Positively modern

Musical Times, Autumn 2004 by Whittall, Arnold

Brody, I feel sure, would agree with Robert Morris's view of Wolpe 's peculiarly volatile Organicism': 'there are no stable forms, only processes of formation and destruction, of accretion and deletion, intersection and complementation' (p.263). These dialectical qualities also engage William Benjamin and Katherine Malyj in their close readings of In two parts for six players (1962 - also on the CD), and Austin Clarkson's introductory reference to these contributions - 'the two authors independently affirm that Wolpe continued to explore a creative engagement between diatonicism and dodecaphony in his late pieces' (p.25) - suggests an otherwise improbable tie-in with the much-less-dialectical Dallapiccola: although in Dallapiccola's case that 'engagement' was more evident in his middle-period than in his late works.

DALLAPICCOLA'S centenary year has not exactly been flooded with performances and celebrations, but it has seen the publication of the first full-length study of the composer in English. Raymond Fearn has worked on 20th-century Italian music for many years, and this book has new, interesting details which stem from productive spells in the archives. Yet Fearn's apparent lack of interest in wider matters of aesthetics and cultural history lends his work a distinctly old-fashioned air. Nor is the book's appeal increased by a literary style which would have benefited from editorial intervention to weed out the many small-scale, redundant repetitions that break up the flow of the narrative. It is probably unfair to expect wideranging critical perspectives in a pioneering study like this, but I do wonder whether the current neglect, especially of the larger works, is entirely due to the obtuseness of promoters and critics, or whether Dallapiccola himself might not be partly responsible.

This is an expensive book, despite the fact that many of the music examples are photocopied from scores - some engraved, some MS - and it has several unsolved editorial problems, including what appears to be some missing text (p. 178, four lines from the bottom). But its value is considerable, despite these glitches. For example, Fearn makes clear how important increasing familiarity with nonItalian contemporary music was for Dallapiccola in the 1930s, with Berg and Webern providing the strongest stimuli. At the same time, his experiences in being married to a Jew, and his increasing commitment to the Catholic faith, served to weaken his sympathy with Fascism, and to promote the aesthetic ideals of unity and symmetry in ways which were to prove overly literal for the sceptical, pluralistically inclined world of music after ipno. Despite many expressionistic, Berg-echoing, Monostimulating moments, even in the later works, there is too little tension, too little energy, and Fearn's unquestioning acceptance of Dallapiccola's apparent belief that Berg was integrating diatonic and dodecaphonic (e.g. p.ni), rather than exploring their conjunctions in more subtle and less stable ways, is symptomatic of the book's critical tone. Examples which call this tone into question are probably more the result of authorial imprecision than of critical intent, as when Fearn writes that