In the meeting organised by the Institute of Music, in conversation with Gianmario Borio, Giancarlo Schiaffini will retrace his career as a performer, improviser and composer. Since the mid-1960s, Schiaffini has been one of the protagonists of free improvised music: he took part in Mario Schiano’s
‘Gruppo Romano Free Jazz’; in 1970, he founded the Nuove Forme Sonore ensemble, which alternated interpretations of aleatory compositions and improvisation; later, he was part of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza and collaborated with the leading protagonists of European improvised music, including the Globe Unity Orchestra and the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra. In the 1980s, Schiaffini played a key role in Luigi Nono’s compositions with live electronics, providing materials and performance techniques. The intertwining of the three (usually separate) roles of performer, improviser and composer makes Schiaffini a unique figure in the panorama of research and experimental music, and an indispensable reference for brass performance practices. At the end of the talk, Schiaffini will perform Sottile canto III by Edgar Alandia, Solo for tuba + Fontana Mix by John Cage, Luz by Domenico Guaccero and Post-Prae-Ludium per Donau by Luigi Nono.
Categoria Evento: Conferences and Seminars
Occultural Transfers between North and South
This conference is organised by Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities in collaboration with Dr. Giuliano D’Amico, Associate Professor at the University of Oslo and director of the research network Esotericism and Aesthetics in the Nordic Countries, and Dr. Marco Pasi, Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and director of the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents.
The osmosis between esoteric/occult and artistic discourse, which scholars have termed “occulture”, has mainly been studied from a national perspective and drawing upon case studies from the last 60 years. Such lack of comparative knowledge and studies is somewhat surprising if one takes into account the impact of esoteric and occult materials from a wider “South” (including not only Southern Europe, but also Northern Africa and the Mediterranean Basin) that has made its way in Northern Europe since at least the end of the 19th century, focusing, but not limited to, Sufism, Egyptosophy and Freemasonry, or, conversely, about the continuous forms of inspiration that Nordic alternative spirituality has had on artistic production in Southern Europe (e.g. with the proliferation of Nordic paganism in occultural discourse). The proposed conference aims at filling this scholarly gap, opening up avenues of research and discussing new ways of approaching and conceptualizing occultural phenomena with a North-South perspective as a starting point. We understand “North” and “South” as including, respectively, the Nordic, Baltic, German and English-speaking countries in Europe, and Southern European, Mediterranean, and African countries/areas. The event will be enriched by a concert of the mdi ensemble that will play music by Jean Sibelius, Kaja Saariaho, and Franco Oppo on the 2nd of November.
Download the programme of the conference here.
Admission is free upon registration.
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Study Day Professor Bad Trip Fausto Romitelli’s triptych, amid compositional technique and aesthetic reflections
On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of Fausto Romitelli, who died prematurely in 2004, the Biennale Musica and the Institute of Music are dedicating a study day to the composer’s poetics, which will end with the complete performance of Professor Bad Trip. Issues concerning the
conception of the triptych and the sources of the compositional process, instrumental synthesis and spectral morphology, para-texts and the evocation of a ‘mental cinematography’ and the issues of performance will be addressed.
Participants: Alessandro Arbo, Oliver Korte, Luigi Manfrin, Nicholas Moroz and Jean-Luc Plouvier.
Study Day The Theatre of the Actors. Wanda Benedetti, Toni Barpi and their Era
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of actress Wanda Benedetti (Treviso, 31 October 1923 – Treviso, 12 July 2017) and of the tenth anniversary of the death of actor Toni Barpi (Feltre, 13 July 1920 – Treviso, 31 October 2013), the Institute for Theatre and Opera intends to promote a study day dedicated to the Veneto theatre scene in the second half of the twentieth century. The two actors, companions both in life and on stage, worked with some of the most important directors of the
time, including Cesco Baseggio, Carlo Lodovici, Renato Simoni, Maurizio Scaparro and Luigi Squarzina. The meeting will provide an opportunity to recall not only the work of these two performers, but more generally to reconstruct a cross-section of theatre in the Veneto area in the decades following WWII.
Wanda Benedetti and Toni Barpi, whose personal archives are conserved by the Institute, worked with other artists whose memory is preserved by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, including stage designer Mischa Scandella, directors Arnaldo Momo, Giovanni Poli and the aforementioned Luigi Squarzina and Maurizio Scaparro.
Accademia Vivaldi. Masterclasses on the interpretation of the music of Antonio Vivaldi
The courses of the Accademia Vivaldi will continue in the autumn with masterclasses on the performance practices of Antonio Vivaldi’s compositions, dedicated to young singers and instrumentalists. The last two encounters will be dedicated to singers and will be led by baritone Sergio Foresti and soprano Gemma Bertagnolli. The ten students selected and scholarship winners will have the opportunity not only to enhance their own interpretation, but also to explore musicological aspects of the pieces examined, thanks to lectures given by musicologists in partnership with the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi and with the research group ‘La drammaturgia musicale a Venezia (1678–1792)’ of the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi.
There will be a concert at the end of each of the two encounters.
Conference | Contemporary spiritualities: open theoretical and methodological issues
Organised by the Centre for the Study of Comparative Civilisations and Spirituality in collaboration with the Italian Association of Sociology (AIS) – Sociology of Religion Section, the conference aims to discuss the state of the art in the sociology of spirituality both on a national and international level. In particular, reflections will address whether and how the ‘spirituality’ category can be translated into theoretical, methodological and empirical terms in various socio-cultural contexts and religious traditions. Furthermore, possible continuities and discontinuities will be examined between spirituality and other categories that, while different, have elements of affinity such as, for example, religion, esotericism, mysticism, New Age, paganism and new religious movements. We will also explore issues such as: spirituality within and out of traditional religion, the comparison between ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ spirituality, the relationship between spirituality and social spheres (economics, politics, culture, the media and leisure, etc.), the theoretical boundaries between spirituality and religion, spirituality and gender, and finally methods for studying the relationship between spirituality and secularisation.
The conference will be in Italian.
Free entrance upon registration.
For more information download the programme here.
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Early Music Seminars Egida Sartori and Laura Alvini Pulcinella musician and philosopher. The Neapolitan comic cantatas in the 18th century
“Along with Peppe Barra, Pino De Vittorio is the last heir to the ancient tradition of singer-actors who for centuries staged the utopian union between high and low-brow: a characteristic that made the history of Neapolitan theatre unique. Like Peppe and Concetta Barra, De Vittorio was discovered
by Roberto De Simone for the first edition of his Gatta Cenerentola, and from then on, continued along the dual path of ethnomusicological research and baroque interpretation with worldwide success” (La Repubblica, 24.11.2017). Nothing to be added to these words of Dinko Fabris, one
of the most internationally renowned Italian musicologists and Scientific Director of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples. The Early Music Seminars, in this particular edition, aim to pay tribute
at the same time to the great singer-actor and promote the precious repertoire
of Neapolitan comic cantatas that he so masterfully interpreted.
Corrado Bologna, a distinguished philologist and academic who will accompany him, will comment on the ambivalent tradition – and especially the sacrificial dimension – of Neapolitan and Italian comic characters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The collaboration of two specialists,
a musicologist and a theatre historian, is also foreseen. Singers and/or actors selected through an international contest will participate in the seminar, accompanied by a basso continuo ensemble.
The event is organised with the contribution of the Swiss foundations Concordance, Irma Merk and L.+Th. La Roche.
On 12 October, the traditional final concert will take place in the Auditorium “Lo Squero”.
Study Day: The Instrumental Ensemble with Voice in the Twentieth Century: Pierrot Lunaire and Ten Poems by Emily Dickinson
Arnold Schoenberg and the reception of his thought in the second half of the twentieth century is the focus of this second appointment of the Research-Led Performance cycle.
The origins, diffusion and differentiation of solo voice ensembles and instrumental ensembles with voice were the subject of a lecture that Gianmario Borio gave at an event in collaboration with the 2021 Music Biennale, significantly entitled Choruses. Drammaturgie vocali.
During this study day, organised by the Institute for Music, in collaboration with the Beaumont Consort and the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory in Venice, musicians and musicologists will compare Schoenberg’s pioneering composition to Giacomo Manzoni’s work on texts by Emily Dickinson.
Afterwards, the two works will be played in a performance by the Beaumont Consort with the participation of students from the Venetian Conservatory and singer Cristina Baggio.
International Study Conference | Vittore Carpaccio: context, iconography, reception
The Institute of Art History promotes debate between leading specialists on the great Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1465–1525) through the two-day international study conference scheduled for June 2023, designed to coincide with the major exhibition on the Renaissance artist to be held at the Doge’s Palace in Venice, organised by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, providing the most comprehensive exhibition of Carpaccio’s paintings and drawings since the famous monographic exhibition of 1963.
The papers to be presented at the conference – selected through a call for papers – will cover the full range of issues that have interested Carpaccio scholars over the last half century: documentation; knowledge and chronology; iconography; patronage and social context; conservation and technique.
The conference – divided into four sessions: Vittore Carpaccio: his patrons and the culture of his time; reading Carpaccio’s images; techniques and restoration; and Carpaccio’s fortunes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – will feature papers by: Matteo Casini, Emil Hilje, Irene Brooke, Gabriele Matino, Gianmario Guidarelli, Rosella Lauber, Stefan Neuner, Piermario Vescovo, Sara Menato, Francesco Trentini, Augusto Gentili, Gianluca Poldi, Brigit Blass-Simmen, Carla Zaccheo, Federica Cerasi, Francesca Capanna, Giulio Manieri Elia, Caterina Barnaba, Egidio Arlango, Valentina Piovan, Stefania Randazzo, Nora Gietz, Alessandro Del Puppo, Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Gabriella Belli and Mauro Lucco.
The Theatre of Franco Scaldati. The Laughter of the Angels
The Institute of Theatre and Opera, in collaboration with the Doctoral School in History of the Arts at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, is promoting a study day dedicated to the Sicilian playwright, director and actor Franco Scaldati. The meeting, which will bring together leading scholars of contemporary theatre, will constitute an opportunity to present the public with the first two volumes of the new critical edition of Franco Scaldati’s works, edited by Valentina Valentini and Viviana Raciti and published by Marsilio.
This series of publications is based on texts conserved in the playwright’s rich archive, donated by the artist’s children to the Institute for Theatre and Melodrama in 2020 and on which the documents kept within it have been reorganised and digitised.
On the occasion of this meeting, excerpts from Scaldati’s texts will be read by Melino Imparato, a historical member of the Compagnia Franco Scaldati.
