Giovanni Sgambati was born in 1843. About the year 1866 he began to make his influence felt and his compositions appeared from the publishers, who, it may be of interest to note, were advised by Wagner to exploit his music. The friendship of Franz Liszt and Sgambati was a very beautiful one; Liszt, in his really noble and generous way, championed the young Italian, saw in him a desire to do something in which Italians of even that day were not especially absorbed. Sgambati did not show Liszt an opera in the Rossinian manner when the master arrived in Rome in 1861. With serious purpose he brought him a symphony. And Liszt, intelligent musical spirit that he was, looked at it and recognized that here was an Italian who knew what the symphonic form meant, who knew his orchestra, who could write with some distinction. If one does not expect the impossible of a pioneer there is always something to be found in his activity that deserves our aid and sympathy. So Liszt encouraged the young man. Sgambati labored arduously; he accomplished a great deal. In his list of works there are symphonies, two of them, there are chamber works for strings with piano, there is a piano concerto, shorter pieces for the piano, some for violin, many songs, a 'Requiem' and other pieces in various forms. Sgambati as an innovator is nothing; Sgambati as an Italian symphonic pioneer is important. There was work to be done and he did it with a zeal that speaks volumes for his artistic sense. We of to-day might find his symphonies tiresome, we might consider them too consciously Brahmsian without the real Brahms spark, to hold our attention. But their meaning for those men who are producing vital things in Italy to-day is undeniable. Sgambati not only gave the world his compositions; he saw to it that for the first time the symphonic works of the great German masters were produced in his country. And he was among the earliest of the Italians to champion the music of Richard Wagner. Such a man, a musician with the breadth to appreciate Wagner in the days when Wagner was hissed and ridiculed, must in truth have possessed the soul of an artist.
With him worked a colleague, Giuseppe Martucci. Like him, he was a pianist of note as well as a composer. Martucci came a little later than Sgambati; he was born in 1856, and he is still living to-day (1915). For him, too, there was in music something beyond an opera that filled the theatre from floor to gallery and gave some adored singer the opportunity to disport himself in the unmusical cadenzas and other pyrotechnical passages which composers all around him were manufacturing so assiduously. In placing an estimate on the achievement of Martucci it is not impossible to consider him quite as important a figure as Sgambati. His music, too, has traits that are typically Italian, though based on German models. His two symphonies, his piano concerto in B-flat minor are admirable compositions, none of them heaven-storming in originality, all of them eminently praiseworthy for the solidity of their texture, for the beauty of their design and for the unflinching adherence to high ideals which they embody.
It was hardly to be expected that the two men who set the example for their countrymen in symphonic composition would be geniuses of the first rank. Had they been they would doubtless have worked along other lines. Italian symphonic composition was to be placed on a secure basis not by path-breakers, but by path-makers. This they were. And they were notable examples of what good such men can work. Italy is rapidly making felt her individuality in the contemporary musical world by the strides in original composition which she is taking. To those two pioneers, Giovanni Sgambati and Giuseppe Martucci, must go the credit for having pointed the way to absolute music by Italians, for having toiled so that the men who came after them might take what they had done and build on it individual structures. And also that their followers might have a public that would listen to them.
Nowhere in the world to-day is there more activity in musical composition than among the young Italians. The world at large seems to know less about them than it does, for example, about the modern French or Russians. This is perhaps largely the fault of the Italian publishers, who do not seem to spread their publications about in other lands as do their colleagues. Yet the sincere and eager investigator cannot go far before he finds a vast amount of engaging new Italian music.
II
In the field of the symphonic orchestra we meet with Leone Sinigaglia, Riccardo Zandonai, Vittore de Sabbata, Gino Marinuzzi, Franco Alfano, Luigi Mancinelli. In the previous chapter we have dwelt on the music of Zandonai's operas. He is, however, one of those big men who have been moved to do absolute music as well; and he has done several fine things for the concert-hall. Like him, the young de Sabbata, of whom we have spoken, and the older Mancinelli, who is better known as a conductor than as a creative musician, have also contributed to the symphonic literature. The others, barring Alfano, who has done some four unsuccessful operas, are composers of absolute music alone.
Zandonai, Italy's greatest figure, has a symphonic poem, Vere Novo, which must be seriously considered. Though it is really an orchestral piece, the composer has called in the aid of a baritone solo voice in an Ode to Spring, the poem being by the distinguished Gabriele d'Annunzio. In it we find a wonderful command of orchestral effects, an intimate knowledge of the nature of the various instruments and a masterly attention to detail. The strings are subdivided into many parts—and not in vain—and the whole work is unquestionably important. There is also a delightful Serenata Mediovale for orchestra with an important part for a solo violoncello, a composition which has distinction and geniality at the same time. It had a performance in New York at an all-Italian concert several years ago, but since then it has been unjustly allowed to languish.
Franco Alfano, born in 1876, has done a Symphony in E and a 'Romantic Suite,' two compositions that have done much to make his name respected. For those who do not believe that a real symphony has come out of Italy of the twentieth century an examination of this score may well be advised. It will convince even the most skeptical. Alfano's instrumentation is always good and he knows how to develop his material. Picturesque is the suite consisting of Notte Adriatica (Night on the Adriatic), Echi dell' Appennino (Echoes of the Apennines), Al chiostro abbandonato (To an Abandoned Cloister) and Natale campane (Christmas Bells). These four movements are frankly programmatic. They are not profound, but they are engaging, and they should be made known wherever good orchestras exist. When we think of some of the unsatisfactory French orchestral novelties, German works of no especial distinction that have been produced recently, it would seem the duty of conductors to seek out these Italian scores and present them to the public.
In Leone Sinigaglia, a native of Turin—he was born in 1868—Italy has a composer who has done for the folk-music of his province, if not his country, something akin to what such nationalists as Dvořák and Grieg accomplished. Piemonte is the title of a suite, his opus 36, and Danze Piemontese are two dances built on Piedmontese themes. These melodies of the people, indigenous material that has always proved a boon to gifted composers, have been treated by Sinigaglia with rare skill. He has clothed them in an orchestral garb which sets off their virtues most favorably and their popular nature should play an interesting part in gaining for them the approval of concert audiences. His 'Rustic Dance' from the suite Piemonte is thrilling, while in the same suite occurs In Montibus Sanctis, in which there is an invocation to the Virgin, serene and aloof in its inflections. The Piedmontese dances are brilliant, racy compositions, a master's development of tunes born of the soil. In bright and gay spirit, too, is his overture Le Baruffe Chiozzotte after a Goldoni comedy. This glistening little overture has already been played in America and never fails to arouse the good spirits of all who hear it.
Sicily comes in for musical picturing in the work of Gino Marinuzzi, born in 1882, a composer whose name is little known. The average musician is not aware of his existence. Yet this modest musician has produced a symphonic poem Sicania and a Suite Siciliana. What Sinigaglia does with the folk-melodies of his native Piedmont Marinuzzi accomplishes by employing Sicilian tunes. And they are very beautiful, too. After all, the results obtained in working on the folk-music of any people depend on the skill of the artist who is welding them into an art-work. Composers enough have tried to make symphonic works of the crude tunes of our Indian aborigines, but few, with the exception of Edward MacDowell in his 'Indian Suite,' have accomplished works of art by their labors. It is, then, a matter of treatment; and both Sinigaglia and Marinuzzi are well equipped to express in tone their conception of folk-songs in artistic treatment, as their orchestral works prove conclusively.