A&HHE Special Issue August 2016
Structural reform and institutional difference: practice as research in Italy
Leonella Grasso Caprioli, Dinko Fabris, Giuseppe Silvestri, Federica Riva
Abstract
Seventeen years on from the reform of Italian higher education in the arts, the music sector finds itself in a particularly complex situation. More specifically – regarding research – there are four structural issues that require special attention. First, the adoption of the concept of artistic research towards innovation; second, an updated comparison between the teaching of musicology in university and conservatoires; third, the establishment of the 3rd cycle within artistic higher education; and, last, the peculiar question of Italian music libraries. Italy’s rich cultural history provides a particularly important context for the development of research in music – from its musical archives and musical traditions to the strength of musicology as a discipline, in particular its close links with practice. In the spirit of fostering broader European harmonization and cultural sharing, the primary aim of this collective study is to articulate an overview of the present situation of higher education in music in Italy, from various perspectives, in order that the national issues it explores might illuminate international issues too.
Keywords
Conservatoires, University music departments, Bologna process, Artistic research, Italy
Context: the reform of Italian higher education in music – Leonella Grasso Caprioli
Italian Law no 508 (1999), which provided for the reform of the Italian higher education system for music and the arts,[i] is still considered highly controversial: it was never implemented organically, and the reforms it put in place have unfortunately generated a number of problems – structural and organisational – that remain unresolved.
At present, the entire Higher Education system in Italy, for all disciplines, is administered by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research. More specifically, the Higher Education is divided into three distinct departments: universities, independent research institutions, and artistic institutions. This structure is the result of a century-long Italian tradition whereby the professional teaching of the arts (including musical practice) is provided by conservatoires and academies of fine arts, established as autonomous institutions independent of the university sector. By contrast, the music and arts departments of Italian universities are responsible for educating scholars through a highly theoretical and historiographical approach.
Conservatoires are at present higher education institutions specialised in practical musical training that have acquired, thanks to legal recognition of their diplomas, ‘university status’ both within and outside Italy. With the reform, they have implemented new curricula incorporating increased teaching of musicology and theory, and they have also adopted pan-European parameters such as the framework of 1st, 2nd and 3rd cycle education, the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, and so on. In other words, as a result of the Bologna Process, Italian academies of fine arts and music conservatoires have merged with the broader third-level or higher education sector – in which they constitute their own section, known as AFAM (Higher Education in the Arts, Music and Choreutics),2 alongside and equivalent to that of universities – while still maintaining their specific mission of educating artists and musicians.
In this restructured context, the major aspect of internal innovation is the fact that AFAM institutions are called on to demonstrate a capacity not only for providing high quality practical training in music and the arts, but also for visible and quantifiable research at a certain level, either in line with a national standard, or within a wider European framework. The whole purpose of the reform, indeed, was to renew Italian artistic education and to improve its social recognition and impact, while also aligning it more closely with international models.
In theory, the design of the reform implied some very ambitious targets including the possibility of merging institutions in order to form polytechnics, with a view to rationalising a system currently fragmented into a very large number of institutions. Furthermore, the drafting of the legislation placed an emphasis on research as key to progress, explicitly designating it as part of the mission of conservatoires and the academies.
In practice, however, the law that embodies this great reform regrettably remains only partially enacted; no coherent body of regulations has yet been derived from it (Ribolzi, 2013). This state of incompletion has condemned the system, in the last seventeen years, to an indeterminate state of continual transition. This challenging transitional phase has also delayed, among other things, a strategic and co-ordinated approach to internationalization. The main problem in the case of musical education is the sheer size of the sector, which has remained unchanged, despite the initial rationalising intentions of the reform.
Thanks to its long musical history, Italy boasts a wealth of prestigious – or at least locally influential – institutions for musical education. Over the last four centuries, these institutions have developed extensively throughout the country (from the first cluster of sixteenth-century conservatoires to the many institutions formed in the course of the nineteenth century). In 1999, with the passing of Law 508, all existing state-owned conservatoires and recognised local-government-run musical institutions were uniformly recognised as Public Institutions of Higher Education; that is to say, all together on a level with universities. In the report by the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research, Ribolzi (2013) includes a census of 78 Higher Music Education institutions (58 conservatoires and 20 Higher Institutions of Musical Studies).3 The AFAM sector of music thus currently consists of around eighty organisations – a factor that sets the Italian question apart from all other European countries. Germany, by comparision, has only 25 Hochschulen für Musik, which – from a legislative point of view – are institutions comparable to Italian conservatoires.
Thus, over the last few years, the critical question of rationalising the number of conservatoires has arisen, provoking a bitter internal divide, as yet unresolved, which has given way to an excessively inward-looking mindset. This in turn has limited the amount of resources and energy spent on the necessary renewal of the sector as a whole (Ribolzi, 2013). The report highlights the many organisational and administrative contradictions that plague the system, undermining its capacity to respond critically and with strategic foresight to the constant demands of a rapidly changing post-modern society. Added to this is the fact that conservatoires have not really benefited from their change in status, due to the length of time the ongoing reforms are taking. Indeed, ‘in the absence of implementational regulations, the sector has remained somewhat unaligned with the university system. The law does not, then, seem to have contributed to a proper valorisation of the sector, but merely to have formally recognised its qualifications as equivalent to those bestowed by universities’ (Ribolzi, 2013: 313).
Artistic research in Italian conservatoires – Leonella Grasso Caprioli
Given the current state of affairs, one of the main priorities for overcoming this decade-long impasse would seem to be the growth of a culture of artistic research. Within the lively debate on this particular subject we especially refer to the concept of artistic research discussed by the Association of European Conservatoires (AEC), which has greatly contributed to the strategic diffusion of the issue in the realm of European higher music education during the last decade. More recently, in 2015, AEC has published both a handbook on 2nd-cycle routes to artistic doctorates and a white paper on artistic research.
Most relevant to the present discussion is the fact that it is precisely the development of research that is considered decisive in the positioning of conservatoires and academies within higher education, alongside university science and humanities departments. For more than fifteen years now, artistic research and the social responsibility of the artist-researcher have increasingly been topics of international debate, with a proliferation of documentation on the subject. But in Italy, conversely, we encounter a notable delay in the raising of awareness of the very existence of the issue, let alone its complexity and urgency.
Artistic research has an essential role to play in leveraging progress in the modernisation of higher musical education generally, as well as in Italy more specifically. Moreover, centring the debate on the question of research could result – depending on who is writing – in heightened support for a greater assumption of social responsibility by the institutions, particularly in line with the vocational objectives of the Bologna Process and the subsequent progress of its reforms. Such a development seems necessary in order to effect a drastic change of attitude towards Italian higher education in the arts. And all this is, of course, situated in a wider context of social change, in which we are witness to the demise of a rational, linear vision of things in favour of a more dynamic, non-directional and experimental relationship with our surroundings.
At the same time, we must be attentive to the possibility that present-day society will begin to view musical institutions for higher education as, quite simply, economically unsustainable. Contemporary society tends to undervalue and progressively marginalise art music, both as an expressive idiom and as a specific educational path, due to a growing sense of its superfluity – of its being uneconomical and belonging to a sphere of human existence that is detached from the pressing needs of daily life. Crucially, such disillusionment particularly attaches to the paradigm of transmission of knowledge of European art music that to this day still constitutes the majority of didactic work within conservatoires. That paradigm is, in many ways, their avowed purpose. Thus the reflection, experimentation and re-theorisation that artistic research entails – not only in comparison with universities but also in connection with the social impact of what we do within these institutions – is central to the debate, and to hopes of refashioning the entire system. Naturally, any sustainable, funded research requires a rationale capable of legitimising its function, establishing its parameters, defining its methodologies and ensuring credible work processes and usable results.
There is thus an urgent need to consider how the process of change envisioned by the reform holds our institutions socially responsible for making professional musical education accessible – on everyone’s behalf and for the common good – and for reflecting critically, in terms of innovation and social impact, on their activities. Here the common good is understood as fundamental, in its educational function, to the acknowledgement of the value of music beyond economic concerns, as something that produces social capital inasmuch as it recognises individuals not only as its target audience, but as active agents – to varying degrees – of a cultural trajectory, entrusted to few, but jointly undertaken for the benefit of society as a whole. In this sense, conservatoires represent – in the broadest social context – bastions for the common good, responsible for musical education, its technique, transmission, quality, excellence and, lastly, its economic potential. They are, moreover, expected to recognise and encourage musical creativity, essential to artistic research, ensuring its development in a climate insulated from that imposed by the market. If on the one hand the adoption of the concept of the common good, in this instance, can interfere with certain avenues of research carried out by experts in the field, on the other hand it aims to forge community ties by tackling scepticism, improving interaction and communication, and stimulating new, more responsible and more informed attitudes, on behalf of all those involved in the process of renewal.
It is on this basis that the Association for Musical Artistic Research in Italy, RAMI,4 has been established, as an independent initiative within the Italian institutional framework, departing from the premise that the creation of a musical research culture should be at the forefront of the debate and, in particular, that artistic research represents – in Italy just as elsewhere – the most stimulating and cogent tool for facilitating the modernisation of the sector.
Musicology: a resource divided between universities and specialist training – Dinko Fabris
Intellectual education in music has also undoubtedly intensified as a result of the reform process, but the dual nature of the sector necessitates some clarification. This section, therefore, provides some observations on how musicology is taught in Italy, how universities and conservatories compare in this regard, and who the main actors are also in the approach towards artistic research. In fact, musicologists trained in universities are present in both areas as teachers, but music lecturers in university departments have what might be called a strictly scientific task, as scholars and educators, and as researchers themselves. Musicologists in conservatories, on the other hand, teach subjects that support the main curriculum to students who will be musicians. The latter do not have access to government funding for research in AFAM, nor can their institutions gain access to national research funding, which is reserved only for universities.
Since 1987, the first time the quinquennial International Musicological Society conference was held in Italy, Italian musicology has had a prominent international profile, such that it may arguably be considered the third most important country in the discipline after the USA and Germany (Pompilio, 1990).
A collection of quantitative data, as evidenced in Table A, can help us to understand the strong presence of professional musicologists in teaching posts in Italian universities and conservatoires (roughly 125 – including fewer than 20 ethnomusicologists – in 41 universities and roughly 200 in 78 conservatoires or similar institutions).5 This data does not include fixed-term lectureships or hourly paid staff,who are present in both types of institution, as this percentage is not only difficult to calculate but also of secondary importance both on a broader economic level and in terms of status.
Table A
| Universities | Conservatoires |
| 41 universities in 31 Italian cities (Rome, Milan and Bologna each have 3 universities) | 58 conservatoires + 20 similar institutions (Istituti di Studi Superiori Musicali) |
| Three Cycles: | Two Cycles (currently): |
| Cycle 1 (Laurea Triennale): no specific degree in Musicology | Cycle 1 (Diploma Accademico di I livello): no specific degree in Musicology |
| Cycle 2 (Laurea Magistrale): degree in Musicology only activated in 10 Universities: Bologna, Florence, Milan, Padua, Parma, Pavia/Cremona, Rome Sapienza, Rome Tor Vergata, Turin, Venice | Cycle 2 (Diploma Accademico di II livello): a few conservatoires have activated a specific degree in Musicology |
| Cycle 3 (Dottorato): doctorate in musicology only activated in 6 universities, Bologna, Pavia/Cremona, Rome Tor Vergata and Rome Sapienza/Palermo (associated) | Cycle 3 (Dottorato): not activated as of 2015. There are proposals for Doctorates in a few conservatoires (Milan is the most advanced) but no regulations have been established as of yet. |
| 3 levels of career for musicologists (they cover all branches of the discipline, i.e. what in Germany is divided into ‘Historical’ and ‘Systematic’ Musicology)
· 23 x Professore Ordinario (Full Professor) · 42 x Professore Associato (Associate Professor) · 43 x Ricercatore (Researcher) · 17 Ethnomusicologists · c. 20-40 external Lecturers (Professori a contratto) |
Only 1 level of career for Professors in Conservatoires (with several internal specializations in both Historical and Systematic Musicology)
· 148 Teachers of History of Music · fixed-term lecturers or hourly paid staff (Professori a contratto)* *Dependent on local need at any one time, so no accurate figures are available.
|
| Total: c. 150 | Total: c. 200 |
| Total teaching staff in Italian universities in 2008: 63,249
(i.e. musicologists = 0.025%) |
Total teaching staff in Italian conservatoires and other higher education music institutions: 7,150
(i.e. musicologists = 3%) |
Since the 1990s, the two factions – once united in a pioneering spirit of ‘young Italian musicology’6 – have drifted further and further apart, resulting in a growing difficulty in communication between universities and conservatoires.7 As well as ‘political’ reasons (the relative value of various qualifications and the scarce availability of professional positions at the end of both paths of study), structural differences in the organisation of degrees and general teaching also continue to hinder a collaborative dialogue between Italian universities and conservatoires.
In an Italian university, for example, any student taking a degree in Music History or Musicology must obtain a fixed number of credits (i.e. more than 40% of the total) in general humanities subjects (Italian literature, history, geography, etc.) to achieve a second-level – specialist or Master’s – degree. These subjects simply do not exist, however, in the equivalent ordinances of Italian conservatoires, which maintain an absolute majority of technical musical subjects and only a minimal focus on ‘cultural’ studies.
Law 508, problematic though it is, has brought about important changes that can finally allow us to readdress the question of collaboration or, at least, equal co-existence: in particular, the Bologna framework (3 years + 2 years) and the educational credit system make it easy to theorise various forms of collaboration, from the simple equivalence of qualifications to the creation of analogous programmes. We must keep in mind that in Italian conservatoires teachers of History of Music – and other musicological subjects – run, for the most part, similar programmes to those of their university colleagues. In many cases their preparatory syllabuses are identical.
Some experimental projects have shown us the usefulness of such a dialogue, as in the past the creation of a technical task-force, composed of university and conservatoire experts under the aegis of the Consiglio Universitario Nazionale, CUN, and the Consiglio Nazionale per l’Alta Formazione Artistica e Musicale, CNAM (the two national councils for universities and specialist training in the arts respectively).
What is certain is that active collaboration between universities and conservatoires – within the sector they have in common, i.e. musicology – would result in the strengthening of both the ‘system’ for teaching musicology and of that for carrying out research within the field.8 This would, in turn, reinstate Italy at the centre of international attention; ground it has lost in recent years also due to the persistent use of the Italian language in published musicological studies, which are of course little read in the increasingly exclusively Anglophone international world of research.
Doctorates in the arts and music: a (slow) work in progress – Giuseppe Silvestri
Another issue highlighted by the conservatoire reform – one particularly related to the research activities within AFAM – is the introduction of doctorates, specifically the extent to which they differ from those awarded by university departments. Currently, due to the uncertain status of Law 508, artistic institutions still do not offer doctoral programmes. In this instance, it would seem all the more appropriate to take stock of the state of the 3rd cycle generally, i.e. also in comparison with the situation in universities, both on a national and European scale.
The first programme of doctoral research in any subject in Italy, i.e. leading to a qualification formally recognised by the Italian government, was not until 1980 – many decades after some countries in Western Europe. Every year since, the Ministry for Universities has authorised universities to advertise doctoral research opportunities. Ministry regulations then determine the courses on offer, the organisation of the courses and the number of scholarships available. They also exercise quality control, and ensure the maximum possible equivalence between the qualifications bestowed by various institutions.
In the case of artistic and musical doctoral research, however, we are far from reaching any similarly general definition or benchmarking. It was only at the end of 1999 that Law 508 – specifically pertaining to the AFAM institutions – drastically reshaped the structure, establishing many elements comparable with university programmes of study, specifically with regard to teaching and the adoption of the 3 years + 2 years + 3 years policy enshrined in the Bologna Process. In reality, as outlined above, the successive implementation of these norms has only led to the establishment of 1st-cycle (i.e. three-year undergraduate) courses; 2nd- and 3rd-cycle studies can only be set up on a trial basis and with the specific agreement of the Ministry. While all institutions offer first degrees and nearly all have established Master’s degrees, few have proposed, and obtained the authority to run, doctoral research programmes. Moreover, the AFAM programmes – despite the repeated insistence on their equivalence with universities – are still all categorised merely as ‘research training courses’.9
The absence of a general framework has, without any doubt, delayed the development of doctoral research programmes in many institutions, despite the increasingly widespread, innovative vision that places research at the core of the teaching and learning, and indeed cultural growth, of those very institutions. In this regard, it is worth noting once more the interest, on a national level, sparked by the formation of the Associazione per la Ricerca Artistica Musicale in Italia, RAMI, which collects and propagates reflections on the various areas in which artistic and musical research can be articulated, and disseminates good practice. RAMI has already been introduced above, but it should be emphasised here that the stimulus it has given to research activity generally has positively influenced institutional and professional interest in the creation of doctoral programmes. As a result, doctoral candidates, their tutors and supervisors experiment with new concepts and – through their research – become promoters of critical awareness and innovative skill-sets.
Changes are also taking place at a ministerial level, seventeen years on from the above-cited reform. Indeed, the Ministry has recently established a work group called ‘Cantiere (literally, construction site) AFAM’ that has carried out extensive consultation with those working in the sector and with other stake-holders, in the hope of implementing further regulations that will make up for lost time and encourage institutions that hope to develop their teaching and learning and research projects, including doctoral research programmes.
Before too long, we can thus expect AFAM institutions to be in a position to introduce doctoral courses without the need for specific authorisation procedures. Accordingly, certain issues currently debated at a European level – relating to the programming and running of syllabuses – will become relevant to this sector as well. Among such issues may be cited the balance between teaching and research, the role of tutors and supervisors, how to validate courses and ensure satisfactory standards, and how to guarantee that the research environment is fit for purpose, both qualitatively and in terms of critical mass.
Doctoral training has always been a point of strategic importance, as much for the European University Association as for the Association Européenne des Conservatoires, AEC.10 The former established a membership service in 2008 – specifically aimed at doctoral training – known as the Council for Doctoral Education (CDE). The latter has set up specific work groups focusing on research and the 3rd cycle (Tomasi and Vanmaele, 2007). In 2010 the CDE published ‘Salzburg II’, which revisits and implements the recommendations of the Salzburg Principles.11
The question of how to apply the Bologna Process criteria to doctoral training is a lively topic of debate within both the university and artistic contexts. The subject raises interesting theoretical questions regarding the need to incorporate both learning and research within a process of intellectual and professional growth. While research depends on the development of knowledge and must be predicated on freedom of expression and critical enquiry, learning is based on a relationship between knowledge and competence, heavily weighted in favour of the teacher, who has the responsibility of defining the course of study and training of the student.
Proper doctoral training depends on a careful balance between teaching and research, ensuring the latter has enough room to bring to light the candidate’s creative and reasoning skills. It is around this question of relative weighting and balance that the discussions in university and artistic and musical training systems respectively are being conducted. For our part, we align ourselves decisively with the CDE’s understanding of the specificity of the 3rd cycle as incompatible with the content and methods of the two prior cycles. The debate continues, but it seems worth citing in this connection the European Charter for Researchers, which considers the candidate to be an early-career researcher,12 that is to say possessed of the right (indeed the responsibility) to exercise his or her inventiveness and ideological independence, albeit under the guidance of a supervisor.
Italian conservatoire libraries, music librarianship and research in music – Federica Riva
The goal of all school libraries is to develop information-literate students who are responsible and ethical participants in society. Information-literate students are competent self-directed learners who are aware of their information needs and actively engage in the world of ideas (International Association of Library Associations and Institutions, 2015). Applied to the Italian public system of higher education in music, this principle dictates that there should be no distinction between different kinds of musicians insofar as they should all have the same levels of access to research.
Music teachers are major actors in the development of artistic research in music;13 at the same time they are users of music libraries,14 archives and museums, where they have access to onsite and online documentation necessary to their studies. As well as preserving documentation of conservatoire activities of past centuries, these libraries also provide the opportunity for any teacher-researcher to access his or her own professional roots, strengthening his or her identity. Library services are therefore essential to the development of artistic research.
The efficiency and quality of a library’s services depend largely on its librarians and library staff; on the former’s ability to direct the management of the library towards research, to close the ever-growing gap between the historical heritage of physical objects and the digitised world, and to reconcile two aspects that are often perceived as opposed: preservation vs usage. Librarians should therefore be regarded as independent actors on the artistic research scene. As reflective information practitioners, they contribute to the development of artistic research on two levels: research on the methodologies of library science applied to music, and the teaching of bibliographic research methods to music students and teachers.
The most prominent quality of the historical libraries of Italian conservatoires is that they preserve coherent and plentiful documentation of musical activities – including pedagogical activities – of the past, consisting of written music, archival documents and museum objects.15 Such rich documentation is available to the teacher who wants to combine different research approaches – including historical methods – to his or her artistic research and teaching, which these days essentially means taking into account musical activities and teaching methods used in previous centuries to deliver the same course that he or she is now teaching. More generally speaking, the cultural heritage preserved in Italian conservatoire libraries is an important part of the lively relationship between European music as a broad field and that of the Italian peninsula, whether through the history of its music institutions, or through donations received by composers, interpreters and music lovers.16
Unfortunately, the huge musical heritage of Italian conservatoires has been treated more as an unresolved administrative problem than as an opportunity for study. In fact, the absence of an established and professional work force, the scarcity of financial resources, the lack of an institutional and regulatory framework and of a clear subdivision of the various roles within the institution and – for the larger institutions – of operational autonomy, not to mention ever more library users, are all factors that have contributed to the increasingly critical situation of library management.
Within this framework the Law defines ‘Bibliography and Musical Librarianship’ as an autonomous disciplinary field, and hence librarians as professionals with special academic qualifications.17 Thus, the educational role of librarians not only improves the management of libraries in many aspects, but also facilitates student training through different stages of their academic curricula, plays a role in faculty infrastructure and, lastly, encourages librarians to reflect on the daily demands of their own profession, i.e to conduct research on their working methods and those of their users.
Furthermore, in the field of bibliography, the rate of technological advances requires students to develop practical and technical skills, as well as research skills. Digital and information technology is transforming not only the tools of research but also the heritage and documentation itself. Since the 1990s, an ever greater part of the heritage preserved in Italian conservatoire libraries can be accessed online from the national library service network, known as the Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale (SBN), within which a database has evolved specifically for cataloguing music. Nowadays, the SBN catalogue lists 200,000 musical manuscripts and more than 490,000 editions of printed music, in addition to books on music and audio and audiovisual documents.
Italy, however, has fallen behind in terms of digitisation. With regard to conservatoires in particular, only two institutions have made their collections freely available to users on national and international portals, while few other conservatoires have undertaken digitisation projects that are published on their websites. Some have transformed existing analogue reproduction services into digital ones, however the material digitised on demand is not then retained for wider public use.18
It is thus important to contextualise both the techniques of bibliographical research and the methods of reproduction with respect to the pedagogical situation in which they are used, and to ask which educational models the librarians themselves would currently advocate. It is common knowledge that digitisation assists in the conservation of original documents inasmuch as limiting their use limits wear and tear. But to what extent does the limitation of use contribute to conservation more broadly defined, which consists also in the maintenance of the original document (cleaning, restoring, etc.) as well as the place in which it is held (air-conditioning, antitheft alarms, fire alarms, etc.)?
These days, long-distance access to the patrimony preserved in libraries can clearly be said to be part of the right to culture. We might ask ourselves, however, whether this right is absolute or, rather, part of a mutual relationship in which the access and use of a whole research community – and its individual academics and students – implies an ethical responsibility for care and conservation of the historical patrimony, understood as a common good.
In other words, is there a correlation between the right and duty of researchers to exercise their own intellectual inventiveness and independence (mentioned above) and a responsibility towards the cultural patrimony to which the documents – i.e. the objects of the researchers’ scientific interest – belong, including under the term ‘cultural heritage’ the original documents as much as their digital copies? If the online distribution of digital copies of documents is perceived by the scientific community as a substitute for the original – that is to say, if the rights of use are understood as having been disconnected from the responsibilities pertaining to the original document – then we risk forming a divisive research culture, that will both instigate and exacerbate a separation between the digital and non-digital spheres.
This division could, in turn, be detrimental to both education and research if – in teaching materials, at public presentations of research projects and also at academic conferences – we were to stop citing the place in which the original document is held and begin to reference only the website where the digital copy can be found. In particular, this tendency could also have economic repercussions, namely the avoidance of paying any library royalties due by attributing a kind of ‘original’ value to the digital document.
The dissemination of a culture that perceives the digital object as more immediately useful to research than the original document means that, in future, the number of people interested in accessing the original source will probably decline and that, as a result, it will become ever more difficult for libraries to find the necessary resources for the conservation of historical collections. If we consider the historical libraries of Italian conservatoires and the difficulties they encounter providing basic services – such as opening hours that meet the research needs of students – we might ask ourselves to what extent the global distribution of their patrimony in digital images can contribute to an improvement of those services – or whether, in fact, technological innovation is superimposing itself in an uncoordinated and even antagonistic manner upon on-site services, or indeed simply bypassing them. It is surely necessary to foster a mindset that is able to find a healthy balance between conservation and digitisation, combining our common interest in the conservation and transmission of cultural heritage with an academic interest in the digital object which facilitates study, as well as with the economic interests of the industry that provides digitisation services.
Conclusions – Leonella Grasso Caprioli
The primary aim in drafting this collective contribution has been to offer an articulated and up-to-date – albeit partial – analysis of the state of play in the midst of the complex evolutionary process currently being experienced by higher education in Italy. With this in mind, it has proved useful to join forces to address – from various perspectives – the issues raised. Moreover, these separate reflections were intended not only to problematise the Italian case – which is indeed exceptionally stratified – but also to identify key areas in which we believe it appropriate to intervene collectively, with special emphasis on international comparisons, in order to advance the important ongoing transformation of the Italian higher music education system. The current problematic stage seems finally to have reached a turning point: according to recent public statements by the relevant Ministry,19 the reform criteria will be updated and finally brought to completion during 2016, coinciding with the structural implementation of monitoring and quality assessment of the AFAM system, with a view to aligning it with the university sector and the international scene more generally. As we hope the observations above make clear, this will be no straightforward task.
Footnotes
1 Law no. 508 of 21 December 1999. Cited numerous times below, abbreviated to ‘Law 508’.
2 AFAM – Alta Formazione Artistica, Musicale e coreutica, the sector of the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR – Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) comprising schools of fine arts, dance, dramatic arts, music conservatoires and higher institutes for musical studies, higher institutes for the creative industries and, more recently as a result of the Act of the President of the Republic (DPR – Decreto del Presidente della Repubblica) 8 July 2005 no. 212), a small number of accredited private institutions. Cited numerous times below as AFAM.
3 The report brings to light other interesting data concerning the state of affairs of the music sector: 6,600 courses are offered, divided into the old system (closed to new candidates), newly activated 1st- and 2nd-cycle programmes in the experimental stages, and 3rd-cycle programmes that are still underway. There are 49,247 students (only 29.4% of whom are enrolled on the new, experimental 1st- and 2nd-cycle system) and 7,145 professors (permanent and hourly paid). Conservatoires make up the most substantial part of the whole sector of specialist training in the arts (62.4% of the total, in comparison to 34.8% of schools of fine arts).
4 RAMI, Associazione per la Ricerca Artistica Musicale in Italia, is an association made up of individual and institutional members, founded in 2014 to stimulate debate and networking around the subject of musical artistic research in Italy, from an international perspective. RAMI was set up by eight conservatoires: Bologna, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Palermo, Pesaro, Pescara and Vicenza (leading the project).
5 We underline that in this table we have expanded the general data mentioned in the previous section and that it relates only to the teaching of musicology comparatively between the two separate sectors of universities and conservatoires.
6 Oscar Chilesotti (1848-1916), Luigi Torchi (1858-1920) and Angelo Solerti (1865-1907) were the prominent figures of this first generation of Italian musicologists, active for almost forty years from about 1880.
7 In Italy there are two Italian musicological societies that publish their own musicological reviews: the older Società Italiana di Musicologia, founded in 1964 at the Conservatorio G. Verdi, Milan (Antolini, 2010) and the younger Il Saggiatore Musicale, founded in 1993 at the Music Department of Bologna University (now the Arts Department; La Face and Bianconi, 2013).
8 Differently to other national systems (i.e. the British one), Musicology pathways in Italian Universities are strictly theory-orientated.
9 This distinction of title seems inappropriate, given that the motivations, aims and – in many cases – methodologies are exactly the same as those of university programmes.
10 The EUA, made up of more that 800 universities and all of the European Conferences of University Rectors, is the most important such association. The EUA’s focus on doctoral training dates back to before the Bergen Conference in 2005, in which the Association’s delegation actively participated, supporting the decision to include doctorates in the Bologna Process.
11 The essential steps of the development have been: the Berlin declaration (September 2003, a meeting in Berlin of higher education ministers from all over Europe, to promote the establishment of the European Space for Higher education, or EHEA, adding a clause to their joint statement dedicated to the incorporation of research doctorates in the 3rd cycle of the Bologna Process); the ‘Salzburg Principles’ (February 2005, a meeting in Salzburg between the Ministerial delegations of Austria and Germany and the EUA itself, to define the fundamental principles that should guide the establishment and management of European doctorates.); and the Bergen statement (in May of the same year, reiterating the importance of research in higher education, but with a few revisions). In particular, agreed principles included that the credit system should be limited to the first and second cycles, that the commitment to teaching should not be at the expense of research and innovation, and that excessive regulation of the 3rd cycle should be avoided.
12 ‘All researchers engaged in a research career should be recognised as professionals and be treated accordingly. This should commence at the beginning of their careers […] and should include all levels [including] doctoral candidates’ (European Commission, 2005).
13 The tradition of Italian higher education in music has its roots in the Neapolitan and Venetian conservatoires. Music teaching has been delivered in Naples since the second half of the seventeenth century by musicians such as Francesco Provenzale and Francesco Durante. Composers such as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Tommaso Traetta and Giovanni. Paisiello belong to the ‘scuola napoletana’. Their teaching method, based also on oral tradition, has been studied by Sanguinetti (2012, 2013).
14 I still prefer the term ‘user’ to the now widespread ‘customer’: services are equal for all users, but are proportioned according to their cost for customers.
15 Collections of audiovisual recordings of music are less developed in conservatoires than in public libraries managed by local governments, whose social role is also more developed. Good examples are located in North Italy, such as the Biblioteca di Sala Borsa in Bologna. As a result, the Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori ed Audiovisivi (ICBSA) in Rome is studying how to create a network to deliver audio files to conservatoires, according to the Swiss model of the AVWorkstations of the Fonoteca Nazionale Svizzera.
16 Between 1870 and 1918 the young Kingdom of Italy concentrated the heritage of the five pre-unification conservatoires in its public schools of music – active in Milan, Parma, Florence, Naples and Palermo – with the music collections of the families and courts of the previous states, such as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1912, at the time of the first specific Italian law concerning state conservatoires, several historic institutions were still administered by local governments, such as the conservatoires of Bologna, Venice, Turin and Pesaro, which reached the status of state institutions under fascism (1935-1942). Between 1960 and 1985 state conservatoires spread throughout the whole country, reaching approximately sixty in number. The first, and last, national rules about conservatoire libraries appeared in 1918. Various bills were then drafted in order to provide these institutions with sufficient resources – including personnel – but none of the attempts of 1955, 1959, 1964 or 1976 came into effect, as Zecca Laterza (1985) points out.
17 The role of the librarian-teacher originates in the 1970s – as a specialisation of the History of Music teaching post – and thus the role is part of the educational body rather than the administrative staff.
18 On the Internetculturale portal, users can access the collection of valuable musical manuscripts from the Conservatorio ‘L. Cherubini’, Florence (1,327 manuscripts) and various collections from the conservatoire library in Naples. An example of a stand-alone digital library is that of the Conservatorio ‘Giuseppe Verdi’, Milan.
19 In particular, a talk by Prof Marco Mancini (Head of Department Higher Education and Research, MIUR) at the ‘Transparency Day’ of the national assessment agency for higher education and research ANVUR (Agenzia Nazionale di Valutazione del sistema Universitario e della Ricerca), 3 December 2015, Rome.
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