Dr. Angela Bellia (National Research Council (CNR), Rom)
Musical Performances in Antiquity: Themes, Approaches, and Perspectives

Although over the last decade various scholarly disciplines have devoted increasing attention to ancient music, they have done so by focusing mainly on textual sources. However, in reconstructing features of ancient music performances, the evidence offered by material culture within its archaeological context should play a critical role. 

Considering music performances in the ancient Mediterranean world, and especially in Magna Graecia and in Greek Sicily, material evidence will be analysed in order to investigate the contribution of this evidence to a deeper understanding of the cultural and social meanings and functions of music performances within activities of ritual and of everyday life in the past. It will be discussed how sonic events reinforced local individualities, and they also acted as a dynamic aspect for exchange and interaction among different communities, analysing how music performances provided an opportunity for social visibility and political organization. Exploring representations in various media and according to context, this perspective opens the door to anthropological and sociocultural readings that enrich our understanding of musical performances in antiquity, fed by methodologies of archaeology of performance. Moreover, reconstructing the many different ways and contexts in which musical performances were experienced, we will give particular attention to musical instruments and sound objects from documented archaeological contexts. 

Finally, an overview of how virtual reconstructions can improve our knowledge on ancient musical instruments and sonic heritage will be provided.

Angela Bellia is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Heritage Science, National Research Council of Italy. Her work involves the fields of archaeomusicology, archaeology of music and dance performances, soundscape archaeology, sonic heritage, and digital heritage. She received her MA and PhD from University of Bologna, and she has a solid musical background as a classical pianist and opera singer. After her research in mobility at the Institut für Archäologie in Zürich, at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, she carried out her research at the Institute of Fine Arts at the New York University, devoting her attentions towards the reconstruction of the performative dimension of an ancient Greek polis in the West. Thanks to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Programme - Individual Fellowships, she carried out her research devoting her attentions towards archaeology of sound and archaeoacoustics as new approaches to the study of intangible cultural heritage. She has been the Chair of the Italy Chapter and of the Events & Network Working Group of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA). Recently, she received the “MCAA Outstanding Contributor Award”. At present, she is the Chair of the Archaeomusicology and Dance Interest Group of the Archaeological Institute of America. Apart from a number of volumes, articles and contributions in journals and edited volumes, she is editor in chief of TELESTES: An International Journal of Archaeomusicology and Archaeology of Sound. To see her work: https://nationalacademies.academia.edu/AngelaBellia