Traditional dances
Perhaps it's the late unification, but Italy is a collection of very strong distinct regional identities. And nothing has so well recorded the assertive character of each territory as its traditional music and dance. They generally reflect a culture, its dialect and its history. That said, there are common characteristics running through each area. For example, in the north, there are Celtic influences (notable in the use of six or seven hole flutes as fiffaro or bagpipes called here piva) and the recurrence of polyphonic singing (especially in Lombardy, Liguria or Friuli). In the south, one guesses (logically) Balkan or North African influences, especially in Puglia or Campania.
In the north, musical traditions have been particularly well preserved thanks to the work of local groups with an ethnomusicological approach. For example, in Piedmont, La Ciapa Rusa, its affiliated group Tendachënt and Tre Martelli keep the local folklore alive by re-orchestrating ancestral music and dances such as monferrine, alexandrine, curente or sestrine. Besides the artistic aspect, the mission of these entities is almost of public interest and sometimes involves the collection and recording of Piedmontese traditions. Lombardy and Veneto present similar cases with, for the first, the group Barabàn, which gives new blood to the polyphonies of the Po Valley or the archaic songs of the Apennines and for the second, the group Calicanto and the Popular Orchestra of the Dolomites.
In the northeast, and more precisely in Friuli Venezia Giulia, the villotta is practiced, a polyphonic song of three or four voices, centered around a short poetic text and filled with improvisations. They also dance the well-named "forlane", a cousin of a jig, energetic and punctuated with hopping. If the name tickles the ears of music lovers, it is perhaps because they have already come across it in compositions by François Couperin(Quatrième Concert Royal in 1722), Jean-Philippe Rameau(Les Indes galantes, 1737) or Mozart in Bastien and Bastienne (1768). Further south, in a strip connecting the Marche to Lazio, a dance related to tarantella and zumbarella is practiced: the saltarello. Lively and full of jumps, it represents the games of love and seduction and is still practiced a lot today, especially at weddings.
In the northwest, in Liguria, the vocal cords are used through the trallallero, a polyphonic a capella song typical of the Genoese hinterland, based on the repetition of onomatopoeia without meaning but harmonic. The trallalero is a (purely male) art of spontaneity, it is anything but rare to see singers improvising in groups without knowing each other - in "jams" called arrecheugeiti - in the streets of Genoa.
In neighboring Tuscany, and in Florence in particular, people also like to make good use of their vocal chords, since popular songs are a pillar of the region's identity. Lullabies, work songs or simple ditties contain the Tuscan memory and have survived particularly well thanks to the research and work of ethnomusicologists-musicians like Claudio Malcapi or Caterina Bueno.
In Emilia Romagna, couples dance the liscio, a practice whose roots go back to the nineteenth century, when Italy was particularly fond of the waltz, polka and mazurka. These three dances, together with the local musical tradition, gave form to liscio. Secondo Casadei (1906-1971), the "Strauss of Romagna", greatly contributed to the popularization of this dance and music throughout the country.
Umbria is not devoid of traditions and the Sor Cesare, Punta e Tacco, Trescone, Lo Schiaffo and La Manfrina are danced and kept alive by folklore groups such as Agilla e Trasimeno.
Southern Italy is obviously synonymous with tarantella. Native to Puglia around the eighteenth century, it is not a dance but a family of dances that originally had a therapeutic function since they served as an antidote to the bite of the tarantula (which explains its name). Very popular in Puglia, Calabria and Naples, its form varies according to the region. In Puglia, and particularly in the Salento peninsula, there is the very famous pizzica, a frenetic dance in duet, in Calabria, the tarantella is quite similar to the pizzica and is also practiced in couple but in a dancing and moving round called " rota " (wheel) while in the region of Naples the tammurriata is practiced. This last one is really the Neapolitan dance par excellence, with the tammorra, a tambourine loaded with cymbals. It is performed in a circle on a binary rhythm, in couples facing each other, with the arms held in front of the body and the elbows outwards.
Artists such as Peppe Barra or the Nuova Compagnia di canto popolare are excellent starting points to discover Neapolitan traditional music and in Calabria, the group Re Niliu is known for its mixture of Calabrian traditions and instruments and world music.
Classical music
It should come as no surprise that Italy has always been one of the most fertile lands in the world for... absolutely all the arts! And the field of so-called learned music is no exception to the rule. Italy is even a pioneer, because if we go back in musical history to the 11th century, we find a certain Guy d'Arezzo, a native of the province of Ferrara and the inventor - revolutionary - of the system of musical notation on staves. Excuse the pun.
Afterwards, even if the 14th century was a period of great artistic dynamism in Italy, it was not until the Renaissance that a thousand talents shone. Starting with the greatest Italian musician of the period: Palestrina. An important figure of the 16th century, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is often considered the father of Western religious music. During the same century, it was Venice that established itself as the leading Italian city in European musical life. Prosperous and stable, the Serenissima quickly established its status as a center for the publication of musical scores, an asset that attracted European composers to it, including certain Flemish composers who have remained emblematic of the Venetian school, such as Jacques Buus and Adrian Willaert.
The 17th century was the time of a small musical revolution in Italy. More particularly in Florence where the composers Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini collaborated in 1598 on a work entitled Dafne which gave birth to the opera. Since only a few fragments of the latter remain today, it is the famous Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) and his no less famous Orfeo (first performed in 1607) that is considered the first work of opera.
This same century was also the century of the Baroque era, dominated by the great Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti and especially Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1742). The latter is a violin prodigy who no longer needs to be introduced, nor his flagship work, the Four Seasons, which has been played with all kinds of sauces - and sometimes not in the best taste.
Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) was born in Sicily, but was identified with the city of Naples, as it was here that he developed his major works. A prolific composer of operas (about a hundred!), his main work is Il Trionfo dell'onore, which was first performed in Rome where it was showered with praise before becoming a huge success in Naples. Alessandro Scarlatti introduced his son Domenico (1685-1757) to music at an early age, and he too has remained famous, especially for his sonatas.
At the end of the 17th century, the Scarlattis were immersed in the Neapolitan artistic ebullition. Naples, along with Paris, dominated the musical scene of the continent - the effervescence was such that 400 churches had their own musical training. It is in this atmosphere that a singular and new theatrical form is born in Naples:theopera buffa (comic and light opera buffa). This original variant gradually became influential throughout Europe and even came to symbolize what would later be called the "Neapolitan school. Initiated by Scarlatti senior, this school contained all the great Neapolitan musical minds that would mark the following century: Francesco Provenzale, Nicola Porpora, Francesco Durante, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and later Niccolò Jommelli, Tommaso Traetta, Niccolò Piccinni, Giovanni Paisiello and Domenico Cimarosa..
At the beginning of the 18th century, Neapolitan opera also fueled its reputation with its castrati, most of them trained here. As a reminder, castrati were singers (male) whose genital glands had been surgically removed between the ages of 7 and 12 so that the voice would not moult. Thus the vocal apparatus did not develop while the rest of the body matured, allowing the singer to keep the luminous timbre of a child but with the "chest" of an adult body. Total stars, the most famous castrati lived in absolute glory, as Farinelli, remained in the legend as much for his exceptional voice as for his caprices...
The 18th century was also the time of great works in Italy. It was during this period that the San Carlo theater was built in Naples in 1737 and then La Scala (1776-1778) in Milan, two legendary stages where the most respected artists in the world continue to perform season after season.
The nineteenth century is the century of the Risorgimento. It was the era of Romanticism in literature, art and music in Europe, a trend attentive to human passions and the tumults of the soul such as love, heroism, courage, freedom, etc. A century first dominated by artists like Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), one of the most important composers of Italian operas (including The Sleepwalker, Norma and The Puritans) and his great rival Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), also famous for his operas: L'Elisir d'amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pasquale ... The latter is often considered the precursor of Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), the eternal and timeless composer of operas (twenty-six) whose work is marked by the psychological dimension infused into his characters - the most famous example is of course Rigoletto. He is perhaps the most performed (and loved) Italian opera composer in the world, even today.
Another icon of the century, Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) is the "greatest violinist of all time", a fabulous and innovative composer who influenced many other Romantic musicians - starting with Liszt.
If the Italiantwentieth century is marked by minimalist music, abstraction, atonality - an avant-garde embodied by Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio or Sylvano Bussotti - it is also the century of the great Italian conductors. Beginning with Claudio Abbado (1933-2014), an unforgettable and unavoidable figure, an emblem of Italian conducting. He took over the direction of La Scala at the age of 35, and it was under his impetus that the institution was transformed and its repertoire and audience renewed. As the director of some of the world's most prestigious orchestras - the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna State Opera and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - Claudio Abbado is forever a reference figure.
During his time at La Scala, Claudio Abbado had as his assistant a certain Riccardo Chailly, a young precocious talent who was just waiting to explode. This happened in no time, with the Italian becoming an object of desire for the most prestigious musical institutions such as the DSO Berlin, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Leipzig Opera. He returned to the source, La Scala, in 2017, but as music director this time. A consecration.
Another beloved Italian, Daniele Gatti is a director of great agility, as skilled in the field of opera as in symphony, and whose quality of interpretations has earned him regular praise. A talent well known to the French public since he was music director of the Orchestre National de France between 2008 and 2016 before taking over the direction of the prestigious Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
And how better to conclude this prestigious podium than with Riccardo Muti? After a stint with the Philharmonia Orchestra before taking over the direction of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980 and then of La Scala between 1986 and 2005, his career reached its peak when he took over the helm of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2010. It is here, at the head of one of the "Big Five" (the five most prestigious symphony orchestras in the United States), that this specialist of Verdi, Rossini or Puccini has established himself as one of the most valuable conductors of his time.
In Italy, musical monuments are not only made of flesh and blood, and among the important stages, let's not forget to mention the Teatro Regio in Turin, a magnificent place full of history, where the premiere of Puccini's La Bohème was given in 1896 in the presence of King Victor Emmanuel II. Let's not forget the Teatro La Fenice, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful opera houses in the world, where Verdi created Rigoletto in 1851.
Popular music
The Italian song is a whole world. And whether we are interested or not, we always know it a little more than we think. In this galaxy of eternal tunes, Come Prima, a 1950s hit covered by Dalida under the name Tu me donnes, is one of the first thrills. It is the iconic Mina whose career includes an unequalled amount of jewels(Une anno d'amore and Cittá Vuota are to be listened to again and again urgently). Otherwise, in no particular order, let's mention Domerico Modugno whose hit Nel blu dipinto di blu (it's the famous "Volare") will be covered by the Gipsy Kings, Toto Cutugno, the author of L'Italiano, or the crooner Adriano Celentano whose 24,000 baci, was also sung by Dalida. Later, Umberto Tozzi and his haunting Ti amo, Laura Pausini and her Solitudine or Andrea Bocelli, the blind tenor, will have great success here and there. More jazzy and melancholic, let's also mention the marvelous Paolo Conte, emblem of this very Italian bittersweet good mood.
In another genre, Italy is a great country of soundtracks. One cannot help but think first of Ennio Morricone, whose compositions for spaghetti westerns greatly contributed to the popularization of the genre. When they didn't steal the show from the leads. Another great name in soundtracks, Nino Rota, remains famous for his work on Federico Fellini's films and, later, on the Godfather series. Let's not forget Piero Umiliani who, if he worked on B movies or niche works, left magnificent soundtracks - including the one of The Girl with the Moon Skin, an erotic film by Luigi Scattini (1972), which is to be listened to again urgently.
Current music
Italian music is constantly renewing itself. Its blood is freshening up, driven in particular by a magnificent new pop scene riddled with talented youngsters such as Andrea Laszlo De Simone, sophisticated, gentle and dreamy, the incredible Giorgio Poi, who superbly modernizes the 60's/70's pop of his elders Lucio Battisti and Lucio Dalla, or Calcutta, adored for his songwriting. Like its French cousin, the new Italian scene also shines for the quality of its electronic music: Not Waving, Lorenzo Senni, Caterina Barbieri, Alessandro Adriani, Silvia Kastel or Andrea Belfi... A handful of names guaranteeing the good health of young Italian musical creation.
In another register, a number of Italian groups have enjoyed success beyond their own borders in recent years. First in electro, with The Bloody Beetroots and Crookers, two hit bands of the 2010s, then, more recently, the winners of Eurovision 2021, Måneskin, a slightly sulphurous band who live up to the motto " sex, drugs & rock'n 'roll"!
