Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nat, Yves

(b Béziers, Hérault, 29 Dec 1890; d Paris, 31 Aug 1956). French pianist and composer. He showed musical talents from an early age: when he was ten he conducted an orchestral Fantaisie of his own composition. Saint-Saëns and Fauré heard him and insisted he be sent to the Paris Conservatoire, where in 1907 he took a premier prix in Diémer’s piano class. His international career began in 1909 when Debussy took him to England; during the next 25 years he appeared throughout Europe and the Americas. He was particularly noted for his performances of Beethoven and Schumann, and he also accompanied Ysaÿe, Thibaud and Enescu. In 1934 he retired from concert life and accepted a professorship at the Paris Conservatoire, where he taught until his death; among his students were Geneviève Joy, Jean-Bernard Pommier and Pierre Sancan. His final public performance was in Paris in 1954, as soloist in his own piano concerto; his other compositions include a symphonic poem, L’enfer (1942), piano pieces and songs. Nat’s recordings of Beethoven’s complete sonatas and Schumann’s major works are characterized by dramatic sweep, vivid colour and a strong sense of architecture. He described his approach to performance in Carnets (Paris, 1983). Proust wrote of him: ‘His playing is that of so great a pianist that one no longer knows if he is a pianist at all; for it becomes so transparent, so filled with what he performs, that he disappears from view and is no more than a window giving on to the masterpiece’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Timbrell: French Pianism (White Plains, NY, and London, 1992, 2/forthcoming)

PAUL GRIFFITHS/CHARLES TIMBRELL

Nataletti, Giorgio

(b Rome, 12 June 1907; d Rome, 16 July 1972). Italian ethnomusicologist and composer. He studied composition with Vincenzo di Donato and took a diploma at Pesaro Conservatory. During his varied career he was artistic director for the first Italian radio station (Radio Araldo of Rome, 1922–3), an originator of sound films in Italy (Istituto Luce, 1930–31), a broadcaster for RAI (more than 1000 broadcasts of ‘Cronache Italiane del Turismo’, 1936–43), of which he was later music director (1948–55), artistic director for RCA in Italy (from 1955) and later music consultant for Fonit-Cetra. He began his research in 1926, which included making transcriptions and tapes in ethnomusicology in Italy, the Maritime Alps and Tunisia. He continued this work until 1936 and from 1946 to 1961 as technical director of Le Arti e le Tradizioni Popolari dell’OND (ENAL), and as secretary of the Comitato Nazionale delle Arti Popolari (1947–52). In 1948, under the auspices of the Accademia di S Cecilia and RAI, he founded (with Ildebrando Pizzetti and others) and became director of the Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare, an institute for Italian folk music studies, unique in Italy; by 1974 it had collected 20,000 documents. After teaching in Tunisia (1932–4), he taught folk music (from 1940), and later music history (from 1961), at the Rome Conservatory.

Nataletti was a member of many national and international societies, including the International Folk Music Council and the Italian commission on folk music to UNESCO. His writings deal chiefly with Italian folk music and he collaborated with Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella on the Italian section (vols.xv–xvi) of The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. His compositions, most of which date from the 1920s, include large-scale choral compositions (Il cantico dei cantici, 1929) as well as orchestral and chamber works.

WRITINGS

Canti popolari della campagna Romano (Milan, 1930)

Musica e canti della patria (Tunis, 1933)

Trenta ninna nanne popolari italiane (Rome, 1934)

Catalogo descrittive degli strumenti musicali raccolti nel Museo strumentale (Rome, 1936)

I poeti a braccio della campagna romana (Rome, 1936)

La raccolta dei canti popolari della CIATP (Rome, 1936)

Le medaglie di Giuseppe Verdi (Rome, 1941)

‘Az olasz népzenei hagyomány tanulmányozsása az elmult húsz évben’ [Research into musical folk traditions in the last 20 years], Emlékkönyv Kodály Zoltán hatvanadik születésnapjára, ed. B. Gunda (Budapest, 1943), 283–96

Il folklore musicale in Italia dal 1918 ad oggi: saggio bibliografica (Rome, 1948)

Elenco della registrazioni di musica popolare del CNSMP (Rome, 1954)

Il CNSMP e gli studi etnomusicologici in Italia dal 1948 al 1958 (Rome, 1958)

‘I dieci anni del Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare’, Santa Cecilia, vii (1959), 70–77; repr. in EM: Annuario degli Archivi di etnomusicologia dell’Accademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia, i (1993), 47–53

La musica folklorica italiana nel cinema (Rome, 1959)

‘Alcuni di musica popolari italiani: distribuzione geografica’, Ethnomusicologie III [and IV]: Wégimont IV [recte V] 1958 and 1960, 75–85

with D. Carpitella: Studi e ricerche 1948–1960 (Rome, 1960)

Attività del CNSMP 1960 (Rome, 1961)

CNSMP: Catalogo sommario delle registrazioni 1948–1962 (Rome, 1963) [incl. ‘In campagna e in archivio’, 23–31; repr. in EM: Annuario degli Archivi di etnomusicologia dell’Accademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia, i (1993), 33–45]

with P. Toschi, G. Tucci and A.M. Cirese: Canti delle tradizioni marinare (Rome, 1968)

ed.: La ricerca e lo studio dei linguaggi musicali della Sicilia dal 1948 al 1969 attraverso l’opera del CNSMP (Rome, 1970) [incl. ‘Il CNSMP e la Sicilia’, 21–6; repr. in EM: Annuario degli Archivi di etnomusicologia dell’Accademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia, i (1993), 75–9]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Rocca: Panorama dell’arte radiofonica (Milan, 1938)

F.B. Pratella: Primo documentario per la storia dell’etnofonia in Italia (Udine, 1941)

1922–1962: Quarant’anni di attività di Giorgio Nataletti (Rome, 1962)

F. Vacca: ‘Gli studi sugli archivi di Etnomusicologia dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia’, EM: Annuario degli Archivi di etnomusicologia dell’Accademia nazionale di Santa Cecilia, iii (1995), 189–225

CAROLYN GIANTURCO