Chants, Places, Sources. Three Microhistories in Multipart Sacred Music

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Description

A short trailer on our next performance for the 7th Symposium of ICTMD Study Group for Multipart Music (5 September 2023, Cremona, Church of San Bassano).

• Introduction •
Musical sources are junction spaces where stories of listening and soundmaking are rendered visible through symbolic encoding and material evidence. Even if we often understand sources as repositories for musical content, they function more like archeological remains of social interactions that are not evident when we render their content through music-making. With this lecture-performance, ITER Research Ensemble seeks to unearth the unhearable stories behind site-specific repertoires of multipart sacred music, in which literate and oral modes of composition and transmission are tightly intertwined.
Codex Trent 91 is the first example. A late-fourteenth century manuscript belonging to the choirmaster of the Trent cathedral, it gathers not only pieces by renowned composers, but also a vast number array of simpler, orally-oriented polyphonies made for pedagogic and liturgical use. We will focus on the "Liber generationis," presenting it in a concert version that highlights its inner formulaic structure.
We will then parallel this high-culture repertoire with the quite exceptional situation of sacred music in Lu Monferrato, a small hill town in Piedmont. In the 18th century, local priests wanted to provide their parishes with a specific musical repertoire, composing cantus fractus and polyphony with up to four parts. This tradition left an impression on the people of Lu, as some local amateur musicians continued composing in the style until the early 20th century. In addition to presenting unusual traces of non-professional composing, these priestly and amateur sources convey much information – often intimate or anecdotal – about the village history, its musicking, and its “sense of place.”
The last examples is the sacred repertoire of the Good Friday procession of Rovinj-Rovigno, Croatia, a solemn rite of Venetian origins that was extinguished in the early 1960s. Blending ethnography, archival research and artistic experimentation, we present our recent work with the local Italian community to recover this heritage from its relics still echoing in living musical practices. Merging microhistory with music-making, ITER Research Ensemble offers a “thick description” of past multipart traditions, in which written sources work as “architectural drawings” bursting with social and multimedia potential.

Camera: Giovanni Cestino, Ester Melchiorre, Laura Cavallazzi
Sound: Emanuele Cristini, Giovanni Cestino
Editing: Giovanni Cestino
©ITER Research Ensemble, 2023