Musique

Béla Bartók’s influence on Italian post-war music spans over several generations of composers. One of these is Bruno Maderna (1920-1973), who, since 1945, has modelled his serial poetics on some aspects of Bartók’s music.

Following on my PhD research, I intend to study the extent of this Bartokian influence on Maderna by analyzing his first String Quartet (1943-45) – a work still little known. In particular, I wish to investigate the dialectic between narrative and non-narrative aspects that emerge in the use of combinatorial and symmetric processes. I focus on the study of form, seeking to identify topics that appear in the formal elements in order to reveal the narrative programme of the composition, and in order to problematize the more opaque areas that sometimes lead to the fragmentation of the narrative (Meelberg).

The three-movement quartet uses the Franco-Flemish canonic techniques (Feneyrou) and is informed by principles of symmetry: arch macroform, symmetrical harmonic field, palindromic sonata form (i. e. reversed recapitulation) for both Allegro movements.
Hence, like in many Bartok’s masterpieces of the 1930s, the slow movement (Lento a fantasia) is the formal and organic nucleus of the work. But it is also a narrative center: Maderna employs Bartok narrative structures and topics in order to reinterpret the connections between Humanity, Nature and Society (Grabócz). In Maderna’s quartet, Nature is placed in the Lento: around it emerges the loneliness suffered by humans. In the end, however, a message of brotherhood among peoples breaks through, conveyed by the Bartók of the mature period (Somfai, Ujfalussy): a deeply relevant message for Maderna as well, writing the quartet at the end of the Second World War.
This dialectic between symmetry and expressiveness (Kárpáti), which appears here for the first time, will be at the heart of Maderna’s serial works made in Darmstadt.

L’influenza di Béla Bartók sulla cultura musicale italiana negli anni Quaranta e Cinquanta del Novecento fu significativa e interessò la produzione di molti compositori, coreografi e musicologi (G. F. Malipiero, G. Petrassi, B. Maderna, F. Donatoni, A. Milloss, M. Mila, ecc.). Questa vera e propria «ondata bartokiana» però, malgrado i richiami espliciti fatti da Petrassi e da alcuni studiosi (P. Cattelan), non è stata indagata approfonditamente dalla letteratura accademica. Eppure la ricezione bartokiana in Italia rappresenta un caso storiografico di notevole interesse musicologico non solo per la sua dimensione estetica e stilistica, ma anche per la sua dimensione politica e ideologica. Infatti la cultura musicale italiana, recependo precocemente la dicotomia Schönberg-Stravinskij costruita dalla storiografia del dopoguerra (R. Leibowitz, T. W. Adorno, ecc.), stabilì con fermezza l’eccentricità artistica ed etica della posizione musicale bartokiana. La «terza via» di Bartók – la via della «libertà» secondo Mila e Petrassi – diventò così un percorso di liberazione estetica, politica e ideologica.
Il mio intervento è il frutto dei primi risultati di queste mie ricerche dottorali ed è suddiviso in due parti.
Nella prima parte intendo esporre rapidamente le problematiche generali riguardanti la ricezione di Béla Bartók in Italia.
Nella seconda parte vorrei proporre un esempio specifico analizzando alcuni passaggi del Primo Quartetto per archi (ca. 1943-45) di Bruno Maderna. Quest’opera infatti, cronologicamente precoce rispetto al resto all’ondata bartokiana, fa numerosi riferimenti alle composizioni dell’ungherese – riferimenti che furono recuperati poco dopo anche da altri compositori italiani. In particolare il Quartetto, suddiviso in tre movimenti, è informato da una forte tensione simmetrica: macroforma «a ponte» (Brückenform), campi armonici simmetrici (la scala ottatonica, ecc.), forma-sonata palindroma nei due Allegro esterni. Inoltre, come in molti lavori bartokiani, il movimento centrale (Lento a fantasia) risulta essere il centro formale, organico e persino «narrativo» dell’opera.
In definitiva l’analisi del Quartetto permette sia di chiarire la genesi della successiva poetica seriale di Bruno Maderna sia di gettare una luce sul resto dell’ondata bartokiana della musica italiana (ad esempio sulla produzione malipieriana della seconda metà degli anni Quaranta).

In 2007 Fosler-Lussier’s book Music Divided illustrates the political articulation of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók in Cold War Europe. After his death in 1945, Bartok’s legacy was divided across the two Blocs: in Sovietised Hungary Bartók was seen as part of artistic modernism repressed by Zhdanovism, whereas in Western countries Bartók was negatively presented as exponent of «musical compromise» as opposed to the «radical serialism» of Second Viennese School and Darmstadt School.
In both cases Bartók’s image is constructed by the media - radio broadcastings, concert programs, press – and I argue that a similar media construction occurred in Cold War Italy.
First, Darmstadt summer courses – the core of Western music modernism in post-war era – are perceived as USA-directed since funded through the Marshall Plan. At the same time, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) propaganda in agreement with Zhdanov Doctrine (socialist realism) created a controversy in the left-oriented press.
Italian artistic intelligentsia, through the use of PCI’s newspaper L’Unità, and RAI radio broadcasting Third Programme, maintained that both serial Darmstadt-Viennese model and Zhdanov Doctrine are oppressive yet necessary. In this context, Bartók became the point of reference for radio broadcastings and the left-oriented press that considered him the «musician of freedom», constituting the response to the call for linguistic innovation, the Zhdanovistic demand of relation with the language of the masses, the PCI opposition to Fascist past and USA future. Indeed, Bartokian techniques were similar to those developed by Darmstadt- Viennese composers, but also to the traditional folk music. Moreover, Bartók openly opposed the Nazist regime, and, during his exile in the USA, he disliked American culture.
The media articulation of Bartok image, combining the needs of the two Cold War Blocs, problematises Italian political alignment: Italy was not merely a Western Bloc country, but it was “divided” into two worlds.

In 2007 Fosler-Lussier’s book Music Divided illustrates the political articulation of Bartók’s legacy in Cold War Europe. After his death in 1945, in Sovietised Hungary Bartók is seen as part of artistic modernism repressed by Zhdanovism. On the contrary, in Western countries Bartók’s poetics is negatively represented as the compromise between serialism and culture industry (as suggested by Adorno and Leibowitz). In both cases Bartók’s figure is constructed through, for instance, the media, musicological essays, and politicians’ statements.
In this paper, I investigate a similar problem in Italian post-war culture, where it is possible to define a real Bartokian Wave (1945-1955) that informs several musical works and that is sustained by a set of different poetics (e.g. G. F. Malipiero, L. Dallapiccola, G. Petrassi, B. Maderna, F. Donatoni). Drawing on the analysis of works by Maderna, Malipiero, and Donatoni, I illustrate the ways in which this Bartokian Wave shapes the emergence of serialism in Italy. Indeed, during 1940s and 1950s, these composers criticise the reductive dichotomy between Darmstadt-Viennese model and serialism on the one hand, and Zhdanov Doctrine and neoclassicism on the other. In this context a “third way” is triggered: the Bartokian Wave. Bartók, as “musician of freedom”, comes to constitute the response to the need for both linguistic innovation and relation with the masses.
To conclude, the political and aesthetical articulation of Bartók’s figure, combining the needs of the two Cold War Blocs, problematises Italian political alignment: Italy was not merely a Western Bloc country, but it was “divided” into two worlds.

The analysis of the political legacy of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók is crucial to understand European culture during the Cold War era. In this article, drawing on Cold War music studies, Bartók’s reception in Italy is investigated for the first time.
After the first piano tours in 1920s, the Hungarian composer becomes a champion of musical modernism and is progressively used by the Fascist regime to resist the cultural and political domination of Nazi Germany (for instance, in 1942 the Teatro alla Scala stages the controversial Bartók’s ballet The Miraculous Mandarin). In post-war period Bartók constitutes the point of reference of left-wing intellectuals that acknowledge him as «the musician of freedom». The influences of Zhdanovism, of Gramsci’s thought, of the Marshall Plan, and of Darmstadt School define the Bartokian way as the only possible choice for several actors (musicologists, choreographers, composers, journalists, ethnomusicologists), leading to the emergence of a real wave (1945-1955). But the latter, in its fortuitous character of alternative, bears the sign of the political fracture that originates it. As the orientation of left-wing culture changes, the Bartokian wave vanishes: Bartók «dies» in Italy in 1956, exactly when De- Stalinization begins.
Today, after the end of 20th century and of avant-gardes, recent studies on the cultural results of Fascism and Communism, which are neither ephemeral nor merely utopian, call upon to recover this Bartokian alternative. What is at stake is the opportunity to pluralise last century and to rewrite its history through music.

Programma di sala del Settimo concerto del 24° Festival di Milano Musica (ottobre-novembre 2015).

23 ottobre 2015, ore 20:30
Auditorium San Fedele, Milano
Quatour Diotima (esecutori):

- Bruno Maderna, Quartetto per archi in due tempi (1955)
- Stefano Gervasoni, Clamour. Terzo quartetto per archi (2015)
- Ludwig van Beethoven, Quartetto n. 16 in fa maggiore op. 135 (1826)

Trasmesso in differita da RAI - Radio Tre

Nicolò Palazzetti, « Robert Adlington (ed.), Red Strains. Music and Communism Outside the Communist Bloc », Transposition [En ligne], 5 | 2015, mis en ligne le 15 novembre 2015, consulté le 18 décembre 2015. URL : http://transposition.revues.org/1210