“Diagramma Circolare” is a stage presentation in two movements composed in 1959. In this work Alberto Bruni Tedeschi expresses his rejection of the atrocities of war and dictatorship, and he does it by trying to make use of the entire theatre and employing all instruments of expression that man has created for audio/visual presentation. Thus we have to do with a work that is among the most modern of that period.

The magnificent Diagramma summarizes the almost twenty year cycle beginning with the ruins of World War I and closing with those of World War II. The six essential phases are: production, overproduction, crises, dictatorship and armament, war and ruins. At the end of the cycle one returns unavoidably to the point of outset. Alberto Bruni Tedeschi is a man of the industrial community, and the cycle depicted by the Diagramma is a source of life experience and relationships for him and not just an opportunity for dry scientific or philosophical speculation. Hence, the cycle itself is presented as almost counterpointal under rather different and seemingly incompatible viewpoints.

The speaker invokes cartesian argumentation, an opinion which, because of humanitarian considerations, cannot condescend to compromises: if logic dictates that the cycle is predestined to be repeated and that the protagonists change only in their personal identities but nonetheless with the same social functions shall commit the same deeds presented to the audience, then the speaker neither can nor may supplant the effect of the speech with his own wishes, he neither can nor may foster any illusions with consoling lies.

The speaker is a hateful, inhuman but necessary being: if the human race were ever capable of interrupting the pardonless cycle, it would not occur unrecognized and contrary to reason. The author created a corner all for the speaker himself who has nothing to do with the passions and suffering caused by the events, even his language is exalted above them, sterile, precluding any stress or even participation in what he is saying, as so expressed by Giampiero Bona's meticulous wording.

But human life is not just reason, there is also ambition, the basic necessity of existence, there are the powers unleashed by human transactions, which become greater with each one of man's control functions, powers which result in such a manifestation of life’s energies that they cause mass deaths and total destruction. Man is also an abstraction: man has changed with the change of the circumstances of history; in the capitalistic world there is the president here is the worker, he threatens even if he doesn't send the politician. The president of the board of administrators does not stand above the parties, as does the speaker. On the contrary, he is involved, he burns with enthusiasm, he defends his role and the ideas evolving from it, he worries, he is happy about the victories and is destroyed by defeat. In contrast to the loneliness of the president is the indivisibility of the worker from the others, comrades in unemployment or at work or family members whose bread depends upon his employment and earnings. What the president and the worker have in common is the intranslatability of their respective languages, fear of the real differences of their interests: for the president the closing of plant 12 can be an unavoidable necessity, as for the worker the necessity of feeding his children is unavoidable. If the one cannot advance towards his goal at the greatest speed, the other cannot wait, and each expresses ideas which are basically only the rationalisation of their respective needs. The worker commits suicide, his son is killed by the police for plotting against the security of the state, the mother will die under the war bombs: but there will always be workers, who work during the periods of superproductivity and armament in an inhumane rhythm and are driven to despair in the times of crisis, which arouse a spontaneous rebellious philosophy of life in the workers.

And in the meantime the rhythm develops mercilessly: and meanwhile the cycle develops mercilessly: the rhythm of production grows beyond measure, and just because of the improved standard of life the crisis breaks out, riches are destroyed which have just been created without considering their real necessity; then the dictator agrees to a certain upswing again, but that simply shifts the crisis to the level of international relations and leads to the fateful war and to new destruction, to ruin, to the return of the circular Diagramma to its original position ready to begin a new cycle of production, crisis and war. But at this point the dramatic situation is withdrawn from the development that seems to be predestined. The daughter of a worker sits in the place of the president, if only for a time, and proposes a search for the causes and responsibility for all of the destruction, for all of the sacrifices of energy and life made in vain. The speaker warns against useless preaching and against trying people who have acted in the only possible way for them. That there have been errors means that everything has been and shall forever be unavoidable, doesn't it? Basically, the law as expressed in the diagram is strict. Man can, however, each for himself or in solidarity with each other, interrupt the diagram at the outbreak of war by use of “foresceing higher reason”. And perhaps the fact that the chorus closes its final complaint with the word “salvation” is symbolic.

The real people in the piece suffer, and so they die, and the musician suffers with them and for their sake, but nonetheless he does not forget that much of what happens is unavoidable. Hence, there's a musical aspect declaring his solidarity with the characters, and even an aspect identifying itself with them (it should not be forgotten that all characters express themselves in words); and finally, an aspect to the contrary presenting the situations in an objective neutral manner. Just as the drama thrives on the strong contrast between reality and purposefulness, the music touches the limits of sound, the limits of presentation corresponding to the reality of the roaring events concerned, sometimes with tbc purpose-fulness of counterpointal architecture which obeys the merciless law, sometimes with the voice of human pain (the six chorus “complaints”), more frequently with a quick succession of all the unravelable parts woven together. In two cases the music forms the voices of worldly beings with exteriors that can hardly be set to music: three stockbrokers and three statisticians. In both cases a catastrophic prophecy comes from the mouths of the unusual people a prophecy that is punctually verified. The drama that the audience gets to see is alive and senses by means of words, film strips, sound effects and finds its exact agreement in the music which in one respect opposes the feeling for the manner of the original basic intention of expression, and in another respect supplements it, so that the strict counter-pointal conversation is in unity with the vitality of the percussion and the naive singability, or with the pointed screeching of the string instruments. The expression “counterpoint”, which by tradition designates a song with many voices, broadens its meaning to that of rehearsing visual action and audio plays, music and sound effects, lights and realistic outbreaks. There is the hissing and explosion of bombs, the merciless pounding of machines, the dramatic crash on the New York Stock Exchange which “counterpoints” the scientific speculation of the stockbrokers who make you shiver because of their “neutrality” by remaining unmoved by the catastrophe and on their part counterpointing the information about the events reported by the speaker with the customary brutal objectivity. In a further sense this is one of many examples of counterpoint laced through the entire work. The music, although an inseparable part of a sizeable project, does have its own essential effectiveness even if it cannot really be separated from the stage action: Diagramma circolare is a message which you can accept as it is or reject, but without doubt it is a testimony that you should not ignore or underestimate.

THE TEXTBOOK

As an explanantion of his own task the speaker invites the public to watch a grand Diagramma Circolare composed of six parts. They represent the different states of the economy, each brought forth by the preceeding, unified in a complete and closed cycle. The parts are respectively: production, overproduction, crisis, dictatorship and armament, war, ruins. In this cycle the principle governing the changes of human existance proves itself: i.e. let us take a worker's family in the period following the war 1915-1918. At first there is the unemployment, of the head of the family, but soon the production mechanism will start again and he will be working in his old factory again. The rhythm of production steps up slowly to a dizzying tempo and goes into overproduction. Then we reach 1929, the year of tragedy, moved by need and ruin, the beginning of the great crisis and the Great Depression. From Wall Street the news of the crash of the economic world is flashed out. The confusion is so merciless and terrifying that numerous industries collapse and turn to dust, legendary wealth disappears into nothing, and the world of despairing expectation begins to tremble, the booty of anarchy and mismanagement. In the factories redundancies become necessary and our worker is dismissed as well, but the losses are multiplied and continue to rise. The only means is to stop production. Silence descends upon the plant. The complete silence, the collapse of work and the machines, the terrifying stillness of the plants, in which life has been blotted out. The worker who has lost every hope commits suicide. The crisis of 1929 announces the beginning of state intervention in the affairs of its subjects. A dictatorship is set up which, however, is gleefully welcomed by the president of the industrial company, who is convinced that this will bring the end of the economic crisis. And indeed the factories soon open their gates: there is new work for them, a new upswing. The only resistance to the dictatorship is incorporated in the son of the worker who commited suicide; he reveals his own ideas in a dramatic discussion with the president of the company. The son is also shot down by the state police shortly afterwards, and thanks to an armament plan the production has been greatly increased, so that the country is prepared for the probable event of a war. The rhythm of production grows convulsively. War breaks out. The plants and the worker's house are destroyed, and the president and the mother are left, but both dead. The only survival of the worker's family is now the daughter. But although her body is alive, her heart and spirit have become the victims of the deadly tragedy. She moves about aimlessly in strange measures, there where happiness could be identified as the complete lack of contact, and surely in a lonely and very sad state of insanitv. The shadows of the dead unite with her in order to lend expression to the torturous question about the purpose of their sacrifices. While the tragically ended economic cycle is beginning anew, the speaker draws his conclusions: all that has been in the past, shall be in the present and the future. But the names and exteriors change, so that anybody without good ears cannot recognize them and cannot be sufficiently prepared to oppose them. Nonetheless, the speaker warns that the horrible war machinery need not be used in order to live, but that it is necessary that man interrupt the cycle of the diagram with all means at his disposal, by exchanging the cycle at the outbreak of war by foreseeing higher reasoning.