(The following article was translated by Roger Birnstingl, principal bassoonist with the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, Geneva. It appeared in the "Gazzetta di Parma" on June 29, 1982. Mr. Birnstingl has also included some clarifying comments of his own at the end of the article. Ed.)
Today, 29 June 1982, Enzo Muccetti would have been seventy. This would have been his last year as professor before taking his pension, if it had not been for his untimely death. Born 29 June 1912 in Corfino in Abruzzo, after a brilliant career he was a true Maestro (with a capital M) of our Conservatory. His native town has dedicated a national prize to his name, and at celebrations last week to honour this event the official speaker was Caspare Nello Vetro, librarian of the Parma Conservatory. For us he writes these words:
About five years ago, on 24 March 1977, Enzo Muccetti died. I have been lucky enough to have known him in this city of Parma where he, as professor at the local conservatory that has nurtured so many great conductors and instrumentalists, was the last link in a prestigious chain of bassoon teachers. Muccetti's pupils now sit in many of the most important orchestras, not only in Italy, but also abroad.
In writing about Muccetti, I don't want to run the risk of stating a boring list of events and dates in his life. In fact, to be with him was always a joy, because he was gifted with an excellent memory and could recall anecdotes of his musical life with tremendous spontaneity and verve. If you were fortunate enough to meet him, you could never forget him, along with his total dedication to his art and music in general. He was the perfect instrumentalist, always striving to improve the mechanics of the bassoon, and as a teacher, paternal and exigent, giving his pupils not only technique and musicianship, but profound and passionate love of the instrument itself.
The passion extended to a constant research into ways to improve the mechanics of the bassoon. His ideas have been readily accepted by Heckel, who produced the Model 41, Special E.M.
Muccetti used to remember the time in 1951 when he decided to change from the Buffet to the German system. He had made the change at the end of the season in order to give himself time to study the new system, but an extra concert was added, including a Beethoven symphony. Muccetti decided he would have to see the conductor De Sabata, and went to find him in his hotel. The Maestro was in bed, the covers piled high with music, and on his head a ridiculous white night cap. Muccetti was struck dumb with surprise and embarrassment, but De Sabata immediately put him at ease, touching the cap, "you see Muccetti, a beautiful woman told me that white suits me".
Mrs. Muccetti has allowed me to see letters, postcards and other documents of this great man's life; one sees a history of Italian music since the war. Paul Hindemith, who conducted the Scala in 1947, wrote on the program "if all bassoonists were so marvelous, life, and especially writing for the bassoon, would be more of a joy than it usually is".
But Muccetti was what he was thanks to himself. Born of a family in which no one had ever been a serious musician, it was through dedication and self-denial that he was able to rise to an artistic level which could inspire such comments as this. Whilst still a child his family moved from the Abruzzi where he was born, to Turin, where he subsequently went to the conservatory. He intended to study the cello, but as he had small hands, he was assigned the bassoon instead. To play the bassoon like a beautifully played cello was his ideal. In a letter written him by Karajan in 1955, we read "your sound which seems to come more from a cello than a bassoon, your brilliant and super-clean technique, and above all, your interpretations, governed by a profound musicality, take you to the highest level in your profession". Further to this, Karajan wrote after a series of concerts at the Scala, "I'm pleased to have found a bassoonist of such stature that in almost all European orchestras there is no one to be compared with you."
As to the time Muccetti spent at La Scala, I've talked to musicians who were there at this time and helped to make it one of the world's finest orchestras. Thus says Oreste Canfora, double bassoonist "he was a scrupulous instrumentalist, and to give but one example, before a concert would search out musicians with whom he had a solo, and attempt to find the perfect unanimity of phrasing and intonation." He is remembered also for his success in pushing for more players in the orchestra, which was increased from one hundred to one hundred and thirty, and thus giving members fewer services and more time to study. The superintendent of that time considered Muccetti quite crazy to make such a radical and expensive proposition, but the tenacity of the latter eventually won the day. However Muccetti resigned, perhaps mistakenly, in 1961, having been at the Scala since 1947, and thenceforth dedicated his time to the work at the Parma Conservatory, where he had been working as a visiting professor for some years.
As to the famous Muccetti sound, so praised by conductors, Roger Birnstingl wrote after hearing a performance of Tosca: "certainly Callas sang magnificently, but you should have heard the bassoonist! how well that sound carries! you can hear it over the entire orchestra."
But let us return to his early days. There was not much space for musicians in Italy in the 1930's, and Muccetti moved from one post to another. First Teatro Regio in Parma, then Rome, San Remo, Radio Torino, and again Rome. At the outbreak of Hitler's war, he was working in Bologna, and after the war years established himself in Milan, first at Teatro Nuovo, and then finally at the Scala in 1947. This was where he joined ranks with the greatest Italian musicians of the period just after the war. Nino Sanzogno, the conductor, as late as 1971 wrote in these terms: "Dear Muccetti, can you believe that whenever I hear a bassoonist, (and I hear many), I think of you? Thus it is that (with admiration) you are still my ideal."
In addition to innate perfection of ear and musicality, right from his student days, Muccetti stuck to a rigid discipline of study that has become a byword. As a boy, during his holidays in the Abruzzi mountains, he worked out a program of study for each day, which he stuck on his bedroom wall. And this meticulousness came into his contact with his own students with whom his lessons became practically a lesson in Life. He treated his class as a family, of which he was the compassionate but strict head. He had patience with all, even the less gifted, who always emerged serious, prepared instrumentalists. As a colleague said: "Enzo, you could teach a stone to play." One pupil reminisces that when he first went to study with the Maestro, he had the habit to use brilliantine on his hair. Muccetti would get this on his fingers when he tried to correct the head position. The next lesson, the hair being as before, he ran the boy to the washroom, and having forced his head under a tap, proceeded personally to wash out the hated grease; unnecessary to add that from that day forward the culprit never more used a hair lotion.
In such a serious atmosphere the study of instrument upkeep and of reed making was an integral part of the whole. The reed shape he used is known the world over as the Muccetti Shape. Another characteristic of the "scuola" was "il canto"; "you must make the bassoon sing" was his constant admonition. Birnstingl writes that Muccetti sent three pupils to his bassoon course at Canterbury in England in 1976. "These three boys amazed the entire class of about thirty bassoonists, not only with their perfect preparation in trios, but above all with their sound".
Hardy professionals had the habit of turning to Muccetti for advice. An English bassoonist happened to be visiting him at his apartment when a Naples bassoonist telephoned and started to play a passage over the phone for criticism. To Muccetti this seemed a perfectly normal procedure.
In spite of all the praise and esteem, Muccetti did not always have an easy life. He was rather unbending in his convictions, both in life and in music, and this lead to some serious conflicts, not only with colleagues, but even with conductors. To give one example; when Stravinsky was conducting the Scala, he stopped the orchestra and asked Muccetti about a seemingly wrong note. "But it's written as I played it" insisted Muccetti. "Do you imagine that I don't know, I who wrote it!" returned Stravinsky with some irritation. Muccetti gets up and takes the part through the orchestra to the conductor to show that in fact the note was incorrectly printed. "This note is written so" says Stravinsky, writing on the music. End of episode, but so powerful was the character of this bassoonist, that Stravinsky after the concert, not having forgotten the incident, gave Muccetti an autographed photo inscribed "merci!"
Muccetti could have been a good conductor and the few occasions that he conducted concerts were always a great success. In 1966 he was invited as artistic director of the wind ensemble of the Northern Sinfonia in Newcastle, England, afterwards going on tour with the group and getting good write-ups in such considerable music centers as Oxford and London. Two years later he was forced to give up this ensemble, as his health no longer permitted it. This also was the reason he had to refuse invitations to teach in summer courses in the United States, and to abandon the work at Lanciano festival, to which he had contributed so much over the last few years. When he died, he was still at the Parma Conservatory where he had been since 1949. One week before his death, he prepared seven reeds, one for each of his students, for their end of year examinations and as a last thought, he left study material, with the name of each student written upon it. Only two days before the end, he was still teaching at home. But his voice has not died with him; it sings still from the bassoons of all those children who have been his pupils.
Gaspare Nollo Vetro
A few notes to clarify some of the points in this article, written by Roger Birnstingl.
The national prize mentioned at the beginning is the "Premio Muccetti", for a work for bassoon solo and strings, and open to Italian nationals. The winner in 1981 was Anna Bianchera, and the work is published (or will be shortly) by Cursi, in Milan. I shall try to get further information about this. Muccetti received his beautiful Heckel in 1951 and decided to make the change from Buffet after the concert season. In order that he should not be tempted to return to the old instrument, he took off all the keys, put them in a box and told his wife to hide them. After about ten days of Heckel study, the news came through that Koussevitski had died, and the Scala were asked to do an exceptional memorial concert with the slow movement of the Eroica. Should he put back those Buffet keys, or risk playing the Heckel? that was the quandary which prompted the visit to De Sabata's hotel. The conductor reassured Muccetti who subsequently played the concert on the Heckel.
The wrong note in the Stravinsky bassoon part was in Oedypus Rex, but I rather think that the "Merci!" was after a performance in Venice of The Rake's Progress. Lanciano is a small town south of Rome which holds summer courses in chamber and orchestral playing, together with individual instrument courses. Muccetti helped found this festival in about 1972.
