Created: Levi Musical Catalogue

After taking a university course on Primo Levi's "Se questo e` un uomo", as well as being exposed to his other novels and poetry, I wondered if composers of classical music had been inspired by Levi's written word. This prompted a personal search to locate as many classical compositions that were either influeced by Levi or used his texts as a reference. From this search, I selected two pieces and presented a public performance of them on April 28th, 2016 at the University of Notre Dame in order to raise awareness of Levi's literature and legacy - all through the medium of music and the spoken word (projections of student testimonies and a short lecture by Dr. Vittorio Montemaggi were included in the program).

In my search, I was surprised to see how many composers of different nationalities chose Levi as a subject and I was especially intrigued by pieces which combined Levi's words with mixed media or with the words of other influential authors. In realizing this online catalogue, I listed each piece's relevance to Levi, its instrumentation, and attempted to find published scores and recordings for each piece, so that anyone interested may be able to locate them.

While I do realize not many people may be interested in a catalogue of classical musical works linked to the author Primo Levi (a niche of a niche!), I hope this helps even one other person, or inspires someone to listen to one of these pieces, support a composer, and/or read some of Levi's literature. If you find a mistake, find further information on an entry, or like to discuss this ongoing project, please email me at camtassi@gmail.com. Thank you!