MUSICA, Year XX - Nr.98
(Edizioni Diapason - Milano)
June-July 1996 (page 44):
Sergio Calligaris:
a sun ray in our days music,
by Umberto Masini

It was a long time that I would to know Sergio Calligaris. My wish to meet and talk him about his music experiences was born, some time ago, after listening to a rare record of the Argentinian pianist and composer, made almost thirty years ago in Rome, and more recently mastered on CD. In it Calligaris plays his own pieces as well as by romantic authors, with a completely original and fascinating style. So, I seized the opportunity of a Calligaris' recent stay in Milan - he lives and works in Rome - to make his acquaintance, with the complicity of some mutual friends of ours and the menu of a renowned restaurant.

In your opinion, does a cause-effect relation exist in developing music, or do innovations of musical speech depend on composers originality and genius?

I'd favour the second supposition. I think that certain composers were born with their own ingeniousness, which doesn't take into account what other authors make during that same historical moment.
A composer like Charles Ives wrote things that can be considered as bringing forward Schönberg's speech, in a moment in which he didn't know Schönberg nor his works.
Certain harmonic audacity that we find in Villa-Lobos' first works sounds like anticipating Debussy, and he didn't know Debussy nor European music in his early years.

You're an advocate of tonal music. How does your research place in the wide context of contemporary music?

I'm strongly averse to banality and I try by all means to write music which, also remaining in the tonal tradition sphere, could "console" the listener with a return to tonality, but being this process not evident. If he listens to my Concerto or Symphonic Dances he will have the impression to listen to tonal music, although it isn't tonal in the true sense of the word.
For me it's about achieving that ideal of timbric, harmonic and tonal "reassurance", recalling the principle of tonality, in fact without ever reaching it.
I'd like to give the listener the same impression felt when, after a storm, the cloudy sky opens and suddenly a sun ray appears. My music is geared to this. This is what I'd like the listeners to feel.

Therefore you grow away from Neo-Romantics?

Certainly I do, they make tonal music in absolute and strict sense. Whereas I consider tonal music as a horizon I make my way towards, never reaching it. I couldn't make so many tonal chords, after experiences of such great historic authors like Webern, Berg and Schönberg. It wouldn't make sense. I prefer giving illusion - and this isn't easy - of that conversational logicality of harmony we were talking about for my piano performances of the nineteenth century Classics, in that old record of mine cited before. I recorded it when I was twenty-three and even already then I thought of music in terms of harmony and structure.

Do you therefore see music more as harmony than as melody?

It's exactly like this that I understand it.

What are your relations with contemporary composers?

Basically controversial. Especially towards the so-called Neo-Romantics. I can't accept a return to the past, in terms of suitability and opportunism, making "photocopies" of Puccini's or Mascagni's music with a melodiousity in bad taste and a harmony really too poor compared to what I like and represents my ideal.
Another fundamental defect that I find in Neo-Romantics is the limited wealth of style and the scarce thematic metamorphosis, in my opinion remaining at mundane level, without real investigations.

It seems you love very much the symmetrical order of things, as well as Variation and Counterpoint as typical expression of your musical speech.

The metamorphosis of music themes is essential for me and it can exist only if supported by a solid technique of counterpoint.

We can also say that your music speech is based on harmony?

I'd say yes. My harmony is based on sequence of polytonal chords, which can be discordant but always expressive in the sense that they keep the listener pleasant company. I'm always interested in making the form prevail in my music, the line of chords, a sort of personal "harmonic impressionism", which isn't obviously the Debussy's one, characterized by the well-known esatonal chords making the French composer celebrated.

Does this way to write music come natural to you or it's a figment of a "reasoned" construction?

My music is "constructed" in the sense that it comes from a technique ripened for a long time, but it's also close to me and to my way to think and to "feel" the art of sounds.

When you write a new piece, do you begin at your desk or immediately at your piano?

Everything arises at my desk.
And themes come with their own harmony at once.
Then, subsequently, there's the check at piano.
But that's a secondary event for me, because music is already written and I hear it all inside me.

And if you have to create an orchestral score, how do you behave?

I start writing the piece for two pianos and only subsequently I think to divide and transform these two parts into the ones of many and various instruments.

What are the main elements of your music?

Certainly sound mixture, colour of sound, thematic outline, counterpoint plot, rhythm beat.
My music would like to express "primordial" feeling only.
I hate describing music and I don't wish for giving to my music different or ambiguous meanings compared to what I've thought since the beginning of creation.

Then you couldn't ever write an opera…

Right, it would be very difficult to me.
One needs a certain bent to write operas, a forma mentis that I've never had. In this aptitude I feel to be close to composers like Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, who never wrote operas.

Do you feel bound to South American culture?

Yes, I do. Especially in the sense of rhythm, which is another feature of my scores, and for the "salutary bestiality" of my music.
I believe I'm very aggressive in my way to conceive sounds. Just think about "Allegro ostinato" of my Piano Concerto.

Do you study very much piano?

Every day. I begin every morning with a "Prelude and fugue" from the Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach.

In your music I really like very much that particular tension never turning out, an emotional climate that one can find in baroque music.

That's a perfect definition of my music. I've never thought in these terms to it, but I found it very close to my understanding.

Would you define yourself a politically committed composer?

I hate all hierarchies, both social and political. My attitude towards people has always been as a great affection. I think that music should go towards the human being without any ideological discrimination.

In your music one perceives a research towards something far, high, bright. Are you believer?

I feel christian, but in a "philosophical" sense. I believe in principles of life and in justice, in goodness, and I can pray also for whom not loving me and trying to hurt me. In this sense I feel religious. I think often to God when I write my music.

What have you been writing in these days?

I've been working on a new Concerto for violin and piano, that I'll dedicate to violinist Sergei Krylov and pianist Stefania Mormone.

Among your compositions, do you have any favourite?

For sure I love in a special way Renzo's Piano Notebook.
Renzo is my best friend. He's not musician, he works as civil servant at Ministry of Justice, in Rome. Renzo's Piano Notebook is a sort of private Mikrokosmos, an evocation of Bela Bartok's Mikrokosmos.
It contains easy and very difficult compositions.
I conceived it as a series of pieces that my friend Renzo - who's a non professional musician - could play on his own.
One day pianist Marcella Crudeli asked me to let her know these pieces and she inserted them in her repertoire, finding them very interesting. Since then - it was 1978 - the Notebook success began and nowadays it's performed everywhere, also in America.
Among my favourite pieces there are also the Tre Madrigali (Three Madrigals), the Scene coreografiche (Choreographical Scenes), the Requiem (for solos, choir, two pianos and percussion). Then I wouldn't forget the Seconda Suite (Second Suite) of Danze Sinfoniche (Symphonic Dances), and naturally my Concerto per pianoforte (Piano Concerto). I really believe I gave my best in my Concerto, from the harmonic and counterpointistic point of view.

Which piano school do you belong to?

I began my studies in Rosario, Argentina, with Domingo Scarafìa and then I attended proficiency courses in Bueno Aires with Jorge Fanelli, who came from the famous Alessandro Longo's "Scuola" (School), which feature was a great digital brightness. Once completed the academic studies in Argentina, I moved to the United States where I studied with Arthur Loesser, from the glorious "School" coming from great Leschetitzki and Stoiovski. Then I attended at Juilliard Adele Marcus' courses, who has been Joseph Lhevinne's assistant. Finally, among my last teachers there were Guido Agosti and Nikita Magaloff.

Do you rely on your music performers?

I do have to rely on qualities and resources of performers. A performer can "feel" my music in a different way than I do, and perform certain passages his way, in a more consonant manner with his sensitivity. I remember that when I was young I often played Rachmaninov's Second Concerto and just for curious I wanted to listen to that record in which Rachmaninov himself played his Concerto with Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I was amazed, listening for the first time, for the Russian Maestro's way to play his music. A music that I understood and performed in a little different way.
This is the real beauty of our art after all, which can always vary in its eternal and iridescent way to be proposed by performers, always in fascinating way. I'm a supporter of performers' freedom: I really believe that I'll always defend my music performers, even when their interpretation will be rather far from my vision of pieces.

Umberto Masini