After I left Pizzetti,
I was still not satisfied. Though
I was really well enough prepared
as a composer, I felt there was still
some secret which eluded me. I later
realised that put simply, what I was
always searching for was the secret
of inspiration and creativity, as
if it could be passed on from one
person to another. I think that I
also felt the secret was partly bound
up with techniques, so that I was
always exploring every possible avenue
which may lead me to the great discovery.
Of course, all that was absurd. I
would have done far better if at a
certain point I had made the decision
to adopt whatever idiom I most preferred,
and then written a good corpus of
works without any further searching.
This has been what most sane composers
have done for centuries. But unfortunately,
it is exactly what I didn’t do,
for I embarked on yet another long
journey of exploration.
I was faced with
a dilemma. I had heard Dallapiccola’s
opera ‘Il Prigioniero’
(The Prisoner) when it was first performed
in Florence, and while some parts
were too dense and stressful for my
liking, other passages seemed to be
just the kind of sound I had long
looked for -
a mysterious, complex sound
with an intangible, enigmatic harmony
which I found intensely beautiful.
Unfortunately, Dallapiccola’s
technique was said to involve the
use of Schoenberg’s serialism,
so everyone in Florence regarded him
as a kind of devil sprouting horns.
Florence is not a progressive town
from a musical point of view, and
is particularly anti-germanic in its
artistic attitudes, so that Dallapiccola
was almost an outcast, especially
at the Conservatory, where his only
position was merely as a piano teacher
for the 3rd grade. To cap it all,
he was not a Florentine at all, but
originated in some barbaric part of
Yugoslavia (actually in Istria, when
it was part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire). I think he was quite friendless
at the Conservatory, and perhaps through
this, his manner could be prickly
and belligerent.
Of course, I already
knew Dallapiccola because of the few
orchestration lessons he had given
me, and with which I had not been
too satisfied. Nevertheless, I decided
I must get to know something about
serialism, and approached him once
again, to arrange lessons. As it happened,
he was just on the point of leaving
Florence for the summer holidays,
so he advised me to read a couple
of books before we met again in the
autumn. These were two books in French
by Rena Leibowitz -‘Introduction
a la Musique de Douze Sons’
and ‘Schoenberg et Son École’.
Both books were very recent (1949)
and were truly excellent, though laborious,
in fact the ‘Introduction’
is quite a tough nut to crack. The
greater part of the book is dedicated
to a note-by-note analysis of each
of the twelve movements of ‘Variations
for Orchestra, Op.3l' and spares the
reader no effort in the dense and
repetitive script which occupies over
a hundred pages. Unfortunately, I
read this first, and got indigestion.
The other book is much more readable,
and more informative about Berg and
Webern, as well as giving a less obscure
picture of Schoenberg’s works.
By the time I had finished these books
I knew all I needed to know about
serialism, except for the most vital
fact - that
no system or technique can in itself
produce musicality, much less the
work of genius. Unfortunately, Leibowitz
forgot to mention this.
However, I soon had
proof for myself. Having been seduced
most by Webern’s intellectualisms,
which have quite an appeal in that
once a certain systematic pattern
or plan is created, the rest of the
music can follow almost automatically,
I fell for such an ingenious concept,
and wrote an extended piece for organ.
When I tried it out on the organ in
the Anglican church, the result was
brutal in the extreme. Horrific. This
puzzled me enormously, so I rang my
friend Alvaro Company, who I thought
may have some ideas. He put his finger
on my error immediately, pointing
out that it is not the system which
creates beauty, indeed on its own
it may only produce ugliness. Instead,
beauty can only come from within ourselves,
indeed what I had long looked for
- the
fount of inspiration and creativity
-can
be discovered nowhere but in our own
minds. There may be many stimulants
-other
works of art, or other pieces of music
- but
the real source is only in ourselves.
Later on, it seemed so obvious and
simple, but at that time, to me it
was still obscure.
That summer, I not
only read the Leibowitz books, but
bought the score of Dallapiccola’s
‘Il Prigioniero’,
and examined the work in detail from
end to end. I found a very different
brand of serialism than that described
by Leibowitz. The music had a more
conventional look, with a smooth and
refined harmony which appealed to
me very much. Though it had the total-chromaticism
of serialism, the harmony was without
the brutism which was all-too-common
with the Schoenberg School. The actual
musical styles in the opera were quite
varied, ranging over Italian music
since medieval times. Some voice solos
seemed to derive from Gregorian chant,
choral pieces from renaissance polyphony,
while most of the atmosphere was very
much in the ‘verismo’ manner.
In fact, the opening orchestral flourish
was very similar to the first bars
of La Bohème. Altogether,
I was much more favourably impressed
by Dallapiccola’s opera, than
with anything I had found in the Leibowitz
books, and I was looking forward to
learning a lot from him.
Unfortunately, I
was to be disappointed. Perhaps it
was my fault. I should have done nothing
but ask questions, delve into whatever
I thought he could clarify, and demand
precise answers. Instead I left him
to lead the way, and we got lost.
(Dallapiccola is said by some to be
an excellent teacher, but even though
eventually we became firm friends,
I could seldom get a grasp of precise,
decisive information, or guess at
a well-defined method in his teaching.
I doubt if he was an organised teacher
at all.) However, it takes time to
discover in which direction things
are going.
Dallapiccola disliked
frequent lessons at fixed intervals.
He preferred to see me only when I
had prepared something substantial,
so every few weeks I would see him
once I had completed a fairly large
work. The result was catastrophic.
Instead of assessing the significance
of the complete work before examining
small details -
as should be done in evaluating
any work of art -
his attention would fix on
some minor point, and from that moment
any hope of him giving a constructive
criticism of my work as a whole was
lost. He had an infuriating habit
which used to annoy me no end. He
would open my score, and after a brief
period, fix his attention on a few
notes, or a bar or two. Then he would
go to his music cupboard and after
much searching, find a score which
he then put on the piano and played.
He never explained why he played it
at all. The exact relevance of this
escaped me, until one day I was so
dissatisfied that I asked what he
wanted to illustrate. The answer was
involved, but not at all clear. I
can only assume that the music I had
written was probably similar in some
way to that which he played on the
piano, but it is difficult to see
how this could help me in any way,
except to show how somebody else had
already done the same thing, but much
better. I found it all frustrating
and discouraging. It would seem that,
yet again, I was getting nowhere pretty
fast.
The truth is, Dallapiccola
became over-involved with unimportant
details, tending to draw conclusions
from small matters without assessing
the nature or value of the whole composition.
Also, his teaching lacked organization,
for we always seemed to follow, almost
at a hazard, a confused path without
establishing any specific goals at
which to aim. This was unfortunate,
for Dallapiccola could have taught
me a lot, but as the months went by,
I increasingly felt a lack of accomplishment,
and so gradually ceased my lessons
altogether. Instead, Dallapiccola’s
own scores taught me far more than
he did himself. Which shows that self-tuition
is better teaching than any other.
However, I think
there was a special personal reason
why Dallapiccola could not help me
at that time. He had reached a crisis
point himself, which he must have
been struggling to resolve. His early
works in the serial technique had
been conceived in what he thought
to be the serial ‘method’
of Schoenberg, but in reality were
far from being true to the ‘correct’
style. (Nevertheless, to me, these
have been his most valid, original
and inspired pieces.) It was only
in the ‘fifties, when Webern’s
scores at last became posthumously
available, that Dallapiccola could
see how far he was from what was then
regarded as the paragon of serialism.
He could at last see that compared
with the intellectual perfection of
Webern’s highly sculptured rationalizations,
his own work had been conceived in
a much less formal way -
spontaneously, freely, and
with loose, informal constructions.
Probably this must have been quite
a shock to Dallapiccola, who, if nothing
else, regarded himself as an intellectual
of no mean order.
From that point,
(probably just when we were meeting),
he abandoned his own original style,
and searched to incorporate Webern’s
constructivisms into his own idiom.
This meant a radical change, giving
up the free, lyrical flow of his previous
music, and constructing with the rigid
cell structures of the Webern manner.
He must have suffered agonies of indecision
before rejecting many composing methods
which had stood him in good stead
until then, and it is my belief that
from then on, his music suffered accordingly.
However, it must
have been that the new rationalization
suited his highly intellectual attitudes
and gave him satisfaction, though
I sometimes wondered if these were
only a facade to hide some sense of
inferiority. He tended to talk in
the high manner of a German philosopher,
labouring obscure teutonic concepts
which were beyond the comprehension
of my humble mentality. Or he would
delve into the Classics, throwing
out abundant quotations in classical
Greek. I was stricken speechless.
Was this meant as normal conversation,
or was its real purpose only to astonish
me with his erudition? If so, why
did he feel the need to impress me?
Whatever the reason,
as a way of teaching, it was highly
counterproductive, for good teaching
should throw light on darkness, and
make the most obscure ideas become
lucidly clear. That is good teaching,
not Germanic philosophising and Greek
mystification. Perhaps after all,
the best thing Dallapiccola gave me
was a strong aversion for obscurity,
and a compelling desire for illuminating
clarity.
Looking back, what
had my composition teachers taught
me? In the end, they seemed to have
been largely unprofitable, disorganised,
even befuddling. Worse still -
a grievous waste of time. Self-tuition,
with an understanding, guiding hand,
would have been far more efficient
and profitable. Perhaps, in the end,
my somewhat negative experiences did
serve a good purpose. They must have
helped me improve my own teaching
when the time came for that.
*
* *
In later years, my
relationship with Dallapiccola improved
enormously, though he was always a
bit enigmatic to me. Perhaps it was
his origins. His father was a school
headmaster in an Austrian-ruled province.
His family experienced the humiliation
and suffering of deportation to Graz
in Austria during the First World
War. When he came to Florence, he
married a jewess, and in the German
occupation of 1943-5, even though
Italians were favourable to jews,
he must have lived in fear for his
wife. All this is shown in his use
of imprisonment and liberation as
the main themes in his music.
In summer we both
spent the August holidays at Vittoria
Apuana, almost next door to each other.
This meant I may have to stumble into
a high-powered conversation at any
moment. In Florence, I used to walk
him home from the Conservatory, all
the way up Via Bolognese, because
I knew he liked to be able to talk.
I said very little. Most of what he
said was polemic, but I learned to
say little and be a good listener.
I was very careful not to set him
on fire by using careless words like
‘Stravinsky’ and ‘John
Cage’. I used to wonder if he
thought me a bit dumb, so I was surprised
to find that when the editor of "La
Rassegna Musicale’ (the most
important musical quarterly in Italy)
wished to publish a special essay
for Dallapiccola’s sixtieth birthday
(1964) he asked me to write it, saying
the composer himself had put forward
my name. This happened again on other
occasions, so I was content that he
thought me not so dumb after all.
Occasionally, he
came out to supper when my friends
and I went out to eat an evening meal
in the country. He even brought Laura,
his wife, but I was never comfortable
with her, for she never seemed to
be able to unbend and relax. I never
heard the maestro tell a joke, or
express a crudity, so I was most surprised
to get a letter from him years later
(1964) about a concert performance
in Florence of a piece of Morton Feldman,
in which he revealed that he did have
a sense both of refined humour and
Tuscan rough humour. It is worth translating
word for word, though I should explain
that the piece referred to, ‘Durations’
(for ‘cello and piano), has very
few notes indeed, and a very abundant
amount of silence:
‘Now during
the piece of Feldman, that is, while
poor Gomez scraped a string of his
‘cello with his bow, and while
his wife, with her bottom in the
air, searched inside the piano to
pluck the strings, one of the audience
had a violent fit of laughter. A
fit he couldn’t control. For
a while he tried to hold it in by
stuffing a handkerchief in his mouth;
but in the end the strain was excessive,
and relieved only by a yielding
of the anal sphincter. The fact
is, in public, he let go a resounding
passage of wind (recorded with the
music on the electromagnetic tape).
So this is where we have got to:
after a season of concerts, that
which is most talked about is a
fart.’....
When, in 1978, the
Italian Embassy in London arranged
a Memorial Exhibition: ‘Luigi
Dallapiccola: The Man and his Music’,
I was asked to send a letter for exhibition,
so I could not resist sending the
above, especially because it must
be almost unique in his writings and
reveals a human side to his character
which we never suspected. However,
it must have been too strong for the
organizers. They exhibited only what
he had written on the reverse, which
was a largely incomprehensible reference
to what Thibaudet reported about a
remark of Mallarmé - nothing
of personal or musical significance
at all, and telling us nothing of
Dallapiccola’s particular sense
of humour.