{"id":686,"date":"2024-07-18T16:50:27","date_gmt":"2024-07-18T16:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/internal-pcons-be-fondazione-fr-dev-elb-1449244171.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com\/?p=686"},"modified":"2020-01-23T11:13:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T11:13:22","slug":"sociology-of-music-in-pirelli-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rivistapirelli.org\/en\/sociology-of-music-in-pirelli-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"Sociology of Music in Pirelli Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cinema-tv-music-and-entertainment"],"acf":{"riassunto":"","composizione_articolo":[{"acf_fc_layout":"composizione_articolo_testo","composizione_articolo_testo_testo":"

As an essential part of the complex relationship between man and machine<\/strong>, sound could not stay far from the pages of Pirelli<\/em> magazine, which during those initial years of post-war renaissance, was itself helping to bring about a modern conception of corporate culture. \u201cMusic and machines<\/a>\u201d was indeed the title of an article written by the illustrious music critic Silvestro Severgnini<\/strong>, one of the founders of the Pirelli Cultural Centre<\/strong><\/a>, and published in issue no. 4 of 1949. It took readers on a concise but profound journey through contemporary music inspired by mechanical labour. As well as Maestros Stravinsky<\/strong> and Prokofiev, the \u201cchant\u201d of the threshing machine by the composer Darius Milhaud and the sound of the foundry by Alexander Vasilyevich Mosolov, what struck Severgnini\u2019s musical sensitivities was \u201cPacific 231\u201d composed by Arthur Honegger<\/strong> in 1923. This is a symphonic representation of \u201ca 300-ton train hurtling through the night at 120 km\/h: a visual impression, a physical pleasure\u201d.<\/p>\n

The distance between \u201cthe music of work\u201d and \u201cmusic for workers<\/a>\u201d is small<\/strong>, and this was the title of an article that appeared in issue no. 4 of 1952<\/strong>, on the influence of music on workers\u2019 productivity, a characteristic subject taken from 1950s psychology in America. The conclusion is not hard to imagine: music has industrial merit and its use at the workplace raises productivity and reduces accidents, with improvements of up to 25%. Never mundane or predictable, and always open to the emergence of new social phenomena, Pirelli<\/em> magazine returned to the subject of music a few years later, at the height of the 1960s, with all the innovation, change, and even revolution that the period brought with it.<\/p>\n

In terms of music, the litmus test of epoch-making change was the blues<\/strong>. \u201cThe archaeologists of blues<\/a>\u201d was the title of an article in issue no. 5 of 1965<\/strong>, and it was immediately clear that, for the author \u2013 the music critic Arrigo Polillo<\/strong> \u2013 it was the end of an era. From New Orleans to Greenwich Village in New York, the good \u201cold timers\u201d \u2013 King Oliver, Louis Armstrong<\/strong> \u2013 had all stopped playing: traditional, harmonious \u201cblack music\u201d had given way to protest jazz, and to the anger of John Coltrane<\/strong>, and even to the avant-garde intellectualism of the \u201cfar-out cats\u201d. A far, very far remove from ordinary folk, who were now looking to rock. But in Polillo\u2019s view, \u201ckids will soon get tired of their little y\u00e9-y\u00e9 orchestras and singers with long mop tops and flat guitars around their necks, and they will come back to jazz musicians\u201d.<\/p>\n

Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli went further still in their historical-sociological dissertation on the blues in \u201cBlack Music<\/a>\u201d<\/strong>, published in no. 9 of 1971<\/strong>, one of the magazine\u2019s last issues. The political critique of the 1970s had moved in and \u201cblack music\u201d was now a form of political awareness<\/strong>: a far cry from the \u201cmusic of machines\u201d celebrated just a couple of decades earlier on the same pages of the magazine published by Pirelli. In 1971 the magazine also made its contribution to the debate on musical education in Italy<\/a>, in an interesting article that the author, Corrado Augias<\/strong>, ended like this: \u201cIf you are familiar with Bach, it is quite likely that you will end up liking the Beatles too.\u201d<\/p>\n

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