41894 - History of Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Music

Learning outcomes

The course provides an overview of the main events and problems of music history from antiquity to Renaissance, supplemented by commented readings and guided listening. Acquire the bibliographic reference tools, at the end of the course the student is able to understand the historical dynamics and orientation among the main genres and musical contexts.

Course contents

The course will be organized in two sections.

1. Events and questions of Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance history of music.

The first part of the course will include some general framing lessons introducting to the main events, authors and contexts of musical production and execution from Antiquity to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

2. Musical images, sounds and representations in the Italian Courts during the Renaissance.

The monographic section of the course will be devoted to the varied musical production promoted by the Italian courts which, since the mid-fifteenth century, are structured on the model of the court of Burgundy. The affirmation of new professional figures (like as the professional composer and the Master of dance), the progressive definition of 'Nordic' and humanistic repertoires, the affirmation of new cultural and musical orientations, the retrieval of performance practices inspired by the ancient myths, and particularly the diffusion of the danse in the courtly feasts and representations, will be exemplified through examples of musical and theatrical performances relating to the Courts of Urbino, Pesaro, Naples, Ferrara, Mantua and Milan.

Both the general and the specialist part will be complemented by text reading, image projection and guided listening of medieval and Renaissance music.

The course will be held in the first semester, starting on Wednsday, October 2nd.

Readings/Bibliography

1. General sction

M. CARROZZO-C. CIMAGALLI, Storia della musica occidentale, vol.1, Roma, Armando editore, 1998, cap. 11 (pp.191-206), 14 (pp. 243-256), 15 (pp. 257-271);

F.A. GALLO, La polifonia nel Medioevo, Corriere della Sera EDT, 2018, pp.35-58;61-84;88-119.

2. Monographic section

N. GUIDOBALDI, La musica di Federico. Immagini e suoni alla corte di Urbino, Firenze, Olschki, 1995, pp.75-98;

B. SPARTI, Dancing in Fifteenth-century Italian Society, in Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro. De Pratica seu arte tripudi. On the practice or art of dancing, a cura di Barbara Sparti, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 47-63.

Suggested readings:

G. COMOTTI, La musica nella cultura greca e romana, Corriere della Sera / EDT,2018;

G. CATTIN, La monodia nel medioevo, Corriere della Sera/EDT, 2018;

F. A. GALLO, Dal Duecento al Quattrocento (§ 3 : I letterati e l' immaginario musicale : idee e suoni), in Teatro, Musica, Tradizione dei Classici, Torino, Einaudi, 1986, pp. 245-263 (Letteratura italiana, VI);

F. A. GALLO, Musica e storia tra Medioevo e età moderna, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986;

N. PIRROTTA, Music and Cultural Tendencies in 15th-century Italy, 'Journal of the american Musicological Society' XIX (1966), pp. 127-161;

L. LOCKWOOD, Music in Renaissance Ferrara 1400-1505, Oxford University Press, 1984;

I. FENLON, Music and Patronage in sixteenth-century Mantua, Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Further Bibliographic references will be provided during the readings. 

Teaching methods

Readings and seminars; the course will also include guided listening to medieval and Renaissance music.

Assessment methods

The exam consists of an oral interview aimed at assessing the critical and methodological skills and knowledge acquired by the student, who will be invited to confront the texts, the themes and the methodological issues faced during the course and during the seminars.

The students will be required to elaborate an individual job, to be agreed with the teacher and presented in seminar form during the last lessons of the course.

Non-attending students are required to read the texts listed in section A of the bibliography and are invited to contact the teacher to agree a personalized work program for the examination.

The assessment of the exam will take into account, in particular, the student's ability to use readings, sources, and exam bibliography to illustrate contents and issues, and to establish links between them .

The examinator will therefore assess the mastery of the content and the ability to synthesize and analyze the concepts, and the ability to express themselves in a language appropriated to the subject matter.

The student’s achievement of an organic vision of the themes dealt with in the lesson together with their critical use, good expressive mastery and specific language will be evaluated with excellence marks; formative gaps and / or inappropriate language, will lead to votes that will not exceed the sufficiency.

Teaching tools

PC, video projector, CD player.

Reproductions of texts, modern music transcriptions, and sound samples will be made available to students at the end of the lessons.

Office hours

See the website of Nicoletta Guidobaldi