It’s generally reckoned that the British are
unrivalled in their capacity to neglect their native composers. Yet
the Italians, loud in their praises of half-a-dozen of their 19
th
century opera composers and two or three baroque ones, neglect the rest
with a thoroughness that would make even a British concert promoter
blush. In some ways neglected Italian composers are worse off than British
ones. A composer’s perceived political leanings in the mid-20
th
century often led to his banishment by the Italian post-war musical
establishment. This at least didn’t happen in the UK, or only
marginally. Furthermore, while the societies, trusts and sites dedicated
to such figures as Gurney, Armstrong Gibbs or Dunhill may lack the financial
clout to do more than a tithe of what they would wish, they at least
exist and ensure a minimum of information and discussion on their chosen
subjects. Vincenzo Ferroni, Aldo Finzi and Leone Sinigaglia are the
sort of figures who would surely have societies dedicated to them if
they were British. In Italy the best they can hope for is a website
put up at somebody’s individual initiative. Nor is there an Italian
Music Society that might, like the British Music Society, take up the
cudgels for composers without pressure groups of their own. In days
gone by the RAI did much to keep alive the lesser names. The best that
can be hoped today from this source is an occasional repeat of archival
broadcasts.
In 1938 Sir Henry Wood could still say (
My Life of Music,
p.271)
that “Sinigaglia’s orchestral works have always been well
thought of in England for their delicacy and for their Piedmontese atmosphere”.
But Wood’s British premières of Sinigaglia go back to 1909
and 1912 and I wonder if anything by Sinigaglia has been heard in a
UK concert hall within living memory. Things in Italy aren’t much
better. While Mario Rossi was still at the head of the Turin RAI SO
an occasional tribute to Sinigaglia was managed, but that is going back
to the 1950s and 1960s. When Cesare Gallino, RAI’s “house
conductor” of operetta in the post-war years, came out of retirement
to conduct his 90
th birthday concert in 1994, his programme
included Sinigaglia’s
Piedmontese Dance no.2, a reminder
that it had been a pop orchestral number in his earlier days. More recently,
music by Sinigaglia is sometimes chosen for performance on Remembrance
Day for victims of the holocaust. As for recordings, a few Toscanini
broadcasts come and go, as do certain chamber works. I am pleased to
have made my own contribution, recording the
3 Canti op.37 with
mezzo-soprano Elisabetta Paglia as part of a CD entitled “
Passé
- Romantic Song in Italy” (
Sheva
SH 050). Here then, in Italian, is the first book to be dedicated
to Jewish-Italian Leone Sinigaglia (1868-1944), native of Turin, pupil
of Dvořák, composer whose works were performed by Nikisch,
Mahler, Toscanini, Mengelberg, Furtwängler, Barbirolli and Kreisler,
collector of Piedmontese folk-tunes, mountaineer and, finally, victim
of Mussolini’s race laws.
Written by a lawyer with a passion for music (La Villa), plus a chapter
on Sinigaglia the composer by a musicologist (Lo Piccolo), the book
plunges in at the end of the story with a dramatic account of Jewish
persecution under the Fascists. Anyone who still subscribes to the comforting
view that Mussolini’s race laws were a fairly benign lip-service
intended,
all’italiana, to keep his bullying German partner
happy while not actually doing very much, can think again. Fully referenced
with detailed footnotes, it makes chilling reading. Doubts on the philological
validity of the book arise, though, when Sinigaglia himself is introduced
into the story.
Towards 6 on a hot, muggy evening, two men were slipping beside the
walls of the Turin buildings. The young man, in a threadbare jacket,
was carrying a small suitcase, while his other hand supported an elderly
gentleman. The young man peered around cautiously. The old man was aristocratically
dressed, but seemed bent and faltering. His eyes were tired and his
beard white. Sirens were sounding while shouts from soldiers and gunfire
could be heard in the distance. But their goal, their salvation, was
nearby: the Ospedale Mauriziano Umberto I
, where the young man
had, with some difficulty, persuaded the older man to take refuge. They
entered a large hall and, after briefly reporting to reception, proceeded
upstairs to a room already prepared. The old man sat down, gasping.
They embraced and said goodbye: “Ciao Luigi”. (p.13,
my translation).
Nice writing but, as the Italians call it, “
biografia romanzata”:
fictionalized biography. In truth, the young man is identified in a
footnote as Luigi Rognoni (1913-1986), a major Italian musicologist.
If the above account is based on a specific memoir by Rognoni, this
is not stated, leaving us to presume it is an imaginative reconstruction
by the author.
Before we get too het up about this, was there any alternative? How
much hard information survives about Sinigaglia? La Villa tells us that,
as part of his preparation for this book, he applied to “the library
of a celebrated [Italian] musical institute” which was known to
hold material on Sinigaglia, requesting to have sight of these papers.
“The director hummed and hawed and in the end I wasn’t allowed
to see anything”. I don’t understand La Villa’s nicety
in not naming the institute and its director, who surely deserves to
be exposed and, if possible, horsewhipped. There it is. If in the end
this book doesn’t offer much in concrete facts that you won’t
already find in Wikipedia, it may be that further facts have vanished
or are impossible to access. What the authors can do - and they do it
very well - is paint the backdrop against which Sinigaglia’s career
took place.
The next chapter goes back to the beginning of the story. True to form,
it dedicates 13 pages to the cultural life of Turin and 5 to how the
young Sinigaglia fitted into this cultural life. It is nevertheless
a fascinating tale. The post-WWII world knows Turin as the city of FIAT,
an industrial, workers’ town milling somewhat incongruously around
the grandiose former royal palaces of the Savoy capital. Even by the
time of Sinigaglia’s birth, Turin’s royal status was a thing
of the past yet, as La Villa shows, it was still a thriving cultural
centre. It was also, thanks to the dominance of the young Toscanini,
one of the few places in Italy where concertgoers could hear not only
Italian opera but Wagner’s music dramas and a range of recent
symphonic works. La Villa even tells us (p.30) that Toscanini conducted
works by Cowen and Stanford. Neither of the latter’s two recent
biographers, Dibble and Rodmell, mention this. However, Toscanini biographer
Harvey Sachs has kindly confirmed that Toscanini conducted a performance
of Stanford’s
Irish Symphony in Turin on 6 October 1898
and the two middle movements of Cowen’s
Scandinavian Symphony
on 12 December 1897 and 8 September 1898. There is no evidence that
he gave further performances of either composer.
The stars in the Turin firmament - scientific and literary as well as
musical - are therefore well described. Turning to Sinigaglia himself,
La Villa is unable to do much more than list those whom Sinigaglia is
known to have frequented, but this is probably not his fault. We learn
that Sinigaglia began travelling in the early 1890s, taking in such
musical centres as Munich, Bayreuth, Prague, Leipzig and Berlin. He
thus planted the roots for a style that seems as much middle-European
as Italian.
The next chapter deals with Sinigaglia the mountaineer. By Sinigaglia’s
day the Alps had been pretty well conquered but the Dolomites, less
high, had been somewhat scorned by professionals as second-class mountains.
They therefore offered several virgin peaks, as well as alternative
routes up some of the known ones. Sinigaglia set about climbing these
and is considered a major figure in the conquest of the Dolomites. His
own account was published in English, soon after the first Italian edition,
as “
Climbing reminiscences of the Dolomites. With introduction
by Edmund J. Garwood. Tr. by Mary Alice Vialls. London: T.F. Unwin,
1896”. A modern reprint appears to be available. Having more material
to work on, La Villa opts for the slightly inconvenient solution of
a basic narration in the text, with many smallish quotations from Sinigaglia’s
own writings, augmented by numerous footnotes, often occupying more
than two-thirds of the page, giving further material from the composer’s
reminiscences. The result is that, whether you want to read all the
footnote material or not, your eyes will be continually darting up and
down the page. Perhaps I am being selfish. As a musician, my interest
in Sinigaglia as a mountaineer does not require much knowledge beyond
the fact that he did it. It is clear, though, that he was at least as
important a mountaineer as he was a composer, and it is right that this
book should cater for mountaineer-readers as well as musician-readers.
The following chapter, “The Viennese
Belle Époque”,
takes up the musical story. These are probably the most interesting
and eventful years, when Sinigaglia once again travelled Europe, meeting
Mahler, Goldmark, Leschetitzky and Brahms. He studied for a time with
Mandyczewski and, most significantly, in 1901, with Dvořák.
It was from the latter that he was inspired to incorporate Piedmontese
melodies and turns of phrase in his compositions, modelling himself
on what Dvořák himself had done with his native Czech themes.
Sinigaglia dedicated his
Piedmontese Rhapsody for violin and
orchestra (1904) to Dvořák. Notable interpreters of this
piece included Kreisler, Jan Kubelik, Kocian and Stefi Geyer. The folk-inspired
Piedmontese Dances provoked loud opposition from the audience
when Toscanini premiered them in Turin in 1905. Many critics, too, accused
Sinigaglia of “introducing tavern songs into the concert hall”.
This was true, but it seems strange today that this should have been
considered a shameful thing to do. Even Toscanini expressed misgivings
in a letter quoted here, though publicly he stood by Sinigaglia.
The last chapter covers the longest period, from Sinigaglia’s
return to Italy at the end of 1901 to his tragic death, but it is the
least eventful. Never a notably prolific composer, his production gradually
slackened, concluding in 1936 with his violin sonata. It seems that
gradually his interests turned towards ethnomusicology. He roamed Piedmont,
taking down folk melodies and amassing a considerable collection that
was not published in its entirety till long after his death. These “philological”
settings had a simple, basic piano accompaniment and are not to be confused
with the
Old Piedmontese Popular Songs which, with their fairly
elaborate orchestral accompaniments, were once performed quite regularly
in Italy.
So the book returns to its starting point. The refuge Sinigaglia sought
in the hospital was short-lived. Despite his age he was rounded up and
only a fortuitous, and fatal, heart-attack saved him from the train
to Auschwitz.
As I stated at the beginning, the last chapter is a discussion of Sinigaglia’s
music by Annalisa Lo Piccolo. This adopts a descriptive tone rather
than a strictly analytical one:
The opening of the Adagio [of the Violin Concerto]
is entrusted
to a warm pastoral melody on the horns, repeated by the oboes and clarinets
while the strings remain silent. The soloist takes up the opening motive,
extended and prolonged by numerous syncopations, which seem to transcend
the steady rhythmic pulsation of the orchestra [p.91, my translation].
The problem with this sort of writing is that it doesn’t play
the music for us, and if somebody did play the music for us we wouldn’t
need it. On the other hand, the time is hardly ripe for the sort of
examination of Sinigaglia’s harmonic and formal procedures that
I would have preferred. If this essay inspires someone to seek out the
music and play it then all well and good.
A slim volume, then, but probably all that could be done at present.
I have a couple of queries, though.
Firstly, more than half - at a rough estimate - of the 100-or-so pages
are taken up with footnotes. Where these quote sources of information,
or direct the reader to more detailed sources, I have no quarrel, indeed
I would expect this. My eyebrows were raised as early as p.18 when a
footnote of 18 lines provided a potted biography of Nietzsche. Surely
the reader who does not know who Nietzsche was can look him up easily
enough? It is certainly useful to have information on such figures as
Angelo Serato (12 lines) and Rosario Scalero (all of 50 lines). That
said, is it likely that anyone ignorant of Bruckner (8 lines), Catalani
(6), Puccini (18), Boito (10), Mahler (25), Dvořák (17),
Bartók (11) and Kodály (9) would be reading about Sinigaglia
at all? The footnotes are strangely selective, too. Dvořák
and Puccini apparently need explaining; Grieg and Mascagni, it seems,
do not. It will be a pleasure to admirers of Svendsen, Reinecke, Rheinberger,
Cowen and Stanford to note that, for La Villa and Lo Piccolo, these
composers are sufficiently celebrated to need no presentation. Were
it not for the suspicion that the authors are so little aware of them
as to think they do not matter. Yet, without disrespect to anyone, the
five composers just mentioned surely contributed at least as much to
musical literature and history as Sinigaglia himself.
Perhaps this is just carping. I’m complaining about things that
are redundant rather than things that are missing. As to what is missing,
it would have been useful to have a work list. There again, maybe the
information just isn’t available. Somebody on the internet has
tried to compile a work list but, although Sinigaglia’s opus numbers
only extend to 44, he has drawn a blank with quite a number of them.
Presumably unpublished, maybe lost.
So, in spite of a few gripes, this book is more than good enough to
start the Sinigaglia ball rolling, provided you can read Italian. Whether
a detailed, full length study will follow no doubt depends on a revised
perception of Sinigaglia’s worth. So what of the music?
Of the one work where I have hands-on knowledge, the
3 Canti op.37,
I must say I was impressed. The harmonic language is closer to Mahler
than to Dvořák and the opening setting of D’Annunzio’s
Canto dell’Ospite penetrates that poet’s mystical-sensual
world as well as any other D’Annunzio setting known to me. The
other two songs are evocative, poetic and far from predictable in their
musical progress.
Finally, I listened to some off-the-air tapes, all recorded in Turin
in the 1960s under Mario Rossi. The Overture “
Le baruffe chiozzotte”,
inspired by a Goldoni comedy, was the piece that grabbed the ears of
so many conductors. It’s an effervescent, bustling affair with
a more songful, lyrical second subject. It has something of the opulence
of the Viennese “Belle Époque”; Rezniček’s
Donna Diana overture came into my mind as a possible comparison.
While you could hardly fail to enjoy it, it can hardly be said to inhabit
a sound-world of its own, or to haunt the memory.
There seems more individuality in the
Old Piedmontese Popular Songs,
8 of which were sung at the concert I have on tape. The orchestral colouring
is unfailingly piquant and imaginative. The orchestral introduction
to “
Il cacciatore del bosco” will be balm to Dvořák-lovers’
ears, as will be much else. These arrangements do not have the over-the-top
lushness of Canteloube’s “
Songs of the Auvergne”,
yet a singer about to record an umpteenth version of these latter might
just take pause for thought and have a look at Sinigaglia’s Piedmontese
songs. She could even find cult material on her hands. Rosina Cavicchioli
sang them beautifully, though some of her more impulsive characterization
found Rossi lagging behind.
The largest-scale work available to me was the Violin Concerto. It sounds
a treat to play in its alternation of fireworks with luscious melodic
phrases. If there’s a suspicion that the outer movements are doing,
very expertly, all the things a romantic violin concerto is expected
to do, the central slow movement touches a deeper chord. Indeed, the
return of the beautiful main theme in the violin’s lower register
with a counter-melody on the flute entwining high above must be among
the most bewitching moments in romantic violin literature. For this
movement above all, Sinigaglia’s Violin Concerto deserves far
wider currency. Rossi and his soloist, Giovanni Guglielmo, are responsive
throughout, but seem truly inspired by the slow movement. If only for
this, and some of Cavicchioli’s singing, these Rossi performances
would deserve historical issue even if modern recordings were to be
made, which I hope they will.
Christopher Howell
