From the Renaissance up to today Venice has been a musical "laboratory". It has been both home and inspiration to many generations of composers and creative innovators (from Zarlino to Gabrieli, from Vivaldi to Nono) who as time went on have traced the characteristics of a school of thought, both as composers and performers, the Venetian School.
The C.l.R.S., founded in 1983, cleaves to this line of experimental profundity, carried out by using both traditional instruments and state-of-the-art technology.
This monograph on Gian Francesco Malipiero is the opening portrait of an entire gallery of outlines which the C.l.R.S., in collaboration with Ricordi and the Veneto Region, intends to dedicate to this ancient but vital School.
Il Presidente del C.l.R.S.
To this discographic tribute to the great Venetian composer, the Ex Novo Ensemble adjoins the research for specific revelations as to performance praxis. Revelations formed in the awareness of Malipiero's creative and conceptual procedure and even, in some cases, directly founded on the recognition of the genesis of the musical text (this method of approach is far from new to the Ex Novo and stems from their many experiences of participation in the problematics, textual as well, of New Music).
A careful examination of the editions with rough drafts in Malipiero's own hand preserved in the Fondo Malipiero of the Giorgio Cini Foundation played an important part in the intense work of preparation and helped to evolve precise answers as to how to perform the polystylistic nature and the arnbiguous thematic or freely polyphonic structures of this music. Ali this carne about beginning with the most minute observation of the "sign" as written by the composer on the staff. It is easy to imagine just how inadequate are these pages in explaining such a process.
Nevertheless, we feel it is important to mention that, in addition to the correction of several typographical errors and a "truer" agogic and dynamic determination of the specifics of the recurring motifs, there are many cases in which it is evident that the conceptual disposition of the composer's gesture itself has been held back in the rough draft (and not conceded in the printed form). For example, the Ultimo Tempo (last movement) of the Sonata a tre (this is a real text case because of the length itself of the composition - it lasts the whole compact disc!) was published in 1928 by Universal of Vienna. For reasons that we feel are typically editorial, it is almost as if the already precarious and contradictory aspect of continuity of the entire Sonata were interrupted at the beginning of the Tempo itself by two solo movements, respectively an Allegro Impetuoso for violin and violoncello and a Piuttosto lento for pianoforte. In the rough draft, for a total of 84 measures, Malipiero set out a different arrangement: perfectly symmetrical and specular (as may be confirmed by a glance at the autographical page included here), preserving unaltered on the page the space - imaginary - which defines and includes the material presence of all three instruments (and of all three "sonadori" [players]). This is to say that during the first 40 measures Malipiero has meticulously written out the silences for the persona of the pianoforte within the solo for strings, and in the next 40 bars the situation is exactly reversed, on the page, within the solo movement of the pianoforte. It is necessary to "read" the rough draft in order to understand that there is really no interruption within this Ultimo Tempo, but, rather, that performance should emphasize the principal dynamics of its development: from maximum convergence, "fusion", of the sound lines - the dialogue between the strings corresponds to that of the two hands on the keyboard - to maximum divergence of the same in the "ensemble" conclusion of all three instruments. Besides, we are only rendering unto Malipiero that which is his, with neither dangerous, gratuitous superimposition "of freedom", nor unjustified constraints.
Malipiero accepts eccentricity only and forever in the formal representations of thematic structure, which he uses in his own way, while for him counterpoint is always, more than objective, "true", i.e. the polyphonic materialization of strumenti-personae (instrument-personages) which already "exist" on the page of his compositive activity. In the Ultimo Tempo of the Sonata a tre we may say, after examining Malipiero's rough draft, that there are no "solo" movements, but "solely" "pauses of silence" (the sounds) and silent presences summoned to unite in an imaginary "discontinuous continuity", tenuously linked to an intentional representation of the interpretative gesture.
Paolo Cattelan, Giorgio Cini FoundationThe Dialogue of Memory in the Chamber Works of Gian Francesco Malipiero
Among Twentieth-Century composers Gian Francesco Malipiero is still underestimated - if not completely unknown - especially out of Italy. However, setting aside the expressions of the Futurists, regarded mainly as conceptual exercises, it was Malipiero himself who gave rise to the Italian music of this century. Still, no cultural phenomenon is generated within a void; Gian Francesco Malipiero sought out his origins, became conscious of his own cultural roots and recognized himself as belonging to the history of the evolution of music, from the Gregorian chant to the Italian Settecento, retrieving references to ethnic-archaic cultural values authentically passed on to us through folklore. This "return to the past", which for Verdi already represented a form of progress, is present in many of Gian Francesco Malipiero's works, in those presented on this recording as well. In listening to these pieces we can perceive reminiscences of popular melodies and rhythms coexisting with tonal harmony, modal scales and procedures characteristic of sacred music. When Malipiero, in his later works, progressively freed himself from the major-minor tonal system (listen, one after the other, to the Dialogo n. 4 of 1956 and the Eighth Quartet for strings, composed between 1963 and 1964), his method of composition is revealed as a form of modernized renaissance polyphony in which the melody, liberated from the tonal system, expresses the rebirth of a use of voices with an indipendent pretonal movement. When Malipiero wrote a symphony or a sonata, he did so not in the tradition of German musical culture, but having in mind the ItaIian music of the Seventeenth or Eighteenth century. Indeed, it is well to remember that instrumental chamber music in Italy flourished during that very period, through the development of the sonata in its various expressions.
At the beginning of our century, composers, engaged in carrying out a reform of the Italian music, set themselves the task of liberating such music from the restrictions of speech, scenic function and singers' whims. It was widely believed that it was necessary to restore music to its lost sovereignty by means of a total use of all its expressive possibilities. These composers wanted to demonstrate - as if to escape from the typical clichés of Italian melody - that they were capable of writing "pure", or in a larger sense "symphonic" music: in other words, that they were equal to writing "instrumental music". Even if composers like Malipiero in later years certainly did not ignore theatrical expression, the problem remains as to whether this renewal of compositive stylistic devices was actually carried out or not. With this recording we are offered the chance to see far ourselves; it contains works written for different instrumental formations following a chronological disposition from 1927 to 1964.
***In spite of the relatively long period of time here considered , we can recognize certain characteristics and personal stylistic modes that were deeply rooted in Malipiero's way of thinking and feeling, not only from an artistic point of view. Although he may have abandoned them from time to time, he always returned to them. The Malipierian style frequently contrasts the form of thematic development typical of Mitteleuropean tradition with the use of paratactical procedures, the application of compositive cells set out in linear sequence (in this sense he preferred the free forms of the symphony and the sonata antica to the more rigorous formal code of the classic-romantic "sonata movement"). The formal procedure was carried out by aligning distinct sound patterns, each characterized by a particular expression and precise motifs and rhythms. Often the transition to the next sound pattern takes place in a sudden and unexpected way; sometimes we can clearly recognize the "suture" and therefore a form of panels, a polyptych (as may be distinctly heard in the refrain in chorale form of the 1934 Sonata a cinque; often Malipiero sought a contrasting effect, i.e. an abrupt change in expression or tempo). Frequently the panel form is barely discernable, since on the level of perception restraining structural elements prevail; other times the presentation of the new sound pattern is hidden by linear procedures (as far example in the first and second movements of the Sonata a tre, composed in 1927). In most cases he achieved a free combination form which leads us back neither to discorsive nor deductive procedure (thematic, for example). This formal structure corresponds to the associative processes, uncontrolled rationally, of consciousness (produced by the unconscious), and to the "stream of consciousness", i.e. the frenetic unwinding of everyday's fantasies (Fantasie di ognigiorno, as Malipiero called his 1953 composition for orchestra). So in this sense music abstracts the individual and filters the universal, represents the archetype of existence and illustrates the primary human emotions.
Malipierian poetics correspond in many aspects to those of the modern novel, in particular to those of Marcel Proust or James Joyce. In fact, the "stream of consciousness" is a compositive procedure which was originally applied in literature. Malipiero was searching-inspired by the title of Proust's famous novel, but with a completely different approach - for "things past". His Venetian consciousness was seething with stories about his motherland, Venice; he "drew" from this well of historic and mythic memory. In this we can identify a fruitful, contradictory attitude typical of the Twentieth Century: the composer, oriented in his inner self toward the past, engenders the new by evoking lime remote - his own and that of others.
In order to do so a language is needed. Since we have pointed out the use of sound patterns as structural and expressive units, it will be useful to compare this choice of method with the typical procedures of musical Impressionism which created the means of capturing the impression evoked by objective processes on the uman subject, thus reconstructing, from the point of view of sound language, an equilibrium between the Self (Ego) and the World. Malipiero assimilated some of Claude Debussy's results and associated them with expressive elements that were both newer and more ancient at the same time.
* * *Dialogue - this is the title of several compositions written during the 1950's. All of the compositions recorded on this compact disc may be interpreted in this sense: as a dialogue among instrumental voices but also as a commentary on the eight dialogues. After composing the first dialogue Malipiero confided that, "Continuing to converse with myself and the instruments at my disposition", the others were born almost magically. In the Dialogo n. 4 the composer skillfully resolved not only the problems of sound differentiation, but those of ensemble sound as well. In the Sonata a tre, on the other hand, the contradictory aspect of the dialogue emerges, as if the instrumental voices coexisted by contrasting each other since - as Malipiero himself pointed out - the sonority of a violin or violoncello does not blend with that of the piano and thus no expressive unity is created.
In the Eighth Quartet for strings (Malipiero, moreover, was inspired by this form to compose several other masterpieces) the degree of fusion is undoubtably greater and yet is kept relatively modest in order to grant polyphonic autonomy to the voices. This work, which is surely the qualitative climax of this recording, is an important example of "freedom" in musical expression. It contains "tonal freedom" (tonal or modal evocations which subject a rigorous atonality to new constraints) and free melodic conduct (melodic identity is not proposed through recurring forms such as motifs or themes; the melody, drawn in wide intervals, seems to be almost dodecaphonic, although it really isn't). The sound patterns - as we have previously seen but here in a more radical way - succeed one another following a free form of association. Listeners who require fixed reference points will undoubtably be in trouble, but those responsive to the joyous fantasy and glorious sound sensitivity of this music are in for a real treat. It is truly wondrous that the over-eighty-year-old Malipiero, whose music might seem an anachronistic relic in comparison to the avant-garde works of those years, was able instead to open new sound worlds and thus leave us a current and critical legacy. In fact, in the works of his last creative period Malipiero sometimes seems even to have assimilated the lessons of some of his most famous pupils (Bruno Maderna and Luigi Nono, for example).
Joachim Noller, 1992