Memorie del suono

Music can be linked to personal remembrances, taking us back to the time of a particular situation or to a specific moment in our lives. Sometimes the presence of musical sound fills the absence of someone who is no longer with us. A composition can bear witness of the poetics of an artistic movement. It can be a document of the taste of a certain era, within the frame of a certain cultural community. But it can also testify something else, such as an “event”, producing the conditions for the listener to become a witness to it, through the aesthetic experience. Music can offer memory supports to preserve the cultural identity of those who share the forms of its knowledge: listening and interpreting music together provides the ground for rooting a common sense of belonging in the sharing of its meanings. But music can also produce memories to be kept and cherished: then music transforms itself into a monument. The effectiveness of all these functions lies in the relationship between music, the listener's subjectivity, and time. It is therefore necessary to analyse ho