Giuseppe Martucci

In his youth Martucci studied piano and composition at the Naples Conservatory. He was a pupil of Cesi (a former student of Thalberg) for the piano and Martucci was a pupil of Serrao for composition. At the age of fifteen he was ordered by his father to stop his formal studies of music and to begin a serious concert vocation. He was praised early by both Liszt and Rubenstein and the early repertoire of Martucci included pieces by J.S. Bach, Scarlatti, Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. This came to a halt when he was twenty four years old having been appointed a professor of music at the Naples Conservatory. In the following year he took up the baton for a successful conducting career that included a performance commemorating Wagner's death and the premiere of "Tristan und Isolde." As the director of the Liceo Muocale in Bologna the extent of his musical literature demonstrated great depth including compositions by Brahms and Wagner. For his last concert conducted in Naples, a year before his death, he brought Debussy's "Prelude a l-apres-midi d'un faune" when most Italians did not yet know the name of this composer. As a writer of music, Martucci was one of the most important Italian instrumental composers during the reign of the Italian operatic tradition. His maturity was illustrated in intimate chamber pieces where he was not inhibited by formal structures and was able to give free expression to his lyric and impulsive ideas. Comparisons have been made between the styles of Martucci, Elgar and Faure but his style remained clearly Italian. In his larger orchestral works Martucci was able to marshall a synthesis of Schumann's light Romanticism with the harmony of Brahms. The Second Symphony stands out as his signature orchestral work containing melodic strains and reflectively laden passages. It has been claimed that Martucci brought orchestral music back to the pallete of Italian composition. ~ Keith Johnson