Sinigaglia, Leone

Leone Sinigaglia
(b. Turin, 14 August 1868 – d. Turin 16. May 1944)

Lamento in memoria di un giovane artista (Natale Canti)

Preface
Together with Sgambati (1841 – 1914), Martucci (1856 – 1909) and Bossi (1861 – 1925), Leone Sinigaglia is in the first wave of Romantic Italian composers to resist the lure of the opera house and concentrate on writing chamber and symphonic works. As such, these figures prepared the way for the better-known ‘Generation of the 1880s’ – Alfano, Respighi, Casella, Malipiero and Pizzetti – to revive what they saw as the true legacy of Italian instrumental music.

Sinigaglia was born into a highly cultured upper middle-class milieu in Turin. Friends of the family included prominent representatives of the arts and the sciences, notably the scientist Galileo Ferraris, the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, and the sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi – the dedicatee of several of Sinigaglia’s compositions. Sinigaglia was well educated, spoke French, German and English, and went on to study law at university. He was also an accomplished climber who detailed his pioneering ascents of peaks in the Dolomites in his book Ricordi di arrampicate nelle Dolomiti 1893-1895 published in Italy in 1896 and in an English version (Climbing Reminiscences of the Dolomites), two years later. His early musical training in violin, piano and composition took place at Turin’s Liceo Musicale under the tutelage of Giovanni Bolzoni and Federico Buffaletti. Some songs, piano pieces and chamber works date from this time. He made numerous visits to Milan and there was befriended by Puccini, Catalani and Bazzini; it was Bazzini who advised the young composer that he should travel to other European cultural centres if he wished to mature.

In 1894 Sinigaglia moved to Vienna where he became one of Brahms’s intimate circle and studied composition with Eusebius Mandyczewski. From these years came many songs and a Violin Concerto Op.20, dedicated to Arrigo Serato. Around 1900, through his contacts with the Bohemian String Quartet he met Dvořák in Prague and became his pupil for nine months. Dvořák demonstrated to the Italian the possibility of incorporating folk music into symphonic works. An immediate consequence of this was his Rapsodia piemontese Op.26 for violin and orchestra, much played by Fritz Kreisler in the version for violin and piano. On his return to Turin in 1901 Sinigaglia began a decade of transcribing Piedmontese folksongs that resulted in a collection of some 500 melodies. He found many of these in the hills around Cavoretto, a village to the southwest of Turin where he had enjoyed holidaying since childhood. He arranged the songs for voice and piano, and incorporated the melodies in the orchestral Danze piemontesi (1905) and the suite Piemonte Op.35 (1905). Toscanini – to whom the suite was dedicated – featured it and other of Sinigaglia’s works in his concerts. The overture based on Goldoni’s play Le Baruffe Chiozzotte Op.32 (1907) and the Piedmont-inspired orchestral works were widely played by other great conductors such as Barbirolli and Furtwängler, and these remain his best-known compositions. Two sonatas, for ‘cello and piano (Op.41) and for violin and piano (Op.44) represent the finest of his chamber music output. Sinigaglia’s productivity slowed after 1912, so much so that only eight more pieces came from his pen after this date. It is difficult to gauge why there is such a falling off; from 1907 he was employed as a professor by the Milan Conservatoire, but beyond that little is known of his personal life. He appears to have travelled a lot and he maintained an active correspondence with composers and performers. As a Jew, Sinigaglia’s final years were anxious ones, as the tide of anti-Semitic feeling and legislation overtook Italy. Taking refuge in the Mauriziano Hospital in Turin he suffered a fatal heart attack on 16th May 1944 at the moment of his arrest by Nazi police…

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