Instrumental Music of Italy

The supremacy of opera in Italian music inclines to overshadow the important place of instrumental music, historically; such music includes the vast array of sacred instrumental music, instrumental concertos and orchestral music in the works of Andrea Gabriel, Giopvanni Gabriel, Antonio Vivaldo, Luigi Boccherini, Tomasso Albinoni, Arcangelo Corelli, Domenico Scarlatti and Luigi Cherrubini. (Even opera composer occasionally worked in their styles like Giuseppe Verdi’s String Quartet in E minor for instance. Even Donizetti, whose name is identified with the beginnings of Italian lyric opera, wrote 18 cord quartets). In the early 20^th century, instrumental music started growing in significant, a process that began around 1904 with Giuseppe Martucci’s second symphony, a work that Malipiero known as the starting point of the renascence of non-operatic Italian music. Many early composers from this period like Leone Singaglia, used local folk traditions.

source of picture: dateline.ucdavis.edu

The early 20^th century also marked the presence of a orchestra of composers known as the generazione dell’ottanta (generation of 1880), which include Franco Alfano, Alfred Casella, Giano Francesco Malipiero, Ottorino Respighi and IIdebrando Pizzetti. These composers usually concentrated on writing instrumental works, rather than opera, members of this generation were the dominant figures in Italian music after Puccini’s death in the year 1924. A new organization arose to support the Italian music like the Venice festival of contemporary music and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Guido Gatti’s founding of the periodical il Piano and then La rassagna musicale also support to promote a broader view of the music than the political and social climate allowed. Most Italians, though, preferred more traditional pieces and developed standards, and only a small spectator sought a new pattern of experimental classical music.