RESEARCH OUTPUTS
Table of Contents
The Interactive Muse: Piano Improvisation in the 19th Century
coordinator: Susanna Pasticci
In this section you can browse through some materials related to a workshop that took place in Rome from the 16th to the 18th of October 2024. The aim of the workshop was to experiment with new approaches to the performance of nineteenth-century repertoire, based on the recovery of improvisation and historical performance practices.
Distinguished scholars Costantino Mastroprimiano, John Mortensen, and Giorgio Sanguinetti gave lectures on historical sources, early 19th century partimento and Romantic improvisation techniques. These lectures provided the participating pianists with valuable guidelines for improvising preludes and interludes when performing pieces from the 19th century repertoire.
The alternation of these performance-based sessions with theoretical ones, coordinated by Susanna Pasticci, featured discussions among a range of experts, including musicologists, performers, and philosophers and psychologists. The focus of these discussions centred on exploring the spaces of improvisational action suggested by 19th-century scores, which musicians of the time could easily recognise and interpret, but which are no longer fully decipherable for contemporary performers.
The final concert, preceded by a panel discussion with music critics and organisers, featured improvisations by eight workshop participants on pieces from the Romantic repertoire. The videos in this section document highlights of the lectures given by the three lecturers, as well as excerpts from the final concert. The contributions of the musicologists and scholars will be published in a volume that will be available on this portal.
Musicking on Early Keyboards: An Embodied Approach
Collective Improvisation and Instant Composition: 1960-2000
coordinator: Gianmario Borio
In this section, several materials related to the workshop held in Rome on the 27th-29th October 2023 can be consulted. Three protagonists of the early scene of European improvisation – Alvin Curran, Eddie Prévost and Giancarlo Schiaffini – trained separate group of musicians in instrumental practice, deep listening, group interaction, and real-time-composing. The transmission of notions, principles and techniques which characterized a phase of great creativity in European improvisation was combined with discussions devoted to the expectations and needs of the present day. Gianmario Borio, Valentina Bertolani, Sabine Feisst, Maurizio Farina, Kai Lothwesen, Ingrid Pustijanac, and Veniero Rizzardi animated the theoretical sessions. The final concert presented the performances of the quintets led by the three maestri.
A report of the workshop with excerpts of talks, discussions and performances is preceded by four lectures by Gianmario Borio about aesthetic issues, relationship to politics, performance styles of the most influential ensembles of the 1960s and 1970s.
Extemporization, Improvisation, Composition in Jazz
coordinator: Vincenzo Caporaletti
This section presents materials related to the project Extemporisation, Improvisation, and Composition in Jazz: Analysing Enrico Pieranunzi’s European Trio. This event offered a rigorous musicological investigation into the open rehearsal sessions of the trio composed of Enrico Pieranunzi (piano), Thomas Fonnesbæk (double bass), and André Ceccarelli (drums).
The sessions, held at the Conservatory of Fermo, facilitated an immersive research environment where participating musicologists engaged directly with the ensemble. The focus extended beyond stylistic and formative elements to a granular analysis of the dynamics of interplay, both at the ensemble level and through individual performance lenses. Under the coordination of Vincenzo Caporaletti, the initiative probed the intricate interaction between improvisation, extemporisation, and composition within a unified performance setting.
The trio’s exploration of jazz’s stylistic idioms served as a live model for examining how audiotactile music functions as a multi-dimensional research object. Such music, carachterized by its immediacy and performative depth, invites inquiry from diverse musicological paradigms, including phenomenological philosophy, structuralist analysis, historical contextualization, and psycho-cognitive methodologies. The rehearsals included structured interactive sessions, allowing scholars to test theoretical frameworks against real-time improvisational processes. These interactions illuminated the cognitive and aesthetic mechanisms underpinning spontaneous musical creation, contributing to a broader epistemological discourse on music as a temporal art form.
The event culminated on 18 November with a free concert at the Lauro Rossi Theatre in Macerata, where the trio synthesized theoretical insights through a dynamic and performative interpretation.
The video materials included in this section provide empirical documentation of key moments from the open rehearsals. They also feature transcriptions by Caporaletti, bridging the gap between the audio-tactile repertoire and contemporary written compositions, thus offering valuable resources for further scholarly analysis.
Piano Improvisation in the 18th and Early 19th Century
coordinator: Giorgio Sanguinetti
This section includes materials concerning the workshop that took place in Perugia from 13th to 15th April 2023. The workshop focused on the role of improvisation in the performance of piano music from late 18th to early 19th century. Distinguished scholars Costantino Mastroprimiano, John Mortensen, and Giorgio Sanguinetti gave lectures on historical sources, 18th century partimento and Classical improvisation techniques. These lectures provided the participating pianists as well as to auditors the essential guidelines for realizing partimenti, improvising cadences, lead-in and fermatas, and extemporizing whole pieces in Classical style.
The workshop alternated performance-based sessions with theoretical ones eliciting discussions among teachers and participants, exploring the spaces of improvisational action and the stylistically and historically appropriate modes of interaction.
The videos in this section document highlights of the lectures given by the three lecturers, as well as excerpts from the final concert. The contributions will be published in a volume that will be available on this portal.
The Rhythmic Body: Improvisation in Theatre and Dance
coordinator: Sonia Bellavia
The workshop took place in Rome (CAE, Città dell’Altra Economia) and was aimed at actors, singers and dancers with experience in the field of theatrical improvisation. During the two days (March 20 and 21, 2025), theoretical and practical sessions alternated. The first day opened with reports by Gianmario Borio, who presented the PRIN project within which the workshop is situated. This was followed by talks by Francesca Falcone (professor of dance theory at the National Academy of Dance in Rome) on the role of improvisation in contemporary dance, and by Leonardo Mancini (professor of theater history at the University of Turin) on improvisation in Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret.
This was followed by the two workshop sessions by Julia Varley (Odin Teatret) and that of Ewa Benesz (Teatr-Laboratorium Grotowski), who held the second practical session on the morning of the second day. Finally, Cathy Marchand had participants experience the improvisational work conducted by Living Theatre.
The second and last theoretical session consisted of the paper by Sonia Bellavia (coordinator of the La Sapienza unit of this PRIN), who in historical perspective reasoned on the drives that led the great masters of the last century to open the path that led to contemporary performativity.
The interplay between theory and practice allowed participants to understand and experience the process that in the second half of the twentieth century revolutionized the way the performer’s corporeality was conceived, his relationship with space and with the audience. The workshop concluded with a panel discussion and a talk by Eugenio Barba (Odin Teatret) on the meaning of theatrical improvisation.
Borderscape Improvisations: From Analog Music to Live Coding
coordinator: Ingrid Pustijanac
This section includes audiovisual documentation on the workshop held in Cremona from 26th to 29th March 2025. The aim of the workshop was to explore the many facets of improvisation in electroacoustic, electronic, and live coding contexts. Topics addressed included the boundaries and intersections between composition and improvisation, the role of the body and technological devices in shaping collective sonic events, and the ongoing challenges in connecting analog and digital bodies with concepts such as gesture, freedom, control, feedback, and latency.
Theoretical contributions by Miriam Akkermann, Giacomo Albert, Pierre Couprie, Simone Faraci, Candida Felici, Francesco Giomi, Leo Izzo, Giovanni Mori, Ludovico Peroni, Sandro Pizzichelli, Ingrid Pustijanac, Luisa Santacesaria and Francesca Scigliuzzo helped to define a shared research framework around these themes. The practical sessions and open rehearsals – led by Alexandra Cárdenas (Berlin), Walter Prati (Milan) and Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay (Lugano) and involving a group of nine young musicians – were central to the exploration and testing of each research axis.
The performers’ diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and practices sparked new questions regarding the use of specific analog-digital technologies and configurations. These issues were discussed collectively by scholars and performers throughout the workshop and during the final panel held after the closing concert. Excerpts and key points from the theoretical sessions, rehearsals, discussions and performances are available in the audiovisual materials provided below.