EARLY MUSIC NEL NOVECENTO ITALIANO

My Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the Early Music movement in Italy between the second post-war period and the end of the seventies in a historic-cultural point of view, limited to the revival of the Medieval repertoire. It is an initial inquiry of a complex and international phenomenon, whose Italian manifestation has still not been an object of research. In this work the phenomenon Early Music – analysed through historical, historiographic and ethnographic criteria – is settled into the broader Italian political, social and cultural context in order to underline the peculiarities, to detect the ideological, esthetical and political reasons which nourished it and to set up connections with other Italian experiences in the second half of the 20th Century, not only what music concern. The work is articulated in two sections. The first part focuses on the early music activity from the period of the post-war reconstruction to the early sixties, through the revival of the lauda and of the liturgical drama repertoire, particularly rich in those years. The first chapter deals with the presence of Medieval music in the cultural life of the post-war period, both what discography and live performance concern, with a particular attention on the attitude of the musical criticism. The second chapter broadens the chronologic span researching the origins of the lauda’s fortune during the Fascist era, aiming to a better comprehension of the phenomenon in the following decades. The third chapter focuses on Milan and on the activity of the choral ensemble Polifonica Ambrosiana in order to underline the revival of the ancient Italian repertoire and the choral practise as moment not only of musical, but also of moral reconstruction for the catholic communities before and during the Vatican Council. The second part examines the decade following the sixty-eight. The first chapter inserts the Italian experience into the international Early Music movement’s frame in the period of the socio-political revolutions, so as to highlight the consonances between the performance and use of early music and the sixty-eight ideals. The second chapter underlines the role of the pre-baroque music as a stimulus to the creation of an alternative musical education towards the academic one, while the third offers a bird’s eye view on the activity of the Italian groups specialised in Medieval music, pointing out some fundamental elements for the construction their identity and self-legitimation. The fourth chapter delves into the Italian Communist Party’s position about cultural politics and its activity within the recreational clubs. The objects of the last chapter are the musical, ideological and political synergies with experiences such as folk-revival and, more generally, with the performance of the folk repertoire and oral tradition.