"'It sometimes takes just one significant event to determine the direction of one’s whole life. Mine was determined on the night of the first of April 1924, when I saw Arnold Schoenberg conduct his 'Pierrot lunaire'. So wrote Luigi Dallapiccola (1904–1975) of the performance he attended in Florence at the age of twenty. Dallapiccola is universally known as an Italian (and Florentine) composer, but he was born a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Istria, that tiny Adriatic peninsula only ceded to Italy after the First World War. For part of the war he was interned in Graz, where he discovered opera and resolved to become a composer. In many respects he was a quintessential Italian, in love with lyricism, the Romance languages, classical antiquity, Dante, Monteverdi, Verdi. Yet a certain orientation towards Austro-German art led him to follow Ferruccio Busoni (who died just three months after that revelatory performance of 'Pierrot lunaire') in seeking new modes of musical architecture.
"In the 1930s his wish to create works of utter clarity and organic consistency was whetted by hearing music of Anton Webern, whom he finally met in Vienna in 1942. Dallapiccola eventually became the first significant Italian composer to embrace Schoenberg's twelve-note method of composition. But he embraced it from a wholly Italianate direction, deriving his music from twelve- note rows but keeping them subservient to his lyrical and visionary expressive impulses. Though he came to prominence in Mussolini’s Italy, Dallapiccola was a dedicated anti-Fascist, in danger of his life during World War II. Many of his works deal with the themes of persecution, imprisonment, resistance to tyranny, the importance of holding fast to civilised values. For him, art possessed moral force: it is this, combined with the refinement and perfectionism of his technique, that makes him such an abiding inspiration in a later age of cultural relativism.
"Dallapiccola is especially known as a vocal composer, for example for his operas 'Il Prigioniero' and 'Ulisse', the cantatas 'Canti di Prigionia' and 'Canti di Liberazione', as well as the Michelangelo choruses and many song cycles, often accompanied by a Pierrot-like chamber ensemble. But he did not neglect orchestral music, which forms a significant part of his output.
"Dallapiccola's only ballet is 'Marsia', composed in 1942–43 to a scenario by Aurel Milloss, on the well-known classical legend of the satyr Marsyas, discoverer of the music of the flute (heard at the very start of the 'Danza Magica'). He was so accomplished a musician that he foolhardily challenged Apollo to a contest of skill. At a dramatic moment in 'Danza di Apollo' the god reverses his lyre and continues to play without touching the strings, thus winning the contest; after which, enraged by the satyr’s presumption, he has him flayed alive. The tears of Marsyas' mourners become a river bearing the satyr’s name. Marsia may thus be counted one of Dallapiccola's works on the theme of man struggling against a force much stronger and crueller than he is.
"There was no chance of a production in Fascist Italy, and the ballet was not in fact staged until the ISCM Festival in Venice in September 1948. But much of the music had already been heard six months before. Dallapiccola extracted the 'Frammenti Sinfonici dal Balletto 'Marsia'' in 1947, and this suite – which represents about two-thirds of the total ballet score – was premiered on Belgian Radio on 12 March 1948, conducted by Daan Sternefeld.
"[...] The 'Due Pezzi' for orchestra originated in sketches which Dallapiccola made in 1946 for a proposed documentary film about the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca. This project remained still-born, and in the winter of 1946–47 he worked up the material into two pieces, which he called 'Due Studi', for violin and piano. He then elaborated them for full orchestra, and this form was premiered in London for a BBC broadcast, conducted by Mario Rossi, on 3 November 1947. In contrast to 'Marsia', 'Due Pezzi is a lean and sinewy twelve-note score, though it makes subtle references to Early Music. The opening 'Sarabanda', a ghostly nocturne, clearly relates to the stately baroque dance with its characteristic rhythm: the great Sarabande from Busoni's 'Doktor Faust' is its clear spiritual ancestor. Its crepuscular orchestral colouring adds greatly to its atmospheric effect over the violin-piano original.
"[...] Dallapiccola's 'Tartiniana' for violin and chamber orchestra was composed in the summer of 1951 on a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation and was dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky. The first performance was given by Dallapiccola’s close friend, the violinist Sandro Materassi, with the Swiss Radio Orchestra conducted by Hans Rosbaud in November 1952. The work is subtitled 'Divertimento on themes from sonatas of Giuseppe Tartini'. As such, it adds to a line of creative rethinkings of the music of earlier Italian composers by their twentieth-century successors – such as Respighi's ballets on themes by Rossini, or Casella's 'Paganiniana' and 'Scarlattiana' suites. (The ultimate model for this sort of 're-creation' was probably Stravinsky’s ballet after Pergolesi, 'Pulcinella'.) In this tender, brilliant and colourful score Dallapiccola may have felt drawn to Tartini not only for his violinistic artistry but by the fact that he, too, was an Istrian by birth.
"The tonal divertimento of 'Tartiniana' may have been something of a 'holiday' respite. Dallapiccola’s next compositional project, commissioned by the Pittsburgh International Contemporary Festival, was the major piano work 'Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera' (1952), written on an extended trip that took the composer from Canada to Mexico – a 'musical notebook' dedicated to his daughter on her eighth birthday and one of his most searching studies of canonic and contrapuntal techniques in the context of twelve-note invention. The 'Quaderno', which Dallapiccola regarded as his most rigorous twelve-tone composition so far, is based on a twelve-tone series which he also used in his monumental 'Canti di Liberazione'. It consists of eleven movements contrasting free with strict (canonic) counterpoint. Within comparatively modest dimensions – for it is also a study in brevity, in aphorism, in saying the maximum possible without a single wasted note – the Quaderno has justly been considered a modern-day counterpart to Bach's 'Musikalisches Opfer' and 'Die Kunst der Fuge', and it contains many subtle references to Bach's musical techniques. In 1953, fulfilling a commission from the Louisville Symphony Orchestra, Dallapiccola reworked the piece for full orchestra as his 'Variazioni per Orchestra'. The premiere took place in Louisville, Kentucky on 2 October 1954, conducted by Robert Whitney.
"[...] Dallapiccola completed the score of the 'Variazioni' in January 1954. His next work was written in a single week three months later and is also for orchestra: 'Piccola Musica Notturna' (the title evokes 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik'). It is dedicated to, and had been commissioned by, Hermann Scherchen, the great champion of modern music, for the 1954 'Jeunesse Musicale' Festival in Hanover. As its title suggests, this exquisite piece is a particularly atmospheric nocturne, very much in the tradition of Busoni's evocative orchestral elegies such as the 'Berceuse élégiaque' and 'Nocturne symphonique'. The score is prefaced by some lines from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, setting a scene where the poet walks a deserted village alone, under the moon, on a beautiful summer night. The instrumentation is of preternatural delicacy even for Dallapiccola (who in 1961 made a reduced version for just eight players). It is also a shining example of truly expressive and poetic twelve-note music, based on a row that does not simply include all twelve available pitches but, in their relation to one another, all eleven available intervals within the twelve-note scale. (Dallapiccola had already experimented with such a row in the sixth of the 'Variazioni'.) Save for one or two tutti outcries, this is among the most serene and mysterious of twentieth-century nocturnes." (Calum MacDonald. From the liner notes.)
Performers: BBC Philharmonic, Gianandrea Noseda, James Ehnes
1. Tartiniana: I. Larghetto, Molto Espressivo, Ma Semplice
2. Tartiniana: II. Allegro Misurato
3. Tartiniana: III. Molto Sostenuto - Più Mosso E Scorrevole, Ma Sempre Serioso
4. Tartiniana: IV. Allegro Assai, Ma Non Precipitato
5. Due Pezzi: A. Sarabanda. Lento; Flessibile
6. Due Pezzi: B. Fanfara E Fuga. Mosso, Ma Non Tanto
7. Piccola Musica Notturna
8. Frammenti Sinfonici Dal Balletto 'Marsia': Danza Magica
9. Frammenti Sinfonici Dal Balletto 'Marsia': Ostinato
10. Frammenti Sinfonici Dal Balletto 'Marsia': Danza Di Apollo
11. Frammenti Sinfonici Dal Balletto 'Marsia': Ultima Danza Di Marsia
12. Frammenti Sinfonici Dal Balletto 'Marsia': La Morte Di Marsia
13. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione I. Quasi Lento, Misterioso: Appena Più Scorrevole
14. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione II. Allegro; Con Fuoco
15. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione III. Mosso; Scorrevole
16. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione IV. Tranquillamente Mosso
17. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione V. Poco Allegretto, 'alla Serenata'
18. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione VI. Molto Lento, Con Espressione Parlante
19. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione VII. Andantino Amoroso
20. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione VIII. Allegro, Con Violenza
21. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione IX. Affettuoso, Cullante
22. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione X. Grave: Ancora Più Lento, Misterioso
23. Variazioni Per Orchestra: Variazione XI. Molto Lento; Fantastico
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