When I was a musician

From Corriere Elbano - News of January 12, 1950
Section  "Fior da Fiore" When I was a musician

My old Portoferraio heart got enormously happy, friday morning, when the first concerts of the renewed City Band were spread in the sky. I remembered the times of my early youth, when after a very brief theoretical and practical preparation, I made my debut in the lines of the music body of that time, feeling for the first time my soul tickling for pride and worries.

Along with me and more than me, also Giovanni Cairati and Giovanni Sansoni must have been very excited, also because their musical career was hundreds time longer and more glorious than mine; they were emeritus cornets under the banner of the same labarum exhumed and returned to Portoferraio. Then again Umberto Miliani trombone and Giovanni Spinelli clarinetist raised in my father's house (almost from the family) and Pietro Giannini, also clarinetist… Like a family also brothers Elpidio and Giovanni Biancotti and many more I do not remember for time has deleted their images.

Cesare Foresi, over ninety is the dean, followed by fervid music lover Antonio Reboa: the first one played the euphonium with great class and was a energetic and precise dean, the second, a distinguished flutist and still passionate teacher and hopefully on the breach for many more years to come.

I could see through a veil of tears, a musician with unlimited breath and  passion and a trumpet from the rifle regiment which was making incredible blares: two brothers, two completely opposite characters who were melting music in great harmony, authentic children of the healthy, cordial and smart people of Portoferraio. Next to them, similarly dear and unforgettable, all the others, the talented and more modest,  Bertès, Allori, Filippini,  Baragatti, Terracciano,  Zei,  Pieri,  Montauti, Magagnini,  Caruso, Benti,  Ratti, Curci, Zuccotti;indeed, the whole Portoferraio where, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the divine art of music was present in all the families.

 

And also when I was younger I hanged out with Euterpe: on no, far away from me was the ambition to play the clarinet in a virtuous way, as I was never able to get out from that wooden pipe a sound that was not ugly and jarring, nor the cornet's argentinian rings, the band's soprano, nor the outstretched singing of the trombone and the euphonium, tenor and baritone, descended from the stage to the public square to bring you their eternal quarrel for love.

Even though they were so necessary, not to me were reserved the solemn blow of the ophicleide or helicon, nor the bizarre moan of the saxophone, not the ringing horns nor the stuttering of the trombones and other accompanying instruments.

Not the pastoral sound of the oboe nor the gentle modulations of the flute or the acute ones of the piccolo, not the robust singing of the horn, not the squeak of the quart : none of this. Yet I was a " solo ", necessarily a performer.

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