"Suona la tromba" (The trumpet sounds) or "Inno popolare" (Hymn of the people) was a secular hymn composed by Giuseppe Verdi in 1848 to a text by the Italian poet and patriot Goffredo Mameli. The work's title comes from the opening line of Mameli's poem. It has sometimes been referred to as "Grido di guerra".
The piece begins with the lines: "Suona la tromba — ondeggiano / le insegne gialle e nere." ("The trumpet sounds, the yellow and black flags are waving."), a reference to the yellow and black flag of the Austrian Empire. It was commissioned by Giuseppe Mazzini as a new battle hymn for the Revolution of 1848 when Italian nationalists sought independence from the Austrian Empire which controlled large portions of northern Italy. He persuaded Verdi to compose the music for it when Verdi visited Milan in May 1848, shortly after the Austrians had been driven from the city and other parts of Lombardy. Mazzini commissioned the text from Mameli in June, asking him for a poem that would become the Italian "Marseillaise" and quoted Verdi's wish that the new anthem would "make the people forget both the poet and the composer". [1] Mameli finished the poem in late August, and Mazzini immediately sent it to Verdi who was living and working in Paris at the time. Verdi sent the finished work, composed for a three part male chorus without accompaniment, to Mazzini on 18 October 1848. In the accompanying letter Verdi wrote:
I send you the hymn, and even if it is a bit late, I hope it will arrive in time. I have tried to be as popular and easy as I can be. Make use of it as you see fit: even burn it if you do not think it worthy. [2] [3]
In his letter to Mazzini of 18th October 1848, Verdi had recommended that if Mazzini wished to publish the hymn, he give it to Carlo Pozzi, an affiliate of Verdi's publisher Casa Ricordi. However, before the music reached Mazzini, the Austrian Empire had regained its lost territories and Milan's musical life was once again under the control of the Austrian censors. The numerous patriotic songs and anthems that had been published by Casa Ricordi and Casa Lucca during the brief revolution were withdrawn, with some of those editions destroyed. [1] Mazzini did not try to have "Suona la tromba" officially published at that time, although in late 1848 a few copies of it were printed and circulated in Florence by the short-lived Associazione Nazionale per la Costituente Italiana (National Association for the Italian Constitution). [4] [5] Mameli died in 1849 at the age of 22. His earlier poem "Il Canto degli Italiani" (The Song of the Italians) later became the Italian National anthem.
Verdi's score for "Suona la tromba" languished in the Casa Ricordi archives until 1865 when Mazzini gave it to the Milanese music publisher Paolo De Giorgi who brought it out as the first in a series of patriotic songs entitled Euterpe Patria. Verdi's hymn is sometimes referred to as "Euterpe Patria", although the series also included songs by several other composers. [6] As a courtesy, De Giorgi had also asked for Verdi's approval, but Verdi was not happy with the idea and Francesco Maria Piave, acting on his behalf, tried to stop the publication. However, his 1848 letter to Mazzini in which he had written "Make use of it as you see fit" was interpreted as having given Mazzini the right to control the hymn's publication. De Giorgi then made the gesture of offering to abandon the project if Verdi agreed to write a new hymn to inaugurate a monument to the Battle of Legnano, knowing full well that Verdi would refuse. [7] The publication of "Suona la tromba" went ahead and came with a piano accompaniment arranged by Angelo Graffigna. De Georgi also published an "economy edition" of the work, under the title "Grido di guerra" (War cry). [8] [9]
There have been several subsequent arrangements of the hymn, some with orchestration, each tailored to popular tastes of the time. [10] Ricordi published the score arranged for chorus and orchestra in 1898 and also included the hymn in 5 canti popolari del 1848, an anthology of patriotic songs published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1848 uprisings. Nevertheless, "Suona la tromba" remained a relatively obscure piece until 1996. Students at the Milan Conservatory had unearthed the 1865 De Giorgi score in the conservatory's library, and it was performed by the City of Milan Chamber Choir in a broadcast by Rai 2 television on 7 February 1996. [4] In 2011, the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, there were multiple performances of the work in commemorative concerts, and it was recorded by the La Scala Chamber Orchestra and Chorus for the CD Musica del Risorgimento. [2]
The critical edition of the score, edited and annotated by Roberta Montemorra Marvin, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2007. In 2013, the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Antica e Moderna published what is claimed to be the sole surviving copy of the score printed in Florence in 1848 and found in 2011 in the private archive of the Italian pianist and conductor Antonello Palazzolo. [5]
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini, whose works significantly influenced him.
Goffredo Mameli was an Italian patriot, poet, writer and a notable figure in the Risorgimento. He is also the author of the lyrics of "Il Canto degli Italiani", the national anthem of Italy.
The unification of Italy, also known as the Risorgimento, was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single state in 1861, the Kingdom of Italy. Inspired by the rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s against the outcome of the Congress of Vienna, the unification process was precipitated by the Revolutions of 1848, and reached completion in 1871 after the Capture of Rome and its designation as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.
Arrigo Boito was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, librettist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's last two monumental operas Otello and Falstaff and his own opera Mefistofele. Along with Emilio Praga and his own brother Camillo Boito, he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement.
"Il Canto degli Italiani" is a canto written by Goffredo Mameli set to music by Michele Novaro in 1847, and is the current national anthem of Italy. It is best known among Italians as the "Inno di Mameli", after the author of the lyrics, or "Fratelli d'Italia", from its opening line. The piece, in a time signature of 4/4 and the key of B-flat major, consists of six strophes, and a refrain sung at the end of each strophe. The sixth group of verses, which is almost never performed, recalls the text of the first strophe.
The national flag of Italy, often referred to in Italian as il Tricolore is a tricolour featuring three equally sized vertical pales of green, white and red, national colours of Italy, with the green at the hoist side, as defined by article 12 of the Constitution of the Italian Republic. The Italian law regulates its use and display, protecting its defense and providing for the crime of insulting it; it also prescribes its teaching in Italian schools together with other national symbols of Italy.
Casa Ricordi is a publisher of primarily classical music and opera. Its classical repertoire represents one of the important sources in the world through its publishing of the work of the major 19th-century Italian composers such as Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi, and, later in the century, Giacomo Puccini, composers with whom one or another of the Ricordi family came into close contact.
The Messa per Rossini is a Requiem Mass composed to commemorate the first anniversary of Gioachino Rossini's death. It was a collaboration among 13 Italian composers, initiated by Giuseppe Verdi. The composition was intended to be performed on 13 November 1869 in the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna, where Rossini grew up and spent a large part of his life.
Teodulo Mabellini was an Italian composer.
The Quattro pezzi sacri are choral works by Giuseppe Verdi. Written separately during the last decades of the composer's life and with different origins and purposes, they were nevertheless published together in 1898 by Casa Ricordi. They are often performed as a cycle, not in chronological sequence of their composition, but in the sequence used in the Ricordi publication:
Ippolito Nievo was an Italian writer, journalist and patriot. His Confessions of an Italian is widely considered the most important novel about the Italian Risorgimento.
The Five Days of Milan was an insurrection and a major event in the Revolutionary Year of 1848 that started the First Italian War of Independence. On 18 March, a rebellion arose in the city of Milan, and in five days of street fighting drove Marshal Radetzky and his Austrian soldiers from the city.
Risorgimento! is an opera in one act by Lorenzo Ferrero set to an Italian-language libretto by Dario Oliveri, based on a scenario by the composer. It was completed in 2010 and first performed at the Teatro Comunale Modena on 26 March 2011.
Inno delle nazioni, a cantata in a single movement, is one of only two secular choral works composed by Giuseppe Verdi. This Hymn incorporates "God Save the King", "La Marseillaise", and "Il Canto degli Italiani". It was the first collaboration between the composer and Arrigo Boito, who, much later, would revise the libretto of Simon Boccanegra and write the original libretti of Otello and Falstaff.
Feliciano Cristoforo Bartolomeo Strepponi was an Italian composer and conductor. He was born in Lodi and died in Trieste at the age of 38. Amongst his compositions were seven operas which had a modest success in their day. The last one, L'Ullà di Bassora, premiered at La Scala in 1831. He was the father and first teacher of the opera singer Giuseppina Strepponi who later became the second wife of Giuseppe Verdi.
Giulietta Pezzi was an Italian writer and journalist whose work included poetry, four novels, and a five-act play. Born and educated in Milan, she was a devoted follower of Mazzini and active in the Italian republican and unification movements. In her later years she wrote for several newspapers and dedicated herself to the establishment of free public schools in Italy based on Mazzini's educational philosophy. She died in the city of her birth at the age of 71. During her lifetime several art songs were dedicated to her, including Bellini's "Vaga luna, che inargenti".
Raffaele Caravaglios was an Italian bandmaster.
Giuseppe Rosi was an Italian poet and patriot known as "Poeta Pastore".
The Anniversary of the Unification of Italy is a national day that falls annually on March 17 and celebrates the birth of Italy as modern nation state, which took place following the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861; however, the complete unification of Italy took place only in the following years. In 1866 the Veneto and the province of Mantua were annexed after the Third Italian War of Independence, then in 1870 Lazio after the capture of Rome, and finally in 1918 Trentino-Alto Adige and Julian March after the First World War. In this regard, the National Unity and Armed Forces Day was also established, which is celebrated annually on 4 November, recalling the Italian victory in the First World War, a war event considered to complete the process of unification of Italy.
