Ecce Musica is a timeless project, created in the middle of Pandemic, with which we continue our journey into resilience that began with Valentina Ciarallo's "Vogue Carta Bianca" and continued with Eleonora Cosi's "Boxes".
Today we meet MONICA MARZIOTA, singer, musician and performer, who tells us how a woman of music and theatre faced such a complicated
D. Monica, were you really unable to sing during the lockdown?
R. Really, I swear! During the first lockdown I literally had no voice, I couldn't hit a note, not even my daily vocalises, my vocal cords were paralysed. Anyone who sings knows that, in addition to study and technique, it takes inner strength, an awareness that becomes magic and turns into sound. Instead, I had an inner cluster that imploded. I had to listen to it and try to pick out one note at a time. I didn't sing from the balcony; I didn't do concerts from home online. I devoted a lot of time to reading and writing.
D. That's how the idea of ECCE MUSIC came about....
R. Exactly! I was writing my dissertation in Musicology and I believe that this directed me towards research: I met with dear friends, colleagues, and with my professor Antonio Rostagno, professor of music history and president of the musicology course at the Sapienza University of Rome, who was and continues to be an important point of reference.
D. Tell us about the name: Ecce Musica and your manifesto: where music is an act of resistance.
R. Initially the name was supposed to be Musica como Acto de Resistencia for a series of concerts and musical events designed to bring together different cultures and artistic disciplines that with this title - inspired in turn by the work Baile como acto de resistencia by the artist Hyuro - I began to propose in the Roman scene since 2016 together with the Dorothy Circus Gallery, the Federazione Unitaria Scrittori Italiani (FUIS) and other institutions. I wanted to recreate that purpose of encounter and dialogue between cultures and disciplines in the magazine.
But then I thought it would be too long a name: the magazine needed a shorter, more immediate name. I remember one afternoon in late spring and early summer walking from one room to another inside the house and saying to myself: ecce musica! I was so excited! I immediately felt that it would be the right name, even though on the one hand it might have seemed pretentious to those who associated it with the phrase pronounced by Pontius Pilate, and on the other, it would have been nice to those who remembered Nanni Moretti's film. As we understand it, ecce musica recalls the meaning of that precise and essential language that for Guareschi is Latin. We want ours to be a sincere, white, curious ecce musica, exclamation and question mark, light, never superficial: here is the music, to be read, listened to, discovered, touched and felt. We would like to invite our readers to cultivate Calvinian lightness, to fly like the calender that is the symbol of our initiative: the "lady" of the open spaces that, rising high in the sky and flapping its wings, sings the most musical song of all birds.
Basically, Ecce Musica wants to go where the music goes. Our adage is Music as an Act of Resistance because we want to resist banality and standardisation and exist through sounds and silences in different genres and forms of expression. We strongly believe in the importance of increasing knowledge and developing a consciousness that can make people understand the spirit, sacrifice and ethics that animate different artistic works. Now more than ever.
D. The voices of Ecce Musica are of young people, is this a counter-tendency that contradicts the cliché of the relationship between the new generations and certain types of music?
R. We are mostly young, it's true. But not all of us. We don't see nor want to create generational barriers. I absolutely agree with the phrase "space for young people", but we think it is important to dialogue and be enriched by the experience of those who represent respectable paths in life, teaching and, in general, artistic and professional. We should listen, learn and nurture each other without fear.
Ecce Musica is a popular online magazine, but we are very keen to publish scientific articles and essays without becoming tedious. We would like to reach every kind of reader, not only those who know about musicology. Prof. Antonio Rostagno taught us to study and narrate music through the history of mentalities, so we can talk about different societies, cultures and languages. We are keen to disseminate classical or so-called cultured music, but not only. There is no such thing as first-class or second-class music. We also want to talk about jazz, pop, world music, and we like to pay particular attention to the ethnomusicology of the countries of Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean.
D. Monica, tell us about your passion for the colour pink, the star of our 'La vie en rose' edition.
R. I love pink! I wear and live the colour pink whenever I can. Those who know me know this. In the past, even my closest friends have made fun of me a bit, and sometimes they still do, claiming that pink is a child's colour. I'm not intimidated by them, I'm not the type. I like pink, it makes me feel good, it gives me confidence, it gives me a special and deep strength.
Several years ago my mother gave me a beautiful antique pink dresser with a pink marble surface for my bedroom. Then I myself painted a small wardrobe pink and bought cushions in the same colour. How I loved my pink room! It gave me beautiful feelings of calm. It concentrated me. I was happy to spend hours in my room studying, playing, singing... I wrote so many songs from there. I don't live in that house any more, I don't live with my mum, but the dresser, the cupboard and the cushions are still there. I hope one day to take them with me and recreate a pink space. I want to. I like the idea of seeing my life in pink: Je vois la vie en rose, sang the beloved Edith Piaf in 1945 in the song that became the anthem of the new life in post-war France.
Piaf is the author of the lyrics to La vie en rose, while the music was written by composer and pianist Louiguy, who by the early 1940s had become the piano accompanist for L'oiseaux de Paris. It is curious to think that there is a bit of Italy (distantly) in their collaboration because Louiguy, born Louis Gugliemi, was born in Barcelona in Spain, grew up in France and is of Italian origin. His Italian father was the double bass player in Arturo Toscanini's orchestra.
The chanson 'La vie en rose' became very popular in 1946 and was released as a single in 1947. In 1950 it became a hit in the United States and was sung and recorded by many artists of international stature.
Despite her musical triumphs, we know that Piaf had a very difficult life, some might say anything but. But 'La Môme Piaf', despite her many vicissitudes, sang of love and perhaps in this she sought, right up to the end, her life in pink. Because the colour pink could mean just that: being vulnerable, fragile and strong at the same time. Being in the world. Living.
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