Luigi Dallapiccola
composer
It was only after Luigi Dallapiccola attended a performance of Pierrot lunaire in Florence under Schoenberg’s direction that the aspiring concert pianist decided to pursue a career as a composer – and by the end of the 1930s, he had become the leading exponent of twelve-tone music in Italy. The great success of the premiere of his one-act opera Il prigioniero, conducted by Hermann Scherchen in 1950, paved the way for Dallapiccola to enter the musical life of the new Federal Republic of Germany, whose orchestras and radio stations became important patrons.
Luigi Dallapiccola was born in 1904 in Pisino, then part of Austria, on the Adriatic peninsula of Istria, which today belongs to Croatia. During the First World War, the family was interned in Graz because of their nationality, where Dallapiccola received lasting musical impressions. After the war, he studied piano and harmony in Trieste before transferring to the conservatory in Florence, where he received his diploma in piano in 1924. Dallapiccola then began an international career as a pianist, with his programmes also including selected pieces by Vito Frazzi, who taught him theory and composition until he completed his studies in 1932. Having already taken over the piano class of his late teacher Ernesto Consolo at the conservatory in Florence on a temporary basis, Dallapiccola was appointed to a permanent position as “insegnante di pianoforte complementare” in 1934. The major music festivals in Florence, Venice, Prague and London made a profound impression on him, leading to groundbreaking encounters with composers from the Schoenberg circle. A decisive turning point came in 1938 with Mussolini’s proclamation of the racial laws, whereby anti-Semitism – Dallapiccola’s wife Laura Coen Luzzatto was Jewish – was exacerbated by the occupation of Florence by German troops. The premiere of his one-act opera Volo di notte, scheduled for 1939 at the theatre in Braunschweig, was banned by the German Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. With the political developments in fascist Italy, the themes of oppression and freedom played an increasingly important role in Dallapiccola’s work. After the Second World War, his works gained widespread international recognition. A highly regarded teacher and lecturer and foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Luigi Dallapiccola died in Florence on 19 February 1975.
