Italy Music Part II

According to MYSTERYAROUND, the only prominent figure of the avant-garde completely extraneous to the serial discourse is that of S. Bussotti (b.1931), whose production includes particularly significant works, such as the symphonic poem I seeds by Gramsci (1971) for string quartet and orchestra; La racine, for 5 mimes, piano and voices (1980); the pantomime ballet by J. Dupin Miró, the light bird (1981), and the opera Phoedra-Heliogabalus (1981).

Among the authors who began to gravitate around the Nuova Consonanza association, founded around 1961, among others, by F. Evangelisti and D. Guaccero in Rome, it is possible to remember M. Bortolotti (b. 1926), E. Macchi, E. Morricone (b. 1928) and M. Bertoncini (b. 1932); coming from the Florentine environment are C. Prosperi (b.1921) and R. Pezzati (b.1939), as well as exponents of a more accentuated experimentalism, such as B. Bartolozzi (b.1911), A. Benvenuti (b.1925)), P. Grossi (b.1917) and G. Chiari (b.1926).

Composer of the older generation, whose work has remained constantly linked to the events of New Music in recent decades, is G. Scelsi (b.1905), prolific author, whose compositions are remembered Kya and Le réveil profund (1984), AnahitChukrumFour illustrationsIxor and Three studies (1985), Four pieces for trumpet (1986), Ka n. 10Suite n. 8 Bot-Ba and Ttai n. 9 (1987), Four illustrations on the Metamorphoses of Vishnu and Ko-Lho (1988).

Significant events which contributed variously to the diffusion of the New Music in Italy between the 1950s and 1960s were undoubtedly the International Conference on the Situation of Music in the 20th Century, held in Rome in April 1954; the project ” Incontri Musicali ” in Milan (1956), to which the homonymous magazine, directed by L. Berio (1956-60), the series of contemporary music concerts (1957-58) and the activity of the chamber group organized by B. Maderna; the xxxiiiWorld Festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music (Rome 1959), the annual organization of the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice (since 1973 as the ” theater-music ” sector of the Venetian Biennale), under the direction of A. Piovesan (to whom we owe, among other things, the execution of Stravinsky’s works, by B. Britten, S. Prokofiev, and by Nono and Maderna themselves), and later by M. Labroca, who reserved great space for the Italian neo-avant-garde, and in particular to the works of Clementi, Castiglioni, Nono, Berio, Togni and Maselli.

In 1955 Maderna and Berio founded the RAI Phonology Studio for Electronic Research in Milan, where, in addition to its founders, illustrious representatives of new European music worked, such as H. Pousseur and A. Boucourechliev, the American Cage, and subsequently the Italians Nono and Paccagnini, who will be entrusted with the direction of the Firm in 1968. Other smaller centers followed the example of the Milanese studio, such as the Studio of the Roman Philharmonic Academy (1957), the Studio of Musical Phonology in Florence (1963) and the Electronic Music Studio of Turin (1964).

In the following years, the search for electronic music also found increasing attention in many of the conservatories and universities of the most important cities, albeit in a spontaneous form rather than for actual programming by the state. In recent years, the activity of the Laboratory for Musical Informatics of the music sector of the Venice Biennale (LIMB), founded in 1980, has been particularly developed. In 1981 the Italian Musical Informatics Association (AIMI) was founded, while in 1982 the annual session of the International computer music conference was held in Venice, and for the first time in Europe.

In 1960 the first of the six International Weeks of New Music in Palermo was organized, which covered almost the entire decade and saw the participation of the major exponents of the contemporary music scene, not only Italian, but also European and extra-European. The Weeks were linked to the new Institute for the history of music in Palermo (1958), entrusted to L. Rognoni, under whose impulse the University Group for New Music (GUNM) was born in 1959.

Among the other important events related to New Music and developed between the Sixties and Seventies, and which still characterize our musical panorama, it is possible to remember the Days of New Music of the Musical Autumn of Como (1967), the International Music Review contemporary piano of the Brescia and Bergamo Piano Festival (1969), and the Milanese initiative of Music of our time (1976).

Among the authors who emerged in this period, S. Sciarrino (b.1947), P. Renosto (b.1935), F. Pennisi (b.1934), A. Corghi (b.1937) deserve particular attention, A. Gentilucci (b. 1939) and D. Anzaghi (b. 1936). Alongside them it is also possible to mention F. Oppo (b.1935), G. Giani-Luporini (b.1936), U. Rotondi (b.1937), C. De Incontrera (b.1937), G. Zosi (1940), W. Branchi (b.1941), G. Baggiani (b.1932) and Italy Vandor (b.1932).

Furthermore, during the seventies also L. Lombardi (b.1945), G. Sinopoli (b.1946), A. Guarnieri (b.1947), S. Gorli (b.1948), L. Ferrero (b. 1951); Over the last decade, F. Vacchi (b.1949), R. Abbate (b.1950), G. Cappelli (b.1952), F. Carluccio (b.1952), Italy Fedele (b.1953) have established themselves.), M. Tutino (b.1954), G. Taglietti (b.1955), M. Ferrari (b.1956), L. Mosca (b.1957), G. Testoni (b.1957), F. Incardona (b.1958), M. Stroppa (b.1959).

Again we can mention L. Ceccarelli (Koan, 1986, and Koan II, 1988), F. Grillo (Lideison, 1984, and Improvviso, 1985), D. Lombardi (Per Agata Smeralda as Alice Through the Looking Glass, 1985), G. Lorenzini (Opera 2, 1986), M. Mollia (Diaphanes, 1976), R. Musto (Interlude n.2, 1976), A. Sbordoni (Angelus Novus, in memory of Italy Calvino, 1985, and Eros: Daedalus, 1988), G. Schiaffini (Patchwork, 1986) and S. Scodanibbio (Two brilliant pieces, 1988).

The approval and implementation of a general law for the reform of the music sector, the urgency of which has been repeatedly denounced in recent years, is still unfulfilled today: the consequence of this has been a progressive worsening of the conditions in which the institutions find themselves. music in our country, from a financial and organizational point of view. This is particularly true for prestigious institutions, including world-wide ones, such as the Teatro della Scala in Milan, the Teatro dell’Opera and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and again the San Carlo in Naples, the Regio in Turin and La Fenice in Venice, alongside which the other lyric-symphonic bodies now present in almost all major cities, the numerous provincial theaters of ancient tradition (such as the Petruzzelli di Bari, destroyed by a fire in 1991), and the major concert institutions, including in particular the RAI symphony orchestras of Milan, Rome and Turin. The non-implementation of a reform also in the music education sector is particularly serious, in the absence of a legislative framework that redefines activities and programs not only at school level – where we must point out the almost total absence of music teaching in the programs ministerial – but also with regard to the institutions of the conservatories (some of which are still of considerable prestige, such as the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the conservatories of Venice and Naples), which are now seriously isolated from the more general social context and cultural.

Italy Music 2