Acusfere. suoni_culture_musicologie

Una nuova rivista. Perché?

Maurizio Agamennone — 2023-11-27

Quando si intraprende un nuovo viaggio, e una nuova avventura, si è usi intrattenersi a pensare, e interrogarsi, sugli intendimenti e le attese che orientano l’impresa. Perciò, alcune dichiarazioni “programmatiche” sono doverose.
Questo è il primo numero di acusfere, nuova rivista con periodicità annuale. Nasce da attitudini, competenze, curiosità ed esperienze diverse che, crediamo, possano convergere in un percorso comune: la ricerca scientifica in musicologia e antropologia; la scrittura musicale, l’invenzione, l’improvvisazione e la composizione nel mondo contemporaneo; le tradizioni musicali locali, anche le più “periferiche”; le relazioni tra la musica e numerose altre attività artistiche
ed espressive; gli strumenti e le tecnologie per la musica e le trasformazioni relative; le espressioni della voce nelle manifestazioni della vocalità individuale e polifonica; le procedure del pensiero, teorie, estetiche e assetti che improntano le “ragioni della musica”; i multiformi comportamenti rilevabili nel “music making” delle culture più disparate; gli spazi e i luoghi della musica, stabili e monumentali ma anche mobili ed effimeri; le proiezioni mediali della musica, celermente mutevoli ed euforicamente integrate in prospettive molteplici. [...]

Acousmatic Music: Towards an Art of Performance

Pierre Couprie — 2023-11-27

This paper presents the results of a research conducted since 2015 on the recording, archiving and study of acousmatic music performance. Based on the analysis of three interpretations of the same work, it presents the development of new methods of musical analysis and the redefinition of the electroacoustic work as a network of agents, objects, and concepts inscribed in a temporality that goes beyond the moment of the performance. It also highlights the interaction between the different members of the research project: the artistic research informs the musicological one, which in turn animates the musical practice. The musicology of artistic creation can thus be considered as a performative discipline.

https://www.lim.it/it/acusfere/6413-acousmatic-music-towards-an-art-of-performance-9788855431521.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

“La sordellina scomparsa”

Marco Iamele — 2023-11-27

The sordellina was a polyphonic bellows-blown bagpipe commonly used at the great Italian courts (Naples, Florence, Milan) between the end of the 16th and the second half of the 17th centuries. It was known in Europe for the Commedia dell’Arte, and in France it exerted such a charm that it was praised, sought after and imitated in court instruments, first of all the Musette de cour. Around the 1630s, in Italy, the sordellina became the object of interest of Manfredo Settala: an antiquarian and inventor, he equipped the instrument with a complex system of keys mounted on three chanters — at the time, an uncommon technology — thus widening its harmonic and melodic ranges and making it apt for both sacred and secular music. The instrument was built with such a technical and artistic skill as to make it almost a “collector’s item”. Unfortunately, no original exemplar has survived. Nevertheless, the recent reconstruction by luthier and musician Marco Tomassi — based on a pictorial canvas by Nuvolone depicting Settala with some of his inventions and a sordellina in the foreground — opened new research perspectives and brought to new life, after more than 400 years, an aerophone that is unique in terms of technological conception and musical possibilities.

https://www.lim.it/it/acusfere/6414-la-sordellina-scomparsa-9788855431521.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

“Noi si fa i cori”

Giulia Sarno — 2023-11-27

The musical practices connected to football supporting have been scarcely investigated within the Italian scholarly community; on the other hand, they have recently attracted the attention of international researchers who have pointed out how, especially for certain kinds of supporters (known in Italy as ultras), making music together provides a crucial platform for building and expressing a collective identity. Resulting from an ethnographic survey of the phonosphere of the Artemio Franchi stadium in Florence and the main ultras group of ACF Fiorentina, this paper offers an interpretation of the supporters’ practices in terms of participatory performance, as in the framework devised by Thomas Turino. The core elements of the ultras’ music making (performative settings, sonic features, musical repertory, forms and functions of “fare cori” – chanting) are examined with regards to the different social scenarios involved. The investigation focuses especially on the “curva” context, i.e. the stands of seating where the ultras gather in the stadium for the home match: this is the situation where the most complex and ambiguous aspects of the supporters’ participatory action come to the surface, the performance turning somewhat towards a presentational frame.

https://www.lim.it/it/acusfere/6415-noi-si-fa-i-cori-9788855431521.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

In pellegrinaggio con un “nat kadaw”

Lorenzo Chiarofonte — 2023-11-27

The pilgrimage to the sanctuaries where local spirits (nat) are worshipped represents one of the main elements of the cult of the nats in Central Burma (Myanmar). At specific periods of the year, devotees, ritual specialists (nat kadaw) and musicians gather together to celebrate the nats in their “palaces”, presenting them offerings and prayers, and dancing possessed by them on the intense sound of the nat hsaing music ensemble. This article describes the celebrations for two spirits (Ma Ngwe Daung and Ma Ma Oo) on the base of the pilgrimage experiences by a young nat kadaw from Mandalay. By focusing on the ethnographic process rather than analysing and interpreting the ritual and the performance practices, this article highlights the implications of the multi-sensory experience of participating in a celebration, reporting the physical and musical encounters between human and non-human participants. Starting from a reworking of the ethnographic notes, informal interviews and audio-visual materials collected during the fieldwork, the article offers a reflection on the researcher’s position in the field and his personal ethnographic experience.

https://www.lim.it/it/acusfere/6416-in-pellegrinaggio-con-un-nat-kadaw-9788855431521.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

Fuori dalla terribile fossa dei serpenti

Daniele Palma — 2023-11-27

In this contribution, I analyse two different musical experiences in “total institutions”: firstly, a “Festival della canzone” organised at the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital of Maggiano (Lucca) between 1964 and 1969; secondly, the current activities of Orkestra ristretta, the musical band of Sollicciano prison (Florence). For Maggiano, the historical reconstruction is based on articles from the internal magazine «La Pantera», and on published or unpublished scientific contributions and congressional communications by doctors and assistants. For Sollicciano, instead, I interviewed Massimo Altomare, a well-known Italian singer/guitarist and band leader of Orkestra ristretta, trying to obtain an emic perspective on the musical activities in the Florentine prison and on the social dynamics underlying it. To compare these two scantly known experiences, I use concepts and tools from the world of community music and Erving Goffman’s well-known theories about “institutional ceremonies”. I aim to outline some general trends concerning the roles played by musicking in total institutions, highlighting how it can help articulate the relationships among patients and prisoners and those between the institution and the “world outside”.

https://www.lim.it/it/acusfere/6417-fuori-dalla-terribile-fossa-dei-serpenti-9788855431521.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

1975 : la fin d’une intrigue ?

Laurent Cugny — 2023-11-27

Schaefer Festival in Central Park, New York City, September 5, 1975: Miles Davis quits the stage in his last public appearance with his band. Newport Jazz Festival, City Center, New York City, June 29, 1976: a “Retrospective of The Music of Herbie Hancock.” Former Miles Davis’ sideman presents his band of the time and two earlier groups he played with: his own sextet Mwandishi, active between 1970 and 1972, and the second Miles Davis quintet of which he was the piano player between 1963 and 1968, with Freddie Hubbard replacing Miles Davis. What does link these two events? The name of Miles Davis of course. In both there is a closing and an opening. The former is the end of a certain history of jazz, the latter is the beginning, maybe not of a new history, but of a new age, an age of some form of postmodernism, as it had been said. But talking about postmodernism supposes that we understand the modern and classic ages. I would like first to address this idea by proposing a new periodization of jazz history built around the concept of a common jazz practice.

https://www.lim.it/it/acusfere/6418-1975-la-fin-dune-intrigue--9788855431521.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim