Music in the museum

Bologna (Italy) has a special museum with one of the largest collections of western music-related books, instruments and paintings from around the world. It's origins were linked to a music loving priest. The building that hosts the museum also has a rich history. This photo-essay presents a virtual tour of the museum and its history.

Introduction

When I had first heard about the music museum of Bologna, I was a bit confused -.how can you put music in a museum? May be they will keep old recordings of the music, I had thought. In India, music has been exclusively an oral tradition - the different Ragas and their rules are taught from teachers to the students, but traditionally they were not written down.

In the west the earliest examples of written down music came up in 6th and 7th century when Plainchants were written for Gregorian prayers. With passing of centuries as the Gregorian chants became more complex, the accompanying music notations also evolved. The notations on five lines came up around 14th century.

With the invention of movable types printing press in the fifteenth century, carefully handwritten music notations could be mass-produced for the first time in history. That was also the period when the formal structures of what is called symphonic music and opera music were being defined in Europe and especially in Florence and Naples in Italy.

The music collection of Fr Martini

The international music museum of Bologna has the origins of its important music collection in the work of a priest called Fr Martini.

Fr Giovanni Battista Martini was born in Bologna in 1706. His father was a violinist and he studied music from a young age. He entered the Franciscan order of priests in 1722, when he was 16 years old. Three years later at the St Francis church, his music compositions received wide appreciation. Later,  in 1758 AD, Fr Martini joined the Academia Filarmonica (Philharmonic Academy) of Bologna, one of the most important music schools in Europe at that time. He was the "definitore perpetuo", the person called to resolve and decide the music related controversies, of the Academy. He had this role till 1781.

Fr Martini's fame spread fast and promising music students came to his school from different parts of Europe. For example, around 1755 Johann Christian Bach, youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach, came to Fr Martini to study music. In 1770 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart took the entrance test to become a member of Academia Filarmonica.

Fr Martini hardly ever left Bologna, except for some music concerts. In 1756 AD, pope Benedict XIV asked him to transfer to Vatican to the St Peter's church, but he excused himself saying that he was not well. Yet, he was able to knit a network reaching far away parts of Europe and even outside.

Fr Martini was interested in collecting music manuscripts, the written down notations of religious music, symphonies and operas. His fame as a music teacher and his role in the prestigious Academy, helped him in writing to people and to churches all over the Europe to ask for copies of any old music notations. Many of the churches, who had their old prayer books with music notations were happy to give them to Fr Martini, in exchange for new music books. Thus the collection of Fr Martini grew.

Fr Martini wrote "The history of music", one of the most significant works on music history of its time. He was supposed to write it in five volumes. However, only three volumes of this book were published as Fr Martini died while he was writing volume four. He also wrote around 700 musical compositions.

In 1750, pope Benedict XIV had given assurance that the music collection of Fr Martini will be archived and kept safe by the church. When Fr Martini died in 1784, his music collection had around 17,000 volumes. He also collected music instruments and paintings of his students and other famous musicians.

During Fr Martini's time, Bologna was a Papal city, governed by Vatican with support of Austrian military. In 1796 when Napoleon attacked Bologna, part of those materials were taken to Austria, where they are now kept in Vienna library.

Beginnings of the Music Museum of Bologna

In 1827, Fr Martini's collection was used to set up the library of the Philharmonic academy of Bologna. In 1986, when the international music museum was set up in the Sanguinetti Palace in Bologna, the library collection of Philharmonic academy was shifted there. Sanguinetti palace underwent a long period of restoration before it was opened to public in 2004.

However, apart from Fr Martini, Bologna also had many other important music personalities, whose music related objects were part of city's heritage. Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale or the Musical Bibliographical Museum of Bologna, was founded in 1959 to hold the Comune di Bologna's collection of musical objects. It was renamed International Museum and Library of Bologna in 2004.

History of the Sanguinetti Palace

The international music museum of Bologna is located in the Sanguinetti palace, an old noble house in the city centre of Bologna. In 16th century this building belonged to Riario family.

Near the end of 18th century, when Bologna was a Papal city, Napoleon Bonaparte from France came to "liberate" Bologna. For some time, Napoleon's forces won the war and count Antonio Aldini was appointed as his Secretary of State of his Italian reign. Count Aldini came to live in this building. Many of the rooms of the palace were redecorated and symbols of Italian independence from Papal rule were painted including tricolour flags and "bands of grain" ("fasce" in Italian that were later taken over by Mussolini and gave rise to the term "fascists").

However, Napoleon's rule did not last very long and Pope's forces, supported by Austrian military, re-occupied Bologna. In 19th century, this building was bought by a well known opera tenor singer Domenico Donzelli, and some time, even famous music composer Gioacchino Rossini also lived in this building as guest of Donzelli.

Donzelli was very famous in the first half of nineteenth century and performed in operas in Naples, Paris and London. A couple of years before his death in 1873, he sold this house to another noble family - the Sanguinetti. The building was donated to the municipality of Bologna in 1986.

Frescoes of the Sanguinetti palace

Renovation of the building in the 18th century, brought many famous artists to design frescoes in this building. On the ground floor, there is a trompe d'oeil (painting for giving an optical illusion) by Luigi Busatti.

On first floor, room used for dining by count Aldini, has a magnificent example of "Boschereccia" (the forest). It was fashionable in 18th century Bologna to paint plants and trees on the wall of a room to give it the look of a garden and these rooms were called "Boschereccia". Usually these rooms were built on first floor of noble houses, because usually the families lived on this floor. The boschereccia room of Sanguinetti palace has some paintings by the young Pelagio Pelagi, who later became famous as an art collectionist and as an artist.

In other rooms of this building, while you admire the beautiful frescoes, you can still see partial signs of Napoleon's arrival and the "independence" of Bologna with the three colours of Italian flag along with bands of grain painted in different places on the roofs of the rooms (though when Papal forces retook Bologna, they had tried to cancel those frescoes).

Objects in the Music Museum

The museum gives you an opportunity to look at original music notations and books from the past 5-6 centuries, different kinds of music instruments, portraits of famous musicians, music instruments used by famous musicians (especially musicians like Rossini, who lived in Bologna).

The museum organises numerous initiatives including guided tours and music laboratories.

A visit to the museum is an opportunity to look at music in terms of its history, its academic study and its evolution.

Conclusions

The international museum of Bologna is a very special place for lovers of western classical and operistic music. In a wonderfully frescoed building steeped into history, it gives you a unique view towards the evolution of the music world over the past centuries.

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Down the musical memories lane

This post has been stimulated by the book “How music works” by David Byrne of the Talking Heads music group. It is about my musical memories as well as, presentation of some of my music related images.

David Byrne’s book has been a revelation – bringing an understanding about an area about which I had never thought before. Most persons like or even love music. Yet, we have no idea about how music is made and appreciated today. In the book, Byrne writes:

“Just as theater is an actor and a writer’s medium, and cinema is a director’s medium, recorded music often came to be a producer’s medium, in which they could sometimes out-auteur the artists they were recording.”

This surprised me very much - would you have thought that recorded music is a producer's medium and not the medium of the artist singing or playing that music?

When films had changed from the silent era to the talkies, there was a big change and suddenly actors who had dominated the silent movie era, were left without work. Similarly, each technical change related to the music recording and distribution – from radios to gramophones to tape recorders to CD players to MP3 players, affected and changed the way the music was played, recorded and understood, Byrne explains in his book. Where you played the music, from a jukebox in a noisy bar or in a concert hall, also influenced it. For example, why does an average song’s duration is around three and a half minutes all over the world and across different languages and cultures? Read Byrne’s book if you like music, it gives you an insight into things about music that today we take for granted.

My musical memories

My first memories of music are linked to the Bush transistor my parents had bought in 1963. It was the time when Laxmikant Pyarelal had come out with Parasmani and were dominating all music charts. It was the time of Amin Sayani presenting the Binaca geetmala on radio Ceylon. Listening to radio Ceylon was not easy, finding the station on SW2 was tough, but there was no choice because at that time there were no sponsored programmes on Vividh Bharati. Guide had come out in 1965 and I remember the first time I had heard Kishore Kumar singing “Gaata rahe mera dil”.

Amin Sayani also did 15 minutes long film-trailor programmes that presented the main story, actors, some dialogues and songs from new films. I remember listening to one such programme about “Phool aur patthar” and Meena Kumari’s voice from that film.

Around 1966-67 I had first seen the gramophone with the handle on the side, that you had to crank up to listen to the LPs. One day I will also have a gramophone, I had promised myself.

Late 1960s had introduced me to the English pop music at my cousin’s home, when I had listened to "Delialah" by Tom Jones and the "Sunshine girl" by the Herman's Hermits.

Around that time I had discovered Forces’ Request on Delhi B on Friday evenings and thus found out Cliff Richards and Jim Reeves. Songs like “Outsider”, “The lemon tree” and “To sir with love”, had become my favourites.

During the 1970s, I had discovered the Hindustani classical music. My uncle had introduced me to “Nirguna bhajans” by Kumar Gandharav. Going to night concerts on Rafi Marg, and listening to giants like Vilayat Khan had suddenly made me appreciate Indian Ragas.

During 1970s, I still remember the first time I had heard Prabha Atre sing “Tan man dhan tope varun” and Mehdi Hassan sing “Awaraghi”. And I remember my first concert of Kishori Amonkar.

In the 1970s, my aunt had shifted to the staff quarters of Janaki Devi college in Rajendra Nagar and that had given opportunities to listen to maestros like Bhimsen Joshi and Pandit Jasraj.

I had come to the European symphonic music and the opera music only after I had come to Italy in 1980. Dvorak’s “In the new world” was the first symphony that I had liked and slowly it had opened the doors to appreciation of other composers, from Verdi to Beethoven. On the other hand, though I loved watching the operas like Aida and Madam Butterfly, I could not appreciate listening to them for a very long time. It is relatively recently that I have started enjoying listening to operas.

Over the last three decades, my work took me to different countries of the world and I started appreciating music from other languages, like Arabic music from Egypt and traditional polyphonic singing from Mongolia.

A visual music tour

Once I started searching for images related to music in my archives, I found that I have hundreds of them. Selecting a few for presenting here was not easy and I had to discard many images that I liked very much. Any way here is my selection.

Let me start with images of music from India - India has such a rich tradition of folk-music, Hindustani and Carnatak music and of course the film music. I like all the different kinds of Indian music.

Today where ever in the world you may live, you can usually listen to music from your country through the internet. However in the 1980s and most of 1990s, it was not so - finding Indian music in Italy was not easy. However, Hare Krishna groups had Indian bhajans and I remember buying a Hari Om Saran music cassette from them once. The image below of the Hare Krishna persons singing and dancing is from Prague.

Prague is also where I saw the wonderful sculptures of blindfolded musicians and dancers by Anna Chromy.

The next image is from London underground, that has a rich tradition of buskers playing music at tube stations and in the metro train. Acoustics of some of the tube stations is marvellous and some of the music I have heard in the tube station sounded absolutely amazing. Like I remember once listening to a busker playing Ravel's "Bolero" on a saxophone at the Piccadilly station, it was the most beautiful rendering of this music that I had ever heard.

London also has the long-standing musical show on Queen's Eddie Mercury - do you remember him singing "I want to break free"? Listening to him, made my blood pulse.

The next two images are from Vienna (Austria) - folk musicians from Slovenia and the statue of Mozart.

The next two images are from Brazil, from a school that teaches Amerindian and Afro music traditions to children to create awareness and respect for these two cultures that are often looked down in contemporary Brazil.

In different parts of the world the dominating cultures mean that the traditions of the indigenous people are seen as "inferior" - music can help us in changing perceptions and helping people to appreciate the value of other cultures. When I had visited the school in Brazil, I had asked myself if in India, the songs and music of Dalits and tribal groups have specific cultural characteristics in different states of India and are similarly ignored? Perhaps someone who knows more about this, can answer my question?

The next two images are from Mongolia. Mongolian traditional singing uses polyphonic sounds to create a special kind of music. I love these ancient melodies, usually sung by men, that seem to come from somewhere deep inside them. The second image has chanting of Buddhist prayers by the monks, an ancient tradition of sacred music that has the power to touch me deeply.

During my journeys in China, I had the opportunity to listen to both traditional music as well as the pop Chinese music. While ancient Chinese traditions received a blow during the cultural revolution and were ruthlessly crushed, in the last twenty years, many of those traditions have re-emerged. The next image presents a guy singing a modern song.

The next two images are from the annual buskers' festival held in Ferrara (Italy) in August. I love the street artists and thus I like visiting Ferrara to listening to them from different parts of the world.

The last images of this post are all from Bologna, the Italian city where I live. Bologna is culturally very active city and every visit to the city centre presents some new opportunity for listening to live music.

The next image is from the music museum of Bologna, one of the most interesting museums that I have seen, presenting notations, music books and instruments from different parts of the world.

The last image of this post is of Dr Ashwini Bhide, a Hindustani classical singer from India, during her performance in Bologna. I like her singing very much and one of her bhajans, "Ganapati vighnaharan" is my favourite. During her concert in Bologna, she had sung that bhajan for me and it remains one of my most cherished musical memories.

I hope that this post has stimulated your musical memories! Wish you all an enjoyful walk down your musical memories lane.

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Springsteen in Bologna

Last night Bruce Springsteen was here in Bologna. It was his first concert in Italy. When I heard about it, it was already too late. There were no tickets left.

Fortunately our local TV channel transmitted parts of it.

Silence please, he had asked for it and got it, to sing about the invisible world, the world of war, peace and loneliness of emigrants. Plain simple words, accompanied by his guitar or harmonica. There was no orchestra. Wonderful.

Made me think of Gulzaar. "Hamne dekhi ha un ankhon ki mehkati khusboo.., sirf ahsaas hai yeh ruh se mehsoos karo..".

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Nostalgia killing by fresh fruit & Vegetables

On internet, I watched the songs from the film "Morning Raga" this morning. They are really beautiful. Shabana Azmi looks great. Perizaad Zorabian also. But it is the music that gave me goose-flesh. I had listened to the cassette of this film in Delhi in December and had thought that it was monotonous.

Back in Bologna, I had tried playing it in the car while going to work a couple of times, and then given it up. And then today, watching the songs is completely different from listening to them. Listening to the cassette now will be another experience. Yet it is still the same cassette!

Morning Raga brought memories of Malati. Renu's friend in NPL. In our home, everyone was didi-dada, but not in Rahul's home. There Renu was just Renu. And Malati. Her voice was heavy, almost like a man's. She practiced Carnatak music. Heavenly. Thinking of Malati brought in mind her sister in law, Vatsal's wife, and their twin sons. I remember her crying desperately in the corridor at Wellingdon hospital, the blanket dirty with blood. I didn't know, how to console her. What do we men know about loss of some thing that grows inside you?

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I have cooked bhindi today. And some arabi. It makes me a bit sad to find all these vegetables at the Bangladeshi fruit and vegetable stalls in Bologna. Till two years ago, I would wait for months to go to Delhi, mentally tasting arhar ki daal, bhindi, karela, mooli ... Now every thing is there in the Bangladeshi and Pakistani shops, very convenient but not so good for the nostalgia.

The Bangladeshi girl in the store had packed bhindi and arabi for me, and then asked me, if I wanted some fresh mangoes? It made me shudder. All my nostalgia, longings and memories killed by fresh fruit & vegetables that come every week from Bangladesh.

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