La musica corale nel Ventennio. Convergenze e intersezioni fra pedagogia, musicologia e musica d’arte

Abstract

It has often been pointed out that choral music played a not insignificant role in the fascist totalitarian project aimed at creating a “new man” (see, for example, Gentile 1993, Tarquini 20162, Bernhard and Klinkhammer 2017). Included by the Gentile reform (1923) among the compulsory subjects in primary and secondary schools and in the courses of teacher training schools, the practice of choral singing was also introduced in the Opera Nazionale Balilla, a youth organization, the Opera Nazionale del Dopolavoro, a leisure and recreational organization, and in the many public events of the regime (see, e.g., De Felice 1974; Scalfaro 2014). While this is not the appropriate place to chronicle and evaluate the development of vocal polyphony instruction in Italian schools and academies during this period, nor its educational -or rather “re-educational2 function in the Fascist sense- within the “Opere nazionali,” it is fair to say that its impact on Italian culture was not negligible. By narrowing the focus of my research, I aim to highlight the role that this renewed attention to choral singing - in pedagogical, socio-cultural, and political terms - played within the musicological discourse and artistic compositional practice of the time. I also aim to show what the interactions between pedagogy, theory, and musical practice were - and what impact, if any, they had. This brief survey may suggest further avenues of research, not only in historiography, but also in the contemporary discussion of the intersections between musicology, learned composition, and music education.