Aldo Clementi - Counterpoint Music Library Services

Aldo Clementi (Catania 1925) began his piano studies at thirteen, and received his diploma in 1946 under the guidance of Giovanna Ferro, a student of Alfredo Casella. In 1947, Clementi attended Pietro Scarpini's master class in piano at Siena.
At the age of sixteen he started studying composition in Catania, and continued his studies thereafter with Alfredo Sangiorgi (who had studied with Schoenberg in Vienna in 1922-23), who introduced him to the technique of twelve-tone composition (Catania-Bolzano 1945-1952). From 1952 to 1954 he studied in Rome with Goffredo Petrassi and under his guidance he graduated.
From 1955 to 1962, he attended the courses at Darmstadt, where his Tre Studi for chamber orchestra (1956-57), Composizione n. 1 for piano (1957) and Triplum (1960) were performed.
Clementi's meeting in 1956 with Bruno Maderna, whose acquaintance revealed to him horizons hitherto unknown, marked a decisive turning point in his musical thought. Attendance at the Studio of Phonology in Milan (1956-62) constituted another fundamentally important stage in his development, and it was there that he composed Collage 2 (1960), Collage 3 (Dies Irae) (1967), and Collage 4 (Jesu, meine Freude) (1979).
The first performance of a work by Clementi took place at Vienna in 1947 (Poesia di Rilke, 1946) with soprano Lydia Stix and pianist Erik Werba.
The first important performance of a Clementi piece after the completion of his studies in composition was that of Cantata, set to a fragment by Calderon de la Barca (1954), broadcast by the Hamburg Radio in 1956 as part of the cycle "Das neue Werk".
In 1959 he won second prize in the ISCM competition with Episodi (1958) and in 1963 he was awarded first prize in the same competition for Sette scene (1961).
In 1961 a work based on visual material by Achille Perilli (Collage) was presented in Rome at the Accademia Filarmonica Romana.
His opera Interludi. Musica per il Mito di Eco e Narciso was staged in 1992 during the "Orestiadi" Festival in Gibellina and was awarded the 1992 Abbiati Prize.
The Scala Theatre commissioned him a new opera, Carillon.
From 1971 to 1992 he taught music theory at the University of Bologna (DAMS); he is often invited to give lectures and composition courses.

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