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Speaker: Cecilia Nocilli (University of Granada)
Domenico da Piacenza (1410 ca.–1477 ca.), dance master at the Este court of Ferrara, is the author of De arte saltandi et choreas ducendi / De la arte di ballare et danzare (1454ca.), the earliest surviving treatise on courtly dance. A closer look at this work reveals much about the authorship of its dance music and how Domenico da Piacenza transformed and applied the theoretical system of musical proportions to dance “misure” or tempos (bassadanza, quaternaria, saltarello, piva) and to body movement. This debrief will focus on the cultural and social position of Domenico da Piacenza in order to challenge the current vision of his limited musical and humanistic literacy. I will approach mensural signs and musical proportions not as abstract and unintelligible elements by one unfamiliar with mensuralism, but rather as key concepts for the understanding of the connection between music and body movement. The analysis of the misure highlights the natura and accidentia of mensuralism in music dance, as well as other aspects such as musical proportions that were already problematic in the fifteenth-century.
Cecilia Nocilli is Associate Professor of music history, musical analysis and music notation at the University of Granada. She has been Hanna Kiel Fellow of The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (2017–2018), and visiting scholar at the City University of New York (2002), University of Turin (2001) and University of Bologna (2000). She has also taught performance practice and dance history at the University of Valladolid (2005–2016) and the Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático de Castilla y León (2006–2015). Her research focuses on Renaissance music theory applied to dance, fifteenth to nineteenth centuries’ music and dance, and rhetorics of music and body. She is artistic director, harpsichordist and dancer of Il Gentil Lauro, ensemble in residence at the University of Granada. Her most recent publications include “Ballo delle Ingrate 1608/1638: la musica per il balletto teatrale tra tradizione e innovazione monteverdiana” (Philomusica on-line, 17/1, 2018); “«Diversità di cose»: composizione e improvvisazione nella musica per danza del Quattrocento” (Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale, XXIII/2, 2017); El manuscrito de Cervera. Música y danza palaciega catalana del siglo XV (Barcelona, 2013); Coreografare l'identità. La danza alla corte aragonese di Napoli, 1442-1502 (Torino, 2011). Forthcoming by Libreria Musicale Italiana (LIM) is the book Domenico da Piacenza, cavaliere, musico e ballerino. «El subtille del subtille» nella musica per danza del Quattrocento.
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