Using architecture to understand music: an interdisciplinary active learning pilot project

ABSTRACT

Few university students in Italy today possess the necessary skills to read a musical score. Consequently, alternative strategies are needed in order to visualize – and hence to memorise – music. This is the main reason underpinning the pilot laboratory of musical architecture, which was launched in 2019 as university workshop thanks to the collaboration of Matteo Pericoli. The educational project’s objective did not consist in the investigation of the stylistic analogies between architecture and music, but rather in the utilization of a plastic discipline in order to stimulate students to reflect upon musical writing, and to arrive to the point of creating three-dimensional models of the analysed compositions. The instruction of this teaching unit was based on the principles of brainstorming, peer learning, processing and the drawing up of a report of the acquired knowledge. The models created during the didactic module made it possible for the students to give an architectural form to musical solutions and concepts of a varying complexity, which facilitated their related visualization. The project demonstrated what advantages might be derived from tools which are alternatives to the musical score in order to photograph specific aspects of musical writing.

KEYWORDS:

• Architecture
• music
• listening education
• visualisation
• models

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea Malvano

Andrea Malvano is associate professor in the University of Turin (Department STUDIUM), where he is also Coordinator of the master degree in Cinema, Performing Arts, Music and Media. His courses are Didactics of the History of Music, Musical Dramaturgy, and History of Music. He was national coordinator of research projects about Rai Music Archive and about the audience education in XXth Century. His monograph about reception and analysis in Debussy’s music was recently translated in Franch (Debussy, un nouvel art de l’écoute, Paris, Van Dieren 2022).