TRENTO – For some singers and musicians traditional music in the Dolomites started as a pastime but later evolved into successful careers. Toni Ortelli, an Italian alpinist and conductor from the Piedmont region is well known in the Alps as the composer the famous Trentino folk song La Montanara. Ortelli wrote the melody and lyrics in 1927 while on an excursion in the mountains and Luigi Pigarelli, a musician and magistrate from Trento, added vocal harmonies to make it a choral piece.
The unofficial anthem of the Trentino region, the song has been translated into 148 languages and is sung all over the world. ''La Montanara, ohe'! / You can hear it sung / We sing the Montanara / And who doesn’t know it?'' The song celebrates the mountains and the ''sweet little dwelling-place / Of Soreghina, the daughter of the Sun'', a character in an ancient Dolomite legend. La Montanara was first recorded by the SAT Choir, founded as the SOSAT Choir in 1926 by the brothers Enrico, Mario, Silvio and Aldo Pedrotti, all members of the Trento Mountaineering Association (SAT) and all enthusiastic about performing, preserving, and promoting the alpine folk songs they grew up singing. Today the SAT Choir performs all over the world and has given more that one thousand concerts.
Mountain choirs and choral performances have become very popular in the Dolomites and play an important social role in the communities, creating opportunities for young and old to congregate, study, research, and even modernize their cultural heritage: a pleasurable and sometimes demanding leisure activity. Another more recent musical phenomena noticed by all visitors to the Dolomites are the marching bands. Schools for band musicians have sprung up in many valleys and public officials vie to support their local bands. Traditional religious processions, celebrations, parades, awards ceremonies; nowadays these typical alpine bands in their flashy uniforms accompany almost all pubic events.
Both the choirs and the bands are relatively recent phenomena but there is a rich vein of alpine music from the past, both folk songs and dances. While some have been lost over time, cultural groups have started rediscovering this important heritage, especially the ancient musical instruments. In the Fiemme and Fassa valleys, predominately Ladin areas, there was once a flourishing trade in musical instruments made from the local wood and a musical culture developed, created by numerous Ladin songwriters. The Ladin people, believed to have descended from an ancient Iron Age tribe later subjugated by the Romans, still live in the Dolomites; they have their own language, their own culture, their own traditions, and their own songs.
Gustav Mahler is perhaps the most celebrated musician to have been inspired by the Dolomites. Too busy conducting during most of the year, Mahler only found time for composing in the summer and for three years, from 1908 to 1910, he worked in a plain hut in a quiet fir wood in Dobbiaco, a Dolomite town near the Austrian border. Hubert Stuppner, the artistic director of the Gustav Mahler Music Weeks, a festival established in Dobbiaco in 1981, wrote that ''the atmosphere of the green fields and forests, the dawns and dusks, the birds in the trees, the cowbells and the church bells, this is a leitmotiv in all Mahler’s work''. Renowned violoncellist Mario Brunello also finds musical inspiration in the Dolomites. When Brunello performed at the annual Sounds of the Dolomites summer concerts he said Dolomite mountain peaks brought to mind Bach scores. Trentino musician Francesco Schweizer, grandson of the Dolomite painter Riccardo Schweizer, composed a work inspired by the silhouette of Pale di San Martino mountain.
Three-time Oscar winner record producer, songwriter and performer Giorgio Moroder was born in the Dolomites. Now a Los Angeles resident, Moroder wrote the soundtracks for the films Flashdance, Top Gun and Midnight Express as well as the themes for the Los Angeles and Seoul Olympics and the Rome World Cup Soccer Championship. The Kastelruther Spatzen (The Castellrotto Sparrows) is folk music group from the German-speaking town of Castelrotto in the province of Bolzano. The group has enjoyed great international success but is little known in Italy. With a multitude of recordings, the Spatzen have sold more than 12 million records and won many prizes with their repertoire of songs liberally sprinkled with Dolomite lore and legend. On June 26 the Dolomites were named a United Nations World Heritage Site for their exceptional beauty, superlative natural phenomena and outstanding examples representing major stages of the earth's history.
