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Italy
As a country that occupied the center of the musical
world for approximately the last 2,000 years, due to the centrality of
Roman Catholic Church, Italy was not very keen on the search for its folk
fundamentals in the Romantic period, for the sake of cultural musical pride
that the other nations needed. This has always been an inseparable part
of Italian musical creation. Italian composers were
at the core of musical creation at all times. In the 11th century,
in Arezzo,
the Benedictine monk and music educator Guido d'Arezzo
invented syllable names (ut, re, mi, etc.) for the notes of the scale.
Some of the most important music
forms were born in Italy: the opera,
cantata,
sonata,
toccata,
partita,
motet
and more.
The heritage of violin
in Italy is highly developed, and goes back long before Vivaldi
and later, Paganini.
The greatest violin makers,
especially Amati, Guarneri
and Stradivarius
came from Cremona.
Italian opera
dominated for a very long time, from
the time of Gluck
to Rossini,
Verdi
and Puccini.
Although Verdi was not one of the national composers who explored their
people's folk music and incorporated it in their work, he
wrote his grand operas during the Italian uprising against Austrian occupation,
he had the privilege of becoming the symbol of defiance to this foreign
rule: (oddly, his name matched the initials of the cry for Italian
royalty Vittorio Emmanuele
Re D'Italia,
and King Vittorio's supporters would call out proudly "Viva Verdi").
He won this honor thanks to his operas dedicated to the spirit of freedom,
honesty and resistance to oppression ("Nabucco",
"Lombardi", "Ernani"),
in which he planted well hidden nationalist messages that made his audience
constantly oppose tyranny. "Nabucco"
("Nevuchadnezar" - the Babylonian emperor
who destroyed the first temple in Jerusalem), deals with the conflict between
oppressed Jews and the tormenting Babylonians.
Dances originated and developed in this country:
Pavane
- a festive, triple metre dance, whose origins
are probably Padua, Italy (hence its name).
Galliard
- a rapid triple metre dance integrated into
the suite.
Tarantella -
a fast dance whose purpose was to cure the bite of the tarantula spider.
Courante
- a quick dance, whose origins are French,
yet became famous in its 3/4 Italian version.
Musical cities in Italy
Italy on the WWW
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