Voci di donne nel "Corpus" di Alberto Favara

Between 1902 and 1905 Alberto Favara collected, from direct execution of his interviewees, 1090 Sicilian folk songs which constituted the "Corpus" published, after his dead, in 1957, by Ottavio Tiby. Favara sometimes reported, along with transcriptions, the performer’s name and some few other data. Among the people he heard there is a relatively high number of women, in a constant proportion in the various repertoires. Women interviewed by Favara, like men, show interest and skill in music; they evaluate its psychagogic quality; point out the differences between the songs by the place of origin, or by the activities they accompany; distinguish the performing ways and habits; are proud to recall old songs, learned in their childhood from old people. Reporting their comments and their opinions, Favara improves his great ethnomusicological work by a lively cross section of the female daily life at the beginning of the 20th century.