Tributes to Dallapiccola

Author(s): Elisabeth Lutyens, Hans Werner Henze, Hugh Wood

Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 108 (Mar., 1974), pp. 15-18
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/943002
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TRIBUTES TO DALLAPICCOLA

1) ElisabethLutyens

I FIRST met Luigi Dallapiccola in 1946. The annual Festival of the ISCM-lapsed
during the war-took place in London that year, giving an opportunity of renew-
ing old acquaintances and meeting new colleagues.
My first sight of Dallapiccola-no one, not even his wife, Laura, ever calls
him Luigi-was of a tiny figure of great vitality and dignity on which was poised
a large, noble head (then black-haired) tilted at a strange angle when looking up
into the faces of those he was speaking with. The speech was always accompanied
by many gestures from his large, expressive hands.
Our next meeting was, again, at an ISCM Festival: Holland I948. At a
reception given to the delegates, artists and composers by Queen Juliana.
Prince Bernhard turned to my husband, Edward Clark (Hon. Sec. and then Presi-
dent of the ISCM) and asked: 'Who is the best composer here?' Answer:
'Dallapiccola'. 'And who is the nicest person here?' Answer: 'Dallapiccola'.
I saw him again at the I949 Festival at Palermo, where we were now
firm friends, and from then on during every visit he made to London. Pictures
come to mind; of dining at 'Prada's' (a musicians' restaurant) and Dallapiccola
reciting Dante with tears pouring down his face; of his asking us the meaning and
'
pronunciation of James Joyce's ' . . . a blue-veined child . . . which he was
to set in his Tre Poemi; of his slowly learning English-with the help of a Miss
Birch-preparatory to his first visit to America.
I treasure the friendship of this dear, good man and wonderful musician,
and wish him a very happy birthday and-as he said to me at our recent parting a
few months ago-'Au revoir ... et bon travail et ... non, Casuffit'.

( 1974 by Elisabeth Lutyens

 2) Hans WernerHenze
I FIRST met Luigi Dallapiccola in Munich in about 'g2 or 'g3 when I1 Prigioniero
was given there in a concert performance at Musica Viva (an organization founded
by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, who saw to it that Dallapiccola's music was regularly
performed in Munich). I found him extremely interesting to listen to, and since
then I have often searched out his company in order to hear him talk, because he is
certainly one of the most cultured people I have ever met. He knows everything
about Proust, he knows everything about German literature. He is, for instance,
a Goethe specialist. He is a Dante specialist of the first order; and I think he's a
rare example of a very complete humanitarian artist.
In the first years of my acquaintance with his music, I was very impressed by
its dramatic urgency. Only later did I understand that this immediate impact is
based on a very carefully structured technique which with the years is getting more
and more profound and clear. He seems to feel responsible for every note he
writes, for every sound he creates; and the links to ancient European traditions
become more and more evident also. I used to think that in the earlier works like
Volodi Notte, Prigionieroand Canti di Prigionia these things were not so strongly
expressed; but I have recently looked at these scores again and I find the same
tendency already in evidence.
His importance is that he saves Italy's music from provincialism. Not for
nothing are his works mainly performed outside Italy! But I think his music is
very Italian: it is very much influenced by Florentine art. I think you can almost
see the Florentine influence even in the design of the scores; and there is a dis-
cipline, an elegance, a clarity, an unsentimentality which is somehow so classical
and so Florentine (so Tuscan, let's say)--very pure. I have always admired this
very much, and I respect very much his musical morality. I respect very much the
enormous sense of responsibility in his counterpoint and his structures, and I feel
that I would like to be as moral in my own writing. But I'm not so patient or so
wise as he.
The only place where I have consciously felt Dallapiccola's influence is in
my recent song-cycle Voices(which was performed in London in January). There's
one song on an Ungaretti poem, and when I wrote it, I did think of Dallapiccola
and perhaps there is even a Dallapiccola sound in it.
His morals of course are not only musical morals. They are also human and
therefore political morals. He maintained admirable integrity during the fascist
period, when he could hardly be performed at all. As a good Italian intellectual,
he belonged of course to the Italian left (in his case the catholic left), and never
compromised with the fascist government. That was almost unique, I think: I
wish there were many young artists with such a responsible attitude as Dallapiccola
and with such decisiveness in human and political behaviour.
So I think of this man with great admiration and respect and love and friend-
ship, and I hope that he will be with us for many, many more years and that he
will give us more beautiful works in the future.

? 1974 by Hans Werner Henze

 17

3) Hugh Wood
THE first piece by Dallapiccola I can remember hearing was at the Dartington
Summer School of Music in 195g. It was his Tre Poemifor voice and chamber
orchestra. I still remember the moment when the slow passacaglia-like move-
ment of the second song gathered itself up to a luscious Bergian chord on the harp.
I remember the sinuous line of the voice throughout, but particularly at the very
beginning: 'Gracile rosa bianca e frali'--a marvellous re-creation of the James
Joyce poem 'A flower given to my daughter'. These are ravishingly beautiful
songs, and I don't know why we don't hear them more often.
The end of the war, was, I suppose, the real beginning for Dallapiccola's
music in England. And it was fortunate, really, that it was just those dark days of
the war, and the difficult years after it, that saw the production of some of his
finest music. The Machado songs, the Tre Poemi, the QuadernoMusicaledi Anna-
libera and the Goethe-Lieder were then, for some of us young ones, the absolutely
new; they were part of the New Music. And now let me jump forward nearly
20 years: two or three years ago I listened, on two
separate occasions, with a
friend who had a vocal score, to wireless performances of Dallapiccola's opera
Ulysses. This is the crowning work of his life, which fulfils a theme which has
haunted him since the age of 8, when he saw a film of The Odyssey. Now two
hearings are not enough to get to know any piece well, let alone a major one:
and an opera one would have to see staged. But nevertheless, the noble stature
of this major work is unmistakable.
So now Dallapiccola is 70, and we know that he is a master. I'm no expert
on his music, and there are many pieces that I've never heard at all. But I do know
what he stands for, and this above all I respect. The whole new world of musical
possibilities which Arnold Schoenberg opened up was first apprehended by
Dallapiccola when he was only 20-when Pierrot Lunairewas first performed in
Italy. All his subsequent career has been lived in the light of that revelation.
Only second to it was his visit to Webern in the middle of the war. Dallapiccola
has always remained true to these formative influences.
Since the war, we have experienced a whole generation of composers who
have reacted against Schoenberg: who have treated him as a maybe necessary, but
transitory, stage in the historical development which has led to their own
brilliant achievements. And a lot of the wonderful possibilities that the forma-
tion of the classical twelve-note technique has thrown up-to say nothing of the
sheer creative power of Schoenberg's music itself-has been virtually laid on one
side, by-passed, gone by default. We've scarcely begun to realize the potential
of it: people have used all this as a theory, but disregarded the actual music.
Dallapiccola was not himself a Schoenberg pupil. But he belongs to a select
group of composers-Roberto Gerhard, Skalkottas, Roger Sessions, and a few
others-who have built upon Schoenberg's achievements in a creative way. All
these composers have completely different characters: it's not at all a question
of His Master's Voice. Dallapiccola's voice is particularly distinctive. He is
capable of the monumental, but I love best his gentle, delicate lyricism: his
music sings. What he really learnt from Webern was not so much the enlarge-

? 1974 by Hugh Wood

I8 TEMPO

ment of the musical language, but the paradoxical lesson which Webern's own
work shows so clearly: that lyricism, the singing line, on one hand, and the most
skilful of contrapuntal devices on the other, are, the pair of them, bosom friends
who help each other, not sworn enemies who have to be reconciled.
To realize this needs not only the imagination of a poet, but also the skill of
a craftsman. These virtues Dallapiccola has. But he has more. The artist in him
has never forgotten the citizen. He is concerned with public matters, with
political events and problems: with captivity for conscience's sake, and with the
possibility and the ecstasy of human freedom. As a European intellectual, who
has lived through the times that he has, he knows what he's talking about-to an
extent that none of us over here can possibly realize. His music has seriousness
and integrity and-it's such an English word, I'm afraid-decency. We should
value these virtues. I wish for him many more years of creative life. I-together
with many others on the occasion of his 7oth birthday--salute him.

Luigi Dallapiccola CANTI DI PRIGIONIA

for mixed chorus, 2 pianos, 2 harps
timpani and percussion

CORI DI MICHELANGELO
BUONAROTTI IL GIOVANE
Set 1 for chorus & chamber orchestra
Set 2 for chorus a capella
Set 3for mixed chorus & large orchestra

DIVERTIMENTO
IN QUATTRO ESERCIZI
for soprano solo and five instruments

TRE LAUDI
for solo soprano and chamber orchestra

these vocal and choral works by the contemporary

Italian master are published by CARISCH, MILAN
the material is available on hire in the UK from

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