ABSTRACT
Malipiero’s severity and thoroughness in suppressing so many of his juvenilia may seem strange, in view of the lack of self-criticism evident in some of his later music. Apparently he was more capable of recognizing signs of immaturity in his early compositions than variations in quality from piece to piece after he had achieved a personal style: he once went so far as as to write that he would prefer ‘not to emerge from silence until 1911, with the first Impressioni dal vero; and these should be followed, only after six years, by Pause del silenzio [I]’. 1 So categorical a rejection of almost all his pre-war works, and even (it would seem) of the relatively well-known Impressioni dal vero II of 1914–15, seems excessively harsh – conditioned, no doubt, by his very different creative needs in later periods of his life. Even the highly interesting and personal Poemetti lunari for piano (1909–10), rightly regarded by Prunières 2 as ‘the first work truly characteristic of Malipiero’, were later dismissed by their author as ‘music which refers to something that no longer interests me’. 3
