From Paris to Rome. Alfredo Casella and Béla Bartók in the Early Twentieth Century

Authors

Keywords:

Alfredo Casella, Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Early Twentieth-Century Music, Musical Nationalism, Bartók's Reception (Italy and France)

Abstract

In recent years, several scholars have investigated the reception of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century. The present article aims to further explore this field of research through an in-depth examination of the artistic relations between Bartók and Alfredo Casella (1883-1947). By drawing on the archival materials held at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, this article provides a general overview of the most important primary sources available on this topic (scores, letters, articles, concert-related ephemera) in order to analyse Bartók's influence on Casella as a composer, pianist, and concert organiser. The time period covered by this research spans from the early 1910s, when Casella discovered the 'new Hungarian music' in Paris, to 1925, when he organised the first concert tour of the Hungarian musician in Italy.

Author Biography

Nicolò Palazzetti, University of Birmingham

Dr Nicolò Palazzetti is a musicologist and historian based in the UK. He is currently serving as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Music at the University of Birmingham. He is a member of the editorial boards of two academic journals: Analitica. Online Journal of Music Studies (based in Italy) and Transposition. Musique et sciences sociales (based in France). He collaborates as a reviewer with the Swiss journal Dissonance.His PhD thesis (2017), supervised by Professor Esteban Buch (EHESS, Paris), focused on the reception of Béla Bartók in Italy. His research interests include twentieth-century music, aesthetics, music analysis and sociology of culture. Palazzetti has given papers at conferences in the UK and abroad and his articles and reviews have been published in English, French and Italian in: Analitica, Dissonance, Il Saggiatore Musicale, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, and Transposition.Nicolò received a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy (2010) and a Master’s degree with high distinction in Philosophical Sciences (2013) from the University of Bologna. In Juin 2013 he received Collegio Superiore’s Diploma in Humanities: the Collegio Superiore was established in 1998 as the School of Excellence of the University of Bologna. Nicoló also attended the Conservatory "Gioachino Rossini" of Pesaro.In 2015 a six-month scholarship has been awarded to Nicolò by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice). In February-March 2016 he has been visiting scholar at the University of Birmingham (UK).

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Published

2018-10-15

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Articles