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In fascist Italy
In Italy, therefore, except form some sporadic concession, silence was continuing.
And his influent friendships, the innumerable and indefatigable letters addressed to Ministers, newspapers and theatre were of no avail. At every request of performance, the answer was always and kindly one: no thanks we are not interested in your operas.
Even on the occasion of the “First Exhibition on the Italian twentieth-century”, held in Bologna during the spring of 1927, where 57 Italian composers were called, Gnecchi was excluded, giving rise to the indignation of many German critics.
By now the Gnecchi case was not referred only to the relation between Cassandra/Elektra but to the musician figure same; the small number of supporters had to sharpen the weapons to fight not only against the detractors (headed by Alceo Toni), who considered the composer a dilettante, but against a whole musical circle, which showed absolute indifference or, in any case, a prevented hostility against any musical creation that did not belong to the gender of the most expected tradition of the Italian melodrama.
And it was actually against said ambience that the passionate interventions of a small group of critics moved. After Mario Nordio it was the turn of the critic Mario Barbieri who, through new documents, reopened in his own manner the “telepathic” question raised twenty three years earlier by Tebaldini on the pages of the “Rivista Musicale Italiana” same.
The last important intervention on the case, prepared with sincere devotion by Francesco Balilla Pratella, titled “Lights and Shadows – For an Italian Musician ignored in Italy” – published in 1933 by the publishing house De Santis, was decisive.
The idea of writing a book including all the most significant reviews of concerts with Gnecchi operas was of the Milan composer same , and it is deemed as the only and final proof of his real value and of his deep faith in music which had inspired everyone of his notes.
At the beginning of the Thirties , Gnecchi found an agreement with the German critic Rudolf Hartmann , proposing to him the idea of the book. The sudden interruption of their relationship though, brought to the definition of new terms for the book with Francesco Balilla Pratella in February 1933: his work was essentially a work of reorganization, arrangement and discreet comment of the vast amount of material collected through the years by Gnecchi.
Up to now, Pratella book’s contribution remains the most important document on Vittorio Gnecchi vicissitudes since, even taking into account all the reserves that may rise from such a defensive-documentary project, it portrays with bare lucidity a precious view on the critics of the time.
He was, after all, an honest witness of his misfortune, firmly intentioned to report always both positions in favour or against his art, convinced of being on the side of reason, presenting newspapers as the only witnesses.
Salzburg and Europe
With the passage of time, as we have seen, Italy forgot completely Vittorio Gnecchi music – and person. It was Austria, instead, which took the position of homeland of adoption , and in particular the enlightened city of Salzburg , showing him immediately a particular affection.
In 1932 Joseph Messner, choirmaster of the Choir of Salzburg Cathedral, commissioned the composition of a Mass to him: the Missa Salinburgensis was born , an opera that showed its importance not only within the creative harvest of Gnecchi, but for the panorama same of Italian holy music and for the history same of Salzburg music tradition.
Performed for the first time in Salzburg Cathedral on the 23rd of July 1933, conducted by Messner same (solo voice was the Vienna soprano Erika Rokita), and dedicated in sign of gratitude to the whole city of Salzburg, in person of his Prince Archbishop, the Missa renewed an old and illustrious tradition , inspiring itself to the leitmotiv of Paul Hofhaymer (1459-1537) Chorale, repeated everyday by the carillon of the city Fortress.
Gnecchi’s Missa raised the enthusiasm of the international newspapers, which cheered it as one of the most interesting modern opera of holy music.
The critic Karl Neumayr closed with these words his long review on the concert: ”the 23rd of July 1933 represents a milestone in the history of Salzburg Cathedral Choir. Since Gnecchi’s Missa Salisburgensis is the most important holy music work of new Italy, and it is also the first great opera that the immortal Italian genius, after the enlivened “Messa di Benevoli” (1628), has dedicated to Salzburg Cathedral”.
Since then Gnecchi was regularly invited in Salzburg, during the period that was – it must not be forgotten – the golden age for the Festival.
It was, for instance, important the concert held in the following summer, when on the 12th of August 1934 , his “ Cantata biblica” was performed as an absolute premiere, always at the Cathedral during the Salzburger Festspiele, conducted by Joseph Messner with, among the interpreters, the famous soprano Stella Roman and the baritone Giuseppe Manachini.
Salzburg remembered him also after the war, and already in 1948 the Missa– in the program with Fauré requiem- was re-proposed on the stage of the Mozarteum, still conducted by Messner; and the following year his new ballet Atalanta was welcomed .
It must not be forgotten that during all these years the real king of Salzburg musical life was Richard Strauss same; it appears, therefore, even more strange that the only Italian composer often present in the Festival programs next to great names such as Palestrina, Rossini e Verdi , was Vittorio Gnecchi same, although – while Strauss was alive – only with holy music.