Imago Musicae

Il cerchio del corpo

Paola Dessì — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The figure of the acrobat in the position of the bridge and the wheel can be found in many different cultures and epochs, in sacred and ritualized secular contexts. This essay presents some exemplary and well-known cases in order to evaluate the meanings, functions, permanence and specificities of acrobatic elements. Beginning with Magna Graecia, our kaleidoscopic survey examines representations from the ancient eastern and western Mediterranean (Magna Graecia, Egyptian, Minoan, Bronze Age), moving on to interpretations of the acrobatic wheel position in medieval Christian settings (especially frescoes, mosaics, and miniatures). The impetus for this type of research is born from the intention to reassess a thirteenth-century fragmentary mosaic from San Giovanni Evangelista in Ravenna, and from the need to interpret the representation of this specific acrobatic figure from a new historical, anthropological and intercultural perspective. Our analysis-based on the comparison of the posture in different artistic media¬emphasizes the persistence of such postures in the Middle Ages and proposes a cosmological interpretation, in which the circularity of the acrobatic posture links the human body to the circular movement of the celestial spheres.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6803-il-cerchio-del-corpo-9788855430869.html

‘Polifonie di pietra’ ed altre evidenze musicali nel ciborio rinascimentale di Santa Maria Maggiore a Spello

Biancamaria Brumana — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This essay examines the musical iconography of the ciborio of the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Spello (Umbria), built between 1512 and 1515 by the architect and sculptor Rocco di Tommaso from Vicenza, in relation to the historical events surrounding the Baglioni family, who ruled Spello at the time. The portraits of the patrons, Giampaolo Baglioni on the left front column and his sister Lucrezia on the right, are linked to representations of instruments with appropriate symbolism. The relief on the right rear column probably celebrates Francesco Eroli, Bishop of Spoleto, who reconsecrated the church in 1513. Here there are representations of two organs and of an open book with the beginning of a polyphonic composition for four voices entitled Ave corpus Jesu Christi, similar in style to the motets used in Milan Cathedral at the time of Franchino Gaffurio. As suggested in this essay, the sculptor probably collaborated with Antonio di ser Bartolomeo da Padova, composer and singer at Santa Maria Maggiore from 1509 to 1514, who came from the same geographical area as Rocco di Tommaso.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6804-polifonie-di-pietra-ed-altre-evidenze-musicali-nel-ciborio-rinascimentale-di-santa-maria-maggiore-a-spello-9788855433013.html

L’ iconographie des premiers opéras-ballets

Anne-Estelle Trombitas-Michelangeli — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The design of the frontispieces of opera libretti has received little attention from musicologists and art historians. An analysis of three examples of the genre ‘opéra-ballet’ (Le ballet des saisons, L’Europe galante, and Le triomphe des arts), published in the monumental Recueil general des opéras (Paris: Christophe Ballard, 1703), shows that these graphics were much more than simple illustrations. Instead, they allow us to draw conclusions about the development of the genre at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. The German engraver Franz Ertinger (1640–1710), who worked mainly in Antwerp before settling in Paris, did not limit himself to illustrating the respective subjects, but found different solutions for the three works in question. The aim of this paper is to elucidate Ertinger’s choices in the light of various iconographic models (tragedy frontispieces, the allegorical tradition) and comparative examples (his own earlier illustrations for Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the opera illustrations engraved by his Dutch colleagues, etc.). The variety of solutions is a reflection of the unprecedented nature of the ‘opéra-ballet’. Beyond this diversity, as the first official collection dedicated to this genre, the iconographic choices contribute, each in its own way, to the canonical image of opera as expressed by the Recueil.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6805-liconographie-des-premiers-operas-ballets-9788855433013.html

Óptica de virtudes e indecencias

Evguenia Roubina — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The study of female musical creativity in eighteenth-century New Spain has been limited almost exclusively to an examination of the institutions, the ways in which girls were educated, and the presence of music in these spaces. The present essay is devoted to the role of music within the female imaginary as established by the civil and religious powers of the viceroyalty. On the basis of a wide range of sources the ex-voto, the moral or didactic painting, the folding screen and other examples of applied art, the female portrait¬a categorization is proposed according to the social stratum of Novohispanic female musicians (nuns and courtesans, comedians who performed on the public stage, ladies of lineage, Creole or indigenous). Special emphasis will be given to the analysis of works of art inspired by contemporary European graphic production. In analyzing these pictorial testimonies, this essay focuses on the symbolic dimension of music-making in order to determine to what extent and from what discursive resources musical iconography contributes to a better understanding of the social and ideological projection of the feminine in New Spain.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6806-optica-de-virtudes-e-indecencias-9788855433013.html

Jean Theodore Royer (1737–1807) and his collection of images of Chinese musical instruments

Zdravko Blažeković, Mu Qian — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the eighteenth century many Dutch organizations and individuals amassed significant collections of Chinese objects, although none of them came close in size and variety to the one assembled by the lawyer, antiquarian and proto-sinologist Jean Theodore Royer (1737–1807). He never visited China, but dedicated years of his life to learning the Chinese language, history and culture. Between 1765 and 1780 he collected objects related to all aspects of Chinese life to use them as the basis of a dictionary of the Chinese language. Besides various realia that arrived mostly from Canton, he owned a set of fifteen watercolor paintings, showing eighty Chinese musical instruments, each annotated with its name written in Chinese. When these paintings arrived in The Hague in the 1770s, this collection became the most extensive encyclopedic survey of Chinese instruments in Europe. However, since the pictures (today kept at the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden) were in Royer’s private collection and never published, they remained unknown to sinologists and music historians. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Royer obtained the paintings from a trader in Canton, Carolus Wang, with whom he corresponded and who sent him some other objects, books and pictures. Wang was also a source of information for the English music historian Charles Burney, who communicated with him via Matthew Raper. Raper, an English trader with the East India Company, owned a collection of Chinese instruments which may have been represented in these pictures, and some of the depicted instruments may have eventually ended up with Burney.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6807-jean-theodore-royer-17371807-and-his-collection-of-images-of-chinese-musical-instruments-9788855433013.html