{"id":52701,"date":"2018-07-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/fondazione-pirelli\/music-a-staple-at-the-pirelli-cultural-centre\/"},"modified":"2022-04-21T15:06:42","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T14:06:42","slug":"music-a-staple-at-the-pirelli-cultural-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/activities\/stories-from-world-of-pirelli\/music-a-staple-at-the-pirelli-cultural-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Music a Staple at the Pirelli Cultural Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The publication by the Pirelli Foundation of the book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/publishing-project\/il-canto-della-fabbrica\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><em>Il Canto della Fabbrica<\/em><\/strong><\/a> \u2013 which was the subject of debate on 6 July 2018 at the <strong>Il Libro Possibile Festival<\/strong> in Polignano a Mare \u2013 brings us to talk about the many times that music has been part of the cultural life of Pirelli. One key meeting place was the <strong>Pirelli Cultural Centre<\/strong>, which was set up in <strong>1947<\/strong> and directed for many years by Silvestro Severgnini. The Cultural Centre had its home in the premises of the Ritrovo in the old Brusada factory, which emerged unscathed from the 1943 bombing raids. It maintained that \u201c<strong>culture is a staple<\/strong>\u201d, as its founder himself wrote in an article published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/archivio-storico\/bookreader\/pubblicazioni-e-riviste\/RivistaPirelli\/1951_1.html?q=Cultura%20come%20il%20pane&amp;start=36&amp;lang=en#page\/36\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Pirelli<\/em> magazine no. 1 of 1951<\/a>. \u201cA new formula, and a pretty successful one at that, to increase workers\u2019 interest in culture\u201d. The company \u201cprovides the means for those of its employees who so wish to take part in the liveliest and most dynamic manifestations of knowledge\u201d. Silvestro Severgnini joined the company in 1939 as a tyre salesman, but soon he found himself playing a key role in promoting <strong>Pirelli\u2019s corporate culture<\/strong>, which acquired ever greater importance in the post-war period.<\/p>\n<p>For Severgnini, music was naturally one of the \u201cdynamic manifestations of knowledge\u201d. In a meeting at the <strong>Ritrovo<\/strong> in 1950, there was talk of <strong>music inspired by machines<\/strong>, and the connection to today\u2019s <em>Canto della Fabbrica<\/em> \u2013 the song of the factory \u2013 is quite amazing. Severgnini himself wrote about this in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/archivio-storico\/bookreader\/pubblicazioni-e-riviste\/RivistaPirelli\/1949_4.html?q=Musica%20e%20macchine&amp;start=38&amp;lang=en#page\/38\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Pirelli<\/em> magazine no. 4 of 1949<\/a>, talking of the <strong>\u201cmechanical\u201d music<\/strong> <strong>inspired by the Pacific 231<\/strong> <strong>train<\/strong> in the work of the Swiss composer <strong>Arthur Honegger<\/strong> in 1923, and <strong>music inspired by steel foundries<\/strong> in that of the Russian musician <strong>Alexander Vasilyevich Mosolov<\/strong> in 1927. Thanks to the work of the Cultural Centre, year after year Stravinsky and Debussy became \u201cculture as a staple\u201d amid the vulcanisers and mixers. The company did all it could to facilitate access to music by its employees, and subscriptions to the \u201c<strong>Musical Afternoons<\/strong>\u201d in Milan went up tenfold in three years, and those to the <strong>La Scala opera house<\/strong> went from 15 to 130 in 1950. A \u201cconcert of the month\u201d was put on, for Pirelliani only, at the <strong>Piccolo Teatro di Milano<\/strong> and a <strong>music hour<\/strong> \u2013 L\u2019Ora della Musica \u2013 was held regularly at 5.45 on Friday afternoons at the Ritrovo. It was led by none other than Silvestro Severgnini, who by this time was known in Milan as the man who had \u201copened La Scala to the people\u201d. Taking up this long tradition of promoting and disseminating culture, still today Pirelli works as a partner with these prestigious cultural institutions, also for conferences for company employees.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>Music Club<\/strong> \u2013 the Circolo della Musica \u2013 was set up in <strong>1953<\/strong> with the brilliant idea of putting on a series of tributes to living musicians in the new premises of the Ritrovo, which at this point moved to Corso Venezia. As the old Brusada was making way for the Tower, composers were invited to meet with an audience of Pirelli workers and office staff \u201cwho always present such a fine show of rapt attention and intense understanding as to become themselves worthy every time of the most open and unconditional applause\u201d. Thus it was that a worker in a great company could personally meet composers of the calibre of <strong>Vladimir Vogel<\/strong> or <strong>Roman Vlad<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Another idea came the following year, with an opening up to \u201c<strong>electronic music<\/strong>\u201d. The transition from Stockhausen to <strong>John Cage<\/strong> was brief: \u201cDuring his first European tour\u201d, we read in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/archivio-storico\/fattienotiziepirellibookreader\/pubblicazioni-e-riviste\/FattieNotiziePirelli\/1954_11_FATTI_E_NOTIZIE.html?q=pianoforti%20preparati&amp;start=12&amp;lang=en#page\/12\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 1954 edition of the <strong><em>Fatti e Notizie<\/em><\/strong> <strong>house organ<\/strong><\/a>, \u201cthe American musician John Cage performed his only concert in Italy, on the initiative of our Cultural Centre, with music pieces composed for <strong>\u2018prepared pianos\u2019<\/strong>.\u201d The event, which was presented to an almost incredulous audience by the composer and musicologist <strong>Riccardo Malipiero<\/strong>, was destined to become part of the history of modern corporate culture: a Milan-based newspaper at the time declared that \u201cthe Pirelli Culture Centre increasingly runs the risk of becoming one of the liveliest cultural venues in the city\u201d. The worker who listened that Friday evening on 5 November 1954 to the Concerto for Prepared Piano by John Cage \u2013 \u201cMusic? Maybe, or maybe something different\u201d, said Malpierio \u2013 would never have imagined that, sixty years later, another worker at the <strong>Industrial Centre in Settimo Torinese<\/strong> would be on the factory floor listening to <strong>Francesco Fiore<\/strong>\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ilcantodellafabbrica.org\/en\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Canto della Fabbrica<\/em> <\/a>with<strong> Salvatore Accardo\u2019s violin<\/strong>. But this is neither a coincidence, nor is it \u201canother story\u201d: it\u2019s \u201ccorporate culture\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The publication by the Pirelli Foundation of the book Il Canto della Fabbrica \u2013 which was the subject of debate on 6 July 2018 at the Il Libro Possibile Festival in Polignano a Mare \u2013 brings us to talk about the many times that music has been part of the cultural life of Pirelli. One [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[240,356],"class_list":["post-52701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-from-world-of-pirelli","tag-music-in-the-workplace","tag-rubrica-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Music a Staple at the Pirelli Cultural Centre - Fondazione Pirelli<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/activities\/stories-from-world-of-pirelli\/music-a-staple-at-the-pirelli-cultural-centre\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Music a Staple at the Pirelli Cultural Centre - Fondazione Pirelli\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The publication by the Pirelli Foundation of the book Il Canto della Fabbrica \u2013 which was the subject of debate on 6 July 2018 at the Il Libro Possibile Festival in Polignano a Mare \u2013 brings us to talk about the many times that music has been part of the cultural life of Pirelli. 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