Ghost of Kuji. (Photographer). (2017). Florence panorama [digital image]. Retrieved from flickr website: www.flickr.com. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).
Map of Italy
Citation: Terrain Map of Italy. Retrieved Feb 9, 2018 from https://www.worldbookonline.com/advanced/media?id=lr012680
Italian Music
Books on Italian Popular Music
Made in Italy: Studies in Popular Music by Call Number: ML3494 .M23Made in Italynbsp;serves as a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology ofnbsp;contemporary Italian popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of Italian music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Italy and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance to Italian popular music. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Themes; Singer-Songwriters; and Stories.
Countercultures and Popular Music by Call Number: E-book'Counterculture' emerged as a term in the late 1960s and has been re-deployed in more recent decades in relation to other forms of cultural and socio-political phenomena. This volume provides an essential new academic scrutiny of the concept of 'counterculture' and a critical examination of the period and its heritage.
More Italian Books in our Collection
Italian Literature Before 1900 in English Translation by Call Number: E-BookTogether with Healey's Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation, this volume makes comprehensive information on translations accessible for schools, libraries, and those interested in comparative literature.
Enlightening Encounters by Call Number: E-BookEnlightening Encounters traces the impact of photography on Italian literature from the medium's invention in 1839 to the present day.
The Invention of Modern Italian Literature by Call Number: E-BookAs an investigation of new expressive processes and stylistic experiences, The Invention of Modern Italian Literature situates prominent Italian writers within the context of modern literature.
Dante, Cinema, and Television by Call Number: PQ4335 .D36 2004Dante, Cinema, and Television demonstrates the many subtle ways in which Dante's Divine Comedy has been given 'new life' by cinema and television, and underscores the tremendous extent of Dante's staying power in the modern world.
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Facts in Brief
The Italian Republic mainly comprises a peninsula, extending from southern Europe into the Mediterranean Sea. The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861 and the country was unified in 1870. In 1946 Italy became a republic. Until 1963 the Partito della Democrazia Cristiana (DC) held power unchallenged. The remainder of the century was marked by the rapid succession of mainly coalition governments. At an early general election held in February 2013, the centre-left coalition narrowly won the largest share of votes in the Chamber of Deputies. However, there was no overall winning coalition in the Senate, which allocates seats on a regional basis rather than on overall share of the vote. Following lengthy negotiations, a ‘grand coalition’ was finally formed in May, with Enrico Letta as Prime Minister. Following Letta’s resignation in February 2014, a new coalition was formed under Matteo Renzi. Renzi resigned in December 2016 and was replaced by Paolo Gentiloni Silveri. Rome is the capital. Italian is the principal language.
The Italian Republic is situated in southern Europe. Mainland Italy comprises a long peninsula, which stretches from the Alps, along the borders with France to the north-west, Switzerland and Austria to the north and Slovenia to the north-east, south into the Mediterranean Sea. Several adjacent islands form part of the Republic, the largest of which are Sardinia (Sardegna) to the west and Sicily (Sicilia) to the south-west. Within its territory two small city-states remain independent—San Marino, near Emilia-Romagna and the Marche in central Italy, and the Vatican City in Rome. Italy covers an area of 301,336 sq km (116,346 sq miles).
Citations:
Snapshots of Italy
Turin, Italy
The Po Valley is the richest and most modern agricultural region in Italy, and its land is almost totally cultivated. It is also Italy's most densely populated region, with many cities and a growing number of industrial suburban towns. Milan and Turin, in the western part of the valley, are at the center of the most heavily industrialized part of Italy.
Village in the Dolomites
The Alpine Slope runs across the northernmost part of Italy. Its landscape includes huge mountains and deep valleys. Forests of beech, oak, and chestnut trees grow at the lower levels of the mountains. Higher levels feature grasslands and conifer forests...The people of the Alpine region live in small, scattered communities, and make their living by farming and herding. Many tourists visit the Alps to ski.
Genoa, Italy
Life in northern Italy differs in many ways from that in southern Italy. The north is richer, more urbanized, and more industrial than the south. Service industries and manufacturing and construction employ the most people in both areas. But the percentage of people who work in agriculture is much higher in the south than in the north.
Rome
The country boasts several world-famous cities. Rome, the capital and largest city of Italy, was the center of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago. Florence was the home of many artists of the Renaissance, a period of great achievements in the arts. Venice, with its intricate canal system, attracts tourists from all over the world.
Roman Colosseum
For nearly 1,500 years, starting about 1000 B.C., the history of Italy was largely the history of the Etruscans and of ancient Rome. The last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was defeated in Italy in A.D. 476 by a Germanic leader, Odoacer. His defeat marked the end of the western part of the Roman Empire. During most of the period from the fall of Rome until the Kingdom of Italy was established in 1861, the peninsula was divided into several smaller states.
St. Peter's Basilica
Italian Vineyard
Grapes are one of Italy's most valuable crops. Most of the grapes are used to make wine. Italy is a leading wine-producing country, and its wines are exported throughout the world. Italy is one of the world’s leading producers of olives. Most are used to make olive oil, another valuable export. Italy is also one of the world's leading producers of apricots, artichokes, cauliflower, cherries, kiwi fruit, lettuce, peaches, and pears. Other fruit and vegetable crops include apples, oranges, potatoes, and tomatoes.
Franco Battiato
(1945-2021) Franco Battiato was one of the most popular Italian singer-songwriter, composer, filmmaker whose songs contain esoteric, philosophical, and religious themes, and have spanned genres such as experimental pop, electronic music, progressive rock, and new wave. His unique sound, song-crafting, and especially his lyrics, offered him a spot in Italy’s music scene with the nickname of “Il Maestro”.
His album L’Egitto Prima delle sabbie won the Stockhausen award for contemporary music in 1978. A single, brief ascending arpeggio is repeated over and over again at different time intervals. While the right hand plays the arpeggio, the left hand keeps a few keys silently pressed, each time a different set of keys. Every time the arpeggio is repeated the harmonics will vary.
Single “I treni di Tozeur” was the Italian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1984 performed by Alice, a famous Italian singer, and Battiato.
“Niente e come sembra” is a simple, intimate song about the relief of understanding that “nothing is as it seems” because, like in Lennon-McCartney’s “Strawberry Fields”, “nothing is real.” Spare electronic drums give way to a sweeping orchestral sound in the chorus.
More information:
"Mystical Arrogance: Franco Battiato's Esoteric Pop" by Alessandro Carrera - http://www.globalpopularmusic.net/?page_id=32
"Franco Battiato, Pop Singer and Versatile Composer, Dies at 76" by Gaia Pianigiani - nytimes.com/2021/05/19/arts/music/franco-battiato-dead.html
Foods of Italy
Fagioli by Call Number: TX803.B4 B37 2004
Garlic, an Edible Biography by Call Number: TX819.G3 C45 2014
La Cucina by Call Number: TX723.5.I8 A33 2009
Native Wine Grapes of Italy by Call Number: SB398.28.D34 2014
Modern History of Italian Wine by
Divided into three sections, the volume takes the reader on a journey into the multifaceted world of Italian wine. Starting from its origins in the 1960s and following its evolution, the journey takes in the viticulture landscape, the many international markets, the winemaking revolution, the different societies and movements, the wineries (inner sanctums where the wine ritual is celebrated), and even Italian cuisine and its global success. The book also introduces the vintners, who decade after decade have written this history from the 1970s until the present, to each of whom is devoted a comprehensive entry.
Call Number: TP559.I8 S85513 2016
Italian Cuisine by
Italy, the country with a hundred cities and a thousand bell towers, is also the country with a hundred cuisines and a thousand recipes. Its great variety of culinary practices reflects a history long dominated by regionalism and political division, and has led to the common conception of Italian food as a mosaic of regional customs rather than a single tradition. Nonetheless, this magnificent new book demonstrates the development of a distinctive, unified culinary tradition throughout the Italian peninsula. Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari uncover a network of culinary customs, food lore, and cooking practices, dating back as far as the Middle Ages, that are identifiably Italian: o Italians used forks 300 years before other Europeans, possibly because they were needed to handle pasta, which is slippery and dangerously hot. o Italians invented the practice of chilling drinks and may have invented ice cream. o Italian culinary practice influenced the rest of Europe to place more emphasis on vegetables and less on meat. o Salad was a distinctive aspect of the Italian meal as early as the sixteenth century. The authors focus on culinary developments in the late medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, aided by a wealth of cookbooks produced throughout the early modern period. They show how Italy's culinary identities emerged over the course of the centuries through an exchange of information and techniques among geographical regions and social classes. Though temporally, spatially, and socially diverse, these cuisines refer to a common experience that can be described as Italian. Thematically organized around key issues in culinary history and beautifully illustrated, Italian Cuisine is a rich history of the ingredients, dishes, techniques, and social customs behind the Italian food we know and love today.
Call Number: TX723 .C2832513 2003
The il Fornaio Baking Book by
Celebrating the Italian culinary legacy of both staunch traditionalism and irrepressible innovation, Italian-born baker Franco Galli presents over 70 classic and inventive recipes from the kitchens of the award-winning Il Fornaio bakeries, restaurants, and cafes. From traditional and specialty breads, pizza, foccacia, and other savory dishes to a temptingly sweet selection of biscotti, cakes, and tarts, these carefully developed, easy-to-follow recipes are woven with Galli's heart warming family memories and fascinating pieces of lore into an entertaining, instructional narrative. Generously illustrated with hand-toned photographs, The Il Fornaio Baking Book is engagingly authentic and contagious in its enthusiasm for baking.
Call Number: TX765 .G27 1993
Ennio Morricone
(1928-2020) Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and trumpet player most known for his film music. Morricone was most recently inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for being one of the most prolific and greatest film composers of all time. His score to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) is regarded as one of the most recognizable soundtracks in history. He has received several Oscar nominations for his music in The Untouchables (1987), The Hateful Eight (2016), and has written the scores for several Quentin Tarantino films such as Kill Bill, Inglorious Bastards, and Django Unchained.
Composing for the Cinema: The Theory and Praxis of Music in Film by Call Number: E-bookWith nearly 400 scores to his credit, Ennio Morricone is one of the most prolific and influential film composers working today. He has collaborated with many significant directors, and his scores for such films as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; Once Upon a Time in America; Days of Heaven; The Mission; The Untouchables; Mal na; and Cinema Paradiso leave moviegoers with the conviction that something special was achieved--a conviction shared by composers, scholars, and fans alike. In Composing for the Cinema: The Theory and Praxis of Music in Film, Morricone and musicologist Sergio Miceli present a series of lectures on the composition and analysis of film music. Adapted from several lectures and seminars, these lessons show how sound design can be analyzed and offer a variety of musical solutions to many different kinds of film. Though aimed at composers, Morricone's expositions are easy to understand and fascinating even to those without any musical training. Drawing upon scores by himself and others, the composer also provides insight into his relationships with many of the directors with whom he has collaborated, including Sergio Leone, Giuseppe Tornatore, Franco Zeffirelli, Warren Beatty, Ridley Scott, Roland Joff , the Taviani Brothers, and others. Translated and edited by Gillian B. Anderson, an orchestral conductor and musicologist, these lessons reveal Morricone's passion about musical expression. Delivered in a conversational mode that is both comprehensible and interesting, this groundbreaking work intertwines analysis with practical details of film music composition. Aimed at a wide audience of composers, musicians, film historians, and fans, Composing for the Cinema contains a treasure trove of practical information and observations from a distinguished musicologist and one of the most accomplished composers on the international film scene.- "The Miracle of Music: A Conversation with Ennio Morricone" byCall Number: Online ArticlePublication Date: 2016
Italian Canzone and The Festival della Canzone italiana di Sanremo
The Italian Canzone is an Italian or Provencal song or ballad that resembles a madrigal. The very lyrical and original Italian canzone consists of 5-7 stanzas typically set to music, each stanza resounding the first in rhyme scheme and in number of lines (7-20 lines). The canzone is typically 11 syllables.
Beginning in 1951 with only three participants, The Festival della canzone italiana di Sanremo or the Italian Song Festival of Sanremo is the most popular Italian song contest and awards ceremony and is held at the Ariston Theater every year.
"La Canzone Mononota" by Malika Ayane won in 2013
"Canzone per Federica” by Maldestro won in 2017
- "The Italian Canzone and the Sanremo Festival: Change and Continuity in Italian Mainstream Pop of the 1960s" byCall Number: Online ArticlePublication Date: 2007
- "Authors and Rappers: Italian Hip Hop and the Shifting Boundaries of Canzone d'Autore byCall Number: Online ArticlePublication Date: 2007
- "Exploring Canzone Napoletana and Southern Italian Migration through Three Lenses" byCall Number: Online ArticlePublication Date: 2016
Book Gallery
Zeno's Conscience
Italo Svevo's masterpiece tells the story of a hapless, doubting, guilt-ridden man paralyzed by fits of ecstasy and despair and tickled by his own cleverness. His doctor advises him, as a form of therapy, to write his memoirs; in doing so, Zeno reconstructs and ultimately reshapes the events of his life into a palatable reality for himself-a reality, however, founded on compromise, delusion, and rationalization...Zeno's Conscience is at once a comedy of errors, a sly testimonial to the joys of procrastination, and a surpassingly lucid vision of human nature by one of the most important Italian literary figures of the twentieth century.
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
Soon to be an HBO series, book three in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted epic by one of today's most beloved and acclaimed writers, Elena Ferrante, "one of the great novelists of our time." (Roxana Robinson, The New York Times) In the third book in the Neapolitan quartet, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women...They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up during the nineteen-seventies. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by a strong, unbreakable bond.
The Name of the Rose
It is the year 1327. Franciscans in an Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, but Brother William of Baskerville’s investigation is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
The Prince
Described both as a practical rule-book containing timeless precepts for the diplomat and as a handbook of evil, this work of great originality--based on first-hand experience--provides a remarkably uncompromising picture of the true nature of power.
Decameron
In the summer of 1348, with the plague ravaging Florence, ten young men and women take refuge in the countryside, where they entertain themselves with tales of love, death, and corruption, featuring a host of characters, from lascivious clergymen and mad kings to devious lovers and false miracle-makers. Named after the Greek for "ten days," Boccaccio's book of stories draws on ancient mythology, contemporary history, and everyday life, and has influenced the work of myriad writers who came after him.
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity. Mandelbaum's astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.
Art & Architecture
Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564. (1508-12). Rome: Sistine Chapel: Lunette - Joatham and Achaz. Retrieved from http://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822000603173
The Last Supper
Leonardo da Vinci, Florentine, 1452-1519. (1495-1498). The Last Supper, fresco for the Refectory, Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. Retrieved from http://library.artstor.org/asset/AHSC_ORPHANS_1071314121
David
Michelangelo Buonarroti. (1501-1504). David. [Sculpture: sculpture (visual work), sculpture (visual work)]. Retrieved from http://library.artstor.org/asset/SS35415_35415_20635471
Abbey of Fossanova
Abbey of Fossanova. [Architecture]. Retrieved from http://library.artstor.org/asset/HARTILL_12315722
A Hangar
Nervi, Pier Luigi. (1935). A Hangar. Retrieved from http://library.artstor.org/asset/AWSS35953_35953_29411458
Interior of the Colosseum
70-82 CE. Colosseum, Interior. architecture. https://library.artstor.org/asset/SCALA_ARCHIVES_1039779561.
Exterior of the Colosseum
70-82 CE. Colosseum, Exterior with view of Arch of Constantine in background, detail. architecture. https://library.artstor.org/asset/SCALA_ARCHIVES_1039779400.
First Reading Lesson
Nomellini, Plinio, 1866-?. 1905. First Reading Lesson. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822000608453.
Metaphysical Interior with Skyscraper
De Chirico, Giorgio, 1888-. 1968. Metaphysical Interior with Skyscraper. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822000559284.
Adam and Eve
Baj, Enrico, 1924-. 1964. Adam and Eve. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822000463164.
Fortune
Clemente, Francesco, 1952-. 1982. Fortune. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822000545705.
ARTStor
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