Gian Francesco Malipiero (Italian pronunciation: "jahm fran-keh-skoh mahl-ee-PEH-roh") was born on March 18, 1882, and died on August 1, 1973. He was an Italian composer, expert in music, music teacher, and editor.

Life

Gian Francesco Malipiero was born in Venice to a noble family. He was the grandson of the opera composer Francesco Malipiero. Family problems made it difficult for him to study music regularly. His parents separated in 1893, and his father took him to Trieste, Berlin, and eventually Vienna. Later, Malipiero and his father had a bitter disagreement, and in 1899, Malipiero returned to his mother’s home in Venice. There, he enrolled at the Venice Liceo Musicale, which is now called the Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia.

After stopping counterpoint lessons with the composer, organist, and teacher Marco Enrico Bossi, Malipiero continued his studies independently. He copied music by composers like Claudio Monteverdi and Girolamo Frescobaldi from the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. This practice began his lifelong interest in Italian music from that time period. In 1904, he went to Bologna to study with Bossi again at the Bologna Liceo Musicale, now known as the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini. In 1906, he returned to the Venice Conservatory Benedetto Marcello to continue his education. After graduating, he became an assistant to the blind composer Antonio Smareglia.

In 1905, Malipiero returned to Venice. From 1906 to 1909, he often studied in Berlin under Max Bruch. Later, in 1913, he moved to Paris, where he met composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Falla, Schoenberg, and Berg. He attended the first performance of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps shortly after meeting Alfredo Casella and Gabriele d’Annunzio. He described this experience as an awakening from a long and dangerous sleep. Afterward, he rejected most of his earlier compositions, except for Impressioni dal vero (1910–11). At that time, he won four composition prizes at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome by submitting five compositions under five different names.

In 1917, after Italy’s defeat at Caporetto, Malipiero had to leave Venice and moved to Rome. In 1923, he joined Alfredo Casella and Gabriele D’Annunzio to create the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche. He had a good relationship with Benito Mussolini until he set the libretto La favola del figlio cambiato by Pirandello, which led to criticism from fascists. He dedicated his opera Giulio Cesare to Mussolini, but this did not improve his situation.

Malipiero taught composition at the Parma Conservatory from 1921 to 1924. In 1932, he became a professor of composition at the Venice Liceo Musicale, which he directed from 1939 to 1952. He taught students such as Luigi Nono and his nephew Riccardo Malipiero.

After settling permanently in Asolo in 1923, Malipiero began editorial work for which he became well known. He created a complete edition of all of Claudio Monteverdi’s works from 1926 to 1942. After 1952, he edited many of Vivaldi’s concertos at the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi.

Compositions

Malipiero had mixed feelings about the musical tradition led by Austro-German composers. Instead, he focused on rediscovering Italian music from before the 19th century.

His orchestral works include seventeen pieces he called symphonies, but only eleven are numbered. The first symphony was written in 1933, when Malipiero was over fifty years old. Before this, he created several important orchestral pieces but rarely used the word "sinfonia" (symphony). This was because he did not support the Austro-German symphonic tradition. The only exceptions were three early works: Sinfonia degli eroi (1905), Sinfonia del mare (1906), and Sinfonie del silenzio e della morte (1909–1910). These early works should not be seen as following the style of composers like Beethoven or Brahms, but rather as symphonic poems.

In the mid-1950s, when asked by The World of Music, Malipiero listed these compositions as his most important:

• Pause del Silenzio for orchestra, composed in 1917
• Rispetti e Strambotti for string quartet, composed in 1920
• L'Orfeide for the stage, composed between 1918 and 1922, and first performed in 1924
• La Passione, a mystery play composed in 1935
• his nine symphonies, composed between 1933 and 1955 (he later wrote more symphonies after this list)

He considered Impressioni dal vero for orchestra to be his earliest work of lasting importance.

Musical theory and style

Malipiero strongly disagreed with the use of sonata form and other standard methods of developing musical themes. He stated:

Malipiero’s music is known for its lack of strict structure. He avoided following traditional rules of variation, instead favoring a more freeform style inspired by song. He also avoided music that tells a specific story through sound. Until the early 1950s, Malipiero’s work was based on diatonism, which connects to older Italian instrumental music and Gregorian chant. Later, he gradually explored more unusual and tense musical areas, moving closer to total chromaticism. He did not abandon his earlier style but reworked it over time. In his later works, influences from his students Luigi Nono and Bruno Maderna can be seen.

Malipiero’s compositions mix free, non-thematic passages with structured themes. His movements rarely end in the same key they began.

When Malipiero wrote symphonies, he did not follow the style that developed after Beethoven. Because of this, some authors called his works "sinfonias" (the Italian term) to highlight his Italian roots and his rejection of German musical traditions. He noted:

As Ernest Ansermet once said, "these symphonies are not based on themes but on 'motifs': Malipiero uses short musical ideas like others do. These motifs create new ideas and return later, but they do not control the music’s flow—they are instead shaped by it."

Reception

The French conductor Antonio de Almeida led the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in recordings of all of Malipiero's symphonies for Naxos (Marco Polo, 1993–1994).

Recently, Malipiero's piano works, including his complete concertos, have become popular again through the performances of Italian pianist Sandro Ivo Bartoli.

A 1985 biographical film titled Poems of Asolo, directed by Georg Brintrup, was made about Malipiero.

Selected works

• L'Orfeide (1919–1922; published in Düsseldorf in 1925), in three parts:
• Three Goldoni comedies (1920–1922; published in Darmstadt in 1926):
• Filomela e l'infatuato (1925; published in Prague in 1928)
• Torneo notturno (1929)
• La favola del figlio cambiato (text by Luigi Pirandello, 1933)
• Giulio Cesare (based on Shakespeare, 1935; published in Genoa in 1936)
• Antonio e Cleopatra (based on Shakespeare, 1937; published in Florence in 1938)
• I capricci di Callot (based on E.T.A. Hoffmann, 1942; published in Rome in 1942)
• L'allegra brigata (1943; published in Milan in 1950)
• Mondi celesti ed infernali (1949; published in Venice in 1961)
• Il figliuol prodigo (1952; published in Florence in 1957)
• Donna Urraca, one-act opera (1954)
• Venere prigioniera (1955; published in Florence in 1957)
• Il marescalco (1960; published in Treviso in 1969)
• Don Giovanni (1963; published in Naples)
• Rappresentazione e festa di Carnasciale e della Quaresima (ballet opera, 1961; published in Venice in 1970)
• Le metamorfosi di Bonaventura (1966; published in Venice in 1966)
• Don Tartufo bacchettone (1966; published in Venice in 1970)
• Iscariota (1971)

• Dai sepolcri (1904)
• Sinfonia degli eroi (1905)
• Sinfonia del mare (1906)
• Sinfonia del silenzio e de la morte (1909–1910)
• Impressioni dal vero, first part (1910)
• Impressioni dal vero, second part (1915)
• Ditirambo tragico (1917)
• Pause del Silenzio (1917)
• Grottesco (1918)
• Ballet Pantea (1919)
• Cimarosiana (1921), five musical pieces inspired by Cimarosa's keyboard works
• Impressioni dal vero, third part (1922)
• Concerti (1931)
• Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra (1931)
• Inni (1932)
• Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra (1932)
• Sette Invenzioni (1933)
• Sinfonia No. 1 "In quattro tempi, come le quattro stagioni" (1933)
• Sinfonia No. 2 "Elegiaca" (1936)
• Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1937)
• Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra (1937)
• Concerto a tre for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra (1938)
• Sinfonia No. 3 "Delle campane" (1944–1945)
• Sinfonia No. 4 "In memoriam" (1946)
• Sinfonia No. 5 "Concertante in eco" (1947)
• Sinfonia No. 6 "Degli archi" (1947)
• Ballet Stradivario (1948)
• Sinfonia No. 7 "Delle canzoni" (1948)
• Concerto No. 3 for Piano and Orchestra (1948)
• Concerto No. 4 for Piano and Orchestra (1950)
• Sinfonia in un tempo (1950)
• Sinfonia dello Zodiaco "Quattro partite: dalla primavera all'inverno" (1951)
• Ballet El mondo novo (1951; published in Venice in 1951)
• Le Sette Allegrezze d'Amore for voice and instruments (Milan 1945)
• La Terra, based on Virgil's Georgics (1946)
• Mondi celesti for soprano and ten instruments (1948; published in Capri in 1949)
• La Festa della Sensa for baritone, chorus and orchestra (1949–1950; published in Brussels in 1954)
• Cinque favole (1950)
• Preludio e morte di Macbeth for baritone and orchestra (1958; published in Milan in 1960)
• Sette canzonette veneziane for voice and piano (1960)

• Sonata for Piano (1933) /Steel (1933)