Candida Felici | Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Verdi, Milano (original) (raw)

Books by Candida Felici

Music and Architecture, (Music, Science, and Technology), Brepols

The article aims at exploring mixed works-installations by the French composer Jean-Luc Hervé, wh... more The article aims at exploring mixed works-installations by the French composer Jean-Luc Hervé, which develop an exploration of the relation between natural environments and built-up spaces, between inside and outside. It will focus especially on Germination (2013). This work is inspired by the life cycle of a plant from seed to germination. It is both a mixed work to be performed in a music hall and an installation located outdoors. It is organized in two main parts, first the mixed work, then the sounds are electronically processed, transformed and broadcast around a square through multiple speakers hidden in the grass. The electronic devices are integrated within a botanic design conceived by a landscaper. The music writing, electronics and space building are totally integrated both in structure and material. They are all based on the natural model of the plant growing from the seed in the underground, developing roots and then the stem, which eventually breaks through the ground and appears in the open air. The work was commissioned by IRCAM in Paris, with the mixed work being played in the hall under Place Stravinsky and the installation continuing the metamorphosis of the same material in the square, which is situated above the hall. Inspired both by the organic model and by Japanese gardens, Germination explores different types of listening and degrees of attention from the concert audience and the bystanders; besides, it explores the relation between inside and outside, between music and environmental sound, music and space.

Candida Felici, Stefano Lombardi Vallauri (eds.), Jonathan Harvey - 2, «Nuove Musiche», 4, 2018 (theme issue).

Candida Felici, Stefano Lombardi Vallauri (eds.), Jonathan Harvey - 1, «Nuove Musiche», 3, 2017 (theme issue).

Papers by Candida Felici

The article examines the first Italian performance of Monteverdi's Orfeo in 20th-century Italy, i... more The article examines the first Italian performance of Monteverdi's Orfeo in 20th-century Italy, in Milan in 1909 transcribed and orchestrated by the composer Giacomo Orefice (1865-1922). The article focuses on the event and the performances which followed in many Italian cities; it also analyses the manuscript score in the light of the orchestration choises made by Orefice. In early 20th-century Italy the performance of Orfeo acted both as a revival of the past and as a stimulus for modern creation.

Questo articolo si propone di indagare la produzione del compositore nel periodo fra la fine del ... more Questo articolo si propone di indagare la produzione del compositore nel periodo fra la fine del secondo conflitto mondiale e gli anni Settanta, attraverso l’esame di alcuni casi studio e di scritti e interviste. In questo arco di tempo Petrassi sottopose a un profondo cambiamento il lavoro del comporre, dapprima avvicinandosi al serialismo e alla dodecafonia per poi trovare un suo particolare linguaggio, in bilico fra modernità e tradizione. L’articolo si concentrerà proprio sul periodo della crisi, in cui Petrassi fece propria la prospettiva dell’osservare, come segno di un suo rapporto con il mondo e la società così profondamente mutati.

La Sequenza VIII per violino solo di Luciano Berio, 2007

Nuove musiche, 2019

This article aims at examining the relationship between spirituality and spectral thinking in Jon... more This article aims at examining the relationship between spirituality and spectral thinking in Jonathan Harvey’s music; for this purpose I will consider three works by Harvey dating from 1994 to 2008: Tombeau de Messiaen (1994) for piano and tape, String Quartet no. 4 (2003) with live electronics and Speakings (2007–2008) for orchestra with live electronics. The analysis of these works enables us not only to highlight Harvey’s peculiar approach to spectralism, but also to see how new technologies were essential for him in order to create a spiritual music. There is a deep connection between Harvey’s idea of music as a path to emptiness and to a pure land (as Buddhist concepts) through detachment from body and suffering, and the concept of ambiguity in music. The latter is achieved through the melting of spectral thinking, intervallicism and new technologies. An ever changing and evolving sound, the difficulty for the listener to recognize sound origin, the halo that results from the creation of a spectral environment for a monodic line, the construction of timbral hybrids, all are aspects of ambiguity in music as a spiritual goal.

Rivista Italiana Di Musicologia, 2018

Franco Donatoni, in his writings of 1980s, uses metaphors coming from the natural world in order ... more Franco Donatoni, in his writings of 1980s, uses metaphors coming from the natural world in order to describe the act of composition and the composed work. Terms such as “cell”, “organism”, “root”, and “plant” stand next to that of rhizome, originating from Mille plateaux by Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze. The rhizome in Donatoni’s poetics contributes to define form not as the application of a pre-existing model, but as a process of continuous transformation of the material. To these concepts Donatoni associates that of fragment: for him all musical work is made of fragments (at a macroscopic level, the panels, at a microscopic level, the intervals). A work is in turn only a fragment of an author’s total opus, an opus that cannot aspire to totality. A rhizomatic approach is realized in the process of quotation that characterizes many of Donatoni’s works. Since the beginnings of his career, Donatoni builds up a piece by using formalized material from a previous composition as a p...

De musica disserenda, 2014

Gli Spazi Della Musica, Dec 19, 2013

Proceedings of the EuroMAC Conference, Strasbourg 2017

The paper aims to analyse the way in which Jonathan Harvey’s compositional language and the use o... more The paper aims to analyse the way in which Jonathan
Harvey’s compositional language and the use of new
technologies interact with extra-musical motivations,
essentially tied with a search for transcendence. The analysis
will focus on some of Harvey’s instrumental works with or
without electronics (Flight Elegy, Tombeau de Messiaen, Run
Before Lightning, String Quartet no. 4), in order to answer the
question: can the interaction of musical structures with
spiritual, religious or oneiric references realize a sort of
narrative in music? The multiplicity of musical processes in
act — spectral approach, symmetric harmonic fields, melodic
variation, electronics — is functional to building a path to
transcendence through the alternation of moments of high
vitality with moments of ecstatic meditation, where the
contrasting elements and musical objects eventually melt and
finally loose their individuality. It is possible to synthetize this
process as a progression from dualism to the dissolution of it
in emptiness (according to the meaning that this word
assumes in Buddhism).

Chigiana, 2020

In this essay I focus on the relation of Jonathan Harvey’s music with nature. A composer with a s... more In this essay I focus on the relation of Jonathan Harvey’s music with nature. A composer with a strong spiritual orientation all along his life, Harvey also showed a deep interest in new technologies, which he exploited from his early production until later works, involving both electronics and live electronics. Nature and ambiguity are at the core of his poetics, together with the ideas of moving sound, and of silence conceived as a continuum between ambient sound and the musical world, taking on strong “transcendental” implications; nature is always seen through the lens of the spiritual, a view becoming overtly Buddhist in Harvey’s mature years. In order to elucidate these aspects, I refer to works including electronics composed from the 1980s onward. In particular, I delve more deeply into One Evening (1994), for voices, instruments and electronics, where Buddhist vision, technological experimentation and the idea of nature as cosmic unity find a complex yet perfect balance.

Studi Musicali, 10/2, pp. 309-344, 2019

This essay focuses on the relationship of Franco Donatoni with the theatre, which was diffi cult ... more This essay focuses on the relationship of Franco Donatoni with the theatre, which was diffi cult and even contradictory, ranging from the total refusal – for him vision and sound had become irremediably separated entities – to several attempts to overcome this ‘ontological’ obstacle, and lastly to the return to opera. Before getting involved in the avant-garde, in 1957 Donatoni composed a ballet, La Lampara , strongly infl uenced by Bart.k, Stravinskij and Petrassi. However, during the 1960s and 1970s, the only collaboration with the theatre was the musical treatment of the choir in an innovative staging of Euripides’ last tragedy, Le Baccanti. This experience would have a deep impact on his future compositions. In the following decade Donatoni wrote a theatrical work for La Scala, Atem (1985), an ambiguous attempt to make vision and sound coexist, even if as separated entities; but only in his last years he realized a true opera, Alfred, Alfred , where irony becomes the only means to allow an integration of music and vision. This article will also focus on musical works which are not strictly theatrical: instrumental music where gesture has an important role, or where the concept of ‘figure’ is essential in the musical process.

Music and Architecture, (Music, Science, and Technology), Brepols

Candida Felici, Stefano Lombardi Vallauri (eds.), Jonathan Harvey - 2, «Nuove Musiche», 4, 2018 (theme issue).

Candida Felici, Stefano Lombardi Vallauri (eds.), Jonathan Harvey - 1, «Nuove Musiche», 3, 2017 (theme issue).

La Sequenza VIII per violino solo di Luciano Berio, 2007

Nuove musiche, 2019

Rivista Italiana Di Musicologia, 2018

De musica disserenda, 2014

Gli Spazi Della Musica, Dec 19, 2013

Proceedings of the EuroMAC Conference, Strasbourg 2017

Chigiana, 2020

Studi Musicali, 10/2, pp. 309-344, 2019

«Nuove Musiche», monographic issue on Jonathan Harvey, ed. by Candida Felici and Stefano Lombardi Vallauri, 2017

Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 2018

Franco Donatoni, in his writings of 1980s, uses metaphors coming from the natural world in order ... more Franco Donatoni, in his writings of 1980s, uses metaphors coming from the natural world in order to describe the act of composition and the composed work. Terms such as ‘cell”, ‘organism’, ‘root’, and ‘plant’ stand next to that of rhizome, originating from Mille plateaux by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze.
The rhizome in Donatoni’s poetics contributes to define form not as the application of a pre-existing model, but as a process of continuous transformation of the material. To these concepts Donatoni associates that of fragment: for him all musical work is made of fragments (at a macroscopic level, the panels, at a microscopic level, the intervals). A work is in turn only a fragment of an author’s total opus, an opus that cannot aspire to totality. A rhizomatic approach is realized in the process of quotation that characterizes many of Donatoni’s works. Since the beginnings of his career, Donatoni builds up a piece by using formalized material from a previous composition as a point of departure. In his late works quoted fragments often come from his own compositions. This article examines some works of 1980s, Alamari (1983), Tema (1981), Still (1985). These show different modes of quotation. That no pre-compositional materials have been preserved for Donatoni’s late works makes the analysis of intertextual procedures enormously useful in order to better understand the genesis and processes of these works.

Musica Iagellonica, 2017

Almost all of Giovanni Gabrieli’s keyboard output has been transmitted in German sources, the mos... more Almost all of Giovanni Gabrieli’s keyboard output has been transmitted in German sources, the most important of which are the German organ tablatures now held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin (I-Tn, Fondo Foà Giordano, Giordano 1-8, Foà 1-8). The lack of concordances and the way of transmission have led some scholars to consider many of these compositions as doubtful or even spurious works. In particular, in a group of ten toccatas in Giordano 2 only the first two works carry an attribution to Giovanni Gabrieli, but the second one clearly states that the following works are also to be considered of the same composer (Toccate di Giovan Gabriel. Toccata prima). The lack of attribution for the other works in the series, titled only Toccata, and a comparison of their characteristics with Gabrieli’s printed works in the same genre have brought Vincent Panetta and Richard Charteris to withdraw them from Gabrieli’s canon.
This article examines the characteristics of the Turin organ tablatures and the way of transmission of Gabrieli’s toccatas, in order to propose a reconsideration of their exclusion. While the attributions given in the indices are not reliable because they were added at a much later date in the eighteenth century, on the contrary those given by the original scribe are reliable and have only rarely been contradicted by other evidence. The absence of Gabrieli’s name in the titles of the toccatas following the first two works reflects the copyist’s normal approach in the case of groups of works by the same composer. Moreover, due to the small number of compositions in free style whose attribution to Gabrieli is without question (a toccata published in Diruta’s Il Transilvano and eleven short intonations preserved in the Intonationi d’organo of 1593), a stylistic evaluation of the Turin toccatas only through a comparison with these works seems particularly problematic.
The article proposes an analysis of the toccatas in question through the comparison with other pieces by Gabrieli, both vocal and instrumental, like those published in the Canzoni et sonate (1615), the Sacrae Symphoniae (1597) and the Symphoniae sacrae (1615): indeed, some of the Turin toccatas reveal strong similarities with late works by Gabrieli. Through both a philological and an analytical approach, the article proposes adding the Turin toccatas to the corpus of Gabrieli’s authentic works.

«AnDante». Dante e la musica: riflessioni interdisciplinari, a cura di Maria Teresa Arfini e Alberto Rizzuti, Università degli Studi di Torino, 2018, 2018

Pietro Antonio Locatelli and the Violin Bravura Tradition, edited by Fulvia Morabito, Turnhout, Brepols, 2015 (Studies on Italian Music History, 9)

This article focuses on the dissemination of Italian instrumental music in mid-eighteenth century... more This article focuses on the dissemination of Italian instrumental music in mid-eighteenth century France, with particular emphasis on performances of Italian violinists at the Concert Spirituel. With the help of contemporary journal articles, writings, catalogues and music editions, this essay wants to contribute to a better understanding of the web of interactions between Italian music and French cultural milieu in the mid-eighteenth century. Italian musicians were a constant presence at the Concert Spirituel venues and this had consequences on the growing number of editions of Italian repertoire —especially violin sonatas and concertos— issued by French publishers. Indeed, we can hypothesize a direct link between the success of a violinist-composer or the performance of music by an Italian master at the Concert Spirituel and the printing of this same music by publishers like Leclerc, Boivin, Maupetit, Hue. Moreover, the French virtuosos who had studied in Italy or with Italian masters contributed to the spread of the Italian style. This new style involved brilliance and rapidity of passages in the allegros, expressiveness and rich ornamentation in the adagios, agility in the use of the bow, the improvisation of cadenzas, the use of double stops and of natural harmonics. Many violinists-composers from Piedmont, students of Giovanni Battista Somis, performed in Paris and some of them settled in France becoming French citizens, as in the case of Pietro Ghignone. Others, members of the Tartini school like Jean-Pierre Pagin, were also involved in the controversy between supporters and detractors of Italian music, which resulted in the querelle des bouffons, as witnessed by the series of pamphlets issued in response to Grimm’s Lettre sur Omphale in 1752. In general Italian cantabile in sonatas and concertos was regarded by the philosophes as a way to enhance the meaningfulness of instrumental music, otherwise unable to communicate in the same manner as vocal music due to the lack of any link with language; in particular, Tartini’s style was seen as embodying the Enlightenment ideals of naturalness and communication of human feelings. Despite French nationalistic tendencies, the wide circulation of musicians and the spreading of their music through print were to transform deeply the French musical scene and create a common musical language; the inclusion of many violin sonatas by mid-eighteenth century Italian composers in Cartier’s L’art du violon in 1798 —intended for the violin pupils of the newly founded Conservatoire de musique— testifies to the long lasting influence of the Italian violin school.

L’articolo esamina le edizioni francesi settecentesche di sonate a violino e basso di Giuseppe Ta... more L’articolo esamina le edizioni francesi settecentesche di sonate a violino e basso di Giuseppe Tartini nel contesto della disseminazione in Francia della musica del compositore istriano. Attraverso l’esame degli annunci apparsi nelle riviste coeve e dei cataloghi degli editori è stato possibile datare le raccolte di sonate dall’op. 4 all’op. 9 nell’arco di tempo che va dal 1747 al 1750. Il confronto con la trasmissione manoscritta delle sonate e con il catalogo redatto alla fine del Settecento dall’allievo e successore di Tartini, Giulio Meneghini, ha permesso di valutare il livello di attendibilità di queste stampe, tra le quali l’op. 6 e l’op. 7 rappresentano certamente le edizioni con il maggior numero di concordanze con le fonti manoscritte principali del repertorio sonatistico tartiniano, benché non vi sia alcuna testimonianza di relazioni tra Tartini e gli editori francesi. Questi ultimi, entrati in possesso delle sonate in questione probabilmente attraverso gli allievi del Maestro delle Nazioni, non si preoccuparono di chiedere alcuna autorizzazione a Tartini, forti dell’assenza di leggi a tutela dell’autore, come già accaduto con gli stampatori olandesi Witvogel per l’op. 1 e Le Cène per l’op. 2. Attraverso l’analisi delle esecuzioni di musiche di Tartini al Concert Spirituel, in particolare quelle di uno dei suoi allievi prediletti, André Noël Pagin, negli stessi anni in cui venivano stampati i volumi di sonate, è stato possibile tracciare la fortuna francese di Tartini, il cui acme può essere situato proprio alla metà del secolo e che fu toccata tangenzialmente dalla querelle des bouffons. Pagin è anche legato alla stampa delle sonate tartiniane, poiché l’op. 4 e l’op. 5 sono a lui dedicate ed egli appare come curatore dell’edizione riveduta dell’op. 7. Benché a metà degli anni Ottanta lo stile compositivo e la prassi esecutiva di Tartini fossero ormai fuori moda (come ci testimonia la famosa recensione dell’esibizione di Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen nel 1785), la sua fama di grande didatta dovette riscuotere ancora grande apprezzamento in Francia, se alla fine del secolo, quando Napoleone fece trafugare opere d’arte, libri e manoscritti in ogni angolo d’Italia per arricchire il patrimonio francese, molti furono i manoscritti tartiniani che andarono ad arricchire il fondo del neonato Conservatoire de Musique di Parigi.

La relazione intende indagare le modalità in cui i testi danteschi sono inseriti nell’opera Lab... more La relazione intende indagare le modalità in cui i testi danteschi sono inseriti nell’opera Laborintus II (1965) di Luciano Berio ed Edoardo Sanguineti, commissionata dalla televisione francese (RTF) in occasione del settimo centenario della nascita di Dante. Estratti dalla Vita nuova, dall’Inferno, dal Convivio, dalla Monarchia e da un’epistola a Cangrande della Scala, intessono il discorso poetico associati a prestiti da Isidoro di Siviglia, Eliot, Pound e lo stesso Sanguineti (Laborintus e Purgatorio de l’Inferno). La tecnica del montaggio di citazioni, applicata sia al testo sia alla musica, rimanda a quell’idea di opera come insieme di citazioni che denota una profonda sintonia tra il pensiero musicale di Berio e quello poetico di Sanguineti. La presenza dei testi danteschi funge da mezzo di articolazione della forma (Sanguineti all’inizio aveva proposto per quest’opera il titolo Strutture), in un percorso dall’inferno al paradiso e in un'ideale catarsi. Ma Dante incarna anche quell’idea di opera come alto impegno morale e civile, come smascheramento dell’idolatria del denaro, che contraddistingue il pensiero poetico di Sanguineti e si riverbera nell’opera di Berio.

This paper wants to focus on the dissemination of Italian instrumental music in France between th... more This paper wants to focus on the dissemination of Italian instrumental music in France between the years 1740-1780, with particular emphasis on performances of Italian violinists at the Concert spirituel. Italian musicians were a constant presence at the Concert spirituel venues and this had consequences on the growing number of editions of Italian repertoire – especially violin sonatas and concertos – issued by French publishers. Indeed, we can hypothesize a direct link between the success of a violinist-composer or the performance of music by an Italian master at the Concert spirituel and the printing of this same music by publishers like Leclerc, Boivin, Maupetit, Hue. Moreover, the French virtuosos who had studied in Italy or with Italian masters contributed to the spread of Italian style. Some violinists, members of the Tartini school, were also involved in the controversy between supporters and detractors of Italian music, which resulted in the querelle des bouffons: the series of pamphlets issued in response to the Lettre sur Omphale de Grimm in 1752 gives us a sample of the tensions in act. In general Italian cantabile in sonatas and concertos was regarded by the philosophes as able to enhance the meaningfulness of instrumental music, otherwise unable to communicate in a way similar to vocal music for the absence of a link with language; in particular, Tartini style of playing the Adagios was seen as embodying the Enlightenment ideals of naturalness and communication of human feelings. With the help of contemporary journal articles, writings, catalogues of publishers and music editions, this paper wants to contribute to a better understanding of the web of interactions between Italian music and French cultural milieu in the mid-eighteenth century.

Most of Giovanni Gabrieli’s keyboard output has been transmitted in the German Organ Tablature pr... more Most of Giovanni Gabrieli’s keyboard output has been transmitted in the German Organ Tablature preserved in the Turin National Library (I-Tn, Fondo Foà Giordano, Giordano 1-8, Foà 1-8). The lack of concordances and the way of transmission have recently led scholars to consider some of these compositions as dubious or even spurious works. In particular, in a group of ten toccatas in Giordano 2 (nos. 21-30), only the first two works are attributed to Giovanni Gabrieli in the source, but the second one clearly states that the following works are also to be considered of the same author (Toccate di Giovan Gabriel. Toccata prima). The absence of an explicit attribution of the following works, titled only Toccata, and a comparison of their characteristics with those encountered in Gabrieli’s printed works in toccata style have brought Vincent Panetta and Richard Charteris to consider seven of them as dubious works. This paper examines the reliability of the Turin Organ Tablature’s attributions and the way this source transmits Giovanni Gabrieli’s toccatas, in order to propose a reconsideration of their exclusion from Gabrieli’s catalogue. Furthermore, it proposes a stylistic comparison of these toccatas with Gabrieli’s vocal and instrumental ensemble music, in particular with late works such as those preserved in the Canzoni et sonate of 1615. Indeed, due to the paucity of compositions in free style whose attribution to Gabrieli is without question (a toccata published in Diruta’s Il Transilvano and eleven short intonations preserved in the Intonationi d’organo of 1593), a stylistic evaluation of the toccatas preserved in the Turin manuscript only through a comparison with these works seems particularly problematic. In fact, some of the Turin toccatas reveal strong similarities with late vocal and instrumental works by Gabrieli. Through an analysis of these characteristics and an examination of the way of transmission, it is possible to hypothesize Giovanni Gabrieli’s authorship of the toccatas nos. 21-30 in Giordano 2.

This paper sheds light on a crucial issue in music history and in history of culture in Rome dur... more This paper sheds light on a crucial issue in music history and in history of culture in Rome during the seventeenth century: the presence of women and their role in creating and interpreting music.

Based on an array of primary sources, my paper examines the difficulties created by the church hierarchy to female participation in public performances, but also the multiplicity of occasions in which women could have an active role in private or semi-private contexts.

My paper will focus on the important role women had in the early seventeenth century in spreading the seconda prattica and the new monodic style. In the first half of the century Rome was a leading centre for musical training and most important female opera singers came from the papal city. Between women who lived in Rome or had links with this city we can cite Vittoria Archilei, Ippolita Recupito, Francesca Caccini, Francesca Campana, Eleonora Baroni, who were singers, instrumentalists and composers, even if only works by Caccini and Campana have been preserved. In the second part of the century Christina of Sweden’s cultural politics, together with a multicentric aristocratic patronage, gave further impulse to musical exhibitions by women and the first Tordinona seasons saw an unprecedented female participation in public opera performances.

While numerous scholars have studied music production and consumption in seventeenth-century Rome, women’s role in this context has hitherto been underestimated. This paper proposes a first attempt to a global understanding of female contribution to musical creation and performance in early-modern Rome.

My paper wants to shed light on the influence of Tartini’s style in European instrumental languag... more My paper wants to shed light on the influence of Tartini’s style in European instrumental language of the late eighteenth century.
Concerto and sonata genres of the Classical period reflect some characteristics of Tartini’s compositional strategies and aesthetic thought. The latter involves a theory of affects strictly linked with the art of ornamentation.
Following the same process of transformation which opera undergoes in the late eighteenth century, from being a stylized representation of abstract and universal feelings to becoming a vehicle for concrete and real passions, instrumental music begins to express unique passions and feelings, in a way that «every melody should have its sole and particular ways of expression» - to use Tartini’s words -.
In this paper I argue that some characteristics of his musical language will form part of a common European cultural horizon.

"Many compositions by Luciano Berio show quotational elements of different cultures, which range ... more "Many compositions by Luciano Berio show quotational elements of different cultures, which range from written, to oral, folkloric or popular traditions.
Sometimes the process is explicit and these objets trouvés are given a sort of narrative and dramatic dimension in works such as Sinfonia, Folk songs, Voci, Naturale. Sicilian melodies in Voci and Naturale bring with them elements of the culture they come from, including performance practices, so they let us experience a true contact with that world, even if mediated and not at all disinterested – to use Berio’s words –.
In particular in Voci the coming of the Sicilian popular world to the fore contributes to the organization of the instrumental groups in the scenic space and articulate the interaction between orchestral groups, soloist and percussions: the instruments answer to the soloist that plays the popular melodies in ways recalling the relationship between soloist and choir in popular cultures.
In other cases the omnivorous Berio does not insert elements or materials but compositional devices, as is the case of the eterophonic procedures inspired from the Banda Linda of Central Africa that Berio adopts in Coro.
External elements can also derive from Berio’s own compositions: the auto-quotation is a common procedure in Berio’s music, it creates a web of links between different compositions instauring a process of mutual references whose semantic implications are always susceptible to multiplication and amplification: these links can be traced between Voci, Sequenza VI for alto and Sequenza VIII for violin, but also between Coro and the same Sequenza VIII. Materials coming from other works can be inserted in a ‘disguised’ manner in a new piece and contribute to its formal articulation, determining the choise of pitches or generating axial sounds around which the musical material grows: the chronological proximity of two works or the presence of the same instruments in different works can act as a catalyst of the proliferation of textual elements beyond the borders af a given composition.
Beside the auto-quotation we must recall that process of commentary that Berio realizes in his Chemins: here the text of the Sequenze is reverberated in an instrumental group that contributes to the amplification of the internal functions, acting also as a deforming mirror.
Memory acts in two ways, in the act of creation through associations perhaps not always totally conscious and during the perception allowing the listener to grasp the links and similarities: the quotational element is detected as ‘other’ but at the same time as structural; the memory of his re-emergencies in the text allows us to perceive/understand the structural articulations in a given composition and to build a web of the possible meanings.
In the present paper I will explain these concepts through examples taken from Sequenza VIII, Corale, Voci and Coro."

The new style which emerged in South German keyboard music in the late sixteenth and early seven... more The new style which emerged in South German keyboard music in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was largely the creation of the composers Christian Erbach and Hans Leo Hassler, together with his brother Jacob, who received their musical education in an environment where the influence of Italian culture was very strong; two of them, Hans Leo and Jacob Hassler, had direct contact with Venice. Thanks to the production of much printed music in Venice at the period, Italian compositions found their way to South Germany. Evidence of the assimilation process is present in the keyboard manuscript known as the Turin tablature, most probably copied in Augsburg or Nuremberg between 1637 and 1640; more than half of its content is of Italian provenance.
The ricercars composed by the Hasslers and Erbach clearly show the influence of those of Claudio Merulo and the two Gabrielis; these tend to be quite long and contain well-defined sections, passage-work in two voices set against full-voice texture and frequently make use of a double subject. Moreover they inherit from the Venetian canzonas the use of parallel thirds and sixths and the insertion of brief motifs treated in imitation. With regard to the toccata, German composers often adopt a structure in three parts with a substantial central contrapuntal section; these compositions also show Sweelinck’s influence, particularly in their use of sections based on sequences, repeated motifs, echo-technique and triadic-based figurations.
By introducing external elements into the classical Venetian genres, the South German composers opened the way for new expressive and formal possibilities.

The Conservatory of Parma, together with the University of Parma, Parma Municipality - Casa della... more The Conservatory of Parma, together with the University of Parma, Parma Municipality - Casa della Musica and the Italian Musicological Society, has organized the international Conference Musica e spazio: esperienze passate, prospettive future (Music and Space: Past Experiences, Future Perspectives) as part of the research project Labirinti Sonori.
The conference has aimed to explore the relation between music and space in its aesthetic, historical, technical and technological dimensions, according to the following lines of research: space as an essential element of musical creation; the relation between music and architecture; the creation of virtual reality and the simulation of space through sound; the spatial dimension in performance practice; the use of technology in order to build sound space.

Laborintus II di Luciano Berio ed Edoardo Sanguineti fu composto nel 1964-65 su commissione della... more Laborintus II di Luciano Berio ed Edoardo Sanguineti fu composto nel 1964-65 su commissione della radiotelevisione francese in occasione del settimo centenario della nascita di Dante; l’opera era la rielaborazione di una precedente composizione di Berio e Sanguineti, Esposizione, rappresentata alla Fenice di Venezia nel 1963 ma successivamente ritirata da Berio. Il presente intervento si propone di mettere in luce la relazione esistente fra Laborintus II e le opere di Monteverdi, in particolare l’Orfeo e il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. Secondo quanto lo stesso Berio affermò, il suo debito nei confronti di Monteverdi è rintracciabile principalmente nello stimolo alla creazione di «un teatro per le orecchie», in cui gli aspetti drammaturgici fossero riassunti nel suono, ovvero nella componente musicale-verbale dell’opera. Berio e Sanguineti condivisero con le avanguardie degli anni Sessanta il rifiuto del melodramma ottocentesco, si rivolsero dunque al teatro delle origini nel tentativo di rifondare un teatro musicale che potesse intrecciarsi con le istanze etiche e ideologiche di un théâtre engagé.

The paper focuses on the relationship between Jonathan Harvey’s spiritualism and spectralism. Thr... more The paper focuses on the relationship between Jonathan Harvey’s spiritualism and spectralism. Through the analysis of some of his works, which see the interaction of instruments and electronics, it is possible to elucidate this relationship.
There is a deep connection between Harvey’s idea of music as a path to emptiness and to a pure land (as Buddhist concepts) through detachment from body and suffering, and the concept of ambiguity in music. The latter is achieved through the melting of spectral approach, serial writing and new technologies. Therefore, in Harvey’s music the coexistence of post-Webern serialism and of spectralism is justified by the idea of ambiguity as a thread to a spiritual music.
An ever changing and evolving sound, the difficulty for the listener to recognize sound origin (is it a string sound, a voice sound, or an electronic sound?), the halo that results from the creation of a spectral environment for a monodic line, all are aspects of ambiguity in music as a spiritual goal.
This paper will provide some examples taken from the following works: Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and prerecorded electronics (1994) – which explores the ambiguity between identity and duality –, the Fourth String Quartet with real-time electronics (2003) – which explores sound spatialization, in other words moving sound, as a spiritual journey – and Speakings for orchestra and real-time electronics (2007/2008) – which aims at erasing the borders between musical sound and speech sound –.

Procedimenti intertestuali sono frequenti nell’opera di Franco Donatoni, dalla produzione giovani... more Procedimenti intertestuali sono frequenti nell’opera di Franco Donatoni, dalla produzione giovanile fino alle opere tarde del cosiddetto periodo gioioso, passando attraverso le fasi dell’indeterminismo e dell’automatismo combinatorio. L’intertestualità si attua in Donatoni sia come trasformazione di un materiale musicale formalizzato proveniente dall’opera di un altro compositore (Stockhausen, Bach, Sinopoli, Schönberg), sia come trasformazione di un elemento estratto da una sua stessa composizione. Quest’ultimo aspetto della produzione musicale donatoniana, quello cioè dell’autocitazione, o auto-prelievo, è particolarmente frequente e significativo e si coniuga con l’idea di opera quale frammento di un insieme che comprende tutta la produzione di un autore. Quest’ultima però per Donatoni non ha alcuna ambizione di unitarietà e completezza, perché anch’essa non è altro che ‘parte’ di un mondo in cui la ‘totalità’ è solo chimera. La proliferazione di un pezzo dal precedente viene concepita come parte di quel continuo processo di trasformazione della materia che travalica, in modo organicistico, il confine della singola composizione. Nel corso della relazione verranno prese in esame alcune opere composte a partire dalla seconda metà degli anni Settanta e caratterizzate dall’uso di procedimenti intertestuali, per indagare le modalità in cui tale processo si attua e il modo in cui esso influisce sulla formazione della forma. La quasi totale mancanza di materiali precompositivi per le opere donatoniane a partire dalla fine degli anni Settanta rende l’analisi dei procedimenti di derivazione particolarmente utile per indagare la genesi e l’articolazione formale delle composizioni in questione.

«Rivista Italiana di Musicologia» 49 (2014), pp. 296-300.

Il nuovo call 2017 della rivista «Gli spazi della musica»: "Ricercari" a tema libero; "Variazi... more Il nuovo call 2017 della rivista «Gli spazi della musica»:
"Ricercari" a tema libero;
"Variazioni" sul tema «Musica, tra giovinezza e senilità».

The new call for papers 2016 of the journal «Gli spazi della musica»:
"Ricercari", free papers;
"Variazioni" on the theme «Music between youth and senility».