Musical Cultures and Practices in the Age of Mass Media
A.Y. 2019/2020
Learning objectives
The course develops historical-cultural and theoretical-interpretive competences concerning the interactions between music and mass media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The course aims to enable students to relate their musicological knowledge with a theoretical and methodological apparatus derived from media and cultural studies. The ability to read and interpret complex intermedia processes informing contemporary musical practices is the main learning goal of the course.
The course aims to enable students to relate their musicological knowledge with a theoretical and methodological apparatus derived from media and cultural studies. The ability to read and interpret complex intermedia processes informing contemporary musical practices is the main learning goal of the course.
Expected learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students will have acquired theoretical-methodological and historiographical awareness regarding some cultural processes which underpin musical practices in the age of mass media. This will be achieved with particular reference to the different monographic theme constituting the main focus of the course every year.
Lesson period: Second semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course cannot be attended as a single course. Please check our list of single courses to find the ones available for enrolment.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Responsible
Lesson period
Second semester
Course syllabus
Title of the monographic course: The sound of "boom": Music and mass media in Italy during the economic miracle
This year's monographic course focuses on musical cultures and practices in Italy during the years of the economic miracle and in the "long 1960s". We will examine the shifts and transformations in the musical mediascape, which contributed to define an overall new soundscape in 1960s Italy. The first part of the program (Unit A) will be devoted to the mutations in the avantgarde and in the popular music scene, as they were linked to media such as television, radio, and the record industry. The second part of the program (Unit B) will focus on film music in what is commonly considered the "golden era" of Italian cinema: cinema will be approached as musicological subject that "re-mediates" musical practices, from jazz to electroacoustic music, from opera to song.
This year's monographic course focuses on musical cultures and practices in Italy during the years of the economic miracle and in the "long 1960s". We will examine the shifts and transformations in the musical mediascape, which contributed to define an overall new soundscape in 1960s Italy. The first part of the program (Unit A) will be devoted to the mutations in the avantgarde and in the popular music scene, as they were linked to media such as television, radio, and the record industry. The second part of the program (Unit B) will focus on film music in what is commonly considered the "golden era" of Italian cinema: cinema will be approached as musicological subject that "re-mediates" musical practices, from jazz to electroacoustic music, from opera to song.
Prerequisites for admission
A good knowledge of twentieth-century music history and a basic awareness of the events of postwar Italian political history are important prerequisites of the course. It is advisable that one chooses this course after having already taken other historical-musicological exams before. Competences in musical grammar and theory are assumed.
Teaching methods
The course will be structured in class lectures and will draw on the Ariel platform for sharing materials and aids.
Teaching Resources
Classes will be supported by slides comprised of multimedia contents (audio and video clips), which will be uploaded to the course's website on the Ariel platform (https://mcorbellacpmemm.ariel.ctu.unimi.it/v5/Home/). The multimedia materials are solely intended for study and research scopes. They are an integral part of the program and will be subjected to the final assessment, together with the bibliography of the course.
For a historical background about Italy's political-economic history during the 1960s, students are encouraged to read chapters 7 and 8 of A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988 by Paul Ginsborg (New York, Penguin Books, 1990 and following editions).
LEARNING UNIT A
(for students attending AND not attending the classes)
- DE BENEDICTIS, ANGELA IDA. Gli esordi dello Studio di fonologia musicale: «Il risultato di un incontro fra la musica e le possibilità dei nuovi mezzi, in Lo Studio di fonologia. Un diario musicale 1954-1983, a cura di Maria Maddalena Novati, Milano, Ricordi, pp. 7-23. Available in English as: "A meeting of music and the new possibilities of technology:" The Beginnings of the Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Milano della Rai, in The Studio di Fonologia. A Musical Journey 1954-1983. Update 2008-2012, ed. Maria Maddalena Novati and John Dack, Milan, Ricordi, 2012, pp. 3-18.
- PRATO, PAOLO. La musica italiana. Una storia sociale dall'Unità a oggi, Roma, Donzelli, 2019, pp. 255-305.
- TOMATIS, JACOPO. Storia culturale della canzone italiana, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 2019, chp. 3 ("Nuovi generi, nuove estetiche: urlatori, cantautori e altri", pp. 137-210), chp. 5 ("«Musica nostra», beat e folk: generi e giovani", pp. 283-327), and chp. 6 ("L'invenzione della canzone d'autore", pp. 329-390).
(only for students not attending the classes)
- AGOSTINI, ROBERTO. Sanremo Effects. The Festival and the Italian Canzone (1950s-1960s), in Made in Italy: Studies in Popular Music, ed. Franco Fabbri and Goffredo Plastino, New York, Routledge, 2014, pp. 28-40.
- GALANTE, FRANCESCO - SANI, NICOLA. Musica espansa. Percorsi elettroacustici di fine millennio. Milano - Lucca, Ricordi - LIM, pp. 74-92 ("Lo Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Milano").
- TOMATIS, JACOPO. Storia culturale della canzone italiana, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 2019, chp. 4 ("Gli intellettuali e la canzone", pp. 211-282).
LEARNING UNIT B
(for students attending AND not attending the classes)
- BUZZI, MAURO. La canzone pop e il cinema italiano. Gli anni del boom economico (1958-1963), Torino, Kaplan, 2013, chp. 1 ("Le funzioni della canzone nel film", pp. 21-61) and chp. 2 ("Il musicarello", pp. 62-107).
- From the special issue Film Music Histories and Ethnographies: New Perspectives on Italian Cinema of the Long 1960s, «Journal of Film Music» 8/1-2 (2015):
· CECCHI, ALESSANDRO & CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Guest Editorial, pp. 5-12.
· GIUGGIOLI, MATTEO. Source and Myth: Opera in Italian Cinema of the 1960s, pp. 13-31.
· CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Setting the Tone of the Southern Question: Music and/as Fatalism in Italian Cinema of the Economic Miracle, pp. 32-50.
· BRATUS, ALESSANDRO. Looking at the Screen through the Spindle Hole: A Phonographic Approach to Italian Cinema of the 1960s, pp. 51-65.
· CECCHI, ALESSANDRO. The Industrial Soundscape between Fiction and Documentary in Italy's Long 1960s, pp. 89-108.
- CORBELLA, MAURIZIO & ALESSANDRINI, LORENA. Scoring the Space Terror: Music in Science Fiction Cinema during the Italian Economic Miracle. «Lied und Populäre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture» 64, 2019, pp. 99-120.
- CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Lo sfondo ai sentimenti di domani». Note sulla musica elettroacustica nel cinema italiano (1950-1980). «Quaderni del CSCI» 15, 2019, pp. 136-141.
It is required to entirely watch and pay special attention to the soundtracks of the following films:
- Urlatori alla sbarra (Howlers of the Dock, Lucio Fulci, 1960)
- La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
- Mafioso (Alberto Lattuada, 1962)
- Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi, 1962)
- Omicron (Ugo Gregoretti, 1963)
- Deserto rosso (Red Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964)
- Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1965)
- Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone, 1965)
- Il giorno della civetta (Mafia, aka The Day of the Owl, Damiano Damiani, 1968)
- La classe operaia va in paradiso (Lulu the Tool, Elio Petri, 1971)
(only for students not attending the classes)
Choose and prepare one of the following films and its accompanying essay:
- Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, Giuseppe De Santis, 1949) · CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Which People's Music?: Witnessing the Popular in the Musicscape of Giuseppe De Santis's "Riso amaro" (1949, Bitter Rice), in Music, Collective Memory, Trauma, and Nostalgia in European Cinema after the Second World War, ed. Michael Baumgartner, Ewelina Boczkowska, New York, Routledge, 2019, pp. 45-69.
- L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) · CALABRETTO, ROBERTO. Antonioni e la musica, Venezia, Marsilio, cap.4 ("Dall'Avventura all'Eclisse. La "svolta" musicale nel cinema di Antonioni", pp. 105-135.
- La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) · SALA, EMILIO. Ossessione sonora, mimetismo e familiarità perturbata nelle musiche di Nino Rota per la "Dolce vita" di Fellini. «AAM-TAC» 7 (2010), pp. 127-140.
- Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits, Federico Fellini, 1965) · CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Notes for a Dramaturgy of Fellini's Cinema: The Electroacoustic Sound Library of the 1960s, «Music and the Moving Image», 4/3, pp. 14-30.
- Il buono, il brutto e il cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Sergio Leone, 1966) · MICELI, SERGIO. Morricone: la musica, il cinema. Milano - Modena: Ricordi - Mucchi, 1994, pp. 107-140. Or alternatively: MICELI, SERGIO. Leone, Morricone and the Italian Way to Revisionist Westerns, in The Cambridge Companion to Film Music, ed. Mervyn Cooke and Fiona Ford, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 263-293.
- Un tranquillo posto di campagna (A Quiet Place in the Country, Elio Petri, 1968) · CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Nuove Consonanze. Corpo, suono e performance in Un tranquillo posto di campagna di Elio Petri. In La musica fra testo, performance e media: forme e concetti dell'esperienza musicale, a cura di Alessandro Cecchi, Roma, NeoClassica, 2020, pp. 257-289.
- Fellini-Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1969) · SALA, EMILIO. An Ethno-Electronic Soundscape: Nino Rota's Music for "Fellini-Satyricon" (1969). «Music and the Moving Image» 11/3, pp. 3-21.
For a historical background about Italy's political-economic history during the 1960s, students are encouraged to read chapters 7 and 8 of A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988 by Paul Ginsborg (New York, Penguin Books, 1990 and following editions).
LEARNING UNIT A
(for students attending AND not attending the classes)
- DE BENEDICTIS, ANGELA IDA. Gli esordi dello Studio di fonologia musicale: «Il risultato di un incontro fra la musica e le possibilità dei nuovi mezzi, in Lo Studio di fonologia. Un diario musicale 1954-1983, a cura di Maria Maddalena Novati, Milano, Ricordi, pp. 7-23. Available in English as: "A meeting of music and the new possibilities of technology:" The Beginnings of the Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Milano della Rai, in The Studio di Fonologia. A Musical Journey 1954-1983. Update 2008-2012, ed. Maria Maddalena Novati and John Dack, Milan, Ricordi, 2012, pp. 3-18.
- PRATO, PAOLO. La musica italiana. Una storia sociale dall'Unità a oggi, Roma, Donzelli, 2019, pp. 255-305.
- TOMATIS, JACOPO. Storia culturale della canzone italiana, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 2019, chp. 3 ("Nuovi generi, nuove estetiche: urlatori, cantautori e altri", pp. 137-210), chp. 5 ("«Musica nostra», beat e folk: generi e giovani", pp. 283-327), and chp. 6 ("L'invenzione della canzone d'autore", pp. 329-390).
(only for students not attending the classes)
- AGOSTINI, ROBERTO. Sanremo Effects. The Festival and the Italian Canzone (1950s-1960s), in Made in Italy: Studies in Popular Music, ed. Franco Fabbri and Goffredo Plastino, New York, Routledge, 2014, pp. 28-40.
- GALANTE, FRANCESCO - SANI, NICOLA. Musica espansa. Percorsi elettroacustici di fine millennio. Milano - Lucca, Ricordi - LIM, pp. 74-92 ("Lo Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Milano").
- TOMATIS, JACOPO. Storia culturale della canzone italiana, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 2019, chp. 4 ("Gli intellettuali e la canzone", pp. 211-282).
LEARNING UNIT B
(for students attending AND not attending the classes)
- BUZZI, MAURO. La canzone pop e il cinema italiano. Gli anni del boom economico (1958-1963), Torino, Kaplan, 2013, chp. 1 ("Le funzioni della canzone nel film", pp. 21-61) and chp. 2 ("Il musicarello", pp. 62-107).
- From the special issue Film Music Histories and Ethnographies: New Perspectives on Italian Cinema of the Long 1960s, «Journal of Film Music» 8/1-2 (2015):
· CECCHI, ALESSANDRO & CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Guest Editorial, pp. 5-12.
· GIUGGIOLI, MATTEO. Source and Myth: Opera in Italian Cinema of the 1960s, pp. 13-31.
· CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Setting the Tone of the Southern Question: Music and/as Fatalism in Italian Cinema of the Economic Miracle, pp. 32-50.
· BRATUS, ALESSANDRO. Looking at the Screen through the Spindle Hole: A Phonographic Approach to Italian Cinema of the 1960s, pp. 51-65.
· CECCHI, ALESSANDRO. The Industrial Soundscape between Fiction and Documentary in Italy's Long 1960s, pp. 89-108.
- CORBELLA, MAURIZIO & ALESSANDRINI, LORENA. Scoring the Space Terror: Music in Science Fiction Cinema during the Italian Economic Miracle. «Lied und Populäre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture» 64, 2019, pp. 99-120.
- CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Lo sfondo ai sentimenti di domani». Note sulla musica elettroacustica nel cinema italiano (1950-1980). «Quaderni del CSCI» 15, 2019, pp. 136-141.
It is required to entirely watch and pay special attention to the soundtracks of the following films:
- Urlatori alla sbarra (Howlers of the Dock, Lucio Fulci, 1960)
- La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
- Mafioso (Alberto Lattuada, 1962)
- Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi, 1962)
- Omicron (Ugo Gregoretti, 1963)
- Deserto rosso (Red Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964)
- Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1965)
- Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone, 1965)
- Il giorno della civetta (Mafia, aka The Day of the Owl, Damiano Damiani, 1968)
- La classe operaia va in paradiso (Lulu the Tool, Elio Petri, 1971)
(only for students not attending the classes)
Choose and prepare one of the following films and its accompanying essay:
- Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, Giuseppe De Santis, 1949) · CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Which People's Music?: Witnessing the Popular in the Musicscape of Giuseppe De Santis's "Riso amaro" (1949, Bitter Rice), in Music, Collective Memory, Trauma, and Nostalgia in European Cinema after the Second World War, ed. Michael Baumgartner, Ewelina Boczkowska, New York, Routledge, 2019, pp. 45-69.
- L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) · CALABRETTO, ROBERTO. Antonioni e la musica, Venezia, Marsilio, cap.4 ("Dall'Avventura all'Eclisse. La "svolta" musicale nel cinema di Antonioni", pp. 105-135.
- La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) · SALA, EMILIO. Ossessione sonora, mimetismo e familiarità perturbata nelle musiche di Nino Rota per la "Dolce vita" di Fellini. «AAM-TAC» 7 (2010), pp. 127-140.
- Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits, Federico Fellini, 1965) · CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Notes for a Dramaturgy of Fellini's Cinema: The Electroacoustic Sound Library of the 1960s, «Music and the Moving Image», 4/3, pp. 14-30.
- Il buono, il brutto e il cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Sergio Leone, 1966) · MICELI, SERGIO. Morricone: la musica, il cinema. Milano - Modena: Ricordi - Mucchi, 1994, pp. 107-140. Or alternatively: MICELI, SERGIO. Leone, Morricone and the Italian Way to Revisionist Westerns, in The Cambridge Companion to Film Music, ed. Mervyn Cooke and Fiona Ford, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 263-293.
- Un tranquillo posto di campagna (A Quiet Place in the Country, Elio Petri, 1968) · CORBELLA, MAURIZIO. Nuove Consonanze. Corpo, suono e performance in Un tranquillo posto di campagna di Elio Petri. In La musica fra testo, performance e media: forme e concetti dell'esperienza musicale, a cura di Alessandro Cecchi, Roma, NeoClassica, 2020, pp. 257-289.
- Fellini-Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1969) · SALA, EMILIO. An Ethno-Electronic Soundscape: Nino Rota's Music for "Fellini-Satyricon" (1969). «Music and the Moving Image» 11/3, pp. 3-21.
Assessment methods and Criteria
The students who attend the classes will be expected to write a paper (approximately 4.500-5.000 words in length), whose topic must be arranged with and approved by the professor in advance. The assessment criteria for the paper will be: 1. Pertinence with the monographic subject of the course; 2. Originality of the chosen topic/approach; 3. Analytical competence and interpretive depth; 4. Ability to integrate the perspectives and notions drawn from the classes and the bibliography (by recurring to extra bibliography, if required by the topic) within a personal critical framework; 5. Formal quality of writing (terminological appropriateness, precision, fluidity, coherence, accuracy of the critical apparatus). The paper must be submitted with a minimum 15-day advance on the date selected for the exam. The oral examination will consist in a discussion of the program's materials, based on the lecturer's feedback on the paper submitted.
For students who do NOT attend the classes, the final examination will consist in an oral test to assess the student's acquired knowledge and their ability to critically engage with the topics of the course, as well as its literature and multimedia materials. The general assessment criteria are: 1. correctness, thoroughness, and richness of the responses; 2. ability to summarize the essential conceptual nodes; 3. quality of the presentation (terminological appropriateness, property of language, fluency, precision); 4. ability to value the salient aspects of argumentations and link them to a personal critical framework.
International or Erasmus incoming students are invited to get in touch with the professor as soon as possible.
The modes of examination for students with physical and/or learning disabilities will be arranged in agreement with the professor and the competent Office.
For students who do NOT attend the classes, the final examination will consist in an oral test to assess the student's acquired knowledge and their ability to critically engage with the topics of the course, as well as its literature and multimedia materials. The general assessment criteria are: 1. correctness, thoroughness, and richness of the responses; 2. ability to summarize the essential conceptual nodes; 3. quality of the presentation (terminological appropriateness, property of language, fluency, precision); 4. ability to value the salient aspects of argumentations and link them to a personal critical framework.
International or Erasmus incoming students are invited to get in touch with the professor as soon as possible.
The modes of examination for students with physical and/or learning disabilities will be arranged in agreement with the professor and the competent Office.
Unita' didattica A
L-ART/07 - MUSICOLOGY AND HISTORY OF MUSIC - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Unita' didattica B
L-ART/07 - MUSICOLOGY AND HISTORY OF MUSIC - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Professor(s)
Reception:
Thursdays, 10:00-13:00, upon appointment. Meetings will either take place in presence or via Microsoft Teams.
Office of the professor, Via Noto 6 (1st floor)