Multipart music in the contemporary vocal and instrumental tradition and folk music revival of North-Western Italy

The subject of “The Role of Educated Musicians and Missionaries in Local Music Practices”, for which I sunmitted my paper, can be fully included in the ethnomusicologic research I have been carrying out in the North-West of Italy. This area, which includes the region of Piedmont, offers some important examples and sources of reflection as regards the issues and internal dynamics of multipart music.The vast field of vocal and instrumental repertoires is characterized by some mutual aspects and internal variants inside a complex use of alternation and mixture of traditional practice and the educated musicians’ influence. However, it is a constantly changing musical field boasting both an archaic deepness – also attested by fundamental works within the study of the national musical folklore (as the first collection of Popular Songs of Piedmont by Costantino Nigra) – and early courses of educated composition about popular elements (as the works by Leone Sinigaglia, who was a pupil and friend of Brahms and Dvořák).