On 3 January 1925, less than three years after the March on Rome, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini announced the beginning of the dictatorship to the Chamber of Deputies of the Kingdom of Italy. Following the assassination in June 1924 of Giacomo Matteotti – the secretary of the Socialist Party – and the protest movement that had emerged opposing Mussolin’s cabinet, the enforcement of an authoritarian state came to represent the best solution to the impasse, one that could both win over the most intransigent fascists and, at the same time, satisfy the nationalist and conservative bloc, which was hoping for a process of normalisation without being particularly punctilious about the loss of fundamental freedoms.

In spite of persistent opposition until around 1928 within parliament to the constitution of a fascist state, the 1925 speech effectively marked the end of liberal Italy. In late 1925, the first leggi fascistissime [ultrafascist laws] transformed the existing constitutional monarchy into an authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorship via the centralisation of power in the hands of the premier and his party, the violent suppression of opposition parties, the control of the press and the media, the institution of a secret police force and, afterwards, the confino [internment] of anti-fascist activists.

It is somewhat astonishing to learn that the diffusion of Bartók’s music in Italy started to flourish around the mid-1920s within this distinctive and leaden political context. Between March 1925 and April 1929, Bartók gave thirteen concerts in Bergamo, Cremona, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Trieste, Venice and Rome. In the 1930s, thanks to the ambitious cultural, media and pedagogical policies of the regime, he was acclaimed as one of the most important musicians of his time. His Allegro barbaro and Suite op. 14 were introduced in the new syllabuses of the Italian conservatories, while his most recent compositions were regularly performed at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice: not only the Music for Strings (premiered in 1937), but also the String Quartet no. 4