Villa Pennisi in Musica

 This is my third year as coordinator and teacher of the workshop of self-construction at Villa Pennisi in Musica, part of the Summer School of Music and Architecture held in the first week of August in Acireale.

Once the third version of ReS has been assembled and is almost finished, the musicians finally have their own stage and they start working on the five days of the Festival. Basically when the architecre workshop ends the Music Festival begins. But there is a moment of transition of extraordinary intensity, in which, the structure is almost finished and the musicians have their very first rehearsal with all architecture students as audicence, who tired from the hard work of the previous days, sit on the ground and finally rest and listen. They are not listening to a concert but to a test, to that moment when the musicians start to build the execution of the next night, as the students have built their acoustic shell.

The musicians play parts of the quartet, single phrases, melodies and bases, together and then into separate pieces, then they assemble them into the final score. When they are satisfied they into into go into the construction of the next part, and sometimes they play entire movement to listen to the final result. When preparing the execution the musicians talk to each other, they think about what they can do to improve sounds and harmonies but also began to comment on the work of the architects and the response of the acoustic shell in its latest version. The students and teachers in the audience listen, and as the test/rehearse goes on, the thought that the structure is responding well is forming in their minds, the shell “works.”

That’s when that sort of “small magic” happens, that one of having built with our hands, an object that is good, that we and who will use it like a lot, then on the stage another magic happens, the real one the one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Suddenly the fatigue and the heat disappear and also, the little frustration that comes with uncertainty, overwhelmed by the spell that comes from these two magic, and it repeats every year in the enchantment of his withering beauty, and every year it makes for a moment our skin rougher and our eyes shining. It lasts a moment then everything dissolves

, “il buio cala e non rimane … altro … che l’incantesimo sublime … e allora … viva la musica!”*.

* Paolo Conte, Dal loggione, in Un gelato al limon, 1979,