Chants, Places, Sources: Microhistories in Vocal Polyphony
multimedia performance
Giuseppe Trovato dramaturgy
Emanuele Cristini sound design
with the voice of David Winton
ITER Research Ensemble
Giovanni Cestino conductor
lenght: approx. 60′
Musical sources are not merely repositories of instructions to be decoded and then “translated” into a musical performance. Rather, they are junction spaces where various practices intersect: sound production, listening, and writing, the latter understood as a symbolic visual operation embedded in material objects that convey it through time—the musical sources.
This project is dedicated to sources that serve as eloquent testimonies of past social interactions: each page is like an archaeological dig revealing the silent traces of making music. Limiting ourselves to merely “playing” these materials means utilizing only the musical information they convey, while overlooking a massive range of other data that illuminate a broader cultural context and an ecology of practices of which music was an integral part.
Chants, Places, Sources. Microhistories in Vocal Polyphony is a performance by the ITER Research Ensemble aimed at uncovering the musical and narrative potential of certain sources that the group is researching. The show presents the audience with four completely unpublished polyphonic repertoires, each associated with specific communities of listeners and performers. A narrator guides the audience in a sort of acousmatic podcast, bringing to life music lost to history through a narrative that is both evocative and firmly grounded in scientific research. This fascinating journey unfolds in four parts, each related to specific works or repertoires:
- a fifteenth-century polyphonic setting of the genealogy of Christ, the Liber generationis, preserved in Trent Codex 91: a three-voice piece on a cantus firmus, based on fixed oral tradition formulas;
- eighteenth-century monodies and polyphonies composed by the canons of a small hill town, Lu Monferrato (Piedmont, Italy), written for their parishioners and accompanied by extensive diary notes on the life of their small but proud community;
- the repertoire of the ancient Good Friday procession of Rovinj-Rovigno (Istria, Croatia), an example of how ethnomusicological research into the current polyphonic practices of the Italian community can stimulate the recovery of a significant component of the city’s cultural and musical past, predating the Yugoslav period;
- Renaissance masterpieces transcribed by the composer Mario Panatero (1919-1962) for the chamber choir he directed and founded, “I Vaganti”, active in Alessandria (Piedmont, Italy) in the early fifties: ITER will sing from the annotated parts used by the choristers, recreating the interpretation of their maestro.
program
Anonymous (15th century)
Liber generationis [Jesu Christi]
Trent, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trent Codex 91
musical edition by Amina Fiallo
concert version by Amina Fiallo e Giovanni Cestino
Unidentified composers from Lu Monferrato (18th century)
Sequentia defunctorum
Stabat mater
Antonio Francesco Colli (18th century)
Salve Regina
Giuseppe Boltri (18th century)
Stabat mater
Lu Monferrato (Piedmont, Italy), Museo d’Arte Sacra “San Giacomo”
musical editions by Amina Fiallo and Giovanni Cestino
Giovanni Masato (1737–1826)
Venite et ploremus – Popule meus
Anonymous
Miserere semplice
Canon Corda (18th century)
Miserere
Giuseppe Peitler (19th-20th century)
Miserere [e Stabat mater] con banda
wind band part reconstructed by Alessio Giuricin
Anonymous (18th century)
Sepulto Domino
Rovinj-Rovigno, Archive of the Church of St Euphemia
musical editions by Alessio Giuricin and Giovanni Cestino
[more on this repertoire]
Mario Panatero (1919-1962)
Coro di morti (excerpt, section “Vivemmo: e qual di paurosa larva”)
for solo tenor, spoken choir and instruments
version for voices and sampled sounds by Emanuele Cristini
Marc’Antonio Ingegneri (1536–1592) / transcr. by Mario Panatero (1919-1962)
Tenebræ factæ sunt
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/26–1594) / transcr. by Mario Panatero (1919-1962)
Sicut cervus / Sitivit anima mea
Jacques Arcadelt (1507–1568) / transcr. by Mario Panatero (1919-1962) after William Barclay Squire (1855-1927)
Il bianco e dolce cigno
Alessandria, Conservatory “A. Vivaldi” Music Library, “Liceo Musicale” Collection
Tenor parts (missing) reconstructed by Giovanni Cestino
Media
Chants, Places, Sources was first presented as a lecture-concert in Cremona (Church of St. Bassano) on September 5, 2023, as part of the 7th Symposium of the ICTMD Study Group for Multipart Music, consisting of only the first three parts.