PTH – Performative Thinking in Humanities / 1

A Periodical Book

Abstract

Rosario Diana

Istituto per la Storia del Pensiero Filosofico e Scientifico Moderno

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISPF-CNR)

rosariodiana61@gmail.com

Editorial

Performative Thinking in Humanities

A Periodical Book

Editorial explaining that the Book Think Tank PTH – Performing Thinking in Humanities will become an annual publication dedicated to the dissemination of philosophical and humanistic knowledge through the visual and musical arts.

Philosophy, Music, Theater, Commitment, Politics

Fabrizio Masucci

Museo Cappella Sansevero

fabriziomasucci@museosansevero.it

A Philosophical Melologue for Raimondo di Sangro principe di Sansevero

Preface by the President of the Sansevero Chapel Museum to the libretto and score of the melologue.

Veil, Veiled Christ, Sansevero Chapel Museum, Philosophy Theater, Dissemination

Rosario Diana

Istituto per la Storia del Pensiero Filosofico e Scientifico Moderno

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISPF-CNR)

rosariodiana61@gmail.com

The Veiled Thought

A Nocturnal Meditation by the Prince of Sansevero

melologue in four scenes for narrating voice, recorded voices and percussion

libretto

Based on the works of Raimondo di Sangro and on other texts of  the circle of the Free Thinkers, the libretto focuses on the personality of the Prince of Sansevero when he writes the Supplica (1753) for Benedict XIV. In it he ask him to delete his Lettera apologetica (1751) from the Index librorum prohibitorum. Raimondo di Sangro is presented as an obstinate defender of freedom of free thought and tolerance. His interest in the system of signs of the Peruvian people (quipu) denounces in him an attention to writing, which – understood as a trace of an existence – can guarantee immortality in fame.

Critical Thinking, Tolerance, Censorship, Writing, Experimentation

Rosalba Quindici

Hochschule der Künste Bern

rosalbaquindici@yahoo.it

The Veiled Thought

A Nocturnal Meditation by the Prince of Sansevero

melologue in four scenes for narrating voice, recorded voices and percussion

partitura musicale

Score of the melologue.

Contemporary music, Timbric Research, Percussion, Writing, Experimentation

Rosario Diana

Istituto per la Storia del Pensiero Filosofico e Scientifico Moderno

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISPF-CNR)

rosariodiana61@gmail.com

Pandemic 2020 / Deserted Scene

A Brief History of a Project that the Pandemic has changed

The short essay describes the processing steps to produce the video Pandemic 2020 / deserted scene, which evokes the theme of closed theaters because of the Covid-19 epidemic and is dedicated to actors and musicians in difficulty, because without work. The explosion of the health emergency forced the participants to modify the project while it was in progress.

Theater, Video, Scenography, Music, Screenplay

Nera Prota

Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli

nera.prota@yahoo.com

Thinking with Hands in the Digital Age

Crafting Art Amidst Information Technology (IT) and Human Creativity

In Art Academies, IT is increasingly proposed as a substitute or a surrogate to developing individual crafting abilities. Those that, for any reasons, feel uncomfortable using their hands can easily find in computer applications an apparent way-out. However, this trend reinforces hands disability preventing individuals to build their own personal artistic language. Machine support in art crafting meets a growing market demand ushering in the fictitious idea that human creativity can be achieved through standardized processes. This is of course functional to market interests. For example, one of the most popular software is used in art design is CAD (Computer-Aided Design). The name itself highlights the asymmetric relation with the user. In many cases software like CAD can directly interact with other complex machines (i.e., numeric control machines) to undertake large-scale, precision tasks. In this essay, the Author will search the boundary between industrial production and human creativity, thus debunking some ambiguity about the role of technology in society.   

Design, Virtual, Art, Technology, Didactics

Benedetta Tramontano

Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli

bene_98@hotmail.it

Stylistic Research and Personal Choices

Tecla: A Visual Evocation in Three Sketches of an Invisible City by Italo Calvino

The contribution describes the methods followed in giving a fantastic – therefore subjective-perspective – representation of one of Italo Calvino’s invisible cities: Tecla, the building site-city. The Author has deliberately chosen freehand drawing and coloring, refusing to use digital drawing software.

Watercolor, Ink, Sketch, Color, Digital Drawing

Rosario Diana

Istituto per la Storia del Pensiero Filosofico e Scientifico Moderno

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISPF-CNR)

rosariodiana61@gmail.it

Giancarlo Turaccio

Conservatorio Statale di Musica di Salerno “Antonio Martucci”

giancarlo.turaccio@gmail.com

An Initiatory Listening

Conversation between a Philosopher and a Composer about Acousmatic Music

A philosophy researcher and a professor of composition talk about acousmatic music, which is proposed (even live) in the absence of her sound source. The discussion briefly reconstructs the history of the concept and highlights the importance of “pure” listening, which is based on the direct relationship between the ear and the sound object.

Pythagoreans, Pierre Schaeffer, Walter Benjamin, Sound Object, Spatialization of Sound

Gianvincenzo Cresta

Conservatorio Statale di Musica di Avellino “Domenico Cimarosa”

gianvincenzo.cresta@conservatoriocimarosa.org

Memory of Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) One Hundred Years After his Birth

On Steady Song

Some Reflections on Per Caterina by Bruno Maderna for Violin and Piano

In the analytic historical survey of a composer we usually look for a synthesis and we focus on some works that are considered more representative. It is a possible way but that can restrict the identity of the composer, bending it to a simplified narrative whereas the creative journey of an artist is a complex kaleidoscope. Per Caterina by Bruno Maderna is a short piece for violin and piano composed in 1963, and despite being in contrast with his other works and stylistic styles of the ’50s and ’60s, it is naturally placed in the creative arc of the author. It is an emblematic piece of his way of experiencing music as a unitary event, without stylistic fences and categorizations. Rhetoric is for Maderna a means and not an aesthetic and music is a complex experience that mixes sound with the perception, the motor and the emotional. Maderna says: «Music can only be an expressive fact, a sound that elicits reactions and sounds are only a means».

Identity, Song, Ancient, Modernity, Freedom

Tommaso Rossi

Conservatorio Statale di Musica di Benevento “Nicola Sala”

info@tommasorossi.it

Una grande Aulodìa

The Flute and the Oboe in Bruno Maderna’s “Arcaic Melody”

In Bruno Maderna’s varied and copious musical production, the choice to devote particular attention to the flute and the oboe – the two highest pitched members of the “woodwind” family – seems to go beyond the composer’s understandable interest in the timbre investigation of two fascinating instruments, but it is linked to deeper reasons, which reside in fundamental aspects of the composer’s musical poetics. The flute and the oboe are “the” instruments of classical mythology. Their particular sound immediately recalls ancient Greece, the civilization that the Greeks founded, with its inherent cult of beauty, which influenced the whole history of Western civilization. Through the sound of these instruments, Maderna looks at this world – now lost ­­– with the precise desire to re-propose utopically – in a modernity marked by the violence of machines and in the context of a dehumanized society – a superior but unattainable ideal of harmony. Through the analysis of many of his works, which feature the flute and the oboe, the author reconstructs some aspects of Maderna’s aesthetics.

Hyperion, Musica su due dimensioni, Grande Aulodia, Don Perlimplìn, Terzo concerto per oboe

Rossella Gaglione

Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

rossellagaglione@hotmail.com

Talk between Echo and Narcissus

About a Recent Book by Dario Giugliano

What is the relationship between ίδιος and κοινός? And how can philosophy (specifically metaphysics) and literature combine these two terms? How difficult is, and at the same time necessary, communicate with Other, that is to transfer one’s singular voice in the shared sign system for this voice can be understood? What is experience? What is idiotism? What about the myth of Echo and Narcissus? These questions and other ones are the basis of Giugliano’s text which – thanks also to the comparison with various thinkers (including Plato, Novalis and Nietzsche) – offers numerous interesting food for thought.

Idiotism, Communication, Experience, Philosophy, Language