The
Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola was born and spent his childhood in Istria,
now part of Croatia, and a meeting-point of cultures. He had his first
experience of Wagner during his family’s internment in Graz in 1917, later
studying music in Trieste and then in Florence, where a performance of
Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire persuaded him to work as a composer, rather
than as a pianist, his earlier choice of career. Concert tours had taken
him to Vienna and to London, leading to a connection with the circle of
Schoenberg. In Germany and later in Italy he met politically inspired
opposition, although his opera Volo di notte (Night Flight), based on
Saint-Exupéry’s Vol de nuit, had performances in both countries.
After the war his Canti di prigionia (Songs of Imprisonment), with texts
based on Mary Queen of Scots, Boethius and Savonarola, was heard at an ISCM
festival in London, marking the post-war re-admission of Italy, and in
1950 his opera Il prigionero (The Prisoner) was staged in Florence, to
be heard also in Germany, as Italy regained something of her earlier position
in contemporary music. In the 1950s Dallapiccola established closer ties
with the United States, where he undertook teaching assignments, with
performances of his works throughout the Americas. He was among the first
Italian composers to absorb the principles of Schoenberg and to make continuing
use of the latter’s serial techniques. Dallapiccola died in Florence in 1975.
Orchestral Music
Dallapiccola’s
Variazioni for orchestra of 1954 is an orchestral version of the Quaderno
musicale di Annalibera for piano of 1952, a work reflecting a refinement of
the composer’s applications of serialism.