Franco Casavola
Encyclopedia
Franco Casavola is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
– 7 July 1955, Bari) was a Futurist
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and theorist.
Futurist movement
In a letter dated 1 October 1922, Filippo Tommaso MarinettiFilippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
wrote to the composer, theorist and writer Franco Casavola:
"I've listened to Tankas, Quatrain, Gioielleria Notturna, Leila and Muoio di sete on the piano. They reveal to me a strong and original musical genius. We Futurists would be pleased if you would join our fight against obsolete ideas."
Casavola (who had studied music at the Rome Conservatory) accepted this invitation with alacrity and formally joined the radical Italian art movement. He began to compose new pieces under the influence of earlier manifestoes written by Marinetti and, later, the specific manifestos on Futurist music produced by Francesco Balilla Pratella
Francesco Balilla Pratella
Franceso Balilla Pratella was an Italian composer and musicologist.-Life and work:Pratella studied at the Pesaro Conservatory where he was a pupil of Pietro Mascagni....
and Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo was an Italian Futurist painter and composer, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises . He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of "noise concerts" in 1913-14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921...
, variously dated between 1909 and 1914. Early Futurist
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
work by Casavola included: Ranocchi al Chiaro d Luna (Frogs in the Moonlight) by A.G. Bragaglia and La Danza della Scimmie (Dance of the Monkeys) for the Teatro della Sorpresa (Theatre of Surprise).
Between 1924 and 1927, Casavola published a series of original essays and manifestoes, dealing with new theories of music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
and its relationship with theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and the visual arts
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
, which are listed below. In 1924, Casavola produced no less than eight essays and one novel, Introduction to Madness. At the Futurist Congress, held in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
on 23 November 1924, the composer also delivered a lecture entitled 'Visible Syntheses, Chromatic Atmospheres and Scenic-Plastic Versions of Music.'
Courageously, Casavola risked opposing the escalating cultural autarchy imposed by Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's fascist
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
government after it seized power late in 1922. Bravest of all was his defence of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, not merely through his written articles, but also his compositions; many of Casavola's best pieces employed rhythms and styles closely resembling jazz forms.
Break from futurism
In 1927, Casavola radically revised his views, and chose to break decisively from the Futurist movement; his musical direction had already begun to display increasingly lyrical and refined qualities.Although Casavola subsequently claimed to have destroyed his Futurist scores, this is not entirely true. The location and cataloguing of many of his lost scores is the result of diligent research by Grazia Sebastiani and musicological studies by Pierfranco Moliterni. The result is that today, Casavola, like fellow futurist Silvio Mix, stands as one of the most interesting Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
experimental composers of the 1920s. Certainly his status equals that of the five composers defined by Massimo Mila as 'la generazione dell'Ottanta' : Gian Francesco Malipiero, Alfredo Casella, Ottorino Respighi (who taught Casavola), Ildebrando Pizzetti and Franco Alfano.
Surviving music
Certain key Futurist works by Casavola are lost, among them Anihccam del 3000, the mechanical balletBallet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
subtitled Interpretazione e riproduzione dei movimenti e rumori delle macchine, whose costumes have become enduring icons of futurism
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
. However, the surviving scores include a Fantasia Meccanica for orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
, and music for a stage production of Tre Momenti by Luciano Folgore, which also incorporated Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo was an Italian Futurist painter and composer, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises . He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of "noise concerts" in 1913-14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921...
's revolutionary intonarumori (noise generators) and the Danza dell'Elica for ensemble
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
. There is also the complete score of Piedigrotta, a ballet inspired by the omonimopoema parolibero of Francesco Cangiullo, in which Casavola combined the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
with traditional Neapolitan
Music of Naples
Naples has played an important and vibrant role over the centuries not just in the music of Italy, but in the general history of western European musical traditions. This influence extends from the early music conservatories in the 16th century through the music of Alessandro Scarlatti during the...
instruments such as the Scetavaiasse and Putipù, in an attempt at polyrhythmic structure. Of all the music written during this period, these compositions alone represent a significant moment, directed by the ideal of creating a truly futurist musical style.
Subsequent works
Following his break from Futurism, Casavola won praise for his short operaOpera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, Il Gobbo del Califfo, staged in 1929 at the Teatro dell'Opera, Rome. Other successful theatre productions included the ballet Hop Frog, Il castello nel bosco, L’alba di Don Giovanni and Il mercante di cuori, the 'sogno mimico' by Enrico Prampolini, performed in Paris in 1927 by the Teatro della Pantomima. In 1931, Casavola composed the music for the play Garara's Journey by Marinetti's wife Benedetta, and, after 1936, he wrote only film soundtracks.