Performance Guide 

Alfredo Casella’s Sicilienne and

Burlesque 
By Claudia Anderson

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“Written in 1914, Sicilienne and Burlesque represents a strange combination of

French Impressionism, early Italian forms, and the Stravinsky of Rite and
Petroushka.”

    Alfredo Casella’s Sicilienne and Burlesque holds a unique place in the history of contest
pieces written for the Paris Conservatoire’s annual concours for flute. The Italian Casella was
a child piano prodigy. He went to Paris just before 1900 to study composition and remained
in France for at least 15 years. His teacher was Gabriel Faure; Maurice Ravel was a fellow
student whom Casella admired and later emulated. At the time Paris was the musical
epicenter for most established or aspiring European and American composers, and Casella
met and heard music by many great or future-great 20th-century musicians: Claude Debussy,
Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakov, Bela Bartok, Arnold Schoenberg, and
Igor Stravinsky. 
    In particular, Casella embraced Stravinsky after hearing the riotous premiere of The Rite
of Spring in 1913. Casella’s early compositional influences from the French Impressionists
gave way to Stravinksy’s more barbaric primitivism, and his former French elegance of line
and Romantic harmonies suddenly acquired new expressive extremes. 
    Written in 1914, Sicilienne and Burlesque represents a strange combination of French
Impressionism, early Italian forms, and the Stravinsky of Rite and Petroushka. The
unorthodox piano writing is largely responsible for the strangeness, with haunting parallel
chords, superimposed harmonies, marcato sequences featuring seconds and open 4ths and
5ths, and growling bass motifs that accentuate the piano’s percussive qualities (e.g. the Jaws
half-step motif during the Burlesque). We will examine Sicilienne and Burlesque by looking
separately at each ingredient of Casella’s multi-national recipe and then swirl it all together
for a final analysis.
Italy and the Commedia Dell’Arte
    Sicilienne and Burlesque follows the French contest-piece formula of a slow, lyrical
opening followed by a fast and virtuosic section. Rather than using a common title, such as
Fantasy, or two tempo-related markings (e.g. Andante and Scherzo), Casella used Italian
forms to distinguish himself from his Paris colleagues. The siciliana/siciliano was a slow
pastoral dance in 6/8, 9/8, or 12/8, characterized by the lilting dotted rhythm we see in the

opening bars of the piece. 

Starting innocently enough, the lilt escalates quickly into a powerful climb up to high B in
the third line. This outburst at the top end of the scale is more reminiscent of Jolivet and
Dutilleux, writing some 30 years later, than of Casella’s peers, such as Gaubert, Enesco, or
Faure. The same can be said of the cascading section on the second page. Even without
considering the somewhat dark and unsettling piano writing underneath, this Sicilienne goes
far beyond its Italian origins in mood and beyond the Paris Conservatoire’s typical treatment
of range and dynamics for competition pieces.
    The burlesca is an Italian form that goes back to at least the 17th century and is related to
the commedia dell’arte, a uniquely Italian brand of theater originating in the 16th century.
The plays featured stock characters and parodies of serious universal themes (e.g. love, age
vs. youth) that are changed into outlandish and distorted versions of themselves. In music,
the burlesque became popular somewhat later; it too used both serious and comic elements
that were juxtaposed to result in a skewed and grotesque effect. As with the Sicilienne,
Casella’s Burlesque delves into an emotional realm quite outside the contemporaneous flute
repertoire’s Romanticism and Impressionism. We see this superficially on the page with
dynamics routinely reaching double and triple forte and increasingly agitated Italian phrases
during the movement: allegramente, brillante e con fuoco, scherzando giocoso, con forza,
stridente, sempre piu vivace, con bravura, stringendo sempre piu. 

The
French Connection
    Casella’s debt to Faure and his admiration for Ravel showed in his music throughout his
career. During most of his sojurn in Paris, Casella’s music was clearly full of the French
Impressionists’ style, and the early Barcarola e Scherzo (1903) for flute and piano fits
naturally into the melodic and harmonic molds of our best-known French collection,
Moyse’s Flute Music by French Composers. 
    The fact that Sicilienne and Burlesque is still part of the French style but significantly
altered by Stravinsky’s influence presents a performance challenge for flutists: How much
Ravel and Faure do we hear, and how much Petroushka and the eerie beginning of Rite? The
very opening piano solo, for instance, is reminiscent of the bassoon solo that begins
Stravinsky’s latter work. Without the piano, the flute’s first couple of entrances appear to be
the typical siciliano pastoral mood; with piano, the tone takes on a murkier quality that lends
uncertainty, a heavy suspense, to the languido e dolce that Casella asks for. 
    As the movement progresses, we are surprised again and again by harmonies that underlie
the flute part, particularly in places where expressive directions and melodic figures suggest
something quite different on the page. For example, on line 6 of the first page, the flute’s D-
flat entrance is marked pp espressivo with a broad crescendo to the middle of the phrase,
then back down to begin a section that breaks into a light and capricious figure (end of line 7
into 8). If this passage were, say, Taffanel’s, the D flat would likely be part of a D-flat or A-
flat harmony, and the low Fs three and four bars later might represent F minor. 
    The entire passage from line 6 through line 8 strongly suggests A-flat major/F minor and
D-flat major/B-flat  minor. When the piano enters, however,  anything remotely suggesting
tonality is obliterated. In fact, the only link between piano and flute is the piano’s undulating
rhythms of the siciliano, which persist throughout the section. So the flute’s high D flat
actually enters as a pale, unearthly dissonance to what is happening below. We must find a
tone color to match this mood, not the one we might want to hear in our heads from
Taffanel. 
    For a brief moment, the harmonies on the second page, line 1 and into 2, suggest a Ravel-
like lushness – even a trace of Hollywood – that match the intent of the flute line. But as
soon as we reach the trills and cascades of runs, the piano reverts to stark parallel intervals
used for driving the flute forward with tense energy. With more traditional French writing,
this would be a moment to stretch the tempo and shape the runs. Here we feel no room to
relax and instead must propel forward to the high F in line 3 (largamente), which should be
an arrival but is in fact a higher level of tension. Casella confirms this by saying senza dim.
as the line falls, sempre molto f as we go into the capricious figure from page 1, and senza
Rall. at the final bar of the section – a written-out rallentando by way of increasing note
values. Clearly, Casella wants the flutist to maintain high tension and discipline to the end.
    We need less beauty and more power, a sound closer to Jolivet’s Chant de Linos than to
any of Casella’s contemporaries who wrote flute chamber music. The orchestral Ravel
of Bolero and La Valseand the large scores of Stravinsky come closest to conveying the
scope of tone colors flutists should seek in this work. The end of Sicilienne dissolves to a
haunting low register in the flute, made strange and without repose because the piano’s
chords have nothing to do with the D-flat minor triad that is the flute’s sole material. Notice
that Casella again writes in a rallentando in the last line by increasing note values; he does
not want to give  any expressive leeway even at the close. He finally drops down a half-step
to C, which suggests the F minor connection in preparation for the F major coming up in
the Burlesque. 

France, Russia and Musical Cubism

     Casella has been referred to as a musical cubist during the period in which he
wrote Sicilienne and Burlesque. Cubism is thought of primarily as a movement in visual art,
with Picasso being its most
famous representative. 
A painting most musicians
know is his Three
Musicians, where we see
three individuals playing
instruments who are both
interlocked and fragmented
by geometric shapes. With
cubism, the artist shows us
many different angles or
perspectives from which to
view the work, rather than a
linear and clear picture
which the artist has
imposed. In music, cubism
exists when the composer
presents a typical or
expected form and
manipulates it so that the
listener is made to hear the work from several different and often conflicting points of view.
This is exactly what Casella has done with Sicilienne and Burlesque: he has taken the
familiar French Conservatory test piece and imbued it with the extreme expressionism of
Stravinsky and the Ravel’s La Valse. 
     The Burlesque, as mentioned earlier, is a musical form that exaggerates character and
accentuates the bizarre. The flute writing features lots of marcato and staccato passages,
along with exaggerated dynamics and abrupt shifts from aggressive to playful moods. The
piano has brassy sounding chord clusters moving up or down in parallel motion, as well as
high-register riffs sounding like top woodwinds that recall the opening market scene from
Petroushka. There is also a more sinister-sounding, half-step theme in the piano’s low
register that precedes the bravura staccato flute passages on pages 4 and 6. 
The movement begins and ends solidly in F major and follows through with key changes
when the main melody modulates (e.g. page 3, line 7: D-flat major; page 5, line 10: D
major). The playful scherzando, giocoso theme also lands on key centers (page 3, line 8: C
major; page 6, line 2: F major). In between these “French” areas, however, the listener is
immersed in the more intense sound world of Stravinsky, which is represented in the piano’s
clusters, riffs and growling bass motives. 
     Beginning with page 3, line 9, the piano sets up a low drum-like beat that goes to the last
measure on page 4, line 4; the statements of the initial theme by the flute in this section have
no harmonic basis, and the drum beat below changes the theme’s character to suspenseful
and ominous. You  may want to alter your sound to dark and hollow, with perhaps a more
brittle articulation. These are options each player should address as the piano score becomes
more familiar. Knowledge of the piano part in a duo work is always mandatory to create the
most convincing performance. In this work the need to know the piano score is especially
critical, given the combination of styles and perspectives that Casella presents. 
     From page 4 through the final return of the main theme (Giocoso) on page 5, the piano
allows no tonal foundation. The pace becomes increasingly frenetic, and if you adhere to
Casella’s markings starting with the first triple forte at the bottom of page 4 to Giocoso on
page 5, the sound and articulation must keep intensifying all the way through. The only
moments in the Burlesque that are not intense – the playful theme on pages 3 and 6 –  should
be performed with as much dynamic and textural contrast as you can muster. Playing this
motive light and dry, thinking tongue in cheek, will add the bizarre edge to the music coming
before and afterwards that Casella had in mind.

The Etudes
     Finding etudes that address the technical problems of Sicilienne and Burlesque along with
Casella’s heightened emotional demands was a challenge. Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s 30 Caprices,
Op. 107 were written precisely during Casella’s  compositional period, and they come from
the same highly charged expressive world.   
     In Karg-Elert’s own words, from the Introduction to his Caprices:

     “The 30 Caprices originated from the urgent need of forming a connecting link between
the existing educational literature and the unusually complicated parts of modern orchestral
works by Richard     Strauss, Mahler, Bruckner, Reger, Pfitzner, Schillings, Schoenberg,
Korngold, Schreker, Scriabin, and Stravinsky; . . .The Caprices explore new and untrodden
paths in technique; a technique which may be required from one day to another in some new
impressionistic or expressionistic work.”

     Number 16, un poco mosso, umoristico, is helpful for the scherzando passages in both
movements.  Execute all the carrot accents in this etude, and you will have the context for
Casella’s biting humor.        
     Number 20, Ardito, capriccioso ed assai mosso, is terrific for work on extreme and
 sudden character changes.
     Most of the Italian terms are common or easy cognates (e.g. malizioso, umoristico). One
you may have trouble with is loquace, which means loquacious or talkative. How to put this
character into the music is a fascinating problem. You might think about a recitative kind of
style, which allows for some rubato in the line. Whatever you decide, exaggerate the various
characters to the fullest.
     There are two Bach Studies that I find very effective support for several technical
passages in Burlesque. Lines 2 and 3 on page 3, and the bottom of page 4 look surprisingly
similar to Bach’s writing, as do the staccato bravura passages on pages 4 and 6. Etude #12,
Prelude (for pages 3 and 4), and #24, Presto (for pages 4 and 6), are both from solo violin
partitas and demand a more forceful or high-energy sound and articulations approximating a
violin. To play with this style through both etudes is exhausting and will definitely build
embouchure endurance. Using transcriptions you will reach further than you would with one
of Bach’s flute sonatas to play a kind of heightened Baroque that will take you closer to
Casella’s music. If you think about playing his passages with the even, strong sound and
finger technique, and the drive of Bach, you are well equipped to dig into Burlesque with
great command of its technique and compelling tone throughout.  
     For the passages that modulate quickly with the same material or are stated in multiple
keys (such as Burlesque’s main theme and section at the top of page 5, lines 1-3), Geoffrey
Gilbert’s Sequencesare helpful. In particular, #8 has some of the same contour of line as
Casella’s passage on page 5, and it moves faster than other examples in the collection.  Play
it as fast as possible and slur everything if you want to simulate the passage in Casella.
     The last two etudes come from contrasting periods, but both help improve staccato
articulation with uneven or widening intervals. One is from Donjon’s 8 Etudes de Salon,
which is found in The Modern Flutist. Called Le Tambour [The Drum], its outer sections are
a vigorous workout in broken chords that are marked (rather uncharacteristically) fortissimo
The other etude is #3, Pour le staccato from Douze Etudes by Marcel Bitsch. This etude is
wonderful for acquiring great embouchure flexibility while maintaining an even staccato.
     At a time when our flute repertoire was firmly rooted in late-Romantic and early-
Impressionist styles, Sicilienne and Burlesque offers a taste of the emerging Expressionist
(using melodic or harmonic manipulation for expressive effect) manner. Casella’s
multifaceted technique, which presented essences of the older styles at the same time as the
new, offers us a true musical prism and a unique performing challenge. Sicilienne and
Burlesque stood (and still stands) alone in our French concour pieces as a unique
representative of its turbulent time.  

 
Claudia Anderson
Claudia Anderson shown with students at Rocky Ridge, where she teaches flute and is
also the Junior Seminar Program Director. A Fulbright scholar to Italy, she was
subsequently principal flute of the Orchestra del Teatro Massimo in Palermo. After
returning to the U.S., she was solo piccolo for ten years with the Cedar Rapids
Symphony and is presently principal flute with the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony and
half of ZAWA with Jill Felber. Receiving degrees from the Universities of Michigan,
Massachusetts, and Iowa, She currently teaches at Grinnell College and has held
positions at the Universities of Iowa and Northern Iowa, Ithaca College, and the
University of California at Santa Barbara.