ferruccio tammaro

took a degree in History of Music under the guidance of Massimo Mila with a thesis about Jean Sibelius and at the same time studied piano and composing at Conservatorio “G. Verdi” di Torino with Azio Corghi and Franco Donatoni. Thanks to a scholarship received from the Finnish Foreign Affairs Board, he continued afterwards his researches about Sibelius publishing many essays (‘L’«imperativo» nella musica di Sibelius’, in “NRMI”, VIII, n.1, 1974; ‘Sibelius e il silenzio di Tapiola’, in “RIDM”, vol. XII, 1977 – n.1; Le sinfonie di Sibelius, Torino 1982), taking part in some conventions (“La Seconda Sinfonia di Sibelius e la natura ligure”, in “Atti del Congresso Internazionale Viaggiatori stranieri in Liguria”, Bordighera, Lerici, Genova, 1987; Jean Sibelius – An Italian View, Atti del Convegno “The Forest’s mighty God. A Celebration of Sibelius. Views from the 20th Century for the 21th Century”, Londra, novembre 1997) and editing the first italian monography (Jean Sibelius, ERI, 1984) about the same composer. So he helped not only to improve in our cultural world the knowledge of this musician, but also to study in depth, thanks to first-hand biographical inquiries (letters and journal), the real personality of a composer who lived consciously and often problematically the relationship between the cultutal virginity of his home and the great musical European towns.  

Associated professor at the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the Turin’s University, he investigated the works of other composers like Vaughan Williams (“Eclettismo e tradizione nelle Sinfonie di Vaughan Williams”, in NRMI, XVII, n.1, 1983), Šostakovič (Le sinfonie di Šostakovič, Torino 1988, the first italian book devoted to the present composer; ‘I quartetti di Šostakovič’, in NRMI, 1991/1) and Ghedini (‘Ghedini trascrittore di musiche antiche’, in AA.VV, Ghedini e l’attività musicale a Torino fra le due guerre, Torino, 1986), so that enlarge and stimulate the knowledge about culturally very different composers, but joined by the same refusal of any extremism radicalism.

At the present Ferruccio Tammaro is researching about the symphonic production in the 19th and 20th centuries; in this connection he edited a book about the symphonies of Čajkovskij (Čajkovskij. Il musicista, le sinfonie, Milano 2008), in which he emphasizes the peculiar ambivalence of a musician full permeated by the Decadentism, but at the same time prompted by the longing for the good handicraft and for the purity of the Mozart’s era.  

 

Ferruccio Tammaro took an interest too in the problems of musical teaching at the secondary school’s classes and at the University, with a large number of publications and textbooks.