Is Verdi the Bard of the Risorgimento?

The process of Italian unification, know as the Risorgimento, was a long and arduous process that lead to great struggles in Italy all the way up to the rise of Mussolini in 1921. It was the political and social movement that brought together the waring states of the Italian peninsula, into the single state of the Kingdom of Italy. The whole process began in 1815 with the Vienna and was completed in 1871 when Rome became the capital. However, even though this union was a process of finding an Italian identity, I personally believe that it would be incorrect to call Verdi the Bard of the unification. To call him a bard is stating that all of Verdi’s philosophical, political, and musical thoughts represented the movement that caused the Risorgimento, which I think would be entirely incorrect to suppose. Italy, even after the official unification in 1871, was highly divided and unstable, with 24 Prime Ministers being appointed over a 50-year period, with 9 being appointed in just 11 years. On this first basis I do not think Verdi would have agreed with the outcomes of the Risorgimento and what it achieved, thus I do not believe it is correct to call him the Bard of the movement. Yet, I think the more poignant part of the matter would be to claim that all his music shares some kind of nationalistic quality or tendency, for it to represent the Italian ideology that was being proposed in the period of the Risorgimento. Whilst Verdi may be seen as the great Italian opera composer of the 19^th century, I do not believe that all his music represented the ideals of the Risorgimento, thus making the title of bard inapplicable to Verdi, as to be the bard of any movement or ideal, one must stand by its code and beliefs; I do not consider Verdi as standing by the beliefs of the Risorgimento.             There is however, an identity that can be given to Italian music. Anna Tedesco states in her article that ‘It is an acknowledged fact that opera was born in Italy at the beginning of the 17th century’¹ and that it was ‘exported to the entire European continent, including Russia and the to North and South America.’² When we consider Opera and its national relation, whilst French and German composers such as Wagner, Bizet and others may have been proprietors of Opera in their own rights, Opera’s true heritage lay very much in the Italian musical tradition. Even Beethoven, the great Germanic composer of the early 19th century only completed one Opera, to varying success. Thus, it can easily be stated that Opera has clear Italian links, and many receivers of the art form in the general populous would often relate it to the Italian style which was dominant in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, such a link to the country does not necessarily give the piece nationalistic links, or even links to the Risorgimento. Taruskin in the New Grove entry for Nationalism states that ‘Nationality is a condition; Nationalism is an attitude’³. I would claim that any assertion of Opera’s general links to Italy would lie in the relation of Opera to Italy’s National sentiment and could be claimed as part of their Nationality; it does not link it to such a concept as Nationalism. Benedict Anderson discusses the idea of Nationalism further in his book Imagined Communities, where he says that ‘Spread of nationalism fostered by rise of print culture, which made possible an ‘imagined community’: press enabled a community beyond a literate individual’s personal range of acquaintances to encompass a publication’s entire potential readership, united by language.’⁴ Thus, it could be assumed that a nationalist movement such as the Risorgimento was born not out of the music that it used, but of the links that others devised. Through the use of the Italian Nationality being manipulated to fit an end goal, Nationalism grew. Once it was plausible to call composers, writers, and artists like Verdi “Italian”, they could be used to form a propaganda, which would cause a plausible understanding of why Verdi could be asserted as the Bard of the Risorgimento; his music was manipulated as part of the Italian Nationality to work on the side of the Nationalistic sentiment of the Risorgimento. Anna Tedesco, National Identity, National Music and Popular Music in the Italian Music Press during the Long 19^th Century, Akademiai Kiado, December 2011_­Ibid.‘Nationalism’ Article, New Grove Online, 2001Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 1983 It is worthwhile looking at more modern sources to see the reasons of Verdi being called the ‘Bard of the Risorgimento’. The Fascist movement in the 1920’s utilised Verdi’s music for their own goals, playing on the use of Verdi as a Risorgimento figure only 50 years prior. Tedesco refers to an article by the writer Remo Giazotto called “Popolo e valutazione artistica” in which he stated that ‘The Italian fascist attests the flavour of his country in Verdi’s music. We have won the battle of wheat; now we can eat bread made entirely of our own wheat. Verdi’s music is all our own (…) Music-soil; a duo whose meaning we exalt.’⁵ Giazotto refers to Verdi’s music as that of the fascists, if not the whole Italian state. In the same article, he even states that people love him as much ‘as a man loves and respects his father.’⁶ This is extensive idolisation of Verdi, which might suggest that Verdi was the perfect figure for the Nationalist movements of both the Risorgimento and the Fascist agenda only 50 years apart. However, I would suggest that Verdi being named as a Bard of the Risorgimento would require his own consent to this titling. As I stated previously, I do not think that his political, philosophical, or musical intentions fall far enough in line with that of what the Risorgimento is suggesting. Further to this, I think Giazotto makes a valid point calling Verdi’s music the music of the people. It suggests that for the piece to be Nationalist, it requires the involvement of the recipient of the music, and their approval of it to represent them. But whilst the people might approve of Verdi’s music representing the Italian Nationalist movement, it doe not mean that an assertion of Verdi as the Bard of the Risorgimento is an accurate title to apply to the composer.             It is important to consider the musical heritage from which Verdi originated. He was heavily inspired by many other composers, particularly in certain works. His Opera Rigoletto is a perfect example of this. First performed in Teatro la Fenice in Venice on March 11^th 1853, the story is set in 16^th century Mantua. In Kobbe’s book of Opera, Rigoletto is stated to be ‘a distinguished opera. Composed in forty days in 1851, it still retains its vitality. Twenty years, with all they imply in Anna Tedesco, National Identity, National Music and Popular Music in the Italian Music Press during the Long 19^th Century, Akademiai Kiado, December 2011Ibid. experience and artistic growth, lie between Rigoletto and Aida.’⁷ I think it is important that this distinction is made between Verdi’s works; in a composer’s career there is always growth and development as their expressional and harmonic language develops. With this in mind, it becomes difficult to assert that a composer is able to stand for an entire movement of music. A composer’s style, aesthetic circumstance, and his or her receptions occur differently throughout their careers. If the composer, like the artist and the writer, is consistently changing and evolving, the music of the composer cannot represent a political movement, as political movements are based upon relatively simple principles which form a foundation to the movement. Regarding Verdi, I think it would be an error to call him the Bard of the Risorgimento, as this would require all of his music to represent the nationalistic movement that occurred within Verdi’s lifetime, and I would assert that this is simply not the case. Gary Tomlinson, talking about Rigoletto, reinforces this point, saying that ‘This convergence in Verdi’s Rigoletto of Hugo’s dramatic and Donizetti’s melodramatic ideals marks the opera as the artistic consummation of the second phase of Italian Romanticism, the phase initiated by Mazzini and others around 1830.’⁸ Tomlinson is describing the opera as the culmination of lots of different previous styles and how Verdi coalesced them into one Opera. Whilst one could argue that this bringing together of the greatest elements of Italian would promote Verdi to the status of Bard of the Risorgimento, as it shows his prowess of taking Italian ideals and unifying them in music, I would think this an unfounded position. Verdi is taking influence from his predecessors and pushing the concepts that they used further than ever before. Tomlinson talks further, stating that ‘Rigoletto breathed the spirit of reforms conceived and freedoms won twenty years earlier. It was the result of a melding of aesthetic and political concerns articulated then, an alloy undoubtedly more lustrous than either of its components, but nonetheless dependent on their special qualities for its strength.’⁹ Again, Tomlinson describes the opera like a combination of many different parts, the influence of Kobbe’s Complete Book Of Opera, Edited and Revised by the Earl of Harewood, Putnam and Company, London, 1969Gary Tomlinson, Italian Romanticism and Italian Opera: An Essay in their Affinities, University of California Press, 1986Ibid. the aesthetic and cultural demands on opera that Verdi in a sense had to bow down to. Nevertheless, the fact that this opera is a culmination still shows how the idea of Nationalist movement cannot be applied to a musician or any artist, as their work develops; it is attempting to apply a flexible object to an absolute principle. Such attempts are not worthwhile as I consider the two entirely incompatible.             Finally, it is important to consider whether music itself can represent any form of political movement. I have already argued that people suppose a use on music, giving it an aesthetic, rather than the music itself assuming an aesthetic. We will often apply a relation to an object because psychologically, we believe it is appropriate to suppose a link between two abstract things. Schumann commented on this, saying that ‘Just as Italy has its Naples, France its revolution, England its navy, etc., the Germans have their Beethoven symphonies’¹⁰ Schumann is showing how people link things in the abstract with another thing in the abstract. For example, France does not own the idea or principle of revolution, but at Schumann’s time, France had such political turmoil that the name of the country almost became synonymous with the political action of uprising. However, this does not mean that we are being accurate with making these arbitrary links. The same can be said for Verdi’s music; just because the work was written by an Italian composer with Italian heritage, it does not necessitate the link between Verdi’s music and it being nationalist. I would claim that most of his music is just music in its own right, with no arbitrary links being required. I have already spoken about the way that music can be manipulated into propaganda, but that propaganda is formed due to perception and reception of the music by the audiences, both home nation and of other nations. By a crowd in London classing Verdi’s music as “Foreign” or “Italian” rather than just music, it takes an identity which has been forced upon it, an identity that I do not believe is appropriate. Carl Dahlhaus states that ‘Without a picture to pinpoint a milieu, or a caption to suggest a country of Schumann in 1839; quoted and translated in Daniel Beller-Mckenna, Brahms and the German Spirit (Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 8. origin, the ethnic elements inserted into a European art composition are seldom distinctive enough to be pinned down to a particular locale, except perhaps in the case of certain dances.’¹¹ This suggests that there is nothing truly in a piece of European music that would give it any ethnic origin, unless a certain dance form or folk tune is implemented. Whilst Verdi may have used such techniques, his techniques used to format his Opera come from years of prior development across the country. As Tomlinson suggested earlier, much of Verdi’s work was a culmination of previous composers, including an influence originating from other areas of the continent. Therefore, it becomes almost ridiculous to suggest that Verdi’s music represents Italy or Italian unification as such a supposition would mean that his music would have to be inherently Italian; such a definition would be difficult to apply to any musician, let alone Verdi.             Therefore, I would reaffirm that it is an incorrect term to call Verdi the Bard of the Risorgimento. Whilst it may be accurate to say that Verdi is idolised by many Italians as a great composer, and one of the Greats of the Operatic world, I think linking all of his works to the movement that led to Italian Unification in 1870, a movement that had deep rooted political and nationalist sentiments would be inaccurate. Further to this, I think an assumption that music can represent political ideology is a cognitive jump that shouldn’t be considered; music can depict things, but such depictions are at the pure speculation of the recipient of the music. It is the difficulty of interpretation and the subjective nature of music that makes the idea of applying music to any form of political representation difficult. Text may simplify things, but in the abstract forms of the looser, romantic stories of Opera, or the great symphonies written by many composers in the 19^th century, one cannot assert one, objective meaning. Music is an art form that is up to interpretation, and whilst some universals may occur, such as a minor key represent sorrow or sadness, the greater in- Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, University of California Press, 1989 depth understanding of a work is up to the individual to decide. Therefore, I consider it totally inaccurate to call Verdi the Bard of the Risorgimento, as it requires his music to have an objective meaning, an opinion that I do not believe is accurate to the true nature of music.