HISTORY OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

The course aims to introduce attending students to the topical moments in the history of modern and contemporary music.

The student will acquire basic notions on the history of modern and contemporary music, both formal and historical; the composers and their works will be placed in the artistic context of the time.

The student is informed about the main events of the XVII-XX centuries, through the chronologies that will be found on the course page.

The Italian avant-garde in the nineteenth century: Arrigo Boito on the centenary of his death (1918-2018).

Arrigo Boito was the utopian tread of every avant-garde, as well as one of the most prominent figures of Italian culture and art of the second half of the nineteenth century, but at the same time knew how to maintain solid relationships with his own tradition in the literary field and musical, which he always practiced virtuously. We will evaluate his production as a librettist serving, in particular, Ponchielli (La Gioconda) and Verdi (from the remake of Simon Boccanegra to Otello and Falstaff), as well as a composer and librettist of a work that has become one of the most popular repertoire (Mephistopheles). Part of the course (6 hours) will be replaced by the frequency of the conference for the centenary of the death "Ecco il mondo": Arrigo Boito, the future in the past and the past in the future, conference (Venice, Giorgio Cini Foundation, 13-15 November 2018).

Homepage: http://www-5.unipv.it/girardi/2019_SMMC/SMMC.htm .
Syllabus: http://www-5.unipv.it/girardi/2019_SMMC/SMMC_esame_2019.htm

Arrigo Boito, atti del convegno nel centocinquantesimo della nascita, a cura di Giovanni Morelli, Firenze, Olschki, 1994 («Linea Veneta, 11»).
Arrigo Boito musicista e letterato, a cura di Giampiero Tintori, Milano, Nuove edizioni, 1986.
William Ashbrook, Gerardo Guccini, Mefistofele di Arrigo Boito, Milano, Ricordi, 1998 («Musica e spettacolo; collana di Disposizioni sceniche diretta da Francesco Degrada e Mercedes Viale Ferrero»).
Arrigo Boito, Il primo «Mefistofele», a cura di Emanuele d’Angelo, Venezia, Marsilio, 2013.
Emanuele d’Angelo, Boito drammaturgo per musica. Idee, visioni, forma e battaglie, Venezia, Marsilio, 2010.
Michele Girardi, French Sources of «Falstaff»: and Some Aspects of It’s Musical Dramaturgy, «Opera Quarterly», vol. 11/3, 1995, pp. 45-63;
—, Mefistofele Triumphant – From the Ideal to the Real, in Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music, a cura di Lorna Fitzsimmons e Charles McKnight, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 317-342.
Piero Nardi, Vita di Arrigo Boito, Verona, Mondadori, 1942.
Wolfgang Osthoff, Il sonetto nel «Falstaff» di Verdi e Guido Salvetti, La Scapigliatura milanese e il teatro d’opera, in Il melodramma italiano dell’Ottocento, a cura di Giorgio Pestelli, Torino, Einaudi, 1977, pp. 157-186 e 567-604.
The Verdi-Boito Correspondence, ed. by Mario Medici and Marcello Conati, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Oral examinatione: interview on the topics discussed in the course

Lectures, with the help of all the tools of computer science, to propose material in video, diagrams, read and discuss on-line bibliography, musical examples also on the piano.

Italian

During the first lesson the articulation of the course will be illustrated. Presence is recommended.

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