Educational seminars in HISTORY AND ANALYSIS OF MUSIC CULTURES
Thursday 17/10/2024 - 9.30-13.30 am/pm
Aula dottorato 3° piano di palazzo Giusso
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali
Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”
Largo San Giovanni Maggiore, 30
80134 Napoli
17/10/2024 ore 9.30-13.30
The principles of the 'Early Music Movement' on the proper performance of early music date back to the 1970s and have long since become part of the technical-theoretical baggage of musicians, and yet they still continue to cause debate. Underlying those principles are the concept of fidelity to the text and respect for the author's intentions. Composing music, whether a song or a symphony, is always a conscious act of the brain that takes shape on the staff in a series of extremely precise signs that indicate equally precise sounds that must be performed following instructions that are also precise. Classical Neapolitan song offers a particularly interesting perspective because it is a learned musical genre in that it is written and at the same time belongs to the oral tradition. The analysis of “Black Tammurriata” and its different interpretations allows us to grasp the intentions of the authors (E.A.Mario, Nicolardi) and the “betrayals” they were victims of, and to get closer to the meaning of the text. Why does E.A.Mario mark a “p” at the beginning of the vocal part? Because it should be sung softly. Why should it be sung softly? It is enough to listen to the version recorded by Roberto Murolo in his “Napoletana” to understand it instantly: the authors wanted to tell a sad story with that sweet and ironic melancholy that often characterizes the finest Neapolitan culture, just think of De Filippo, Di Giacomo, Totò himself. And one need only listen to any rendition of “Tammurriata nera” available on YouTube - Loredana Berté is the best example - to realize that betrayal is the rule, not the exception. It is rightly objected that in the folk tradition the text is from time to time the performance, no longer the score, and that therefore anything goes. True, no one prohibits Peppe Barra from performing “Black Tammurriata” as he sees fit, nor does he have the right to challenge his choices, because the text belongs to all of us, to the collective memory, no longer to E.A.Mario and Nicolardi. Yet a text is there, and in the same way that one must respect the ethnomusicological or “popular music studies” perspective, one cannot disregard the fact that the classical Neapolitan song -- that is, the extraordinary repertoire of poetry for music composed between the 1880s and the two wars -- belongs in its own right to art music, has nothing to envy to the cultured vocal production of those same years (opera, salon romance, lied).