When, as I have on several occasions recently, I speak of obscure modem Italian composers, I am merely showing off my own ignorance. I am quite sure that all of you out there on the receiving end can probably whistle on demand the complete works of Gaspare Scuderi and Franco Mannino. So when I triumphantly announce, "At last, MHS gets around to a well-known modem Italian composer!'' you'll understand the limitations of my remark.
For a score of years now (what a lovely phrase! I wonder where I got it.)--For a score of years now, I have treasured an old and ephemeral Westiminster recording of the Coro di morti ( Chorus of the dead). It is protected by a sleeve intended for a disc called "Port Said," said to contain Music of the Middle East as performed by Mohammed El-Bakkar and His Oriental Ensemble; it features a full-frontal photo in glorious color of a boyish-hipped young female called Nejla Ates, clad in a sequined G-string, pasties, gauntlets, and not much else. If this seems inappropriate, don't blame me; the record came from a strange shop on the Ave. of the Americas where you could once buy the whole Westminster output for 98 cents each if you didn't mind small holes bored through the labels and an absence of jackets. I was being paid $4000 per annum then.
The Coro di morti is a black, brooding work, set for the unusual combination of male voices, piano, brasses, and percussion. Petrassi, taking his cue from the mature Monteverdi, calls it a "dramatic Madrigal.'' The text is by the great nineteenth-century poet Giacomo Leopardi, the prologue to a longer work called ''Dialogue between Frederick Ruysh and the Mummies"; its theme is that death, not life, is the natural condition. "What," asks the dead, struggling to remember, ''was that bitter moment that had the name of life?" and call themselves now "lieta no ma sicuro "-not happy but secure. For many years my University has boasted a superb male-voice choir, and I've pleaded with its director to do the Coro, but he finds it too depressing. Now it is to be disbanded, thanks to some pipsqueak administrator who is afraid the dreaded Feminists will get him if he doesn't eradicate all traces of maleness from the campus. I guess I'll have to settle for the new recording, for it's a work I wouldn't do without.
As I seem to say so often about composers in these columns, Petrassi's mistake seems to have been staying in the middle of the road when the fashionable dudes were attracting attention by hurling themselves into sloughs and brier-patches along the margins. Even at that, he hasn't done badly for one who is not a household word. Born near Rome seventy-four years ago, he has been connected with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia there for much of his life as .. student and teacher. His larger works' include two operas, two ballets, five concerti for orchestra, and Beatitudines, an oratorio dedicated to the memory of Martin Luther King. (Petrassi toured the U.S. in the mid-1950s, incidentally.) Baker's, which distinguishes between musicians in terms of importance, terms him "outstanding Italian composer," which is pretty high on Mr. Slonimsky' s scale.
Nonsense has been recorded two or three times. The English title is no fluke, for the work is a choral setting of several limericks by Edward Lear--but in Italian! ("C'era un vecchio musicale: un serpe gli entro dentro lo stivale," etc. If MHS does not include texts with this record, I shall behave dismally!) The four settings of Latin hymns are new to me, but I welcome anything of Petrassi's gladly. (If my untoward enthusiasm here gets to you, try to remember that my friends both regard my tastes as a bit strange.)
