NOTES FOR AN ANALYSIS OF THE CANTI DI LIBERAZIONE.(lecture by composer Luigi Dallapiccola)

I AM GRATEFUL--profoundly grateful--to Dr. Luciano Alberti who, in proposing to me this series of seminars, has obliged me to analyze [1]--for the first time--the Canti di liberazione and Ulisse. [2]

In general, when finished with a work I do my best to forget it--even at the cost of a long silence.

Therefore, in these [past few] days, for the first time, I have accounted for the notes of the Canti di liberazione--and I assure you that this has not always been an easy task. I hope [at a] later [time] to be in a position to answer a good portion of the questions that will come to me--[however, during the course of this lecture] when [I am] faced with the very few cases for which I have not found the solution, you will excuse me.

The Canti di prigionia [3] were not yet finished--I speak of the far distant year 1941--when already I wanted to follow them with another choral work, likewise on Latin texts, with a structure similar to this: two pieces, the first and the third in an "Adagio" tempo; in the middle an "Allegro" about half as long as one of the "Adagios."

I can't tell you how many times I had hoped to begin the Canti di liberazione, nor how many times (in my diary) I had noted having begun such a task. But shortly afterwards I became aware that I was not sufficiently mature for such a work, or that the times were not sufficiently mature.

Paul Claudel wrote: "Poets are like seagulls; they foretell the storm." (I don't know if anyone has ever attributed to poets the possibility of foretelling a clear sky; but I fear not.)

In a friendly conversation with Massimo Mila (one of the very few with whom I have allowed myself to speak confidentially), a conversation that took place at the end of November 1949, I remember having announced to him the start of the composition. But I was full of illusions.