Nationalisme et cosmopolitisme chez Alfredo Casella (1883-1947)

This dissertation seeks to study the notions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism as well as the possible links between them, through the work and career of Casella. The Italian pianist and composer Alfredo Casella was born in Turin in 1883.  Being unable to obtain in the Italian conservatories of the time an adequate musical formation, that would have been complementary to the one received through his family, Casella reaches France.  He studies at the Paris Conservatory until 1902, as a pupil of Gabriel Fauré and Louis Diémer.    During the years spent in Paris (1896-1915), Casella takes an active part in the Parisian musical life.  He performs in many salons, in many concerts organized by French societies (both as a pianist and as a composer).  Through his very rich journalistic activity, Casella implicates himself actively in the current debates and polemics of the French musical environment.     During these nineteen French years, Casella is exposed to the nationalist currents that inhabit the French artistic milieux.  Simultaneously to the very strong expression of this nationalism, Casella will literally be imbued in the various foreign influences (Russian, German, Spanish, Hungarian) than present in this center that is the Paris of the beginning of the XXth century.  These multiple influences (those of Stravinsky, Bartók, De Falla) are all integrated in his compositional work, to such an extent that one calls Casella the « chameleon ». The First World War forces Casella to return to Italy.  The peninsula is than dominated by operatic music and the instrumental music production is almost inexistent.  Casella gives himself the mission of reforming the instrumental music and of fighting actively against Italian operatic music.  Such a musical revival will be possible, according to Casella, if Italian composers manage to give up sentimental excesses of the romanticism.  This is what Casella will endeavor to do in his own works.  But it will not be sufficient. The young composers will have to study the works of Italian great master of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, while integrating technical innovations of European contemporary musics. Casella suggests a reeducation program for the young composers, but also for the Italian public.  The pedagogy is, according to Casella, the key which will give access to this musical revival.  He will be piano teacher at the Accademia Santa Cecilia, tan at the Rome Conservatory and, finally at the Accademia Chigiana in Sienne.  These teaching positions will give him the opportunity to initiate his protégés into Italian classical musics, but also into foreign contemporary musics.  He will also set up two concert societies, the Società Italiana di Musica Moderna (1916-1918) and the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche (1924-1928).  With these two concert societies dedicated to make recognize contemporary music in Italy, Casella succeeds in building up an impressive international network which will contribute to his vast plan of the Italian music’s development in a world context. Casella’s first intention is to give back its dignity to the Italian musical art.  During the 1930’s, his wish to renovate the music of the peninsula corresponds to several facets of the cultural politic of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime.  Thus, Casella’s name will often be associated to the cultural achievements of the Regime, which seems in contradiction with the composer’s universalizing intentions.

Keyphrases: Casella, Folklore, Tradition, Casella, Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, Regionalism, Latinity, Folklore, Modernity, Tradition, Pedagogy, Fascism