Two native Italians who have made their homes in America must be mentioned here. They are Pietro Alessandro Yon and Giuseppe Ferrata. Mr. Yon is a young man of unquestioned talent. He was born in Settimo in 1886 and occupies the post of organist of the Church of St. Francis Xavier, New York, devoting a good portion of his time, however, to composition. Just as it is the duty of organists of Anglican churches to turn out an occasional Te Deum or Jubilate, so must the Catholic church organist produce a Mass every now and then. Mr. Yon is one of those who when he comes forward with a Mass gives us a musical work of distinction, not a pièce d'occasion. He has written a number of them, but particularly fine is his recent Mass in A. Here the true ecclesiastical spirit of the Roman church is to be found; and what a mastery of polyphony does this young Italian exhibit! His organ compositions are also praiseworthy, a charming 'Christmas in Sicily' and a 'Prelude-Pastorale' (Dies est laetitiæ) being characteristic examples.
Giuseppe Ferrata (b. 1866) lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he teaches and composes. His list of works is a long one, including a Messe solennelle for solo voices, chorus or mixed voices and organ or orchestra, a Mass in G minor for male voices and organ, numerous songs, piano pieces, and a dozen or more violin compositions in small forms. He should be praised especially for a very fine string quartet in G major and a group of sterling organ compositions. Mr. Ferrata's path to success has not been made easier by his living in America; it has, in a sense, taken him away from Italy and her ways and, though it has doubtless given him a freer viewpoint, he has had to struggle for a hearing. His compositions are only now being recognized and given performances. He has something to say, has a fine compositional technique, and he is disposed to add to his style the innovations of modern harmonic thought.
IV
Doubtless ninety-nine out of every hundred musicians and music-lovers still believe that Italy has no art-song, that her composers are still devoting their energies to turning out those delectable morceaux in ballad-style which Italian opera singers have sung in the past, and still do, to an extent, when they are called upon to take part in a concert. For these persons, whose number is a large one, it will be surprising information that Italy is working very seriously in the field of the art-song. And the man who has achieved the most conspicuous place in this department is that young genius, Riccardo Zandonai, already spoken of as a music-dramatist and as a symphonic composer. Whereas some of the songs which can be placed in this class by contemporary Italians still contain germs of the popular Italian song style, Zandonai's songs are indubitably on the high plane which is uninfluenced by popular tendencies.
Mr. Zandonai has doubtless done a great many more songs than we in America have been made familiar with. He has perhaps also written many more than he has published, the case with most composers. Several years ago there appeared three songs, first a setting of Verlaine's Il pleure dans mon cœur, then Coucher de soleil à Kérazur and third Soror dolorosa to one of Catulle Mendès' finest impassioned outbursts. The effect of these songs on musicians who, at the time, had heard no music of Zandonai was tremendous. In every measure was written plainly the utterance of a big personality, who commanded modern harmonies with indisputable mastery. Whether his setting of the lovely Verlaine poem matches or surpasses the widely known one of Debussy is of little consequence. It is not at all like it; Zandonai doubtless was unfamiliar with the Debussy version when he wrote the song and his Il pleure has an atmosphere all its own. The Orientalism of Coucher de soleil à Kérazur is unique—it gives the impression of a twilight conceived through an entirely new lens. But it is in the Soror dolorosa that the composer has written what would seem to be one of his masterpieces. Every drop of the emotional force that Mendès has called out in his glorious stanzas, every bit of the color, of the warmth of the poem is reflected stunningly in this music. It is a wedding of voice and piano, achieved only by the greatest masters in their most notable songs.
Then there appeared another set of songs, this time five in number. Visione invernale, I due tarli, Ultima rosa (this one to a Foggozzaro poem), Serenata and L'Assiuolo are the titles. You cannot prefer one of these songs to the other if you really get their meaning; only the last one might be said to be not so distinctive. The wonderful dirge of Visione Invernale, the thrilling melodic beauty of Ultima rosa and the lighter Serenata and the tragic narrative of I due tarli ('The Two Worms') grip as do few things in modern music. If Mr. Zandonai has written difficult songs, that is, from the singer's standpoint, it was not unexpected. No composer who really had a message ever wrote to a singer's taste. And Mr. Zandonai never makes concessions.
Guido Bianchini, Enrico Morpurgo, Alfredo Brüggemann, Mario Barbieri—names assuredly strange to many a music-lover—are all men who have contributed significantly to song literature. Morpurgo's Una speranza is typical of him at his best; Bianchini has real modern tendencies. Francesco Santoliquido is known to us through two songs, Tristezza crepuscolare and Alba di luna sul bosco. Tristezza crepuscolare is the better of the two, a magnificent conception, a song that is thrilling in every inflection. There is a strong Puccini tinge in Santoliquido's music, made fine, however, by more restraint than the composer of Tosca knows how to exert. Unusually well managed are the accompaniments, which are rather graphic. Mr. Santoliquido knows how to achieve a climax within a few pages as do few of his contemporaries.
Apart from all these men stands Vittorio Gui, a young composer and conductor, whose career has been furthered by Arturo Toscanini. Signor Gui is an 'ultra' in the best sense of the word. His songs, which have not been exploited in America at all, are enigmatic. In fact his choice of poems makes them so. He has taken Chinese poems and translated them into Italian, poems that contain that world of Confucian philosophy which is still but little known. There are problems in ultra-modern harmony here which many will not be willing to solve, but which a few have already given serious attention to and from which they have gotten much joy. There is distinction in these songs; a desire to experiment, perhaps, but still the feeling for new paths, new moods, and, above all, a new idiom. The attainment of that may not be so easily accomplished, but Gui is one of the men who are going prominently in that direction.
A word about the ballad composers, Paolo Tosti, P. Mario Costa, Luigi Denza, and Enrico de Leva. Whereas their position in serious music is not one of importance, their appeal to millions entitles them to mention. Tosti is doubtless the ablest of them. His innumerable melodie—the characterization of his songs as such is typical of what Italians thought a song must be before they attempted the art-song—have a melodic fascination. Who has not heard his 'Good-bye' and his L'ultime canzone, two songs which have won a popularity truly universal in scope! And when 'Good-bye,' hackneyed as it is, is sung by a Melba it contains an emotional thrill, theatrical as its appeal may be, insecure as its structure is from the standpoint of the art-song. It would be idle to enumerate Tosti's writings. His songs go into the hundreds. De Leva, Denza, and Costa are of the same creative blood; they believe in pure melodies, none of them distinguished, set to very indifferent Italian texts—not poems—and one and all gorgeously effective for the singer. What these men have produced has developed in Italian singers that failing, namely, the dwelling on all high notes, which is so objectionable. But it has also brought joy to so many Italians whose sole musical interest was singing, and their place in the development of Italy's music cannot be overlooked. When a hundred years have rolled around perhaps the name of Tosti will be remembered. But it is exceedingly doubtful whether there will be Italians producing a similar kind of music; for by that time Italy's music-lovers will have repudiated this type of banal melodic song, which makes only an emotional appeal and into whose make-up the intellectual has never been allowed to enter.