Symphony No.2 in C minor Op.12 (1908-1910)

Italian composers in the early years of the 20th century were not much interested in the symphony. Alfredo Casella, however, was a major exception. On the advice of Giuseppe Martucci – one of the very few of his generation who had successfully resisted the prevailing “tyranny of opera” to concentrate on orchestral and chamber music – Casella had been sent at the age of 13 from Turin to the Paris Conservatoire. There, alongside such outstanding fellow students as Maurice Ravel and George Enescu, he had received the all-round professional training that would have been unavailable to him in Italy.

This did not, of course, translate Casella into a French composer. Certainly, he was much influenced in his early piano pieces not only by his composition teacher Gabriel Fauré but also by Debussy and Ravel. His next stylistic allegiance, with the Russian Nationalists – which became inescapably apparent when he conducted his First Symphony in B minor in Monte Carlo in 1908 – was also a product of his Parisian environment, not least by way of a formative friendship with Ravel. But in his passion for Mahler he was, in French musical circles, more or less on his own. As Mahler was moved to learn when he first met the young composer, in Paris in 1909, he knew his symphonies “by heart.” It was largely through heroic efforts on Casella’s part that Mahler was enabled to conduct one of his own works –    the “Resurrection” Symphony in the Théâtre du Châtelet on 17 April 1910 – for the first and only time in the French capital.

Six days later Casella’s own Second Symphony in C minor was first performed in the Salle Gaveau. Those members of the Paris audience who were at both events cannot have failed to notice certain similarities between the two symphonies. The Mahlerian aspect of Casella’s score should not, however, be exaggerated. While there are many examples of themes, harmonic colours and orchestral sounds deriving directly from the music of his current hero figure, no one who knows the two composers could ever mistake one for the other. Casella has his own distinctive personality here. He is more excitable even than Mahler, unable (except in the uncharacteristic second movement) to remain in the same tempo for more than a few bars at once, more likely to allow his textures to proliferate into extravagant complexity, more inclined to drive passion into frenzy.

How the Second Symphony was put together is something of a mystery. The Finale, including the Epilogo, is dated 11 September 1909, which makes perfect sense in relation to a first performance six months later. The Adagio was completed in March 1908 and, although the date on the manuscript is unclear in this case, the Allegro molto vivace must, on the stylistic evidence, have been written still earlier. The problem arises with the first movement, which is dated “Paris, 2 November 1910” – six months after the first performance. The only possible explanation seems to be that the composer was unhappy with what he had heard in the Salle Gaveau in April and revised it. That it is a revision and not an entirely new piece is confirmed by otherwise inexplicable allusions to it in the Epilogo.

The first movement begins, like the other three, with a rhythmic ostinato, this one loaded with C-minor foreboding. Another prominent feature of the Lento introduction, following eerie bell sounds, is a heavily emphasised rhythmic figure – just two notes with a tiny rest between them – which is to motivate much of the rest of the movement. On a string crescendo it acts as a springboard into the first subject of the Allegro energico, where it is not only incorporated into the busy figuration of the violins but also thrust into the foreground by brass and woodwind, most memorably where it is transformed into a Valkyrie-like trumpet call. The second subject is a contrastingly lyrical melody (beginning with the Dies Irae motif) tenderly presented in E flat major and at a slower tempo by violins. The Lento introduction reappears twice. It precedes a dramatic development section, devoted exclusively to first-subject material, and a full-scale recapitulation with the second subject now in C major. The last recall of the Lento is also in C major but a progressively quicker and louder coda surmounted by a huge climax dismisses major-key aspirations as unrealistic.

The ostinato rhythm at the beginning of the hard-driven Allegro molto vivace scherzo in C minor suggests that Casella might be reverting to Italian type with a tarantella. In fact the background here, as in the First Symphony, is Russian – which becomes clear first with the entry of the brass fanfares and later with the exotic element in the delightfully tuneful C-major middle section.

Framed by a woodwind chorale harmonised in alien fourths over an ominous timpani ostinato, the F sharp minor Adagio seems at this stage to be in a desolate world of its own. Its main theme, introduced by oboe and violins is obviously Mahlerian in inspiration but is no less gloomily expressive for that. Although the key changes to A major for the soothing second theme on violins, there is no lasting consolation. The main theme is recalled on cor anglais, ruefully contemplated by solo violin and carried to a searing climax (characteristically marked appassionatissimo) on an extraordinarily mixed textural accretion of wind and harp figuration over the pounding timpani rhythm from the introduction.

Up to the point where it dies away to make room for the Epilogo, the Finale could have been the last part of what is described on the manuscript title page of the work, cancelled but still legible, as a “Prologue for a tragedy.” It sets off as a brisk Mahlerian march in C minor but then exceeds its model in grotesquerie, touching on extremes of brutality, before it encounters another Mahlerian situation, a funeral oration delivered in F minor by trombone and tuba and eliciting sighing sevenths on oboe and violins. Since this happens twice, the second experience more desperate than the first, there is surely no hope.

With the Epilogo, which follows after a short pause, everything changes – as the quotation from Dante’s Purgatorio at the head of it promises:

Per correr miglior acque alza le vele

ornai la navicella del mio ingegno,

che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele.

(To run over better waters    the little vessel of my genius hoists its sail to leave behind a sea so cruel.)    In a mystic atmosphere, created in part by the entry of the organ, first violins re-introduce the soothing melody from the Adagio. Now at last it fulfills its consolatory function. Recalling material from the Lento introduction to the work as well as the Valkyrie theme from the first movement, this time on two solo horns, it leads the way “with all possible intensity of expression” to a sustained and massively jubilant confirmation of C major. It is an astonishing achievement – technically and emotionally overwrought though it might be – for a composer still in his 20s.

Scarlattiana: divertimento on music by Domenico Scarlatti (1926)

I Sinfonia: Lento, grave – Allegro molto vivace

II Minuetto: Allegretto ben moderato e grazioso

III Capriccio: Allegro vivacissimo ed empetuoso

IV Pastorale: Andantino dolcement mosso

V Finale: Lento molto e grave – Presto vivacissimo

Italian composers in the early years of the 20th century were not much interested in the symphony. Alfredo Casella, however, was a major exception. On the advice of Giuseppe Martucci – one of the very few of his generation who had successfully resisted the prevailing “tyranny of opera” to concentrate on orchestral and chamber music – the 13-year-old Casella had been sent by his musically ambitious family in Turin to the Paris Conservatoire. There, alongside such outstanding fellow students as Maurice Ravel and George Enescu, he had received the all-round professional training that would not have been available to him in Italy.

This did not, of course, translate Casella into a French composer. Certainly, he was much influenced in his early piano pieces not only by his composition teacher Gabriel Fauré but also by Debussy and Ravel. His next stylistic allegiance, with the Russian Nationalists – which became inescapably apparent when he conducted his First Symphony in B minor in Monte Carlo in 1908 – was also a product of his Parisian environment, not least by way of a formative friendship with Ravel. But in his passion for the music of Gustav Mahler he was, in French circles at least, more or less on his own. As Mahler was moved to learn when he first met Casella, in Paris in 1909, the young composer knew his symphonies “by heart.” It was largely through heroic efforts on Casella’s part that Mahler was enabled to conduct one of his own works –    the “Resurrection” Symphony in the Théâtre du Châtelet on 17 April 1910 – for the first and only time in the French capital.

Six days later Casella’s own Second Symphony in C minor for large orchestra was first performed in the Salle Gaveau. Those members of the Paris audience who were at both events – including perhaps the dedicatee of the new work, George Enescu – cannot have failed to notice certain similarities between the two symphonies. The Mahlerian aspect of Casella’s score should not, however, be exaggerated. While there are many examples of themes, harmonic colours and orchestral sounds deriving directly from the music of his current hero figure, no one who knows the two composers could ever mistake one for the other. Casella has his own distinctive personality and his own agenda here. He is more excitable even than Mahler, unable (except in the uncharacteristic second movement) to remain in the same tempo for more than a few bars at once, more likely to allow his textures to proliferate into extravagant complexity, more inclined to drive passion into frenzy.

The first movement of the Second Symphony begins, like the other three, with a rhythmic ostinato, this one loaded with C-minor foreboding. Another prominent feature of the Lento introduction, following eerie bell sounds, is a heavily emphasised rhythmic figure – just two notes with a tiny rest between them – which is to motivate much of what follows. On a string crescendo it acts as a springboard into the first subject of the Allegro energico, where it is not only incorporated into the busy figuration of the violins but also thrust into the foreground by brass and woodwind, most memorably where it is transformed into a Valkyrie-like trumpet call. The second subject is a contrastingly lyrical melody (beginning with the Dies Irae motif) tenderly presented in E flat major and at a slower tempo by violins. The Lento introduction reappears twice. It precedes a dramatic development section, devoted largely to first-subject material, and a full-scale recapitulation with the second subject now in C major. Although the last recall of the Lento is also in C major, a progressively quicker and louder coda surmounted by a huge climax dismisses major-key aspirations as unrealistic.

The Allegro molto vivace scherzo in C minor, which must have been written a couple of years before the rest of the work, is something of an anomaly in this context. The driving ostinato rhythm at the beginning suggests that Casella might be reverting to Italian type with a tarantella. In fact the background here, as in the First Symphony, is Russian – which becomes clear first with the entry of the brass fanfares and later with the exotic element in the delightfully tuneful C-major middle section.

Framed by a woodwind chorale harmonised in alien fourths over an ominous timpani ostinato, the F sharp minor Adagio seems at this stage to be in a desolate world of its own. Its main theme, introduced by oboe and violins is obviously Mahlerian in inspiration but is no less gloomily expressive for that. Although the key changes to A major for the soothing second theme on violins, there is no lasting consolation. The main theme is recalled on cor anglais, ruefully contemplated by solo violin and carried to a searing climax (characteristically marked appassionatissimo) on an extraordinarily mixed textural accretion of wind and harp figuration over the pounding timpani rhythm from the introduction.

Up to the point where it dies away to make room for the Epilogo, the Finale could have been the last part of what is described on the manuscript title page of the work, cancelled but still legible, as a “Prologue for a tragedy.” After setting off as a brisk Mahlerian march in C minor, it exceeds its model in grotesquerie, touching on extremes of brutality, before it encounters another Mahlerian situation, a funeral oration delivered in F minor by trombone and tuba and eliciting sighing sevenths on oboe and violins. Since this happens twice, the second experience more desperate than the first, there is surely no hope.

With the Epilogo, which follows after a short pause, everything changes – as the quotation from Dante’s Purgatorio at the head of it promises:

Per correr miglior acque alza le vele

ornai la navicella del mio ingegno,

che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele.

(To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius hoists its sail to leave behind a sea so cruel.)    In a mystic atmosphere, created in part by the entry of the organ, first violins re-introduce the soothing melody from the Adagio. Now at last it fulfils its consolatory function. Recalling material from the Lento introduction to the work as well as the Valkyrie theme from the first movement, this time on two solo horns, it leads the way “with all possible intensity of expression” to a sustained and massively jubilant confirmation of C major. It is an astonishing achievement – technically and emotionally overwrought though it might be – for a composer still in his 20s.

Casella spent 19 years in Paris before he returned to Italy with a mission to develop in every way he could “an art which could be not only Italian but also European.” Taking into account the non-operatic distinction to be achieved by composers of the same generation such as Respighi and Malipiero, he could certainly claim some success in that respect. At the same time, as was pointed out at the time, in helping his countrymen find a style for themselves he had difficulty in finding one of his own. For the first few years of his new career in Rome he was as changeable in his stylistic allegiances as he had been in Paris. In the 1920s, however, he discovered neo-classicism, which was to serve him well, in one way or another, for much of the rest of his career.

Though a classic of its neo-classical kind, Scarlattiana was by no means the first. Completed in Rome in 1926, it was preceded by Vincenzo Tommasini’s Le donne di buon umore (1916), which is also based on Scarlatti sonatas, Respighi’s La boutique fantasque (1918), based on music by Rossini, and Stravinsky’s highly influential Pulcinella (1920), based on material by or attributed to Pergolesi. The difference is that whereas those three works were commissioned for performance by the Ballets Russes, Scarlattiana is pure concert music, scored like them for a small orchestra but with a concertante piano part. All four composers, however, had the same problem, which was to take a fresh look at 18th-century music from a 20th-century point of view. Casella was particularly tactful in this respect, avoiding parody on the one hand and excessive sentiment on the other and excluding 19th-century developments in harmony and piano technique while discreetly allowing himself trendy 1920s diversions in both.

Drawing on perhaps as many as 90 of the hundreds of Scarlatti sonatas available to him, Casella presents an abundance of melody, its general light-heartedness effectively offset by such thoughtful episodes as the matching slow introductions to the opening Sinfonia and the Finale. The Minuetto is harmonically the most imaginative movement, its sensitively applied dissonances in the middle section not so much distorting the delicate melodic material as enhancing it. After the central Capriccio, which with its witty castanet colouring acknowledges Scarlatti’s long period of residence in Spain, there is another lyrical inspiration in the beautifully scored Pastorale with its serenely poetic if harmonically precarious ending. Characteristic ostinato rhythms see Casella safely through the metrical risks he takes in the precipitous closing Prestissimo. Paganiniana was to follow 17 years later.

notes by Gerald Larner © 2010