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From Ancona to Ascoli Piceno for the inauguration of a railroad...
 Ascoli Piceno, 9 May 1886
Ascoli Piceno, XIX cent. | "I cannot possibly expect to have a piano in my room and my poor Guglielmo progresses in bits and pieces; every moment I find myself bewildered finding the harmonies and could thus wish more to have a piano than a killing at the lottery. I have had to leave many pieces unfinished for this reason. And yet the work goes well; I am really pleased with it; I have taken a great del of care with the orchestration, which seems to me to be clear and open. |
| "I have finished the solo of Maria in the fourth act which is nothing more than a little French romance, and it is a little jewel ... Now I am working at the great love-duet and must content myself with my poor violin, my only companion, the only witness of my enthusiasm for Ratcliff and of my tears. I will never again abandon this beloved instrument which has helped me as much as it could. And having to play it I have become a rather good player; during my free hours I lock myself in my little room and try out the pieces already written on my Guglielmo and find there as much satisfaction as if I had played all the harmonies on the piano." |
While Puccini was the composer who most betrays his compositional method as being in front of a piano keyboard, it is astonishing to see a composer as fluidly imaginative and accomplished as Mascagni flat-out confessing his need to have a piano in order to compose. This was the century of the pianist-composer, those who did not have sufficient ear training to write without having notes corroborated by an instrument (Prokofiev, Puccini, among others) subject of much ridicule by other composers who shunned this practice (Busoni, Berlioz, Shostakovich, Weill, etc.). |
"...it was a breathless and continuous running around, but with few profits. That which I feared happened: the company disbanded and I was left without a bit of money.
But there is a Providence for musicians as well as for alcoholics. I was good friends with some excellent people who showed me great sympathy and one of whom, after hearing the parts of my opera which were already written, immediately became crazy about the music and, since I was working, helped me out with some money. I had written the Prelude to Ratcliff in Ancona, and now in Ascoli, lacking anything better, I continued to be immersed in the opera and wrote the Intermezzo (see Another Side of the Story for another version of the writing of this piece. Mascagni's memory is perhaps at fault here—DS) and then the entire fourth act, which I orchestrated in a few days.
Ascoli Piceno, 18 May 1886
"Believe me, I am really desperate; I don't even know how I manage to write my poor Guglielmo; in the morning I get up with a fever (which never leaves me) and I work the entire day without even having the consolation of being able to hear what I've done ... And every day I see poor Guglielmo grow before my eyes, and I regard it with pride and kiss it, weeping over my scandalous fate which has reduced me to my present state, now that my opera is almost finished ... The fourth act came out better than I thought, and I'm entranced by the love-duet. God alone knows how much I've studied this piece: in itself, the interpretation was too difficult; not for the words, but in the manner of expressing them; I have worried over that poor poetry for several whole months; I have read and re-read those poor verses (not poor in the sense of "wretched") a thousand times; I have declaimed them a thousand times in a loud voice, in a low voice, I have given them a thousand inflections; I have changed the expression a thousand times; I have closed my eyes and imagined myself to be William embracing Maria; I imagined speaking words of love to her; I have whispered those words into her ear and I have composed the love-duet. It is beautiful, it is strange, it is strong; there is the purest love combined with the erotic; there is the perfume of the chaste room of Maria; there are the bloodstains on William's hair; there is the remembrance of Edward and Lovely-Elisa; I like it, I am in love with it ..."
"But my hunger was still very strong and I tried to divert it by contemplating those mysterious specters that seemed to come out of the opera, those two phantoms that the hero of the drama always saw. But, with all this, the musical notes gave me nothing to eat and I resolved to return to Ancona, meanwhile writing letter after letter in order to obtain any kind of engagement. Finally one morning I received an invitation from Naples to leave for the Teatro del Fondo and with the invitation came a check for a hundred lire. I had been engaged by the company of the Duke Cirella.
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