Pietro Mascagni
Romanze inedite
edited by Patrizia Balestra
(Vocal chamber music, 9)

XXVIII, 32 p.; 29,7 x 21 cm 
Intro and Apparatus in English and Italian

The first two songs in this collection were composed in Leghorn: Piccola Elegia, in 1879, when Mascagni was sixteen years old and was attending the local Istituto Musicale; XXVII Postuma di Lorenzo Stecchetti in 1884. While sojourning in Cerignola, in 1887-1888, Pietro Mascagni wrote Astro immortal risplende, dedicated to Giuseppe Cannone, the mayor of Cerignola; and Deh non fuggir sì rapida, which was likely written for Venturina Palieri, a piano student of Mascagni’s. The two sacred canzoncine (the first for voice and organ, the second one for organ) were composed by May 1895 for Pisano, another pupil of Mascagni’s, then organist at the Capuchins’ Church. The songs, Madrigale and In mare, come from Mascagni’s French period (1912, when he was composing Parisina), enlivened by Anna Lolli’s presence. Two piano waltzes composed in Cerignola in 1888 are edited in the appendix.

Patrizia Balestra is active as a musicological/ethnomusicological researcher in the Apulian area. She authored La chitarra di Mauro Giuliani(Bari: Adda, 1984) and La collaborazione Tito Ricordi-Zandonai e la “Francesca da Rimini” (id., 1986), and was editor of Sciamboli e canti all’altalena (Rome: SquiLibri, 2010). Her papers in proceedings of meeting include: Salvatore Sacco e l’attività musicale a Cerignola tra ’500 e ’600, in Enrico Radesca e il suo tempo (Lucca: LIM, 2001); Didone nelle opere metastasiane del Settecento: appunti di drammaturgia musicale da Sarro a Paisiello, in Le chiavi del mito e della storia (Bari: Levante, 2013); Significati musicali nella dinamica affettiva della “Carlotta Corday”, in Intellettuali di Capitanata. La famiglia Bellucci (Foggia: Grenzi, 2015); Giordano e l’impresa discografica: da Fonotipia alla Discoteca di Stato, in Giordano e le nuove tecnologie: cinema, radio e disco (forthcoming). She currently teaches Music History at the Umberto Giordano Conservatory, Foggia.