The collaboration with the music schools Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali of Reggio Emilia and Castelnovo ne’ Monti ‘Peri-Merulo’ led to the project titled Corpi Sonanti (Sounding Bodies), a performance conceived for an orchestra of 40 young musicians aged between 14 and 16. Its aim was to experiment with new educational and artistic experiences, bringing into play and creating a connection between the expressive power of the body and the acoustic space, improvisation and musical memory, instrumental skills and the musical performance of the pieces played live.
The young musicians, under the guidance of the teacher Gabrielangela Spaggiari, worked in the Fonderia with Arturo Cannistrà, who helped them to play and approach the instruments using their bodies in a more creative and unusual way with respect to customary orchestra practices.
Corpi Sonanti InNatura
Idea Gabrielangela Spaggiari
Choreography and lighting design Arturo Cannistrà
Dramaturgy coordination Gabriele Tesauri
Dramturgy and music direction Gabrielangela Spaggiari
Orchestra Florestano of ISSM “Peri-Merulo” di Reggio Emilia e Castelnuovo ne’ Monti
Music Varèse, Vivaldi, Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven
Soloist flute: Giacomo Galvani
Soprano: Angelica Milito
Accordion: Alexei Maniac
Educational-artistic project in collaboration with Fondazione Nazionale della Danza and Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, in the framework of the Polo delle Arti.
The melting of the glaciers: this is the theme that inspired Corpi Sonanti InNatura.
We feel astonishment when we hear the intense, frightening, but also suggestive sounds caused by the breaking of the glaciers; we feel disorientation and terror when we see the tremendous and irresistible force of a collapse, the breaking of a balance.
In the face of these impressive signs of nature’s energies (and man’s responsibilities) we can also feel a sense of immobility, precariousness and abandonment: but just when Time, suspended, seems to expose us to our precariousness, it is possible that a generating force, which is of Nature but also of Art – embodied here by the famous generating module of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – can offer us the possibility (“the boldest stole”, says the Poetess) to also glimpse new horizons.
… the boldest stole out of his Covert
To see if Time was there –
Nature was in an Opal Apron –
Mixing fresher Air.Emily Dickinson, in Poems on Silence, n.1397
Corpi Sonanti InNatura is dedicated to these “boldest stole”, to the energy of those who can see “beyond” the resignation, or dismay, or abandonment that sometimes adults are unable to avoid.
Gabrielangela Spaggiari
Corpi sonanti In-canto with music by Brahms, Čajkovskij, Wagner
Can the song of the whales let us experience an enchantment as happens with music and with the expressive gestures of the body?
This is the idea behind the new performance of Corpi sonanti In-canto.
The enchantment that comes from the primitive song of the whales (but not for this less intense and expressive) excites us to the point of stunning and almost frightening us. From this surprise it comes the idea of provoking an encounter with music: at the beginning only a fleeting contact, while the body still acts in its primordial animality, then, during the performance, the song of the whales joins and merges into one with the “song” of music while the body is transformed into dance.
This experience, which seeks to bring together the song of whales with music (by Ciaikovsky, Brahms and Wagner) and the gestural expressiveness of the body, has as its main educational purpose that of stimulating a sense and sensitivity towards this that of nature, mysterious and exciting can still give us.
Gabrielangela Spaggiari
CORPI SONANTI
IN ASCOLTO
(SOUNDING BODIES LISTENING)
This year, the Corpi Sonanti workshop focused on the theme of listening, with the aim of raising the young orchestra players’ awareness of its importance in performing and creative practice.
So, what did the young participants experience with Corpi sonanti?
It was not just a listening experience to develop the necessary ability for staying in step with and contributing to the construction of a musical sense. It also involved listening to the body and the gesture of contact, to the silence and the breathing of musicians before they begin to play, to the glances of mutual support they exchange with one other, and to the emotions they release, thereby enhancing that musical sense and its expressiveness.
Thus, by combining musical practice and musical gesture, they sought to deliver an exploratory and creative interpretation of some works by Stravinsky, Weill, Sibelius and Satie by playing as a single choral body, a “sounding body”, in a performance based on “listening” to new spaces of sound and expression.
Gabrielangela Spaggiari
Performance:
Fonderia, Reggio Emilia – Sunday, 25 March 2018
Auditorium Fondazione Cariplo, Milan – Saturday, 7 April 2018
Reggia di Rivalta, Reggio Emilia – Monday, 2 July 2018
Music:
I. Stravinsky (1882-1971)
First Piece for Solo Clarinet (from the 3 Pieces) Andante (from Suite No. 1 for Small Orchestra) Miniature No. 7 (from the 8 Instrumental Miniatures)
Berceuse and Finale (transcribed by I. Meerle from The Firebird Suite)
K. Weill (1900-1950)
Tango-Ballade (transcription for wind ensemble by F. Codeluppi from The Threepenny Opera)
J. Sibelius (1865-1957)
Andante Festivo for string quartet
E. Satie (1866-1925)
Gymnopédie 2 (Adaptation of the version for Orchestra by Debussy)
Corpi Sonanti
In cammino
(SOUNDING BODIES ON THE MOVE)
Performance at the Fonderia – 17 March 2017.
Music:
Third Movement from Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler
Sarabande from the Holberg Suite by Edvard Grieg
Moldava by Bedřich Smetana
First performance at the Fonderia on 24 March 2016
Music by Handel and Wagner.
Flash mob in Piazza Prampolini, Reggio Emilia, on 24 May 2016 as part of Reggionarra.
Corpi Sonanti in vetta (SOUNDING BODIES ON THE MOUNTAINTOPS)
Following a workshop with Arturo Cannistrà, held from 24 to 31 August 2016 as part of the summer school organized by Istituto Musicale ‘Peri’, the young orchestra presented Corpi sonanti in vetta – flash mob under the belfry of the main square of Ligonchio (Reggio Emilia, Italy), creating emotional and evocative moods.
