“Does none then hear this”? Critical and self-critical remarks on the today’s perception about the music of the Italian fascism
Translation in Greek: Ioannis Fulias
Aim of this paper is a modern appreciation of the music of the Italian fascism, with the noticeable deficiency of serious musicological studies on Ottorino Respighi’s music as a starting point. With further references to Luigi Dallapiccola and Gian Francesco Malipiero, the writer distinguishes the cultural policies of the Italian fascism from the ones that were followed in other major European dictatorships (i.e. Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s U.S.S.R.) at the same period, criticizing the inconsiderate transference from biographical data to aesthetical views, the supposed exclusion of progressive tendencies from the fascist culture, and the idea that a musicological analysis can dispense justice in the musical works of the past. Finally, Flamm also examines cases, in which the research for the music of the totalitarian regimes conceals a suspicious psychological identification of the researcher with his subject-matter, and he warns against the danger of a science that is not necessarily searching for the truth but it mainly serves other purposes.
© Musicology