CD CLASSICA, Year 9th - Nr.85
(Firenze City Magazine Editrice)
September 1995 (page 16):
Sergio Calligaris:
a conversation with the Argentinian composer,
by Gregorio Nardi

My first contact with Sergio Calligaris dates from 1979, when some friends of mine who knew my interest in contemporary music sent me the Quaderno pianistico di Renzo (Renzo's Piano Notebook), a work which holds particularly important place in the Argentinian composer's career - as we'll see during the interview. This work, executed nearly one thousand times, has later on ensured to Maestro the reputation which accompanies him. My experience induced me to prefer the delicate talking of Epigrams by Ferneyhough instead, the multicoloured irony of Sequenza (Sequence) by Berio, Donatoni's sparkling and spontaneus rhythm, the fascinating melody by Barraqué or the formidable building of Carter's concert writing. I was amazed at the contact of Calligaris' extreme formal severity, by his classical counterpoint, by his strictly digital pianism. It was with joy, then, that I could ask him explanations to my doubts. Answers didn't make themselves await.

"My very first real teacher, Calligaris explains, was a priest, Father Machado, of the school of Hindemith: an extremely rigorous writing, counterpointistic, and a great use of harmony by fourths; not necessarily Scriabin's mystic chord, but exceeding or right fourths, never diminuted. From Rachmaninov, instead, I obtained the conception of the form. When I wrote my Piano Concerto, I couldn't compose a small, miserable concert, made so, just for writing. I devise the concert as a great and spectacular symphonic event, what it doesn't mean a show, but really demanding. After Rachmaninov and Prokoviev's works, you can't think about a shabby piece: from such authors I believe I derived an instinct for the pianism of great communicativeness, not necessarily to seek attention, but evidently very difficult, not difficulty for itself, but rather a search for a great sound power. My conception is neoclassical, I'm not a neoromantic. If ever, as romantic I have a bent for being communicative, because I'm naturally like this, and music reflects the individual: I'm not introverted, when I write I need to communicate and to feel straight away the answer of my speaker, audience. I spent a long time without composing, when I held concerts as a pianist, from 1954 - I was thirteen - to 1979, the year of Renzo's Piano Notebook. With this experience, I developed a sixth sense for what "works". What makes most of contemporary music fail in front of audience, is not its complexity - it's so simple, there's no content, nothing, harmony doesn't exist, rhythm is something uncertain - because Rachmaninov, Prokoviev, Ravel, Hindemith are complex, not avant-garde music. This one does want to be difficul, without logic, without order; nor the author realizes if you make something different as what is written".

- Maybe is audience not accustomed to make the slightest effort. I would have said that, on the contrary, our contemporaries are forced to be completely conscious of what they look for and how they write.

In any case it's useless they to write. They could make other signs: in any case I don't understand them, I don't have time to study them. I desperately need form, outline, contrasts, because the success of a piece with audience - and I do respect audience - comes from precise needs. Me too, when I listen to an amorphous piece, I'm bored, and I don't want to be bored. I want contrasts, architectural equilibrium among masses of different characteristics. The first movement of my Concerto has a setting out trait: it presents six main themes and four secondary ideas, that I'll use "metamorphosed" later. For the Scherzo I drew my inspiration from that of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, with a double Trio. Also the short interlude which binds the Scherzo to the first movement is nothing but a shortened exposition of the Adagio main theme. It seems there a secondary idea of transition, but it isn't that, it has its own function. I never use passing bars on their own: they are always the counterpointistic speculation of something which will happen or already happened. In the third movement I present a theme that could remind of Bartok's not style but pianism, because it's very percussive.

- In fact, I find that the style is radically different: Bartok adores breaking - or, better: opening the form starting from materials requirement; in a way that themes lead the construction, and are never forced.

My structure is exactly symmetrical. I believe in symmetry; there isn't any form without return to what was before, in a way that you can't forget what you listened to. Also refrains are nothing academic, but logic. In order to do a more free final, nearly as a fantasy, I had to be more rigorous before. Continuous freedom changes to anarchy, and I don't love anarchy, at least in music. I like re-using acquired forms: the Quodlibet, the counterpoint, and harmony which sounds like tonal must be like this, otherwise it makes tired. There must be a sense of tension and relaxation. I esteem Roussel, but sometimes his music is a bit harmonically amorphous, because it never ends up, like an accordion. Then I get tired because it doesn't excite me, I don't get a climax or relax, even discordant. It becomes a waste land, always the same, and addiction arises. Since I analysed Franck's First Choral with my Maestro, I loved the beauty of harmony, of chords, it doesn't matter how altered. In another point I agree with Rachmaninov, the melody must be beautiful and clear, otherwise it's a failure.

- It seems to me that, in spite of all, not a few of themes nowadays famous were welcome with the maximum indifference. Maybe audience don't understand always what they can love, maybe one can lead them out of habit and - let me say - of ignorance.

A theme to be remembered must have a form where to recognize a beginning and an end; not because it ends up in an obvious manner, but because it has a line. The fascination of a theme is as the one of a person, you can't invent it, either it exists or it doesn't. We meet very boring cultured people and very fascinating almost illiterate ones: due to their tone of voice, their look. Also successful themes can't be explained: the choice of counterpoint, the beauty of harmony are useless if themes can't be remembered.

- So themes come to you so, as for divine inspiration.

I'm not a very prolific author, and I boast about it. During an eleven years long professional career I got to the opus number 33. Other authors, that I prefer not to mention, put an opus number to every small piece. If they don't get to opus 994 they're not satisfied. If I would do like them I'd have got opus 97.

- A real competition.

I'd like to get to opus 45, 46, like Rachmaninov; and I'd like to be as loved as him. Nowadays many composers write just for writing, for being performed. Since they aren't performers, they understand nothing. One can ask them a Trio for ukelele, triangle and double bass - a frightening combination - and they write it just for writing something. I compose for those instruments which do suit me only. My only work entirely atonal is the Grande fuga (Great fugue) of Preludio, corale, doppia fuga e finale (Prelude, choral, double fugue and final) for great organ op.19. However I get such an atonality with a fourths harmony, so that it doesn't make stand on end who's listening because of dissonances. I usually go to mountains to draw my inspiration, in Abruzzo, and during my long walks I bring my notebook with me: all themes must be spontaneous, you can't build them on your desk. You can't write music without inspiration, that's dry up music.

- Does it happens sometimes to you to draw your inspiration from other authors?

My Symphonic Dances op.26 represent a tribute to Bellini. They were required, together with a short work by Bussotti, for the centenary of the Massimo Theater of Catania. I was a bit perplexed: I wondered how to reconcile Bellini's style with mine. Then I used some elements from two not very known operas: the Pirata and Beatrice di Tenda and I inserted them in small interludes. The Second Suite op.27 was born by replacing the Bellini's themes in the interludes - that I had personally harmonized - with my own themes. I'm not eclectic: since the Piano Notebook up to now my style remained unchanged. And it'll remain like this.

- Don't you recognize the need for a possible development?

I believe in harmonic rules I imposed myself. I can't conceive of being tonal a day, dodecaphonic another. Stravinsky did it successfully. I don't want to be like this. I want to be recognized straight away. I don't want to be an ugly photocopy of myself, what's the big problem of who writes for vanity or ambitiousness; who administers to us "indigestible" stuff, meaningless, with insignificant themes where the music is dead. Man finds in themes something like a meaningful sentence. Janacek said that when we speak, we sing. We have shriller sounds, deeper, speeding up, slowing down, accents. If man doesn't recognize in these sounds something in which to identify himself, all is useless. Do we have to feel ashamed of saying that Tchaikovsky is nice? Do we feel ashamed because housewives like him? That's provincial intellectualism: it's enough that something is nice to be suspicious, if it's ugly it's raised at once. Just think to Rachmaninov: how many crawling little worms allow themselves to insult him! If he'd return to life and come into this room, I'd kneel down for admiration.

- Come on: you make it as a personal issue.

I can see things in a very different manner as certain colleagues of mine do, because I got a great advantage compared to them: a life musically international. Local composers sometimes pop over abroad a few hours for a concert and then come back home; my case, as for many other latin-american musicians, is the one of an incredibly severe academic training: our musicians are very prepared, but they look for new experiencies abroad. I chose the United States, because I found certain american pianists very interesting: Browning, Van Cliburn, Janis. I was there in touch with an open world, without any almost parish presumption. One can tell me he doesn't want to write melodies because is unable or without inspiration, but can't insult great authors.

- Would you like to tell me about your piano experience?

The two most important piano teachers in Argentina were Scaramuzza and Fanelli, who was my teacher. He belonged to the Neapolitan school, very close to the Longo's one: complete autonomy of fingers from arm; arm self held up. If I do a fortissimo I use not only fingers, but also the weight: a weight not falling as dead, but distributed by a previously armed hand, springing as a claw. Sound is given by attack speed, not by the weight. I improved in the U.S. with Loesser, a pianist almost infallible, as Michelangeli in his best days: he knew the whole repertoire by heart and could play the Well-Tempered Clavier in any tonality he would. He came from Leschetizk's and Stokowski's school, extremely digital, very low wrist, very bent fingers with wide articulation, almost for harpsichord. He often change pedal and seemed not to use it. And he had a habit of details, each note had to be weighed, thought. He didn't say to sing: he spoke of the "illusion of singing". Singing at the piano makes me laugh of angry, that's a percussion instrument, you can't make it sing. You can mentally deceive yourself, but what comes out is a mess of hammered notes. It sounds like a nailing down cobbler. Instead, with an almost Machiavellian strategy, it's necessary to devise the duration and the volume, the dynamic of each note, the type of attack; and then you can say you created a perfect legato which sounds like sung with voice bearings as well.

- It seems really difficult. Doesn't ever happen that a pupil of yours becomes frightened in front of such a task seeming so arduous?

Unfortunately, here in Italy you can't choose your pupils. What can I make of a scrawny pupil with the technique of strength that I teach? One can't face it with wrists looking like toothpicks.

- Have you never thought to write an opera?

No, I haven't. I'm not apt to theatre. I'm mad about dance, a passion I inherited from my mother. The opera doesn't attract me, I don't want to be conditioned by the stage. But I listen to it with delight: I've always been a wagnerian. I prefer to set on music poetic verses, treating them as absolute music in perfect symbiosis. And the ballet! During my youth I did steps at the bar. Modern dance attracts me less, unless it goes back to tradition. As in my music, where I can be very audacious in harmony, but I always need the form. I love everything resulting from discipline, not music looking only for pure hedonistic effect. Talking about my instrumentation, they sometimes tell me it's very beautiful. Tell me instead it works; all voices have to be heard, then if the result is beautiful also, that's better.

- Do you consider yourself as a pianist-composer or a composer-pianist?

I'd say I'm first of all a pianist, I'm basically a "beast of the stage". When I write also, I have the performer's instinct. Nowadays you hardly listen to a composer who's also performer, a frequent figure in the past. What can a composer understand, who never had a professional contact with audience? And then, why to write for audience? That's useless. Sure that my stay in Italy gives me perplexity. In Cleveland we had on average three, four concerts per week; the Institute orchestra performed one, and an opera per month, in stage version. When I was teacher there, Levine was the director. Everyone always spoke of music, made music. Here all is nothing but bureaucracy. Such a discouragement.

- You don't really want to talk about contemporary composers.

I don't have so much affinity with those of postwar years. Maybe an author who can fascinate me because of his atmosphere of timbric suspension is Ligeti, although I feel him so far from me. I heard something really bewitching by Schnittke, but since I'm not eclectic it's really difficult to me accepting the unexpected presence of tonal cues, almost sounding like unreasonable. There's a reason for sure, he's a real artist not to have it, not to have a sense in what he does. In other hands it would be a dubious mixed salad.

- You devoted yourself late to professional composition.

I wished to compose something for my best friend, Renzo Arzeni, and my very first piece was written on a small napkin. What resulted is a small artistic, not didactic, Mikrokosmos. Some pianists were informed of it and put it into their repertoire. It's like this that I found again my creative inspiration, and that's the reason because in each composition of mine I quote among its counterpoint folds a theme from the Notebook: it's as if I would like humanely to mantain sincerity and honesty with which I wrote it. In those days I could be considered as an untopical composer. Nowadays, when many composers are looking for going back to traditions of the past, I'm an author who recovered a slice of that past: I've all right to primogeniture. I haven't made it for fashion, but because I firmly believed in what I was doing. And I haven't taken into account anything else, remaining loyal to myself and to the friendship ispiring me. I only wanted to give my best friend a present. I didn't think to a long career as composer.

Gregorio Nardi