OVERVIEW

Course format: 

- Part 1 + Part 2: 9 CFU

- Part 1 only: 6 CFU

Part 1: European Art Music from Bach to Brahms: a Journey ​from Baroque to Romantic Age

Part 2: The Merry Widow and Musical Life in Belle Époque Vienna

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims at offering a guide to main styles and forms of musical theatre and instrumental music, considered in the

chronological development of history of music.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

9 CFU

The course aims at providing the student with the capabilities to acknowledge, understand, and describe symbols and meanings of musical language, increasing the awareness of the numerous relationships between music, literature, arts, and sciences. The student will learn to understand the strategies composers employ to transmit specific ideological, poetical, religious, political, or personal messages through the prescriptions, on the paper or other, which will enact the score, so that their message reaches the listeners through the performers. 

The main assumption of the course is that the knowledge and competence about genres, forms, and authors from the history of western music significantly completes the cultural preparation of any student of humanities. This will enable to correct a guilty failure of Italian school system, contributing to the assumption that music, differently than other disciplines in the humanities, must settle for an extemporaneous and acritical approach, as if it were an ephemeral experience to be consumed with eyes wide shut.

By the end of the course students will be able to understand a significant time span of the history of western music, having developed tools to acknowledge, understand, and describe musical language which could be applied, also in creative terms, to other contexts. They will be able to acknowledge, understand and describe the main genres of art music in Europe between Bach and Debussy, understand, discuss, and describe the aesthetic and style options of the composers considered, judge proximity or distance between movements and single composers. 

6 CFU

The course aims at providing the student with the capabilities to acknowledge, understand and describe symbols and meanings of musical language, increasing the awareness of the numerous relationships between music, literature, arts, and sciences. The main assumption of the course is that the knowledge and competence about genres, forms, and authors from the history of western music completes significantly the cultural preparation of any student of humanities.

By the end of the course students will be able to understand a significant time span of the history of western music, having developed tools to understand, discuss, and describe musical language which could be applied also to other contexts. 

PREREQUISITES

General interest in music and its use as an art form.

TEACHING METHODS

Class lessons with CD and DVD examples.

The class will attend a performance of The Merry Widow at Teatro Carlo Felice.

The class will be invited to attend concerts and operas on stage in Genoa and at Teatro dell’Opera Giocosa in Savona, if related to the course programme.

Attending class is strongly recommended.

The course will be held

- part 1 (first Semester) online through Microsoft Teams (the code will be available here and in Aulaweb);

- part 2 (second Semester), hopefully in presence.

Registering to the course Aulaweb is strongly recommended.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The course might be chosen in a 6 (just Part 1) or 9 (6+3: Part 1 + Part 2) credit format.

No specific background in music is required.

Part 1: European Art Music from Bach to Brahms: a Journey from Baroque to Romantic Age

Part 1 (6 credits) will enquire the development of Western Music 1680 to 1890, from late Baroque to the Romantic age. The general outline of that historical period will be regularly exemplified in class through CDs and DVDs, leading students to a solid knowledge of styles, genres and main composers of Western Music from Bach to Brahms. The course will explore four seasons of European Music: Baroque, Galant, Classic and Romantic styles. 

Part 2: The Merry Widow and Musical Life in Belle Époque Vienna

Since 1866 the capital of the newly established Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, completely renovated in his urbanistic shape as it appears still nowadays from the Ring-Strasse, restored as the heart of a brilliant musical life, Vienna experiments a glorious period of cultural life lasting until 1938, thanks to the contribution of intellectuals such as Freud and Klimt, and, on the musical side, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg, and Berg. One of the most remarkable features of that period was the flourishing of dance-centered entertainment music, transfiguring through art the energy, the vitality, and the hedonistic and optimistic perspective of a century which, having overcome the 1848 Revolution, was about to enjoy the thriving belle époque, before the abrupt stop caused by the traumatic experience of World War I. The course aims at discussing the high-level entertainment music of that period, from the world-famous output of the “King of Waltz”, Johann Strauss jn., to The Merry Widow (1905) by Franz Lehár, the most famous Operette, both to be seen as celebration of dance, icon of elegance and at the same time open to the rich musical diversity of the provinces of the Habsburg empire.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Required Readings - Part 1 only (6 CFU)

R. Mellace, Il racconto della musica europea. Da Bach a Debussy, Carocci («Quality paperbacks» 560), 2019, p. 1-387.

Required Readings - Part 1+2 (9 CFU)

1. R. Mellace, Il racconto della musica europea. Da Bach a Debussy, Carocci («Quality paperbacks» 560), 2019, pp. 1-387. 417-422, 507-510.

2. Libretto and recording of F. Lehár's Merry Widow; score (for those who can read music).

3. C. Dahlhaus, La musica dell’Ottocento, La Nuova Italia, Scandicci, 1990, pp. 240-250.

4. C. Casini, L’operetta danubiana dei grandi maestri, 1. I primi lavori di Franz Lehár (1902-1909), in Musica in scena, IV Altri generi teatrali, dir. A. Basso, Torino, UTET, 1995, pp. 379-385.

5. R. Mellace, L’invenzione del moderno a passo di danza, in La vedova allegra (Die lustige Witwe) di Franz Lehár, Programma di sala, Milano, Edizioni del Teatro alla Scala, 2008, pp. 67-95.

6. R. Mellace, Franz Lehár. Cronologia della vita e delle opere, ivi, pp. 119-121.

7. S. Durante, Ragionamenti sul canto, in La vedova allegra, Programma di sala, Padova, Teatro Comunale “G. Verdi”, 2014, pp. 6-11.

8. J. Roth, La marcia di Radetzky, different editions (Rizzoli, Adelphi, Giunti, Newton Compton) OR J. Roth, La cripta dei Cappuccini, different editions (Rizzoli, Adelphi, Rusconi, Newton Compton)  

N.B.: n. 2 (libretto only), 3, 4, 5, 6 e 7 will be uploaded, after lessons have started, in the course's Aulaweb. Enrollment to Aulaweb is therefore strongly reccomended

N. 1 e 8 are available in the university library and in bookshops.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

RAFFAELE MELLACE (President)

DAVIDE MINGOZZI

LUCA BELTRAMI (Substitute)

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Lessons start on October 7th.  

Lesson hours: Thursdays 4 to 5 p.m.; Fridays 1 to 3 p.m., on Microsoft Teams, Team "Storia della musica 2021/22", code b8897yj

Class schedule

HISTORY OF MUSIC

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Oral Exam.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The exam will consist in an oral interview on the course programme and its bibliography. Students will be tested on (instrumental and vocal) genres and forms, styles and main authors of the portion of history of music considered in the course program, paying specific attention to the evolution of each style. They are required to be able to describe and discuss the topics of the course programme. 

Students will be tested on the knowledge of the course programme (topics discussed in class, readings taken from the bibliography or uploaded in the course "aulaweb"), specifically on their capabilities in describing and discussing the course topics and in the accuracy in employing the specific language.

Notes taken in class cannot be by any means considered adequate to reach the required outcomes.

Exam schedule