Lecture-concert by Battista Acquaviva: "Music, Corsica and elsewhere", Friday 12 September at the Propriano Media Library
In the West, what world music specialist doesn't know Corsica?
And yet, if one of the secrets of traditional Corsican singing is the harmonics that form above the heads of good
head of good paghjella singers (the voice of the angel), the other secret would be its specific modal scale.
In this talk, we'll look at how to re-appropriate it, as well as 'mimophony', Nando Acquaviva's method for highlighting his major discovery: the Terza Mezana, the flagship micro-interval of traditional Corsican singing, in other words the specific signature note of the ancient Corsican singers.
Listening to the Quilici background, it's a question of singular notes that we'll call 'grey' notes, i.e. neither minor nor major, neither white nor black, and impossible to find on a piano.
They are, however, common to the Corsican vocal tradition and to the other half of the world: peoples who use modal scales, such as the Arab world, India, or "polyphonic" peoples (Bulgaria, Georgia); or emblematic peoples who are often minorities and mostly oppressed, using music to express their singular voice (e.g. Armenia).
Their vocal realisation implies a certain freedom, including in tessitura, and in so doing they embody a philosophy of life, a way of thinking about the world and reinterpreting the polyphonic landscapes of our often mountainous terrain, winding up to the point of rivuccata.
In a way, these quarter tones contain the quintessence of a way of living our microcosm.
Despite Corsican resistance to melodic and linguistic standardisation in the Latin practice of sung masses, the blossoming of tonal music in the Western world over the last few centuries, from which Corsica has not escaped in the last century and a half, leaves little room in the ears of younger generations for micro-intervals, traces of timelessness.
The time has come for radio hammering of variety and the calibration of its hits.
So the aim of this conference is to safeguard and pass on a heritage that has disappeared beneath the rubble of our culture.
Allowing the more systematic reproduction of specific lost pitches would be a way of rebuilding an old world.
While standardisation is on the march, killing tradition and grading notes like it grades people
the question of teaching arises.
This attempt to safeguard the tradition raises an inescapable didactic aspect, of which this conference proposes to be one of the foundations.
Free admission.
Information on 04 95 76 23 64
In the West, what world music specialist doesn't know Corsica?
And yet, if one of the secrets of traditional Corsican singing is the harmonics that form above the heads of good
head of good paghjella singers (the voice of the angel), the other secret would be its specific modal scale.
In this talk, we'll look at how to re-appropriate it, as well as 'mimophony', Nando Acquaviva's method for highlighting his major discovery: the Terza Mezana, the flagship micro-interval of traditional Corsican singing, in other words the specific signature note of the ancient Corsican singers.
Listening to the Quilici background, it's a question of singular notes that we'll call 'grey' notes, i.e. neither minor nor major, neither white nor black, and impossible to find on a piano.
They are, however, common to the Corsican vocal tradition and to the other half of the world: peoples who use modal scales, such as the Arab world, India, or "polyphonic" peoples (Bulgaria, Georgia); or emblematic peoples who are often minorities and mostly oppressed, using music to express their singular voice (e.g. Armenia).
Their vocal realisation implies a certain freedom, including in tessitura, and in so doing they embody a philosophy of life, a way of thinking about the world and reinterpreting the polyphonic landscapes of our often mountainous terrain, winding up to the point of rivuccata.
In a way, these quarter tones contain the quintessence of a way of living our microcosm.
Despite Corsican resistance to melodic and linguistic standardisation in the Latin practice of sung masses, the blossoming of tonal music in the Western world over the last few centuries, from which Corsica has not escaped in the last century and a half, leaves little room in the ears of younger generations for micro-intervals, traces of timelessness.
The time has come for radio hammering of variety and the calibration of its hits.
So the aim of this conference is to safeguard and pass on a heritage that has disappeared beneath the rubble of our culture.
Allowing the more systematic reproduction of specific lost pitches would be a way of rebuilding an old world.
While standardisation is on the march, killing tradition and grading notes like it grades people
the question of teaching arises.
This attempt to safeguard the tradition raises an inescapable didactic aspect, of which this conference proposes to be one of the foundations.
Free admission.
Information on 04 95 76 23 64
