ABSTRACT
The poignantly contemplative mood epitomized in the fourth of the Cinque studi per domani, from which I quoted at the end of the previous chapter, was to reappear again and again in the slower music of Malipiero’s last productive decade. His highly personal brand of chromaticism, which had played an increasingly prominent part in his works during 1948–54 before bursting into full bloom in 1955 in Veriere prigioniera, had by 1960 settled down to become an habitual way of thinking, even a routine. Even in the weaker works of his last years this chromaticism always has the effect of ‘sensitizing’ every note it touches, with a total result that is not quite like anything else in music but which by no means always produces the clear outlines and memorable motifs that were such conspicuous features of the Cinque studi per domani, as of most of the Dialoghi before them. On the contrary, that risk of diffuseness in the bad sense, which the Studi per domani so successfully avoided, was to become a serious liability in quite a number of the very last works, although there are notable exceptions right through to the end.
