ABSTRACT
After Venere prigioniera - written, it should be noted, when he was already seventythree years of age - Malipiero's basic musical vocabulary underwent few further fundamental developments in principle. Moreover it cannot be denied that Fedele d'Amico's comparison (already quoted at the beginning of Chapter XII) of the composer's later output to 'a subdued soliloquy, continuing uninterrupted for years and years, passing from one work to another, apparently always the same' is notably apt where some of the very last works are concerned. Nevertheless D'Amico's remark remains, even for this last period of all, a sweeping simplification of the truth, to which there are many exceptions. To see this clearly, one need only examine the two principal groups of pieces which Malipiero wrote in the later 1950s, and which are our main concern in this chapter and the next: the eight Dialoghi of 1955-7 and the four 'rappresentazioni da concerto' of 1957-60.
