[AMS-announce] CONF: the Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns in 17th-century musical thought, Rome, 23 Feb 2007

[ams-announce-admin at list.bowdoin.edu]

The Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns in 17th-century musical thought:
synthesis and perspectives

Rome, Villa Medici, 23 February 2007

This research seminar questions the dynamic relationship between the Ancients and the Moderns in 17th-century musical thought. The discourse on music will be examined from the viewpoint of its deviation from its theoretical heritage: strategies of appropriation that apply to this heritage and to its transformations,  both in the field of the theory and in its interrelationship with contemporary musical practice.

While the opposition between Ancients and Moderns  underlies the unfolding / framework of normative discourse, , this topic took a particular turn in the 17th century, for it was connected to the reorganization of the mathesis universalis, to the restructuring of musical theory, and to the emergence of new practices (such as the seconda prattica). The status of the Ancients, which had previously been an irrefutable guarantee and a syllogistic challenge,  now underwent various manupulations, as several Moderns  began to resist the authoritative weight.

Musicologists, philosophers and historians of sciences will re-examine primary sources, issues and problematics related to the comparative approach in the domain of musical thought.

Dalla Porta d’Oriente

The opening concert draws an original baroque path: music of the Ottoman court. During the 17th century, ambassadors, travelers and scientists returned from the East with musical samples, instruments, manuscripts and miniatures describing musical life in the Ottoman empire and then took part in the fashion of  “Turkish scenes”. Not  quite  an ethnological approach, philosophers and theorists of music will be questioning these discoveries  to seek traces of this “paradise lost” of Greek music and its unique expressive virtues. From their standpoint, the Ottoman sultans, sensitive to the artistic tastes and fashions at European courts, welcomed European musicians in order to import the style of the Moderns.

· programme / programma : 

                http://www.villamedici.it/privato/articoli/170/italiano/D%E9pliant%20Musicologie.pdf 

· informations et documents de travail / informazioni e documenti preparatori / information and documents :

http://anciens-modernes-musique.blogspot.com/