Macrostrutture formali della canzone napoletana nell’Ottocento

Abstract

The classic Neapolitan song represented a model for many coeval and later similar genres, such as the “Salon” romance, the tango, and the modern Italian song. Of course, his influence was favored by the action of a dynamic and efficient cultural industry, able to give an international success to songs like Funiculì Funiculà (1880) or ’O sole mio (1898), on the habanera rhythm. The wide circulation of this repertoire, however, was also due to artistic factors, as exemplified by the poetic and musical forms brought to perfection in the late 19th century. The most important of these formal devices was the verse-and-refrain form, a macro-tructural scheme already present in the pre-classical Neapolitan songs (for example the famous Io te voglio bene assaje, 1835 ca.). This became popular, however, only since the 1880s, when authors, such as Luigi Denza, Enrico De Leva, Mario Costa and Salvatore Di Giacomo, who for the first time identified themselves as professional songwriters, adopted it regularly. These composers and poets, also looking at the musical art tradition, elevated the Neapolitan song to a very high stylistic level and implemented the verse-and-refrain form, the same that would later on become customary in other song repertoires.