Before and after the territorial unity of Italy in 1861, some scholars concentrated all their efforts on unifying the language and the culture of the country, without taking into consideration both the regional inner division and the dialects. The investigation on the studies about vernacular poetry accompanied by music testifies that there was a passage from a research phase based on the regional songs to a phase devoted to the general survey of the new state. For instance Costantino Nigra (La poesia popolare italiana, 1876) and Alessandro D’Ancona (La poesia popolare, 1879) promoted some comparisons among different dialects and languages whose unity was partially based on the Medieval strambotto in hendecasyllabic lines, sung by heart and performed by popular singers and courtesan poets during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Despite any evidence that these intellectuals traced the way of folk strambotto which, migrating from Sicily to Tuscany as the cultivated poetry of the time, became the basis of the modern Italian language of Dante and Petrarch – it is necessary to remind that the Sicilian literati engaged at the court of Friedrich II wrote some poems on the patterns provided by the French trobadours, which were firstly transcribed in Bologna and then in Tuscany, thus stimulating the work of the great Tuscan poets. In view of a self-making tradition, the ethnologists and the historians of Italian literature emphasized this paradigm and transformed it into a symbol of a common origin of the Italian people. Besides the comparative method established by D’Ancona, Ermolao Rubieri distinguished three directions in creating the popular songs: songs invented by people for people as a folk level, songs composed for people as a popular level and, finally, cultivated songs adopted by the people as another type of popular genre (Storia della poesia popolare, 1877). At the end of the 19th century other researchers, influenced by Nietzche’s and d’Annunzio’s ‘philology of history’, rejected these categories, embracing the theory of folk/popular as unwritten tradition of the present and of ancient times. Ezio Levi recognized the roots of the Italian spirit in the oral poems and legends of mountebanks and lutenists, i.e. the heritage that was seen in opposition to the elitist written tradition of the court and the church, which represented a minority (Poesia di popolo e poesia di corte nel Trecento, 1915). At the same time, the ethnomusicologist Alberto Favara collected hundreds of Sicilian folk items, refusing any comparison with other Italian lands because he was not interested in the historical reconstruction and in the contaminations among cultivated and folk songs (Il canto popolare nell’arte, 1898). From this point of view, Favara applied a synchronic method showing that there has not been any change between past and present in refernce to the spontaneous creation of folk songs.

La nascita delle moderne filologia, musicologia ed etnologia nel XIX sec. ha contribuito ad approfondire anche in Italia lo studio scientifico della poesia e della musica non cólte. I termini popolare e nazionale, tuttavia, erano passibili all’epoca delle interpretazioni più varie, in virtù del diverso approccio delle tre discipline alla materia. Gli storici della letteratura si occupavano infatti di poesia con scarsa sensibilità per la musica, i musicologi di musica antica senza alcuna preparazione letteraria, gli etnologi indagavano i fenomeni nel loro accadere e solo in qualche caso formulavano ipotesi sulla storicità delle tradizioni. La prima generazione di studiosi delle tre branche postulava inoltre l’unità linguistica del paese, come dimostra la teoria monogenetica del tetrastico da cui si è generato lo strambotto, secondo la quale i dialetti sarebbero varianti dello stesso nucleo sorto in Sicilia e migrato in Toscana, come accadde per la poesia colta secondo l’opinione di Carducci. Tesi duplicata da Nigra con l’origine celtica della canzone e sicula dello strambotto, fondata sul pregiudizio della diversa indole razziale delle genti del Nord e del Sud, che non nega però la comune origine latina dei due ceppi. L’identificazione del popolo creatore collocato in via esclusiva nel passato e le dialettiche di trasmissione dei canti hanno occupato il dibattito in relazione alla musica, guardata come il medium privilegiato per la veicolazione del testo popolare. I musicologi, dal canto loro, non hanno mai usato il concetto di classe e si sono limitati a descrivere come popolare una parte dell’antica polifonia profana. Il trend si è radicalizzato sul finire dell’Ottocento, a causa della reazione nazionalista che agì negativamente anche sulla filologia. Basti pensare ai “cantari leggendari” forzatamente assimilati all’epica romanza e germanica. In questo caso il popolo che canta è facilmente omologabile al concetto di nazione, cui si richiamavano in musica i vari Torchi, Parodi, Silva e Tommasini. Non stupisce quindi l’accoglimento della “filologia delle origini” da parte di Favara, il quale, come d’Annunzio, era affascinato dalla melodia primordiale e dagli archetipi del popolare. Laddove il popolare coincide con la musica e il dialetto, in cui si riconosce il perenne dionisiaco separato dall’apollineo al quale si piega la lingua. Le due categorie metastoriche hanno consentito così di superare l’impasse di un bilinguismo culturale che avrebbe reso inconciliabili lo studio del canto folklorico e la filosofia di Nietzsche, poiché lo studioso non attendeva alla ricerca in senso diacronico, ma alla registrazione nell’ hic et nunc di fenomeni che nei modi si ripetono sempre eguali nel tempo. Per cui la settorializzazione dei saperi, invece di aprire una fenditura nei processi di classificazione regolati su dinamiche di creazione-ricezione dal basso all’alto e viceversa, favorì l’occultamento del concetto di classe e delle relative stratificazioni culturali multiple.

Cavallini, I. (2013). Folk and Popular as "National": The Invention of the Italian Unity through Poetry and Music. In Franjo Ksaver Kuhac (1834-1911). Glazbena Historiografija i identitet/Musical Historiography and Identity (pp.217-224). Zagreb : HMD Croatian Musicological Society.

Folk and Popular as "National": The Invention of the Italian Unity through Poetry and Music

CAVALLINI, Ivano
2013-01-01

Abstract

Before and after the territorial unity of Italy in 1861, some scholars concentrated all their efforts on unifying the language and the culture of the country, without taking into consideration both the regional inner division and the dialects. The investigation on the studies about vernacular poetry accompanied by music testifies that there was a passage from a research phase based on the regional songs to a phase devoted to the general survey of the new state. For instance Costantino Nigra (La poesia popolare italiana, 1876) and Alessandro D’Ancona (La poesia popolare, 1879) promoted some comparisons among different dialects and languages whose unity was partially based on the Medieval strambotto in hendecasyllabic lines, sung by heart and performed by popular singers and courtesan poets during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Despite any evidence that these intellectuals traced the way of folk strambotto which, migrating from Sicily to Tuscany as the cultivated poetry of the time, became the basis of the modern Italian language of Dante and Petrarch – it is necessary to remind that the Sicilian literati engaged at the court of Friedrich II wrote some poems on the patterns provided by the French trobadours, which were firstly transcribed in Bologna and then in Tuscany, thus stimulating the work of the great Tuscan poets. In view of a self-making tradition, the ethnologists and the historians of Italian literature emphasized this paradigm and transformed it into a symbol of a common origin of the Italian people. Besides the comparative method established by D’Ancona, Ermolao Rubieri distinguished three directions in creating the popular songs: songs invented by people for people as a folk level, songs composed for people as a popular level and, finally, cultivated songs adopted by the people as another type of popular genre (Storia della poesia popolare, 1877). At the end of the 19th century other researchers, influenced by Nietzche’s and d’Annunzio’s ‘philology of history’, rejected these categories, embracing the theory of folk/popular as unwritten tradition of the present and of ancient times. Ezio Levi recognized the roots of the Italian spirit in the oral poems and legends of mountebanks and lutenists, i.e. the heritage that was seen in opposition to the elitist written tradition of the court and the church, which represented a minority (Poesia di popolo e poesia di corte nel Trecento, 1915). At the same time, the ethnomusicologist Alberto Favara collected hundreds of Sicilian folk items, refusing any comparison with other Italian lands because he was not interested in the historical reconstruction and in the contaminations among cultivated and folk songs (Il canto popolare nell’arte, 1898). From this point of view, Favara applied a synchronic method showing that there has not been any change between past and present in refernce to the spontaneous creation of folk songs.
28-ott-2010
Franjo Ksaver Kuhac. Glazbena historiografija i identitet/Franjo Ksaver Kuhac. Musical Historiography and Identity
Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Croatian Musicological Society
27-29 ottobre 2010
1
giu-2012
2013
8
Cavallini, I. (2013). Folk and Popular as "National": The Invention of the Italian Unity through Poetry and Music. In Franjo Ksaver Kuhac (1834-1911). Glazbena Historiografija i identitet/Musical Historiography and Identity (pp.217-224). Zagreb : HMD Croatian Musicological Society.
Proceedings (atti dei congressi)
Cavallini, I
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10447/97344
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