Alfredo Casella

Alfredo Casella was born in Turin in 1883. His family had long musical associations (his grandfather was friends with Paganini, for example) and he himself proved to be a precocious piano player, performing in public for the first time aged just 11. As a thirteen year-old, he was sent to study at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was to remain for the next 19 years. There, he developed close friendships with the likes of Ravel and Enescu, whilst also being acquainted with Debussy (whose music he adored), Stravinsky, Mahler, Richard Strauss and Bartók. His musical outlook at this time was, therefore, adventurous and cosmopolitan. In 1915, however, he felt the need to return to his Italian roots, and thus took up a piano professorship in Rome. He swiftly surrounded himself with a group of young Italian composers (such as Respighi and Malipiero) who sought both to introduce modern music to provinicial Italy and to modernise Italian music-making itself. His music at this time (his 'second manner') was of the 'extreme avant garde' kind, according to the New Groves, and gradually infused with Italian nationalistic flavour. Later in the 1920s, his musical idiom changed once again to a much more crisply dissonant diatonicism, with influence from Italian folk-music and pre-19th Century Italian music, such as Scarlatti.

During the 1920s and 1930s, of course, Mussolini ruled the roost in Italy: Casella was not immune from his charms and can fairly be said to have been an out-and-out Fascist. He wrote an opera, for example, which praised Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopa). The New Groves is keen to point out that Casella was a 'good' fascist: they use the phrase 'Casella's fascism was of the “innocent” kind, reflecting nothing worse than lack of political understanding and gullability in the face of propaganda'. I think it reasonable to read that sentence as a hefty splash of whitewashing: if you mix with the likes of Ravel, Stravinsky and Mahler, you cannot possibly be that gullible or naiive! So: I don't buy the excuses and a fascist he must be seen to have been. That said, he was a champion of the music of Schönberg in the 1937 Venice Festival, so he wasn't a narrow-minded Italian nationalist. Italian fascism, of course, had much less of the anti-Jewishness about it than the later German Nazi movement espoused: championing the Jewish Schönberg was not quite the brave (foolhardy!) step it would have been in Nazi Germany in 1937, therefore. Once Mussolini introduced race laws in 1938, however, Casella's identification with the cause of Fascism became more problematic: his own wife was French-Jewish, after all. From 1943 onwards, after Germany had effectively invaded Italy, Casella was in constant fear of his wife and daughter being imprisoned: the family actually spli up and hid in the homes of friends to avoid that fate.

Apart from any significance his own compositions may have, Casella's biggest claim to fame may have been his re-discovery and promotion of the music of Antonio Vivaldi: in 1939, he organised a “Vivaldi Week” which made a tremendous impact. After the war, he was likewise instrumental in getting new editions of Vivaldi's works prepared and published. Much of Vivaldi's current popularity and acclaim must be laid at Casella's door, in fact.

Casella's own compositions were considerable and covered multiple genres. There are three extant symphonies; multiple suites, rhapsodies and overtures; a violin concerto, a cello concerto; multiple works for string quartets; and a pile of piano works. He also wrote several ballets -including his most well-known one La giara- and three operas. As previously mentioned, his music falls into three basic tranches: his earliest works pay hommage to the likes of Fauré, Stravinsky and Mahler; his second 'phase' is the avant garde stuff that picks up nationalist influences; his third is the neo-classical diatonicism that takes note of Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Paganini. Much of his music is attractive and enjoyable, regardless of the 'phase' in which it was written -though, obviously, that of the second phase is more challenging than his other work.

Personally, I find much of his music immensely satisfying intellectually, but devoid of emotional heft. Which is to say: it is always listenable, but seldom memorable, to me anyway.

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