Abstract

From 1908 to 1916 a singular debate in epistolary form, between the most important Italian composer of the "Generazione dell'Ottanta", Gian Francesco Malipiero, and the old musicologist Oscar Chilesotti, took place. In this correspondence - full of 'lacunae' with regard to the letters of Chilesotti - can be retraced the ideological aim that pushed Malipiero to compound the artistic and philological approaches in restoring early music. Malipiero rejected the contemporary musicological method and exposed to Chilesotti diverse utopian visions in which past and present are mixed. In fact, as a composer and as a thinker, Malipiero was against the philological analysis in editing early music as well as in searching the 'true text'.