À la manière de... Casella

Alfredo Casella composed the two piano collections entitled A la manière de in 1911 and 1914, respectively – the second of them being equally divided with Maurice Ravel. Although these two collections are commonly thought of as belonging to Casella’s minor production, they actually reveal an aspect of Casella’s personality that cannot be considered as secondary. In the two collections, Casella’s stylistic disguise – moulded on the French taste for literary and musical pastiche – guides the composer to mirror himself with his contemporaries and with two icons, such as Brahms and Wagner. In these confrontations, the device of parody hints at more secret issues.