Description
The paper focuses on the musical practices in southern Italy - civil and military - of ‘fanfares’ and the first ‘bands’ between 1800 and 1870, indicating the relevance of their ‘sound’ and ‘colour’ even within a written and cultured tradition.
The reconnaissance of musical sources and archival documentation, carried out on a sample basis, shows the predominant role that wind orchestras played in the soundscape of the Kingdom of Naples (the largest pre-unification state occupying about a third of the Italian peninsula) and in its widespread musical literacy.
Bands and fanfares are active in multiple urban contexts and display a highly differentiated technical level: oscillating between amateurism and professionalism, they allow for real and widespread socio-cultural inclusiveness. Civic uses (religious devotion, civic celebrations, ‘cassette’ concerts, musical instruction) and military uses (parades, marches, etc.) characterise the variegated archipelago of the hundreds of concert bands, tour bands, municipal fanfares, displaying characteristics similar to practices in other European territories.
However, the current availability of ‘pure’ band compositions from the 1800-1870 period is far less than in other territories (Northern Italy, Austria, France). Why? The answers, in my opinion, are twofold. The first consideration is that our knowledge of that surviving musical heritage is still lacking and many band archives have not been investigated.
Secondly, in my opinion, ‘cultured’ music for bands in the pre-unification Mezzogiorno initially burst out forcefully in the theatre, in the orchestra of 19th century melodrama. From that new sound, from that already ‘band-like’ writing of opera linked to the ‘Neapolitan school,’ naturally descended the endless band rewritings that still characterise the southern soundscape today.
A few case studies will serve to offer an initial attempt to use the sources for the reconstruction of a long-lasting phenomenon that may prove the existence of a sensitivity for instrumental music in Italy in the 19th century period that is considered exclusively dominated by opera.
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