Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Fixed forms.

See Formes fixes.

Fizdale, Robert

(b Chicago, 12 April 1920; d New York, 6 Dec 1995). American pianist. His entire career was as a duo pianist with Arthur Gold. They met at the Juilliard School, where Fizdale was studying with Hutcheson and Gold with Josef and Rosina Lhévinne. They made their début (as Gold and Fizdale) at the New School for Social Research in 1944 with a programme of 20th-century works including Cage’s A Book of Music and Three Dances (first version) for two prepared pianos, both composed for them. Their New York Town Hall début followed in 1946; that year they gave first performances of other works composed for them, including Bowles’s and Haieff’s sonatas for two pianos, and Milhaud’s Concerto for two pianos (at Chautauqua). At a time when two-piano concerts chiefly connoted clatter and arrangements, they set a new standard for the art. In the ensuing years, Gold and Fizdale commissioned works from Rorem, Rieti, Barber, Thomson and Howard Brubeck, and from the French composers Auric, Milhaud, Poulenc, Henri Sauguet and Germaine Tailleferre. In 1972 with the New York PO they gave the first performance of Berio’s Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, and they were also the first to revive Mendelssohn’s early concertos in E and A.

Beyond the impressive refinement and intelligence of their playing, Gold and Fizdale were admired for the breadth of their repertory, which included almost all the two-piano literature, much music for piano duet (which, however, they played on two instruments), and works involving other performers, such as Bartók’s Sonata for two pianos and percussion. Their recordings cover most of this repertory, and their tours took them all over the world. Gold and Fizdale wrote a biography, Misia: the Life of Misia Sert (1980). They retired from public performance in 1982.

MICHAEL STEINBERG/RUTH B. HILTON

Fjeldstad, Øivin

(b Oslo, 2 May 1903; d Oslo, 16 Oct 1983). Norwegian conductor and violinist. He studied the violin at the Oslo Conservatory and with Davisson in Leipzig, making his début in Oslo in 1921. After joining the Oslo PO he became its leader, and also led the Norwegian RO. He first appeared as a conductor at Oslo in 1931, and had further studies with Clemens Krauss in Berlin. Appointed chief conductor of the Norwegian broadcasting service in 1946, he was awarded the Arnold Schoenberg Diploma at Salzburg in 1952 for his work on behalf of contemporary music. He was the first music director of the newly formed Norwegian National Opera, 1958–60 (with Flagstad as Intendant), and from 1962 to 1969 was music director of the Oslo PO. He toured widely as a guest conductor, and for several years took a close interest in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, conducting it on a tour to Germany, the USSR and Scandinavia in 1961, and on later occasions, to 1968. His recordings include a number with the LSO and the Oslo PO, mainly of Scandinavian music, and the first complete version of Götterdämmerung, with Flagstad, Svanholm and Norwegian forces, issued in 1956. A Knight of the Order of St Olav, he also received honours from Belgium, Finland and the Netherlands.

NOËL GOODWIN

Flabiol [flaviol]

(Cat).

The tabor pipe of the Catalan cobla. See Pipe and tabor. See also Spain, §II, 4–5.

Flaccomio, Giovanni Pietro

(b Milazzo, nr Messina, c1565; d Turin, 1617). Italian composer. According to Mongitore he was director of the royal chapel of Felipe III of Spain, and then almoner to the Duke of Savoy at Turin. He was a scholar and a priest and came from a noble family; he held a high opinion of his own aptitude for music ‘at which I have shown astonishing skill since boyhood’. In Le risa a vicenda, edited in 1598 by Flaccomio and dedicated to Cardinal Del Monte, nine composers set a two-part madrigal for five voices (a proposta–risposta between two lovers) from which the entire collection takes its title. Alternating with these nine works are ten settings of different texts: the first and last madrigals form a frame, their texts referring to the main poem, and most of the other eight texts are at least loosely connected with it. The book is therefore an example of the fashion of the time for madrigal anthologies with a unifying literary theme. The first setting of the title poem, by Gerolamo Lombardo, maestro di cappella of Messina Cathedral, was meant to serve as a model for the other composers, the most important Roman, Messinese and Milanese composers of the age.

Flaccomio’s two volumes published in Venice in 1611 were dedicated from Madrid and addressed to members of the Spanish court. The madrigals are stylish and graceful pieces, for two high voices and one low, with a basso continuo part; stylistically they are canzonettas and scherzi, but formally they are madrigals, since they are through-composed. The refinement of musical style is matched by the excellence of the texts; many of them had already been set by others, either as polyphonic madrigals or in the new monodic style. The madrigals that survive from his settings of Guarini’s Il pastor fido also demonstrate his skill in the older five-part polyphonic medium.

WORKS

Vesperae, missa sacraeque cantiones (1591), lost (see Bianconi)

Liber primus concentus, in quibus vespere, misse, sacreque cantiones in nativitate Beatae Mariae Virginis aliarumque virginum festivitatibus decantandi continentur, 8vv (2 choirs) (Venice, 1611)

2 motets, 1617^1

Motet, 12vv (3 choirs), lost

Il primo libro delli madrigali, 3vv, bc (hpd) (Venice, 1611)

Pastor fido: il secondo libro de madrigali, 5vv (printed), lost (see Bianconi); 2 pubd in C. Monteverdi: Il secondo libro della musica di Claudio Monteverdi fatta spirituale da Aquilino Coppini (Milan, 1608); 1 in 1616^10, ed. in MRS, vi (1991)

ed.: Le risa a vicenda vaghi e dilettevoli madrigali, 5vv (Venice, 1598^8); ed. in MRS, xii (1993)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Mongitore: Bibliotheca Sicula, i (Palermo, 1708/R), 359

O. Tiby: ‘The Polyphonic School in Sicily of the 16th–17th Century’, MD, v (1951), 203–11

O. Tiby: I polifonisti siciliani del XVI e XVII secolo (Palermo, 1969), 89–90

L. Bianconi: ‘Sussidi bibliografici per i musicisti siciliani del Cinque e Seicento’, RIM, vii (1972), 3–38

J.G. Kurtzmann: ‘Some Historical Perspectives on the Monteverdi Vespers’, AnMc, no.15 (1975), 29–86, esp. 71–2

P.E. Carapezza: ‘Dialogo immaginario di Antonio Il Verso con il suo discepolo Giuseppe Palazzotto e Tagliavia nel giorno del Santo Natale dell’anno 1617 in Palermo’, in Madrigali siciliane in antologie transalpine, 1583–1616, MRS, vi (1991), xxxix–li

F. Piperno: ‘Polifonia italiana e mercati europei’: introduction to ibid., xiii, xxiii–xxiv

P.E. Carapezza: ‘Il Cardinale del Monte tra il Caravaggio e Le risa a vicenda’: introduction to Le risa a vicenda, MRS, xii (1993), pp.ix–xxxix

M.G. Natoli: Primo libro delli madrigali a tre voci di G.P. Flaccomio (diss., U. of Messina, 1993)

PAOLO EMILIO CARAPEZZA, GIUSEPPE COLLISANI