Founded in 1997 at the University of Milan, De Musica is an intedisciplinary journal that considers music from a broad perspective which includes philosophy, musicology, cogntiive sciences, psychology and psychoacoustics.
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Mimesi e ritmicità come prerequisiti del linguaggio verbale
La scoperta dei neuroni specchio ha stimolato una serie di nuove ricerche sull’origine del linguaggio, le quali hanno condotto, in modo sempre più stringente, ad avvalorare l’ipotesi che essa vada ricercata nell’evoluzione di sistemi comunicativi gestuali, piuttosto che vocali. In questo contributo passiamo in rassegna alcune ragioni che confermerebbero tale teoria, soffermandoci su due caratteristiche prettamente umane che potrebbero avere influito in modo determinante sullo sviluppo del linguaggio verbale: la mimesi, ovvero la capacità di comprendere, interpretare e rappresentare intenzionalmente gli oggetti e gli enti animati che ci circondano, nonché le azioni con cui noi e i nostri simili ci relazioniamo a essi, e la ritmicità, ossia la facoltà di riconoscere e individuare un’organizzazione temporale ordinata e prevedibile negli eventi sensoriali e negli atti motori. Cercheremo di mostrare come mimesi e ritmicità siano facoltà psico-corporee correlate tra loro e come possano considerarsi prerequisiti indispensabili per la nascita di sistemi comunicativi referenziali e ricorsivi, tra cui in primis il linguaggio verbale.
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The Great Book of Music of Al Farabi - A Medieval Model for a Musico-Theoretical Research
The Great Book of Music (Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir), by the Golden Age Islamic philosopher Al-Farabi, is a X th. century treatise on music in Arabic. It consists of two parts, the first being an introduction in which the definition of melody and its subdivisions, the origin of music, and some acoustic problems are discussed. The second part is devoted to the specifics of musical instruments popular among Arabs, the variety of rhythms, and the composition of melodies. Influenced by Pythagoras' theory of harmonic relationships, Farabi gives us a detailed definition of music, reveals its categories, and describes the elements from which a musical work is formed. The author systematically and subversively explains the importance of induction, and supports his theory emphatically by evidence, asserting that many of the principles he derives are acquired through sense experience, as in astronomy, optics, medicine, and other sciences.
Satirising Wagner by parodying Offenbach: the Orfee in vioron by Cletto Arrighi
The operetta-parodia Orfee in vioron by Cletto Arrighi, while drawing inspiration from Jacques Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers, does not merely reinterpret the French original but becomes a vehicle for satire against the so-called musica dell’avvenire, particularly Wagnerian music. Through an analysis of contemporary newspaper sources and the autograph manuscripts of the libretto, this study aims to reconstruct the production context of the work and its reception, highlighting the reasons for its resounding failure. Both the audience and critics reacted negatively to the performance, emphasizing its lack of originality and the poor quality of its musical execution. Nevertheless, Arrighi’s work fits into a broader tradition of Milanese satirical theater, which draws on references to popular culture and the aesthetic-musical debate of the time. The analysis of the dramaturgical and musical structure of Orfee in vioron reveals the complex relationship between the French operetta tradition and Italian musical culture, raising questions about the reception of German music in Italy. Despite the opera’s failure, its value as a historical document and a reflection of the artistic tensions of the time remains undeniable.
In a debate held in «Music Analysis» between 2003 and 2004, two opposing positions, the formalist and the hermeneutic, coincide in the common need to define an idea of unity that does not nullify the value of the ‘particular’. In this context, Jonathan D. Kramer proposes the prolific concept of «coherence», which, however, lacks precise aesthetic connotations. My aim in this paper is to re-consider the concept of coherence from that of “Polyphony” as discussed by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. In order to achieve my goal, I will take into consideration the suggested relationship (Hatten, 1994; Steyer, 1995; Cook, 2003) between aspects of Beethoven’s late style and Bakhtin’s perspective, and propose a ‘polyphonic’ analysis of the Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in A-flat major op. 110, in which the heterogeneity of material is conceived in a ‘multiple’ dimension of musical time that allows us to understand the latent references in the composition as signs of an inner dialog between movements.
Postfazione. Che ne è della filosofia della musica?
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Osservazioni sulla recensione al mio volume apparsa su questa rivista a firma di Angelo Pinto.
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In 1961, the ethnomusicologist Diego Carpitella developed the concept of indifference to define the particular attitude that the poet-storytellers of Southern Italy have towards the musical dimension. With indifference, Carpitella certainly did not mean to argue that the musical aspect was not important in the economy of knowledge, art and the spectacle of the storytellers, but rather that music played functions that were not only reducible to aesthetics. Starting from a brief historical-anthropological description of the phenomenon of the Southern storytellers and the transformations it had from the early twentieth century, this contribution highlights the critical and exploratory role that music plays in the multimedia poetics of the storytellers of Southern Italy, aimed at finding, reflecting and denouncing the most controversial aspects of each story in the public dimension, as alienating as it is participatory, of the square.
Before Words. Music and Its Natural History
The paper investigates the evolutionary origins of music, focusing on its adaptive function and phylogeny. We compares theories such as Steven Pinker's, who sees music as a non-adaptive by-product, Charles Darwin's ideas that music evolved through sexual selection as a signal of intelligence and fitness, and Herbert Spencer's, who argued that music evolved from emotional expression rather than reproduction. Other perspectives highlight the role of music in social cohesion and emotional expression. The paper also examines modern research that questions whether sexual selection is the sole driver of evolution, suggesting a complex and multidisciplinary understanding of the role of music in human evolution.
After years in which the study of musical abilities in species other than humans occurred sporadically, the investigation of these building blocks (e.g., rhythm, frequency variation) received a new impetus. Using the comparative approach, recent studies have shown how the investigation of rhythm in the vocal displays of primate species can yield surprising results that help us to shed light on the factors that may have acted as selective pressures throughout the evolution of the primate tree. This contribution aims to review the studies conducted in the last decade on primates and understand how these can be useful in reconstructing a phylogeny of some of the abilities that enable humans to make music.
The canto ara petrejancara is a vocal tradition that originated in the mountains of central Tyrrhenian Calabria. These two- or three-part polyvocal songs are sung at a free, non-measured slow tempo, typically accompanied by the diatonic accordion. Songs in this style have been documented in several audio recordings, including those by Alan Lomax and Walter Hennig, who published the relatively well-known track Aria Nova in 1954. Despite being still practised in the region, little information is available on the canto ara petrejancara to date, making it an understudied phenomenon in Italian ethnomusicology. This paper aims to fill this gap by discussing both historical and contemporary manifestations of the ara petrejancara style through music analysis and ethnographic data. This article starts with an analysis of the little information provided by Hennig about Aria Nova to position this recording in the broader context of central Calabria music. After providing an analysis of Aria Nova, the article reviews the historical audio recordings of songs in this style documented from the 1950s onward and discusses their stylistic features. It then analyses a recent recording that depicts the current state of the canto ara petrejancara. This recording is compared with the historical recordings in light of the rich ethnographic data gained through participant observation and direct involvement in the local community of musicians.
The complex relationship between music and emotions.
The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the philosophical debate on the relationship between music and emotions, which developed within analytical aesthetics, is still crucial for accounting for the theory of musical expressiveness. This debate opposed cognitivists and emotivists. The former places expressiveness externally in the musical code and foresees only a cold, cognitive recognition by the listener. The latter places expressiveness in the internal emotional experience of the listener. In our view, that debate has now exhausted its propulsive arc because it was conditioned by excessive polarization. It actually showed the necessity of an interaction between cold and hot aspects, externalist and internalist perspectives of musical expressiveness, which can only be adequately addressed through a hybrid theory that re-evaluates both the external activating potentials of the musical code and the internal emotional experience of the listener.
The article presents an analysis of the complex relationship between music and language by comparing two contrasting semantic approaches. The aim is twofold: 1) to highlight the implications of different theories of meaning for the understanding of music; 2) to determine which approach is better suited to the theoretical challenges raised by this comparison. The perspectives considered appear to be mutually incompatible, each emphasising different facets of the musical phenomenon. On the one hand, the referentialist perspective treats music like natural-historical languages with their denotative capacities, emphasising the undeniable fact that music prompts interpretation, conveys content and carries meaning. Semiotic analysis, on the other hand, presents music as structured acoustic material whose only content is the representation of formal relations. The coexistence of the two perspectives is possible if the focus of comparison is shifted from the products of linguistic and musical activity to the operating principle of the two phenomena. The common operating principle is found in the general capacity for sign articulation outlined by Saussure in the Course in General Linguistics. Once this perspective is adopted, it becomes possible to reconcile the content-oriented instances of musical interpretation with its formal description.
San Francisco Sound. 1965-1967, rivoluzione in musica
The USA of the post-World War II era underwent a period of considerable economic expansion and widespread prosperity. The white middle class lives the American dream by relocating to tranquil suburbs where ownership of every type of household appliance is possible, and social conformity represents a distinctive status. In such a structured society, between the 1940s and 1950s, a counterculture emerges that is destined to sensibly alter the mindset of an entire generation. The Beat Generation, combined with the evolutions of jazz and the electric emergence of Rock and Roll, creates a cultural substrate from which a movement may arise. Primarily through music, a new generation of Americans will challenge the social structures of the United States. From 1965 in San Francisco, a genuine cultural revolution unfolds, with music as one of its most potent weapons, involving a significant portion of the youth population worldwide within a few short years. From the sidewalks of North Beach, young beatniks move to the apartments of Haight Ashbury, giving life to a community that gathers in venues where musical groups, originating in the Bay Area and destined for global fame, begin experimenting with a new form of art. This cultural vanguard, until 1967, succeeds in creating an inseparable bond between art and community. The intent of this article is to retrace the milestones, amid concerts, happenings, and festivals, that will characterize the cultural revolution between 1965 and 1967.
Béla Bartók’s music never fails to seduce, even a century later. His extremely curios mind led him to explore the Hungarian countryside collecting folk music: from asymmetrical meters to modality, he was deeply permeated by its non-conventional traits, also offering a fundamental lesson to the new-born Ethnomusicology. Besides, the Hungarian composer had a strong interest in nature’s inner voice, which he tried to put on paper investigating its mathematical principles. In so doing, he shaped a very original aesthetics of music, and he would have rigorously complied with it for the rest of his life. This paper aims to investigate the most relevant characteristics of Bartók’s musical language in order to highlight its ultimate meaning, which could be possibly summarised as a “return to the origins”. Music for strings, percussions and celesta, an incredibly innovative work first performed in 1937, exemplifies Bartók’s unique poetics, with striking similarities to that of the contemporary painter Piet Mondrian. The most remarkable feature of this masterpiece is that proportions form arithmetical patterns consistently recurring both as a whole and in detail. In light of these considerations, Bartók’s use of Golden ratio, a topic which is still very controversial, may find a plausible interpretation.
Perception and cognition of music components
In this paper, I analyze how the auditory system works when exposed to different kinds of music components, such as melodies, harmonies, the mere successions of sounds, and the ordinary simultaneities of sounds. I will claim that, while melodies and harmonies are perceivable, the mere successions of sounds and the ordinary simultaneities of sounds are processed at the cognitive level. This conclusion is based on the analysis of how the auditory system employs primitive grouping, schema-based grouping, and cognitive schema-based grouping when ordering the auditory landscape by the identification and categorization of meaningful musical streams.
Wittgenstein between musical formalism and antiformalism
In analyzing Wittgenstein’s music aesthetics, various authors have pointed out the resemblance between Wittgenstein’s view and Hanslick’s writings on musical formalism. The similarities between the two can be found especially in two areas: in the role attributed to the structural characteristics of the musical work, used to highlight interesting facts for the listener, and in the strong refusal of a reductionist interpretation of music, according to which the essence of music consists in generating specifics emotions in the audience. However, there are also some remarking differences between the two authors, especially in the second phase of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work, which is centered on emotional and non-grammatical aspects of human forms of communication. In this paper, the critical views of Béla Szabados and Anne Appelqvist are compared, to show how difficult it can be to fit what Wittgenstein wrote about music in one simple box. A difficulty that was also pointed out by other authors, such as Roger Scruton and Alessandro Bertinetto, who both abandon the classical dichotomy between musical formalism and anti-formalism, to better focus on the peculiarities of Wittgenstein’s work.
Reflections on Forme dell'addio by Ernesto Napolitano
This article presents an extended commentary on Ernesto Napolitano’s book, Forme dell’addio on the late music of Gustav Mahler. Following the pathway in the Mahlerian world that Napolitano proposes, the article discusses his key points related to Mahler’s early modernism: a) tendency to abstraction; b) anti-subjectivism; c) anti-anthropocentrism; d) objectivity and disenchantment; e) Mahlerian narrativity as ‘modern epics’, according to Moretti’s theory (1994); f) comparison between the late Mahlerian works and those of the Wunderhorn years. First, by discussing these points the article suggests a stronger link between the late Mahlerian style and that of the Wunderhorn years than what Napolitano presents. Then, the article enlarges the theoretical and hermeneutical range of anti-anthropocentrism, which Napolitano limits Mahler’s music narrativity but that can be a reading key of this musicologist’s findings on the Eighth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, Lastly, starting from Napolitano’s analysis of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, the author of the present article implies a stronger application of the paradigm of modern epics to this symphony. As an example of this direction of research, he then proposes outcomes from his previous articles on this symphony (Pinto 2019, 2020).
Fauré’s music is still today the subject of many misunderstandings and a general devaluation both by listeners of classical music, by performers and, obviously, by music critics. Situated between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, his production is imbued with the complexities and contradictions of this period. But how is it a reflection of this? In other words, how is it possible to approach this "closed garden" hermeneutically without getting lost in ambiguity? This article is an opportunity to reflect again, in light of the centenary of his death (1924), on the French composer and on a certain inability of musical criticism to frame his values. In what sense can Fauré’s work be defined as "modernist"? Using the thought of the critic Antoine Compagnon as a reading prism, but also the philosophical interpretation of Jankélévitch, we will attempt to define some traits of Fauré's production. Particular attention is paid to the experience of listening to Fauré.
Imparare la musica: un laboratorio del pensare. Una ricerca-azione di Emanuele Pappalardo
La recensione porta alla luce la metodologia euristica di insegnamento musicale del docente Emanuele Pappalardo, nel suo compimento e nei risultati raggiunti.
Various music enthusiasts can testify from personal experience to the powerful impact of listening to sad music, and several experimental studies have confirmed the widespread preference for this musical genre. Sadness is a negative emotion, and if someone seeks it out in real life, they are considered to be suffering from some psychological disorder. So why is the avid listener of sad music not usually a psychopath? This study attempts a reconnaissance of the various hypotheses that have been put forward, and the ensuing discussions, about the paradox of enjoying sadness in music. Ending with the observation that we are still far from a convincing explanation.
The composer constantly makes choices: it is the composer, in fact, who chooses a melodic, rhythmic, harmonic path among the various, infinite possible paths between point A, the beginning, and point B, the end of a composition. The choice of one path over another, a local modification of a given path, can also be influenced by external factors. As it happens for the path of a charged particle in a magnetic field, the choice of the musical path can be influenced by personal style, culture, technical characteristics of the instruments, and combinations of instruments used. Even in quantum mechanics, there are “choices”: the state of a system appears as a superposition of possible eigenstates with different probability amplitudes. The act of measurement “forces” the system to choose a particular state: the observer influences the physics of the system. Like the famous example of Schrödinger’s cat, alive and dead at the same time until the box in which it is located is opened. From the choices of notes and musical paths to decision-making systems, we present some examples of the application of quantum mechanics to music. Among the applications of quantum computing, we mention a study on robots with associated musical descriptions. In particular, we consider the distributed intelligence of a swarm of robots and its possible musical description, from some existing works to our original application.
La Nonlinearità nella musica di Schumann
In this paper, I reflect on nonlinearity in some musical compositions and improvisations. The nonlinear analyses written by Jonathan Kramer are well known. I intend to extend a similar approach to musical compositions, improvisations and performances by adopting the perspective of the musician who restores the relationship between linearity and nonlinearity in the concrete act of musical performance.
Un ritratto in divenire (Per il Duo Gazzana)
A partire dall'intervista finora inedita tenutasi il 1° novembre 2020, il presente contributo offre un ritratto in divenire per il Duo Gazzana, in equilibrio tra il ricordo di ciò che è stato e il desiderio di ciò che sarà.
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Mozart in Paris: 'Les Mystères d'Isis'. An opera in four acts
Les mystères d’Isis is one of the most controversial works in the history of Western music. Despite being very famous in the nineteenth-century French and especially Parisian period, today it is almost forgotten. In the Italian musicological context, the opera is poorly studied and there is a lack of literature on the subject. Born in 1801 from the adaptation of the Mozartian The magic flute, it has been created by the collaboration between Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith (1746-1820), who arranged the music, and Étienne Morel de Chédeville (1751-1814). The adaptation of works, especially foreign ones, is a practice in nineteenth-century theater, but this time something more happens. While the libretto is totally rewritten, the music is partly modified from the original work and arias from Don Giovanni and Clemenza di Tito are added. The result is a work that aroused the public’s favor with regard to music, scenography and ballets, but the libretto was extremely criticized. Despite the textual criticism, it had over 120 performances in Paris allowing the vast public to make Mozart famous as an opera composer. Indeed, Mozart had been to Paris in 1778 without reaching great visibility. Although it gave rise to the dissemination and appreciation of Mozart, it had a critical point: the original version of The Magic Flute did not appear in Paris before 1865 and in French. This meant on the one hand the success of Mozart as composer but on the other it witnessed a difficult permeation of the original work in France for a long period after the composer’s death.
Recensione a Massimo Raffa, Il tessuto delle Muse. Musica e mito nel mondo classico
Recensione a Massimo Raffa, Il tessuto delle Muse. Musica e mito nel mondo classico, Roma, Inshibboleth, 2021
The metasemantic nature of music does not allow forming inference rules useful for disambiguating the deep structure of a message, like any sound signal showing a minimum of structural coherence. The creation, exercise, decoding of musical practices is perennially poised between magic and science, between shamanic improvisation and the (often overestimated) competence of experts. Between the two is the taste of the public, notoriously fluctuating and changeable, not as the needle in the balance but as an additional element of cognitive undecidability. In the end, musical philology falls back on a mere criterion of probability, both analytical and predictive, or of absolute fungibility, having to deal both with the lability of the interpretative paradigms and with the relativity of what, in music, appears «obscure» and far from the argumentative «clarity» of epideictic or demonstrative rhetoric.
Recensione a Kõrvits / Schumann / Grieg di Natascia e Raffaella Gazzana
Recensione del disco "Tõnu Kõrvits / Robert Schumann / Edvard Grieg – Stalker Suite / Notturni / Sonata N. 1 in La minore op. 105 / Sonata N. 3 in Do minore op. 45" del Duo Gazzana (Natascia Gazzana, violino; Raffaella Gazzana, pianoforte), ECM, 2023.
Charlie Haden is one of the most important musicians in the history of jazz. Both as a double bassist and composer, he innovated the musical language of the jazz and free jazz scene from the 1960s onward. His particular sound and his original vision of music have enabled him to play with the greatest musicians in the history of jazz, making himself always recognizable, even in different musical contexts. His political activism led him to clash with regimes all over the world, even going so far as to be imprisoned in Portugal in 1971. This article will analyze several performances of Haden’s compositions and fragments of solos, showing recurring elements and stylistic differences dictated by the ensemble or the peculiarities of the individual artists on the recordings, as well as linking the genesis of the pieces (as with Song for Che) to Haden’s own extra-musical ideas.
Sketch for a metaphysics of musical performance.
The article aims to reflect - in a dialogic form with interludes - on some issues concerning musical interpretation and performance in Luigi Pareyson's work, in an admittedly partial reconnaissance of the philosopher's articulated research path in its fundamental phases: an aesthetics accomplished as a theory of formativity, a hermeneutics developed as an ontology of the inexhaustible, a theocentric ontology of freedom.