page_title: Music of Italy
section_title: Baroque and Classical
hierarchical_section_title: Music of Italy / Classical music / Instrumental music / Baroque and Classical
caption_attribution_description: English: "An anonymous portrait in oils in the Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna is generally believed to be of Vivaldi and may be linked to the Morellon La Cave engraving, which appears to be a modified mirror reflection of it. It is striking how the engraving and the painting 'secularize' Vivaldi: they contain no hint of his identity as a priest. (The fashionable, though slightly informal, dress and self-confident attitude of the composer resemble very closely those of Telemann in the well-known engraving by Georg Lichtensteger.) Ghezzi's sketch likewise shows Vivaldi in a non-clerical black stock as opposed to the white clerical stock and still wearing a wig. (Two years later, in the anno santo of 1725, Innocent XIII was to ban the wearing of wigs by priests.) There is disagreement over whether the hint of red showing in front of the centre of the composer's wig in the painting is a sly reference to his famous hair-colour or simply an unpainted part of the canvas. Whatever the case, it is not out of place to observe that, contrary to the belief of many modern illustrators, Vivaldi's wigs were never coloured red." Michael Talbot, The Vivaldi Compendium (2011), p. 148. The proposition that the painting actually depicts Antonio Vivaldi has been questioned by some sources (e.g. by Groves dictionary). Français&#160;: Portrait d’un violoniste vénitien du XVIIIe siècle, généralement considéré comme étant celui de Vivaldi
context_page_description: The music of Italy has traditionally been one of the cultural markers of Italian national and ethnic identity and holds an important position in society and in politics. Italian music innovation – in musical scale, harmony, notation, and theatre – enabled the development of opera, in the late 16th century, and much of modern European classical music – such as the symphony and concerto – ranges across a broad spectrum of opera and instrumental classical music and popular music drawn from both native and imported sources.
  Italian folk music is an important part of the country's musical heritage, and spans a diverse array of regional styles, instruments and dances. Instrumental and vocal classical music is an iconic part of Italian identity, spanning experimental art music and international fusions to symphonic music and opera. Opera is integral to Italian musical culture, and has become a major segment of popular music. The Canzone Napoletana—the Neapolitan Song, and the cantautori singer-songwriter traditions are also popular domestic styles that form an important part of the Italian music industry, alongside imported genres such as jazz, rock and hip hop from the United States.
context_section_description: The dominance of opera in Italian music tends to overshadow the important area of instrumental music. Historically, such music includes the vast array of sacred instrumental music, instrumental concertos, and orchestral music in the works of Andrea Gabrieli, Giovanni Gabrieli, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Tomaso Albinoni, Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, Domenico Scarlatti, Luigi Boccherini, Muzio Clementi, Giuseppe Gariboldi, Luigi Cherubini, Giovanni Battista Viotti and Niccolò Paganini. (Even opera composers occasionally worked in other forms—Giuseppe Verdi's String Quartet in E minor, for example. Even Donizetti, whose name is identified with the beginnings of Italian lyric opera, wrote 18 string quartets.) In the early 20th century, instrumental music began growing in importance, a process that started around 1904 with Giuseppe Martucci's Second Symphony, a work that Gian Francesco Malipiero called "the starting point of the renaissance of non-operatic Italian music." Several early composers from this era, such as Leone Sinigaglia, used native folk traditions.
caption: Antonio Vivaldi
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