Abstract
Against the backdrop of a musicology of the movement of the early music which proceeds to study musical artifacts a posteriori (disc, film, concert, performance) or discursive realizations (written or through the media), this thesis seeks to interrogate in situ a modern form of practice for medieval music, leaning on the creation of the cycle Dante Troubadour by the ensemble La Camera Delle Lacrime produced over the course of three seasons 2017 through 2020 - for which I assume the functions of playwright and scenographer as well as the artistic co-direction with singer Bruno Bonhoure. What do we hear when we listen to medieval music? What do we see when we go to a « medieval music » concert? Since its founding in 2005, the musical ensemble La Camera Delle Lacrime has been dedicated to the creation of dramatic practices organized around medieval heritage sources, mainly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, without aiming at historicizing but rather by considering the gap between the medieval source and its audiovisual manifestation during the produced show. My work in design, playwriting, and scenography revolves around the re-definition of the spectacular event for the « medieval music » concert of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as an incarnated manifestation stemming from a complex transformative operation of a trace of the past, in lieu of being a representation of the image of this trace. If we accept this hypothesis, it opens a new field of musicological studies by engaging a reflection on the historical and ontological trajectory of such artifacts. What then can be the meaning and purpose of such objects? What then are the true stakes for the « medieval music » concerts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? What kind of performativity can we expect from these events? To answer these questions, following the example of Marc Augé‘s perspective reversal from an ethnoanalysis to a self-analysis which allowed him to shift from the ethnology of African villages to the anthropology of contemporary worlds, I will put into perspective the concepts of ethnoscenology (ethnoscenology studies organized spectacular human practices and behaviors), using an introspective approach to my practice as a designer and stage director (and « meaning » director) for an anthropological study of the art gesture (to the nearest of the creative source).