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The Sources of Absolute Music: Mapping Emotions in Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera

Descrizione del progetto

Le emozioni nell’opera del XVIII secolo

Con l’obiettivo di definire l’espressione e il significato della musica, verrà creato e analizzato un corpus di 4 000 arie digitalizzate da diverse centinaia di spartiti d’opera del XVIII secolo basati sugli otto drammi più popolari di Pietro Metastasio. Utilizzando metodi tradizionali e la tecnologia informatica dei megadati, il progetto DIDONE, finanziato dall’UE, focalizzerà la propria attenzione sull’opera del XVIII secolo, un tipo di opera che si è consolidata con la principale preoccupazione di esprimere le emozioni dei personaggi mentre cambiano durante il dramma. Lo studio comparativo del progetto su decine di diverse impostazioni musicali degli stessi libretti farà luce su come i compositori correlano specifiche circostanze drammatiche ed emozioni con distinte caratteristiche poetiche e musicali.

Obiettivo

The belief that ‘the end of music is to move human affections’ (Descartes, Compendium musicae) has been a central issue in European musical thought since Plato. Opera was invented to recover the power of Ancient music to move the human heart, and its history is a permanent exploration of the capacity of action, words and music to convey emotions.

In the eighteenth century a new type of opera consolidated with the chief concern of expressing the character’s emotions as they changed throughout the drama, inspired by Descartes’ theory of human passions. The key expressive medium was the aria col da capo, where a single, distinct passion was represented, like a concentrated pill of emotional meaning. The ideal corpus to study this issue are the 900 operas set to music by 300 composers on the 27 dramas by Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782). It contains a comprehensive catalogue of emotions in music, a unique window of opportunity to scrutinize conventions that defined music expression and meaning for over a century, paving the way for the emergence of ‘absolute’ instrumental music, autonomous from any other art form.

DIDONE presents an innovative approach to unveil these conventions: the creation of a corpus of 4,000 digitized arias from 200 opera scores based on Metastasio’s eight most popular dramas, to be analysed using traditional methods and big data computer technology. The comparative scrutiny of dozens of different musical settings of the same librettos will reveal how composers correlate specific dramatic circumstances and emotions with distinct poetic and musical features. The results will be applicable to three main fields: (i) opera performance; (ii) analysis and interpretation of other types of music; and (iii) composition in several scenarios, from film soundtracks to creation by Artificial Intelligence. An opera festival will be designed to recover and disseminate this hitherto ignored repertoire, which was essential to define the European musical identity.

Meccanismo di finanziamento

ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

Istituzione ospitante

UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 1 209 575,00
Indirizzo
AVENIDA DE SENECA 2
28040 Madrid
Spagna

Mostra sulla mappa

Regione
Comunidad de Madrid Comunidad de Madrid Madrid
Tipo di attività
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Collegamenti
Costo totale
€ 1 209 575,00

Beneficiari (3)