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: Verdi’s Macbeth Based on Shakespeare’s Play: a Modern Descent into Hell

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

There are no specific requirements.

TEACHING METHODS

Class lessons with CD and DVD examples.

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

The class will be invited to attend concerts and operas on stage in Genoa, if related to the course programme.

Attending class is strongly recommended.

Registering to the course Aulaweb (activated immediately before lectures start) is strongly recommended in order to obtain information and materials.

Erasmus Students should speak with the instructor as lectures start, in order to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams. Erasmus students not proficient in Italian may request a substitutive bibliography, and take the examination in English, French or German.

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: Verdi’s Macbeth Based on Shakespeare’s Play: a Modern Descent into Hell

Macbeth is a unique work in Verdi’s career. The composer was fully aware of the exceptionality of this first encounter between himself and Shakespeare, two giants of European theatre. Approaching one of the most accomplished among Shakespeare’s tragedies, he clearly perceived the abyssal quality of a text different from any other opera libretto Italy before 1861 (where Shakespeare was at any rate very rarely performed even in spoken theatre) was accustomed to. Confronting Shakespeare’s tragedy, Verdi found himself. He detected in Shakespeare’s text features corresponding to the idea of theatre he was developing in his tormented “galley years”, of which Macbeth is a milestone. An exceptional feature in the opera is the total absence of the love topic, normally unavoidable in the making of an opera. Most of all, a true innovation is the importance of the supernatural, virtually unknown to Italian operatic tradition, signified by the collective character of the witches, haunting projection of Macbeth’s endless ambition and internal contradictions. The opera turns out as a journey into the abyss of conscience, a highly modern descent into Hell, which is still able to shake our contemporary sensibility.

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.

Alternative readings for English-speaking students:

​Heller W. (2014), Music in the Baroque, Norton, New York.

Rice J. (2014), Music in the Eighteenth Century, Norton, New York.

Frisch W. (2013), Music in the Nineteenth Century, Norton, New York.

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 (included in  n. 4 of this bibliography) and video or audio recording of Verdi's Macbeth; score (for those who can read music).

3. R. Mellace, Con moltissima passione. Ritratto di Giuseppe Verdi, Roma, Carocci, «Sfere» 82, 2013 (also Carocci, «Quality paperbacks» 514, 2017, Società Europea di Edizioni – “Il Giornale”, «I protagonisti» 28, 2022).

4. G. Verdi, Macbeth, Milano, Edizioni del Teatro alla Scala, 2023.

5. R. Mellace, Un poeta «che non ha nulla in comune cogli altri», in Verdi. Macbeth, Milano, Intesa Sanpaolo – Musicom – Edizioni Gallerie d’Italia – Skira, 2022 (“Vox Imago” 8), pp. 103-117.

6. D. Degrada, Macbeth, un'opera sperimentale, in Macbeth, Milano, Edizioni del Teatro alla Scala, 1975, pp. 73-91.

7. Fabrizio Della Seta, Re Duncano va a morire . Un itinerario rivoluzionario da Shakespeare aVerdi,   in  La drammaturgia   verdiana   e   le   letterature   europee,   Roma,   Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2003, pp. 23-35, ora in Id.,  «Non senza pazzia». Prospettive sul teatro musicale, Roma, Carocci, 2008, pp. 97-110.

N.B.: n. 4, 5, 6 and 7 will be uploaded, after lessons have started, in the course's AulaWeb. N. 1 and 3 are available in the Library of the School of Humanities and in bookshops.

Alternative readings for English-speaking students:

Heller W. (2014), Music in the Baroque, Norton, New York.

Rice J. (2014), Music in the Eighteenth Century, Norton, New York.

Frisch W. (2013), Music in the Nineteenth Century, Norton, New York.

Budden J. (2013), Verdi, Oxford University Press, New York.

Budden J. (1978), The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi, vol. 3, Oxford University Press, New York (the chapter on Macbeth).

Albright D. (2005) The Witches and the Witch: Verdi's Macbeth, in “Cambridge Opera Journal”, 17/3, 2005, p. 225-252.

Mellace R. (2022) A poet who “has nothing in common with the others”, in Verdi. Macbeth, Milano, Intesa Sanpaolo – Musicom – Edizioni Gallerie d’Italia – Skira, 2022 (“Vox Imago” 8), pp. 103-117.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Classes will take place starting from the week from Monday 29th September (class schedule not yet available)

Class schedule

HISTORY OF MUSIC

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Oral Exam.

Students who have valid certification of physical or learning disabilities on file with the University and who wish to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams, should speak both with the instructor and with Prof. Sara Dickinson (sara.dickinson@unige.it), the Department’s disability liaison.

Erasmus Students should speak with the instructor as lectures start, in order to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams. Erasmus students not proficient in Italian may request a substitutive bibliography, and take the examination in English, French or German.

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.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Students who have valid certification of physical or learning disabilities on file with the University and who wish to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams, should speak both with the instructor and with Prof. Sara Dickinson (sara.dickinson@unige.it), the Department’s disability liaison.

Erasmus Students should speak with the instructor as lectures start, in order to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams. Erasmus students not proficient in Italian may request a substitutive bibliography, and take the examination in English, French or German.