7 May 2010
9.30 – 18.30

Every year the Giorgio Cini Foundation holds an Early Music Seminar for young musicians who are selected through an international competition. At the same time the Foundation organises an accompanying International Study Day in order to explore the historical and cultural background to the music studied and performed in public during the Seminar.
 
This year’s theme at the Seminar –  to be held at the Giorgio Cini Foundation, 2-8 May 2010 –  is Galileo’s thinking on music. The Study Day will thus focus on Galileo’s texts on music and their historical, historical-scientific and musical contextualisation. At the centre of the discussion will be a letter on some aspects of art theory written by Galileo to his friend the painter Ludovico Cardi, called Cigoli. The letter was previously commented by Panofsky in a celebrated essay of 1954: ‘Galileo as a Critic of the Arts’.
 
Although relatively well known by historians and art historians, this letter has received little comment from musicologists.  In it Galileo asks Cigoli to help settle the conventional debate on the difference between sculpture and painting by making a comparison between vocal and instrumental music. In fact the difference between vocal and instrumental music had been taken as a metaphor for the concept of sublimation, apparently often used to great effect in the Roman intellectual circles to which Galileo, through Cigoli, referred.

Galileo’s views seem to have run counter to the predominant ideas of the day, especially when seen in the musical context (the birth and rapid rise of opera, which Galileo was well aware of, thanks to the theoretical practical works of his lutenist father Vincenzo and his own musical education). In fact his comments might enhance and further develop the centuries-old discussion, revisited in the 17th century, on the sublimation of words in non-verbal music, together with the concept of mimesis between various musical and artistic genres.

The Study Day will bring together experts from the various disciplines linked to the topic of discussion that Galileo had suggested to Cardi: musicologists, musicians, art historians specialised in 17th-century painting or sculpture, science historians specialised in Galileo and historians of music philosophy.
 
This year there will also be a Round Table involving the speakers from the Study Day and other interested scholars.  To be held on the morning of Saturday, 8 May, the Round Table will compare the writings of Vincenzo and Galileo Galilei, and especially Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna and Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo. The discussion will be preceded by an introductory paper to be given by Prof. Maurice Finocchiaro.