Italy

Capital: Rome

Continent: Europe

Monteverdi

Lully

Scarlatti

Palestrina

Vivaldi

Frescobaldi

Paganini

Puccini

Verdi

Rossini

Italy

As a country that occupied the center of the musical world for approximately the last 2,000 years, due to the centrality of Roman Catholic Church, Italy was not very keen on the search for its folk fundamentals in the Romantic period, for the sake of cultural musical pride that the other nations needed. This has always been an inseparable part of Italian musical creation. Italian composers were at the core of musical creation at all times. In the 11th century, in Arezzo

, the Benedictine monk and music educator Guido d'Arezzo invented syllable names (ut, re, mi, etc.) for the notes of the scale.

Some of the most important music forms were born in Italy: the opera

, cantata

, sonata

, toccata

, partita

, motet

and more.

The heritage of violin

in Italy is highly developed, and goes back long before Vivaldi

and later, Paganini

. The greatest violin makers

, especially Amati, Guarneri and Stradivarius

came from Cremona

Italian opera dominated for a very long time, from the time of Gluck

to Rossini

, Verdi

and Puccini

. Although Verdi was not one of the national composers who explored their people's folk music and incorporated it in their work, he wrote his grand operas during the Italian uprising against Austrian occupation, he had the privilege of becoming the symbol of defiance to this foreign rule: (oddly, his name matched the initials of the cry for Italian royalty Vittorio Emmanuele Re D'Italia, and King Vittorio's supporters would call out proudly "Viva Verdi"). He won this honor thanks to his operas dedicated to the spirit of freedom, honesty and resistance to oppression ("Nabucco", "Lombardi", "Ernani"), in which he planted well hidden nationalist messages that made his audience constantly oppose tyranny. "Nabucco" ("Nevuchadnezar" - the Babylonian emperor who destroyed the first temple in Jerusalem), deals with the conflict between oppressed Jews and the tormenting Babylonians.

Dances originated and developed in this country:

Pavane

- a festive, triple metre dance, whose origins are probably Padua, Italy (hence its name).

Galliard

- a rapid triple metre dance integrated into the suite.

Tarantella - a fast dance whose purpose was to cure the bite of the tarantula spider.

Courante

- a quick dance, whose origins are French, yet became famous in its 3/4 Italian version.