Music of Italy - Education

Education

Many institutes of higher education teach music in Italy. About 75 music conservatories provide advanced training for future professional musicians. There are also many private music schools and workshops for instrument building and repair. Private teaching is also quite common in Italy. Elementary and high school students can expect to have one or two weekly hours of music teaching, generally in choral singing and basic music theory, though extracurricular opportunities are rare. Though most Italian universities have classes in related subjects such as music history, performance is not a common feature of university education.

Italy has a specialized system of high schools; students attend, as they choose, a high school for humanities, science, foreign languages, or art—but not music. Italy does have ambitious, recent programs to expose children to more music. Furthermore with the recent education reform a specific Liceo musicale e coreutico (2nd level secondary school, ages 14–15 to 18-19) is explicitly indicated by the law decrees. Yet this kind of school has not been set up and is not effectively operational. The state-run television network has started a program to use modern satellite technology to broadcast choral music into public schools.