Musical identity and social change in Italy

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Notes

1 The subject of recent historiographic interest: see Barbon (2000) and Biguzzi (2003).

2 ISTAT (2003, pp. 9 – 11; but see also ISTAT 2000). The data cited refer to persons above the age of eleven, interviewed in the year 2000. For a further consideration of the significance of data such as these, see Santoro (2002).

3 I therefore limit myself to a reference to Gasperoni et al. (2004), as well as the essay by G. Montecchi in this issue.

4 In a very extensive body of literature, I will make reference only to Nicolodi (1984), Rosselli (1984, 1991), Morelli (1996), Bianconi and Pestelli (1998), Waterhouse (2001), and – as an example of a study that pays special attention to the sociopolitical and cultural dimensions of the more learned and cultivated type of musical life – Stamatov (2002). For a critical consideration, see Montecchi (2002).

5 Concerning the history of that heterodox (and very often politically charged) branch of musicology that is ethnomusicology in Italy, however, see Leydi (1991) and Bermani (1997).

6 See, in general terms, for a reconstruction of the field with reference to Italy by one of its leading experts: Fabbri (2002). As a further indication of the changes that are now underway, allow me to mention that I am editing, with Goffredo Plastino, a special issue on Italy for the most respected international journal in this field, Popular Music, the first special issue devoted to Italian musical culture since the journal's foundation in 1982.

7 A separate case is that of the study of jazz, which in Italy can rely upon a close-knit network of passionate scholars, usually outside the academy, inclined to the writing of essays that oscillate between the erudite and the hagiographic, among which the most striking – with specific reference to Italian jazz – is certainly the recent work by Mazzoletti (2004).

8 See Servizio Opinioni RAI (1968). The survey was based on a sampling of almost 5,000 individuals. The popularity of operetta was 34 per cent, compared with the 70 per cent of musica leggera.