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(1882-1973)
I have never understood the level of neglect accorded to this great master. I don’t believe it’s simply a case of Malipiero’s work being inherently unapproachable, despite the fact that his work is thornier than that of his more popular contemporary rival, Ottorino Respighi. Still, there are varying levels by which one may approach this admittedly enigmatic figure’s music, sometimes in fairly straightforward fashion. It is altogether true that in order to experience the impact of his musical discourse, it does help to understand his philosophy and musical and personal background.
• His Life
Malipiero was born in 1882 into a musical family. His grandfather, Francesco Malipiero, was an operatic composer. His father, Luigi, was a conductor. His schooling included study at the Vienna Conservatory and Liceo Musicale “B. Marcello”, These experiences thoroughly grounded him in formal theory and compositional techniques, especially in Italian musical history. Around 1902, his studies led him to some old music manuscripts by Italian composers. He was soon to begin the efforts that won him recognition as one of the leading musicologists of the 20th century, as well as the foremost expert on Italian music literature. (He copied and transcribed the complete works of Claudio Monteverdi and many works each of Giovanni Bassani, Emilio del Cavalieri, Alessandro Stradella, Giuseppe Tartini, Antonio Vivaldi, and others) (Randel pp. 544-5).
Malipiero’s interest in the manuscripts was intense. Consequently, he absorbed stylistic traits of the old masters into his own compositions, including the modal and contrapuntal techniques that were to become trademarks of his compositions from that time forward (Ewen p. 461-2). As well, his works from this time were imbued with the peculiarly Italian, plaintive nostalgia that is so characteristic of, and associated with, his work. At the time, though, in the early 1900s, his work seemed to be overly derivative to some (himself included!). His musical gestures were too reminiscent of older methods. Malipiero felt he was out of step, somehow, with current trends; somehow too closeted with the older ways. Several works of this time are bathed in this aesthetic; notable are three early Sinfonie (plural for Sinfonia, an older Italian form of music in a suite-like structure, unrelated to the later classic-romantic Austro-Germanic Symphony with its pattern of repetition and development of thematic materials. Malipiero preferred the Italian nomenclature to make that distinction clear in his own work). Malipiero felt that the three works: Sinfonia degli Eroi (Sinfonia of Love - 1905), Sinfonia del Mare (Sinfonia of the Sea - 1906), and Sinfonie del Silenzio e de la Morte (Sinfonias of Silence and Death - 1908), were too narrow, expressively, and were out of sync with a more forward looking idealism that was just beginning to inform the European compositional landscape. So he isolated these works, as well as several other early works, and repudiated them in various interesting ways. Although Malipiero (ultimately) was to support the Sinfonia del Mare, the instrumental Impressioni dal vero (composed in 3 parts: 1913; 1917; and 1923) were more revelatory of his subsequent development.
In 1913 Malipiero went to Paris where he was to absorb a multitude of fresh and stimulating new musical experiences, not the least of which was a performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). In the process, Malipiero came into contact with Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Manuel de Falla, and Stravinsky himself. These interludes were very influential in helping Malipiero establish a new formal approach, if not an entirely new aesthetic. That is to say, he did not completely discard his entire musical métier. Some of the modality and contrapuntalism were refitted with more modern sounding chordal structures including some more aggressive dissonances (not overly so, when one contemplates some of the stuff put forth by such luminaries as Arnold Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, and Edgard Varčse). But Malipiero was smart enough not to entirely discard his peculiar nostalgia for the older Italian sensibility and sonorities that were uniquely his: he retained his sense of personal expression. One of the ways was to couch the musical discourse in a series of contemplations internal to the architecture (Waterhouse Cyclopedia p. 1318). The main attribute of this new style is a formal series of musical ‘panels’ (Waterhouse Cyclopedia p. 1317) delineating separate musical episodes, seemingly unrelated, but reflectively interactive towards one another in the manner of a dialogue (somehow reminiscent of Messiaen’s “aspects”). The most prominent work in this new approach is his Pause del Silenzio I (1917)................
• His Style
In general, Malipiero’s work is intuitive, presented through a formal technique that builds and accumulates expressive material. Like Debussy, a composer he greatly admired throughout his artistic life, Malipiero distrusted the packaged forms (sonata-allegro, rondo, etc.) of the German Romantic tradition with their emphasis on repetition and development. Malipiero was more fond of freer sonic discourse that enabled a more secretive plan, one that would require greater attention to the exposition, and less to the shell. As a result, one encounters several melodies, sometimes just fragments, which play in the unfolding process. Malipiero’s unique sense of variation determines just how this reveals itself. Frequently, fragments appear for no formally traceable reason, seemingly only for whim. There are intuitive designs at work, but their secrets often remain with the composer!
Unlike the classical symphony, the different movements of his Sinfonias often do not contain repeated thematic materials, or materials drawn from previous movements within the same work. Additionally, movements begin in one key and end in another, when key signatures are used (PAR Waterhouse 8.223602 p. 6). The result is often a craggy texture that, for these very reasons, can imbue the whole of the work with considerable charm. The non-symphonic (or non-sinfonic, as the case really is) poems, like Pause del Silenzio I, or Notturno di Canti e Balli, are usually in separate movements (Notturno), or in ‘panels’ of action (Pause) held together by means of short interludes of a single theme. These interludes, though thematically common, are varied by means of tempo, rhythm, orchestration, or otherwise upon each appearance. The materials in the main panels are usually unrelated to those in previous panels. These formal expressions signify that it is incorrect, even sloppy analysis to label Malipiero’s work ‘neo-classical’, simply because there exist works with the label “symphony” or “sinfonia”. There is no standard patterning here.
Melodically and harmonically, Malipiero’s mature work (post 1915) is generally divisible into three overall stylistic periods. The first lasted from about 1915 through the late 1920s, and it was characterized by dissonant sequences of short melodic statement that were then in vogue (Bartók, Stravinsky, et al). The second lasted through the 1930s and 1940s, and was characterized by softer, more relaxed melodic and harmonic treatment. The third lasted through the 1950s and 1960s, and saw the composer’s work become very terse and expressionist, and even atonal (though he claimed never to have used serial procedures).............
CHAPTER PREVIEW - MALIPIERO
