Cesare Nordio e il Liceo musicale bolognese fra le due guerre in Bologna Novecento. Un secolo di vita della città, edited by M.L.Bramante Tinarelli, Bologna 1998, pp.79-82.
Music in Bologna, musicians in Bologna.

The years immediately following the first world war were characterized by a period of crisis and instability in the running of the musical lycée in Bologna. The musicians who had succeeded one after the other in the Direction, although very prestigious ones as Marinuzzi (1916-1919) and Alfano (1919-1923) could not  apply themselves to the Institute with the necessary energy, as each  was completely engrossed in his own activity of orchestra conductor and composer. From 1923 to 1925, the Musical Lycée was run by a communal supervising commission , until the arrival in Bologna of a young teacher of Composition, approximately thirty years old, who showed immediately to be in possessions of the necessary qualities to lift up the destiny of the prestigious institute.  Appointed Director of the Musical Lycée in Bologna in 1925, Cesare Nordio would  run the institute for about twenty years, becoming the absolute protagonist of the Bolognese musical life. In this way the Musical Lycée knew one of the most vivid periods of its history, providing itself with such an organization which is, largely, at the basis of today’s one. On the occasion of the appointment of Cesare Nordio to director, the review of the Town Council noted: “The young new director, gifted with an unbending will and a sincere and vivid interior life, greatly talented, gives assurance of the rebirth of the ancient, glorious Bolognese institute”. Born in Trieste in 1891, Nordio had studied in Milan and Lipsia, where he had got a diploma in Fugue and Composition under Max Reger. After having volunteered in the first world war, he had held the chair of Counterpoint and Composition at the officially recognized Lycée “Tartini” in Trieste, where he had established an important symphonic orchestra, and then charged with the chair of Counterpoint, Fugue and Composition, Chamber Music and Orchestra Conduction at the Regio “Bellini” Conservatoire in Palermo. In January 1925 he won the National Competition for the chair of Composition at the Musical Lycée in Bologna, where he became director in the same year in July. He arrived in Bologna as an already renowned composer, particularly thanks to the cycle of three symphonic impressions “Il Poema di Bruges” (Prime luci, Il lago d’amore, Le Beffroi) of 1922, in which late Romantic heritage and impressionistic orchestral colour cohexisted.

Click here to request the complete text (Italian version only)