Musica da film fra tradizione e avanguardia, trad. ingl. Film Music between Tradition and Avant-Garde, in "Continuity and Avant-Garde Between the Tradition and New Challenges" The 19th Slovenian Music Days (19-23 April, 2004), Ljubljana, Slovenija, pp.84-94.

We should observe that from the early 20th century to the Second World War, which is a sort of an historical and cultural turning point, a well-shaped vision of the history of music crystallized.
On the other hand, there are many possible interpretations of the development of music in second half of the 1900s.  The fundamental element characterizing the second part of the century is the establishment of new technological media for musical realization that have modified our conception of music at its root. First we can refer to such magnetic technologies as the vinyl record and then the digital CD.  Second, I refer to radio, cinema and TV, which have opened a new artistic period under the banner of technological progress.  Traditional concerts have been placed side by side with - and frequently replaced by - the recording that permanently fixed a product and placed it in the archives.  In this view, the concert hall, which used to be the traditional place for the listening to music, has been gradually losing its pre-eminence in favour of a less ritualised listening which can be endlessly reproduced anywhere and anytime. Actually, many compositions that marked the second half of the century are hardly available in their paper score but they exist in a recorded version. In some cases the original score consists only of a draft.  In some other cases the score has been lost or it never existed as composers and interpreters worked in such a symbiosis that the traditionally written score has proved to be superfluous.  It seems that every musical phenomenon that does not take this radical change in perspective into consideration tends to become more and more secondary. The music best representing the second half of the 20th century is the one which has been able to reach the great mass of people through a wide record diffusion or by radio, TV and cinema. The so-called “classical music” has not always been able to grasp this change.  Composers remaining linked to an out-dated vision have not often met with an audience. The so-called popular, or light music, to use a somewhat diminutive term, has gradually filled all spaces.

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