The Twelve-Tone Music of Luigi Dallapiccola (review)

With this book, Brian Alegant envisions the addition of a new dimension to scholarly literature on the music of Luigi Dallapiccola. The author seeks to find “an analytical and theoretical framework” for the serial music of this composer with emphasis on the middle- and late-period works, an aspect he claims to be missing in present secondary literature. On the first page, Alegant sets the tone for his study with the assertion that the approach “does not ask why Dallapiccola composed with twelve tones, but, rather, how he did” (p. 1). In keeping with this statement, the emphasis throughout the book is definitely upon serial procedure with only limited reference to the musical qualities of the works themselves. The statement is in conflict with Schoenberg’s often cited response to Rudolf Kolisch who had “worked out the series” in Schoenberg’s Third String Quartet. “I can’t utter too many warnings against overrating these analyses, since after all they only lead to what I have always been dead against: seeing how it is done; whereas I have always helped people to see: what it is!” (Arnold Schoenberg, Letters, ed. Erwin Stein, trans. Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965], 164–65).

Alegant divides his study into two parts. In part 1, he proposes an evolutionary view of Dallapiccola’s twelve-tone technique; in part 2, he provides detailed analyses of two of the later twelve-tone works “in their entirety, so as to model their large-scale strategy” (p. 2).

Alegant takes his title for part 1, “Dallapiccola’s Serial Odyssey, 1942–1972,” from Ethan Haimo (Schoenberg’s Serial Odyssey: The Evolution of his Twelve-tone Method, 1914–1928 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990]). The author claims that Dallapiccola’s allegorical journey may be understood as a “slow shift . . . from a ‘Webernian’ conception to a ‘Schoenbergian’ one” (p. 3). The “fundamental characteristics” of the two Viennese composers, as Alegant understands them, are presented in chart format as a series of seven contrasting pairs of traits (fig. 1.1, p. 10). Throughout the book, the author relies upon these traits as “templates for understanding Dallapiccola’s development over a thirty-year period” (p. 10). The chart becomes the basis for Alegant’s subdivision of Dallapiccola’s entire twelve-tone oeuvre into four phases. However, this chart of contrasting pairs is both incomplete with regard to musical features and inaccurate with regard to some of the serial features of these two composers. The single exclusively musical pair on the list, “sparser orchestration” for Webern as opposed to “denser orchestration” for Schoenberg, is too general to be incisive. It ignores matters of orchestral doubling, use of instruments, and texture, all of which differentiate Webern from Schoenberg. In addition, the chart makes no reference to tempo, dynamics, phrase structure, or expressive indications in the score.

The remaining six contrasting pairs concern serial characteristics. Alegant’s use of the terms “unordered” and “aggregate” betray a lack of precision. As an example, Alegant contrasts the “linear presentations” of Webern’s rows with the “unordered presentations” of Schoenberg’s rows. Neither here, nor elsewhere in the book, does the author observe the disjunct linear contours common to most of Webern’s row presentations and the much more conjunct melodic contours of Schoenberg’s re-ordered row presentations. The term “re-ordered” is important for an understanding of Schoenberg’s melodic lines, for most certainly they have their own order even when the original order has been reconfigured. Alegant’s refererence to these re-ordered rows as “unordered” removes the distinction between melodic lines and verticalized segments, the latter referred to by the author as cross partitions. The term “re-ordered” may also apply to Webern in that, while his “linear presentations” preserve the original order, the rows are partitioned into dyads (op. 21), trichords (op. 24), or tetrachords (op. 30), in which each segment produces a vertical...