Leone Sinigaglia: Improvviso, for Piano

Composer(s)

Leone Sinigaglia 　(b Turin, 14 Aug 1868; d Turin, 16 May 1944). Italian composer. After studying under Giovanni Bolzoni at the Liceo Musicale, Turin, he went to Vienna in 1894 and became a pupil of Eusebius Mandyczewski. He met Brahms, Goldmark and Mahler, and became a close friend of Dvořák, who gave him private lessons in orchestration at Prague and Vysoká (1900–01) and awakened his interest in folk music. In 1901 Sinigaglia returned to Turin, and from 1902 devoted much energy to the collection and study of Piedmontese folksongs (c500 in all), many of which he arranged for voice and piano or for other media. He died suddenly when on the point of being arrested as a Jew.

Most of Sinigaglia’s music written before he moved to Vienna remains unpublished; but the sombrely meditative Romanza op.3 for horn and strings and the vivacious Scherzo op.8 for string quartet reveal a fluent, amiable, essentially conservative talent, receptive to the influences of Mendelssohn and other early Romantics. His growing awareness, during his Viennese period, of Brahms is reflected in some of his mature music, for instance in parts of the Violin Concerto. But the example of Dvořák proved more decisive: the fresh, melodious Rapsodia piemontese, written in Prague, is particularly indebted to the Czech composer, whose influence persists (despite the different regional accent) in two highly successful works using genuine folk melodies, the Danze piemontesi and the Piemonte suite, both often heard in Italy. Sinigaglia’s folksong arrangements as such are always tasteful and imaginative, with judicious variations in the accompaniments from verse to verse. In his original compositions, however (except in the two above-mentioned works and the Serenata sopra temi popolari), he preferred to absorb folk influences without recourse to direct quotations. Nor do all his post-1902 works have Piedmontese overtones: the popular Baruffe chiozzotte overture, for instance, comes nearer to Wolf-Ferrari in its sparkling, neo-Rossinian exuberance. After World War I Sinigaglia composed little and showed almost no inclination to update his style (though he took an open-minded interest in at least some modern composers, from Debussy to Dallapiccola): Dvořákian characteristics remain discernible, notably in the agreeable Cello Sonata; and in the late Violin Sonata such characteristics are sometimes modified by an affectingly nostalgic chromaticism that recalls Strauss at his most mellow.