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Thu Aug 16 18:29:29 2007
Portrait of Debussy-9
John C. G . Waterhouse
In this series of articles we attempt to build a composite portrait of Debussy the musician through
examination of the various impressions he left on the
music of other composers: in general, and also in
particular b.v documentation of what works they
heard, and when, their statements, and the reflections
found in their own compositions.
During the first few decades of the 20th century the
Italian musical world, like the British, tended to be
parochial in outlook: the more progressive trends in
northern European music were not wholly resisted
but were accepted only with suspicion, and the
public was often curiously arbitrary in what it would
welcome and what it would reject. For example
when, in 1915, Alfredo Casella first introduced the
second suite from Daphnis et Chlot and Petrushka to
an Italian audience, both at the same concert, the
former was received in glacial uncomprehending
silence while the latter aroused wild applause.'
Nor was this ambivalent, unpredictable attitude
confined to concert-goers: it extended through every
level of Italian musical life. On the one hand, many
intelligent musicians were so insidiously affected by
xenophobic prejudices surviving from the Risorgimento, reinforced by World War 1, and further
enhanced under Fascism, that their resistance to
foreign influences was as thoroughgoing as they
could make it-though even they could not immunize themselves c ~ m p l e t e l y . ~On the other hand,
there were men like Casella and, later, Dallapiccola
who, though not as purely 'internationalist' as some
of their earlier opponents suggested, wereprofoundly
interested in, and receptive to, the whole range of
northern European music, while still holding fairly
definite views about what was 'relevant to Italian
sensibility'. It is against the background of such
conflicting attitudes to foreign music that one should
view the changing fortunes of Debussy's music and
influence south of the Alps.
Debussy's works first became widely known in
Italy during the decade 1904-14, when the Italians'
receptivity to foreign trends seemed to be growing
and when the renewed xenophobia of the war years
and their aftermath was still to come. I n 1907 the
first important Italian article on Debussy appeared
in the Rivista musicale italiana;3 in the following
year Pelltas et Melisanrie reached La Scala and was
soon taken up by other Italian opera-houses; and
one has only to skim through the pages of a
periodical like La nuova niusica4 to see that by 1909
'For an account of this historic concert, Casella's first in Italy
after his exile, see Mario Labroca's note 'Roma 1915' in
L'Approdo Musico;e (19581, 111, 57-60.
For a sample of some of the more reactionary, parochial
attitudes current in Italy in the 1930s see the notorious Manifesto of Dec 17, 1932, published in several Italian newspapers,
signed by Pizzetti, Respighi, Zandonai and others, and partly
reproduced in the Italian edition (not the English translation)
of Elsa Respighi's Ottorino Respighi (19541, pp.265-267.
BVincenzo Tommasini's 'Claude Debussy e 1'Impressionismo
nella Musica', xiv, 157f
4Florence, 1896-1919
Debussy's exquisite harmonic and orchestral imagination, Pizzetti goes on to express grave doubts
about the enervating tendencies of the French composer's art ('But is this, is this what art should give us?
Is this what we should ask of it-that it should
stifle our will to live?. . . Should not art rather exalt
life and humanity to a higher plane?'). Yet despite
these drastic reservations, so typical of the more
'moralistic' side of Pizzetti's nature, there can be no
doubt that Pell@asprovided an important model for
his own operatic techniques. I t is true that the
much-vaunted declamaro pizzetriano-that
fluid,
flexible declamation, against a continuously
evolving but relatively subsidiary orchestral backcloth, which forms the basis of all his published
operas-owes a good deal to other composers too,
from Peri and Caccini to Wagner and Mussorgsky.
But passages like ex 1, from the moving final act of
Fedra (1909-12), show that the Debussian model was
often the overriding one. The resultant operatic
methods, so beautifully expressive in Pizzetti's best
early operas, carried within themselves a danger of
monotony, all too apparent in his inferior later ones:
but then (dare one say) this danger is present even
in Pell6as itself.
Pizzetti was never much interested in harmonic or
orchestral innovations for their own sakes, and his
response to these aspects of Debussy's art was
limited. Mildly Debussian dissonances, a Debussian
fluidity in the rhythms, and incidental Debussian
undertones in the modal turns of phrase are,
admittedly, widespread.
Yet thoroughgoing
Debussian echoes are rare, though one can find a
few, as in parts of the colourful but uneven and
uncharacteristically 'hedonistic' incidental music for
d'Annunzio's play La Pisanella (1913). Moreover.
even such Debussian traits as one can see in Pizzetti's earlier works were to become increasingly
absorbed or watered down in his later music, in
which he was affected up to a point by the renewed
xenophobic prejudices of the time: his signing of the
1932 manifesto was at least symbolic.
Casella's response to Debussy's influence could
hardly have been more different from Pizzetti's.
His long residence in France during his formative
yearsl0 gave him special advantages over his more
stay-at-home compatriots: he wrote later that as
early as 1898 his first contacts with Debussy's music
had aroused in him 'a sudden infinite enlargement
of my musical receptivity'.ll In due course he got to
"'He enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire at the age o f 12, and
finally returned to Italy only in 1915.
~ c ~ ~ ~
' ~ ~ ~ . ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ $
~
~$
":,': ,
" ~ ~ ~ ~'Yrom
~ , an
" ~ article
~ ~ ,in " Musikbliifter
: " , I ~ des
~ ~Anbruch
~ ~ (19251, later
Casella.s more extreme innovations
the parallel by
with those of the cubists-a comparison backed up by some of
Casella's own remarks in I s e g r e t i della giara (,kIusic in m y time,
p.102).
A selection of works by
ITALIAN COMPOSERS
from the
RICORDI
catalogue
ALFANO Franco
Sakuntala: Danza e Finale
BETTINELLI Bruno
Cioncerto da camera. for small orchestra
Sinfonia Breve
CASELLA Alfredo
.A Notte alta. for piano and orchestra
Le Couvent sur l'eau: 3 Frammrnti sinfonici
O p 19 for soprano and orchestra
La Donna serpente : Frammenti sinfonici
GHEDINI Giorgio Federico
.Adagio e .\lleg-ro da concerto
.\rchitetture
Partita, in 5 tempi
Dialoghi. I to \'I11
NIELSEN Riccardo
\-arianti; for orchestra
PETRASSI Goffredo
Concerto for orchestra
Salmo IX. for chorus, strings. brass. percussion and
2 pianos
PIZZETTI Ildebrando
.Assassinio nella cattedrale : Intermezzo
Canti della stagione alta. Concerto for piano and
orchestra
Concerto dell'estate
Filiae Jerusalem; Adjuro Vos.
Cantata for
Foprano, female chorus and orchestra
RESPIGHI Ottorino
Balfagor : Ouverture
CIoncerto in ..\ minor. for piano and orchestra
Impressioni Brasilliane
Maria Egiziaca. for solos, chorus and orchestra
5letamorphoseon
ROTA Nina
Concerto for strings
TEST1 Flavio
Crocifissione, for male chorus and strings
ZAFRED Mario
C:oncerto for piano and orchestra
"cf Roman Vlad's Luigi Daflapiccola (1957) p.55n2; Dalla'"'La musica pidnistica itdliana tra il 1900 e il 1950', Rassegna
piccola has enlarged on this in conversations l'had with him in
ntrrsical~Cirrr i (1967), XX,'I , 13-20
May 1962 and November 1963.
copyright rnusic eiantples reproduced by Xinrl permission of Ricardi ( e x x 1, 2, 3a, b, d , and 4 ) and Scltott ( e x 5)