Scudo, P(ietro)
Scudo, P(ietro)
Scudo, P(ietro), Italian-born French writer on music and composer; b. Venice, June 8, 1806; d. Blois, Oct. 14, 1864. He was reared in Germany, then went to Paris, where he studied at Choron’s Institution Royale de Musique Classique et Religieuse (c. 1824–30). He was for a time an opera singer and also played clarinet in military bands, then turned to journalism. He publ. several political pamphlets, and also became music critic of the influential Revue des Deux Mondes. A writer of considerable talent, he held reactionary views and violently attacked Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. He became deranged and died in an insane asylum. He was the composer of several songs, and also wrote a musical novel, Le Chevalier Sarti (1857; not connected with the composer Giuseppe Sarti), the sequel to which, Frédérique, was publ. in the Revue des Deux Mondes.
Writings
(all publ. in Paris): Critique et littérature musicales (Vol. I, 1850; third ed., enl., 1856; Vol. II, 1859); l’art ancienne et l’art moderne: nouveaux mélanges de critique et de littérature musicales (1854); L’année musicale, ou Revue annuelle des théâtres lyriques et des concerts (1860–62); La musique en l’année 1862 (1863).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire