The Italian Traditions and Puccini: Compositional Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera

2 Studies in Lucca and Milan

41 I. Composition as Craft It was obvious, inevitable even, that Puccini would pursue a musical career . His ancestors had occupied positions as maestri di musica in Lucca since 1739, and no one, least of all Puccini himself, appears ever to have questioned the assumption that he would continue the family tradition. Like most professional composers in Italy before him, he spent his entire childhood receiving specialist musical training. There was little need for muchothereducationbeyondthebasics.Suchthoroughapprenticeships, which had all but died out in the rest of Europe, remained possible in Italy because music was still regarded as a profession or craft, as opposed to a vocation or “calling.” Just as maestros in the service of the church were required to furnish whatever music the clergy and congregation demanded of them, so too were professional opera composers expected to please their audience and whoever controlled the industry, whether impresarios, theaters, or, especially after 1850, publishers.1 Personal expression , particularly if unconventional, was a luxury that few could afford . Music was judged primarily for its artistic entertainment value, for theeffectivenessofitsdelivery,andforitscomprehensibility.ByPuccini’s time the composer was no longer quite so much in thrall to the whims of starsingers,owingtotheincreasedemphasisandprestigeaccordedtothe “work” rather than the “act” of music, but the opera audience remained the final arbiter of musical taste. Suchattitudes servedtodifferentiate the Italian musicaltraditions of thenineteenthcenturyfromthosethatheldswayelsewhereinEurope,especially in Germany. Yet this crucial distinction is habitually overlooked two Studies in Lucca and Milan 42 The Ita lia n Tr a ditions a nd Puccini in critical assessments of Puccini, which tend to judge his achievement according to “norms” that were far from normal in Italian musical life.2 The disparaging or downright negative assessment of his work in much scholarly literature may be understood to be grounded on a set of values against which Puccini, like numerous other non-Germanic composers, would always be found wanting. The framework for modern musicology and music criticism was forged in nineteenth-century Germany. Scholars have for the most part kept faith with this inheritance. The attitudes that underpin academic judgments on Puccini are in general related to those that surfaced with the birth of Romanticism and German artistic self-consciousness. Some light may be shed upon these attitudes through the terms Kultur and its antithesis, Zivilisation. The former signifies the deepest foundations of a culture, das rein Geistige or purely spiritual, as encapsulated in the guiding idea of Hegel’s Aesthetics: “In art we have to do, not with any agreeable or useful child’s play, but with the liberation of the spirit from the content and forms of finitude . . . with an unfolding of the truth which is not exhausted in natural history but revealed in WorldHistory .”3 The latter term, Zivilisation, implies superficial “civilized” or “cultivated”attitudes,includingcosmopolitantastesandentertainments. Zivilisation stood for the culture of the prerevolutionary aristocracy and thevaluesoftheEnlightenment.Inmusicalterms,itsuggestsanessential link between the musician and the consumer. Kultur comprised the specifically Romantic and Germanic discourse of Innigkeit or self-discovery. As sociologist Norbert Elias puts it: In German usage, Zivilisation means something which is indeed useful, but nevertheless only a value of the second rank, comprising only the outer appearance of human beings, the surface of human existence. The word through which Germans interpret themselves, which more than any other expresses their pride in their own achievements and their own being, is Kultur.4 Kultur was associated strongly with Bildung, the intellectual formation of the individual. It celebrated the uniquely personal and especially the artist’s subjectivity, leading to a producer-oriented system that soon coalesced into the cult of the genius. Much the same ideology continues to inform modern notions of art and artistic activity as “creativity” from within. The music of Kultur was primarily the “absolute spirit” of Studies in Lucca a nd Mila n 43 instrumentalmusic,whetherexpressedthroughthesymphonyorchestra, the chamber ensemble, or the “endless (orchestral) melody” of Wagner’s operas. Its aim was not so much to please, or to sound agreeable or beautiful , as to elevate and transcend, to reveal deeper levels of being. There was also a distinctly nationalist element that came to the fore during the nineteenth century, with Kultur being associated with German sincerity and strength of purpose and Zivilisation with Italian and French superficiality . Their “civilized” music was associated with polite mannerism, the base ambitions of performers, and the frivolous tastes of audiences. The public became the enemy, unable to understand the message of the genius...