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What’s Art? Why Is Art Important?

Art & Music

Notable amongst these local traditions was the Canzone Napoletana—the Neapolitan Song. Although there are nameless, documented songs from Naples from many centuries in the past, the term, canzone Napoletana now typically refers to a large body of comparatively recent, composed popular music—such songs as “‘O Sole Mio”, “Torna a Surriento”, and “Funiculi Funicula”. In the 18th century, many composers, together with Alessandro Scarlatti, Leonardo Vinci, and Giovanni Paisiello, contributed to the Neapolitan tradition by utilizing Art & Music the local language for the texts of a few of their comic operas. Later, others—most famously Gaetano Donizetti—composed Neapolitan songs that garnered nice renown in Italy and abroad. The Neapolitan music custom grew to become formalized in the 1830s via an annual songwriting competition for the yearly Piedigrotta festival, dedicated to the Madonna of Piedigrotta, a well known church within the Mergellina space of Naples.

Art & Music