Ritorno a scuola playlist

Back to school

As always, September is the time when students and teachers head back to school. But it’s not only school lessons that begin again in primary and secondary institutes: indeed, for ages education and music have shared a lexicon made up of lessons, alphabets and instructors. So alongside geography classes there are piano lessons, while teachers may be deaf, in love or even unemployed, as in the story of the trombone instructor sung by Bernardo Cantalamessa. The world of school was also one of the favourite subjects of the comic sketches that had a great following when they were recorded on 78 rpm records, a custom that lasted into the mid-1940s: this was actually a convenient and cheap way of having some light-hearted theatrical entertainment at home. If you were lucky enough to have a professor as friendly and competent as Alberto Rabagliati, the success of a school of rhythm was guaranteed. And of course at the end all had to rise when the headmaster walked in.

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