ACTIVITIES
HISTORY AND MUSIC CONGRESS
History and Music Congress Activities organized by Fundació Cultural CdM
More info
FRIDAY, JULY 19
18:00 Gothic Hall
Opening Conference:
Presented by: Juan Ángel Vela del Campo and José Luis García del Busto
Juan Angel Vela del Campo. He is an essayist and has been involved in cultural dissemination tasks in press, radio, and television for the past three decades. Founder and cultural director of the “Digital Opera” project at the Liceu de Barcelona during its first four years, involving 49 universities from all Spanish autonomous communities, as well as several from Portugal, France, and Mexico. He also served as cultural director for a decade for the “Tutto Verdi” project in Bilbao and was a consultant for the School of Higher Musical Studies of Galicia for several years. Director and editorial coordinator of the “History of Music in Spain and Hispanoamerica” in 8 volumes, published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica. Winner of the Music and Theater Criticism Award from the Salzburg Cultural Fund in 2000, he has been teaching “Music and Opera” for 15 years in the cultural journalism master’s program at CEU and for 8 years at the summer courses of the Carlos III University and the Circle of Fine Arts. He is also the honorary president of the Cappella Neapolitana and a member of the advisory board of the Orfeón Pamplonés.
José Luis García del Busto is one of the great patriarchs of musical knowledge in Spain. He serves with lucidity as an Academician at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. His studies and publications on music and musicians are a reference. For a decade, he was a reliable and intelligent music critic for the newspaper El Pais and later for the newspaper ABC. His analyses combine rigor and passion perfectly. Born in Játiva (Valencia) in 1947, he is a brilliant lecturer.
19:30 La Llotja
Dance Workshop: “Bureo”
Presented by: Toni Aparisi
Learn to dance traditional dances and actively participate in the meeting during the course.
SATURDAY, JULY 20
17:30 Municipal Theater
Round Table: “Of passions and landscapes: reflections on music from Morella”
Moderated by: Juan Ángel Vela del Campo Participants: Stefano Russomanno (Scherzo), Luis Calvo (International Festival on the Camino de Santiago), and Cosme Marina (International Festival of Santander)
The round tables proposed each year by the Morella Festival at its beginning represent a point of reflection on musical and cultural programming in a very particular context, on the importance of musical education, and on the dissemination and scope of content on a large scale. This year, Stefano Russomanno, a model of precise and elegant musical journalism, will participate, a role he has played for several years in global media at the national level and currently as editor-in-chief of the specialized music magazine Scherzo. Also present will be Luis Calvo, responsible for the attractive Festival of the Camino de Santiago, and Cosme Marina, who after many years as a seasoned journalist specializing in classical music is now the new director of the historic Festival of Santander. Coordinating the round table for the fifth consecutive year is Juan Ángel Vela del Campo, coordinator of the “History of Music in Spain and Hispanoamerica,” from the Fondo de Cultura Económica, in 8 volumes.
SUNDAY, JULY 21
17:30 Gothic Hall of the Town Hall
Lecture: “Guido d’Arezzo’s Musical Innovations in the Age of Church Reform”
Presented by: Angelo Rusconi
Guido d’Arezzo was the brilliant author of inventions that have deeply influenced the history of music. The importance of these inventions has obscured the profound reasons behind Guido’s work: in our eyes, the ‘technical’ innovations have become the end, while for Guido they were the means to achieve a higher goal, which has been almost completely forgotten. What was this goal? A revision of the ‘Gregorian’ liturgical-musical repertoire and its dissemination through new systems of writing and musical pedagogy. Guido is a monk immersed in the historical period in which he lives; he works in monastic and episcopal environments strongly influenced by the ideas of Church reform, for which homologation with Roman liturgy is considered a guarantee of fidelity to Rome and doctrinal correctness. The possibility of disseminating with the new system an ‘authentic’ version of the chant of St. Gregory must have seemed functional to the project of achieving liturgical uniformity in the Latin Church, a project that culminates with the suppression of the Hispanic liturgy in the second half of the 11th century. The conference, also thanks to little-known documents, re-reads Guido’s historical period and his musical innovations from a historical-ecclesiological perspective and helps to better understand a fundamental period in the history of music and the Church.
MONDAY, JULY 22
17:30 Gothic Hall of the Town Hall
Lecture: «The dances of the Sexenni. The long survival of a baroque ritual»
Presented by: Josep Vicent Frechina and José Vicente Castel
The Sexenni dances are one of the Valencian cultural expressions that have had greater historical continuity. With medieval roots but with a definite configuration in the festive retinues of the Baroque, today they continue to walk the streets of Morella every day of the novena with which the Sexenni is celebrated. The dance of the Torneros is particularly striking, due to its antiquity and specificity, and it is not for nothing that it is also called the dance of the city. In this talk, we will delve deeper into the historical roots of the dances, their evolution over time and their survival today. The talk is illustrated by the live musical interpretation of the music of the dances by the dolçainer José Vicente Castel. Music that also has particularities that make it unique in the Valencian territory.
22:30 Bullring Gate
Night visit to the castle
Presented by: Carlos Sangüesa, historian, and director of the museums of Morella
TUESDAY, JULY 23
17:30 Gothic Hall of the Town Hall
Lecture: “300 years of the Morella organ: reconstruction of its historical-musical past”
Presented by: Elena Aguilar and Pablo Márquez
On the occasion of the 300th anniversary (1724-2024) of the drafting of the Act of the reception of the organ and its records of the present church of Santa María La Mayor de la Villa de Morella, it is intended to value the instrument, entrusted and manufactured by the organ maker of Cretas, Francisco Turull (1670; †1734), and its musical context. The conference will address, on the one hand, the documentation, from a technical, aesthetic, and organological point of view, the characteristics, evolution, and current state of the instrument, and on the other hand, the contextualization of the historical-musical environment (organists, opposition documents, and works written expressly for this instrument over the years of its operation), interrelating perspectives and linking new documents. In this way, an attempt is made to give greater visibility and diffusion to this impressive instrument, unique in Valencian Baroque construction, as the protagonist of our historical, cultural, and musical heritage. We thank Elena Aguilar, a resident of Morella, for her selfless conference as part of the program.
19:00 Gothic Hall of the Town Hall
Early Music Morella Ensemble Classes
Directed by Carles Magraner
Organized by Universidad Jaume I de Castellón
Rehearsal of La dansa de la mort. Intended for all course students
19:30 City Town Hall
Instruments exhibition
Marco Salerno
For all course students and interested people
THURSDAY, JULY 25
16:00 San Francisco Convent
General Rehearsal
22:00 Casa Roque Restaurant
Final Course dinner
And also during the course:
Meeting of European programmers
With the collaboration of Spanish Cultural Action (AC/E))
Yoga Classes with Toni Aparisi
07:30 Lonja del Ayuntamiento. From July 22 to 25
Relaxation and yoga classes for musical practice. Limited places according to the space capacity, each student must bring their own mat.
Med_Ren Jamssessions
23:30 La Nevera Pub
Every night onwards the Course evenings. With free participation for all those soloists or groups who want to play, sing, recite, or dance medieval and Renaissance music and poetry.