LA CARTELLINA, Year 24th - Nr.130
(Edizioni Musicali Europee - Milano)
November 2000 (page 62):
CONVERSATIONS
Interview to Sergio Calligaris,
by Giovanni Acciai

We meet Maestro Sergio Calligaris in San Giuliano Milanese, at the site of Nuova Carisch, the day after the concert, at Palazzina Liberty, of the Première of his Toccata, Adagio e Fuga op.36 for string orchestra, under the baton of Vittorio Parisi.
Argentinian born but Italian of adoption, Sergio Calligaris is piano performer, composer and teacher of international reputation.
His works have been performed all over the world and recorded on CD by major record labels.
Since we know how big his love and interest towards voice and chorus are, we asked him to answer some questions for our readers. As his nature is, truly affable and available, Maestro agreed to our request.
Hereafter is the report of this conversation.

G.A. Maestro, in your intense creative activity, you undertook a great deal of genres, forms, styles and languages. Also the voice, besides your beloved piano, has had a really particular attention from you: I think about Ave Maria op.8 and the well known Three madrigals op.13. By the light of the experience matured in this field, what are your relationship and interest towards the voice; how do you employ it in your creative moment?

S.C. I must point out first of all that the first version of the Three madrigals was for voices "a cappella"; later on, in occasion of the Prix Italia 1985, representing Rai Due, I prepared a version for soloist voices, harpsichord and organ. I imagined the first version for chorus "a cappella" for a choir of female voices.
Nevertheless, my most far-reaching choral work is the Requiem. It's about a large scale work (it lasts more than one hour!) for mixed chorus, three male voices, two pianos and percussions.
When I deal with vocal sacred music I solely employ Latin language, because I believe that there isn't any better language than this to be set into music. It wasn't by chance that until Vatican Council II Latin was the official language of Church!

G.A. I fully agree with your opinion about it. If I remember well, also your Ave Maria op.8 for voice and piano is in Latin.

S.C. Certainly. But now I'd like to go on speaking about Requiem. I wrote it in 1983-84, after my mother's passing away. This work isn't a Missa pro defunctis in a strict sense, but rather a believer musician's meditation upon the theme of death. On the other hand, the piano writing of this work is so complex, virtuosistic, not to say trascendental, to make impossible any possibility to perform it throughout liturgy.

G.A. What models did you draw your inspiration from, writing this work?

S.C. From Verdi, above all, but from Fauré as well. As Maestro from Busseto, I've also chosen not to subdivide into sections the text of Dies irae, but to include it all in one wide scale movement (more than twenty minutes).
Since I'm a devotee of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem, it also composed ad memoriam mother's, I thought not to end my work with the dramatic tone of Libera me Domine, but rather with that much more reassuring, serene and ethereal of In Paradisum.
For me, the Requiem is like a stage oratorio, let's call it like this; it recalls the dramatic atmosphere of the text, tragic, consuming or consoling of other moments. It doesn't tell, it evokes. The opera composer must have a theatrical instinct of the tale that I feel not to own.

G.A. Beyond your fondness of the instrument you're great virtuoso of, what were the reasons of technical and timbric nature driving you to include two pianos into the instrumental ensemble of your Requiem, by the same standard as Rossini made in his Petite Messe solennelle?

S.C. I wanted two pianos because I needed that sharp, piercing, metallic sound that only two pianos can render.

G.A. And what about the chorus?

S.C. In terms of polyphony, I treated the mixed chorus in an extremely complex manner as well as very sophisticated in the same time. Although my vocal output isn't large as for piano or other instruments, I consider my Requiem a very demanding work, both for who's singing and for who's playing.

G.A. What were the reasons preventing you to compose choral music more frequently?

S.C. Throughout my artistic life there is a lapse of time of about thirty years when I didn't write just a single line of music; I devoted myself to concerts only. In my youth I graduated in music and composition when I was sixteen only. But that strictly academic training helped me very much. I can make stand out I have a technically very sturdy writing, maybe craft, but effective. Technique, for me, isn't a bond, rather a stimulus to my inspiration. When a musician owns the technique, his fantasy shapes at once in the best way what he wants. In my youth I wrote some lyrics on texts of great Spanish poets such as García Lorca, Gustavo Bécquer and Vasquez Cey. The Edizioni Carisch of Milan published my Tema e variazioni op.5 on poetry Arboles (Trees) by García Lorca for bass voice and piano. Later on, I used this theme in my variations for clarinet, cello and piano (Tema e variazioni op.5a) and for violin, piano and cello (Tema e variazioni op.5b).
My abstract sense for vocal music isn't recent. Opera, that is stage vocality, is the only musical expression I don't feel attracted by.

G.A. In vocal music, do you recall echoes of your native land?

S.C. No, I don't. At least intentionally. On the other hand is doubtful that the contact I had with Latin-American culture hasn't left any trace in me.
Recently, a dear friend and colleague of mine, listening to the Agitato con fuoco of my Concerto for piano and orchestra op.29, told me: "But aren't you aware that it's a malambo?". It was true! In spite of trying by all means not to have recourse to folk quotes in writing this work, nevertheless certain rhythms of dance, especially the dythyrambic ones, are inherent in my nature. I didn't want to make a malambo in my piano concerto, but unconsciously I did it…
Even if I'm totally Italian (from Friuli on my father's and from Turin on my mother's sides) I can't deny that I'm full with Latin-American and Spanish culture.

G.A. Now I'd like you to speak about your Three madrigals op.13 for soloist voices or chamber chorus "ad libitum", organ and harpsichord. What poetic source did you draw the text from?

S.C. The poems are by Giovan Battista Strozzi, prominent poet during the Florentine madrigal great season. They look like three pictures: the first recalls death's theme, the second the sunset theme and the third the flourished May, that is Spring. I don't tell a tale with them, I only evoke the poetic atmosphere of madrigal.

G.A. Maestro, that's a customary question, I think, but it's proper to ask it: how do you place, from the language style point of view, in the context of your generation composers?

S.C. Thank you for asking this question. As I already told, I graduated in composition when I was sixteen only, even twelve in piano. In those days, there was in Argentina a rather pressing avant-garde that I didn't feel like to share, even if I respected it, because it was far from my own nature. It was a matter of "skin", not incomprehension or, worse, hostility. Given that I had already started a very sturdy career as a pianist, I decided not to torture myself any more, fighting against an unfavourable world. That choice didn't cost me little. I used to write well and I was talented, but I could no way recognize myself within that cultural climate. It was better, for me, put away the music paper into a drawer, lock it and throw its key away. Time decided later on a so drastic choice not to be definitive.
Many years later, in 1978, with Renzo's Piano Notebook, dedicated to a brotherly friend of mine, I started to write music again and I did it my way.
If I'd have to describe myself, I'd define me not as a neoromantic, obviously not intended in the meaning given to this term nowadays, but rather as a neoclassic, whose forms of counterpoint recall the most rigorous Bach. A "filtered" Bach, however, through the compositive school I feel to belong to: the one deriving from Hindemith, I mean. A severity of form, counterpoint and technique; demanding music, nothing conceding to effects. That's because composing an opera would be very difficult to me. I feel like rather more inclined to ballet. But I'm also glad to turn to Brahms. But not to Bruckner. My style is actually more concise, succint and essential. And then, I can't basically stand with certain wagnerian boundless expansions.

G.A. But it's undeniable that Wagner, starting from Tristan, contributed in a decisive way to the renewal of the harmonic language as well as its structural functions.

S.C. That's for sure. As far as I'm concerned, my harmonic language is oriented towards a "polytonality" of altered chords, used in such a manner as to take always into account tension and relaxation sequences. It means that behind this way to proceed there is a very sturdy academic basis; it allows me to be completely free in creating the most daring harmonic clusters, without falling into the formal or abstract art.

G.A. To know from where to start, then, which way to get…

S.C. … how to achieve the aim. You feel it in my works as well as in my Requiem.
I believe in an instrumentation and a vocality recalling Rimskij-Korsakov's idea, telling: "Use always instruments and voices in their own most comfortable registers".

G.A. This should be the condicio sine qua non for any composer worthy of this name. One can be defined a composer just when he effectively demonstrates, through his works, to deeply know the instrument he turns his attention to.

S.C. Blessed words! I can understand and appreciate from the artistic point of view the wonderful coloraturas of Donizetti or Rossini. But I ask myself: is it absolutely necessary to force singers to climb up to the high-pitched E-flat? All right: that's lovely, but doesn't it sound a bit like a circus? It's so moving to listen to Lieder by Schubert, Schumann or lyrics by Gabriel Fauré, where the voice sings always in its most consonant register with its possibilities, and the vocal technique isn't jeopardized and has never to attempt to do at all costs something naturally anti-vocal. And don't make me speak about contemporary vocal literature…
Also piano virtuosism I confer on my works turns, by force of circumstances, to pianists of unquestioned technical ability. But this virtuosism isn't something affected, pondered over only. Not at all. It's something physiologically natural. When you play Liszt, Rachmaninov or Prokofiev, although certain passages are extremely difficult, they're however technically accessible. If you've got a good technique, you can overcome them. There are authors, instead, even if writing things less difficult as Rachmaninov, they can't render them pianistically. Why? Because they're anti-physiologic. A certain avant-gard has especially destroyed voices; it has forgotten "expressiveness". I hear certain notes, yes, I understand for sure certain intentions of certain formulas; but after hearing and understanding it all from a technical point of view, what remains more? Nothing. This music is neither sad nor cheerful, neither introvert nor extrovert, neither bright nor dusky: it's nothing. It's about heaps of notes. And sometimes, neither written too well…
In certain way, some authors forgot what means get in touch with the voice. The voice is the most extraordinary good given us by nature. The voice is human, it's within the body, it isn't a violin, it isn't a piano. It's human! Why do we have then to inhumanize it, making it to do trills or staccatos, better made by a bassoon or a clarinet, or huge jumps ruining the vocal cords?

G.A. I'd like to understand it as well. I'm glad you clearly told it, without hesitations or circumlocutions.

S.C. As I've already told, I don't consider me as a composer who destined to the voice most of his creative efforts. But when I employ the voice in my works, I do it always with naturalness and with the highest respect of its technical and expressive peculiarities.
A voice must work as a voice. If you play piano, you must think it's a percussive instrument: it can sing, give the illusion to sing thanks to the supreme strategy of the sound of each note in relation with the previous or the next, or keeping a note not legato a bit more what's necessary and leaving it a bit late to give a sense of portamento. But it's always about a percussive portamento. You can never write for piano without thinking it's a percussive instrument. The voice, instead, is something mysterious and very delicate; it isn't a machine as the piano; we can't use violence on it for nothing.
A scream in the night, a protest against society: that's what composers say. But it isn't true: that's the cry of despair because they're destroying a vocal organ.

G.A. Maestro, after these fervent remarks about the voice and the opportuneness to always treat it in the most adequate way within a compositive project, I'd like to ask you if you're working on something choral that you can already announce to "La Cartellina" readers.

S.C. I've recently had the opportunity to meet and speak for a long time to the Archbishop of Ferrara, His Grace Carlo Caffarra. He suggested me to set into music the text of Ave verum, a text of moving mildness but also of piercing tension and unlimited dramatic sense.
I'm very devout to Our Lady. I'm a deep believer, without an over-pious faith and its blind acceptance of dogmas, but meditating on and pondering over them with personality and humanity. I'm a deep believer, but I haven't a blind faith accepting everything without reasoning, without trying to understand it and setting it in the current context around me.

G.A. What ensemble do you imagine for this work?

S.C. Mixed chorus in four voices and piano.

G.A. I don't dare ask you more. But I'm sure that it'll be an important work and will have its value within our time choral literature, especially the Italian one, so miserly of masterworks in this sector.

S.C. Thank you. I'll try not to disappoint this expectation.