THE RESEARCH TEAM
The researchers at IMPROCOMP are a dedicated group of individuals who explore the intricate relationship between improvisation and composition in modern and contemporary European music, bringing valuable insights to this crucial issue.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
GIANMARIO BORIO – University of Pavia
Gianmario Borio is professor of Musicology at the University of Pavia and director of the Instituteof Music at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice. In 1999 he was awarded the Dent Medal by the Royal Musical Association. In 2013 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. In 2021 he received the “Happy New Ears Prize” for academic publications on new music, endowed by the Hans und Gertrud Zender Stiftung. In 2002-2003 and 2006-2007, Borio was principal investigator of research projects on the history of musical concepts, involving different Italian universities (PRIN). Since 2013 he is member of the Academia Europaea, since 2016 corresponding member of the American Musicological Society, and since 2019 corresponding fellow of the British Academy. He is the director of the book series Musical Cultures of the Twentieth Century (Routledge) and the on line-journal «Archival Notes». His publications deal with several aspects of twentieth-century’s music (theory and aesthetics, political context, audiovisual experience) as well as with the history of musical concepts and the theory of musical form.
ASSOCIATE INVESTIGATORS
SONIA BELLAVIA – University of Rome “Sapienza”
Sonia Bellavia teaches Discipline dello Spettacolo at the Department of Humanities and Modern Cultures at the University of Rome “Sapienza”. She specializes in German and Italian theater between the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular focus on actors and acting. Her latest monographs include Max Reinhardt (Carocci, 2021) and Vienna and the Duse, 1892-1909 (Di Pagina, 2017). Her research papers are dedicated to topics such as the influence of Ibsenian dramaturgy in the Viennese theatrical context, as well as the figures of Hermann Bahr and Frank Wedekind.
VINCENZO CAPORALETTI – University of Macerata
Vincenzo Caporaletti, musicologist, musician and composer, teaches General Musicology and Transcultural Musicology at the University of Macerata and is co-director of the “Centre de Recherche International sur le Jazz et les Musiques Audiotactiles” (Sorbonne Université). He is editor of the series Grooves. Collana di Studi Musicali Afro-Americani e Popular, Edizioni di Musiche Audiotattili, Musiche da Leggere (LIM), Musicologie e Culture (Aracne) and of journals «acusfere. suoni_culture_musicologie» (LIM) and «Journal of Jazz and Audiotactile Music Studies» (Sorbonne Université). His books include I processi improvvisativi nella musica. Un approccio globale (LIM, 2005); Esperienze di analisi del jazz (LIM, 2007); Jelly Roll Morton, the Old Quadrille and Tiger Rag. An Historiographic Revision (2011); Swing e Groove. Sui fondamenti estetici delle musiche audiotattili (LIM, 2014); Improvisation, Culture, Audiotactilité (with L. Cugny and B. Givan, 2016); Introduzione alla teoria delle musiche audiotattili (Aracne, 2019). He was multi-instrumentalist and composer in the Italian progressive rock group “Pierrot Lunaire” as well a session musician; in the jazz scene, among others, he worked as guitarist for several years with American clarinettist Tony Scott. He is director of the “CeIRM. Inter-University Centre for Musicological Research” (UNIMC, Pescara Conservatory and Fermo Conservatory).
SUSANNA PASTICCI – University of Cassino
Associate Professor in Musicology at the University of Cassino. Her research explores issues of analysis and interpretation in nineteenth- and twentieth‐century music, with a special emphasis on creative process, aesthetics and cultural history. She has authored books on Schenkerian analysis, Set theory, and Stravinsky’s sacred music; she has also edited volumes on Formenlehre, musical hermeneutics, music and identity, and critical editions on Italian instrumental music and opera. Recent publications include Listening to Space in Time (in Experiencing Music and Visual Culture: Threshold, Intermediality, Synchresis, Routledge, 2021), Futurism (in The Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia, CUP, 2021), Il suono della memoria. Scritti sulla musica contemporanea (NeoClassica, 2022), Ildebrando Pizzetti (in Oxford Bibliographies, Oxford University Press, in print). She is currently working on a book titled Il teatro nel bosco: musica e suoni della natura nell’Italia postunitaria and, as co-editor with Roe-Min Kok, on the volume Music and the Spiritual since the French Revolution. She is the Editor of «Chigiana, Journal of Musicological Studies».
GIORGIO SANGUINETTI – University of Rome “Tor Vergata”
Giorgio Sanguinetti is full professor of Music Theory and Analysis at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. He has been visiting professor at the McGill University in Montreal (Canada) at the University of North Texas (Denton) and the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki). He gave classes and seminars in several European and American institutions, such as the “Orpheus Institute” in Ghent (Belgium), the “Schola Cantorum Basilensis” (Switzerland), the “NUI” in Maynooth (Ireland), the “CUNY”, Northwestern University, Indiana University, Boston University (USA), the University of Leuven (Belgium). He has been member of the scientific board of the “Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani” (Parma) and the “SIdM” (Società Italiana di Musicologia). He published several articles and essays on the history of Italian theory from 18th to 20th century, Schenkerian analysis, analysis and performance, form and Ottocento Italian opera. As a pianist he has performed as soloist and in chamber groups. In 2013 the Society for Music Theory conferred him the “Wallace Berry Award” for his book The Art of Partimento. History, Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2012). In 2020 he published a book on Beethoven’s piano sonatas (LIM, Lucca) and he is currently working at his new book: The Craft of Partimenti: a Textbook, for Oxford University Press.
RESEARCHERS
GIANLUCA BOCCHINO
Gianluca Bocchino, musicologist and musician with proven experience in research and teaching, has expertise in theatre marketing related to opera and dance. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Cassino and Lazio Meridionale. He is mainly focused on medieval secular monody, music paleography, and music philology and archival studies. His collaboration with the National Academy of Dance and the Foundation of the National Academy of Dance has led him to delve into the performing arts, particularly dance. He has published books and articles on his research interests. He is the president of “Assonanze” – Association of Young Musicologists of University of Rome “Sapienza”. His research activity is complemented by his artistic career as an opera singer. Starring in several tenor roles, he has cooperated with important conductors and directors, in famous Italian and international theaters. With Domenico Turi (composer and pianist) he founded the duo “ContromanoDuo”, staging unreleased compositions by contemporary musicians and irreverent adaptations of operas.
SIMONE CAPUTO
Simone Caputo is an Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of Rome “Sapienza”. His research interests are focused on early modern music, historical urban soundscapes, and musical biopics. Caputo has published several works including the monograph Dies irae: Requiem in musica dal Cinquecento all’Ottocento (Neoclassica, 2021), which explores the history of requiem music from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Additionally, he has also published the critical edition of Niccolò Jommelli’s Il Trionfo di Clelia (1774) (ETS, 2019), and co-edited the special issue of «Chigiana Journal of Musicological Studies» entitled Out of Nature: Music between Natural Sound Sources and Acoustic Ecology (2020) with C. Felici. Furthermore, Caputo serves as the editor of two musicological journals, «Il Saggiatore musicale» and «Chigiana. Journal of Musicological Studies».
MICHELA GARDA
Michela Garda has a philosophical and musicological background. She teaches Musical Aesthetics and Sociology of Music at the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia. She is the author of two books: Musica sublime. Metamorfosi di un’idea nel Settecento musicale (1995) and L’estetica musicale del Novecento. Tendenze e problemi (2007). Over the last years, she investigated some threads in the Wagnerian theoretical writings related to voice, Gesamtkunstwerk, and myth. Her current main research interests are in the theory and history of musical performativity and the voice (Registrare la performance. Testi, modelli, simulacri tra memoria e immaginazione, ed. with Eleonora Rocconi, Pavia University Press, 2016); The Female Voice in the Twentieth Century: Material, Symbolic and Aesthetic Dimensions ed. with Serena Facci (Routledge, 2021); La mediazione tecnologica della voce (Neoclassica, forthcoming).
FRANCESCO GIOMI
Composer, improviser and sound projectionist, he has collaborated with Luciano Berio and other relevant composers, musicians, choreographers and directors besides orchestras and ensembles from Italy and abroad. He has led the live electronics music staff of “Tempo Reale” (the center for music research, production and education founded by Berio in Florence) in theaters and festivals all over the world. His works are regularly performed all over the world in festivals and concerts. In the last ten years he has started a series of creative projects investigating the relations between electroacoustic music and improvisation and conducting collective music performances in several contexts. As a researcher he has published two monographic books and more than eighty articles and issues for publishers like Mouton de Gruyter, MIT Press, Swets & Zeitlinger, Harwood Academic Publisher, Indiana University Press, Cambridge University Press, Il Mulino, ERI-RAI, Zanichelli, Arcana and many others. He is professor of Electroacoustic Music Composition at the Music Conservatory “G. Martini” in Bologna and director of “Tempo Reale”.
MASSIMILIANO GUIDO
Massimiliano Guido is an Associate Professor at the Musicology and Cultural Heritage Department of Pavia University, where he teaches courses on History of Musical Instruments and Historical Improvisation. At Cremona he was the Principal Investigator of the project “Music Theory While Playing”, Blue-Skye Research Grant (2017-19). He previously served as Banting Post Doctoral Fellow (2012-14) and PDRF Fellow (2011) at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University, where he worked on historical improvisation at the keyboard with Peter Schubert. In 2013-14 he was the principal investigator of the international research project “Improvisation in Classical Music Education: Rethinking our Future by Learning our Past”, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He organized two international conferences on improvisation and he is the editor of Studies in Historical Improvisation: from Cantare super Librum to Partimenti (Routledge, 2017). He holds degrees in musicology (Pavia Univ. Doctorate and Laurea, Göteborg Univ. Master of Music Research), organ (Parma Conservatory) and harpsichord (Como Conservatory). His writings cover a variety of subjects, such as music theory, performance practice, organ building, and art song. He was the chair of the “Interest Group on Improvisation” of the Society of Music Theory (2016-18). He is also active as organist, harpsichordist, and clavichordist.
CANDIDA FELICI
Candida Felici (PhD) is Professor of Music History at Milan Conservatory. She is both a musicologist and a pianist. Her research focuses on post-World War II music, especially on compositional process, intertextuality, multiculturalism, relationship music-science-technology. She devotes also to early Baroque and 18th-century music, in particular to issues of migration, notation-performance-improvisation-ornamentation, imitative writing, gender studies. In 2013 she coordinated a conference on the music of Franco Donatoni (Parma) and eventually edited Franco Donatoni. Gravità senza peso (2015). She co-edited a double number of the journal «Nuove Musiche» devoted to Jonathan Harvey (2017-18). In 2021 she coordinated the international conference on Music and Space. Past experiences, future perspectives, Parma. Since 2019 she is member of the scientific committee of «Chigiana» journal; she is also member of the board of the “Italian Musicological Society”. Since 1999 she is the pianist of the “Dynamis Ensemble” specialising in contemporary repertoire. She has performed many new works and has a strong interest in compositions including new technologies.
MARCELLO LA MATINA
Graduate in Greek Philology (Palermo, 1981) and then Ph.D. in Philosophy of Language (Frankfurt/Oder, 2001), he has been teaching Semiotics and Philosophy of Language at the University of Macerata since 2002. His monographs include Il problema del significante (2001), Texts, Pictures and Scores (2002), Chronosensitivity (2004), L’accadere del suono (2017), Archäologie des Signifikanten (2020). He also edited the first critical edition of the eighteenth-century play La Pastorale (2009). He published articles in various national and international journals and volumes. He is a member of the Center for Patristic Philosophy at the University “Vita e Salute” – San Raffaele (Milan) and, since 2015, has been a member of the Advisory Board of “Scrinium. International Journal of Patrology and Critical Hagiography” (Brill, Leiden – New York). He is also a member of the scientific committee of the music philosophy journal «De Musica». He has given congress papers, lectures, and conferences in various Italian universities and abroad, such as in Pécs (Hungary), Oxford (UK), Durham (UK), Chicago (USA), Syros (Greece), Tübingen (Germany).
MASSIMILIANO LOCANTO
Massimiliano Locanto is Associate professor in Musicology and History of Music at the University of Salerno. His research interests and publications are in two main areas: the history of medieval monody, and twentieth-century music, with a strong focus on the music of Igor Stravinsky. He is the author of the volume Stravinsky and the Musical Body. Creative Process and Meaning (Brepols, 2021) and contributed to the Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia (CUP, 2021). He edited, among others, the volumes Igor Stravinsky: Sounds and Gestures of Modernism (Brepols, 2014); Composition and Improvisation in Fifteenth-Century Music (LIM, 2017, with Julie E. Cumming and Jesse Rodin); Tracce di una tradizione sommersa. I primi Testi lirici italiani tra poesia e musica (Sismel, 2004, with Maria Sofia Lannutti). He is Associate Editor of «Chigiana. Journal of Musicological Studies»; a member of the Advisory Board of the journal «Archival Notes» (Fondazione G. Cini, Venezia); general editor of the Contemporary Composers series (Brepols Publishers).
COSTANTINO MASTROPRIMIANO
Costantino Mastroprimiano is one of the leading experts in historical piano performance internationally. After his studies in piano and chamber music with Michele Marvulli, Guido Agosti and Riccardo Brengola, devoted himself to the Fortepiano (historical piano). His vast discography features compositions by Chopin, Alkan, Burgmüller, Staehle, Moscheles, Ries, Hummel, Beethoven, Kraus, and in particular the complete piano sonatas by Muzio Clementi and by Hummel for Brilliant Classics. He is currently recording all Beethoven piano sonatas for Aulics Classics. He is frequently invited to give concerts (Accademia Filarmonica Romana, I Concerti della Normale, Società del Quartetto di Milano, Accademia Cristofori di Firenze, Micat in Vertice, etc.) and abroad (Les Nuits de Septembre – Liège, Noites de Queluz, Mozarteum di Salzburg, Salle Cortot, Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sans Souci, Haydn Geburtshaus Rohrau, la Grange aux Pianos, Ignaz Pleyel Zentrum, PBA Charleroi, etc.). He regularly teaches masterclasses in Italy, Europe, the US and Russia (APM Saluzzo, Ecole Normale de Paris, Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag, Universität – Mozarteum Salzburg, Conservatorio di Stato P. I. Čajkovskij, CSM di Malaga, Sam Houston State University – Texas). He teaches Historical Keyboards and Chamber Music in the Conservatory of music in Perugia (Italy).
ELISA NOVARA
Elisa Novara is research associate in the project “Improvisation – Composition: The Double Identity of European Music” (University of Rome “Sapienza”) and scientific collaborator in the research project “Beethovens Werkstatt. Genetische Textkritik und Digitale Musikedition at the Beethoven-Haus” in Bonn. She studied musicology, literature, and theatre at the university “Sapienza” in Rome and she holds a binational Ph.D. (Rome and Leipzig) with a thesis about Robert Schumann’s piano trios within the Robert Schumann Critical Edition. Music journalist and pianist, she published the critical edition of Robert Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen op. 132, the digital genetic edition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Duet WoO 32 as well as various musicological articles. Her research interests include the history of composition in 19th-century music, music philology and critical editions, and 18th-century music pedagogy. In 2022 she was Visiting Scholar at the Boston University Center for Beethoven Research (DAAD Postdoc Fellowship) with a project about the genesis of the four-hands piano transcription of Beethoven’s Great Fugue op. 134.
LUDOVICO PERONI
Ludovico Peroni, musicologist, improviser and composer, is post-doctoral research fellow in University of Cassino. He studied musicology at University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, improvisation at “Santa Cecilia” Conservatory in Rome, and holds a PhD in History of Performing Arts – Musicology at the University of Florence. His interests concern mostly improvisation, aesthetic studies, musical analysis, and pedagogy. His field of study is mainly focused on collective improvisation and, in particular, on conducted improvisation. He is one of the founders of the music ensemble “QRO” with whom he composed Il Sognatoio (Da Vinci, 2020). His recent publications include Pandemic Soundscaping: Rediscovering a New Aura in the Mediatised Sonic Reality (in Sounds of the Pandemic, Routledge, 2022), Improvvisazione Condotta: un valido strumento pedagogico? («Quaderni di pedagogia e comunicazione musicale», 2021), Inside an Atmospheric Producer: The Conducted Improvisation (in Resounding Spaces. Approaching Musical Atmospheres, Mimesis International, 2020). With Antonella Dicuonzo and Francesco Giomi has coedited Suono Bene Comune (Squilibri, 2023). He is a member of the editorial board of the journal «acusfere. suoni_culture_musicologie».
ELIA PIVETTA
Elia Pivetta graduated in Organ at the Conservatory of Udine and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (CH). In 2020, he obtained a Master’s Degree in Musicology at the University of Pavia – Cremona, where is currently a PhD student. His research project, coordinated by prof. Massimiliano Guido, focuses on the relationship between composition and improvisation in Eighteenth Century Venice. His research, in particular, investigates the processes of studying, learning, developing and performing the basso continuo models with specific reference to Francesco Gasparini’s treatise (L’Armonico-pratico, Venice 1708) and its possible practical realisations in the Psalms of Benedetto Marcello (Estro Poetico armónico, Venice 1724-26).
INGRID PUSTIJANAC
Ingrid Pustijanac, musicologist and musician (composition, electronic music, choral music and conducting) is Associate Professor and Assistant Director at the University of Pavia, Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage (Cremona), where she has been teaching Music Analysis and Contemporary music. Her writings include a book on György Ligeti and articles about the late 20th-century music with special attention to the spectral music (Gérard Grisey’s works and theoretical horizon, in particular), post-spectral and sound studies, free improvisation, and mixed music from the perspective of sketch studies and analysis of compositional processes. She is a member of the Editorial Board of «Archival Notes», journal by the Cini Foundation Institute of Music (Venice), and member of international research groups (“ACTOR”, University of McGill, “GRIAMI”, University of Strasbourg) and the founder and coordinator since its foundation in 2019 of “DALM” (Dialogic Approach to Living Musics), the research group of the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage (Cremona-Pavia) aimed at the study of contemporary musical creativity.
CARLO SERRA
Carlo Serra teaches at the University of Calabria and the University of Turin. His field of research is related to the phenomenology of sound and philosophy of music. The themes of his work relate to the morphology of melodic forms, the structural relationships between rhythm and timbre, and the connections that bind music theory to philosophical reflection on the metaphysics of sound. He has published numerous studies and monographs, including Musica Corpo Espressione (Quodlibet, 2008), La voce e lo spazio (Il Saggiatore, 2011), and Come suono di natura: Metaphysics of Melody in Mahler’s First Symphony (Galaad, 2021).
AGGREGATED RESEARCHERS
ALESSANDRO ARBO
Alessandro Arbo is Full Professor in the Music Department of the University of Strasbourg, where he is also head of the “Centre de Recherche et Experimentation sur l’Acte Artistique” (CREAA). After having devoted some studies to the musical cultures in the Italian border region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, he focused his researches on the aesthetics and the philosophy of music. His publications include: Archéologie de l’écoute. Essais d’esthétique musicale (Paris, 2010), Entendre comme. Wittgenstein et l’esthétique musicale (Paris, 2013), The Normativity of Musical Works: A Philosophical Inquiry (Leiden, 2021). Furthermore, he edited Perspectives de l’esthétique musicale : entre théorie et histoire (Paris, 2007), Wittgenstein and Aesthetics: Perspectives and Debates (with M. Le Du and S. Plaud, Frankfurt, 2012), Ontologie musicale : perspectives et débats (with. M. Ruta, Paris, 2014), Quand l’enregistrement change la musique, with P.-E. Lephay (Paris, 2017) and four books on the Italian composer Fausto Romitelli. The ontology of music and the theoretical issues concerning musical recording in the web age are among his current interests.
MARIA TERESA ARFINI
Maria Teresa Arfini is associate professor of musicology at the Rome 3 University. She studied musicology at the universities of Turin and Bologna, and piano and composition at the Turin Conservatory. She has published, in addition to essays and curatorships, a monograph on Felix Mendelssohn (Palermo, 2010) and one on Counterpoint in the piano music of Robert Schumann (Florence, 2012); she deals not only with 19th century German instrumental music, but also with the history of compositional techniques and didactics of composition, and with 17th century instrumental music. She is currently working on a monograph on Liszt’s late piano production.
ALESSANDRO BERTINETTO
Alessandro Bertinetto (1971) is Full Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Turin. He was researcher at the University of Udine and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the FU Berlin. He has been visiting scholar in Spain, France, Germany, Japan and Brazil and was a member of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Aesthetics (2012-2018). He coordinates the seminar “ART – Aesthetics Research Torino”. He writes short reviews of contemporary music for the webzine «Kathodik». His current research focuses on the connection between aesthetics, improvisation and habits. His latest books are Eseguire l’inatteso (il Glifo 2016); La pensée des sons. Introduction à la philosophie de la musique (Delatour, 2017) (it. Il pensiero dei suoni, Bruno Mondadori, 2012); The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts, ed. with M. Ruta (Routledge, 2022) and Aesthetics of Improvisation (Fink/Brill 2022) (it. Estetica dell’improvvisazione, il Mulino, 2021).
ANTONIO CASCELLI
Associate Professor and Head of Music at Maynooth University, Ireland. His main research interests are in arts and music in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, Monteverdi, Schenker and Chopin, music analysis, the relationship between music and visual arts, Goffredo Petrassi. He has published a book on Schenker’s material on Chopin from the Oster Collection, New York Public Library (LIM, 2017). His articles on Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and L’Orfeo are published in the «Cambridge Opera Journal» (2017) and «Philomusica Online» (2018). He is co-editor, together with Denis Condon, of Experiencing Music and Visual Cultures. Threshold, Intermediality, and Synchresis (Routledge, 2021). With Christopher Morris has coedited Re-envisaging Music. Listening in the Visual Age («Chigiana. Journal of Musicological Studies», 2021). Articles on visual and music culture are forthcoming in The Museum of Renaissance Music (Brepols) and Music and Visual Culture in Renaissance Italy (Routledge). He is currently working on a project titled: “Mapping Aural and Visual Imagination in Sixteenth Century Italy. An alternative look at the origins of opera”.
IMPROCOMP TECH TEAM
ANTONIO ARTESE
Antonio Artese holds a Diploma in Pianoforte Principale from the Rome Conservatory “Santa Cecilia,” a Degree in Theoretical Philosophy from the University “G.D’Annunzio” in Chieti, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a multifaceted pianist, composer, and promoter of musical projects in higher education. He has directed international study centers of major U.S. universities in Italy and is an expert in digital technologies. He is the founder of “Spectra Enterprises”, the Florentia Consort in Florence, and the founder and artistic director of the “Argiano Baroque Music Festival”. Currently, Antonio Artese serves as the Dean of the Chigiana Global Academy Programs and is a board member and founder of “SigmArt Ltd” in London and “Sonusplay srl” in Torino.