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Posted on Monday March 14, 2016

Updated on Monday November 6, 2023

Italian First World War Music

This digital collection of songbooks and sheet music written and spread during the tragic World War One period is kept at the National Library of Italy (Rome). This collection gathers songs of patriotic exaltation, entertainment and military marches.

These war songs represent war art but also the individual and collective emotions, feelings, memories, despair, attitudes, intentions during the war period. Among the several songbooks are 'I canti della trincea', trenches songs by Liana (Emilia Ascoli) with original illustrations by Giorgio Szoldatics a famous painter from Rome and 'Stornelli e canti militari', military songs published in 1918.

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