Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ROMAVANTGARDE (The Musical Avant-garde in Rome in the 1960s: Actors and Networks in Music History)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30
ROMAVANTGARDE aims to reveal a particular phenomenon in the history of music: the effervescence of avant-garde networks in Rome during the 1960s. This phenomenon saw the first steps of influential figures to come: Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, and Ennio Morricone. But it is also of particular interest as it involved a large number of artists from varied national and cultural horizons, connected diverse institutions (schools, bars, religious establishments), and saw the convergence of various genres (art, jazz, and popular music) to create original repertoires. As a consequence, this is an ideal case to contribute to research on musical creativity and, in particular, to study how art music creation—despite the enduring paradigm of the individual genius—is a collective phenomenon involving human but also nonhuman actors (institutions, artifacts, concepts). To do so, ROMAVANTGARDE draws specifically on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), but also on Social Network Analysis (SNA). The first approach maps the social relationships between people, objects, and ideas, treating them all as agentic entities that form a vast network. The second explores social structures using networks and graph theory. The combination of both will prove an innovative tool for the understanding of sociotechnical networks in music creation. ROMAVANTGARDE’s expected impacts are to advance knowledge on the history of twentieth-century music and to reveal Rome as a cosmopolitan city actively participating in the construction of the European and international musical landscape. Doing so, ROMAVANTGARDE aims to enhance our understanding of the cultural dynamics in twentieth-century Europe. Moreover, it aspires to further research on creativity and collective intelligence, and to encourage the recent exchanges between music studies and networks theories such as ANT and SNA.
ROMAVANTGARDE’s main achievements are:
- The identification and collection of archive documents on the musical avant-garde in Rome in the 1960s. These documents are from the following collections: Accademia Filarmonica Romana, American Academy in Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome, Scelsi Foundation, Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori ed Audiovisivi among others. The information collected has been classified, digitized, and used in the context of different publications (or stored for future use).
- Interviews of artists, or protagonists of the musical avant-garde in Rome in the 1960s, such as John Heineman, Edwin Prevost, Giancarlo Schiaffini, or Christian Wolff. As with previous information, these interviews were used in the context of different publications (or stored for future use).
- The methodological approach of the project consisted in using Actor-Network Theory for the study of the collective aspects of musical creativity. An important progression has been made in this direction, notably in demonstrating the agentivity of institutions, technologies and concepts in the processes of musical creativity. Musical creativity is conceived as unfolding in networks uniting humans and non-humans, or 'hybrids'.
- An important element was added to the initial objectives: to reveal the music diplomacy efforts undertaken in the 1950s-1970s by a number of American institutions in Rome. Information gathered on music diplomacy and propaganda has been compiled for an in-depth study. I notably collected declassified data concerning travel grants and scholarships of American musicians in Rome. These documents include reports on the cultural and educational activities of the U.S. Embassy in Rome to the State Department. Reports of the Fulbright, Ford, Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, which funded the activities of many American musicians in Rome, were also investigated.
- The identification and collection of archive documents on the musical avant-garde in Rome in the 1960s. These documents are from the following collections: Accademia Filarmonica Romana, American Academy in Rome, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome, Scelsi Foundation, Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori ed Audiovisivi among others. The information collected has been classified, digitized, and used in the context of different publications (or stored for future use).
- Interviews of artists, or protagonists of the musical avant-garde in Rome in the 1960s, such as John Heineman, Edwin Prevost, Giancarlo Schiaffini, or Christian Wolff. As with previous information, these interviews were used in the context of different publications (or stored for future use).
- The methodological approach of the project consisted in using Actor-Network Theory for the study of the collective aspects of musical creativity. An important progression has been made in this direction, notably in demonstrating the agentivity of institutions, technologies and concepts in the processes of musical creativity. Musical creativity is conceived as unfolding in networks uniting humans and non-humans, or 'hybrids'.
- An important element was added to the initial objectives: to reveal the music diplomacy efforts undertaken in the 1950s-1970s by a number of American institutions in Rome. Information gathered on music diplomacy and propaganda has been compiled for an in-depth study. I notably collected declassified data concerning travel grants and scholarships of American musicians in Rome. These documents include reports on the cultural and educational activities of the U.S. Embassy in Rome to the State Department. Reports of the Fulbright, Ford, Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, which funded the activities of many American musicians in Rome, were also investigated.
It should be noted that this mandate was interrupted in the middle of its term. As a result, a number of results could not be achieved. However, my research work on the Roman avant-garde will continue in my new role. A series of lectures were given in Europe and beyond (in Cairo, Institut français d'archéologie orientale; in Montréal, Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal; in Rome, Università degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza; in Marseille, at the Institut d’Ethnologie Méditerranéenne Européenne et Comparative; or in Cremona, Università di Pavia a Cremona). During this year of mandate, I also have a series of publications or publications in progress (La Revue Générale, Égypte Soudan Monde Arabe, Enciclopedia della Musica Contemporanea Treccani, or Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart).