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 Corsair from Byron to Verdi
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.
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.
General interest in music and its use as an art form.
Class lessons with CD and DVD examples.
The class will attend a performance of Verdi's Il corsaro 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.
Registering to the course Aulaweb is strongly recommended.
For students with learning disabilities/dsa it is recommended to contact the teacher, copying to dsa@segreterie.unige.it o disabili@segreterie.unige.it
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.
Fall 1848: Giuseppe Verdi stages, for the second and last time, an opera derived from a text by Lord Byron, the great Romantic poet so much connected with Genoa, whose name often appears, together with Shakespeare, among the operatic projects Verdi considers. Based on the poem of the same name from 1814, Il Corsaro is an eccentric opera in Verdi’s output, being staged on the secondary town of Trieste and published not by Verdi’s main publisher Ricordi but rather by his rival Francesco Lucca. For these reasons and others Il Corsaro has been unjustly neglected, crashed by the operas of the famous “popular trilogy” which followed a little later. It’s however a very interesting opera, staging a first-line character and topic in European Romantic culture. Verdi devotes interesting musical solutions and much attention to it, starting with the doubling of the soprano role and the care for the duets of the opera. The central character of a brave and passionate outsider, the natural and exotic settings, between see and harem, contribute to the interest for an opera Verdi stressed some fascinating situations of, as he was giving instructions to the singer entrusted with the role of prima donna: «The dramatic situation of this whole duet, as you see, is wonderful. In the final trio, don’t forget you have killed a man, and be careful that your remorse appears in all the words you utter».
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.
2. Libretto and recording of Verdi's Il corsaro; score only for those who can read music..
3. R. Mellace, Con moltissima passione. Ritratto di Giuseppe Verdi, Roma, Carocci, «Sfere» 82, 2013 (or Carocci, «Quality paperbacks» 514, 2017, or Società Europea di Edizioni – “Il Giornale”, «I protagonisti» 28, 2022).
4. J. Budden, Le opere di Verdi 1. Da Oberto a Rigoletto, Edt, 1985 / 2014, pp. 390-418.
5. P. Gallarati, Verdi, Milano, il Saggiatore, 2022, pp. 206-212.
6. M. Mila, Lettura del “Corsaro” di Verdi, in: Nuova rivista musicale italiana 5 (1971), pp. 40–73.
7. P. Mioli, Giuseppe Verdi. Le nozze di musica e dramma, Roma, Neoclassica, pp. 237-241.
N.B.: n. 2 (libretto only), 4, 5, 6 and 7 will be uploaded, after lessons have started, in the course's Aulaweb.
N. 1 and 3 are available at the University library and in bookshops.
Ricevimento: In the Dean's Office, via Balbi 2, secondo floor, by appointment (made in class or by Email)
RAFFAELE MELLACE (President)
DAVIDE MINGOZZI
LUCA BELTRAMI (Substitute)
Tuesday 3rd October 2023
Class Timetable
Tuesday 2-4 p.m., Polo didattico, via delle Fontane, Aula Magna
Wednesday 5-7 p.m., Albergo dei Poveri, Aula 15
HISTORY OF MUSIC
Oral Exam.
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.
