L'“armonia modernissima”: La ricerca teorica nell'Italia del primo Novecento

The revival of theoretical speculation in Italy in the early 20th c. was marked by the rise of several periodicals. Theoretical studies appeared in the Rivista musicale italiana, in periodicals such as La critica musicale (founded in Florence by the musician and journalist Luigi Parigi), and in literary periodicals such as La voce and Lacerba (which featured writings by the futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella and the critic Giannotto Bastianelli). There was also an increase in the publishing of treatises, texts, or leaflets of various kinds, typified by Gino Bellìo's Saggio di alcuni speciali criteri applicabili alla tecnica della composizione musicale (Firenze: Officina grafica, 1908). Until the 1930s, most of these writings were concerned with chords, the division of the octave, the return to the ancient models, microintervals and nontempered systems, and modernist empiricism gravitating around Alfredo Casella.