Learning objectives
The course will provide students with the analytical tools appropriate to the knowledge and understanding of the dramatic and rhetorical relations that characterize the musical production of the Viennese Classicism, particularly in the music by W.A. Mozart. Learning will also occur through analytical sessions, to apply the acquired knowledge and understanding, with reference to the compositions that constitute the Classic repertoire.
Prerequisites
The course does not require a specialized musical competence: students who possess that, may agree with the professor a different program and frequency of alternative modules in the first term.
Course unit content
“From the opera to instrumental music: drama and musical rhetoric in Mozart”
The course will examine excerpts from Mozart’s opera repertoire, in connection with his instrumental production, regarded as the expression of a wordless theater, interaction place of rhetorical and dramaturgical functions. Particular emphasis will be given to a favoured interpretative tool: Leonard Ratner’s Topic Theory.
Bibliography
Ottó Károly, La grammatica della musica, Torino, Einaudi: 1969.
Ulrich Michels, Atlante di musica, Milano: Sperling & Kupfer editori, 1994.
Giorgio Pestelli, L’età di Mozart e di Beethoven, in Storia della Musica, a cura della SIdM, 12 voll., Torino: EDT, 1991.
Charles Rosen, Lo stile classico, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Milano: Adelphi, 2013.
Leonard G. Ratner, Classic Music. Expression, Form, and Style, New York: Schirmer, 1980.
Massimo Mila, Lettura del Don Giovanni di Mozart, Torino: Einaudi, 1988.
Teaching methods
Group lessons, laboratories and workshops.
Assessment methods and criteria
The oral examination consists of an interview about the music and the topics discussed during the lessons, to assess the knowledge and understanding, both theoretical and applied.
