Presentation

«His father was Vincenzio Galilei, a gentleman most capable in mathematics and mainly in speculative music, of which he had such excellent knowledge that perhaps, amongst the modern theorists of greatest fame, there had been none up to present day who wrote better and with more erudition».
Vincenzo Viviani – A Historical Account of the life of Galileo Galilei , 1654

Father of modern science, Galileo (1564 – 1642) was the son of Voincenzo Galilei, a well known theorist, composer and lutenist who was affiliated with the Camerata de’ Bardi. Vincenzo was the first and one of the main exponents of the ideas of the Camerata: he entered into conflict with classical tradition and proposed a return to Monody against the rampaging counterpoint of polyphony, thus contributing to the musical revolution that brought as a result the birth of Baroque music in a significant manner, from both a theoretical and aesthetic musical standpoint.

Vincenzo and Galileo are among the main witnesses of the artistic and scientific revolution that flourished in Italy in the first decades of the 1600s.
According to his first biographer, Vincenzo Viviani, Galileo was an excellent player of keyboard instruments and of the lute, “surpassing in gentleness and grace in the manner of touching the instrument his own father”. In addition to instrumental practice, Galileo dealt with music also in his scientific research and in his treatises on art, giving an indirect but fundamental contribution to music theory, by deepening and developing the theories that his father exposed in the “Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna” (Dialogue on ancient and modern music).
Moreover, the discovery and comprehension of some acoustical phenomena are attributed to Galileo, as described in the “Discorso intorno a due nuove scienze, giornata prima”– (A discourse on two new sciences, first day).

«In touching the keys and the lute, with the example and the teaching of his father, he reached such excellence that several times he found himself competing with the main professors of those times in Florence and Pisa, being in such instrument very rich in invention, and surpassing in sweetness and grace in playing the same his own father».
Vincenzo Viviani – A Historical Account of the life of Galileo Galilei , 1654

From an aesthetical viewpoint, the new ideas of composers and theorists (most of all those of the Florentine Camerta de’ Bardi, of which Vincenzo Galilei was part, so as Mei, de’ Cavalieri, Rinuccini and others) bridged the distance between poetry and music: Galileo embraced his father’s theories (cfr. the quote in exergo) the central idea in the musica revolution to “move the affections of the soul” as Monteverdi recalls, and his “second practice”.

The idea that instrumental music is not second to vocal music, a concept that was first introduced by his father, became an integral part of this position for Galileo. Instrumental music, such as was also performed by his brother Michelangelo, lute player, presents such “harshness and dissonances” apt to “awaken hidden affections”: in the span of a few years the musical style drastically changed with respect to that of Vincenzo’s times, and went in the direction that he had hoped and that his son Galileo foresaw.

The musical program starts from the first works by Vincenzo and Michelangelo (the first collection of works was published thanks to the financial support of Galileo) and their contemporaries, and follows the stylistic evolution of the first thirty years of the century, illustrating the “second practice” and the “theory of affection”, which strongly sustained the idea that music should not limit itself to describe human sentiments, but that it is itself fully capable to kindle passions.

This “musical garland” is enriched by electronic music interventions elaborated from planet sounds, live extemporary vocal improvisations and a series of texts by Galileo that illustrate his passions and his moods throughout the course of his life.

Musical performance in GALILEO – THE ORDER OF THE EYE is supported by a video- art projection.

Why the use of video-art? First of all, because it transforms the concert into the narration of a tale; opposite to classical film, this is takes the form of a free narration, and does not attempt to give a univocal meaning to such a vaste and complex story, but leaves the spectator with freedom to orient himself in Galileo’s world proceeding by allegorical thinking, free associations of ideas, perception of atmosphere.

The second reason is to help the public to approach the music of Galileo’s times: to make XVII Century music come out of history textbooks and to make it accessible, to make it come to life through our contemporary means. It’ an evocative process that has no claim or wish to be exhaustive; it is not a biography or an essay on Galileo: rather, it is a fresco painting, an immersion in a world where men were changing the schemes of thought, while contemplating the vertiginous new horizons of earth and sky.

The story of Galileo Galilei is a portrait of a genial, controversial and desperate solitude. It is the history of an obstinate thought, alone against everything else in the world: that obstinacy of truth that radically changes the place of Man in history, and in this case, in the universe.
Galileo never looked in the direction everyone else was looking.
If one pointed to earth he looked at the sky, and viceversa.
This disobedience was the cause of his solitude as a scientist.
His clumsy curiosity brought him where no one had imagined to be able to arrive.

When one would point at the charts of the Ptolemaic system or of some other divine cosmology, he first wanted to look at the sky with his own eyes (in the same way that his father refused the Pythagorean system supported by Zarlino, since it did not correspond to what his ears heard).

The eye of Galileo pointed to the sky marked the beginning of modern thinking. Galileo’s eye is not just the physical organ in itself, but it is the immaterial eye of reason; it is what prompted him not to trust the astronomical investigation done with a “naked eye” or just theoretically, but instead moved him to look into a telescope, a more powerful eye; it is what convinced him to distrust official theories, already written on paper, and instead to investigate with his own eyes

“this immense book that is opened in front of our eyes, I mean the Universe…”

GALILEO – THE ORDER OF THE EYE is a metaphor of vision, of solitude, of the contrast between darkness and light in the material and spiritual universe.

So there were not only aesthetics and formal revolutions in those years, but also scientific revolutions regarding music theory, acoustics, the temperaments and tuning of the instruments.

«[…] False opinions, born in men persuaded by the writings of some, and in which I myself have been, and of which having lately informed myself through the means of experience, master of all things».

Vincenzo Galilei, Discorso intorno all’opere di Messer Gioseffo Zarlino (A discourse on the works of Gioseffo Zarlino) , Firenze, publshed by G. Marescotti, 1589

Observation is the key element in the story of Vincenzo and Galileo Galilei. This explains the presence of images in the performance, in addition to music. Vincenzo was a revolutionary theorist: he did not accept the prevailing ideas of his times because these worked in theory, but did not correspond to what could be found through experimental observation. His experiments on string tension were carried on with the help of his son, who at the time was a young man, and were repeated by Galileo in his mature years and in his Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (A discourse about two new sciences), 1638.

And so the rosette of Vincenzo’s lute is transformed into the lens of Galileo’s telescope…

It could be said that modern science, always progressing through experimenting and verification of observations, was born with music and with Vincenzo. He taught this to his son Galileo, the one who changed forever the vision of natural phenomena. The new systems of acoustics and music theory of Vincenzo (brought to completion by his son Galileo) thus substituted the complex conglomeration of myth, scholarly dogma, mysticism, and numerology that formed the foundation of ancient theory with a much less imposing base, but a more solid and permanent one.

Thus, following a passion for observation, and with the freedom and power that Vincenzo and later Galileo conferred to the new magus, (the artist and scientist), we look at the cosmos with different eyes and interact with it, searching for new meanings. We travel through the eye of Galileo listening to the musician of which he speaks in the letter to Cardi, that is the one who moves us to compassion with harshness and accents full of pathos.