Antonello Venditti

In these days of the Italian high school final exam, you can hear it bouncing around here and there: “Notte prima degli esami”, a 1984 track that probably bought Antonello Venditti a couple of seaside villas thanks to the royalties.
The song, we imagine you all know it. Besides, this isn't the place to walk you through its historical references or its melodic and harmonic evolution. Let's instead take a few minutes to ask ourselves why, after more than forty years, this is still the song that beautiful young graduates sing outside their schools on the fateful “night before” their first written exam. And again, why they choose it when they gather on the last day to say goodbye to each other, or to soundtrack the social media stories recounting the typical anxieties of graduating students.

For work reasons, I hear "Notte prima degli esami" sung by different graduating students, year after year. Watching them sing it together reveals a few things about why it's still chosen today. First of all, they don't know it perfectly: the lyrics are too complex, too long, hard to memorize, even incomprehensible in many passages. In today's schools, multicultural in a way that would have been impossible in 1984, and struggling even with the INVALSI tests in Italian, that's more than predictable.
What does come through, though, is all the emotion. The piano intro is, as the kids say today, iconic, and the opening line stirs up a moving nostalgia that resonates in the chests of these graduating students: "Io mi ricordo" ("I remember"). Suddenly that moment, more or less feared and awaited, is about to become first present and then past. The paths of classmates will diverge, teachers will gradually fade in memory. Plenty of memories will surely stick around, of course, but even at nineteen you've already understood that you can't remember without a touch of melancholy.

Rather than identifying with the four kids at the Folkstudio in the opening lines, the students see themselves reflected in this little group of slightly hapless dreamers, not quite clear whether they're teenagers or already adults. The night before the exam is thus a threshold, where it's easy to feel lost in a way that's uniquely typical of that age. Coming to the rescue: friends, and perhaps a naive, sweet, slightly messy love that may or may not survive. The graduating students keep identifying with this particular state of mind, a mix of fear, hope, anxiety, instant nostalgia.
These students are about to stop being students, forever. Afterwards, most see a big "who knows": a holiday in Mykonos, a university course that doesn't convince them much, or maybe the chance to go work at their uncle's company or with that family friend. Plans, with choices attached. A different story from the tracks of high school, with teachers acting as more or less rickety locomotives.
As I said, the students don't know the lyrics. There are exceptions, though, moments when the off-key, slightly embarrassed voices of the chorus fall into line, emphasizing the lines that feel closest to their own experience. Besides the opening lines already mentioned, there's good choral agreement on “Claudia non tremare/ Non ti posso far male/ Se l’amore è amore” and above all on that glorious statement of intent, "Notte di lacrime e preghiere/ La matematica non sarà mai il mio mestiere" ("A night of tears and prayers/ Math will never be my trade"). They nudge each other, laugh, and by this point the more sensitive ones already have tears in their eyes.

Having covered the lyrics and their mood, a few other reflections can be made, without dwelling too long. There's really no competition from other songs about the Esame di Maturità (Italian high school leaving exam). You could fall back on songs that fit the mood, like the hopeful "Buon viaggio (Share The Love)" by Cesare Cremonini, another unmissable track during these "before" days, or opt for more theatrical, dramatic choices from the past like "The Best Years of Our Lives" ("The Best Years of Our Lives"). Even on social media, if you type in the keyword "esame" or "esami" ("exam"/"exams"), there's really very little competition.

Finally, there's the dimension of collective, intergenerational ritual. The music that high schoolers listen to today is often very far removed from what was trending twenty or thirty years ago. So different that many of us "older" folks find it incomprehensible, all the same, without value or soul. This is a generation that has cut many bridges with the musical past, albeit with some exceptions (lately, Michael Jackson above all), but a collective ritual calls for something timeless. A song unlike anything else on their Spotify playlists, recognizable even to parents, even to grandparents.
They listen to it, and even those of us who are twice or three times their nearly twenty years find ourselves transported back: it's a parade of faces, names, feelings to be remembered with sweet nostalgia. For us teachers, it's also a way to meet our students in that bittersweet emotion, before they move on elsewhere and we lead others toward their own, surely unforgettable, "Notte prima degli esami".

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