«Il musicista della libertà»: l’influenza di Béla Bartók nella cultura musicale italiana degli anni Quaranta e Cinquanta del Novecento

Abstract

The political legacy of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók is a crucial theme to understand European culture of the Cold War era. In this article, drawing on Cold War music studies, Bartók’s reception in Italy is investigated for the first time. After the first piano tours in 1920s, the Hungarian composer becomes a champion of musical modernism. He is progressively used by the Fascist regime to resist the cultural and political domination of Nazi Germany (for instance, in 1942 the Teatro alla Scala stages the controversial Bartók’s ballet The Miraculous Mandarin). In the post-war era Bartók constitutes the point of reference of left-wing intellectuals who considered him as «the musician of freedom». Because of the influences of Zhdanovism, of Gramsci’s thought, of the Marshall Plan, and of the Darmstadt School, the Bartokian way became the only available choice to musicologists, choreographers, composers, journalists, and ethnomusicologists. This led to the emergence of a real wave in the years 1945-1955. As the left-wing orientation changed, the Bartokian wave vanished: Bartók «dies» in Italy in 1956, exactly when De-Stalinization begins. After the end of 20th century and of avant-gardes, recent studies on the cultural influences of the Fascism and Communism, which are neither ephemeral nor merely utopian, call upon to reconsider this Bartokian alternative. What is at stake is the opportunity to pluralise the last century and to rewrite its history through music.