Alfredo Casella
Alfredo Casella was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher, and one of the most influential figures in Italian music in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Turin to a musical family, he was the son of professional cellist Carlo Casella and pianist Maria Bordino. His mother gave him his first music lessons. He made his first public appearance as a pianist in 1894.
In 1896, on the recommendation of Giuseppe Martucci and Antonio Bazzini, Casella’s parents sent him to the Paris Conservatory, where he studied piano with Louis Diémer. He also studied composition with Gabriel Fauré in 1900–1901 and graduated in 1902. He remained in Paris until 1914. There, he became friends with Maurice Ravel and George Enescu, and took an interest in music by Claude Debussy, 19th-century Russian composers, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky. After graduating, he toured as a pianist in many European countries, including Russia in 1907 and 1909.
Casella returned to Italy in 1915 and became a professor at the Santa Cecilia Lyceum in Rome. He promoted music by Ravel, Stravinsky, and other contemporary composers. By 1917, a circle of young composers had formed around him, including Gian Francesco Malipiero, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Ottorino Respighi, Vincenzo Tommasini, Vittorio Gui, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. With them, he founded the National Music Society, soon renamed the Italian Society of Modern Music. The group presented concerts of contemporary Italian and international music and published the journal New Art. Casella’s performances as a pianist, composer, and conductor drew strong reactions from the musical public; the society disbanded in 1919.
In the following years, Casella resumed extensive touring as a solo pianist, as a member of the Italian Trio with Arturo Bonucci and Alberto Poltronieri, and as a conductor. He left his teaching post in 1922 and continued his work to modernize Italian music. With Malipiero and Mario Labroca, he founded the Corporation of New Music, which promoted new developments in contemporary music. It later joined the Italian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music, while retaining some autonomy until 1928. The group helped bring Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Stravinsky’s The Wedding to Italian audiences.
In 1930, Casella founded the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice, part of the Venice Biennale, and directed it for its first four years with Adriano Lualdi. Two years later, he began teaching piano at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome. The festival continued to present works by avant-garde composers, including music by Schoenberg in 1937. Casella showed signs of a serious illness in 1942, but continued composing until 1944 and conducting until 1946. His final appearance as a pianist took place three weeks before his death in Rome in 1947.
Casella’s works include three symphonies, the orchestral rhapsody Italy, the ballets The Venetian Monastery and The Jar, the operas The Serpent Woman and The Tale of Orpheus, and a cello concerto. His other compositions include War Pages for piano four hands, the Roman Concerto for organ, timpani, brass, and strings, and Paganini Variations for orchestra. In 1967, a newly established conservatory in L’Aquila was named after him. The Alfredo Casella International Piano Competition was held in Naples from 1952 to 2001.