Luigi Dallapiccola

Quattordici capitoli per esplorare la musica e il pensiero di Goffredo Petrassi, uno dei maggiori compositori italiani del Novecento, e con essi la musica occidentale del secolo scorso. Da Darmstadt al Coro di morti, dal cinema alla didattica, dal rapporto con le arti figurative ai Concerti per orchestra, Luca Lombardi conduce e insieme discute le idee di Goffredo Petrassi, un musicista che ha segnato la cultura (non solo musicale) della sua epoca. La postfazione di Antonio Rostagno, docente di Musicologia all’Università di Roma “Sapienza”, approfondisce e aggiorna le riflessioni scaturite da questi colloqui.

La copertina è di Daniele Simonelli.

Listado de docentes, concursos, becarios, visitantes invitados, biografías, conciertos de los "Seminarios de composición" y de los "Festivales de música contemporánea" que se desarrollaron en el Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella. Publicado en: Castiñeira de Dios, José Luis. 2011. La música en el  Di Tella: resonancias de la modernidad, 74-139. Buenos Aires: Secretaría de Cultura de la Presidencia de la Nación.

The article analyses several details of the libretto and of the score of Dallapiccola’s 'Ulisse', in connection with a number of manuscript sources (notes, schemes, sketches, drafts) and of letters attesting different steps of the compositional process. The aim is to demonstrate that, even though the Sirens are only briefly alluded to by Circe at the very end of the III Scene of the I Act, their wordless seductive song is represented by the enchanting canon cancrizans played by the two flutes at the end of the instrumental interlude between III and IV scene of the I Act. The hypothesis
that Dallapiccola might have had the idea to employ the contrapuntal technique in this passage under the influence of the alleged musical structure of the Chapter 12 of Joyce’s Ulysses - a text that he knew very well - is also proposed. The documents taken into consideration belong to the ‘Fondo Dallapiccola’, now preserved in the Archivio Contemporaneo ‘A. Bonsanti’ at the Gabinetto ‘G. P. Vieusseux’ in Firenze.

Questa Teoria della composizione dodecafonica (titolo tedesco Die Komposition mit Zwölf Tönen) venne pubblicata originariamente in Germania nel 1952 per le edizioni Max Hesses di Berlino-Wunsiedel all’interno della collana Stimmen des XX. Jahrhunderts. Il suo autore, il musicologo austriaco Josef Rufer (Vienna, 1893 – Berlino, 1985), fu allievo di Arnold Schönberg per circa quattro anni, precisamente tra il 1919 e il 1922, e, successivamente, dal 1925 al 1933 – anno nel quale il grande compositore viennese, a causa dell’avvento del nazismo, fu costretto a lasciare l’Europa per gli Stati Uniti –, suo assistente presso la cattedra di composizione che Schönberg tenne a Berlino alla «Preussische Akademie der Künste». Da questa “discepolanza” deriva buona parte dell’autorevolezza di Rufer in àmbito musicologico e, in particolare, dodecafonico. Dal 1956 egli insegnò tecnica dodecafonica alla «Hochschule der Künste» di Berlino e tenne altresì delle lezioni ai «Ferienkurse» di Darmstadt. Nel 1954 il volume venne tradotto in lingua inglese e, due anni più tardi, addirittura in giapponese. Come si presentava questo testo, quasi dieci anni più tardi, agli occhi di colei che aveva il compito di approntare l’edizione italiana, appunto Laura Dallapiccola?

During the years of exploring dodekaphonic composition techniques Luigi Dallapiccola engaged himself in applying complex canon techniques to pre-existing historical materials in his works »Sonatina canonica« (1942/43), »Tartiniana« (1951) and »Tartiniana seconda« (1956). The article presents this group of compositions – like Dallapiccola’s practical editions of Monteverdi’s »Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria«, Musorgskij’s »Pictures at an exhibition« and Vivaldi’s cello sonatas op. 14 – as part of a strategy to incorporate historical thinking into the current artistic output through establishing a connection with the own cultural history.

The article aims to demonstrate that, even though the Sirens are only briefly alluded to by Circe at the very end of the III Scene of the I Act, their wordless seductive song is represented by the enchanting canon cancrizans played by the two flutes at the end of the instrumental interlude between III and IV scene of the I Act. The hypothesis that Dallapiccola might have had the idea to employ the contrapuntal technique in this passage under the influence of the alleged musical structure of the Chapter 12 of Joyce’s Ulysses - a text that he knew very well - is also proposed. Several details of the libretto and of the score of Dallapiccola’s Ulisse are analysed, in connection with a number of manuscript sources (notes, schemes, sketches, drafts) and of letters attesting different steps of the compositional process. The documents taken into consideration belong to the ‘Fondo Dallapiccola’, now preserved in the Archivio Contemporaneo ‘A. Bonsanti’ at the Gabinetto ‘G. P. Vieusseux’ in Firenze.

Luigi Dallapiccola (1904–75)—a pioneering figure as serialist, composer of protest music, and trailblazer for the avant-garde—wrote his Greek Lyrics song cycle (1942–5) as an apparent escape from wartime anxiety. I locate the Lyrics in a context of engagement through a nexus of technique, text setting, and ethical meanings. That complex resonated with the younger composers Berio, Nono, and Maderna; each responded in the postwar with settings from the same collection, Quasimodo’s 1940 free translation of classic Greek lyrics. I examine Quasimodo’s ethics, placing the poetry and Dallapiccola’s settings within Gramsci’s notions of language, modernism, and justice.

Attingendo alla tradizione francese delle 'pièces à sauvetage', Beethoven rappresenta nel "Fidelio" l’orrore della prigionia e la gioia della ritrovata libertà. Le valenze politico-rivoluzionarie dell’opera sono ben note e si iscrivono nel programma del cosiddetto stile eroico (1803-08): il lieto fine come superamento del negativo, la trasfigurazione del dolore, l’utopia di una società più giusta, che sconfigge i tiranni. Nell’azione si cela altresì un sottotesto simbolico, espresso dalla musica e dagli apparati scenici, che ruota attorno all’antinomia ‘buio/luce’. La prigione non è solo un’ingiustizia, una mera contingenza storica, ma è intesa come una prova divina, attraverso cui conquistare un nuovo sguardo sulle cose, la capacità di vedere oltre le apparenze. Leonora, che entra nell’antro oscuro per salvare il marito, è la donna dentro cui «riluce un’iride»; l’evasione dal carcere diventa sinonimo di autocoscienza, «l’uscita dell’essere umano dallo stato di minorità di cui egli stesso è colpevole» (secondo la celebre definizione dell’illuminismo data da Kant). L’intervento affronta questi temi, riconnettendoli al mito della caverna di Platone, che offre un archetipo drammaturgico, fondato sull’itinerario in salita, sulla progressiva riscoperta della luce e del cielo stellato. Di tale tensione conoscitiva, non aliena da risvolti iniziatici, si darà conto a partire dai diari di Beethoven, che abbondano di citazioni sulla sofferenza terrena e sull’estasi, come ‘uscita da sé’ e ricongiungimento con il Tutto. Un analogo sfondo di problemi sarà poi rintracciato in un’opera cruciale del Novecento italiano, che pone risposte per certi versi opposte: "Il prigioniero" di Luigi Dallapiccola (1943-48), tratto dal racconto crudele "La torture par l’espérance" di Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Le carceri dell’inquisizione spagnola diventano qui un labirinto senza via di fuga, nel quale ci si muove a tentoni, in balia delle ombre. La luce che trapela dall’esterno coincide con le fiamme del rogo, rivelandosi un terribile inganno. Dallapiccola realizzava così un ‘anti-Fidelio’, per denunciare la barbarie del nazifascismo, ma non poneva fine alla ricerca di senso e alla speranza di un nuovo inizio. Si mostrerà, infatti, come l’opera faccia parte di una parabola più ampia, che prende avvio con la preghiera dal carcere di Maria Stuarda, nei "Canti di prigionia" (1938-41), e si conclude con un passo di Sant’Agostino, nei "Canti di liberazione" (1951-55), laddove viene evocato il bagliore della scintilla che libera dalla cecità («Coruscasti, splenduisti, et fugasti caecitatem meam»).

The task that’s been assigned to me is that of identifying the lineage of the Second Viennese School within Triestine society and its surrounding areas.
Hapsburgian Trieste of the early 20th century was a lively and avant-garde city.  This vitality and cultural ferment was lost in the years after the First World War, that is when Trieste became Italian.
Within the period of time around the First World War, the interest in Schoenberg in Triest was very much alive in both Slovenian and Italian circles.  This interest emigrated along with Dallapiccola and was strengthened by Banfi’s phenomenological school in Italy.  It can be hypothesized that with Dallapiccola a passage from the Triestine area (Italian, but connected to the German world) to the Italian world was realized; a passage so short that it yielded its dividends after the Second World War.  As such, in the first decades of the century Trieste was a favored channel through which those avant-garde achievements that touched the Italian world up close traveled.
After this period in Trieste, most likely due to the arrival of fascism above all, the avant-garde thrusts were quieted.
After World War II Trieste did not position itself as avant-garde, but as a profound response against which many – some of whom were young (at that time) musicians – tried to rebel but without great results.  One of the ways of rebelling was the presentation of Schoenberg’s compositions as well as those of his students.

A thought-provoking  comparison between  Luigi Dallapiccola and Luigi Nono: two musicians of different generations – the former was born in 1904, the latter twenty years later– but equally important as protagonists of the socially committed wing of  Italian art music  The comparison is focused on the efficacy of the combination between advanced technics and political message which can be acknowledged to the theatrical works composed by  Dallapiccola and Nono at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century: ‘Il prigioniero’.and, respectively, ‘Intolleranza 1960’.

Course Description: The purpose of this class is to present students with a general overview of the repertoire of the 20th-century as well as several different approaches for the analysis of these works. Additionally, this class strives to place each composer and their works into the appropriate historical context. By understanding the motivations of the composer, the context in which they were writing, and the compositional methods used, and in many instances developed, the diligent student will ultimately arrive at a more in-depth understanding of this era's music. Through listening and score study students will learn what analytic tools would be most appropriate for extracting the meaning of the compositions being considered by trying to answer the questions, " Why/ when/how was this piece written? " and uncovering a composer's stylistic traits. Score study and analysis will be supplemented by readings that include short biographies, journal articles and other important historic accounts. Students will also put some practices to use in short compositions of their own based upon some of the techniques learned in class.

Il 28 maggio 2018 si era tenuto, presso l'Istituto francese di Firenze, un incontro dal titolo: "Dallapiccola e la cultura francese" in cui Mario Ruffini, principale studioso di Dallapiccola, catalogatore delle sue opere e direttore del Centro Studi Luigi Dallapiccola, dialogava con l'allora direttrice Isabelle Mallez. Grazie all'ospitalità della nuova direttrice dell'Istituto, Manon Hansemann, si è tenuta il 5 maggio 2019 una nuova serata dallapiccoliana dal titolo: "Cultura greca e cultura francese. Dialoghi fra Michela Landi e Mario Ruffini". La serata si inquadrava nell'ambito dei "Dallapiccola days" (4-5-6 maggio), ciclo di incontri e concerti curato dallo stesso Mario Ruffini, in collaborazione con il Maggio musicale fiorentino e il Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini.

Since the 1950s, Jacques Wildberger (1922-2006) has not only written in-depth analyses of Dallapiccola's music, but has also established a sincere and personal connection with the Italian composer. This relationship is considered through various published and unpublished documents.

The title of this little book printed in 1968 at the author’s expense is inspired by the last sentence of ‘Der Weg zur neuen Musik’, a  cycle of lectures delivered by Anton Webern in 1933. Here, however, it alludes not  – as in  Webern’s lectures – to the ‘hard work’  done by the pioneers of the dodecaphonic system in order to affirm their own music,  but to the one  that  independent  scholars  on contemporary music had to do  in 1960 Italy in order to affirm their own views, given the polarization of    musical  criticism  between  the obtuseness  of conservative newspapers and the elitism of avant-garde journals.

Forthcoming in proceedings of 2016 Tufts-Harvard conference, *Utopian Listening: the Late Electroacoustic Music of Luigi Nono: Technologies, Aesthetics, Histories, Futures.*

Nono’s *Con Luigi Dallapiccola* sketches include a note to a “continuous presence of a brother of great human moral and musical rigor,” then citing the imminent *Prometeo*. My paper explores Dallapiccola’s influence, intertextually and through a larger, ethical model, which I claim figures crucially at the threshold of Nono’s final period. To highlight this shared worldview, I first explore Dallapiccola’s wider influence on the immediate postwar Italian avant-garde by reassessing the relationships between compositional process and ethical import.

As noted by Alessandro Mastropietro, Nono’s term “brother” alludes to the “Brother” motive from *The Prisoner* (1948), permeating both scores. Nono’s homage goes beyond that, however, to unfold a dense, memory-like narrative of the staged psychological drama, including the evocation of other *Prisoner* leitmotives, for example those representing a bell and a lantern. A “futuristic nostalgia” develops through the percussion ensemble fused with live electronics. The subtraction of pitch foregrounds rhythm and timbre, underscoring features of Dallapiccola’s craft often overlooked; at the same time, the electronics dis- and re-orient the listeners’ time-space sense. In this and other ways, what at first seems an introspective, intimate meditation evolves into a theatrical, even revolutionary work, absorbing the musico-dramatic characteristics of Dallapiccola’s experimentally twelve-tone opera into a new language ("linguaggio specifico," in Nono’s words).  The prisoner’s struggle emerges from the soundworld, his alternating entrapment and liberation through listening, within a maze-like physical and psychological space. Nono had pushed the concept of genre with *Intolleranza,* similar to *Prisoner* for the boldness in dramatic innovation; *Con Luigi Dallapiccola* continues in the same vein, emphasizing the ethical rather than the political.

Nono’s “con” acknowledges a singular influence, distinguishing this work from other dedications, in his and others’ outputs, that are “to” or “for.” “Con” evokes a presence, a present, a journey together; a dialogue, however, not just of technique and form. Nono’s musical language itself, I propose, embodies liberation, similar to the freedom inherent in Dallapiccola’s serialism. Both composers--at significant junctures of life, work, and political path--communicate a “new beginning” (nuovo inizio) through a narrative in which language and ethics are one.

Verflogene Träume. Darstellungen des Illusionären in Luigi Dallapiccolas "Volo di notte" und "Il prigioniero", in: Traum und Wirklichkeit im Theater und Musiktheater. Vorträge und Gespräche des Salzburger Symposiums 2004, hrsg. von Peter Csobádi, Gernot Gruber, Jürgen Kühnel, Ulrich Müller, Oswald Panagl und Franz Viktor Spechtler, Salzburg (Müller-Speiser) 2006, S. 330-341

Several details of the libretto and of the score of Dallapiccola’s Ulisse are analysed in connection with a number of manuscript sources (notes, schemes, sketches, drafts) and of letters attesting different steps of the compositional process. The aim is to demonstrate that, even though the Sirens are only briefly alluded to by Circe at the very end of the III Scene of the I Act, their wordless seductive song is intentionally represented by the enchanting canon cancrizans played by the two flutes at the end of the instrumental interlude between III and IV scene of the I Act. The hypothesis that Dallapiccola might have had the idea to employ the contrapuntal technique in this passage under the influence of the alleged musical structure of the Chapter 12 of Joyce’s Ulysses - a text that he knew very well - is also proposed. The documents taken into consideration belong to the ‘Fondo Dallapiccola’, now preserved in the Archivio Contemporaneo ‘A. Bonsanti’ at the Gabinetto ‘G. P. Vieusseux’ in Firenze.

The fascist totalitarian regime that ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 took a direct interest in the production and promotion of music as an important part of a broader system for expressing cultural power and manipulating critical and social thought. The various branches of entertainment, including opera houses, were required to make rigorous use of propaganda, and to follow strict regulations issued in 1942 that excluded Jews from every sphere of the performing arts. Documents from the archives of the Teatro la Fenice contribute to our understanding of how such cultural institutions helped further the regime’s antisemitic ends, while shedding light on its treatment of composer Luigi Dallapiccola.