L’italiano in musica: an interdisciplinary study in semantics, musicology and emotions

This seminar forms part of the monthly cross-campus 'Emotions in Research' series. Gian Marco Farese's interdisciplinary research draws on cutting edge methodologies and theories from the fields of linguistics, musicology and emotions history and theory to explore key Italian agogic symbols, *vivace* and *rubato*, across time.

ABSTRACT

One of the most difficult challenges for music teachers dealing with Western music is to explain to their students the meaning of the many musical terms used in a score, the so-called agogic symbols. In particular, music teachers often struggle to explain concretely to students how to interpret the indications of a given musical term correctly and how to perform a piece of music accordingly. Moreover, considering that these terms are Italian terms (mostly emotion terms, e.g. allegro) and that they are used internationally, the task can be even more difficult for students, as they need to understand what these terms mean in Italian first. However, so far there has been virtually no attempt at explaining the meaning of musical terms by making reference to their original meaning in Italian.

Drawing on linguistic and musical evidence from no fewer than five centuries, I will present a semantic analysis of two musical terms with which most music teachers and students struggle: vivace and rubato. The scope of the analysis is twofold: firstly, to elucidate the meaning of these two terms in a clear way; secondly, to produce a cultural semantic analysis of these terms adopting the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage; at the same time I will highlight connections between this analysis and emotion theory, on the one hand, and Italian language and culture, on the other.

I will start discussing the debated question of the ‘semantics of music’, that is whether or not music has a meaning, focusing on the relationship between music and language. I will then examine the relationship between music, language and emotion theory focusing on the doctrine of the affections and its connection with music. After introducing the general characteristics of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach, I will explain how this methodology of semantic analysis can be applied to the study of musical terms. Ultimately, the aim is to highlight the advantages that NSM-based semantic explications of musical terms can have for pedagogical purposes. The explications proposed can be read by speakers of any language and therefore can be effectively used to teach music students with various linguacultural backgrounds the meaning of vivace and rubato even if they are not familiar with Italian.

In order to show how semantics can be applied to musicology as well as to emotion theory, the analysis brings together three different fields within the humanities which rarely intersect.

Speaker: Gian Marco Farese is a PhD student in Linguistics in the ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics.

In his research, he adopts the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to semantic analysis to investigate the cultural semantics of forms of address in English and in Italian. Gian Marco’s research interests include cultural semantics, cultural linguistics, cross-cultural and intercultural communication and also Japanese language, culture and linguistics. He is also a musician, with an interest in a variety of genres. His first album came out in 2013 and his second album is due to appear by the end of this year. Before coming to ANU, he received a BA in Cultural and Linguistic Mediation from the University of Naples L’Orientale (2011) and a Master in English Linguistics from University College London (2013).