Suona la tromba

"Suona la tromba" (The trumpet sounds) or "Inno popolare" (Hymn of the people) was a secular hymn composed by Giuseppe Verdi in 1848 to a text by the Italian poet and patriot Goffredo Mameli. The work's title comes from the opening line of Mameli's poem. It has sometimes been referred to as "Grido di guerra" and "Euterpe Patria".

The piece begins with the line: "Suona la tromba, ondeggiano le insegne gialle e nere." ("The trumpet sounds, the yellow and black flags are waving."), a reference to the yellow and black flag of the Austrian Empire. It was commissioned by Giuseppe Mazzini as a new battle hymn for the Revolution of 1848 when Italian nationalists sought independence from the Austrian Empire which controlled large portions of northern Italy. He persuaded Verdi to compose the music for it when Verdi visited Milan in May 1848, shortly after the Austrians had been driven from the city and other parts of Lombardy. Mazzini commissioned the text from Mameli in June, asking him for a poem that would become the Italian "Marseillaise" and quoted Verdi's wish that the new anthem would "make the people forget both the poet and the composer". Mameli finished the poem in late August, and Mazzini immediately sent it to Verdi who was living and working in Paris at the time. Verdi sent the finished work, composed for a three part male chorus without accompaniment, to Mazzini on 18 October 1848. In the accompanying letter Verdi wrote:

I send you the hymn, and even if it is a bit late, I hope it will arrive in time. I have tried to be as popular and easy as I can be. Make use of it as you see fit: even burn it if you do not think it worthy.

In his letter to Mazzini of 18 October 1848, Verdi had recommended that if Mazzini wished to publish the hymn, he give it to Carlo Pozzi, an affiliate of Verdi's publisher Casa Ricordi. However, before the music reached Mazzini, the Austrian Empire had regained its lost territories and Milan's musical life was once again under the control of the Austrian censors. The numerous patriotic songs and anthems that had been published by Casa Ricordi and Casa Lucca during the brief revolution were withdrawn, with some of those editions destroyed. Mazzini did not try to have "Suona la tromba" officially published at that time, although in late 1848 a few copies of it were printed and circulated in Florence by the short-lived Associazione Nazionale per la Costituente Italiana (National Association for the Italian Constitution). Mameli died in 1849 at the age of 22. His earlier poem "Il Canto degli Italiani" (The Song of the Italians) later became the Italian National anthem.

...
Wikipedia