Part Three - Composers

Summary

The senior living composers who made the greatest impression on me in my early BBC years were the exiled Spaniard Roberto Gerhard, who lived in Cambridge, and the Italian Luigi Dallapiccola. After the vapidity of Nono, and Berio's trendy good humour, I found in Dallapiccola something true and lasting. I was first in touch with him as early as the end of 1960, when William Glock had heard he was starting work on an opera about Ulysses and asked me to find out more. I received a sizeable letter (in French) telling of the opera's genesis. When he was about six he had seen an experimental silent film made in colour, with a scene where Ulysses pointed to his forehead to tell his comrades that Polyphemus must be blinded: ‘Je n'ai jamais oublié le ‘geste’ d'Ulisse’ (I have never forgotten Ulysses's gesture). One evening in Florence, a quarter of a century later,

J'ai eu la vision de l'Opéra. Un instant. Ma il m'a fallu seize ans d'attente avant d’écrire mon livret … Il me faudra des longues années de travail. D'ailleurs je ne suis pas pressé.

(I had the idea of the Opera. In a flash. But I had to wait sixteen years before writing my libretto … it would take me long years of labour. Besides, I was in no hurry.)

For 1964 I was keen to present a programme with some of his important early works and wrote to him again. He replied with the history of his Musica per tre pianoforti. Its violence had caused protests in various Italian cities during the 1930s, though one critic who didn't know him had understood what he was attempting to do, right down to his ‘re-creation of the Gabrielis’ spatial stereophony’. He also alerted me to the need for a small chorus rather than solo voices in the second set of Michelangelo choruses:

N'oubliez pas que, en 1935, en Italie il n'y avait pratiquement pas des choeurs … Avez-vous vu que, si possible, je demande des voix de garÇons? Rêves d'un compositeur … hélas.

(Don't forget that, in 1935, there were practically no choirs in Italy … Have you taken on board that, if possible, I am asking for boys’ voices? Ah, the dreams of a composer …)