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Memory of the past and perception of sound in the Renaissance: the Aristotelian perspective
| Author | Stefano Lorenzetti |
| Series | Recercare - Rivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica antica - Journal for the study and practice of early music |
| Nr. | XXXI/1-2 2019 |
| Size | 17×24, pp. 230 |
| Year | 2020 |
| ISBN | 9788855430319 |
What would appear to have been for centuries the climax of the musical memory is not so much the memory of the musical works produced from time to time, but rather the memory of the procedures to produce them: the technical means that allow music to be produced, that allow music to appear on the perceptive surface of the world, are systematically, obsessively, remembered. The ‘humanism of sound’ promoted by Zacconi and other Renaissance theoreticians, profoundly rooted in the anthropological dimension of modernity, uses memory not mainly as a means to remember a past impossible to recover, but as a generative tool to shape the new. This, perhaps, could contribute to explain, why the memory of music is more a memory of the processes involved than a memory of the objects written: according to the scientific dimension of the discipline, the climax of remembering is located into the language, which is enduring and necessary, while the opus is contingent and evanescent, even if written on paper.
Stefano Lorenzetti is professor of Music history at Conservatory of Vicenza. He earned his Ph.D. in History and Civilization at the European University Institute, Florence (2001). He is a former fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University, New York. He also studied organ and harpsichord with Kenneth Gilbert. He published the monograph Musica e identità nobiliare nell’Italia del Rinascimento. Educazione, mentalità, immaginario (2003) and many articles, especially on the history of ideas, music and education in early modern age, and the relationships between music and the art of memory in the Renaissance. His dual vocation as a musicologist and musician led him to explore forgotten practices, experienced in several concerts and recordings.stefano.lorenzetti@consvi.it