(Pazin 3 February 1904-Florence, 19 February 1975)
Interned with his family in Graz during the First World War, he began his musical studies there, which he later continued in Trieste and Florence with Frazzi. In 1930, he formed a duo with the violinist Materassi dedicated to the performance of modern music, and in 1934, he was appointed teacher at the Conservatory of Florence, where he still resides. He was also briefly active as a music critic and, from 1951, held summer composition courses at Tanglewood in the United States. From 1956 he also taught at Queen's College in New York.
Dallapiccola began his activity as a composer with a diatonic language in that typically Italian climate between the 1920s and 1930s, which saw an enthusiastic revaluation of ancient Italian instrumental and vocal music and a healthy revolt against melodrama realists. In short, Dallapiccola belongs, with Goffredo Petrassi and other Italian composers, to that generation of musicians who - following the example of Malipiero and Casella - felt the need to insert Italy into the living context of the current evolution of music, also referring to an exquisitely our tradition. Thus was born that phenomenon called "neo-madrigalism", that instrumental taste was born which is influenced by the beneficial influence of our best tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries. It is no coincidence that Dallapiccola, like Petrassi and Ghedini, he began his activity with a Partita, a typical form of the Italian 17th century, and dedicated much of his production to vocal music, with works that remain fundamental for understanding the evolution of music in Italy in recent decades.
Around 1940, Dallapiccola was the first Italian musician who felt the need to study the twelve-tone technique and knew how to use it by incorporating a sensitivity formed in the study of the best Italian tradition: it is precisely for this reason that everyone has consistently highlighted the very particular flavor which has acquired the use of Schonberg's technique in his work.
The relaxed singability, the contained serenity of the expression, a baroque but always clear and linear contrapuntal taste remain typical of his twelve-tone works. In his latest compositions, Dallapiccola has been influenced, but we need to find out how helpful the most recent technical achievements of the young serial generation are.
Dallapiccola is the author of three theatrical works (Night Flight, The Prisoner and Ulysses), of the ballet Marsyas and of much choral and vocal music which undoubtedly remains the best part of his production.
Partita for orchestra (with a soprano voice) (1932)
Like Petrassi and Ghedini, Dallapiccola also made his debut with a Partita. This homage to the Italian tradition is made even more so by adopting a terso diatonism, a language with an evident "neoclassical" approach. Adopting a terso diatonism. However, we can already notice some peculiarities of Dallapiccoli's more personal style: the predilection for specific rarefied and refined timbres, a cold but always compelling lyricism, and a dramatic attitude that, at times, conquers the listener.
The Partita includes: "Passacaglia," "Burlesca," "Recitativo e Fanfara," and "Naenia Beatae Mariae Virginis" (the latter piece with the soprano solo voice).
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