Gian Francesco Malipiero

Background

Gian Francesco Malipiero was born August 3, 1882, in Venice, Italy and spent much of his life there; the grandson and son of musicians. His grandfather was the opera composer Francesco Malipiero.

Education

Malipiero studied the violin as a boy in Venice and in Vienna. Upon returning to his native city, he entered the Liceo Musicale Benedetto Marcello as a composition student and transferred to the conservatory in Bologna.

Career

In 1913 Malipiero went to Paris, where he met Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky and heard the first performance of the latter's Rite of Spring. This was a turning point in Malipiero's life. He repudiated all of his earlier compositions and set about achieving an individual style of music that would be freed from the clichés of the overwhelmingly popular 19th-century opera-a problem faced by several Italian composers of his generation.

Malipiero found elements of his mature style in the works of 17th- and 18th-century Italian composers, such as Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, Giuseppe Tartini, and Antonio Vivaldi. Almost none of the music of these masters was available; when Malipiero found the manuscripts and original editions in the library of the Liceo Musicale in Venice, he started the lifelong project of transcribing and publishing them. One of the results of these efforts was Vivaldiana, for which Malipiero was well-known.

With his original Inventions (two sets, the latter titled The Feast of the Indolents), he combined a wide range of orchestral and operatic compositions. A portion of the work was used in the Walter Ruttmann film Steel.

Malipiero was a composer but he was also an academic. In 1921 he became a professor at the Parma Conservatory.

Malipiero's Antonio e Cleopatra was first performed on May 4, 1938, in Florence. For this opera, he wrote his own libretto.

From 1939 to 1952 Malipiero would direct music institutes at Padua and Venice.

Malipiero wrote more than 25 operas, 4 ballets, 15 symphonic poems, 9 symphonies, 4 piano concertos, a violin concerto, large works for choir and orchestra, chamber music, and piano music. Most of this music was performed at the Festival of Contemporary Music held biannually in Venice, but little of it survived the premieres. This was probably because Malipiero's style was unpopular with the general public, the critics, and his fellow professional musicians. Malipiero's style was highly intellectual and based upon his desire to return to the foundations of Italian music. He carefully avoided spectacular or exciting effects. For his librettos he frequently chose fantastic or metaphysical tales whose elusive meaning left the general audience more bewildered than satisfied.

Gian Francesco Malipiero died January 8, 1973, in Venice.

Achievements

• He was well-known as a musicologist and music educator who edited Monteverdi and Vivaldi. In 1924 he cofounded (with Alfredo Casella) an association for the popularization of modern Italian music.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Gian Francesco Malipiero: Orchestral Works

    (Five vividly contrasting works, four of them in world pre...)

  • Gian Francesco Malipiero: Piano Works

    (Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973), was one of the most...)

  • Gian Francesco Malipiero: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4; Sinfonia del mare

    (Gian Francesco Malipiero may be considered the most origi...)

  • MALIPIERO: Symphonies Nos. 5, 6, 8 and 11

    (MALIPIERO: Symphonies Nos. 5, 6, 8 and 11 by Antonio de A...)

  • Gabrieliana / Serenata / Madrigali / Favole
  • Gian Francesco Malipiero: Piano Concerto No. 3; Nocturne of songs and Dances; Fantasies of Every Day
  • Gian Francesco Malipiero: Piano Concertos 1-6; Variazioni senza tema Hybrid SACD by Saarbrcken Radio Symphony Orchestra (2007-10-30)

Views

Quotations: "The Italian symphony is a free kind of poem in several parts which follow one another capriciously, obeying only those mysterious laws that instinct recognizes. "

Connections

Grandfather

Francesco Malipiero

composer

References

• The New Book of Modern Composers. 3rd ed., revised and enlarged.
• A Hundred Years of Music