Corsica and music. Between tradition and modernity

The Museum of Corsica proposes, through the presentation of musical, filmic, plastic and literary works from the 19th to the 21st century, an exhibition dedicated to the multiple realities that associate Corsica and music.

Put in a situation of listening to the sounds of nature and human activities, visitors are led to perceive the island as a musical composition and to discover these musics in an original context. This exhibition traces the career of personalities such as Niccolò Tommaseo, musicians of the past and present who have profoundly marked Corsica and have had a determining influence on the musical life of their time well beyond the borders of their native island, and deals with the mutations and ruptures generated by the cultural and technological revolutions that have progressively altered the singular relationship that Corsican society has with music.

More than four hundred works are presented in an original scenography with avant-garde audiovisual technologies: a powerful auditorium, music boxes, innovative sound spaces, virtual juke boxes and sound showcases.

Among the original works on display, visitors can discover a 1947 film of Paul Arrighi and Félix Quilici’s mission for Popular Arts and Traditions, watercolors and gouaches by opera decorators Jean Muelle and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, operetta posters by illustrator Georges Dola, instruments of Corsican popular music and recordings of popular songs made on steel wire tape recorder from our collections, the historical posters of the Teatru di A Muvra gathering the names of the greatest poets-improvisers of the 1920s and the manuscript of the first orchestral work of Maurice Ravel composed in 1895.

The exhibition has a prologue and four main sections:

  • Prologue: FROM NATURE TO THE VILLAGE PLACE
  • Sequence I : A NATURAL IMAGINATION
  • Sequence II: FROM OPERA TO SONG
  • Sequence III : MEETING MUSICIANS AND INSTRUMENT MAKERS
  • Sequence IV : FROM TRANSMISSION TO LEARNING

General Curator of the exhibition :

Joseph-François KREMER-MARIETTI, Director of Culture and Heritage of the Territorial Collectivity of Corsica.

Curator of exhibition :

Philippe SALORT, in charge of the sector of general musicology at the museum of Corsica.

Associate curator of the exhibition :

Bernard PAZZONI, in charge of the Sound Archives of the Museum of Corsica.

Scenography : Yves Kneusé assisted by Charlotte Vaillant.

Lighting : Fabrice Blanc.

Audiovisual : Harouth Bezdjian

Practical information

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