On October 16 and 17, 2024, at John Carroll University, where I have been teaching Italian language classes for around 6 years, 155 people, most of them students, were treated to a free performance of art songs and operatic excerpts written in four different languages: Italian, German, French, and Spanish. Four of my talented colleagues sang, I played piano. Many of those who showed up, I am sure, were there for the extra credit; and yet, their curiosity and attentiveness were palpable as the program unfolded.
The piano I played was beaten up (why Steinway can’t make nice upright pianos is still a mystery to me), and the floor carpeting ate much of the sound, and still the concerts were successful, because the music was powerful enough to overcome all resistance; its century-old message reached the audience.
As many other native speakers turned language teachers, I tend to spend too much time and effort trying to teach rules that are in many cases arbitrary and inconsistent, and not enough time sharing what my native culture has to offer, apart from verb conjugations. Sure, I try to make learning interactive and “fun,” I use “authentic” materials whenever possible, I gamify the tedious process of absorbing and retaining those conjugations, etc. BUT…
For my students language learning is a requirement, and most of them will quickly forget what they learned, unless what they learn MEANS something to them (besides passing their finals). The lucky ones will have a trip planned for the following spring, or summer, and with that comes a sense of purpose; still, the “meaning” I am talking about goes beyond the annual vacation or study abroad experience, which most students will never be able to afford anyway. It begins with exposure to cultural artifacts that were made for the express purpose of breaking barriers to reach those feelings / values / perspectives we humans all seem to share.
Music is not a universal language, but it is a universal behavior that can be observed among all cultures in every corner of the world. I like to think that it appeared before any kind of structured language, as a tool of expression imbued with deep symbolical meaning. The first musical instruments were made out of hollowed-out trunks and reeds, horns, bones, dried skins, seashells, and other vessels that previously belonged to other living creatures; producing sound by hitting, shaking or brushing those remains was the closest thing to reanimating the creatures themselves. The action of playing, for those first performers, was a liminal experience that placed them at the threshold between life and death.
When language first appeared, it must have been an imitation of sounds: maybe the waves, maybe the thunder or the wind rustling among the trees. Those imitations signaled a massive cognitive shift into a new symbolic order, which in turn enabled other means of reproduction: drawing, painting, and eventually writing. The desire to capture what until then had seemed indescribable must have entailed endless negotiations: how to best represent something in a way that everybody can refer back to it? A sign must be utterly efficient in reducing the properties of its referent to the essential, without wandering too far into the abstract realm for fear of losing all meaning.
While aesthetic trends rise and fall over the years, the very existence of a canon tells us that some artworks do achieve permanent status. The reason for that is somewhat of a mystery, but I’d like to suggest that it has something to do with MEANING, in the sense that I tried to articulate in the preceding paragraphs. A canonic (i.e. “classic”) work of art is a successful negotiation between immanent tools and universal properties. It is not so much that great art ‘has’ meaning, but rather that great art ‘is’ meaning: it is the perfect sign in an idiom that transcends time and space.
The songs we performed shared that remarkable quality; in different ways, they achieved transcendence, and that is why they were able to reach a contemporary audience mostly made of kids who would have never otherwise been exposed to them.
As a teacher/performer, I often wonder why we cannot have more of these events, and I strive to make them happen. Given how much the interdisciplinary approach has been glorified and emphasized in academic conferences over the last 20 years, it would seem only natural to include art songs and opera in our curriculum. It would also be a way to rejuvenate academic departments by creating connections with performing arts professionals who can offer fresh insights on their craft.