There is an often-told anecdote that on 1 April 1924, in the Sala Bianca of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, before the eyes of a young piano and composition student from the city conservatory, Luigi Dallapiccola, Giacomo Puccini listened to Pierrot lunaire, conducted by Arnold Schoenberg. At the end of the concert, Puccini and Dallapiccola chatted for ten minutes in a corner of the foyer. No one knows what they said to each other, but they gave the impression of having a heart-to-heart conversation. It was a time when two artists with vastly different personalities and ideas could find common ground within their shared passion.¹

At this point, the musical dualism represented by this historic encounter had already manifested in Dallapiccola’s compositional development, shaped by his various influences. One of the most important of these was the Italian tradition of melodrama, especially that by Giuseppe Verdi. Discussing Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra in 1930 (he also wrote about Verdi’s Falstaff, Rigoletto, and Un bal masqué), Dallapiccola perceived that its musical and theatrical modernity was enriched by an openness to the cosmopolitan inclinations of contemporary art. Another important influence was Ferruccio Busoni. Though Dallapiccola never met or heard him perform, he shared Busoni’s dual Italian and Germanic heritage, and he praised the sentimentality, “solid granite construction,” and dramatic intuitions in Busoni’s Doktor Faust.

Dallapiccola was also captivated by Maurice Ravel, on account of Ravel’s sense of balance and his ability to draw a whole world of sound from a single cell, notably in L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. In this piece, Ravel served not merely as a narrator but an active participant in the child’s inner world.

Along with the influence of the Second Viennese School (to which we will return later), there was that of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy (“What would our youth have been without Debussy?” Dallapiccola asked himself), and even Edgard Varèse, a former pupil of Busoni, with whom he would work from 1951 onward. Dallapiccola was specially positioned at the confluence of these different musical modernities.

Moreover, as verismo was gradually fading with Puccini’s death, and the “Ottanta” generation was emerging, who would dominate the Italian stage in the 1930s, the date of the above anecdote deserves further comment. From 1925 onward, laws passed by the Mussolini-led fascist government were dividing the musical world. On 17 December 1932, a manifesto against “atonal trumpeting,” signed by Ildebrando Pizzetti, Ottorino Respighi, and Riccardo Zandonai, was published in Il popolo d’Italia, Il corriere della sera, and La stampa. In its wake, the Syndicate of Fascist Musicians, in 1937, condemned expressionism, objective music, the “cerebral ramblings” of modernity, and the consequences of atonality, which it said were “analogous to those of Bolshevism.” Dallapiccola then, like Bernd Alois Zimmermann, belonged to a generation born both too early and too late: too early to participate in the avant-garde of a democratic state, yet too late to have fully assimilated, freely and contemporaneously, the achievements of serialism.

In the 1930s, during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and Italy’s military intervention in Spain, Dallapiccola’s opposition to fascism threatened his family’s very existence. Yet, even as he confronted political oppression, he was also rethinking his approach to sound — a reconsideration that would pave the way for a distinctly Italian postwar serialism, one deeply intertwined with the nation’s reconstruction and its embrace of anti-fascist values. This ideological stance is clear in his 1937-1938 work Volo di Notte, a one-act opera based on the novel Vol de nuit by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Unlike the fascist and Nazi glorification of military heroism, Dallapiccola’s opera denies its central character, the aviator, the status of a hero. At the time, aviation — one of the great symbols of technological modernity — was on the brink of becoming an instrument of mass destruction. The leap from civil heroism to military heroism was a short one, yet Volo di Notte refuses to take it. Instead, the protagonist’s actions realize and engage with a profound sense of humanity. Resisting the rhetoric of blind individualistic willpower, Dallapiccola’s musical language favors clarity and restrained serenity.

In his article “Sulla strada della dodecafonia” (1950), written well after he had adopted serialism, Dallapiccola reflects on his early encounters with atonality — an arrival he felt had come “too soon” — and with twelve-tone serialism, which he had used as early as the 1930s for its melodic potential and coloristic effects.

He had previously described his discovery of works by Anton Webern: Concerto, op. 24, on 5 September 1935 in Prague, then Das Augenlicht, Op. 26, on 17 June 1938 in London. His diary records these experiences, praising the works for their brevity and extraordinary concentration, which, in his words, “expresses the maximum of ideas with the minimum of words.”

What also struck him was Webern’s use of silence — once considered unsettling within traditional music theory — along with the stylistic and aesthetic unity of his compositions. He recognized a grounding in tradition, an ethical dimension, and a manifest attention to sound itself. This last aspect, though somewhat elusive in definition, was central in Dallapiccola’s own aesthetic thinking, encompassing both timbre and the sonic reality of musical structure. In Webern’s serialism, he saw a world where everything was invention, which allowed “highly varied differentiations.”²

Before reading the theoretical works of Ernst Krenek, René Leibowitz, or Josef Rufer,³ Dallapiccola confirmed his orientation toward serialism through his appreciation of the literary assonances of James Joyce’s Ulysses, as well as the way Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time evokes memory and develops its characters slowly, rhythmically and melodically. “I therefore began to understand that in music the same succession of sounds can assume different meanings, provided they are articulated in different ways.”⁴

Was his serialism, then, a language or a technique? Dallapiccola introduced a third term: for him, it was a state of mind, a disposition — what could be described as a Stimmung, an atmosphere. He believed serialism “may one day be as satisfying as the seconda prattica adopted by Monteverdi more than three centuries ago .” The acoustic upheaval it introduces is, in his view, a natural development, resulting from the breakdown of the tonal universe and the emancipation of dissonance. Serialism, for him, is the most comprehensive method, the only one that allows for articulation, transformation, and variation, while also providing a means of achieving discursive unity. Yet he remains aware that “no technical artifice has ever guaranteed anything in art, and the unity of a work, like melody, rhythm, and harmony, is ultimately an internal matter.”

Dallapiccola’s rejection of rigid systems also denied an essential, if not founding, principle of dodecaphony: the equality of all twelve tones. Instead, he considers them in the precise moment they are heard, integrating them into a flexible framework shaped by their dynamics, duration, timbre, and placement — whether they fall on a strong or weak beat, or in a fast or slow movement. While the traditional tonic, octaves between outer voices and on strong beats (though not necessarily elsewhere), and classical cadential motion are avoided (making sonata form impossible), one force from conventional harmony remains: distinct, privileged intervals. This principle establishes subtle relationships between specific sounds — less immediately perceptible than the dominant–tonic relationships of tonal music, but nonetheless essential in shaping the musical structure.

However, these intervals are not fixed; they shift throughout a piece and vary from work to work, requiring constant reinvention. Dallapiccola’s progressive adoption of dodecaphony proceeded principally from its application to melody (melodia, in Busoni’s sense of the term⁵) and does not preclude the presence of tonal, modal, or diatonic resurgences and tropes. In the fifth of his Sei cori di Michelangelo Buonarroti il giovane (1932-1936), for choir alone or with instruments, Dallapiccola — an early reader of Schoenberg’s Treatise on Harmony (which he studied in 1922, in particular the chapter on fourth chords) — experimented with replacing perfect fourths with diminished fifths. “To my astonishment,” he later recalled, “I realized that doing so resulted in the complete chromatic set.” The descending melodic-serial row he used is F–B–F#–C–G–Db–Ab–D–A–Eb–Bb.

A similar exploration appears in the first section of Tre Laudi (1936-1937), for voice and chamber orchestra, where a twelve-tone series and its retrograde appear. In Volo di Notte, Dallapiccola introduces series in inversion and retrograde inversion. In Canti di Prigionia (1938-1941), for choir and instruments, he applies a Webern-like model by dividing the series into three almost identical tetrachords, each structured as a minor third, diminished fifth, major ninth, and major seventh: E–G–Bb–F# / A–C–Eb–B / D–F–Ab–Db.

By the 1940s, Dallapiccola’s serial harmony includes perfect intervals as well as major and minor chords. Thus, Cinque Frammenti di Saffo (1942), for voice and fifteen instruments, features C major and Eb minor chords: C–E–G / Eb–Gb–Bb / C#–A–B / D–F–G#. Similarly, the “Liberty” series from the opera Il Prigioniero (1943-1948) features three tetrachords with diatonic contours: A–B–D–F / G–Bb–C–Eb / F#–G#–C#–E.

Dallapiccola sometimes employs several series in a single work, as in the end of his Canti di Prigionia, which also includes a quotation from the Dies irae. Other examples are Cinque Frammenti di Saffo, in which one or two distinct series make up each part, and Il Prigioniero, which is based on three different series. However, Dallapiccola gradually restricted his material by using derived series modeled after Berg’s Lulu, in which the initial series is transformed by omitting six of its pitches.

• Main series: F–(Gb–Bb–C–C#–E–G)–Eb–(A–B–D–G#/F–Gb)–Bb
• Derivative series: F–Eb–Bb–B–C#–G#–G–F#–A–C–D–E

It thus becomes clear that Dallapiccola’s tone rows maintain a balance between consonant and dissonant intervals. This approach is a consistent characteristic of Italian serialism, as accentuated by Bruno Maderna and Luigi Nono in the 1940s based on their study of Paul Hindemith’s Unterweisung im Tonsatz (The Craft of Musical Composition).

During the 1950s, Dallapiccola undertook intensive research into the properties of twelve-tone composition. Following the guidance of René Leibowitz, he abandoned major and minor chords, as well as false octave relations, instead embracing the symmetrical series and constellations of common intervals derived from Webern. The influence of Webern’s Concerto, op. 24, can be seen in the structural design of Dallapiccola’s Quaderno musicale di Annalibera (1952), for piano. However, the series he employed (A#–B–Eb–Gb–Ab–D–Db–F–G–C–A–E), including all the intervals, follows more closely the example of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite. Dallapiccola divides it into four melodic entities and adds the BACH motif in the harmony, alongside a descending chromatic line.

Symmetry continued to concern him in Cinque canti (1956), for baritone and eight instruments. In this work, the series is split into two hexachords, with the second as the retrograde inversion of the first: Gb–F–B–D–C–Ab / C#–A–G–Bb–E–Eb.

Dallapiccola’s final opera, Ulisse (1960-1968), organizes its harmonic framework into three series. The basic series “Mare I” (Db–C–D–Eb–A–Ab / F–E–G–F#–A#–B) gives rise to the “Mare II” series made up of the first hexachord and its transposed retrograde inversion: Db–C–D–Eb–A–Ab / B–Bb–E–F–G–F#. The “Mare III” series is made up of the retrograde and transposed inversion, G#–A–Eb–D–C–C# / F#–G–F–E–A#–B, following the model of Weber’s Symphony op. 21, whose second hexachord corresponds to the retrograde of the first.

Such symmetrical principles affect not only pitch organization but also form. His works — including Canti di liberazione (1951-1955), for choir and orchestra, the Goethe-Lieder (1953), for mezzo-soprano and three clarinets, Requiescant (1957-1958), for mixed choir and orchestra — are all shaped by arch forms. This is particularly evident in Ulisse, whose dramatic structure mirrors the Homeric return. As Dallapiccola confided to psychologist Julius Bahle, the work’s source is found in its climax, rather than its beginning. In Ulisse, this apex of its arched form is “The Kingdom of the Cimmerians,” a scene that has no parallel other than itself.

Dallapiccola had already borrowed Webern’s use of canons for composition, not as a formal device but as a natural consequence of the principles of polyphony. One example is the third song of the Canti di Prigionia (1938-1941). Here, the choir intones a double canon while the instruments unfold a canonical structure around a central mirror point. Another is the fifth movement of Quaderno musicale di Annalibera, “Contrapunctus secundus” — a canon in contrary motion. Another notable example is Sex Carmina Alcaei (1943), for voice and ensemble. Dedicated to the memory of Webern, it is more than an homage to a friend; it expresses “admiration for and indebtedness to the teaching of the master — the composer new among the new.” The polyphonic texture of the Sex Carmina Alcaei serves as a testament to the “treasure” Dallapiccola ascribed to the Viennese composer’s work.⁶

The text of the work consists of ancient Greek poems in Salvatore Quasimodo’s 1940 translation. Though the poems had rigorous metrical and lexical research behind them, they also acquired a political dimension, forming an artistic stand against the vulgarity and barbarism of Nazi ideology:

Those were the years when Europe, surrounded by barbed wire, was rapidly being reduced to a heap of ruins. The sovereign equilibrium emanating from these Greek poems helped me, at least in certain periods, to find comfort amid the relentless disorder that shaped our lives. It allowed me to endure the tragic events of the time and, perhaps, to provide a necessary contrast with the atmosphere of the opera Il Prigioniero, which I was working on at the time.⁷

The structure of the work is as follows:
I. Expositio
II. Canon perpetuus
III. Canones diversi
IV. Canon contrario motu
V. Canon duplex contrario motu
VI. Conclusio

Dallapiccola’s approach to dodecaphony, at its most rigorous in Sex Carmina Alcaei, reveals a fundamentally contrapuntal nature — one that, as Nono observed, led the composer to “construct his music with a developed architectural sense, giving his later works an organicity and logic that finds its resolution in the dodecaphonic vision.”

By the 1950s, Dallapiccola was applying an increasingly precise internal structure to his tone rows, often segmenting them into groups of two to six notes, producing a kind of sui generis variation. For example, in Canti di liberazione, he uses a single melodic cell consisting of notes 7, 8, and 9 of the series; however, through simultaneous transformations, he reveals the vast array of possibilities embedded within this fragment. The structural logic of the row is further emphasized by orchestration, which outlines the counterpoint’s shifting articulations. Timbre itself thus becomes a structuring element of the canonic texture.

A similar example is Cinque canti, whose eight parts are divided in two, following the Renaissance concept of the proportional canon. Meanwhile, the overtly canonic character of Sex Carmina Alcaei gives way to a more abstract serial canon, with increasingly elaborate rhythmic configurations.

Ultimately, any discussion of Dallapiccola’s use of serial techniques and their canonical expressions must acknowledge the underlying humanism of his work. Critical of mystification, he sought new modes of expression, no matter how difficult or utopian, as a way to deepen the dialogue between individuals. Three distinct yet interconnected domains emerged from this pursuit.

1. The first of these is the Hellenic. Bracketing the obvious example of Ulisse (the magnum opus that was, according to Dallapiccola, “the result of my whole life”), there is also Cinque canti, based on a fragment by the Pythagorean philosopher Ion of Chios, the lyric poetry of an anonymous author and of Likymnios of Chios, the Dorian vocabulary and Laconian legends found in Alcman’s songs, and verses by Ibycus of Rhegium, who was recognized in antiquity as a poet of love inspired by nature. Yet the texts Dallapiccola set to music are never academic, esoteric, philologically self-conscious, or nostalgic for some inaccessible past. Instead, Dallapiccola — the son of a professor of classical studies, raised in the spirit of Italian irredentism, and the last heir of the Risorgimento’s tradition of resistance — finds in antiquity an exaltation of humanity’s struggle against overwhelming forces. His choice to engage with the past is profoundly political; it is never an escape, never a respite from the tragic realities of his time.
2. The second is the religious, a prime example of which is Job (1950), a sacred oratorio with a text by Dallapiccola based on the Bible. Other Christian texts he set to music include works by St. Augustine in Canti di liberazione, the book of Matthew in Requiescant, St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians in Parole di San Paolo (1964), and excerpts from the book of Ecclesiastes in Tempus Destruendi — Tempus Aedificandi (1970-1971). Though a believing Christian, Dallapiccola rejected any notion of religion as a means of repression or domination. His works explore faith, charity, and hope — central themes in Il Prigioniero, a work influenced by the tale of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. They also grapple with mystery, redemptive suffering, doubt, the dark night of the soul, and prayer, all of which bear spiritual witness to heightened concerns in the middle of the twentieth century.
3. The third domain is the political, or the power of indignation. For Dallapiccola, musical creation was both an act of commitment and an ethical conquest. Both of these requirements are evident in Canti di Prigionia and Il Prigioniero, which stand as denunciations of intolerance and deprivation of freedom, whether individual or collective. His work speaks against the brutalities of the Spanish Inquisition, the oppression of Istria by the Habsburgs, the racial laws of fascist Italy, and the tragedy of mass extermination in Hitler’s Germany. In his music, the denizens of dungeons, prisons, and camps call for fraternity. In Il Prigioniero, the repeated invocation of “fratello” (brother), sung over a three-note motif, later resonated in the works of Nono and Luciano Berio. And the final word of the opera, libertà (freedom), is uttered not as a triumphant resolution but as a tormented question.

As Giacomo Manzoni writes about Dallapiccola:

The value of his work and presence lies above all in the fact that even in the most tragic moments of recent human history, he maintained his faith in a high and noble ideal of man, believing in the possibility of rediscovering it through art, its truest voice.⁸

^{1. Luigi Dallapiccola, “Sur le chemin du dodécaphonisme” (1950), Paroles et Musique, Paris, Minerve, 1992, pp. 196-197. See also Dallapiccola, “Di un aspetto della musica contemporanea” (1936), Parole e musica, Milan, Il saggiatore, 1980, pp. 207-224, an article not reproduced in the French edition. ↩}

^{2. Dallapiccola, “Encounter with Anton Webern” (14 June 1938, at the premiere of Das Augenlicht), Paroles et Musique, op. cit. (note 1), p. 130. Dallapiccola also met Webern in Vienna on 9 March 1942. ↩}

^{3. See Ernst Krenek, Über neue Musik, Vienna, Verlag der Ringbuchhandlung, 1937; René Leibowitz, Schoenberg et son école, Paris, Janin, 1947; and Josef Rufer, Teoria della composizione dodecafonica, (Dallapiccola’s wife, Laura, collaborated on the translation of the technical terminology), Milan, Il saggiatore, 1962 (Die Komposition mit zwölf Tönen, Berlin/Wunsiedel, Max Hesse, 1952). ↩}

^{4. See Dallapiccola, “Sur le chemin du dodécaphonisme”, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 196-208. ↩}

^{5. “A series is (1) a collection of repeated intervals that (2) ascend, descend, articulate and animate (3) rhythmically, which contains (4) a latent harmony and describes (5) a state of mind that can and does exist independently of the text as well as (6) expression, while also remaining independent of the accompaniment and (7) form; the essence of which is in no way modified by the (8) tonality or (9) performance instrumentation.” Dallapiccola, “Témoignage sur le dodécaphonisme” (Testimony on dodecaphony, 1952), Paroles et Musique, op. cit. (note 1), p. 212, quoting Ferruccio Busoni, “Appunti” (1922), Lo sguardo lieto, Milan, Il saggiatore, 1977, p. 131. ↩}

^{6. Luigi Nono, “Luigi Dallapiccola et les Sex carmina Alcaei” (circa 1948), Écrits, Geneva, Contrechamps, 2007, p. 29. See Webern’s letters to Dallapiccola on 3 June 1942 and 15 April 1944 in Luigi Dallapiccola: Saggi, testimonianze, carteggio, biografia e bibliografia, Milan, Suvini Zerboni, 1975, pp. 66-69. Despite their stylistic differences, Webern emphasizes their “common path” (einen gemeisamen Weg) and thanks Dallapiccola for the dedication of Sex carmina Alcaei: “How proud it makes me! But above all it consoles me and reassures me: how we need such warmth and such friendship today!” ↩}

^{7. Dallapiccola, “Liriche greche” (CBS Epic BC 1088, December 1968), reprinted in Luigi Dallapiccola: Saggi, testimonianze, carteggio, biografia e bibliografia, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 122-123. ↩}

^{8. This is a retranslation from the French, where a source is not cited. ↩}