Any attempt to outline (however succinctly) all the musical events of the 20th century would require a very general approach to the subject – to say the least. The succession of artistic currents, from Modern Music to New Music and the Avant-Garde, occurred irrespective of any constant evolutionary process. The characteristics (technical, expressive, social relevance) of each strand often exhausted themselves in a process of self-destruction or, alternatively, assumed positions of pre-eminence that were excessive when viewed against the real scope of the message. Some of these currents were essentially sustained merely by a strong element of musical personalism, linked to composers who were as brilliant as they were well-versed in the organisational systems that favoured the spread and production of their works. The instrumentalists, who by then had become performers of rare dexterity, found that the composers of the last century were keen to make them perform the functions of ‘co-authors’ and ‘decipherers’ of new musical codes. This in turn exponentially increased the personalism, offering even more stratified perspectives. An interest in the instruments’ new technical potential and range of effects became almost compulsive, to the extent that the strictly musical value of the text was marginalised.

Yet, alongside the music composed (or otherwise produced) in the period when official Serialism had its heyday, we find masterpieces that are often difficult to detect among a multitude of other, practically indistinguishable, works. And undeniably, ‘violent attacks’ were made against those who continued to compose following what the dictionaries – not without an air of condescension – described as ‘a language adhering to tradition, but open to new experiences’. Today, a good half-century later, critics, musicologists and instrumentalists have finally realised that, working alongside the New Music and the Avant-Garde, other composers of great stature had upheld a tradition that was capable of being more than just self-referential. Indeed, theirs was a tradition so solid (from a technical point of view) that it could perfectly absorb the claims of a society undergoing rapid – often very rapid – transformation.

The composers represented on this recording – some well-known, others unfamiliar to most listeners – belong to a group of artists that well deserve to be regarded as part of ‘the other 20th century’: a musical 20th century that has often been denied attention, consideration and distinction, in spite of the fact that its main exponents were well aware of, and fully shared, the artistic values of the period.