Camillo Togni

Camillo Togni (18 October 1922 – 28 November 1993) was an Italian composer, teacher, and pianist. Coming from a family of independent means, he was able to pursue his art as he saw fit, regardless of changing fashions or economic pressure.

Life

Togni was born in

Michelangeli introduced him in 1938 to the music of Arnold Schoenberg, which affected him profoundly and caused him to develop a tremendous interest in the Second Viennese School. During the war, he gained access to Schoenberg's scores through Luigi Rognoni [it], with whom he was studying. By 1940, Schoenberg's influence was clearly at work in Togni's Prima serenata for piano, and his new-found technique came to full flower in the Variazioni for piano and orchestra (1945–46), with which he made his compositional debut at the 1946 Venice Festival of Contemporary Music^{[2][page needed]}. In 1949, together with Luigi Dallapiccola and Bruno Maderna, he addressed the First International Dodecaphonic Congress in Milan. From 1951 to 1957 he attended the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt, but he found the turn toward aleatoricism there, beginning in 1957, alien to his nature, and did not return until he was invited back in 1990.

From 1960 to 1961, he taught courses on contemporary music at the University for Foreigners in Florence. From 1977 to 1988 he held the chair of the Advanced Course in composition at the Conservatory in Parma. Starting in 1989 he taught the special courses in composition at the School of Music in Fiesole.

Amongst the most widely admired works from his post-Darmstadt period are the

Togni's music can be heard in labels such as Naxos, Stradivarius, and Bongiovanni.

Principal works

• Variazioni, for piano and orchestra, Op. 27 (1946)
• Tre capricci, for piano, Op. 38 (1954–57)
• Fantasia concertante, for flute and strings (1957)
• Helian di Trakl, cycle of five Lieder for soprano and chamber ensemble (words of Georg Trakl) (1955)
• Gesang zur Nacht, for contralto and instrumental ensemble (words of Georg Trakl) (1962)
• Recitativo for tape (1961)
• Rondeaux per dieci, for soprano and instrumental ensemble (words of Charles d'Orleans) (1963)
• Three Preludes for harpsichord (1963–75)
• Quarto Capriccio, for piano (1969)
• Blaubart, lyric opera (1972–75) (a companion piece to
  Duke Bluebeard's Castle)^{[clarification needed}
  ]
• Für Herbert, for two violins, viola, and harpsichord (1976)
• Some other where, for orchestra (1977)
• String Trio, for violin, viola and cello (1978)
• Quasi una serenata, for guitar (1979)
• Barrabas, lyric opera (1981–85)
• Permaila for flute and piano (1982)
• Quinto Capriccio, for piano (1987)
• Sesto Capriccio, for piano (1991)
• Concerto for piano and orchestra (1989–93, unfinished; completed 2004 by Paulo de Assis)

• Anon. n.d.""Camillo Togni: Biography"". Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2006-09-03. . Italian Composers Website.
• Bortolotto, Mario [it; fr]. 1964. "Italy: New Music at Palermo", translated by David L. Burrows. Perspectives of New Music 2, no. 2 (Spring–Summer): 159–63.
• Osmond-Smith, David. 2001. "Togni, Camillo." The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.

Footnotes

Further reading

• Bortolotto, Mario. 1965. "The New Music in Italy", translated by William C. Holmes. The Musical Quarterly 51, no. 1 (January): 61–77. Reprinted in Contemporary Music in Europe, edited by Paul Henry Lang and Nathan Broder, 61–77. New York: W. W. Norton, 1965.
• Fearn, Raymond. 1997. "Camillo Togni: Blaubart" in: Italian Opera Since 1945. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
  ISBN 90-5755-002-4
• Osmond-Smith, David. n.d. "Camillo Togni."
  Grove Music Online
  edited by Laura Macy (Accessed 31 August 2006) (Subscription access)
• Smith Brindle, Reginald. 1956. "The Lunatic Fringe III: Computational Composition". The Musical Times 97, no. 1361 (July): 354–56.

External links

• Profile,
  Naxos Records