Among wind instruments, the clarinet is certainly one of the most interesting for contemporary composers. It has a particularly extended range; its various registers have timbral qualities of their own; it allows for multiple experimental techniques to be created, tested and employed; one might even say that it possesses the flute’s agility, the oboe’s intensity, the bassoon’s mellow tone.
The clarinet has therefore represented a true laboratory where many of the greatest composers in today’s (and yesterday’s) musical scene have found new instrumental solutions, but also a source of inspiration which in turn influenced the composers’ overall research.
This Da Vinci Classics album is a magnificent display of what a single instrument can do, in the hands of composers who knew it well and of a performer who is familiar with its most hidden secrets. The seven composers represented here are all Italian. They were born within the space of thirty years, between 1905 (Scelsi) and 1936 (Anzaghi); they can be said, thus, to represent an entire generation. Whilst they are all among the most important names of Italian twentieth century music, their fates have been very different as concerns popularity and fame. Moreover, they show the various facets of musical research in their era, demonstrating an “Italian path”, in a manner of speaking, through the complex waters of contemporary music. What connects all of their works together, in fact, is the attention to how technique becomes sound; to how the quest for innovative means of sound production can transform itself in a “spiritual” experience. Many of these composers were deeply interested in and fascinated by spirituality, in its various and at times conflicting forms – in some case, this took the form of a nihilistic denial of reality and of all transcendence. However, they were by no means indifferent to the spiritual, in their adhesion to or negation of religion. Whilst they did explore most of the fundamental languages of the musical avantgardes, they also constituted (with their differences and in the absence of an explicit sharing of values) an “Italian” school, inspired by many sources, but unidentifiable with any.
Giacinto Scelsi probably embodies this quest in a paradigmatic fashion. Born in an aristocratic family, he received an international education in the greatest European capitals. He befriended many of the leading figures of twentieth-century culture (including Jean Cocteau, Virginia Woolf, John Cage and others). He became very interested in the East, following a first journey in Egypt, and he practised and studied Eastern philosophies, religions and disciplines such as yoga and zen.
Scelsi’s first major success took place in 1931, when he was 26 and his Rotativa was performed to great acclaim in the famous Salle Pleyel in Paris, under the baton of Pierre Monteux. In spite of his sympathy for Eastern religions, he was also attentive to the Christian tradition, and themes from various religions recur in his oeuvre.
His technique for composing was certainly idiosyncratic. He was mainly driven by improvisation, which mirrored, in his opinion, the “passive” attitude preached by many Eastern philosophies. His improvisations were recorded on tapes, which were then entrusted to his collaborators, who transcribed them under his supervision. This unusual working practice elicited many perplexities by outside observers, and, alas, fostered a fiery polemic after Scelsi’s death. However, it represents probably the ideal approach for a composer entirely alien to mainstream culture. Scelsi’s originality did not help a fair recognition of his value, and only in the 1980s a series of monographic performances brought to light his true standing within the panorama of contemporary music.
The title Ixor indicates four pieces written by Scelsi, but only the first of them was accepted within his official catalogue. The title sounds exotic and/or religious, but in fact the composer did not reveal any hidden programme behind it. The musical material is derived from a wide ascending gesture, but Scelsi’s interest in experimenting with sound and timbre is revealed in his use of microtonality (an aspect on which he constantly focused) and key noises. As happens with many other works by Scelsi, at the piece’s core is the struggle between rest and movement; long repeated notes are juxtaposed to quick and fleeting passages.
Microtonality was also a main interest for Valentino Bucchi. Coming from a family of Florentine musicians, he studied in his city, among others with Luigi Dallapiccola and Vito Frazzi. He was particularly gifted also in the field of literature, becoming the musical critic of Florence’s main newspaper at the early age of 22. His activity extended to the areas of music management, with important roles in great musical institutions, and of pedagogy (where he taught at Conservatories and directed one of them). This intertwining of music and literature is evident also in his musical output, characterized by continuing experimentation but with a specific focus on the communicative dimension of music.
His Concerto per clarinetto solo was composed during a break he took in between two stages of the composition of Il Coccodrillo, one of his major works. It is a large-scale piece in four movements, distinct but also very unified. As the composer himself wrote, “all musical articulations are born from a nucleus of three characterizing intervals proposed at the beginning”. The composer acknowledged the utter complexity of the piece: he worked in close cooperation with a particularly gifted student of the Conservatory of Perugia, Ciro Scarponi, with whom he experimented many unusual techniques. Technique, however, is not the goal of this music: he aimed at a “fecund discourse”, which had not to be emptied by a self-referential “linguistic experience”, but rather aim at “grasping the real and finding some fundamental values again”.
Scarponi would also be the performer of Franco Donatoni’s Clair: the first movement of this diptych is dedicated to Giuseppe Garbarino, who taught in that same Conservatory of Perugia, whilst the second was offered to Scarponi himself.
Donatoni had studied in some of the greatest Conservatories in Italy, but was a restless musician who could not find his own voice until his maturity. He was continuingly unhappy with the teaching he received – even though this was provided by some of the greatest composers of the era – and he would describe in harsh and very critical terms his own output from his youthful years. In spite of this, or perhaps thanks to this, he became one of the most influential teachers in turn, forming a plethora of composers, conductors and performers.
Like Bucchi, he had also a very conspicuous activity as an author, writing several books of thoughts about music and of considerations on composition. His truest vein was perhaps found when he adhered to a nihilistic approach to music, resulting in an overall playfulness and lightness. “Negativity” (as theorized by St. John of the Cross, but without any mystical religiosity) became thus his key for accessing positive composition.
The two movements composing the first Clair and the piece called Clair II are very different from each other. They explore the history of the instrument, with allusions to its use in military and folk music, but also the dissolution of sound through an exploration of delicate transparencies verging on silence. Great contrasts of sound take place, reaching summits of intensity and speed, but also touching the most delicate nuances. Typical for Clair II are the progressions of scales, trills, and ascending movements, perhaps pointing to an ascesis otherwise denied by the composer.
Donatoni had also taught Davide Anzaghi, who was, in turn the son of a musician. Like several other composers represented here, he studied and taught at the Conservatory of Milan. His early career as a composer was marked by the reception of many awards and prizes, assigned by juries whose members included Petrassi, Rota, Togni, Xenakis, Ligeti, Lutosławski and Messiaen.
His mature works are inspired by the desire to find new ways of eliciting an active form of listening, privileging more immediate language forms over the complexities of the avantgardes’ compositional methods. His activity extended to music management, promoting many new artists (not only in the musical field).
His brief Melodie are self-standing miniatures. The first is structured as a Theme with three variations, with the use of several daring performing techniques. The second is structured on a repetitive pattern with increasingly longer acciaccaturas which progressively diminish the space reserved for arpeggios. The piece closes with an ascending movement reaching a summit of pitch and intensity.
Little needs to be said about Luciano Berio, one of the most famous Italian composers of the twentieth century. After his experiences in Darmstadt, where he met with many other great musicians of the era, he undertook his own explorations, particularly as concerns electronic music and innovative uses of the human voice (also thanks to his relationship with Cathy Berberian). He wrote many Sequenze for several instruments: all are characterized by extreme technical complexity and by the exploration of new forms of sound production. His Sequenza IX (which he himself transcribed for alto saxophone) is, in his own words, “essentially a long melody implying – like almost every melody – redundancy, symmetries, transformations and returns”. At its core is the repetition of a single pitch, held for 10, then 8, then 6 seconds.
By way of contrast, Lied is much less complex from the technical viewpoint and possesses a singing quality. Its improvisational style requires great flexibility on the performer’s part.
Like Bucchi and Donatoni, also Flavio Testi was a prolific author besides his activity as a composer; in his case, his literary output focus mainly on music history, in which he produced several important works. Born in Florence, he studied with the Turinese musician Luigi Perrachio and taught at many important conservatories. Many of his works are conceived for stage performance, and his output is characterized by a powerful political inspiration, particularly as concerns the opposition to dictatorship.
His Jubilus I is remarkable for its capability to reconcile melodic inspiration with aggressivity, roughness with tenderness. Many diverse techniques are employed, and what particularly characterizes his writing is the exploration of a special “spatiality” of sound.
Last but not least, Bruno Bettinelli was also both a student and a teacher at the Conservatory of Milan, and in turn taught many of the greatest performers, composers and conductors of the second half of the nineteenth century. His rich compositional language draws from a variety of inspirations, including Gregorian music, atonality, seriality, aleatoric music, but also traditional songs and choral practices. His Studio da Concerto juxtaposes many different approaches, with a constant rhythmic and tempo wavering, an almost hesitant pace, but also a very brilliant and idiomatic writing. Together, these works represent a magnificent view on the Italian way to the clarinet, and a welcome addition to the panorama of twentieth century music.
Chiara Bertgolio © 2021
Solo Concertante: Italian Unaccompanied Clarinet Music of the 20th Century
