«Non posso, non devo, non voglio». Il Maestro Pizzetti nella “lega” dei modernisti

The essay traces the artistic and ideological profile of Ildebrando Pizzetti in the years between 1910 and 1925, as the members of the so-called “generazione dell’Ottanta” undertook to carry out their program for the renewal of Italian music. Through close reading of unpublished correspondences, preserved in the Pizzetti Archive of the Istituto Treccani, it is possible to shed light on the composer’s thought and the contradictions of the group: whilst Mali­piero dreams of a “league” of young musicians, which advances compact and combative, the author of Fedra chooses the path of a disenchanted individualism and, in a paper entitled La «Senzatetto» (The homeless), expresses his distrust towards the strategies of cultural activism. These divergences will break out with the arrival of Alfredo Casella, revealing a deeper contrast, which involves the plane of compositional techniques and the corresponding aesthetics. The second part of the essay tracks down the presence of Pizzetti within the Società Nazionale di Musica, from the hesitant, almost forced, adhesion, to the refusal of any collaboration with colleagues, who were accused of futurism. Besides the examination of the reasons of friction between Casella and Pizzetti, a critical perspective that highlights the similar background of the two composers is nonetheless suggested: supporting the view of the Vocian thinker Bastianelli, they both share a problematic relationship with musical modernity, which oscillates between openness and conservative reaction.