We are great "consumers" of music, if only for the fact that almost everyone of us has a song or a musical motif that has marked his life. Indeed, music is the universal language through which to express our feelings and emotions. It is the mirror that reflects the infinite nuances of life and dreams, of the sacred and of mystery. And we Italians should be the first to know, given that our peninsula has given the world Gregorian chant, Renaissance music, the great masters of the Baroque up to nineteenth-century melodrama.
And yet, music finds very little space in the Italian school with the result that in this way a part of our cultural tradition is lost and above all the younger generations are not educated to listen to and understand the masterpieces of the past. There is, in fact, a common thread that links Monteverdi's madrigals and the songs of Sanremo, Mozart and the groupies of the 1960s.
The volume "1001 quiz on music" (Newton Compton Editori, 2023, Euro 14.90, pp. 480. Also ebook) by Aldo Carioli helps us in a fun (and intelligent) way to rediscover this thread, retracing the history of music from origins to contemporaneity with the simple mechanism of challenging our memory and our musical preparation.A challenge to undertake alone or during an evening with friends with the addition that Carioli's volume does not only propose questions, then providing the correct answer. For each question it also contains an explanation of why one should choose one solution rather than another.It thus becomes not only fun, but also instructive to discover how behind every song and every artist we have loved there is a whole universe of anecdotes, curious facts and incredible human events.
Who has won the most Sanremo festivals? Where was trap music born? Who is the author of the musical The Rocky Horror Show? Why is the pentagram called that? Four questions, four examples that help us understand how Carioli's volume spans 360 degrees, from rock to the history of classical music, from the greats of jazz to the evolution of sounds over the centuries, from opera stars to catchphrases summer. Thus, at the end of 1001 questions, answers and explanations we arrive at a single conclusion: whether it is made by blowing into a flute made from a bone, composed in the quiet of a Renaissance court, written in the midst of war or waiting for a subway train, music remains one of the best ways human genius speaks to us and shows itself to the world.
