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COPYRIGHT 2000 University of Washington
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.
I have never made a secret of the difficulty that the selection of a text represents for me. The texts of Canti di liberazione were--in addition--limited by the [intended] duration [of the work]. Already in 1942 I believed I had found the text of the "Allegro"; a text that attracted me very much and that you probably recognize because it inspired that tableau (choral symphony) that Darius Milhaud entitled "The Death of a Tyrant," But Milhaud set to music the French text in the splendid version by Diderot; I had imagined the original Latin, by Lampridius, [4] taken from the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, which also fascinated me because of certain obvious analogies with the form of liturgical texts:
Parricidae cadaver unco trahatur...
Qui omnes occidit unco trahatur ...
Qui omnem aetatem occidit unco trahatur...
Qui utrumque sexum occidit unco trahatur...
Qui sanguini suo non pepercit unco trahatur...
Qui templa spoliavit unco trahatur...
Qui testamenta delevit unco trahatur. . . etc.
(Let the body of the murderer be dragged with the hook...[5]
He who slew all men, let him be dragged with the hook...
He who slew young and old, let him be dragged with the hook...
He who slew man and woman, let him be dragged with the hook...
He who spared not his own blood, let him be dragged with the hook...
He who plundered temples, let him be dragged with the hook...
He who set aside the testaments of the dead, let him be dragged with the hook... etc.) [6]
Despite everything, I gave up the very beautiful text because I realized that it would not be possible to condense it into one piece of five or six minutes' duration. And I will spare you, for the moment at least, further elaboration of the difficulty that the choice of texts presents.
I remember well that, in December of 1951, the idea of writing an all-interval row passed through my mind. [7] And I confess to you that, at that time, I did not know the Lehrbuch der Zivolftontechnik by Dr. Herbert Eimert, published in 1952, [8] a book that I found much later. Dr. Eimert, speaking of the all-interval row, says that 'its construction is achieved empirically and only after endless attempts;" doubtless a most accurate observation. For my part the attempts were most laborious, above all because I wanted the series to be musical.
Dr. Eimert also maintains that every all-interval row, written from the bass to the treble, ought to comprise a range of sixty-six semitones (five-and-one-half octaves)--as can be seen in [Example 1 ] [9]--which constitutes the series that I used in the Piccola musica notturna.
I will confess to you that, despite the evidence, I have never wanted to call the series of the Canti di liberazione an all-interval row--not even when the work was performed the first time in Cologne on 28 October 1955. [10] It has been written that this date was chosen (just so) by me, as an allusion to our well-remembered and ill-omened 28 October. [11] But that is not true. I think, generally, we can dismiss the idea that a composer could impose a date--or would be in a position to impose a date on a concert society. That the date fixed by Cologne Radio had delighted me is another story. But, with reference to the trivial gossip that is written, I will say that the rumor that I finished the work on the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Florence has nothing to do with reality, among other things because Florence was liberated on 11 August 1944. The score was finished 18 April 1955, the day on which the representatives of one billion four hundred million persons of color were assembled in Bandung, [12] a date from which we expected many more things--unfortunately--that are very far from being realized. I did not call my series an all-interval row, solely so as not to subject myself again to more controversy. [13]
I am not a theorist: I am only a composer. But, in reference to theorists, allow me to express a certain astonishment at the fact that Dr. Eimert--in the musical examples in his little book--had completely overlooked one of the fundamental (at least for me) triumphs of dodecaphonic music, that is, the elimination of octaves and of false octave...
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