Topoi of technology in Italian 'experimental' industrial film (1959-1973)

After discussing some problematic premises of topic theory in relation to the study of cinema, the paper proposes to investigate audiovisual topoi by combining Rick Altman’s “semantic/syntactic/pragmatic” approach to film genre with the structural perspective on audiovisual “textuality” developed by Gianmario Borio starting from the reflections of Michel Chion and Nicholas Cook. This methodological framework is applied to the case of Italian industrial cinema. An outline of the history of this non-fiction genre presents technology as a semantic field emerging in relation to the rapid industrialization process during the period of the so-called Italian “economic miracle” (1958-1963). Pragmatic aspects play a significant role. In those years the major industrial corporations and centres for scientific research (Enea, Eni, Fiat, Innocenti, Italsider, Olivetti) invested in cinematographic communication as a means to promote their image and popularize scientific-technological information, taking advantage of state subsidies. On this basis industrial cinema became a field of conscious audiovisual experimentation. Among the musical collaborators we find prominent avantgarde composers engaged in the field of both electroacoustic and instrumental music, such as Luciano Berio and Egisto Macchi. Their contribution produced a radical change in the soundscape of the genre, directly affecting the audiovisual representation of technology. Particularly electronic and concrete music were the fundamental component in the recurrence of audiovisual structures forming new topoi. Among these emerge both topical configurations aiming at producing simple communicational effects and elaborate constructions involving the use of rhetoric figures

Grammar of expressive gestures in Gustav Mahler's First Symphony

The paper aims at sketching a theoretical framework for the discussion of music as object analysis. In doing this, it offers some eclectic premises such as Adorno’s incidental remarks on style, late Wittgenstein’s concept of grammar, Hatten’s definition of musical gesture, Kühl’s cognitivist approach to music, and Nietzsche’s claims for a genealogy of musical meaning. As a result, the paper defines grammar as a precondition for a vocabulary of expressive gestures whose formation depends on the composer’s concrete choices insofar these intentionally charge specific musical patterns with meaning. Relying on this definition, the paper proposes to deal with expressive gestures implemented by Mahler in his First Symphony through semantic correlations that arise from the shift between musical genres and discursive modalities

Forming form through force: Bruckner, Mahler and the structural function of highpoints

A comparative analysis of the first movements of Bruckner’s Ninth and Mahler’s First Symphonies relying on the cross-fertilization of Kurth’s ‘energetic’ and Adorno’s ‘material’ theory of form shows how the compositional strategies of the two composers are related. The new structural function of highpoints identified in late Bruckner was in fact basically continued by Mahler

Diegetic versus nondiegetic: a reconsideration of the conceptual opposition as a contribution to the theory of audiovision

The essay offers a history of the concept "diegesis" and of the conceptual opposition "diegetic/nondiegetic" from its introduction in French film studies during the 1950s to their most recent uses. The reconsideration of the opposition is necessary in order to escape the unconscious realism implicit in the concept as well as to develop a theory of audiovision based on a consciously constructivist approach to the audiovisual products

Performance/Media/Documentation... Thinking Beyond Dichotomies: An Interview with Philip Auslander

The philosophical and general cultural contribution of Philip Auslander’s work to music, media, and the arts considered as performance is the radical, critical, and self-critical questioning of cultural dichotomies that often trap our thoughts exactly when they seem to help us think more clearly. Intervewed by Alessandro Cecchi, Auslander reflects on the exploration of the “continuum” between sound and vision, technique and technology, performance and media, music and the arts considered in their continuously and mutually changing relationships.   Philip Auslander is a Professor of Performance Studies and Popular Musicology in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia, USA). He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and seven books, including Presence and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance (University of Michigan Press, 1992), From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism (Routledge, 1997), Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Routledge, 1999; 2nd ed. 2008),Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music (University of Michigan Press, 2006), Reactivations: Essays on Performance and Its Documentation (University of Michigan Press, 2018), and In Concert: Performing Musical Persona (University of Michigan Press, 2021). In addition to his scholarly work on performance and music, Prof. Auslander has written art criticism for ArtForum and other publications and regularly contributes essays to exhibition catalogs for museums in Europe and North America, including Tate Modern, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Migros Museum, and the Walker Art Center. He is also a screen actor and writer. “Dr. Blues,” a short film Auslander wrote, produced, and acted in, premiered at the Peachtree Village International Film Festival in Atlanta in October of 2019

A music semiotic perspective on the Italian industrial cinema of the economic miracle: the technology paradigm and the modes of audiovisual representation

The chapter focuses on the Italian economic miracle, a particularly thriving season in industrial cinema, examining mainly two aspects: the presence of electronic music (made of synthetic and/or concrete sound) and the cooperation of composers ascribable to music avant-gardes, who all together produced one of the most significant changes in industrial cinema soundscape. Among the names of the composers involved in filmmaking of one or more industries, there are authors like Luciano Berio, Vittorio Gelmetti, Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, Egisto Macchi, Gino Marinuzzi jr, Franco Potenza. At this stage the years 1959-1960 were crucial: products like the CNEN film "Ispra 1" (Gian Luigi Lomazzi, 1959; music by Luciano Berio) or Olivetti film "Elea classe 9000" (Nelo Risi, 1960; music by Luciano Berio) are destined to profoundly influence the following development of this genre, marked by experimental industrial films of remarkable audiovisual and musical impact. Among them, Italsider film "Il pianeta acciaio" (Emilio Marsili, 1962; music by Franco Potenza), FIAT film "F4CB. Acciaio su misura" (Victor de Sanctis, 1965; music by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino), the many ENI films with music by Egisto Macchi – such as the famous feature film "La via del petrolio" (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1967) – and Virgilio Tosi’s CNEN productions with music by Franco Potenza, not to mention FIAT and Olivetti productions of the end of the Sixties with music by Vittorio Gelmetti. The chapter also deals with theoretical and methodological problems, which have led to proposing a semiotic-structural approach to audiovisual communication, with a special emphasis on the part played by the sound component and especially by music

Monodia e polifonia

Trattazione sistematica del rapporto tra principi armonici e melodici nell'ambito della musica d'arte di tradizione scritta, tra principio monodico e polifonia

Tecniche compositive

Trattazione sistematica delle principali tecniche compositive della musica d'arte di tradizione scritta

Tecniche di sincronizzazione nella musica per film di Angelo Francesco Lavagnino: una prospettiva musicologica

From the advent of sound film composers’ attention gradually shifted from the structural parameters of the score (formal organization, melodic-syntactic articulation, tonal coherence), intended as aesthetically autonomous configuration, to the sound result in relation to the audiovisual destination of musical composition. This concerns not only timbre and instrumentation – aspects that are in any case under the control of the composer – but also the aspects involved in the increasingly sophisticated process of sound recording, sound editing and post-production in general, which was mainly controlled by engineers and technicians. Moreover, from the end 1940s on, some composers became increasingly aware of the aspects of synchronization and sonorization: on the one hand they envisaged the collaboration of technicians, on the other hand they gave up the autonomy of their artistic activity all to the good of sound shaping for the audiovisual construction. This was particularly the case of composers who specialized in film music, such as Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, who during the 1950s – namely after his collaboration to Orson Welles' "The Tragedy of Othello: the Moor of Venice" (1952) – elaborated and developed personal techniques of composing for the films in a rapid and effective way, also with repercussions on the scores. This aspect sheds light on a neglected aspect of film production, where composition as practical activity generally demands high levels of ‘performance’ particularly considering the aspect of time – in many cases the whole process of composing, recording and synchronizing took approximately four weeks. Lavagnino was particularly aware of this, as shown by the unpublished conferences in the private archive of the composers’ daughters in Gavi. Starting from the musical sources conserved in the Biblioteca "Luigi Chiarini", Rome, I discuss Lavagnino’s techniques of sonorization by means of the analysis of relevant synchronization points. In the article I focus attention on Lavagnino’s score for the Italian-French-American mainstream production "The Naked Maja" (1958), directed by Henry Koster, and particularly on aspects of sonorization in the music for the last macro-sequences (corresponding to the last reels), characterized by changes soliciting the composer for readjustments. The comparison with the working process in some sequences of "Othello" allows me pinpoint specific elements of the evolution in Lavagnino’s approach to film synchronization techniques through the 1950s