Art Music

"Art music" is a somewhat broader term than "classical music" and may be defined for the purposes of this article as "establishment" music (either religious or secular) that is composed for public or private performance. By definition, it excludes popular musical forms (see below) that are based on folk music. In spite of the overlap that might exist in some music, these definitions are nevertheless helpful.

Plainsong

Plainsong is also called plainchant. More specific terms such as Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...

, Ambrosian chant, Gallican chant

Gallican rite

The Gallican Rite is a historical sub-grouping of the Roman Catholic liturgy in western Europe; it is not a single rite but actually a family of rites within the Western Rite which comprised the majority use of most of Christianity in western Europe for the greater part of the 1st millennium AD...

 are also found. Generally speaking, they all refer to a style of monophonic

Texture (music)

In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition , thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece...

, unaccompanied, early Christian singing performed by monks and developed in the Roman Catholic Church mainly during the period 800-1000 . The differences may be marginal—or even great, in some cases. These differences reflect the great ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity that existed after the fall of the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 on the Italian peninsula. Different monastic traditions arose within the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 throughout Italy, but at different places and at different times. Even a musical non-specialist can hear the difference, for example, between the straightforward tone production in the Ambosian chants from Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 and the chants from Benevento

Benevento

Benevento is a town and comune of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, 50 km northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill 130 m above sea-level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino and Sabato...

, which display a distinct "eastern" ornamental quiver in the voice, reflecting the vocal traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church

Eastern Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...

. Yet, in spite of the differences, the similarities are great. In any event, the formal Gregorian chant was imposed throughout Italy by 1100, although the music of Greeks rites continued to be heard at various places on the peninsula, especially in those places which Byzantium

Byzantium

Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...

 had once held, such as Ravenna

Ravenna

Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...

  or in the southern peninsula, which had been a refuge for those Greeks fleeing the great Byzantine iconoclast controversies

Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...

 before the year 1000. Obviously, where Greek rites were practiced, the chants were sung in the Greek language

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 and not in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, as they were in the Roman Catholic liturgy.

Music of the Trecento

The Trecento

Trecento

The Trecento refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history.Commonly the Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Renaissance in art history...

, from about 1300 to 1420, was a period of vigorous activity in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 in the arts, including painting, architecture, literature, and music. The music of the Trecento pioneered new forms of expression, especially in secular song and in the use of vernacular language, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

. In these regards, the music of the Trecento may seem more to be a Renaissance

Renaissance music

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...

 phenomenon; however, the predominant musical language was more closely related to that of the late Middle Ages

Medieval music

Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...

, and musicologists generally classify the Trecento as the end of the medieval era.

Secular music

Secular music before the year 1500 was largely the work of jongleurs, troubadours and mimes. This was the age of the great vernacularization of language in Italy—indeed, throughout Europe; that is, people started to write and sing songs in their native language, which was not Latin, but whatever brand of vernacular medieval neo-Latin was spoken in their area. Thus, Dante

DANTE

Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...

 showed with the Divine Comedy in 1300 that the common language (his was called "Tuscan" and not "Italian" until as late as the 18th century) could be a vehicle for fine literature. Logically, that extended to the lyrics of the songs that people sang.

Two points are worth mentioning in this regard: (1) we know a lot more about the words of songs than we know about the actual sound of the music. Words were written down with much more ease than melodies were notated. (See musical notation

Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...

). Thus, we know that there was a vibrant troubador tradition in the 12th century in the Provence

Provence

Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...

 in their language

Franco-Provençal language

Franco-Provençal , Arpitan, or Romand is a Romance language with several distinct dialects that form a linguistic sub-group separate from Langue d'Oïl and Langue d'Oc. The name Franco-Provençal was given to the language by G.I...

 and we know that 1000 miles away on the island of Sicily there was also a vibrant troubador tradition at the Hohenstaufen

Hohenstaufen

The House of Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of German kings in the High Middle Ages, lasting from 1138 to 1254. Three of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In 1194 the Hohenstaufens also became Kings of Sicily...

 court of Frederick II

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick II , was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, and even to Jerusalem, were enormous...

, songs sung in the dialect of the people (very much influenced, for example, by Arabic), but it is conjecture as to exactly what either one sounded like. We only know that southern French folk music, today, sounds quite a bit different from Sicilian folk music. Since folk music is relatively conservative in that it resists rapid change, we may assume that at least some of the obvious differences in melody, scales and approach to vocalising that exist now, existed then. It is interesting that the call and response nature of much popular choral singing in the Middle Ages—that is, a soloist singing a line that is then answered by a group—found its way into medieval church music as a way of involving all members of the congregation.

The complicated polyphonies

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

 of what is called the Ars Nova

Ars nova

Ars nova refers to a musical style which flourished in France and the Burgundian Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages: more particularly, in the period between the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel and the death of the composer Guillaume de Machaut in 1377...

 began to be heard in the 14th century and 15th century; popular items such as madrigal

Madrigal (Trecento)

The Madrigal is an Italian musical form of the 14th century. The form flourished ca. 1300 – 1370 with a short revival near 1400. It was a composition for two voices, sometimes on a pastoral subject...

s employed increasing dense overlays of different melodies sung at the same time, the point being to create an interwoven and euphonious texture of sound; this is NOT the same as harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

, the sounding of many notes together in order to form a chord. That is a later invention. Nevertheless, the move from the monophonic sounds of chants to the many simultaneous melodies of polyphony does represent a revolution in our musical perceptions: to wit, you can have more one thing sounding at the same time and still find it pleasant to listen to.

The Renaissance

Most people do not think of music when they hear the term Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

. Yet, in the same sense that architects, painters, and sculptors of the 16th century were paying tribute to the newly rediscovered values of classical Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

, poets and musicians of that period attempted to do the same thing. The years between 1500 and 1600 are the most revolutionary period in European musical history; it is the century in which harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 was developed and the century that gave birth to opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

.

These two developments are connected. Readers will have noted the move from the monophony of Gregorian chants to the complicated polyphonies of madrigals and other music of the few centuries before 1500. The next shift in musical perception involves a less common term: homophonic; that is, the sounding of a harmonic chord or progression of chords, not meant to stand out, but which support an obvious melody on top of the harmony.

The desire—perhaps need—for homophonic music arose from a number of factors. First, there was a rejection of overly complicated polyphony of many different melodies running at the same time: second, a general, new musical aesthetic of the period, best summed up in the words of Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

 in 1500, who said that music was "the simultaneous conjunction of proportional parts"—that is, the sounding together of notes based on simple arithmetic rations such as 2:1 (which produces the sound of an octave), 3:2 (which produces the sound of fifth), and 5:4 (which produces the sound of a major third). Thus, if you generate notes at 400, 600, 800, and 1000 cycles per second, you have all the notes of the simplest and most harmonious sound in our music—the major chord. It really is that simple. (See Musical Acoustics

Musical acoustics

Musical acoustics or music acoustics is the branch of acoustics concerned with researching and describing the physics of music – how sounds employed as music work...

.) Third on the list of factors that make the 16th century so important was the Renaissance desire to tell a story, to put people up on a small stage and have them sing songs about Greek mythology—the tale of Orpheus

Orpheus

Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...

, for example. That is difficult to do if everyone is singing a melody at the same time; thus, polyphony gave way to homophony, and early opera consisted of relatively simple melodies with texts about Greek mythology, sung in Italian and supported by simple harmonies. The important city in Italy in this development of music in the 16th century was Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

. (See also: Florentine Camerata

Florentine Camerata

The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama...

 , Vincenzo Galilei

Vincenzo Galilei

Vincenzo Galilei was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and of the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei...

, Jacopo Peri

Jacopo Peri

Jacopo Peri was an Italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles, and is often called the inventor of opera...

, Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...

, Arcangelo Corelli

Arcangelo Corelli

Arcangelo Corelli was an Italian violinist and composer of Baroque music.-Biography:Corelli was born at Fusignano, in the current-day province of Ravenna, although at the time it was in the province of Ferrara. Little is known about his early life...

.)

Besides Florence, two other Italian cities are particularly worthy of mention in the period around 1600. There is somewhat of a friendly rivalry between advocates of the two cities as to which one is more important in the history of the development of music in Italy. Venice justly claims its place as the birthplace of commercial opera; Naples points to its own history of church-sponsored music conservatories, institutions that developed into "feeder-systems," providing composers and performing musicians for much musical life in Italy and, indeed, Europe as a whole. (See also: Music of Venice and Music of Naples.)

The seventeenth century

The period from about 1600 to 1750 encompasses the musical Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

. Many important things happened in this period. One was a return to the melodic complexities of polyphony, but this time—and this is a crucial difference—the melodies ran within a modern, established system of harmony based on chords and major and minor scales. This latter element is an extension of the concept of homophonic music (mentioned above) and allowed—even forced—melodic complexity to rise to dominance over the importance of text. (The struggle for dominance between text and music goes back to the music of the Greeks and is still going on in all forms of European art music and popular music.) This new dominance of melody within harmony at the expense of text led to great changes, including the expansion (through invention) of instrumental resources of the orchestra; the keyboard was extended in both directions; the making of instruments such as those by Stradivarius became a great industry in Cremona; and instrumental music started to develop as a separate "track," quite apart from the traditional role of accompanying the human voice. Instrumental forms include such things as the sonata and fugue. Important names in music within this period in Italy are Alessandro Scarlatti, and Antonio Vivaldi, representing the importance of Naples and Venice, respectively, within this period.

The eighteenth century

From the early 18th century to the end of that century encompasses what historians call "classical music". (Note that this use of the term "classical" does not correspond to what non-historians mean when they say "classical music"—that is, all opera and symphonic music, as opposed to "popular music".)

The term "classical" is appropriate for this period of music in that it marks the standardization of musical forms such as the symphony

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

 and concerto

Concerto

A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...

. Thus the term "classical" is used in the Renaissance sense of classical Greek philosophy—Platonic form

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

, the idea that things such as beauty exist eternally as ideals, and that the artist's job—in this case, the composer's job—is put form on that ideal. Thus, we have, for example, a symphony formalized as a standard work in four movements for orchestra, and so forth.

The physical plant for composition and performance of music in Italy advanced greatly during this century. It is the period in which the great opera houses in Naples and Milano were built: the San Carlo Theater

Teatro di San Carlo

The Real Teatro di San Carlo is an opera house in Naples, Italy. It is the oldest continuously active such venue in Europe.Founded by the Bourbon Charles VII of Naples of the Spanish branch of the dynasty, the theatre was inaugurated on 4 November 1737 — the king's name day — with a performance...

 and La Scala

La Scala

La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...

, respectively. It is the age, as well, of the rise to prominence of the Neapolitan—and then Italian—Comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

. Important, too, is refinding of some sense of balance between text and music in opera, largely through the librettos of Metastasio

Metastasio

Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...

.

Important Italian composers in this century are: Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...

, Domenico Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style...

, Benedetto Marcello

Benedetto Marcello

Benedetto Marcello was a Venetian composer, writer, advocate, magistrate, and teacher.-Life:...

, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...

, Niccolò Piccinni

Niccolò Piccinni

Niccolò Piccinni was an Italian composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera. Although he is somewhat obscure, even to music lovers today, Piccinni was one of the most popular composers of opera—particularly the Neapolitan opera buffa—of his day...

, Giovanni Paisiello

Giovanni Paisiello

Giovanni Paisiello was an Italian composer of the Classical era.-Life:Paisiello was born at Taranto and educated by the Jesuits there. He became known for his beautiful singing voice and in 1754 was sent to the Conservatorio di S. Onofrio at Naples, where he studied under Francesco Durante, and...

, Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini was an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Boccherini is most widely known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No...

, Domenico Cimarosa

Domenico Cimarosa

Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school...

, and Luigi Cherubini

Luigi Cherubini

Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....

. It is also the age in which "Italian music" became international, so to speak, with many of these Italian composers beginning to work abroad.

The nineteenth century

This is the century of Romanticism in European literature, art, and music. Romanticism in music is marked by many of the same characteristics that define that century's literature and painting: less attention to the formalities of classicism, more involvement of human passions such as love, heroism, courage, freedom, etc., all of which is a direct outgrowth of the humanism

Humanism

Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

 of the French Enlightenment. Italian opera tends to forsake the light-heartedness of the Comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

 for the more serious fare of Italian lyric Romanticsm. Although the ever-popular Rossini

Gioacchino Rossini

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...

 is certainly an exception to that, Italian music of the 19th century is dominated at the beginning by the likes of Bellini

Vincenzo Bellini

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...

, Donizetti

Gaetano Donizetti

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...

, and then, of course, for the last fifty years of the century by Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

, the greatest musical icon in Italian history. It is also the time of the early career of Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Puccini

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

, perhaps the greatest composer of pure melody in the history of Italian music, and certainly the last one. Puccini is the bridge to the age of the new music of the 20th century.

The twentieth century

Romanticism in all European music certainly held on through the turn of century. In Italy, the music of Verdi and Puccini continued to dominate for a number of years. Other Italian Romantic composers—at least composers who continued to compose in the tonal traditions of Western music (as opposed to the new atonality

Atonality

Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...

 and dissonances of post-WWI Europe—composers who "made it" into the 20th century include Arrigo Boito

Arrigo Boito

Arrigo Boito , aka Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito, pseudonym Tobia Gorrio, was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's operas Otello and Falstaff, and his own opera Mefistofele...

, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...

, Francesco Cilea

Francesco Cilea

Francesco Cilea was an Italian composer. Today he is particularly known for his operas L'arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur.-Biography:...

, and Ottorino Respighi

Ottorino Respighi

Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral "Roman trilogy": Fountains of Rome ; Pines of Rome ; and Roman Festivals...

.

Yet, it was inevitable that Italian composers would respond to the fading values of Romanticism and the cynicism provoked in many European artistic quarters by such things as World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and such cultural/scientific phenomena as psychoanalysis in which—at least according to Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

—"all men have secret thoughts that would shame hell." Romanticism—in spite of its lingering popularity with opera goers—died in the First World War. Romantic music in Italy, however, cannot be said to have died under its own weight, as one might say of the overlong and over-orchestrated works of the late Romantic music in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 that gave way to Minimalist music

Minimalist music

Minimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....

. But abstraction and atonality and, simply, "difficult" music did come to Italy after the death of Puccini. Among the most important Italian names in 20th–century music are Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...

, Luigi Dallapiccola

Luigi Dallapiccola

Luigi Dallapiccola was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions.-Biography:Dallapiccola was born at Pisino d'Istria , to Italian parents....

, and Goffredo Petrassi

Goffredo Petrassi

Goffredo Petrassi was an Italian composer of modern classical music, conductor, and teacher. He is considered one of the most influential Italian composers of the twentieth century.-Life:...

.