Guido Piamonte, un critico musicale di eredità malipieriana. Trattamento archivistico e studio del fondo Guido Piamonte conservato alla Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi di Venezia. Volume 1. Trattamento archivistico, profilo del soggetto produttore e sua contestualizzazione (1930-1950). Volume 2. Inventario analitico della serie Rassegna stampa

The focus of my doctoral research is the Guido Piamonte Collection conserved in the archives of the Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation in Venice. The work consists of two volumes dedicated, one to the archival treatment of the collection and its producing subject, with the consequent historical contextualization, the other to the analytical inventory of the series called ‘Newspaper clipping’. The first volume completed by the inventory of the articles contained in the series reserved for them and four appendices: a table that reconstructs the structure of the collection, a table of the documentary units dated between the thirties and fifties, a transcription of the articles treated within the thesis, and a last appendix in which the letters from Guido Piamonte to Gian Francesco Malipiero (his teacher) preserved in the Gian Francesco Malipiero Collection of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice are listed. The first chapter focuses specifically on the description of the collection ‘Guido Piamonte’. Donated to the Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation by his sister Giannina, the ‘Guido Piamonte’ collection consists of three series: ‘Library’, ‘Miscellaneous’ and ‘Newspaper clipping’. This latter gathers more than seven thousand articles written by Piamonte between the 1930s and 1980s. The second chapter aims to frame the journalistic environment in which the collection's producer has operated and outline the characteristics of his journalism. After an excursus on the general situation of Italian and Venetian journalism after World War II, the study examines, from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, the Piamonte’ journalistic collaborations. Fully inscribed in the Italian twentieth century, Piamonte's activity is clearly divided into two periods, distinct from the watershed year of his journalistic production, 1945. Only the long-lasting collaboration with the newspaper ‘Gazzettino’ crosses this date and the turbulences of 1943-45. The third chapter concentrates on the following area: it outlines the situation of Italian music criticism between 1930 and 1950, and then, through Piamonte's writings, it examines the approach and methods of his journalism in relation to national cultural tendencies, including Croce's aesthetics. The last chapter reconstructs Piamonte's view on Venetian cultural and musical life and that of its institutions. Piamonte's relationship with Gian Francesco Malipiero, which began as a master-pupil relationship and was troubled by Malipiero's complex character but also rich in important episodes, contributes to expand the biography of both critic and composer. Furthermore, the Piamonte’s vision of the Venetian institutional dynamics provides a singular perspective of the events that involved, for example, the Teatro La Fenice and the International Festival of Contemporary Music in the problematic period between the Second World War. The praise of musical progress, common in the writings of the Venetian years (1930-1950), will no longer be credited to the new avant-gardes; on the contrary, Piamonte will not miss an opportunity to emphasize the decadence of Italian music in the second half of the twentieth century. The experience of the Venetian years, so determining in the years of his formation, would become paradigmatic in his activity as critic in the late period. The second volume of the thesis consists of a description of the ‘Newspaper clipping’ series of the Piamonte collection. Since this treatment is not the common practice for such kind of series, it is necessary to research and develop descriptive criteria based on international standards. The thesis therefore also fulfills an archival task of this type.