The boy de Sabbata was born in Trieste in 1892. Saladino and Orefice were his masters at the conservatory in Milan and they taught him well. His orchestral technique matches that of Zandonai already and it is almost impossible to imagine what he will arrive at in the future. His Suite in four movements, Risveglio mattutino (A Morning Awakening), Tra fronda e fronda ('Mid Leafy Branches), an Idilio and Meriggio (Midday), is one of the most amazing orchestral scores we have ever seen. It was written at the age of twenty. De Sabbata is not a Korngold in his musical speech; he is a modern to be sure, but he has none of the qualities which have won for the young Viennese composer such heated discussion. His harmonies are new, yet they do not seem to have been put down with any desire to be different. There is a very distinct personality in this music, and in the third movement of his suite (Idilio) there is some of the warmest writing that has come to our notice in a long time. This young man has imagination, strong fantasy and a keen appreciation of color. At twenty he can say more than most composers at forty. And because he says it in his own way one cannot help thinking that the future will be very bright for him. The only hindrance is his ill health, which is already causing those who are interested in him much concern.
Pietro Floridia, born in 1860, an Italian musician who lives in New York, has written a symphony in D minor, creditable from the standpoint of the student but uninteresting for the public. It has had a performance in New York, where it was cordially, if not enthusiastically, received. Mr. Floridia has also done the operas Carlotta Clepier, La Colonia Libera, Maruzza and Paoletta. Of Luigi Mancinelli's orchestral compositions the Suite Scene Veneziane has been performed in London. They are interesting examples of an Italian whose idiom is post-Wagnerian in the broadest sense. And Alberto Franchetti, better known for his operas, has composed a symphony which Theodore Thomas played shortly after it was composed. Like his other productions it lacks physiognomy totally.
It may not be amiss to digress here to say a word about Signor Marinetti and his Futurist fellows. Their place is not an especially important one in Italy's musical scheme. Their presence does, however, make them come in for consideration. What Signor Marinetti and his colleagues would have music become none of us will be so rash as to endorse. Thus far he has given performances of works of his own invention, using instruments which make hideous and inartistic noises to express his ideas. He calls them 'gurglers,' 'snorters' and 'growlers.' We are not conservative in our taste; we cannot afford to be, for we have with us the very interesting Arnold Schönberg, who is a Futurist in tendencies, though not of the Marinetti type, and Leo Ornstein, whose music is the dernier cri in our development. Ornstein's music seems to have no relation with musical art of the past; he is an impressionist and writes as he feels. He refuses explanations of his music, further than his stating that he is oblivious to all that has gone before in musical composition, and writes what his emotions tell him to, quite as he hears it before ever a note is set to paper. He employs the piano, stringed instruments, the voice, the orchestra, as the case may be. He is therefore obviously not of Signor Marinetti's tribe. There might be some interest in hearing one of the latter's bombardments, but it cannot have any æsthetic value. It must fail as one of those wayward retrogressions which all arts have experienced at some time in their history. From Marinetti we need fear nothing. He will be forgotten long before the next decade rolls round, when his aggressive experiment in what he calls music will have been heartily exploded as the attempt on the part of an iconoclast to fuse a passing madness with a lofty art.
III
Italian piano composers are few; only one of them touches the high-water mark. Franco da Venezia is his name and he has put to his credit a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra and some very unusual shorter pieces for pianoforte solo. The former is regarded as a splendid work. Of the morceaux we cannot say too much. Da Venezia is a man of strong physiognomy. He makes no compromises to win his public, he writes no salon music. Look at his 'Caravan and Prayer in the Desert' and you will know what he can do with the keyboard of the piano! Then turn the pages of a short poem for the piano, L'Isle des morts, in which there is more real feeling than in the volumes of many a fashionable modern Frenchman. Fire has been struck here; nor has it been lighted to express some happy little thought that might please amateur pianists. In this music a tone-poet speaks and his message is worth listening to. Paolo Frontini is another man who has written much for the piano. Not important music is his like that of da Venezia, but he has done some very agreeable pieces, musicianly in execution and certainly worthy of acquaintance. Mario Tarenghi, Muzio Agostini and a half dozen others, whose names would scarcely be worth recording, have contributed small shares. Modern Italy's piano composer is Signor da Venezia. It is to him that we must look for the Italian piano music of the day.
Corelli, Vivaldi, Vitali, Veracini and a host of others held the high standard of their country in violin music in the days of the classic foundations. We have not forgotten Corelli's La Follia, the sonatas of these other men, nor the superb chaconne of Vitali. These men were violinists and their répertoire was acquired and increased by their own compositions. Until Nicolo Paganini appeared in 1782 the Italian violin literature was scarcely enlarged. And Paganini's music had value only as violin music, whereas theirs had and has a place to-day both as music and as music for the violin. Now again an Italian violinist has come forward, the musician who has established a string quartet in Rome, where he gives his concerts every year for a discriminating public. Rosario Scalero has in a sense atoned for the woeful lack of violin composition in his country. Scalero is not perhaps as original a composer as we would like to have him; he has followed German models and has studied seriously. But his sonata in D minor for violin and piano is one of the best modern sonatas we have, and we must be grateful that it has come to us from a land that has done little since the seventeenth century in producing chamber music for the violin. This sonata leans a little on Brahms, but there is in it at the same time something of that Italian feeling which one recognizes so easily in music, whether it be for the violin, piano, orchestra or what not. Scalero has also put forth revisions of some of the classical sonatas by the old Italian masters, revisions that show his erudition and artistic judgment.
Some short compositions and a 'Piedmontese Rhapsody' by Sinigaglia constitute that very interesting musician's contribution to violin music. They are all of them idiomatically conceived and effective in performance. The Rhapsody is made up of folk-songs of Piedmont, quite as are the orchestral dances which have been discussed. It is an exceptionally felicitous piece to perform, and with orchestral accompaniment it should soon replace such hackneyed music as Saint-Saëns's Rondo Capriccioso. Beyond the efforts of these two men nothing of value is being written for the violin by the modern Italians.
Before turning to the discussion of the art-song we must speak of that curious musical personality, Don Lorenzo Perosi, born in 1872, who is the representative of oratorio in his land to-day. Also the Italian organ composers. Perosi began his career by startling all who knew him with his pretentious works in which he has employed Biblical narratives as the subject for long oratorios. His 'Resurrection of Lazarus' when first produced in Venice fixed the attention of the world upon him. It was said that a new Palestrina had been found. All kinds of honors were paid him. A street in his native Tortona was named after him. His services as conductor at presentations of his oratorios were sought. We cannot do better than to quote the remarks of Luigi Torchi, who seems to have examined his productions very carefully. He says: 'After all, why this hurrah about Perosi? He, whose recreation in times past was to compose cathedral church hymns after the pattern of the Protestant chorales, writes at present his vulgarly vaunted oratorios. This little abbé, born with theatrical, operatic talent, and not being permitted as a priest to write operas, in fault of religious feeling gives vent by way of compensation to the fullness of his romantic and sentimental exultations. And look at the form of his compositions: a frequency of tedious recitatives with words that follow literally the text of the Bible; little melodies, properly beginnings without endings, without any severe dignity of line, alternate with more or less long instrumental pieces of lyrical character; a couple of modern church anthems, in a work drawn from the New Testament; plain-song harmonized tragically, and some attempts at operatic realism, ecclesiastical harmonies and realistic operatic style.... He follows the lead of Wagner, and makes use of the leit-motif; soon after he delights in turning his back on him, and offers a badly made fugue on a subject that smells of too classic times. He has a fondness for instrumental phrases of much color, but his purely orchestral numbers are puerile, and betray no knowledge of modern orchestration. He has learned to compose pieces without ideas, fugues without developments, and, that he might not be too badly off, orchestral intermezzos, written and orchestrated with the knowledge of a schoolboy. Perosi has undertaken the task of illustrating the life of our Saviour in twelve oratorios. If he should keep his word, he should be pardoned.'
Thus this abbé-composer is disposed of. Marco Enrico Bossi, born in 1861 in Brescia, has written two oratorios, 'Paradise Lost' and 'Joan of Arc,' fine, sincere works along lines that add little to what has been done in the field before his time. He is at least dignified and knows his craft and so, unlike Perosi, cannot be charged with being a poseur. He is the foremost living organ composer that Italy owns. And it is in this department of activity that he is at his best. Some will think that he should have been mentioned with the orchestral composers. But his orchestral works are of the Sgambati-Martucci kind, and, since he is one of the younger men, it would be hardly proper to discuss academic essays along with the work of those men who are blazing paths. His chamber music, including a fine trio 'In Memoriam,' is creditable but undistinguished. It is only in his organ music that an individual note is found.
Cesare Galeotti, Oreste Ravanello, Polibio Fumagalli, Filippo Capocci, these are names of men who have written in recent years and are writing (some of them) organ music to-day. Capocci has done several sonatas of a pleasing type, as has Fumagalli, while the other two have confined themselves to working in the smaller forms, often with much success.