Art songs play a prominent role in Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s musical output. Approximately a quarter of his works with opus numbers are devoted to this genre, and many of these pieces were composed early in his career, during his years in Italy. However, he did not turn his attention to American poetry until 1936, when he set verses by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) in I Saw in Louisiana, Leaves of Grass, and Ocean. A just-published volume from Edizioni Curci unites the composer’s twelve Whitman songs for the first time.
Although the cycle was held in high esteem by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, during his lifetime he was only able to publish the first of the three parts which comprise op. 89. As he explains in his autobiography:
Of the Whitman songs, only Louisiana is published, and it is not very well known. I had hoped to publish my settings of Whitman’s poems in America, but I found a regrettable bias against certain aspects of his poetry among American publishers. (He is nonetheless considered America’s first national poet, but only for his patriotic poems). Thus my settings from Leaves of Grass are unpublished (and will probably continue to remain so). It’s such a shame, because these songs are among my best! With these poems, I found a freshness of inspiration and a fervor I had not felt in a long time.
Mario’s 1936 discovery of Whitman’s poetry happened thanks to his physician, Dr. Vincenzo Lapicciarella, who was treating the composer for a bout of depression that he suffered after a period of intense work and fatigue. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s decision to set poems from Leaves of Grass, a cycle that captured the spirit, contradictions, and possibilities of the American democratic experiment, seems in today’s hindsight to have been a premonition, given that three years later he would leave Italy for the United States.
The volume is available in a print edition as well as via the Edizioni Curci digital app.