The Ambiguous Reception of Alfredo Casella's Music in Nazi Germany

This chapter explores the fluctuating reception of Alfredo Casella’s music in Germany between 1933 and 1945. As the leading Italian composer of his generation, Casella had always been a divisive figure during the 1920s. Strongly supported by his Viennese publishers Universal Edition and praised in the more enlightened German musical centres, especially for his intensive support for the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), conservative factions were more suspicious of his intentions. This division of opinion, coupled with him being placed on an official blacklist of composers proscribed by the regime, initially scarred his reputation between 1933 and 1935 at a time when efforts were made to accommodate new Italian music into the German repertory alongside closer cultural cooperation between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Indeed, as a result of a spurious rumour that Casella was of Jewish extraction (an accusation he vigorously denied), his music became increasingly marginalised in Germany up to 1936. This situation changed following increased musical exchanges between German and Italian performers and composers in the context of the signing of a pact between Hitler and Mussolini. For his part, Casella capitulated to demands to withdraw from the ISCM, and his music as a consequence enjoyed greater exposure in Germany from 1938 onwards. Thereafter, Casella achieved the most affirmative critical success with his large-scale Sinfonia which was championed by several German orchestras during the 1941/2 season. Yet a careful examination of the score suggests that its unequivocal musical allusions to his early musical idol, Gustav Mahler, whose work was proscribed in both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, reflects his underlying opposition towards state-sponsored anti-Semitism.