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Alfredo CasellaAuthor(s): Guido M. Gatti and Frederick H.

MartensSource: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 2 (Apr., 1920), pp. 179-191Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL:.Accessed: 16:55Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship.

For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The MusicalQuarterly.This content downloaded from 195.78.109.69 on Tue, 20 May 2014 16:55:43 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCASELLA By GUIDO M. GATTI ASIDE from his own self, in other words a musical personality quite decisively and irrefutably of note, a firm and com- manding temperament nourished by study and consideration, Casella in these days undeniably represents a new word, one hither- to not spoken; a new voice, one as yet not raised in modern art. It is no longer possible to pretend to ignore this; disdainful in- difference where he is concerned, which at times has assumed the most brutal forms of anti-artistic sabotage, has been the result either of inability to understand him, or of questionable prejudice. It is possible to disagree with his ideas, often expressed with that peculiarly uncompromising spirit common to natures funda- mentally sincere and to minds innately broad. No cultured and practiced intellect, however, given to the calm critical study of esthetic phenomena can any longer refuse to consider Casella, nor refuse to give some of his inspired works a place among the highest in art.

And in this connection another fact cannot be denied: Casella has always been, profoundly, an artist. His works have been multjforme: they comprise pages that run the gamut of diversity and are separated by the greatest distances one from the other as regards form, musical contents and value as well.

Anyone who compares to-day the two youthful sympho- nies with the symphonic poem A notte alta is quickly struck by the decisive evolution in expression, which almost raises a doubt as to the identity of the two authors. A more intensive examination of these works will nevertheless show that certain fundamental elements-those commonly known as sentimental- are repeated in both compositions. But before all, there are absolutely wanting in both works the heterogeneous components, the stereotype ingredients dishonestly calculated to secure some immediate effect; in short, they lack all those accessories so dear to the servile imitators of the in- imitable Debussy: what may be called, comprehensively, the tricks and mannerisms of musical writing.

All that Casella writes is in first instance musical. In their essence his works, character- istically enough, have an exclusively sonorous origin, they spring 179 This content downloaded from 195.78.109.69 on Tue, 20 May 2014 16:55:43 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsCasella This content downloaded from 195.78.109.69 on Tue, 20 May 2014 16:55:43 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsMusical Quarterly from a purely tonal font, they are conceived purely as music and are nourished only on purely musical elements. Casella is neither a musical scholar nor is he an alchemist; his nature is established, one might say, feeling its way in an ambient impregnated with the music which was the music of his infancy; and his tempera- ment has brought him into maturer life to express his individuality across a musical education nobly classic and secure. It might be well here to give some brief details regarding his early years in Turin, and his first steps in music.

He was born in a musical home. Cast software vs sonarika. His father was an excellent 'cellist and a professor at the Turin Liceo Musicale; his mother, an admirable pianist, had been tutored in her art by that keen mind, Carlo Rossaro. His godfather was that magician of the violoncello, Alfredo Piatti: all his nearest relatives were 'cellists. When four years old Casella began to study the piano under the guidance of his mother; yet he did not fail on that account in freely devoting attention to other natural inclinations less marked.

He had alwvays taken, from the very first, lively satisfaction in busying himself with electricity and chemistry, and occupying himself seriously and with constancy with their study. So much so, in fact, that Galileo Ferraris, a friend of the family and a frequent visitor of the Casella home, insisted that the boy should begin to take up the arduous study of science. It was in 1895, at the age of twelve, that on the advice of Giuseppe Martucci, Casella gave up all other pursuits to dedicate himself entirely to music, studying harmony with Cravero. Al- ready, however, as a ten year old youngster, he had made a success- ful dSbut in the Circolo degli artisti, and in the year following he appeared before a larger audience in the Carignana. In 1896 Diemer, the famous teacher at the Paris Conservatory, who had admired the boy's extraordinary talent in various concerts which the latter had given in Parisian concert-halls, induced him to come to his school. In the Paris Conservatory Casella completed his regular studies, and on concluding them remained a year longer in order to follow Gabriel Faure's course in composition. Now, however, that he found himself free from any control, and no longer confined within the narrower bounds of academic study, he began his new life with phenomenal and astonishing activity.