In hoc signo vinces by Angelo Paccagnini and Eugenio Carmi – Symposium and Concert, November 9th 2024

Posthumous discoveries of unknown and never performed musical works always represent, in the eyes of researchers and the public, a valuable opportunity for new biographical readings and new interpretative scenarios. In hoc signo vinces (1976) is a score-catalogue discovered by archivist Carlotta Ghiretti at the archives of Eugenio Carmi (1920-2016, one of the protagonists of abstractionism and graphic design research in Italy) and co-signed by Angelo Paccagnini (1930-1999) composer, teacher, founder of the electronic music course at the “G. Verdi” conservatory in 1969, and director of the Studio di Fonologia of RAI in Milan from 1968 to 1970.

Paccagnini and Carmi collaborated on several occasions during the 1970s, but this “artistic-musical” work had remained in the shadows. The event on November 8 represents the culmination of a laboratory and research project (curated by Davide Gagliardi and Laura Zattra) born within the “G. Verdi” Conservatory of Milan. The project aimed to study, interpret and perform for the first time a mysterious and unusual score, which contains alternating reproductions of both visual art and musical notation from the past (Middle Ages and Renaissance) and present (aleatory notation, objets trouvés, electronic interventions).

The discovery and subsequent research, as well as the project presented here, have intensified the collaboration between the Carmi archive, the NoMus Association (which makes available archival materials and specific knowledge about Angelo Paccagnini), and the people involved: researchers, musicologists, archivists, collaborators and performers of Angelo Paccagnini’s music: in addition to the curators of the day Davide Gagliardi and Laura Zattra and the ensemble of the Conservatorio “G. Verdi” of Milan, also Maria Maddalena Novati (director of the NoMus association) and Marina Vaccarini (lecturer and author of the volume Angelo Paccagnini. The Independent Utopian, edited by Novati and Vaccarini, 2022), Lis Carpenter (archivist of the Carmi Archive), architect Giulio Masoni (Carmi Archive), Gaetano Liguori (jazz pianist and improviser) and Goffredo Haus (LIM, University of Milan).

For more information: https://www.consmi.it/it/491/news/8931/giornata-di-studi-ore-14-e-concerto-ore