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Notes from a small hill town

Project leaders: Amina Fiallo, Anna Martini
Team: Amina Fiallo, Alessio Giuricin, Anna Martini, Michela Marcucci

The Museo d’Arte Sacra “San Giacomo” in Lu Monferrato (AL) houses a rich collection of artifacts—small and large treasures that bear witness to the vibrant cultural activity of a small community that reached its cultural peak in the 18th century. It is well known that in 1748, the canons of Lu received the privilege from Pope Benedict XIV to wear the cappa magna and rochet, garments distinctive of the highest ecclesiastical ranks. This exceptional event was eternalized by Pietro Francesco Guala (1698-1757), whose painting is now preserved in Lu, within the museum. The work has since become famous; historian Carlo Ginzburg described it as “the finest group portrait of 18th-century Italy.” Less known, however, is the musical production of the depicted canons, who felt the need, as early as the late 17th century, to provide their parishes or confraternities with a dedicated liturgical repertoire. These musical works, compiled in handwritten paper codices, have been preserved thanks to the dedication and invaluable work of Leone Rota, president of the Associazione Culturale San Giacomo, and are now the focus of a study and enhancement project.

Pietro Francesco Guala, The Canons of Lu, oil on canvas (1748)

The manuscripts (about twenty in total) contain a diverse range of compositions, such as plainchant and simple polyphony, either copied or composed by the canons for use in the religious institutions under their care. However, what sets these music books apart from other similar manuscripts is the presence of annotations at the end of the pieces, which clarify the occasion for which the composition was created or recount anecdotes related to everyday life in the town. The authors almost never signed their names; instead, they often “hid” their identities using Greek or Hebrew letters, or even through cryptographic alphabets. Whether this was done for amusement or other reasons remains an open question, but the use of these enigmatic strategies nonetheless reveals something significant: the erudition of the canons, who likely took pleasure in flaunting their knowledge, at least to the limited circle of those who could appreciate it. While the content of these annotations remained confined to a “private” sphere, the music likely resonated throughout the entire community, judging by the heavy signs of use evident in these manuscripts.

[Antonio Francesco Colli], [Liber] Pro collegiata de Lù, p. 49

The first scholar to report the existence of these materials was Stefano Baldi, during his survey of the musical collections in the province of Alessandria (2014). However, it is only recently that these sources have become the focus of a dedicated project led by members of the ITER Research Ensemble. In 2023, some of the pieces from Lu were performed at two international conferences: “Musicology in Progress” and the Seventh Symposium of the ICTMD Study Group on Multipart Music. At the latter event, the repertoire of the canons of Lu was part of a broader analytical framework that included and compared repertoires from different periods and distant places that nonetheless shared similarities, aiming to highlight how these manuscripts are not merely collections of music, but also significant testimonies of strong social and community interactions. The music from Lu was performed again in the remarkable setting of the Basilica Palatina of Santa Barbara in Mantua on April 27, 2024, as part of the “Cori in viaggio” series. In this event, conceived by ITER, the audience was invited on a sonic journey that alternated between live music and acousmatic narration, resembling a live podcast experience.

Building on the research by Baldi, ITER Research Ensemble is working on creating a digital archive to preserve these sources in digital form, making them accessible to a wider audience. Additionally, a project is underway to make the original documents available for public viewing. Within the “San Giacomo” Museum, some of the musical codices will be displayed in a showcase placed next to the Guala painting, allowing visitors to enrich their experience and gain insight into a previously unexplored aspect of the town’s cultural life. Moreover, visitors will be able to listen to the music and words of the canons through a permanent sound installation in the museum room, curated by ITER Research Ensemble, which will provide an “amplified” and “immersive” way to experience this heritage. Not only will visitors benefit from this, but the local Lu community itself will once again be able to enjoy a cultural treasure from their past that is being brought back to light.

Media

Introduzione al repertorio dei canonici di Lu Monferrato di Giovanni Cestino