Ildebrando Pizzetti
Encyclopedia
Ildebrando Pizzetti was an Italian
composer
of classical music
.
in 1880. He was part of the "Generation of 1880" along with Ottorino Respighi
and Gian Francesco Malipiero
. They were among the first Italian composers in some time whose primary contributions were not in opera. (The instrumental and a cappella traditions had never died in Italian music and had produced, for instance, the string quartets of Antonio Scontrino
(1850-1922) and the works of Respighi's teacher Giuseppe Martucci
; but with the "Generation of 1880" these traditions became stronger.)
Ildebrando Pizzetti was born in Parma
, the son of Odoardo Pizzetti, a pianist and piano teacher who was his son's first teacher. At first Pizzetti seemed headed for a career as a playwright—he had written several plays, two of which had been produced—before he decided in 1895 on a career in music and entered the Conservatorium of Parma.
There he was taught from 1897 by Giovanni Tebaldini
and gained the beginnings of his lifelong interest in the early music of Italy, reflected in his own music and his writings.
He taught at the Conservatory in Florence
(director from 1917 to 1923), directed the Milan
Conservatory from 1923, and was Respighi's successor at the Academy of St. Cecilia in Rome from 1936 to 1958) His students included Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
, Olga Rudge
, Manoah Leide-Tedesco
and Franco Donatoni
. Also a music critic, he wrote several books on the music of Italy and of Greece and co-founded a musical journal.
A disciple of poet, playwright and revolutionary Gabriele d'Annunzio
, Pizzetti wrote incidental music
to his plays, and was highly influenced by d'Annunzio's dark neoclassic themes. One of Pizzetti's later operas is a setting of d'Annunzio's La Figlia Di Jorio.
He was named to the Royal Academy of Italy
in 1939. As noted by Sciannameo, his relations with the Fascist government of the 1940s were often positive, sometimes mixed; he received at one point high awards, and the one symphony of his mature years was the product of a commission from their Japanese allies to celebrate the "XXVI Centennial of the foundation of the Japanese Empire" (Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem was also commissioned for this event, though it was rejected on account of its finale; its original finale was rediscovered after Britten's death and only premiered then. Pizzetti's Symphony in A was premiered as noted in the article, and recorded in 1940 (its only recording as of 2005).)
His Violin Concerto in A was premiered in 1944 by Gioconda de Vito
; this seems to be the only 20th century violin concerto she ever played.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
of classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
.
Biography
Pizzetti was born in ParmaParma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
in 1880. He was part of the "Generation of 1880" along with Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral "Roman trilogy": Fountains of Rome ; Pines of Rome ; and Roman Festivals...
and Gian Francesco Malipiero
Gian Francesco Malipiero
Gian Francesco Malipiero was an Italian composer, musicologist, music teacher and editor.-Early years:Born in Venice into an aristocratic family, the grandson of the opera composer Francesco Malipiero, Gian Francesco Malipiero was prevented by family troubles from pursuing his musical education in...
. They were among the first Italian composers in some time whose primary contributions were not in opera. (The instrumental and a cappella traditions had never died in Italian music and had produced, for instance, the string quartets of Antonio Scontrino
Antonio Scontrino
Antonio Scontrino was an Italian composer.Scontrino studied at the Palermo Conservatory from 1861 and 1870 and later in Munich. He began performing as a double bassist in 1891. In 1898, he became a professor of composition at the Palermo Conservatory and also taught in Florence afterwards...
(1850-1922) and the works of Respighi's teacher Giuseppe Martucci
Giuseppe Martucci
Giuseppe Martucci was an Italian composer, conductor, pianist and teacher. As a composer and teacher he was influential in reviving Italian interest in non-operatic music. As a conductor he helped to introduce Richard Wagner's operas to Italy and also gave important early concerts of English music...
; but with the "Generation of 1880" these traditions became stronger.)
Ildebrando Pizzetti was born in Parma
Parma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
, the son of Odoardo Pizzetti, a pianist and piano teacher who was his son's first teacher. At first Pizzetti seemed headed for a career as a playwright—he had written several plays, two of which had been produced—before he decided in 1895 on a career in music and entered the Conservatorium of Parma.
There he was taught from 1897 by Giovanni Tebaldini
Giovanni Tebaldini
Giovanni Tebaldini was an Italian composer, organist and musicologist- Life :He studied with Amilcare Ponchielli at the Conservatory of Milan and later withFranz Xaver Haberlin Regensburg...
and gained the beginnings of his lifelong interest in the early music of Italy, reflected in his own music and his writings.
He taught at the Conservatory in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
(director from 1917 to 1923), directed the Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
Conservatory from 1923, and was Respighi's successor at the Academy of St. Cecilia in Rome from 1936 to 1958) His students included Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian composer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In 1939 he migrated to the United States and became a film composer for some 200 Hollywood movies for the next...
, Olga Rudge
Olga Rudge
Olga Rudge was an American-born concert violinist, now mainly remembered as the long-time mistress of the poet Ezra Pound, by whom she had a daughter, Mary....
, Manoah Leide-Tedesco
Manoah Leide-Tedesco
Manoah Leide-Tedesco was an Italian-American composer, conductor and violinist.- Biography :Tranquillo Manoah Leide-Tedesco was born in Sinigaglia, Italy, but grew up in Naples...
and Franco Donatoni
Franco Donatoni
Franco Donatoni was an Italian composer.Born in Verona, he started studying violin at the age of seven, and frequented the local Music Academy...
. Also a music critic, he wrote several books on the music of Italy and of Greece and co-founded a musical journal.
A disciple of poet, playwright and revolutionary Gabriele d'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, and dramatist...
, Pizzetti wrote incidental music
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
to his plays, and was highly influenced by d'Annunzio's dark neoclassic themes. One of Pizzetti's later operas is a setting of d'Annunzio's La Figlia Di Jorio.
He was named to the Royal Academy of Italy
Royal Academy of Italy
The Royal Academy of Italy was an organization of Italian academians, intellectuals, and cultural figures created on 7 January 1926 by the Fascist government of the Kingdom of Italy by a royal decree, and effectively dissolved in 1943....
in 1939. As noted by Sciannameo, his relations with the Fascist government of the 1940s were often positive, sometimes mixed; he received at one point high awards, and the one symphony of his mature years was the product of a commission from their Japanese allies to celebrate the "XXVI Centennial of the foundation of the Japanese Empire" (Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem was also commissioned for this event, though it was rejected on account of its finale; its original finale was rediscovered after Britten's death and only premiered then. Pizzetti's Symphony in A was premiered as noted in the article, and recorded in 1940 (its only recording as of 2005).)
His Violin Concerto in A was premiered in 1944 by Gioconda de Vito
Gioconda de Vito
Gioconda de Vito was an Italian-British classical violinist. -Life:...
; this seems to be the only 20th century violin concerto she ever played.
Orchestral music
- Symphony in A in celebrazione del XXVIo centenario della fondazione dell'Impero giapponese. 1940
- Incidental music, especially to plays by d'Annunzio, especially
- La Pisanelle (1912-3)
- Suite from La Pisanelle (premiered 1919)
- Harp concerto in E-flat (1960)
- 3 Sonetti del Petrarca
- Tre composizioni corali
- Other vocal works, e.g. Epithalamium (1939? 1940, played at a Library of Congress concert in April 1940 and again in 1977)
- Cello concerto in C (1933-4)
- Violin concertoViolin concertoA violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin and instrumental ensemble, customarily orchestra. Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up through the present day...
in A, 1944 - Canti della stagione alta : concerto for piano and orchestra (1930)
- Sinfonia del fuoco (from music for the silent film CabiriaCabiriaCabiria is a silent movie from the early years of Italy's movie industry, directed by Giovanni Pastrone . The movie is set in ancient Sicily, Carthage, and Cirta during the period of the Second Punic War . It follows a melodramatic main plot about an abducted little girl, Cabiria, and features...
) - Rondo veneziano (1929)
- Concerto dell'Estate
- Tre Preludii sinfonici per L'Edipo Re di Sofocle (1903)
Operas
- Sabina (1897)
- Il Cid (1903)
- Aeneas (1903)
- Mazeppa (1905, unfinished)
- Fedra (1909-12)
- Gigliola (1914, unfinished)
- Dèbora e JaéleDèbora e JaéleDèbora e Jaéle is an opera in three acts by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti. Pizzetti also wrote the libretto, which is based on the story of Deborah and Jael from the Book of Judges in the Bible...
(1915-21) - Fra Gherardo (1928)
- Lo stranieroLo stranieroLo straniero is a dramma lirico or opera in two acts with music and an Italian language libretto by Ildebrando Pizzetti.-Roles:...
(1930) - Orsèolo (1935)
- L'Oro (1947)
- Vanna Lupa (1949)
- Cagliostro (1953)
- La figlia di Jorio (1954)
- Povera gente (1956, unfinished)
- Assassinio nella cattedraleAssassinio nella cattedraleAssassinio nella cattedrale is an opera in two acts and an intermezzo by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti. The libretto is an adaptation by the composer of an Italian translation of T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral. The opera was first performed at La Scala, Milan on 1 March 1958...
(1958) (with Nicola Rossi-LemeniNicola Rossi-LemeniNicola Rossi Lemeni, , was a basso opera singer of mixed Italian-Russian parentage.Rossi Lemeni was born in Istanbul, Turkey, the son of an Italian colonel and a Russian mother. In his prime he was one of the most respected bassos in Italy...
and Leyla GencerLeyla GencerLeyla Gencer, or Ayşe Leyla Çeyrekgil was a world-renowned Turkish operatic soprano.Known as "La Diva Turca" and "La Regina" in the opera world, Gencer was a notable bel canto soprano who spent most of her career in Italy, from the early 1950s through the mid-1980s, and had a repertoire...
in the first cast, conducted by Gianandrea GavazzeniGianandrea GavazzeniGianandrea Gavazzeni was an Italian pianist, conductor , composer and musicologist.Gavazzeni was born in Bergamo. For almost 50 years, starting from 1948, he was principal conductor at La Scala, Milan, in 1966-68 being its music and artistic director.He had his Metropolitan Opera debut on 11...
, staged by Margherita Wallmann at La ScalaLa ScalaLa Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
) - Il calzare d'argento (1961)
- Clitennestra (1965)
Chamber music
- Violin sonata in C minor (1900)
- String Quartet n.1 in A major (1906)
- Violin sonata in A (championed by Yehudi MenuhinYehudi MenuhinYehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
) written 1918–9 , pub. 1920 - Cello sonata in F 1921, pub. 1922
- Tre canti for cello and piano (1924)
- Piano sonata pub. 1942
- Piano trio in G minor (1900)
- Piano trio in A (from 1925)
- String Quartet n.2 in D (written 1932-33, pub. 1934.)
External links
- In black and white: Pizzetti, Mussolini and Scipio Africanus, by Franco Sciannameo, in The Musical Times, summer 2004, pages 25–50, volume 145, issue 1887, ISSN 0027-4666
- List of principal compositions and biography, in Italian