Clementi Revival

"Dolce, dolcissimo," begged Dr. Sergei Koussevitzky during rehearsal of his Boston Symphony Orchestra one day last week. "It is beautiful music, gentlemen, play it beautifully. . . . Give me the warm Italian sunshine, gentlemen." Three days later Conductor Koussevitzky and his men played this beautiful music so beautifully that a capacity audience in Symphony Hall came near breaking a house rule against applause between movements. What aroused their enthusiasm was the first U. S. performance of a major work by an almost forgotten 18th Century maestro, Muzio Clementi.

Living during 80 years (1752-1832) in which flourished such taller musical giants as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, Italian-born Clementi achieved his fame and wealth in England as a teacher, pianist, conductor and music publisher. He wrote a Gradus ad Parnassum, exercises which some piano students still practice. In Vienna he engaged in a public battle of music with Mozart, the two improvising on the pianoforte, playing at sight and in duets. Listeners called it a draw. When Death came to this able composer, whom Beethoven respected, his most ambitious works--a score of symphonies, some of which he had conducted in London--remained unpublished, the manuscripts in complete disorder.

While Clementi's reputation languished for more than a century, some fragments of his symphonic scores began coming to light. The British Museum acquired one batch in 1871, the Library of Congress another in 1917. Two years ago Alfredo Casella, Italian composer-conductor, went to Washington to do some musical sleuthing. With great difficulty he reconstructed one Clementi symphony from a number of sketches and notes. A Great National Symphony which, surprisingly for its time (1824), contains British folk themes and God Save the King in polyphonic elaboration, Casella put aside for future investigation. Easiest job was to take a Symphony in D Major, most of which was in the Library of Congress, combine it with an introduction and allegro in the same key in the British Museum, pronounce the whole the Second Symphony of Clementi.

This was the one Dr. Koussevitzky performed last week.

Boston critics found the Second Symphony fresh, charming, dashing. Wrote Critic Alexander Williams of the Boston Herald: "Mr. Casella may have wished to please Mussolini by finding a great Italian symphonist for the grandeur of Rome. Instead, and of greater importance, he has enriched the world." Conductor Koussevitzky said sagely: "It is very individual. Even in Beethoven you hear a suggestion of Haydn. In this, Clementi, you hear only Clementi." A final grace note to the Boston performance was a telegram from Bronxville, N. Y. which Dr.

Koussevitzky read aloud: "Best wishes for the Clementi from his great-grand-daughter. Hope you will bring it to New York. (Signed) Cecilia Clementi Pitman."

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