The Art of Musical Interpretation: Non-Positivist Approaches in Italian Musicological and Critical Discourse (1930–1989)

Abstract

The subject of this paper is a discussion of distinguished Italian thinkers, musicologists and critics on the topic of musical interpretation, initiated in 1930 in the periodical La Rassegna Musicale. In the following years – contrary to the positivism that dominated in Italy at the end of the 19th century, and influenced by the Crocean idealism – numerous authors breathed life into the performer, recognizing their part in the creation of musical meaning. This summary of the most important arguments of the selected Italian authors from the 1930s to the 1980s provides an insight into that dynamic debate, which until now has not been present in the Serbian musicological literature. The importance of their departure from the dominant positivist approach is emphasized by the fact that similar postulates in the Anglo-Saxon literature gained momentum significantly later – only at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.