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Allegorical Erasmus: Bruno Maderna's Ritratto di Erasmo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2012
Abstract
This essay aims to find a unifying thread amid the eclectic works of Bruno Maderna, and also to situate his compositional philosophy in relation to his more famous colleagues of the Darmstadt Summer Courses. More than any of the other composers at Darmstadt, Maderna was committed to its ‘project’ and to the values it placed on musical discourse, in spite of the fact that he seemed to abstain from its often-heated polemics. In contrast to many of his colleagues, Maderna was not one to speak at length about his compositions, preferring to express himself through his music. However, one work – his 1969 radio documentary, Ritratto di Erasmo – makes a poignant statement both about his music and the post-war generation as a whole. By championing Erasmus's equivocation, the work reveals something of Maderna's relationship to the arguments at Darmstadt. Just as Erasmus was situated between Luther and the Catholic Church, Maderna seemed to sit silently in the middle, while the more ideologically inclined composers swarmed at the periphery.
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1 The telegram has been lost, but a letter from Steinecke to Maderna dated 19 August 1949 responded, ‘Als ich dann Ihr Telegramm erhielt mit der Nachricht, dass Sie nicht nach Darmstadt kommen werden, haben wir anstelle dieses Werkes Fantasia und Füge für zwei Klaviere angesetzt’. Maderna, Bruno and Steinecke, Wolfgang, Carteggio/Briefwechsel: Bruno Maderna, Wolfgang Steinecke, ed. Dalmonte, Rossana (Lucca, 2001), 36Google Scholar.
2 Carl Seeman and Peter Stadlen performed the piece for two pianos in a concert of chamber music on 9 July 1949; see Borio, Gianmario and Danuser, Hermann, eds., Im Zenit der Moderne: die Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt 1946–1966: Geschichte und Dokumentation in vier Bänden, Vol. 3 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1997), 538Google Scholar.
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13 Fearn, Bruno Maderna, 318.
14 Konrad Boehmer, in conversation with Nuria Schoenberg-Nono at the conference, La presenza storica di Luigi Nono in Padua, 1 December 2006.
15 Indeed, music criticism was an integral part of the design of the Darmstadt Summer Courses from the very beginning. Steinecke was himself a music critic and he included seminars in music criticism and engaged at least one critic as a teacher every year. See Borio and Danuser, eds., Im Zenit der Moderne, Vol. 1, 427–32.
16 Borio and Danuser, eds., Im Zenit der Moderne, Vol. 1, 432–3.
17 Früchtl, Josef and Calloni, Maria, eds., Zeit gegen den Zeitgeist (Frankfurt, 1991), 136Google Scholar. Musicologist Gianmario Borio confirms that Adorno's book had just been published when he arrived at Darmstadt and had ‘an immediate impact on European musicians’; see Borio, Gianmario, ‘Dire cela, sans savoir quoi’, in Hoeckner, Berthold, ed., Apparitions (New York, 2006), 43Google Scholar.
18 Adorno, Theodor W., Philosophy of New Music, trans. Hullot-Kentor, Robert (Minneapolis, 2006), 11Google Scholar.
19 Wimsatt, W.K. Jr. and Beardsley, M.C., ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, in Sewanee Review, 54/3 (July–September 1946), 468–88Google Scholar. In their example, the authors ask whether Eliot's ‘Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ contains a reference to John Donne's ‘Teach me to heare Mermaides singing’. At the time of writing, they suggest, it would have been possible simply to write to Eliot and request an answer. However, even if Eliot were to have responded, this would not settle the question.
20 In trying to connect Adorno's thought with the music of late twentieth-century composer Wolfgang Rihm, Alastair Williams assumes that Adorno could confer legitimacy on Rihm's music. Rather than explaining why Adorno's philosophy is more supportive of a composer like Rihm, he suggests that those passages (primarily in the Philosophy of New Music) which criticised the tendency to total organisation were misread as vindications of that tendency. See ‘Wolfgang Rihm and the Adorno Legacy’, in Hoeckner, ed., Apparitions, 85–102.
21 Borio, ‘Dire cela’, in Hoeckner, ed., Apparitions, 41.
22 Fearn, Bruno Maderna, 319.
23 Maurizio Romito, ‘Ritratto di Erasmo by Bruno Maderna’, trans. Mark Weir, in L'immaginazione in ascolto, 227. See Mila, Massimo, Maderna musicista europeo, ed. Mosch, Ulrich (Turin, 1999), 51Google Scholar.
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25 De Benedictis, Angela Ida, ‘“Ritratto di Erasmo” di Bruno Maderna’, in Musica/Realtà, 73 (Milan, 2004), 153Google Scholar.
26 Anastasia, Adriana, Ritratto di Erasmo: Un'opera radiofonica di Bruno Maderna (Trent, 2009), 19Google Scholar. Works from the Premio Italia, including Ritratto di Erasmo, have recently been collected in a new publication from Die Schachtel. See De Benedictis, Angela Ida and Novati, Maria Maddalena, eds., L'immaginazione in ascolto: Il Premio Italia e la sperimentazione radiofonica (Rome–Milan, 2012)Google Scholar.
27 Anastasia, Ritratto di Erasmo, 8. Anastasia speculates that Ritratto di Erasmo may have been excluded from the 1969 Premio Italia because its attitude toward religious freedom was still controversial at the time. De Benedictis remarks in a footnote to an interview with Marino Zuccheri, a sound engineer who worked with Maderna on Ritratto, ‘For reasons which are still unclear (and thus not worth too much debate), it was the victim of some sort of internal censorship’. Veniero Rizzardi and Angela Ida de Benedictis, eds., ‘… at the Time of the Tubes…: A Conversation with Marino Zuccheri’, trans. Peter de Laurentiis, Nuova musica alla radio, 206. Romito wonders whether the inclusion of a second work devoted to Erasmus, Lamento pacis by Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw, may have made Maderna's work seem superfluous. Romito, ‘Ritratto di Erasmo by Bruno Maderna’, 228–9.
28 Noller, Joachim, ‘Von Marinetti zu Maderna’, in Zibaldone, 8 (Munich, 1989), 61–7Google Scholar. See footnotes 23, 25 and 26 for citations of the texts by De Benedictis and Anastasia.
29 Noller, ‘Von Marinetti zu Maderna’, 70.
30 Romito, ‘Ritratto di Erasmo by Bruno Maderna’, 229–30.
31 De Benedictis, 157; ‘Non vi è momento più chiaro e preciso, nella Storia della Chiesa Christiana, di quello di Riforma.’ All translations from Ritratto are the author's own, unless otherwise noted.
32 See Rummel, Erika, ‘Erasmian Humanism in the Twentieth Century’, in Comparative Criticism, vol. 23, ed. Shaffer, E. S. (Cambridge, 2001), 57–67Google Scholar. Rummel concludes that Erasmus has become – she seems to think that this is largely an oversimplification – equated with tolerance and pacifism. She views the real base of his philosophy as scepticism or possibly even equivocation. True Erasmianism – what might be called a true following of Erasmus – cannot really be an -ism because it is not dogmatic. In its original formulation, that is in the centuries immediately following its founder, Erasmianism seems to have been related to his work in ‘rhetoric, philology, and the study of biblical languages’. Modern Erasmianism attempts to find philosophy and theology in a body of work that may have been more of a practical enterprise. Rummel, ‘Erasmian Humanism in the Twentieth Century’, 58.
33 De Benedictis, ‘“Ritratto di Erasmo” di Bruno Maderna’, 29 and 121.
34 Anastasia, Ritratto di Erasmo, 121.
35 Ibid. Romito comments that this work is ‘often considered the most beautiful composition to have come down to us from the 14th century’, indicating that Maderna reserved something special to accompany his introduction of Erasmus; Romito, ‘Ritratto di Erasmo by Bruno Maderna’, 243.
36 De Benedictis, ‘“Ritratto di Erasmo” di Bruno Maderna’, 157.
37 Ibid., 158.
38 Ibid.
39 Anastasia, Ritratto di Erasmo, 121.
40 De Benedictis, ‘“Ritratto di Erasmo” di Bruno Maderna’, 158–9.
41 Anastasia, Ritratto di Erasmo, 121.
42 De Benedictis, ‘“Ritratto di Erasmo” di Bruno Maderna’, 160.
43 Ibid., 160–61.
44 Ibid., 162.
45 Ibid., 165.
46 Ibid., 166.
47 Ibid., 167.
48 Ibid., footnote XXXV, 182.
49 Romito, ‘Ritratto di Erasmo by Bruno Maderna’, 240. Most of the entries also occur in the Lesser Key of Solomon, which was ‘a popular handbook of sorcery known from the 17th century’ according to the introduction to a critical edition of the translation, edited by Joseph H. Peterson. One demon that does not appear in the Lesser Key of Solomon is the last, ‘Satana’. Peterson, Joseph H., ed., The Lesser Key of Solomon (York Beach, ME, 2001)Google Scholar.
50 De Benedictis, ‘“Ritratto di Erasmo” di Bruno Maderna’, 171. ‘Amon? – Marchese dell'inferno. Commanda 40 legioni infernali. Testa di lupo che vomita fiamme, coda di serpente. Appare tavolta con testa di gufo e corpo umano. Conosce il passato e l'avvenire.’
51 Ibid.
52 De Benedictis, ‘“Ritratto di Erasmo” di Bruno Maderna’, 173. ‘Nessuno si illuda! Ognuno è un demonio in se stesso e tutto il bene che ha, lo ha da Dio. Che cosa infatti hai in te, e da te stesso se non il peccato?’ and ‘Se vuoi prendere quel che è tuo, prendi il peccato, poiché la giustizia spetta a Dio.’ Translations of both quotations are from Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Battles, Ford Lewis, ed. McNeill, John T. (Philadelphia, 1960), 269Google Scholar.
53 De Benedictis, ‘“Ritratto di Erasmo” di Bruno Maderna’, 173. ‘I suoi nomi, i suoi attributi, la forma delle sue apparizioni, tutto insomma di lui è infinito, come infinito è il non creare che egli rappresenta di contro all'eterno ed infinito continuo della creazione.’
54 Romito, ‘Ritratto di Erasmo by Bruno Maderna’, 241. The melody, which Romito dates as being from the eleventh or twelfth century, is on the famous Cunctipotens genitor Deus trope, with the unvoiced words: ‘Omnipotent Father, God, creator of all things, have mercy. Christ, splendour of God, virtue and wisdom of the Father, have mercy. Holy Spirit, bond and love of both, have mercy.’
55 Ibid.
56 Of course, the Darmstadt Summer Courses continue to this day; by disintegration, I mean that of a particular ethos – the process that prompted composers like Luigi Nono to talk of the school ending in about 1960.
57 ‘Schönberg is Dead’, in The Score, 6 (1952), 18–22.
58 Boulez, ‘Schoenberg is Dead’, 22.
59 Adorno, , ‘The Aging of New Music’, in Essays on Music, trans. Gillespie, Susan H., ed. Leppert, Richard (Berkeley, 2002), 181–202Google Scholar.
60 Adorno, ‘The Aging of New Music’, in Essays on Music, 187.
61 Adorno, Theodor, ‘Vers une musique informelle’, in Quasi una fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. Livingstone, Rodney (New York, 1998), 269–322Google Scholar.
62 Ibid., 269.
63 Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 61.
64 Other examples from Darmstadt include Karel Goeyvaerts's Music for Violin, Alto-voice and Piano (1948), Wolfgang Fortner's Trio for Violin, Viola and Violoncello (1952) and Hermann Heiß's Composition in Three Parts (1954).
65 Adorno, ‘Difficulties’, trans. Susan H. Gillespie, in Essays on Music, 660.
66 Adorno, Theodor, ‘Gedenkrede auf Wolfgang Steinecke’, in Borio, and Danuser, , eds., Im Zenit der Moderne, Vol. 3, 368–73Google Scholar.
67 Ibid., 373.
68 Fearn, Bruno Maderna, 319.
69 Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 10.
70 Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 7.