Rome Environs

“What Makes It Italian?” is a music listening and discussion group that meets online on the Zoom platform and is open to everyone.
Participation is free.
The group is led by Gina Crusco, who has also guided listening at Bard LLI and Riverdale Y; acted as maestro del coro for opera in Italy; instructed music at The New School; and directed Underworld Productions.
Please email ginacrusco@gmail.com to confirm your attendance and receive an invitation link.

The second encounter will focus on:
Sacro Bosco, Bomarzo, with composer Francesco Canova da Milano
and
Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati, with composers Girolamo Frescobaldi and Cesarina Ricci de Tingoli

Whatever the purpose of a garden – pleasure, contemplation, practicality, or botany – it is the artifact of someone taming chaos into a recognizable form. When garden forms share underlying aesthetics with music, they make the unseen tangible. In this series, we listen to works by composers associated with Italian gardens, including Leonora d’Este, Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo), Francesco Veracini, and Federico Campana.

Like a gardener, the composer “weeds out” unwanted sounds and manipulates others into preordained forms. We explore parallels between gardens – nature organized in space – and music – noise organized in time. Just as some garden designs, like the labyrinth, defy geography and era, so music speaks an international language. Let’s listen.