Francesco Balilla Pratella

Francesco Balilla Pratella (Lugo, Italy February 1, 1880 – Ravenna, Italy May 17, 1955) was an Italian composer, musicologist and essayist. Although he was one of the leading advocates of Futurism in Italian music, much of Pratella’s own music betrays little obvious connection to the views espoused in the manifestos he authored. Biography Born in Lugo, and deeply impressed by the folk-music he heard in his childhood in his native Romagna (now part of Emilia-Romagna), Pratella entered Pesaro Conservatory and studied with Vincenzo Cicognani and Pietro Mascagni. Pratella’s professional career was largely centered in teaching and musicology; he served as director of the Liceo Musicale in Lugo from 1910 until 1927, when he accepted a post as director of the Istituto G. Verdi in Ravenna, where he remained until his retirement in 1945. His interest in collecting Romagna’s folksongs began before his futurist period and continued after, intensifying later through Pratella’s arrangements of folksongs and training of choruses. Pratella also made modern performance arrangements of early polyphonic music. From 1921 to 1925 Pratella headed the Bologna-based music publication Il Pensiero Musicale