Cultura&Identitŕ, Year 2nd - Nr.4
(Cultura&Identitŕ)
March - April 2010 (page 68):
Classical Music
between tradition and innovation
An interview with
Professor Sergio Calligaris
by Maurizio Brunetti

A meeting in person with Sergio Calligaris – Argentinian, but resident in Italy since 1974 – disorientates who knows even a little of his biography: his exquisite kindness would be not at all taken for granted in a former child prodigy who became, extremely young, teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Music and at the California State University in Los Angeles and now is an international concert performer and a very acclaimed composer. His bright temperament makes him very close to another extraordinary performer of our times, Vladimir Ashkenazy, with whom he has a very sincere friendship: in 2001 right Vladimir and his son Dimitri performed the Sonata op. 38 for clarinet and piano[1], that Calligaris had dedicated to them.

When he sits at the piano, however, the austerity prevails. In the occasion of this interview, taken the 24th February 2010, the Maestro performed Une barque sur l’Ocean taken from Miroirs by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and the Arabesque op. 18 by Robert Schumann (1810-1856), in a performance free of improper twilight languor. It was a sample of the so called “pianism of strength”, that gives to each note a special sparkling[2].

Maestro, your biography makes of you a privileged observer of the Classical Music…

I admit that growing with Italian parents, enriching my musical experience in the United States, making a performing activity that brought me even to Manila – the Philippines are, after all, an extreme continuation of the Western World, aren’t they? – and, eventually, teaching in three different conservatories in Italy, all them are factors that contribute in recognizing the many faces of this artistical world.

Do you believe that some of them escape those artists, who were exclusively trained in the Old World?

I give you immediately an example. In the Twentieth Century, while in Europe the Art was experiencing a certain bewilderment, permeated by despair and loosing self-confidence — I understand that it was not a joke the removal of the rubble, especially from the souls, of two world wars and two totalitarisms —, in the Americas the musical world, in its three aspects – composition, performance and education – was reaching its specific fullness. It seems to me that, in the past, the prevaling attitude of the Europeans towards that world was a little superficial and boastful. Certainly, the American is a young world: it is not wrong defining Julián Aguirre (1868-1924), of whom I recorded something some time ago [3], the Argentinian Albéniz [Isaac (1860-1909)],or in referring to Edward MacDowell (1861-1908), who is a surely underestimated musician, as the Grieg [Edvard Hagerup (1843-1907)] of the United States. The situation, however, completely changed with the successive generation: the contact with the Parisian world in the 1920s would not have prevented the Brasilian incredibly prolific Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) or the Newyorker Aaron Copland (1900-1990) to come to a personal and very American style, where Impressionism and Neoclassicism were subject to a decisive metamorphosis thanks to the fusion of the Brazilian vitality in the first, and with the energy of the “great unexplored spaces” in the second. Some years later, the Argentinian Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983), whose ballet Estancia is very known, describing with melodic and rhythmic taste the atmosphere of the big farmhouses of the country where we were born, would have reached in subsequent and more abstract works, like the Harp Concerto, an unquestionable individuality and structural wisdom. We would be taken too far in continuing the list of the musicians who contributed to the formation of an American aesthetic not necessarily folklore-style; let me only remember at least the name of Samuel Barber (1910-1981), the author of that Adagio for Strings, subsequently re-elaborated as Agnus Dei, whose evocative power was useful to all the many films where it was inserted [4]. Is it not, together with the Rhapsody in Blue of George Gershwin (1898-1937), perhaps the best-known classical work among those composed in the Twentieth Century?

In short, I have the impression that in Europe they still consider the American Classical music worthy of a more or less concise “footnote” in an ideal book containing the whole Western World music. Yet, when in this part of the Atlantic you have to suggest a modern textbook of Harmony, your choice usually falls on the work of the American Walter [Hamor] Piston (1894-1976) [5] – who used to teach at Harvard, not really the last among all the universities in the world! – otherwise, for a panoramic on the compositions techniques in the Twentieth Century, on the work of Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987) [6]. How could one think that these fellows have not written music worthy of esteem?

You taught both in the United States and in Italy. Could you mention the possible differencies you found in the teaching methodology?

I can obviously refer to the situation at the time I was experiencing it. Potentially, the conservatories in Italy train the future musicians even “from scratch”. In Cleveland, instead, the Institute of Music accepted in its Conservatory Department students at a level compared to our ninth year. There, I had special students, people who came to improve without necessarily aspiring to academic title. I was invited by Victor Babin (1908-1972) to my teaching commitment, after obtaining my Artist Diploma, granted only to those who, after a masterclass, would have been able to perform in three public concerts running, on a really vast repertoire from Mozart [Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791)] to Shostakovic [Dimitri (1906-1975)], through Liszt [Franz (1811-1886)], Debussy [Claude (1862-1918)] and Scriabin [Alexander (1872-1915)].

From middle 1970s and for a quarter of a century I taught at the Piano Main Class in Naples, Pescara and L’Aquila. It is interesting to notice that in the United States, differently from what occurred in Italy, the students were clearly asked to perform in public playing by heart as well as taking part to chamber ensembles. Not uncommonly, some students were awarded even before completing their studies.

I noticed that, in the last few years, the classical music international awards of a certain importance are won less frequently by young people coming from the Western Europe…

Restricting our interest to those young people who were awarded in 2009, I thought over what they share among each others. There is the Chinese pianist Yuja Wang, who won as “Young Artist of the Year” the Gramophone Award – a sort of Academy Award for the classical music – and there is the Ukranian pianist Denis Zhdanov, winner of the Chopin Prize in Rome; there are the Serbian Slobodanka Stevic and Aleksandar Gligic who, always in Rome, won the Special Prize Sergio Calligaris at the 19th International Piano Competition, playing a work of mine for two pianos [7]; there is the Japanese cellist Michiaki Ueno, first at the International Tchaikovsky Competition. I add to this list the set of three winners of the Piano Competition Van Cliburn that takes place in Texas – once again a Japanese, a Chinese and a Korean – and, eventually, the last very young Carmen at the Scala of Milano, the Georgian soprano Anita Rachvelishvili.

This is what they share: all of them come from countries that less suffered from the cultural revolution of 1968 and its pedagogical laissez-faire. Maybe the thesis of Bernhard Bueb, remarking that nowadays in the Western World «young people are no longer brought up, but they just grow» [8] is a little strong. However, the fact is that, at a certain point, our young people stopped receiving the value of the inner discipline, of self-control. It is not lack of talent. Unfortunately, when this is not equal to the discipline and the latter to the technique, one stops to be competitive and the carreers do not take off. When we do not teach our talented young people the value of the discipline any longer, we sentence them to the mediocrity.

It is true, I was a child prodigy, I composed a ballet for piano and orchestra when I was ten, staged at the theatre El Circulo in Rosario and I performed for the first time as a soloist when I was thirteen [9], with the Sonata op. 26 by Beethoven [Ludwig van (1770-1827)], works of Chopin [Fryderyk Franciszek (1810-1849)], of Alberto Williams (1862-1952) – the nationalism of the time used to impose that the program would contain one Argentinian author at least – and Rachmaninov [Sergej Vasilievic (1873-1943)], but this talent in nuce would have withered soon, left to itself, if I would have refused to adapt my temperament to the severe training imposed by my teachers [10]. Unless any illness prevents me from doing so, since years I get up by five o’clock in the morning and study for hours, starting on a mute keyboard with a Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier of Bach [Johann Sebastian (1685-1750)], played by heart. It is this discipline, that by now fits in me like a second nature, that grants me such freedom that becomes, on one hand the ability to determine in advance the effect of each single note I play and, on the other hand, the inner strength that will never make depend the outcome of the performance on the mood of the moment.

You composed around fifty works, some of which performed really very often, such as the Quaderno pianistico di Renzo op. 7. Among your works we find sonatas, concertos, suites, quartets [11]. Even the choice of their titles makes guess you feel comfortable with the great musical forms of the tradition. Would you accept being defined a conservative composer?

I must say first of all that even in the world of the art it often occurs that words are used like means for denigrating or silencing aesthetic points of view different from the others’. At the end of the Nineteenth Century – I think to the training years of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) – the avant-garde of the “Wagnerians” accused Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) of composing a conservative and no longer topical music. It would have been Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), in 1933, who made justice, leading the attention to the innovative character of Brahms’ themes structures [12]. Actually, the harmonic audacity of the brahmsian Intermezzo op. 119 nr. 1, composed in 1893, touches upon the atonality.

Since the Sixties of last century, they started to label as “conservative” anyone who would have not accepted with enthusiasm the experimentations of Olivier Messiaen’s (1908-1992) pupils in Darmstadt, Germany [13]. They were telling that the Twenty-first Century would have been the one of the“alea” [14] and “concrete” music [15]. For sure, the music I write is many miles far from each of these tendencies I have just mentioned and that, I would rather say, I believe they have been getting old in a very bad way. I believe that the form sustains very usefully the poetic inspiration. I have a preference for the harmony of fourths, the logic of the counterpoint and the use, sometimes percussive, of the piano like in Bartók [Béla Viktor János (1881-1945)]. I never use quarters of tone or “siren effects”. In my music, there are obviously dissonant moments and it may happen that I have recourse to dodecaphonic techniques, but – as I have already told you in another occasion [16] – I am not among those who tend to avoid, with maniacal care to have recourse to major or minor perfect chords, or who feel ashamed of the cantability of some own tune.

Well, I feel myself conservative in the meaning pointed out by Seneca [Lucio Anneo (4 b.C.-65 a.C.)]: «So, I pursue the path of the ancients? I pursue it, but I treat myself to find out something new, to change, to leave the tradition on some aspects. My free consent is not slavery» [17]. In the history of music the breaks are very few. Usually, we see organic evolutions: each composer inherits a musical tradition and filters it giving his own personality.

And what about some very widespread textbooks in Italy, that propose the history of music as a sequence of contrasting positions…

…and, due to this, they disqualify as imitators all a series of giants. When one says that, without Chopin, the early preludes of Scriabin and those of Rachmaninov would have been never written, or else when one remarks the continuity between the symphonic texture of Tchaikovsky [Pjotr Ilic (1840-1893)], of Glazunov [Aleksandr Konstantinovic (1865-1936)] and of Rachmaninov, it is actually true; or still better, I would also bring Grieg near to the Russian composer and virtuoso, in terms of the details of the harmony solutions, that are almost independent from the melody, so much they are evocative.

After all, we must recognize that Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Grieg have not written – I apologize it is obvious – the preludes, the concertos and the symphonies of Rachmaninov, where a personal and unmistakable voice emerges. Without mentioning that many number of his catalogues – I only refer to the choral symphony The Bells op. 35, recently performed also in Rome [18], as well as his Third Symphony op. 44 – are absolute masterworks. This is because [the critic] Massimo Mila (1910-1988) was wrong in reserving to Rachmaninov two lines only in his successful book [19].

On the contrary, they give correctly a lot of space to Claude Debussy, as if there were no reminiscenses of the previous authors in him. And yet, in the Suite Bergamasque, the one containing the celebrated Clair de Lune, there is instead the sophisticated harmonic subsequency of Massenet [Jules-Émile-Frédéric (1842-1912)]; an influence, this one, tangible even in the harmonic structure that sustains the archaic-style moods of a late work such as the Sonata for flute, harp and viola.

In the Twentieth Century, the real breaks that were made refer to the attempts to surpass in a synthesis the dialectic sound/noise, as in the experiences of the avant-garde I have already mentioned a little earlier, or else that of sound/absence of sound – I think to the provocative 4’33’’ by John Cage as well as his pieces for “silent performer” –. The minimalism of Steve Reich and others, instead, distinguished by a tiring static harmony and intentionally naďve modulations, I interpret it as the equivalent in music of the “weak thought” in philosophy. This is an experience far from my sensitivity too. My musical thought is strong, structured, “Ratzingerian”!

Somewhere else you have already expressed reasons for an intellectual empathy with Benedict XVI, to whom you dedicated in 2005 your Panis Angelicus op. 47 [20]. This work was very much praised at its first performance [21]. It is true that, in the contemporary classical scenario, your music seems to have a communicative strength out of the ordinary…

Someone told that, if it is true that every composer processes sound architectures, I build… bridges too! A work of mine can be said as successful if I managed something of my inner universe to come to the listener. The audience does not know this, but it is the logic, the severity of the writing that make this outcome sure. There are works, even early, such as the First piano concerto of Prokofiev [Sergej Sergejevic (1891-1953)] or the First Symphony of Shostakovic that fascinate at the very first approach: only the study of the scores, subsequently, reveals how much this is due to the strict integration of the themes.

Most of young people, however, seem to show a growing indifference against classical music of every kind. Do you think it is possible any cultural strategy able to invert such trend?

Let's get it quite clear: even when, one hundred and more years ago, the novels of Dostoevskij [Fëdor Michailovic (1821-1881)] and of Tolstoj [Lev Nikolaevic (1828-1910)] were best-seller, the modest popular sentimental litterature used to ensure the highest revenues to its publishers. In other words, no other kind of action would make that, in a near future, the number of classical music lovers increases up to fill entirely the stadiums as it occurs in the rock concerts.

For sure, it does not help the cancellation of almost all spaces that, even until ten years ago, the public broadcasting networks made available to the classical music. I remember programs like Maratona d’Estate with Vittoria Ottolenghi, dedicated to the ballet; there was Voglia di musica with Luigi Fait, and Spazio Due on Rai Due. All these three programs, in those times, involved me in various ways. I remember also a daily program by Laura Padellaro on Radio Due, L’oro della musica: they were not only the intellectuals who found it attractive. Radio Tre is, from this point of view, the very last bulwark. A possible thematic channel cannot really take the place of such spaces, given that it would be searched by who is already very fond…

It is probable that, in the past, towards the young people the wrong marketing strategy was applied. Nowadays it is important that the classical music is proposed to the young people. In Italy we have some virtuosos of the piano, the violin and the cello who would not disfigure, in terms of appearance, in the cast of a successful soap opera. Once a chance is given to them, even to perform in the schools, the kids would eventually understand that the wealth of this art is not only within their grandparents’ capabilities, but also addressed to themselves, even – why not? – in the guise of protagonists. I am favourably aware of the initiative of symphonic concerts for free that, for instance, the Teatro San Carlo of Naples organized in various university sites of the city, with a young conductor who briefly described the pieces before the performance.. Riccardo Muti conducts a youth orchestra composed by performers between seventeen and twenty-eight. If a minimum visibility were granted to them, it would be possible to easily activate psychological dynamics of emulation. But these are operations to promote also in lower levels schools, even through the help of the great television medium. Of course, such operations are not zero-cost.

Since you have lived in Italy, you have seen the alternation of governments of different orientation. Have you found a substantial difference among their cultural policies?

I kindly ask you not to make me enter into the number of those who express opinions on fields far from theirs own. I do not want to do like those showmen or sportsmen, when they are guests in talk shows, who end up in pontificating on the maximum systems with outcomes rather pathetic, as one would expect. Therefore, restricting my opinion only on the world of art that lies within my competence, I would invite the politicians of both the alliances, but with different hints, to a better attention to our musical reality, that is complex and deserves to be examined; and this, I realize, costs time and effort.

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[1] A recording of the Sonata played by Antonio Tinelli at the clarinet and Giuliano Mazzoccante at the piano is available on the CD Sergio Calligaris. Rigor y Pasión, DAD Records DAD-021-2, 2006.
[2] This technique is described with many details in PAOLO DE BERNARDIN, La logica della forma, in inarCASSA. Trimestrale della Cassa Nazionale di Previdenza e Assistenza Ingegneri ed Architetti, Liberi Professionisti, year 31, nr 4, October-Dicember 2003, pages 86-88, available also in the website http://www.sergiocalligaris.com/scalit/ina04it.htm visited for the last time on 3rd March 2010.
[3] It is about Triste (Elegia) no. 4, in the long playing Piano music of Latin America, LP: Orion Records, ORS 7286, also containing other works of Latin-American authors: the Preludio in Sol minore of Floro Melitón Ugarte (1884-1975) and the Preludio no. 6 “Caiçaras” of Francisco Paulo Mignone (1897-1986).
[4] Among the others: The Elephant Man (1980) by David Lynch, Platoon (1986) by Oliver Stone. L’olio di Lorenzo (1992) by George Miller and The fantastic world of Amélie (2001) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
[5] See WALTER HAMOR PISTON, Armonia, Italian translation, Edizione E.D.T., Turin 1989.
[6] VINCENT PERSICHETTI, L’armonia del ventesimo secolo. Aspetti creativi e pratici, Italian translation, Guerini Scientifica, Milan 2009.
[7] It is about the Due Danze concertanti (Guerriera/Ideale) op. 22. The performance of the duet can be listened by visiting the website http://www.youtube.com/user/ingmarduo#p/a/u/0/vRQQGxYokB8, visited for the last time on 3rd March 2010.
[8] BERNHARD BUEB, Elogio della disciplina, Italian translation, Rizzoli, Milan 2007, page 11.
[9] The concerto took place in Rosario at the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes “Juan Bautista Castagnino”.
[10] Calligaris studied composition with Luis Angel Machado (1922-2007) and, as a pianist, with Jorge Fanelli (1897-1971) in Buenos Aires, Nikita Magaloff (1912-1992) in Siena, Adele Marcus (1906-1995) in Aspe, Colorado, Guido Agosti (1901-1989) in Rome and Arthur Loesser (1894-1969) in Cleveland. See also, for example, PAOLO DE BERNARDIN, mentioned, page 88.
[11] A complete list of all the works of Sergio Calligaris published by Edizioni Carisch is in the website http://www.sergiocalligaris.com/scalit/catit.htm visited for the last time on 3rd March 2010.
[12] ARNOLD SCHÖNBERG, Stile e idea, Italian translation, Feltrinelli, Milan 1960, pages 56-104.
[13] The most renowned are Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio (1925-2003), Luigi Nono (1924-1990), Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), and Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001).
[14] A score of aleatory music, typically, contains indications deliberately generic or imprecise, or else lines and diagrams (sound "gesture") that the performer can freely interpret as he/she likes. Representative of this trend are the American John Cage (1912-1992), the Argentinian Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008) and, in some of his works, the Italian Sylvano Bussotti. Cf. JOHANNE REVEST, Alea, happening, improvisation, open opus, in Enciclopedia della musica vol. III, Giulio Einaudi editore, Milan 2006, pages 312-321.
[15] This trend, whose recognized leader is Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995), inserts in its works sounds and noises coming from the environment, even electronically re-processed. Cf. FRANÇOIS DELALANDE, Il paradigma elettroacustico, in Enciclopedia della musica vol. III, mentioned, pages 380-401.
[16] See MAURIZIO BRUNETTI, Sergio Calligaris. Il pensiero del musicista dalle sue parole, in Il settimanale di Padre Pio, Year 5th, nr. 29 on 10th December 2006, pages 24-26, available in the site http://www.sergiocalligaris.com/scalit/spp49it.htm visited last time on 3rd March 2010.
[17] LUCIO ANNEO SENECA, Letter 80th in Letters to Lucilio, Italian translation, R.C.S. Rizzoli Libri, Milan 1998, page 139.
[18] The Bells was performed on 19th, 21st and 22nd December 2009 by the Orchestra and Chorus of Santa Cecilia conducted by Antonio Pappano at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.
[19] See MASSIMO MILA, Breve storia della musica, Einaudi, Turin 2005.
[20] See MAURIZIO BRUNETTI, mentioned, page 26.
[21] This is the concert held in the Basilica della Santa Casa of Loreto on 30th July 2007 and recorded on the compact disc Omaggio a Sua Santitŕ Benedetto XVI. Armonie della sera ADS 06. Cf. also my review A concert long four centuries of sacred music, in Il Domenicale, Year 7th nr. 23, of 7th June 2008.

Maurizio Brunetti is a mathematician and belongs to the Faculty Staff of the University "Federico II" of Naples - Faculty of Engineering as Researcher. He got the Doctorate in Italy and the Ph.D. at University of Warwick (UK). He is an algebraic topologist. His scientific works appeared on several specialized journals, and were often presented at international conferences.
Apart from other magazines, he cooperates in Cultura&Identitŕ.