This is a session on the modernist formal, cultural and pedagogical legacy of art and music, discussed through the work of composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) and artist Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916).

2016 marks the 100 anniversary of visual artist Umberto Boccioni’s death (1916) and the 150 years anniversary of composer Ferruccio Busoni’s birth (1866). Apart from being close collaborators—Boccioni being the junior admirer of Busoni’s great work, while Busoni regarding the radical promise of futurism in Boccioni’s work—their work bequeaths us with a huge legacy, most of which is yet to be articulated.

Given the speed by which Modernism is said to have exhausted itself through the unfolding of two of the bloodiest World Wars, Boccioni’s and Busoni’s work still represent a wealth that, except for a few art historians, musicologists, composers and practitioners, is yet to be mined.

In this session, participants coming from art and music practice as well as art and music education, will highlight Boccioni’s and Busoni’s contribution through a number of artistic and musical dialogues that are intent on shedding light on the ideas, forms and practices that inform Boccioni’s and Busoni’s modernist heritage. More so, this session is also intent to present music and art as radical forms which do not simply break new ground in terms of form and narrative, but where in its immanent simultaneity, art and music are also revealed as pedagogical moments that open up new forms of autonomy and freedom — as indeed expressed in the high rhetoric and often grossly misrepresented heralding of a new era by the radical tenor of Modernism. 

While one cannot characterize Busoni and Boccioni as educators, their work and writings broke into new avenues in modernity which evidently portend a striong formative ground that in and of itself required a totally new approach to our understanding of apce and time throughart and music. In this respect it will be argued that Boccioni and Busoni have laid the foundations for a modernist approach to the arts, which remains fundamental to how we now look at music and art in the academy. Indeed, so many “new” ideas that art and music educators tend to keep discovering, were already conceived and articulated in Boccioni’s manifestos and Busoni’s writings a century ago—not to mention what their own art and music represented.

Through contributions from musicians and music educators Mario Azevedo (Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espectáculo, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Portugal), Laura Falzon (New York University, USA and Ministry of Culture, Malta), and Paulo Mesquita (Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espectáculo, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Portugal), and artists and art educators Catarina Martins (i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Oporto), John Baldacchino (University of Dundee) and Ricardo Pistola (i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Oporto), this session will include a number of papers, recital, and a drawing workshop. These will reveal and focus on Busoni’s and Boccioni’s pedagogical implications through music and the visual arts. Moreover, this session would also bring together Boccioni and Busoni in terms of how they influence each other as evidenced in their writings and more so in their artistic and musical work.  

Another objective of this session is to provide a good example of how scholarship, artistic and musical practice work together, by which research and teaching are informed by a discourse of practice—which in and of itself first got its major evolutionary step in Modernism, and in how it offered a radically new approach to art and music as forms of autonomy.

This is a session on the modernist formal, cultural and pedagogical legacy of art and music, discussed through the work of composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) and artist Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916).