Italy

Department of Music

Bellissimo!  Beginning in the fall of 2006, Furman’s nationally acclaimed music department will offer its students a chance to study abroad in the native land of such musical geniuses as Vivaldi, Verdi, and Puccini.  Italy has long played an influential role in music history, and its rich cultural tradition provides visitors with unparalleled learning opportunities. 

Participants spend twelve weeks in Arrezo, Italy—a small city in southern Tuscany.  The town is centrally located between the larger cities of Florence and Sienna, and was the birthplace of the poet Petrarch.  Only an hour’s train ride from the cultural treasures of Florence, Arrezo is also within easy travel distance of Rome, Venice, and Milan. 

The program will be based at the Accademia dell'arte which makes its home in the beautiful Villa Godiola. This building is a 16th-century former bishop's palace surrounded by grape vines and olive groves overlooking Arezzo.

The course work for the program focuses on Italian culture, language, and music.  Students take classes in Basic Conducting, History and Literature of Music- Ancient-1750, and an intensive Italian language course.  Classes are taught by a combination of Furman faculty and local professors.  The opportunity to earn credit towards a Bachelor of Music makes the program particularly useful to Music majors who may previously have found foreign study difficult to fit around the structure of the department’s curriculum.