Music and Fascism in Italy

He was a prominent figure

«With the statements that follow, the musicians who subscribe to them neither presume nor claim to
assuming gladiatorial poses and sedition attitudes […] it is not their custom to create small churches and
congregations for this or that aesthetic purpose or to build artistic cooperatives of mutual censorship
then move in small so-called avant-garde platoons or real trenches to be conquered. However a point of
there must be contact and there really is between men of good will and good faith to whom they are not
the artistic fate of our country is indifferent. [...] All aesthetic beliefs, which had to subvert the canons
traditional, have been exhibited and practiced. Our world has been hit, it can be said, with all the gusts
of the most reckless futuristic concepts. […] Everything was good as long as it was unthinkable and unthinkable. Thing
did we get it? Of atonal and pluritonal trumpets, of objectivism and expressionism
what has been done with it, what is left? In the musical field, more than anywhere else, there is truly biblical confusion
babelica [...] The public, bewildered by the clamor of so many amazing apologies, intimidated by so many,
very deep and very wise programs of aesthetic reform, he no longer knows which voice to listen to or which way
to follow […]. A sense of comfortable rebellion against the secular canons has infiltrated the spirit of young people
fundamentals of art [...]. The future of Italian music does not seem certain, if not at the tail of all
foreign music. Young people must be freed from the error in which they live [...] there is nothing of our past
we feel we have to deny […] nothing is unworthy of the artistic spirit of our race […] The Gabrielli
and the Monteverde (sic!), the Palestrina and the Frescobaldi, the Corelli, the Scarlatti, the Paisiello, the Cimarosa and the Rossini.
Verdi and the Puccini are various and different branches of the same tree. Signed Ottorino Respighi, Giuseppe Mulé,
Ildebrando Pizzetti, Riccardo Zandonai, Alberto Gasco, Alceo Toni, Riccardo Pick-Mangiagalli, Guido
Guerrini, Gennaro Napoli, Guido Zuffellato. "
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