Polifonie “in viva voce” 13

Polifonie “in viva voce” is a yearly event organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation’s Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies in collaboration with the G. Mazzariol Department of History of the Arts and Conservation of Artistic Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. After having brought together music groups and scholars from many European regions in previous years, the programme for the 13th edition features traditional group singing from Piedmont. The spotlight will be on the Coro Bajolese, a choir from Bajo Dora, a tiny village of 350 inhabitants situated in the Canavese (an area in the north of the Province of Turin). Founded in 1966, the choir produced a very long and radical ethnographic enquiry into the collective memory and musical traditions of the village. The hundreds of documents collected were then housed in the Centro Etnologico Canavesano in 1975. The choir has performed in a large number of concerts in Italy and Europe highlighting on stage the modes and processes used by rural and mountain societies in the practise of group singing, as mean of binding local communities and giving form to local identity. The collection of songs brings together and reflects very diverse social practices: from work in farm fields, mountain pastures and woods to games and religious practices. Another important aspect in this polyphonic singing is the preservation of the memory of broader historical developments involving events with much wider-ranging repercussions than the direct effects on small communities: the memory of the Great War, the Resistance during the Second World War, the experience of emigration and workers’ protest movements. The programme is divided into two parts: a seminar, involving Amerigo Vigliermo, Maurizio Agamennone and singers from the Coro Bajolese, will examine the musical, anthropological and social aspects of polyphonic singing practices in the Canavese area; and a concert in which the Coro Bajolese will perform the most representative songs from their polyphonic repertoire.

Seminar ore 4pm
curated by Maurizio Agamennone and Amerigo Vigliermo

Concert 6.30pm
Coro Bajolese

Free entrance

For further info:
Istituto Interculturale di Studi Musicali Comparati
tel. +39 041 2710357
musica.comparata@cini.it