Title: “Ars
video: The Short Music Video in Early and Classical Music”.
Authors:
Rubén López-Cano. Escola Superior
de Música de Catalunya.
Abstract:
On
rare occasions do we ponder on the ways in which visual and digital culture and
the media have impacted the diffusion of the so-called “Classical Music” although
this influence is beginning to bear its fruits. The fact is that in the latest
decades the production of promotional videos, documentaries and artistic videos
has increased, especially in the domain of Early Music.
In
their quest to create images for music, these audiovisual artifacts sometimes
look like pop music video clips or pieces of Auteur Cinema even if the
results prove to be unequal. Despite some very relevant findings, Classical
Music has yet to be endowed with its own means of expression and its own visual
aesthetic.
In
this paper we aim to analyze four audiovisual productions:
-
Luca
Marconato (director), Riccardo Minasi (violin, conductor), Musica Antica Roma, Dreaming
a King, 2010
-
Olivier
Simmonet (director), Cecilia Bartoli (sopran), Giovanni Antonini (conductor),
Il Giardino Armonico, Sacrificium: The art of castrati, 2010.
-
Magdalena
Kozena (sopran), Freue dich, erlöste Schar, BWV 30, 1999.
-
Matthew
Brown (director), Greg Anderson, Elizabeth Joy Roe (piano), Der Erlkönig,
2011.
After
briefly characterizing some film styles and reviewing the adequacy of the current methodology in audiovisual analysis
when applied to this particular domain (Nicholas Cook, Carol Vernalis, Paolo Peverini),
we will highlight how these proposals have challenged the leery glance that classical
music has traditionally cast upon mass media. We will underline some aspects of
the media performance in its staging, dramaturgy and the impact it has on our
traditional notion of concert. This will allow us to highlight some
performative aspects, like the improvement of the audience’s perceptual ability
towards conventional concert, the intensification and orientation of their attention
towards some little known aspects of the dynamics of musical gestures; or the beautification
of the concert into a true artifact in which music is just one element among
others, although it is the one with the highest ranking.
