Memories stirred by Vito’s Scala Alternata

Vito’s Scale Alternata

I have recently undertaken what appears to be an impossible task. It involves composing with Vito Frazzi’s “Scala Alternata”. This comes after some research into linear harmony which produced diminished chords from this scale. The story about this “Scala alternata” goes back to the year 1961. But before this comes a little background.

I arrived at University after too long at a terrible military school which happily seems to have improved considerably since I was there. They now all wear “dressups” in gorgeous uniforms and, for some reason, the drum major even wears a bearskin! Here’s Prince Harry visiting the place. https://www.youtube.com/embed/RhMvVwR_Uos?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

I escaped some of the awfulness by joining the chapel choir which enabled me to miss church parades then I joined the band which meant that I could march up and down the parade ground enjoying playing music while the rest of the school stood still for about an hour during the weekly Trooping of the colour ceremony. This could be difficult on occasions. For example, we once marched up and down, playing the same Sousa march for over an hour non-stop, while the rest of the school marched in a huge circle after the RSM told the school that we all looked like a “shower”! 

I remember arriving at College. Having to share a room during the first year,  before having a room in hall, seemed a hardship for many students but, for me, it was a luxury having shared a dormitory room for so many years with 19 other school kids while I was at school. 

It was SO delightful in that shared room that I smashed a fresh egg on the wall above my bed. I then announced to the astonished company, “THAT is my past life!” I was determined to appreciate the fact that I was in such a civilised environment at last! It seems crazy now but I remember that it remained there for the whole of my first year. It was reported to my moral tutor who must have understood where I was coming from. In fact, that “moral tutor” always sent me his best wishes when he ran the Royal Institution. Chancellor Merkel, a fellow physicist, flew over to Cambridge for his 80th birthday after he was Master of Peterhouse in Cambridge. 

But it was the ability to enjoy music and talk to fellow students about music which made me happy. I made some extra cash by becoming a lay clerk in the cathedral, playing in the local jazz club and in a 16 piece big band later. My rough “military” clarinet playing earned me a place in the College orchestra, but it was even more pleasing to be invited by a friend who was a genuine Music student to accompany him to a course at the Academia Chigiana in Siena. 

We shared a room in the student hall and had our own tavaglioli slots in the student Mensa. My friend was studying composition and I signed on to study Italian in the university and the conducting class with Celibidache. That is where we both learned of the “Scala Alternata” from Vito Frazzi who was in charge of the Composition Course. 

Although Vito Frazzi had taught Dallapiccola, it seemed to us that composition using this “Scala Alternata” was almost impossible so it didn’t take much thought to enable my friend to leave the Vito Frazzi’s music composition course and join the Film Music Composition course run by a rather innovative man called Angelo Francesco Lavagnino. 

Then the film music course moved down to Cine Cittá as Lavagnino had booked the sound stage for a film and that could not be cancelled. So the film music course moved to Rome with him. I also left Celibidache for a while and travelled with my friend to  Cine Cittá.

It was a revelation seeing the way that Lavagnino worked. Besides more conventional instruments, he used a number of prepared keyboard instruments and percussion in a very approachable manner. We had been used to these instruments being employed in avant grade environments but here they were being used in a very descriptive manner blending with other more conventional instruments and voices in the film music. https://www.youtube.com/embed/JyC_Vzwe9kc?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

After sessions in Cine Cittá we drove down to some beautiful places south of Rome like Casino and Caserta but passing through Naples as quickly as possible to the place on the present “Amalfi Drive” where Neitsche is said have spoken to his superman Wagner for the last time after announcing that he had decided to compose a religious opera. We stayed in a hostel nearby. 

We then travelled up the coast stopping at some interesting places; for example Cumae where Aeneas consulted the Sybil in book 6 of the Aeneid. It was while we were driving too fast down a lane from Cumae that a miracle happened. We turned a corner to find a car approaching us far too fast. (It must have been the wine!) We both tried desperately to avoid a collision driving to the LEFT of each other instinctively. Amazingly, the oncoming driver was English! Had the oncoming driver been Italian, there would have been a very bad collision. After that shock, we continued very steadily up the coast then past Rome to travel along the hill roads back to Siena. So I returned to Celibidache to learn how to make the basses play pianissimos using just one hair of the bow and join in his reorchestration of Schumann symphonies.

My subsequent slight knowledge of Italian enabled me to get the job of translator for the British delegation attending the “Italia Sessantuno” that year. After the student Mensa, it was good to be eating well in the top hotels around Torino before returning to Physics in the UK.