Luigi Dallapiccola and Musical Modernism in Fascist Italy by Ben Earle (review)

Extended studies of music, musicians, and musical life in fascist Italy first appeared in the mid-1980s, since when there has been a plethora of studies and essay collections, including three major monographs with diverse methodologies: Fiamma Nicolodi, Musica e musicisti nel ventennio fascista (Florence, 1984); Harvey Sachs, Music in Fascist Italy (New York and London, 1987); Jürg Stenzl, Von Giacomo Puccini zu Luigi Nono: Italienische Musik 1922–1952. Faschismus-Resistenza-Republik (Buren, 1990). The first and third of these authors in particular manage to avoid one of the worst factors blighting some musicology today: the use of context as a substitute for musical engagement. Ben Earle's new book clearly demonstrates awareness of these issues, and could never be accused of a lack of attention to musical specifics. Indeed, he makes explicit (p. 78) the importance of a primary focus upon the music, working backwards from that towards the biography, rather than vice versa (though the traffic is sometimes two-way). He incorporates a range of generally ad hoc musical analyses, employing basic pitch-class terminology, which works better for music on the threshold between tonality and atonality than some more systematic methods, though he tends to neglect timbre and more crucially vocal style. Clearly sceptical of overtly 'formalistic' approaches, Earle tries throughout to navigate a path between politics and formal analysis (more successfully in the earlier parts of the book), though he is reticent about acknowledging aspects of relative musical autonomy. Cultural institutions of fascist Italy only surface briefly, certainly in comparison with Sachs's study.

Undoubtedly and unsurprisingly, the central focus of the book is Earle's revisionist view of key works by Luigi Dallapiccola and his role as a dodecaphonic composer complicit with fascism. But he also diverges from this to write a wider history of early twentieth-century modernism and music under Italian fascism (notably in Florence, where Dallapiccola lived from 1922). He falls short of fusing these different perspectives into a fully coherent and comprehensive narrative and interpretation, but the book nevertheless stands as an extremely significant contribution to the historiography of early twentieth-century Western Art Music.

Earle's range of reference and reading on music, philosophy, and aesthetics across four languages is impressive. He also exhibits a commanding knowledge of Dallapiccola literature—both scholarly work and published reception. His political verdict is undoubtedly harsher than that of many of his predecessors, especially Nicolodi and Sachs. He shows how the composer benefitted immensely from selection for performance during the 1930s, cites the work of David Osmond-Smith to demonstrate that Dallapiccola held bureaucratic roles in the musical life of Florence, contrary to his own pronouncements, and highlights further references to fascist mythology in the early works. Some of his hermeneutical arguments are extravagant, but these wider political arguments are nonetheless strong.

The first two chapters of the book are the most convincing, presenting a subtle picture of the development of Italian musical modernism prior to the fascist takeover, then viewing Dallapiccola's earlier works in the context of Casella, Malipiero, Stravinsky, and Dallapiccola's teacher Vito Frazzi. The other three chapters, 'Fascist modernism', 'Protest music?', and 'The politics of commitment' (3 and 5 have been published elsewhere in earlier versions), consider three key vocal/theatrical works: Volo di notte (1937–9), Canti di prigionia (1938–41), and Il prigioniero (1944–8), with a little on some other transitional works. The latter two works have regularly been viewed as marking a shift in the composer's output, and epitomizing 'protest' and 'committed' music respectively; these are the views Earle seeks to challenge.

The first chapter portrays in vivid fashion the chasms between bourgeois operatic quasipopulism, aristocratic aestheticism, and a post-1918 new music that is neither of these things. Earle's familiarity with wider aesthetic and philosophical thought of the period enables him to illuminate the positions of Italian composers and critics more...