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:  Nabucco, Verdi’s first masterpiece

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:  Nabucco, Verdi’s first masterpiece

Nabucco, Verdi’s first masterpiece is the opera with which, according to its own author, «one can say my artistic career really began». It was staged in nearly 60 opera houses through Europe in barely two years from 1842. Young Verdi, who was coming from the professional failure of this second opera and the huge personal tragedy of the death of his wife and their two baby children, saw in the success of that opera he had unwillingly accepted to compose the proof that the career he had chosen was the right one. From then onwards, he later said, «I obtained whatever commission I wanted»; «I had no more one hour of peace: 16 galley years»¸i.e. of hard, continuous work. Nabucco moreover offered him the chance to meet with his lifelong partner, his second wife, soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, who had accepted to sing the Primadonna role of the opera, convincing the opera house to schedule it. On a creative side, Nabucco is a huge step forward compared with the previous two Verdi’s operas, concerning ripeness in inspiration, melodic invention, intensity in conveying emotions (especially through ensembles), central role of choruses, which not by chance include «Va’ Pensiero», the most iconic chorus of Italian 19th-century opera and history. Nabucco revealed for the first time Verdi’s «almost savage nature» and his «power in expressing passions» that Rossini acknowledged Verdi, whom he met exactly the year of Nabucco’s debut.

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 Nabucco; score (for those who can read music).

3. R. Mellace, Con moltissima passione. Ritratto di Giuseppe Verdi, Roma, Carocci, «Quality paperbacks» 514, 2017 (also Carocci, «Sfere» 82, 2013).

4. G. Verdi, Nabucodonosor, Milano, Edizioni del Teatro alla Scala, 2026.

5. S. Arienta, Una trilogia per tempi di guerra, in «Studi verdiani», 27, 2017, pp. 81-110.

N.B.: n. 4 and 5 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. 1, Oxford University Press, New York (the chapter on Nabucco).

Parker R. (1997),  "Va’ pensiero" and the Insidious Mastery of Song, in Leonora's Last Act: Essays in Verdian Discourse, Princeton University Press, Princeton, p. 20-41.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Classes will take place from the week starting with 28th September.

First Semester Classes cover 6 CFU; the remaining 3 are going to be taught in the Second Semester (timetable yet to be defined). 

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.

FURTHER INFORMATION

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.

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 the Departments' disability liaison:

Lingue e culture moderne: Sara Dickinson - sara.dickinson@unige.it

Lettere e filosofia: Elisabetta Colagrossi - elisabetta.colagrossi@unige.it