In Defense of Marginalized Music: Pirandello from the 1910s through the 1930s

In Pirandello’s theoretical writings music is the language of modernity , because it stimulates man’s creativity to the maximum, producing “unimagined images that can be as terrible as those of nightmare, as mysterious and changeable as those of dreams” (Saggi, poesie, scritti vari). On the other hand, in his works of fiction Pirandello depicts the contemporary reality where the importance of music has been questioned, mirroring the general crisis of the arts in the Twentieth Century commercialized society: the Italian Opera, that established national identity, seems superannuated to wagnerian musicians who, in the pirandellian short story titled Musica vecchia , mocks the operistic intense expressiveness, and ridicule Icilio Saporini, old music teacher , yet linked to a romantic, departed world . In another tale , Leonora addio, the opera theatre means mundanity and moral licence for the main character, Mommina, who identifies with the fictional universe of librettos to such an extent that she can’t recognize the reality: forced to reclusion by a madly suspicious husband, she acts again, as by a distorting mirror , the same dramas of jealousy and violence she had seen on the stage. The story of Mommina is then converted in piece (Questa sera si recita a soggetto) by Dr. Hinkfuss; his critic’s glance further disassembles the inner workings of this theatre’s fascination, in a series of Chinese boxes that show the hidden untruth of the operatic world . The real music survives in confined spaces, in an underground dreary cafe where Zuccarello distinto melodista performs, or in the workhouse of Serafino Gubbio operatore novel; in this liminar place a brilliant mute violinist is self exiled to avoid a repetitive and alienating job, or a dishonourable performance in monstruos duet with a player piano. Main character’s double , the man with a violin refuses to nullify himself in a machinery , that is the Serafino’s tragic destiny, reduced to man/ crank handle; so the violinist’s art is saved for few but precious moments in the plot, as Zuccarello’s singing, nailed to a modest “distinzione” . The survival of true art firstly descends by the dissolution of traditional genres and means of communication, secondly is subjected to a replacing and redrafting in its social context, according to avantgardes’ poetic, while in open controversy with Dannunzian superomismo and Wagnerism