We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
We publish here, in slightly altered versions, three lectures given by Pierluigi Petrobelli in Autumn 1988 as Chair of Italian Culture at the University of California, Berkeley. The terms of the Chair, established in 1928, state that the person entrusted with the post should ‘lecture in illustration and interpretation of Italian culture’.
1 Calvino, Italo, Lezioni americane – Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio (Milan, 1988)Google Scholar; trans. Cleagh, Patrick as Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).Google Scholar
2 Calvino, , Six Memos, 14–15 (translation slightly modified).Google Scholar
3 By such composers as Luzzasco Luzzaschi and Giulio Renaldi (1576), Giovanni Battista Mosto (1578), Lambert Courteys (1580), Domenico Micheli and Francesco Soriano (1581), Pietro Vinci (1584); see Vogel, Emil, Einstein, Alfred, Sartori, Claudio and Lesure, François, Il nuovo Vogel (Lamezia, 1983), 652, 1526, 1845, 1977, 2333, 2621, 2922Google Scholar. On Dante and Renaissance composers, see the excellent essay by Degrada, Francesco, ‘Dante e la musica del Cinquecento’, Chigiana, 22, new ser. 2 (1965), 257–75.Google Scholar
4 See Fenlon's, Iain entry on the elder Striggio in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, Stanley (London, 1980), XVIII, 271–4.Google Scholar
5 Savinio, G., ‘Fortuna’ [of the Divine Comedy], in the entry on ‘Mantova’, Enciclopedia dantesca (Rome, 1971), III, 812–13.Google Scholar
6 The term is Leo Schrade's, and comes from his Monteverdi: Creator of Modern Music (New York, 1950).Google Scholar
7 Foscolo, Ugo, Discorso sul testo del poema di Dante (London, 1825).Google Scholar
8 (Paris: Chez De Roullede de la Chevardière/Esprit, Libraire au Palais Royal, 1781), 198.Google Scholar
9 See Tartini, Giuseppe, La raccolta di sonate autografe per violino (Padua, 1976)Google Scholar, which reproduces in facsimile ms. 1888, fasc. 1 from I-Pca. The Tasso melody is on pp. 37 and 56.
10 Burney, Charles, A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1789), ed. Mercer, Frank (New York, 1957), II, 453.Google Scholar
11 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Italian Journey (1786–1788), trans. Auden, W. H. and Mayer, Elizabeth (London, 1962), 76–8.Google Scholar
12 ‘Le fo un piccolo Souvenir di musica mia. L'Esule e varj altri pezzi d'opere piacute a Napoli. Fra quelli vi è 1'Ugolino di Dante; ne ha riportato qualche compatimento, ma io voglio il suo.’ Zavadini, Guido, Donizetti: Vita, Musiche, Epistolario (Bergamo, 1948), 260.Google Scholar
13 This piece is included among the youthful compositions in a list prepared by Pompeo Cambiasi, and checked and completed by Verdi himself; see Nel primo centenario di Giuseppe Verdi. 1813–1913, ed. Broglio, L. Grabinski, Vianbianchi, Carlo, Adami, Giuseppe ([Milan], 1913), 4–5.Google Scholar
14 See Barone, Giulia and Petrucci, Armando, Primo non leggere. Biblioteche e pubblica lettura in Italia dal 1861 ai nostri giorni (Milan, 1976), 11.Google Scholar
15 See Parker, Roger, ‘Sull'ali dorate’Google Scholar: The Verdian Patriotic Chorus and its Reception in 1848, to be published by the Istituto nazionale di studi verdiani, Parma.
16 On Wagner's influence in the Bolognese milieu at the time of Rossini's death, see Mossa, Carlo Matteo, ‘Una Messa per la storia’, in Messa per Rossini. La storia, it testo, la musica (Quaderni dell'Istituto di Studi Verdiani 5), ed. Girardi, Michele and Petrobelli, Pierluigi (Parma, 1988), 11–78, esp. 36ff.Google Scholar
17 Letter dated 17 November 1869 to Ricordi, Giulio, I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Cesari, Gaetano and Luzio, Alessandro (Milan, 1913), 210–11.Google Scholar
18 To give just one example, see the famous letter to Hans von Bülow: ‘Happy you who are still the sons of Bach! And us? We also, sons of Palestrina, once had a great school … and ours!’, letter dated 14 April 1892, I copialettere, 376.Google Scholar (‘Felici voi the siete ancora i figli di Bach! E noi? Noi pure, figli di Palestrina, avevamo un giorno una scuola grande … a nostra!’)
19 These translations date from the late fourteenth century, and were published under the poet's name as early as 1491: we find them together with a Credo on the last page of the Bernardinus Benalius and Matteo da Parma edition of the Divine Comedy, printed in Venice in March of that year. In spite of the awkward style, Verdi was convinced they were by Dante.
20 Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi 1880–1881, Petrobelli, Pierluigi, Casati, Marisa Di Gregorio and Mossa, Carlo Matteo, eds. (Parma, 1988), 70.Google Scholar
21 For the best account of the similarities between Rossini's and Verdi's Otello, see Budden, Julian, The Operas of Verdi (London, 1973–1981), III, 303ff.Google Scholar
22 Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi, 20–1.Google Scholar
23 For the purpose of our discussion, I prefer to leave aside the Ave Maria ‘on an enigmatic scale’, which has nowadays become the first of the Quattro pezzi sacri. In Verdi's lifetime, and for some time afterwards, it was never performed with the other three pieces, which are the Stabat mater and the Te Deum (both for large chorus and orchestra), and between these two huge frescoes what is now called the Laudi alla Vergine Maria, a small polyphonic composition. Today this last piece is performed by a rather large chorus of women, but such was not Verdi's intention.
24 Carteggio Verdi-Boito, Medici, Mario and Conati, Marcello, eds. (Parma, 1978), I, 253–4.Google Scholar
25 The date of composition of the Dante Prayer is rather mysterious: Abbiati, Franco, Verdi (Milan, 1959), IV, 570Google Scholar, maintains that it was written immediately after Otello, that is, in 1888–9; but we have no evidence supporting this date.
26 The largest and most important collection of Dallapiccola's writings is Parole e musica, ed. Nicolodi, Fiamma (Milan, 1980).Google Scholar Many of these essays are published in English in Dallapiccola on Opera (Selected Writings of Luigi Dallapiccola, vol. 1), trans. and ed. Shackelford, Rudy (n. p., 1987).Google Scholar
27 ‘Sulla strada della dodecafonia’, in Parole e musica, 448–63, here 453Google Scholar; Cooke's, Deryck English translation of this essay (not used here) appears in Music Survey, 4/1 (1951), 318–32.Google Scholar
28 ‘Sulla strada della dodecafonia’, Parole e musica, 454.Google Scholar
29 ‘Nascita di un libretto d'opera’, in Parole e musica, 511–31Google Scholar, here 512; a translation of this essay (not used here) appears in Dallapiccola on Opera (see n. 26), 232–62.Google Scholar
30 ‘Per una rappresentazione de ‘Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria’ di Claudio Monteverdi’, in Parole e musica (see n. 26), 421–35;Google Scholar translation (not used here) in Dallapiccola on Opera (see n. 26), 215–31.Google Scholar
31 ‘Per una rappresentazione’, Parole e musica, 425.Google Scholar
32 ‘Nascita di un libretto d'opera’, Parole e musica, 507.Google Scholar
33 Reprinted in Parole e musica, 188–92.Google Scholar
34 ‘Dallapiccola e Dante’, in Luigi Dallapiccola. Saggi, testimonianze, carteggio, biografia e bibliografia, ed. Nicolodi, Fiamma (Milan, 1976), 55–6.Google Scholar
39 See Dallapiccola, Luigi, Ulisse, opera in un prologo e due atti. Riduzione per canto e pianoforte di Franco Donatoni [Opera in two acts with prologue. Adapted for voice and piano by Franco Donatoni], published by Suvini Zerboni, pl. no. S. 6910 Z. (Milan, 1968), 68.Google Scholar
40 ‘Sulla strada della dodecafonia’, Parole e musica, 455.Google Scholar
41 Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York, 1962), 119–35, esp. 133.Google Scholar
42 ‘Per una rappresentazione’, Parole e musica, 421.Google Scholar
43 McGann, Jerome J., ‘The Cantos of Ezra Pound, the Truth in Contradiction’, Critical Inquiry, 15 (1988), 1–25; here 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
44 Dallapiccola, Luigi, Ulisse, Opera in un prologo e due atti [Libretto] (Milan, 1972), 26.Google Scholar
45 ‘Nascita di un libretto d'opera’, Parole e musica, 530.Google Scholar
