Franco Margola: Piccola Suonata Cat dC 8, for Violin and Piano (1929)

Franco Margola (b Orzinuovi, Brescia, 30 Oct 1908; d Nave, nr Brescia, 9 March 1992). Italian composer. He studied the violin at the Brescia Istituto Musicale with Romano Romanini (diploma 1926), and composition at the Parma Conservatory with Guido Guerrini, Carlo Jachino and Achille Longo (diploma 1933). In 1930 he won the Camerata Musicale Napoletana prize with Il campiello delle streghe. He taught history of music at the Brescia Istituto Musicale (1936–9) and composition at the conservatories in Cagliari (1941–9), Bologna (1950–52), Milan (1952–7), Parma (1963–75) and at the Accademia di S Cecilia in Rome (1957–9). He was director of the Messina Liceo Musicale (1939–41) and the Cagliari Conservatory (1960–63).

From the Casella-influenced neo-classicism of his early works, with their linear idiom and calm, unproblematic sound world (e.g. the Trio in A and the String Quartets nos.4 and 5), Margola turned in the postwar years to a free use of 12-note technique. His music retained an unmistakable diatonic imprint and an exemplary expressive simplicity, seen particularly in pieces like the two Kinderkonzerte.