Corso di laurea magistrale in CAM
Cinema, Arti della scena, Musica e Media

The objective of this course is to give students a critical knowledge of the history and practice of music in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This knowledge, open to interdisciplinary perspectives, constitutes a crucial basis in order to understand the development of successive musical cultures. Furthermore, it offers remarkable opportunities for comparison with today’s experience of music. The study of medieval and renaissance music is, additionally, an excellent training ground for developing competences and methods that students can apply to other epochs and repertories too.

Knowledge and understanding: students know the basic elements of the musical and sonic cultures of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and understand the role of these cultures in European cultural history.

Applying knowledge and understanding, and making judgements: students are able to analyze examples of medieval and renaissance music, situtate them historically, and draw conclusions about the sonic culture from which they originate.  

Communication skills: students are able to discuss aspects, problems, and repertory of the musical and sonic cultures of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance with a historically and musicologically appropriate terminology.

Learning skills: students know how to use various kinds of documents (from verbal and musical texts to images and objects) to derive information about the musical culture and practice of the period.

Classes will be held in attendance, with frequent listening activities and shared analyses; attendance is therefore warmly suggested.

The Moodle platform will be used as an integrated learning environment, by uploading materials that can be used asynchronously.

Oral exam. Students will be asked to demonstrate:
- their critical assimilation of the contents proposed during classes and in the bibliography
- their knowledge of the musical repertory examined during the course
- their capacity of structurate their arguments and master the terminology

The course will have a monographic character and will be dedicated to the soundscape of the Renaissance.

Main topics:

• The study of soundscape in historical perspective. The concept of «Renaissance»
• The soundscape of Renaissance cities: Milan, Florence, Venice, Rome
• Musical chapels; music and liturgy; the education of the musici
• Sacred and secular genres: the motet, the Mass, the madrigal, the lauda
• Sonic cultures and communal singing
• Writing, performing, improvising, and disseminating music
• Instrumental cultures
• Women and music

Further materials will be uploaded on the Moodle platform during the course.

Besides studying the texts and materials, it is fundamental to repeatedly and actively listen to the musical pieces analyzed or suggested during classes/in the slides, available on the main streaming platforms.

Students are required to register to the course, clicking on the button at the bottom of this webpage (“Registrati a questo insegnamento”), in order to receive updates on the classes.