from Luciano Berio to Massimo Mila, dated 20 November 1959, typewritten. Unpublished document held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Mila Collection. 40 In line with the spirit of the review, Berio asked for suggestions of people directly involved in music, as he explains in a letter to Dallapiccola dated Milan, 30 June 1959: «Sarebbe però molto utile che Lei stesso mi indicasse qualche altro nome – possibilmente straniero USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 17 nald Smith Brindle, Peter Stadlen, Humphrey Searle, Heinrich Scherchen and Roger Session – Dallapiccola had also suggested the name of Elliott Carter.41 But when contacted by Berio, Carter had declined the invitation to draw a parallel between the two composers – «I would like to write for “Incontri Musicali”, but I am a bit sorry to have to take sides between Petrassi and Dallapiccola, both of whom I find interesting in different ways» – but expressed his willingness to write an essay on Petrassi – «this is something that interests me a great deal».42 In April 1960 Carter sent the text of his article to Petrassi to have his reaction before it was published, something Carter regarded as absolutely necessary as the prospect of a composer commenting on and analysing the music of another is never neutral and objective, but inevitably tends to give greater importance to certain aspects closer to his own sensibility and personal interests: I don’t like writing and, usually, I only do it when it seems necessary to me – it may be that I am wrong about your music, seeing only the things that interest me – but I shall correct myself if you want. I must say that, having the leisure to read your scores when I was in Europe they all interested me and struck me a lot and I tried to express what I found in them and to pay homage to a composer of the first order.43 Actually, the content of Carter’s essay is not substantially different from the notes on a musical poetics in Petrassi’s letter of January 1960; this article did not appear until 1997, when it was published with the title The Recent Works of Goffredo Petrassi (1960) in a collection of writings by the composer edited by Jonathan Bernard.44 Carter underlines above – sul quale poter contare: qualcuno, cioè (non critico, ma compositore o esecutore) che potesse contribuire in maniera originale e sensata a questo numero»; («But it would be very useful if you yourself could indicate some other names – foreign if possible – on which we can count: not critics, but composers or performers, who might contribute in an original and intelligent way to this number»); copy of unpublished letter, manuscript, held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Berio Collection. 41 Letter from Luigi Dallapiccola to Luciano Berio, dated Forte dei Marmi, 6 July 1959, typewritten. Unpublished document held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Berio Collection. 42 Letter from Elliott Carter to Luciano Berio, dated 17 December 1959, typewritten. Unpublished document held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Berio Collection. 43 Letter from Elliott Carter to Goffredo Petrassi, dated 21 April 1960, typewritten. Copy of unpublished document held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, Carter Collection. 44 ELLIOTT CARTER, Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937-1995, edited by Jonathan W. Bernard, Rochester, Rochester University Press, 1997, pp. 187-193. This collection also contains a second essay by Carter on Petrassi (Some Reflections on “Tre per sette”, pp. 193-197), written in 1986 at the request of Enzo Restagno and published with the title Riflessioni su “Tre per sette” in the volume Petrassi cit., pp. 310-312. The English edition has two musical examples that were not included in the Italian edition of 1986. 18 SUSANNA PASTICCI all the difficulty of grasping analytically the essential elements in Petrassi’s music: «“traditional” analytic methods are not effective in coming to grips with [his] works».45 Not because the individual details of the musical surface – chords, counterpoint, phrases and accompaniments – take on a fresh appearance from those in traditional grammar: what is questioned and, finally, completely dismissed, is above all the syntactic context in which the individual elements are included.46 All this, Carter underlines, as a sign of the absolute domination of imagination, the creative imagination, and the constant search for the ‘unexpected’. Constant changes of rhythm, texture, dynamics and timbre determine a changing musical surface that gives more importance to the logic of contrast than that of likeness, and in which the connection of ideas is more often ‘oblique’ than immediate and direct. Particularly interesting are the extra-musical references Carter introduces to describe some aspects of Petrassi’s music: the technique of linking musical ideas, for example, has a direct equivalent in the methods of symbolic and analogical expression in modern poetry. To explain the concept of ‘events’ – a central concept in Petrassi’s poetics, who in his 1960 letter had defined the form of his pieces as «a series of musical events that are self-generated according to the needs of the imagination» – Carter cites a definition of the English philosopher and mathematician Alfred N. Whitehead: «the event is a unit of action in a total sequence in which the event contains within itself not only its own history but as well its prefiguration of possible futures and its own individualized character».47 In musical terms Carter brings out the analogy of Petrassi’s techniques with certain techniques of Baroque music, particularly the rhapsodic modulations of the organ fantasias; less usual in criticism of Petrassi was the reference to Haydn’s music, which Carter associates with Petrassi’s both for its great inventive freedom and for the capacity of both composers to combine different musical qualities within a composite and varied, but at the same time, strongly unified dramaturgy. Using history, to make history Carter’s interpretation confirms once again that a recognition of the historical and stylistic models that stimulated Petrassi’s creativity could 45 ELLIOTT CARTER, The recent works of Goffredo Petrassi (1960), in Collected Essays and Lectures cit., p. 187. 46 Carter’s remarks refer to Petrassi’s works from the late 1950s, particularly Serenata (1958), Invenzione concertata (1956-57) and the String Quartet (1958). 47 ELLIOTT CARTER, The recent works of Goffredo Petrassi, cit., p. 187. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 19 be extended indefinitely. Even though the discontinuity of Petrassi’s creative impulses does not allow us to draw up a final map of his shifting reference points, we cannot help noting that one of these models, Stravinsky, was able to exercise on Petrassi’s imagination an influence stronger than any other: Fu proprio la folgorazione della Sinfonia di Salmi a determinare la mia devozione per Stravinsky, una devozione che devo dire, ahimé, mi ha segnato non dirò per sempre, ma certo per molti anni. Da questo asservimento alla poetica stravinskyana ho cercato di liberarmi come ho potuto […]. La Sinfonia di Salmi […] costituiva qualcosa di completamente nuovo e diverso, qualcosa capace di smuovere la mia esperienza più profonda degli archetipi antichi e di trasformarla in qualcosa di attuale che improvvisamente scoprivo in me.48 A possible testing ground for verifying this process of freeing himself from “servitude” to Stravinsky’s poetics is a piece from Petrassi’s last creative season, conceived as an explicit homage to his most important and long-lasting model: Sestina d’autunno. “Veni, creator Igor” for six instrumentalists (viola, cello, double bass, guitar, mandolin and percussion), commissioned by the Accademia Chigiana of Siena in 1982 for the centenary of the birth of Igor Stravinsky. The choice of title is explained by the composer in an interview given to Enzo Restagno in 1986: Il sottotitolo, “Veni, creator Igor”, si spiega perché l’inizio della viola sola è tratto dal “Veni, creator Spiritus” dell’inno gregoriano. Questa è la matrice che prosegue per tutto il pezzo. Nel sottotitolo non mi sembrava giusto dire “Veni, creator Spiritus” perché non avrebbe significato niente, allora ho deciso per “Veni, creator Igor” in modo che si precisasse il mio intendimento. Sestina d’autunno perché il pezzo è formato un po’ come una sestina poetica; la sestina è infatti quel breve componimento nel quale si accoppiano le rime a due a due. Nello sviluppo del componimento ci sono alcuni momenti in cui gli strumenti si legano, fanno delle specie di cadenze a due a due: la chitarra con il contrabbasso, la viola con il violoncello e così via. Perché d’autunno? Sestina d’autunno prima di tutto suona bene e a queste cose, esteticamente, io tengo. E poi l’autunno in fondo può anche adombrare l’autunno della mia vita perché io sto vivendo la mia stagione autunnale.49 48 «It was the blinding light of the Symphony of Psalms that determined my devotion for Stravinsky, a devotion that I have to say, alas, marked me – I won’t say forever, but certainly for many years. From this servitude to Stravinsky’s poetics I tried to free myself as well as I could […]. The Symphony of Psalms […] was something completely new and different, something able to stir my deepest experience of ancient archetypes and transform it into something relevant that I suddenly discovered in myself»; GOFFREDO PETRASSI, Una biografia raccontata dall’autore e raccolta da Enzo Restagno, in Petrassi cit., pp. 3-53: 20. 49 «The explanation for the sub-title, “Veni, creator Igor”, is that the start of the viola solo is taken from the “Veni, creator Spiritus” in the Gregorian hymn. This is the matrix that 20 SUSANNA PASTICCI The choice of the Gregorian hymn Veni creator Spiritus (reproduced in example 1) has particularly powerful symbolic implications. Traditionally attributed to Rabanus Maurus (786-856), abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Magonza, it is one of the most important hymns in the Christian liturgy, and is sung on particularly solemn occasions such as the election of popes, the consecration of bishops, the ordination of priests and the celebration of synods and councils. The text expresses the total submission of the Church to the majesty of God and its absolute willingness to receive the action of the Holy Spirit, artificer of the consecration: «Come creative Spirit, visit our minds, fills our hearts with the divine grace that You created». For a deeply practising Catholic like Petrassi, who very probably fully understood the meaning of the text and its special celebrative function, the choice of this hymn suggests a full-blown profession of artistic ‘faith’. Replacing the term “Spiritus” with the composer’s name, “Igor”, goes beyond the confines of affectionate homage to become an authentic act of worship: the recognition of a divine quality that could not have been expressed more directly than in the comparison of Stravinsky with the Holy Spirit – “Veni, creator Igor”. Example 1: Veni, creator Spiritus, Gregorian hymn The expectations created by the sub-title are, however, ignored in the first part of the piece, whose sound world is far removed from the materials and techniques of Stravinsky. In the interview with Enzo Restagno, Petrassi claims that the opening for solo viola, reproduced in example 2 (see p. 22), is taken from the Veni, creator Spiritus, and that «this is the continues for the whole piece. It didn’t seem right to me to say “Veni, creator Spiritus” in the sub-title because it would have meant nothing, so I decided on “Veni, creator Igor” to make my intention clear. Sestina d’autunno because the piece is formed a bit like a poetic sestina; the sestina is a short composition in which the rhymes are paired two by two. In the development of the composition there are some moments in which the instruments are linked, perform a sort of cadenza two by two: the guitar with the double bass, the viola with the cello and so on. Why autumn? Above all, Sestina d’autunno sounds good and these things are important to me aesthetically. And, after all, autumn can also suggest the autumn of my life because I am in the autumn season of my life»; Ivi, p. 52. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 21 matrix for the whole piece». But, in practical terms, what does the idea that a Gregorian melody can function as ‘matrix’ for a whole piece mean? The concept of matrix was particularly important in twentieth-century music, above all in relation to the development of serial techniques. In integral serialism the matrix often appeared as a numerical series used to regulate, through the application of more or less complex rules of permutation, the choice of different musical parameters: pitch, duration, attack, dynamic and register. The use of a matrix derives from the need to generate materials that are coherently derived from a fundamental structure, on the basis of a musical logic that is wholly freed of the thematic-motivic thought of the classical-romantic tradition and Schönberg’s twelvetone system. However, in a piece like Sestina d’autunno there is no visible procedure of serial structuring: when the composer claims that the Gregorian hymn is the matrix of the piece, he is actually using this term in a sense that has a direct antecedent more in the improvisations of Baroque music, based on the procedures of ornatus and diminutio, than in twentieth-century structural technique. Comparing the incipit of the viola in example 2 with the Veni, creator Spiritus in example 1 one can see how the notes of the Gregorian melody are used as the basic structure for creating a dense melismatic arabesque, which seems to walk the tight-rope while allowing us to glimpse the fundamental pivots of the Gregorian hymn. So it is in the perspective of the Baroque ornatus that we need to understand the composer’s concept of matrix; a sense that links up with the idea of noyau – the “core” in the sense of the starting point for the compositional process, mentioned by Petrassi in his 1960 letter to Carter.50 A noyau that has nothing in common with a serial matrix, as it is not used to make the material proliferate through a phase of pre-compositional elaboration; but is not a theme either, as it is not expounded and developed in terms of motif and theme. The Gregorian hymn is a lexical element with strong genre and historical associations: when Petrassi accommodates it in his compositional laboratory, this element is stripped of its stylistic connotations and used as a simple succession of intervals, able to delineate in the musical space the fixed points of a musical plan that is articulated variously and discontinuously. Evoking the virtuoso, ornamental passages in Baroque music, the opening solo for viola leads us into the piece, which also maintains the rhapsodic and improvised character of the instrumental fantasias and seventeenth-century ricercari in its formal articulation: «a series of musical events 50 Cfr. note 35. 22 SUSANNA PASTICCI that are self-generated according to the needs of the imagination», to cite once again what Petrassi wrote in the letter to Carter. The solo writing concentrates the tension on the contrasts of timbre and dynamics created by the alternation of various instrumental groups, and the choice of grouping the instruments in a variety of different and heterogeneous combinations helps strengthen the rhapsodic character of the piece. At the same time, however, the concertante texture also becomes an effective means of defining the form: the different combinations of instruments give rise to a series of formal sections that, by introducing strong discontinuities of timbre, define the piece’s formal articulation. Example 2: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, bars 1-4 USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 23 As in many of Petrassi’s works, the instrumental writing in Sestina d’autunno too emerges as the main ‘actor’ in a piece that has the features of a veritable ‘dramatisation’ of sound events. The interest in the musical instrument, and in the rich range of creative potentialities linked to the exploration of its physical character, is also confirmed in this case as one of the central elements of the composer’s poetics; partly because the instrumental timbre, apart from its material value, brings with it a series of idiomatic implications linked to other important aspects such as dynamics, phrasing, rhythmical articulation and agogics. Actually, from the point of view of experimentation in timbre, we should recall that Petrassi was always essentially extraneous to the more daring explorations of the twentieth-century avant-garde, settling on a writing that in the end was always fairly traditional. So what we are pointing to when we speak of the centrality of the dimension of timbre is the possibility that the sound image of the instrument – in its materiality and before it has even taken on specific connotations of pitch and duration – might represent the main concern of the composer, if not indeed the moving force of his inspiration, the starting point of the creative act. This conjecture is confirmed in the composer’s drafts and working notes: example 3 (see pp. 24-25) reproduces one of the pages of the preliminary draft of Sestina d’autunno, containing the materials of bars 64-74.51 For the final version Petrassi introduced more or less substantial modifications in defining pitch and rhythmic articulation; but the most significant fact that emerges from reading this sketch is the almost maniacal care with which he wrote down the agogics, the dynamics and all those indications for performance (sul ponticello, sfiorato sul tasto and so on) that define the timbre of the individual sounds. A care for detail that actually, in the overall economy of the piece, takes on much greater significance than mere attention to local matters; above all if we consider that, as we have already noted, it is precisely the timbre of the different instrumental combinations that determines and strengthens the concertante texture, which in turn is the main factor that defines the form of the piece. At this point, we still need to clarify how a conception that is so strongly weighted towards the dimension of timbre relates to the cri- 51 The sketches for Sestina d’autunno are held in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle (Petrassi Collections, Musical manuscripts section). There are 31 manuscript pages numbered progressively, containing a single sketch that, despite various cancellings, substantially correspond to the printed score. The most obvious differences concern the cancelling of a long section of 36 bars, which in the sketch is between bars 134 and 135 of the printed score, and another section of 14 bars between bars 274 and 275. 24 SUSANNA PASTICCI teria that preside over the organisation of pitch, also bearing in mind the presence and function of the Gregorian hymn. Example 3: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, page 8 of the preliminary draft Example 4 reproduces a significant extract from the opening of the score (bars 5-19): the conjecture that the Veni, creator Spiritus is the ‘matrix’ from which the materials of the piece freely derive is confirmed if we examine the individual instrumental lines, in which, despite the diminutions and octave intervals we can see the basic features of the Gregorian hymn. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY Example 4: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, bars 5-19 25 26 Segue: Ex. 4 SUSANNA PASTICCI USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 27 Apart from the undulating melodic profile – characterised by a rotating movement around a central axis, stepwise or by intervals mainly of fourths and fifths – the instrumental lines borrow from the Gregorian ‘matrix’ another strongly characteristic element: the diatonic motion. Each instrument uses only the seven notes of a particular major scale; and as each instrument moves within a different tonality, the overlapping of the six diatonic scales creates an overall result that is poly-tonal. The page of the preliminary draft reproduced in example 5 (see p. 28) shows how this structural criterion was applied particularly rigorously and systematically. Petrassi actually indicated in the score, beneath the name of each instrument, its ‘basic tonality’: C for the viola, G for the cello, F for the double bass, E for the guitar, B flat for the mandolin and D for the percussion instruments of definite pitch. The six tonics belong to the scale of F Major, and it is no coincidence that the seven sounds of this scale are used for the first tutti of the piece, the fortissimo chord in bar 5 that marks the entry of all the instruments after the initial soliloquy of the viola. The poly-tonal arrangement continues unvaried until bar 135: the different combination of instruments, moving diatonically within the tonality assigned, perform constantly new diminutions of the undulating profile of the Gregorian hymn and give rise to a succession of sound pictures with changing timbre that follow each other uninterruptedly. The fixed diatonic melodiousness in a poly-tonal context that thwarts any possible harmonic function generates a stagnant and uncertain climate, a timeless dimension in which all the dialectic action is due to the mutability of the timbre. At bar 135 some instruments start to modify their ‘basic tonality’: the viola moves from C Major to A Major (b. 135), while at bar 163 the guitar changes from E Major to D Major, the mandolin from B flat Major to E Major and the percussion from D Major to C Major.52 Actually the changes are minimal, given that the new tonics are always notes belonging to the scale of F Major (or also, from bar 163 when the mandolin passes from B flat Major to E Major, to the scale of C Major). These changes introduce the second part of the piece, in which the instrumental parts abandon the rigorously diatonic motion for a more fluid and chromatic articulation; the opening of this new section, which is more or less the second half of the whole score, is marked at bar 177 by 52 In the sketch, the change of tonality of the percussion corresponds to materials that appear in the score at bar 163: however, as only the percussion instruments of indefinite pitch are used in this passage, the change of tonality planned by the composer in the sketch has no effect on the final score. 28 SUSANNA PASTICCI Example 5: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, page 3 of the preliminary draft a violent chord involving all the strings (cf. example 6). The introduction of the chromatic element in the horizontal dimension creates a very significant discontinuity (and so a formal caesura), not only diastematically, but also and above all in terms of timbre and sound, further confirming USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 29 the absolute centrality of this aspect in Petrassi’s creative universe. The first part of the piece too, in fact, had overall a chromatic sound, generated by the overlapping of different tonalities assigned to the various instruments. In that case, however, the choice of assigning each individual instrument a limited and clearly defined diatonic range contributed to reinforcing the idiomatic connotation of the instruments, thanks to the fact that each timbre was always and constantly associated with a precise diastematic quality. An idiomatic connotation that is inevitably lost in the second part of the piece, where the instruments no longer move within a limited, well-defined range of pitches, but roam freely in the whole chromatic range. Abandoning diatonic and poly-tonal writing opened the way to a series of citations of Stravinsky, which make up the connecting tissue of the second half of the piece: only in very general terms, however, can this new sound climate be associated with a Stravinsky-like setting. At times, the writing of the instrumental lines seems to respond to criteria of octatonic organisation: 53 at page 19 of the score (cf. example 6 pp. 30-31), the viola is based on the third octatonic collection, while the cello moves mainly in the ambit of the first collection as does the double bass, which ‘modulates’ to the second collection from bar 191 on. The guitar fluctuates between collection 3 and collection 2, while the mandolin settles on collection 3. The conjecture that the individual instrumental lines move within different octatonic collections on the basis of a stratified concept of the sound tissue analogous to the poly-tonality of the first part of the piece is not wholly supported by the score, however: unlike poly-tonal articulation, octatonic articulation is not used systematically, and in various passages the pitch content cannot be assimilated to any of the three collections. We should bear in mind, though, that the effective functioning of an octatonic system does not depend simply on the use of the pitches of one of the three collections. What defines the octatonic system as a way 53 In the last few decades there has been widespread agreement among music critics with the idea that the octatonic organisation of the pitches is one of the basic elements of Stravinsky’s musical language. The presence of the octatonic scale based on the regular alternation of semi-tones and tones (described by Olivier Messiaen in his Technique de mon langage musicale as Deuxième mode à transpositions limitées), was first pointed out by Roman Vlad in his essay on the composer (Stravinsky, Turin, Einaudi, 1958), and later described more systematically by Arthur Berger in his essay Problems of Pitch organization in Strawinsky’s Diatonic Music, «Perspectives of New Music», II, 1963. The nomenclature adopted here is taken from Pieter Van den Toorn’s fundamental study, The Music of Igor Strawinsky, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1983. The octatonic scale can be transposed only three times, giving three different collections of pitches: the first octatonic collection is C#-D-E-F-G-Ab-Bb-B; the second collection is D-Eb-F-F#-G#-A-B-C; the third collection is Eb-E-F#-G-A-Bb-C-Db. 30 Example 6: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, bars 173-193 SUSANNA PASTICCI USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY Segue: Ex. 6 31 32 SUSANNA PASTICCI of organising the pitches with its own specific vocabulary is above all the particular importance of some harmonic or melodic cores that can be ascribed to scale articulation.54 In the absence of these elements, we can only observe that, despite the octatonic flavour of some passages, the writing in the second part of the piece is freely chromatic, determining a sound climate that is substantially different from that of the previous section. In the first part of the piece the Gregorian hymn played its role as matrix, imposing a rigorously diatonic effect on the individual instruments, and the lack of this in the second part creates a sense of strong discontinuity – and so of anticipation – that is resolved by the entry of new elements with particular semantic and expressive power: the citations of Stravinsky. The first citation, from Le Sacre du Printemps, appears at bar 251, in the passage reproduced in example 7 (see p. 33). It is a short, but particularly incisive, chromatic cell that appears in the Danse sacrale at number 151 of Stravinsky’s score: from its first enunciation by the three trombones, on a rhythmic carpet from the orchestra based on the repetition of a single chord, this cell emerges with particular power and vividness. The citation of this cell, which Petrassi gives to the double bass, is quite literal in terms of pitch, rhythm and register: its vividness – an essential, key feature of the original model – is guaranteed both by the fortissimo and by the surrounding timbre onto which the citation is grafted, a passage for solo percussion of indefinite pitch. The fortissimo chord of viola, cello and guitar that marks the conclusion of the cell is another element that helps emphasise the citation even more: it is indeed a chord with a characteristically Stravinskyesque sound, made up of notes belonging to the third octatonic collection. Apart from its fleeting but significant appearance at bar 251, the cell from the Danse sacrale appears no more in the following sections of Sestina d’autunno: it bursts upon the listener like a meteor and vanishes as abruptly. Unlike the Gregorian hymn, which performs a fully structural role, the citation of Stravinsky thus seems to have no organic function, given that there is no trace of its appearance in the following bars. 54 The use of musical resources linked to the octatonic system is not extraneous to Petrassi’s poetics: in particular, Mario Bortolotto has noted extensive use of “Olivier Messiaen’s octophonic modes” in various sections of the Ballet La follia d’Orlando (1942-43); cfr. MARIO BORTOLOTTO, Il cammino di Goffredo Petrassi cit., p. 51. Cfr. also GIORGIO SANGUINETTI, Modi di organizzazione octatonica in “La follia di Orlando” di Goffredo Petrassi, «Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana», XXXIX, 2005, pp. 491-503. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 33 Example 7: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, bars 245-256 Another group of three more Stravinsky citations starts at bar 270 (cf. example 8, p. 34). This time they are taken from the third movement of Symphony of Psalms. The first element is for the guitar, at bars 270-272: it is a literal citation of a particular accompaniment scheme that Stravinsky introduces at number 22 of the score and that is repeated without interruption in a passage lasting 42 bars. The second element is introduced by Petrassi in the immediately following measures, between 273 and 276: it is a citation of the “Alleluja” that opens the third movement of Symphony of Psalms, a choral passage of great expressive intensity that Stravinsky uses as a sort of refrain and that reappears various times in the course of the piece. Here too the citation is handled with great fidelity to the original: apart from a slight rhythmic variant, Petrassi takes over the same pitches and the same register as the original, giving the choral parts to viola 34 Example 8: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, bars 265-284 SUSANNA PASTICCI USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY Segue: Ex. 8 35 36 SUSANNA PASTICCI and cello, and the cello and double bass parts to the double bass. At bar 275 the end of the citation of the “Alleluja” is grafted onto the reprise of a fragment of the Stravinskyesque accompaniment scheme already cited at bars 270-272, which Petrassi again gives to the guitar. In Stravinsky’s score these two elements are never superimposed on each other: the accompaniment scheme indeed is associated with the choral passage “Laudate Eum in cymbalis” (number 22 of the score), whose melodic opening is introduced by Petrassi at bar 277 in the part of the mandolin. This third citation concludes the rapid series of references to Symphony of Psalms one after the other without interruption in the course of just eight bars. This extreme condensation of echoes of Stravinsky is the result of a process of composition that was particularly painful and marked by second thoughts: at page 24 of the sketch, reproduced in example 9, Petrassi had included a passage of fourteen measures between bars 274 and 275 that was cancelled from the manuscript and then eliminated from the printed edition. The rapid sequence of citations of Stravinsky is interrupted at bar 279 by what seems to be a ‘reprise’ of the opening of the piece: the solo viola repeats the Veni, creator Spiritus, subjected to the usual procedures of diminution and free embellishment. In the following bars the presence of the Gregorian hymn becomes more and more pervasive; compared with the first part of the piece, however, now its appearances are punctuated by various reprises of the melodic formula of Stravinsky’s “Laudate” (see, in the extract from the score reproduced in example 8, the passage for mandolin at bars 283-284). In this way, unlike the quotation from the Sacre – a fleeting appearance that does not seem to have any significant effect on Petrassi’s score – the fragments of Symphony of Psalms are taken up as ‘pre-formed’ material to be reused in various reprises. In this perspective the raison d’etre of the piece’s conclusion, which begins with the reprise of bar 279, is the need to reconcile the various heterogeneous materials, seeking a possible point of convergence between the echoes of Stravinsky and the Gregorian ‘matrix’ (cf. example 9, p. 37). His intention becomes particularly explicit in the final bars of the piece, reproduced in example 10, where the cello finally – and for the one and only time – offers an almost literal citation, no longer transfigured by diminutions, of the Veni, creator Spiritus (bars 317-318). The guitar’s accompaniment scheme (based on the repetition of the interval of a fourth, C-G) is a typically Stravinskyesque module, extensively used in Symphony of Psalms from number 2 of the score on. At bar 319 a new reprise of the melodic cell of “Laudate” is grafted onto the echo of the Gregorian USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 37 Example 9: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, page 24 of the preliminary draft hymn; after the short space of a pause, the formula of the “Alleluja” is heard for the last time; until a short passage for percussion leads to the final chord of the piece, which significantly is the same C-E chord that concludes Symphony of Psalms. 38 Example 10: Goffredo Petrassi, Sestina d’autunno, bars 311-326 SUSANNA PASTICCI USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY Segue: Ex. 10 39 40 SUSANNA PASTICCI But what is the element linking this significant variety of expressive ideas? In the light of this examination, it would seem that it is to be sought above all in the composer’s bent for absorbing the various citations in the framework of a conception of musical time that is never linear or consequential, but that always emerges as deliberately discontinuous. It is no coincidence that Petrassi wrote in one of his letters to Carter that what he would have liked to discuss with him in depth, «if the Ocean did not prevent it», was above all «timelessness»: something that Petrassi thought was «a perhaps unconscious aspect» in Carter’s experimentation, but that in his own creative experience was absolutely essential and central.55 The conception of time that Petrassi had inherited from the great tonal tradition was linked to a logic of musical discourse dominated by the idea of cause and effect, and by a sense of a process directed towards a specific end. In Sestina d’autunno, however, time is never linear, but is inflected in constant spirals: there is no longer an idea to expound and develop logically and consequentially, because the discourse unfolds through a figurative explication of possibility, a series of movements that in their diversity can sometimes find tangential points that are utterly surprising, and unforeseeable a priori. The image of time that is restored to us when we listen to this piece is thus eminently static, “vertical”, undirected and non-procedural, as our perception of the flow of sound is on a timeless plane without development, movement or change. In bringing out some expressive means used by Petrassi in his work, this brief account of Sestina d’autunno suggests some more general reflections on the composer’s relation with the heritage of the tradition. Tradition, T.S. Eliot reminds us, is not a patrimony that can be inherited passively: those who want to posses it «must achieve it by great labour». To obtain it one needs above all a good historical sense: «which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal, and of the timeless and of the temporal together».56 The concept of tradition evoked by Eliot significantly accords with some thoughts expressed by Stravinsky in his Poetics of Music: Tradition is entirely different fron habit, even from an excellent habit, since habit is by definition an unconscious acquisition and tends to become mechanical, whereas tradition results from a consciuous and deliberate acceptance. A 55 Letter from Goffredo Petrassi to Elliott Carter dated Rome, 27 April 1968; cfr. note 34. 56 THOMAS S. ELIOT, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), in Selected Essays, London, Faber and Faber, 19513, p. 14. USING HISTORY, TO MAKE HISTORY 41 real tradition is not a relic of a past that is irretrievably gone; it is a living force that animates and informs the present. […] The borrowing of a method has nothing to do with observing a tradition. A method is replaced: a tradition is carried forward in order to produce something new. Tradition thus assures the continuity of creation.57 These comments indicate that the historical sense cannot in any way be confused with respect for the past: it is no coincidence that in oral cultures, which are the most traditional of all, tradition is not known as such. According to the sociologist Antony Giddens, indeed, to understand tradition, distinguishing it from other ways of organising human experience and action, we need to cut space-time in ways made possible only by the intervention of writing, which expands the level of space-time differentiation and creates a perspective made up of past, present and future. With the advent of modernity reflexiveness pervades the very bases of the system, so that thought and action are constantly refracted onto each other. Consequently, what characterises modernity – more than hunger for novelty, conflict with tradition or the tendency to embrace novelty for itself – is above all the assumption of global reflexiveness: only in modernity is it possible «to use history to make history».58 Goffredo Petrassi kept his distance from the avant-garde mainstream in the twentieth century, but he showed that he had clearly understood the deepest essence of modernity. He had understood above all that having profound historical consciousness does not mean ‘respecting’ or ‘rejecting’ tradition, but simply learning to ‘use’ the past with the lucidity and critical awareness of an artist committed to the courageous task of constructing his own aesthetic present. 57 IGOR STRAVINSKY, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1942, pp. 56-57. 58 ANTONY GIDDENS, The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity 1990, p. 50. The definition of modernity as a period of global reflexiveness, in contrast with the dominant conception that tends to emphasise mainly the elements conflicting with tradition and the search for the “new”, is part of a theoretical context designed to demonstrate that the so-called “postmodern” period is simply a phase of extreme radicalisation of modernity itself.