Gian Francesco Malipiero - Compositions

Compositions

Malipiero had an ambivalent attitude towards the musical tradition dominated by Austro-German composers, and instead insisted on the rediscovery of pre-19th century Italian music.

His orchestral works include seventeen compositions he called symphonies, of which however only eleven are numbered. The first was composed in 1933, when Malipiero was already over fifty years old. Prior to that, Malipiero had written several important orchestral pieces but avoided the word "sinfonia" (symphony) almost completely. This was due to his rejection of the Austro-German symphonic tradition. The only exceptions to that are the three compositions Sinfonia degli eroi (1905), Sinfonia del mare (1906) and Sinfonie del silenzio e della morte (1909–1910). In such early works, the label "symphony" should not, however, be interpreted as indicating works in the Beethovenian or Brahmsian symphonic style, but more as symphonic poems.

When asked in the mid-1950s by the British encyclopedia The World of Music, Malipiero listed as his most important compositions the following pieces:

• Pause del Silenzio for the orchestra, composed in 1917
• Rispetti e Strambotti for the chamber music, 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 would compose additional symphonies in the years after this list was made)

He regarded Impressioni dal vero, for orchestra, as his earliest work of lasting importance.