Ildebrando Pizzetti

Ildebrando Pizzetti (20 September 1880 – 13 February 1968) was an Italian composer of classical music, as well as a musicologist and a music critic. Biography Pizzetti was born in Parma in 1880. He was part of the “Generation of 1880” along with Ottorino Respighi, Gian Francesco Malipiero, and Alfredo Casella. They were among the first Italian composers in some time whose primary contributions were not in opera. The instrumental and a cappella traditions had never died in Italian music and had produced, for instance, the string quartets of Antonio Scontrino (1850–1922) and the works of Respighi’s teacher Giuseppe Martucci; but with the “Generation of 1880” these traditions became stronger. Ildebrando Pizzetti was the son of Odoardo Pizzetti, a pianist and piano teacher who was his son’s first teacher. At first Pizzetti seemed headed for a career as a playwright—he had written several plays, two of which had been produced—before he decided in 1895 on a career in music and entered the Parma Conservatory. There he was taught from 1897 by Giovanni Tebaldini and gained the beginnings of his lifelong interest in the early music of Italy, reflected in his own music and his writings. He ta