Università Roma Tre

The course deals with the relationship between music and society focusing on the following twofold aspects: a) “music as agency” in everyday life; b) the social construction of the carriers of musical texts and musicians. The first part of the course will provide to the students the analytical tools for understanding how and to what extent the music can contribute to construct the social meanings of experience, time and space. In everyday life music can function as technology of memory, emotions, cognition, constructing for the listeners frames, within which they are asked to experience their life. There are songs that contribute to defend human rights (“Nick and Bart”), others that became symbols of an epoch, historically and/or politically. The second part will address and problematize the notion of musical genius, by showing its social aspects. It will focus on the relation among genius, ethnicity, gender and social class.

1) Anna Lisa Tota (2000), Musica e vita quotidiana: la composizione musicale dell’esperienza sociale, «Konsequenz», 3-4, pp. 63-72.
2) Anna Lisa Tota (2001), When Orff meets Guiness: music in advertising as a form of cultural hybrid, «Poetics. Journal of Empirical Research on Literature, the Media and the Arts», n. 29, pp. 109-123.
3) Tia DeNora (2001), Memoria e tradizione nella costruzione del talento di Beethoven, in La memoria contesa. Studi sulla comunicazione sociale del passato, a cura di Anna Lisa Tota, Milano, Angeli, pp. 172-196.
4) Tia De Nora (2000), Corpo e genere al piano. Repertorio, tecnologia e comportamento nella Vienna di Beethoven, “Rassegna italiana di Sociologia, n. XII, n. 2, aprile –giugno, pp. 165-188.
5) Pinan Güran and Tia DeNora (2016), Remembering through music: Turkish diasporic identities in Berlin, in Anna Lisa Tota and Trever Hagen (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies, London, Routledge, pp. 233-246.
6) Tia DeNora (1999), Music as a Technology of the Self, «Poetics. Journal of Empirical Research on Literature, the Media and the Arts» (27), pp. 31-56.

Moreover the students have to choose one book between the following options:

7a) Norbert Elias (1991), Mozart. Sociologia di un genio, Bologna, il Mulino, pp. 1-162.
7b) Max Weber (ediz. It. 2017), Sociologia della musica, Milano, il Saggiatore.

The articles (from 1 to 6) will be available for the students on the website www.filcospe.it (see the professor's webpage).