Album Booklet

Sera d’inverno 1. Sera d’inverno [3:42] Songs by Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) 2. L’annuncio [2:06] Cinque Liriche 3. I pastori [5:15] 4. La madre al figlio lontano [4:13] 5. San Basilio [1:59] 6. Il clefta prigione [2:42] Hanna Hipp mezzo-soprano 7. Passeggiata [6:16] Emma Abbate piano 8. Épitaphe [1:48] 9. Antifona amatoria di Basiliola [1:19] 10. E il mio dolore io canto [2:34] 11. Incontro di Marzo [6:00] (from Tre Liriche) Due Canti d’amore 12. Adjuro vos, filiae Jerusalem [2:42] 13. Oscuro è il ciel [2:28] 14. Scuote amore il mio cuore [1:45] (from Tre Canti d’amore) About Hanna Hipp & Emma Abbate: Tre Canti Greci ‘Hanna Hipp [...] is excellent, with a knowing, 15. Augurio [2:58] competent demeanour and a glowing mezzo timbre’ 16. Mirologio per un bambino [3:17] The Guardian 17. Canzone per ballo [4:04] ‘[...] sensitively accompanied by Emma Abbate’ International Record Review Total playing time [55:20] Sera d’inverno: The Songs of An important question to consider regarding Ildebrando Pizzetti Pizzetti is whether to view him as a revolutionary or a conservative. His Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) belonged complicated history makes answering this to a group of Italian composers who were question less straightforward than it might born around the year 1880, referred to as at first appear. Two manifestos, both signed the generazione dell’ottanta (‘generation by Pizzetti, reveal this dichotomy. The first – of eighty’). Far from being unified by a signed by such forward-thinking composers singular style, this group included other as Vincenzo Tommasini (1878–1950), important composers such as Franco Francesco Malipiero, and Alfredo Casella, Alfano (1876–1954), Ottorino Respighi in addition to Pizzetti and three others – was (1879–1936), Gian Francesco Malipiero included as a kind of preface to a printed (1882–1973), and Alfredo Casella programme for a concert of compositions by (1883–1947). They would, despite their these so-called ‘young Italian school’ very different aesthetic ideals, play composers in 1914. The signatories sought important roles in preparing the way for to revitalise the national music of Italy, ‘in the next generation of Italian composers, spite of the lethargy which has blighted the many of whom broke away from traditional natural development of the seventeenth- Italian styles. One characteristic that set century melodrama, smothered the germs Pizzetti apart from his contemporaries of eighteenth-century chamber music and was that he never studied outside Italy, dried up (or almost) the sources of unlike the other members of the folk-song’. The authors continued by generazione dell’ottanta. Therefore, he announcing that ‘this concert [...] is being was perhaps the most intrinsically ‘Italian’ given in order to prove the birth of a new of all of these composers, since his musicality in our country’. Pizzetti’s education was steeped in the traditions association with this group of composers and techniques of the old Italian school. and his signing of this document would His domestic education probably also seem to place him at the forefront of the explains his ‘preoccupation with emerging modern musical movement in Italy, a from Italian musical provincialism’, an movement far removed from the stodgy objective that would remain a life-long conservatism of the verismo and old concern for him. bel canto schools. Ildebrando Pizzetti In 1932, Pizzetti aligned himself with Respighi, are unique in the long history of song Italy’s past and present, as perceived by to be from Pizzetti’s hometown of Parma. Riccardo Zandonai (1883–1944), and various composition. Never has an Italian composer Pizzetti, who obscured the texts they were other conservative musical figures to sign a expressed such a strong emphasis on the setting for various musical reasons, but Pizzetti’s careful attention to text setting had notorious manifesto that essentially texts of his songs. Pizzetti’s varied methods especially for the sake of melody. He also many results. The first was that his songs condemned experimental music and of responding to text make for highly felt that composers of the recent past had eschewed traditional melodies in favour of encouraged a return to the established individual works in this genre. He was not chosen to set inferior poetry, largely due to vocal lines that followed the natural spoken musical tradition of Italy. This manifesto a composer who was content to compose the ease with which it was possible to set inflection of the Italian language. Thus, caused great upheaval in an already music that was guaranteed to be a success such simplistic, metrically regular verse. In longer, higher notes, especially those that complicated and tense period for struggling with his audiences. Instead, he challenged identifying these problems, Pizzetti set for fall on the strong beats of the measure, tend Italian composers, creating a situation in himself to compose thoughtful settings himself the objective of writing songs that to be found on the stressed syllables of which ‘[...] the Italian musical world was that arose from the elevated poetry that he were absolutely faithful to the words in important words; unstressed syllables of soon divided into pro and contra camps consistently chose to use. If some of his every conceivable way, a goal that influenced less important words in the sentence fall and sub-factions.’ Ironically, this document greatest songs are also his most rhythmically nearly every aspect of his songs. on lower notes and are shorter in duration. was likely aimed at some of the signatories and musically challenging, one need look no In fact, in certain songs one can almost of the 1914 manifesto, specifically Casella further than Pizzetti’s efforts towards This ideal also led Pizzetti to seek out imagine Pizzetti creating a hierarchy of and Malipiero. It is surprising that Mussolini, realising an authentic, idiomatic rendering modern and traditional poetry of high words in each sentence in order to establish often the advocate for Italian tradition, of his texts to discover the reason for their quality for his songs. His texts come from his vocal ‘melody’. Emotional outbursts in actually sided with the modernists after complexity. The resulting songs are so three basic sources: modern Italian the text are consistently set as high notes, this manifesto surfaced. Pizzetti later characteristically ‘Pizzettian’ that virtually poetry; ancient and historical sources, usually preceded by an unprepared disjunct recanted his signing of this document, none of them could be mistaken for having including biblical texts and poetry, and leap. Generally speaking, though, his vocal perhaps in response to confrontations by been written by any other composer. In the texts by Petrarch (1304–1374), Michelangelo lines are stepwise in nature, making these musicians such as Malipiero – who in 1934 best of them, he essentially created an (1475–1564) and Sappho (born c. 650 B.C.); excursions distinctive because they leap out wrote to Pizzetti condemning the manifesto entirely new kind of Italian song (which he and folksong texts. By far the largest source of an otherwise speech-like texture that falls and its ill effects on all modern composers, called liriche), one in which word and music of poetry for his songs comes from modern within a limited vocal range. As one might even those that signed it – but his signing were perfectly wedded to form something Italian poets. Some were famous, such as expect, the texts themselves are usually set does shed light on either the composer’s greater than its parts. Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) and syllabically, with only a handful, such as the change of position over the course of three Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970), who were late song Surge, propera, amica mea serving decades or his proclivity for rejecting The most universal and important two poets that inspired some of the greatest as aberrations from the norm. alternate musical ideologies that did not characteristic of Pizzetti’s style is his focus Pizzetti songs (I pastori by D’Annunzio and correspond to his own artistic values. on the text. Early in his career, he began to the later work, Due poesie di Giuseppe Another characteristic driven by Pizzetti’s direct his attention toward achieving an Ungaretti), while others were lesser known, desire for accurate text-setting is his varied The songs of Ildebrando Pizzetti, of which authentic musical setting for Italian texts. such as Mario Silvani (1884–1913), who use of mixed meter, which manifests itself there are thirty-three for voice and piano, This came as a reaction to composers of authored Sera d’inverno and who happened either as a consistent fluctuation in meter as a basic characteristic of the piece (I pastori), One fine example is a later song, Scuote in his maturity (after, say, 1908, the year in other ways. He admired certain composers or as a polymeter between the voice and amore il mio cuore, in which Pizzetti has which L’annuncio and I pastori were for their operas, such as Bellini and Gluck, piano (Vorrei voler, Signor, quel ch’io non created a scale from which much of the composed, both of which make use of this but felt that their compositions fell short of voglio), or both (La madre al figlio lontano). piece is derived. The poetry is by Sappho compositional device). These themes are his high standards, usually due to the In his most famous song I pastori, the voice (born c. 650 B.C.), and it is likely that Pizzetti very often presented in the piano in octaves predominance of the music over the words and the piano are written in polymeter composed this ‘mode’ in response to the or in multiple octaves in an introduction to in their operas.

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