- Travellers' music from Antiquity to Modern Age: texts and
images.
- Musica humana: history of Boethius' idea from
Antiquity to Middle Age.
- Seeing the musica mundana: diagrams in the
musical treatises.
The research topics are to be understood into two broader
perspectives. The first one concerns the extension of the sources
used for musicological research. The other one concerns the study
of the transmission patterns of knowledge, in which the music has
took part from Antiquity to the Modern Age. The constant presence
of ideas about music in the cultural life of the past is one of the
musical heritage assets to preserve and transmit consciously.
1) Travellers' music from Antiquity to Modern Age: texts and
images.
This project derives from a wider research based on an
idea by Franco Alberto Gallo twenty years ago. The first
time, it was presented in 1995 with the title Across the
Mediterranean: A Proposal for a Study of Travelers' Reports as
Documents of Musical Life (Venice, Levi Foundation), at “Past
and Present. Perspectives for the Anthropology of Mediterranean
Music”. The meeting was organized by the ICTM Study Group on
“Anthropology of Music in Mediterranean Cultures”, which was
chaired at the time by Tullia Magrini. After the 1995 presentation,
the research has developed the topic of music and travels from
Antiquity to Modern Age all over the world known to European people
at the time: Africa, Asia and Europe(«Musica e Storia», IX/2, 2001,
pp. 377-529; XIII/1, 2005, pp. 83-175) ; «Itineraria. Letteratura
di viaggio e conoscenza del mondo dall'Antichità al Rinascimento»,
VI, 2007 ; Per una storia dei popoli senza note, a cura di Dessì,
Bologna, Clueb, 2010).
In time the group of researchers has increased, including
scholars from different disciplines – history, archaeology
and history of art, literature and philology, and of course history
of music – who discuss images and texts describing music events,
facts and experiences related to travelling.
The true focus of this research – whose key words are
“music”, “world”, “travels” and “historical atlas” – is to
collect images and texts concerning musical encounters with ‘other'
people, ‘other' music, ‘other' ideas and functions of music, in
ages when most documents – or the only documents recording music –
were images or texts. Images and texts record sound events from
different places, providing information about available
representations of musicians, performances and relevant meanings,
musical traditions of ‘other' peoples, as well as the functions of
musical instruments in different groups and societies. When
handling this kind of sources we must be careful and aware of the
many filters they contain. It means considering travelling as a
subject as well as a medium. Considering travels and travelers as a
literary and iconographical medium implies looking for information
which has been neglected until now, or underestimated by scholars
in musicology, history of music and ethnomusicology. It implies
crossing conventional boundaries, both material and symbolic.
One of the main themes of this (neverending) project regards the
representation of Alexander the Great's legacy from the musical
point of view. No systematic research has ever been carried out in
this perspective and we have just started: Alexander the Great's
Travels and Musical Encounters: a Project, in Travelling Music and
Music for Travelers: Archetypes and Documentary Evidence of Music
Itinerancy in Ancient Greece, panel with D. Castaldo, C. Lo Muzio,
E. Rocconi, in Crossing Borders: Musical Change and
Exchange through Time, XIII Symposium of the ICTM Study group
for Music Archaeology, Universidad del Valle, Guatemala City, April
8-12, 2013, now published inthe Proceedings of the Meeting (Ekho, Berlin 2019); and in "Itineraria", 16, 2017, pp. 19-36.
Other related studies have been published in:
(con L. Mauro), «Ascoltiamo il canto armonioso degli uccelli, il grido delle aquile». Incontri filosofici e sonori nei racconti su Alessandro, in Itinerari del testo per Stefano Pittaluga, II, Genova, Dipartimento di Antichità, Filosofia e Storia, 2018, pp. 653-660.
Listening between lines: Alexander’s musical legacy in Italy (13th-15th centuries), in The Music Road. Interculturality and Regional Traditions from the Mediterranean to India, ("Proceedings of the British Academy: Themed Volumes”), ed. by Reinhard Strohm, London, pp. 87-100.
The conclusive editorial project about this subject will be: Atlante della musica nei racconti di viaggio, a cura di F. A. Gallo, V. Minazzi, D. Restani, Milano, Jaca Book, 2020 (in press).
2) Musica humana: history of Boethius' idea from
Antiquity to Middle Age.
For about two decades, I've been studying the historical contexts
and texts , in which it appears the formation of the Boethian
concept of music and , in particular, of musica humana .The
research deals with various kinds of treatises , not just musical
ones , to look for any trace of the reflection on this subject at
the time of Boethius . In this direction I looked , therefore, the
Christian anthropological treatises from 4th and 5th centuries ,
and in particular the texts of Chalcidius , Macrobius and the
writings De anima , with particular reference to Claudian
Mamerto .
Currently , this research is aimed to check the context in which
Boethius may have developed the concept of musica humana, in
relation to the texts in which he had dealt with the
anthropological theme of the soul of man in relation to the
experience of sound. The next extension of this research will
involve the development of a monograph, which will include two
parts, one on the sources of the idea of musica humana and
the other on the musica mundana (the fourth line of research
set out below).
Of these studies have given so far account numerous conference
papers , then merged in the third chapter of the book
Musica per
governare. Alessandro, Adriano e Teoderico (Ravenna , 2004) and
in the papers below:
- (con L. Mauro) Musique du corps et musique de
l'âme : la musica humana de Boèce, in Musica
corporis. Savoirs et du corps de l'antiquité à l'âge humaniste
et classique, par F. Malhomme et E. Villari, Turnhout, Brepols,
2011, pp. 159-178;
- Le radici antropologiche dell'estetica boeziana: anima
humana e musica humana, in Le fonti dell'estetica
musicale. Nuove prospettive storiche, Atti del convegno
(Venezia, 26-28 ottobre 2006), in «Musica e Storia», XV, 2007, pp.
243-258;
- La musica humana e Boezio: ipotesi sulla formazione
di un concetto, in Music in the Roman Empire:
Theoretical Evidence and Archaeological Findings, Atti del
secondo meeting di MOISA. The International Society for the Study
of Greek and Roman Music and its Cultural Heritage (Cremona, 30-31
ottobre 2008), a cura di E. Rocconi, «Philomusica online», 2010,
pp. 21-27.
3) Seeing the musica mundana: diagrams in the musical
treatises.
Maps and diagrams are one of the many representations of thought
which the multidisciplinary research is now on focus. In
particular, this project concerns a group of diagrams yet little
explored , as the diagrams in the manuscripts and in the early
modern editions of the ancient Greek and Roman musical treatises.
Among them, this research deals with the diagrams which represent
the connections between the cosmos and the music. Until now it
concerns the diagrams in the first two centuries of the printed
editions of the Commentaries to the " Dream of Scipio " by
Macrobius . I would like to extend it to the manuscripts
of Macrobius. Then I'll take care of the diagrams of
Bryennius'Harmonika, for the connections with Macrobius'
1535 edition, by J. Camerarius .
The first draft of this project - The Renaissance of
musica mundana : the early printed editions of
Macrobius' Commentary on Cicero 's Dream of Scipio (
1472-1597 ) - was presented for the first time at the
international conference Sing aloud harmonious spheres:
Music , philosophy , and the order of the universe in the
Renaissance , Venice, University of Warwick, May 12 to 15 ),
then published in 2013 ( Ricerche sulle immagini musicali nelle
prime edizioni del Commento al Sogno di Scipione di
Macrobio, in Polidoro. Studi offerti ad Antonio
Carile, a cura di Giorgio Vespignani, Fondazione «Centro
italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo», Spoleto 2013, pp. 919-928 e
tavv. I-IV).
