CWOQ: Giancarlo Aquilanti

“Why the Opera Changed the Course of Music”

Operas—those beautiful melodies that stick in our brain for us to sing all week after a show. Are you aware that this started about 400 years ago, thanks to a small group of artists in the city of Florence? Professor Aquilanti shares how they radically changed the way composers wrote music and the inner technique of composition.

Giancarlo Aquilanti, DMA ’96 is a senior lecturer in music and director of the Music Theory Program.

Classes Without Quizzes are presented by the Stanford Alumni Association. Filmed on location at Stanford Reunion Homecoming 2015.