Alfredo Casella

Alfredo Casella was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Alfredo Casella.

From the period sources

The composer Alfredo Casella was recognized in the early 20th century for his influence on contemporaries and for his own compositions. According to Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (American Supplement, 1920), Lord Berners’ work was “influenced by his association with his friends Casella and Stravinsky.” Casella’s suites were also among the “novelties” performed by the Berlin Philharmonic and Blüthner Orchestras in a series of symphony concerts between 1912 and 1914, conducted by Theodore Spiering, as noted in the same 1920 source.

Earlier reference works, however, mention other musicians named Casella. A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1900) records a “Casella” who trained the voice of pianist and baritone Ernst August Kellner in Naples in 1815. This same Casella was also a teacher at the Naples Conservatory, where Giovanni Moretti, a prolific opera and sacred music composer, was his pupil, as detailed in the Dictionary of Music (1896). Another Pietro Casella, born in 1769 in Umbria and dying in 1843 as a professor at the Royal Conservatorio in Naples, was a dramatic and church composer, writing several operas including Paride (1799) and Virginia (1812), and many masses and vespers, according to Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians (1888). These earlier sources do not refer to the Alfredo Casella mentioned in the 1920 Grove’s Supplement.