Prof. Giovanni Giuriati presents Performing a Carnival tarantella. A case study from Montemarano

MUSIC DEPARTMENT RESEARCH SEMINAR
2pm on 18 March 2009
in Howard Recital Room, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Prof. Giovanni Giuriati (Sapienza Universita’ di Roma)
Performing a Carnival tarantella. A case study from Montemarano, Southern Italy

All OU Staff/Students Welcome

The Seminar will deal with a processional tarantella performed by clarinet, accordion and frame drum in Montemarano, a village in the mountains near Naples. I will draw a comparison between an analysis of an improvisational process based only on the musical text (that I have done some years ago) and a recent analysis that takes into account the moment of the performance showing how the two differ widely in methods and results.

While the first model yielded significant results, in unveiling what I have termed a kaleidoscopic process of improvisation, this kind of analysis lacks several contextual elements that relate in various ways to the act of performance. Among such elements to be taken into account are: interaction among musicians, interaction between musicians, dancers, and the audience, musical composition and stylistic differentiation among performers, relationship with space, micro and macro time scales, physical effort, rivalry and emulation, musical borrowing and reference to external models such as “ballo liscio” and world music, processes of musical and social change.

Such a complex and dynamic kind of analysis, that should not be intended in a normative way, but rather as a reference and a list of variables rather than a self-confined model, and that must take into account both the contextual elements, and the participant observation of the researcher, allows to better interpret the textual elements of the music.

During the Seminar some sound and video examples will be presented to illustrate the case study.

From email from Dr Laura Leante 08/03/09