La 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. 

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. 

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 Nietzsche 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. 

Siena Then

It was during one Summer long ago that I first attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. I attended the conducting course run by Sergiu Celibidache and actually took the Italian course run by Siena University.

The conducting course was held in the town theatre.

Celibidache had been conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic before Karajan. Incidentally, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic after Karajan was Claudio Abbado, who had attended Celibidache’s class in Siena.Other people who had been in Siena included Zubin Mehta and Daniel Barenboim.

Celibidache was into Zen Buddhism and would rise early each morning to meditate before classes. He believed that hearing music live can induce a transcendental experience in those present – something I also believe. He therefore reckoned that recordings that did not induce this experience were worthless.

Later, I was present at one of the first rehearsals he did with the London Symphony Orchestra. At the time, the wind section of the LSO was the finest in the world, including Barry Tuckwell on the horn, Gervese de Peyer on clarinet, Anthony Camden on oboe. In one section where the wind section was playing on its own as a group, he stopped conducting. The orchestra played on then stopped looking very puzzled. Anthony Camden asked, “Why did you stop conducting?” The maestro replied, “You were playing so well – you didn’t need me to conduct you”. This reminded me that the best instrumental performers are usually the best listeners. He seemed to get on well with the LSO.

The Accademia Musicale Chigiana was set up by Count Chigi of Saracini. The story went that Count Chigi had no heirs and was devoting his fortune to music. There were scholarships and the fees were tiny. I also believe that the fees for the hostel room in which we stayed were also subsidised by the Count. The teachers were great performers like Segovia on guitar, Fernando Germani on organ, Nicanor Zabaleta on harp plus many others.

Arriving at the hostel was interesting as pianos were being hauled up the stairs for students to use during the course. I was amazed that one man would carry a piano all on his own up the stairs to the room.

Coming from uncultured Britain, we needed a little tutoring in Italian manners. The first lesson in manners was in the student mensa. We were each given a serviette (table napkin or tovagliolo) with a ring and assigned a pigeon hole in which to keep it. They were changed each day. “Only barbarians eat without cloth serviettes!”, said our server. Amongst other useful skills, I learned the correct way to approach a plate of pasta lunga!!! We found out that we could have a really nice shower in a petrol station at the bottom of the hill on which Siena is built. We also learned that the real Italian, as promoted originally by Dante, has only ever been spoken in Siena. (They sure don’t speak it in Firenze!!!)

If the days were stimulating with very individual views on music from Celibidache, the evenings were amazing treats. Count Chigi brought in some of the finest performers in the world who gave concerts in his palace. One interesting feature of the performances was that, at the end of each piece, they would bow to the Count before acknowledging our applause. We had no worries about that. We were so grateful to be able to hear these great players. The only slight annoyance was that the flunky on the door insisted that we were “dressed appropriately” which could be hot in the rather warm Siena Summer evenings.

The funniest feature of living in the hostel was the “eight o’clock chord”.  Students were allowed to practice their instruments in the rooms but only after eight o’clock in the morning. So, at exactly eight o’clock, every instrumentalist in the hostel would play an enormous chord or note and we would rush out to buy fresh rolls for breakfast.

We were in a room next to a student learning the Shostakovitch first cello concerto. So, every morning at eight o’clock, we heard those four notes which begin that piece. And we heard the rest again and again more often that we wanted! When we attended a concert recently with Pieter Wispelwey playing this Shostakovitch concerto, I realised that the solo part was still engraved in my memory!!

Life in Siena back then was a dream. There were hardly any hotels around the city at that time, in fact there were none that I knew of, so any buses which pulled into the campo at lunch would leave before the end of the day. The only time that the city became busy was during the ‘Palio’ times.

Here is a better view of the actual race.

There were many distinguished teachers around. I ‘hung around’ Alfred Cortot’s class one day. This must have been almost his last utterance and I didn’t understand a word but it was Alfred Cortot!!! We heard talk of Pablo Casals still arguing with Gaspar Cassadó despite Yehudi Menuhin persuading Casals to “forgive” Cassadó some years earlier. John Williams, a student in the Guitar class around that time, has recently been very critical of Segovia’s approach to teaching so all was not smooth in the interaction between students and tutors.

The composition course was run by Vito Frazzi whose “scala alternate” represented a considerable musical mountain to scale before students could compose much music. But the film music course was run by Angelo Lavagnino, a much more colourful composer, to say the least.

One day Lavagnino announced to students that the next meeting would be in Cinecittá Studios in Rome where he had a gig in two days time. I immediately changed from the Conducting Course and travelled down to Rome on the back of my friend’s motorbike to the studios where we saw music being added to what seemed to be a slightly risqué film. We also took the opportunity to go down to Casino. Caserta, Amalfi, Cumae, Sperlonga and other places on the way back to Siena.

Cumae was a great experience because of  the acropolis under which the famous Sibyl was said to have resided. Virgil describes the place where the Sibyl prophesied the future and it is possible to work out, from book 6 of the Aenied, where she sat.

Riding away from Cumae, the most strange thing happened. As we rounded a corner, there was a car facing us travelling quite fast. To avoid collision, we went to one side – the LEFT side!! Much to our amazement, the approaching car ALSO went to their left side. The people in the car were also British so had instinctively gone to the left. The sibyl was obviously looking after us all!

Palio week was very busy and it was said that the Count produced sufficiently large bribes to enable our contrada to win the horse race. This meant that there was loud ringing from a huge bell just outside our hostel window for a couple of days.

When the course finished, I sat and watched Celibidache rehearse a single symphony for almost a whole week. He knew exactly what he wanted and the orchestra loved him despite the frequent very direct comments. I do remember one piece of ‘tongue in the cheek’advice to students. “If you stop the orchestra and do not know what to say, just say the second oboe is flat – the second oboe is ALWAYS flat”