Voci di donne nel "Corpus" di Alberto Favara

Between 1902 and 1905 Alberto Favara collected, from direct execution of his interviewees, 1090 Sicilian folk songs which constituted the "Corpus" published, after his dead, in 1957, by Ottavio Tiby. Favara sometimes reported, along with transcriptions, the performer’s name and some few other data. Among the people he heard there is a relatively high number of women, in a constant proportion in the various repertoires. Women interviewed by Favara, like men, show interest and skill in music; they evaluate its psychagogic quality; point out the differences between the songs by the place of origin, or by the activities they accompany; distinguish the performing ways and habits; are proud to recall old songs, learned in their childhood from old people. Reporting their comments and their opinions, Favara improves his great ethnomusicological work by a lively cross section of the female daily life at the beginning of the 20th century

Introduzione. Il suono delle cose

This paper introduces the book of the theoretical texts by the composer Federico Incardona (Palermo, 1958-2006), collected and put in order by his students, now stored in the musicological library of Palermo University; it draws a concept map to guide the reader into Incardona\u2019s labyrinthine path. The fundamental concepts, highlighted and analyzed, are: the \u201cinaudito\u201d (what you never heard) as the result of a research in which the composer is involved even physically; the \u201csign\u201d, as a tool to objectify the unheard; the \u201ctone row\u201d as the order of notes obtained by their bonds with the sensations and experiences: the epiphany of the sound of things: the \u201ctradition\u201d as \u201cpermanent revolution\u201d, a R. Kolisch\u2019s idea that Incardona learned from H.-K. Metzger ; the \u201cwork\u201d as an utopian aspiration

La musica di Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The word in the title, "music" recalls the concrete music, heard, written, composed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But it refers too to the idea of music he elaborated within his thought on societies, languages, and on man. Concrete music and philosophical conception interrelate each other with bonds and nodes. Rousseau felt himself torn between happy reveries in the loneliness and virtuous social obligations to think and to write. Likewise his music was as well the simple one that turns to sensibility, as the language of both art and nature that reflects the thinking unity, and, for that, is able to tell the truth. While the first is common music, he considers the second more and more unattainable. And in his attempt to define the qualities of this second kind of music, he defines, with sharp and modern thoughts, those which will make music as the favoured object of romantic metaphisics and, beyond, those which the Expressionism will oppose to the logic of artistic materials

Presentazione

This article, introducing the book by Marilena Laterza about same contemporary rewrites of Gesualdo da Venosa’s compositions, explains the many problematic aspects inherent the musical rewrite and indicates the interesting choices made by the author

L'insegnamento universitario in "Luigi Rognoni intellettuale europeo. Testimonianze"

L'insegnamento di Luigi Rognoni alle Universit\ue0 di Palermo (1957-1970) e Bologna (1971-1983) ebbe particolari caratteri legati non soltanto alla sua statura di intellettuale europeo e ai suoi legami internazionali, ma anche alla sua idea politica, ed al suo credo culturale ed etico. Ai suoi studenti, e a tutti coloro che lo ascoltarono in diverse citt\ue0 d'Europa e ai microfoni di numerosi programmi radiofonici, Rognoni voleva trasmettere, e trasmise, la speranza che le attivit\ue0 artistiche e la musica funzionassero come linguaggio privilegiato capace di incidere nelle coscienze e di denunciare le storture del secolo XX. Cos\uec facendo si mosse controcorrente, dando l\u2019esempio di un impegno culturale che coincide con l\u2019azione politica e che rifugge dall\u2019omologazione e dalle banalit\ue0 dei linguaggi specializzati, svuotati di ogni energia e disancorati da ogni teoria

Traductions, transformations, transmutations du Pygmalion de Rousseau dans les royaumes de Naples et de Sicile

The Rousseau’s Melodrama, Pygmalion, first time staged in 1771 at Lyon, arrived in Naples in 1773 performed in French by a French theatrical company and with the music composed by Aspelmayr. At the same time in the kingdom of Naples, like in northern Italy and in Austria, the first Italian translations and the first attempt to change the original text in an Opera libretto put essential questions about the translation of theatrical texts and especially the change of a dramatic-musical form, a semiotic transmutation. In 1797, in Palermo, according to the historian Pitrè, was staged a Pigmalione or Pigmaglione translated perhaps by Sografi, transmuted in operatic form, put in music by Asioli or Sirotti or Cimador. In Catania, another town of the Bourbon Kingdom, a libretto was printed in 1791 for the performance of a Pimmalione in melodramatic form but in Italian language. The music was by Gluck: so we can read in the libretto; but it’s much more probable that the musician was Aspelmayr, like in Venice, where it was printed the first time Perini’s translation used also in Catania. Many cuts in this translation also perfected the trivialization of the dramatic invention and of the play by Rousseau

Senso e significati: un esempio

Il secolare dibattito sulla semantica della musica ha prodotto innumerevoli studi, e diverse teorie che riflettono la grande varietà dei modi significanti che possono ritrovarsi nella musica d’arte occidentale di ogni tempo. Questo scritto propone come strumento di chiarificazione e di sintesi la distinzione tra rappresentazione e espressione che ha origine storica ed evidenza ermeneutica. La rappresentazione può cogliersi in tutte le componenti strutturali di una composizione musicale determinate, chiuse, codificate che si dispongono percettivamente nella dimensione spaziale; l’espressione in quelle indeterminate, fluide, tragressive che riflettono il tempo psicologico. Un esempio straordinario di questa dialettica può vedersi nel celebre Lied che Schubert compose nel 1814 su testo di Wolfgang Goethe, Gretchen am Spinrade, dove la descrizione di una fanciulla intenta al lavoro femminile della filatura assume carattere simbolico. Gli elementi musicali portatori di senso vengono individuati e analizzati per mostrarne le risultanti percettive all’interno della dialettica tra spazio e tempo, rappresentazione ed espressione, il particolare in universale

Introduzione

This introduction aims at describing the goals of the publication but it also traces the state of the art about the history of Palermo's Music Conservatory