Some evenings you wish would never end….. that was the case for the evening organized at the Municipality of Trequanda, province of Siena, together with the Elicona Cooperative at the multipurpose hall of the Pallavicini museum in Trequanda.
The occasion was the Etruscan Day magnificently honored by a genius of Etruscan culture, Francesco Landucci, a Florentine transplanted to Cecina, where he has lived for over 30 years. Musician, music producer with a passion that has now become a profession for Etruscan culture and in particular music at the time of the Etruscans.
For about fifteen years Francesco, an Etruscan of modern times as he defines himself, has been studying the instruments collected by the archaeological museums of Etruria, our Central Italy and since after Covid he has begun to reproduce them and sell them abroad to film companies and important collectors.
The meeting with Francesco Landucci, a true genius and historian of music, was not just a theoretical conference like many others, but we witnessed the experimentation of sounds with instruments of the “Etruscan” type created entirely by hand by him.
The musical performance obviously began with wind instruments: the flute, similar to the Egyptian one, was the most common instrument, even in the two-horn version born from the union of two flutes that we have seen reproduced in paintings of lunches, religious and profane ceremonies; the horn had great importance among the Italics with futuristic sounds later widespread in the metal version used more in warlike contexts; the mouth organ like the musician in the sculptural work of the Piatto di Cortona. The lyre not different from that of the Greeks, the cithara a larger instrument than the lyre, the aforementioned attributable to the tortoise shells found in the excavations.
Thanks to freely expressed musical interpretations, Landucci managed to make us enter that world, those processions, dances, those battles, passing from the sacred to the profane with persuasive elegance. Musical interludes of such refinement that they glued a large audience despite the heat of this summer. Among the Etruscans, ceremonies for the deceased were considered as celebrations, they believed in life after the grave and music served precisely to mitigate pain; in fact, instruments such as the two-horn flute accompanied by the more glorious horn appear in Etruscan tombs; as well as percussion instruments similar to modern castanets. In funeral banquets, the experiences and happy moments of the deceased's life were recalled, as well as the preparation of the meal to be used by the deceased in his last village. Games, dances and acting accompanied playful celebrations with a succession of musical instruments skillfully played, so much so that the Romans, in their celebrations, expressly requested Etruscan musicians who traveled on tour. It was very interesting to learn Francesco Landucci's working method, a purely scientific method based on the study of instruments starting from paintings and careful analysis of musical instruments, what remains of them, collected in museums. As an Etruscan of modern times, he visited the main existing collections in Central Italy, supporting museum curators even playing the instruments himself or at least trying to reproduce their sound, managing over the years to record, measure, and catalogue objects that were then reproduced in his own artisan laboratory.
He is the consultant for the richest museum of Etruscan musical instruments at the archaeological museum of San Vincenzino in Cecina. Numerous visits to the butcher to build flutes from sheepfold femurs, bird bones, to collect intestines certainly not to make sausages as the butchers of the Etruscan Coast kindly asked him. This methodological orthodoxy allowed him to produce instruments and as he explained he was not inspired by classical master luthiers but by ethnic music, delving into the knowledge of African, Oriental, South American instruments that can approach prehistory to Etruscan culture. Thanks to the Etruscan Day, in Trequanda a large audience of refined culture of the subject found itself in front of a knowledge of musical, historical, living artisan culture, a living museum; while it is possible to intercept online experts on the Etruscan musical world, it is not possible to hear those sounds reproduced or similar melodies reconstructed with such artistic wisdom. A curiosity: during the time of covid, to pass the time Francesco Landucci reproduced sounds by creating melodies, he made himself known by receiving requests for such instruments that today keep him very busy together with his work as a music producer.
Valentina Niccolai
Sartoria della Musica
Online publication Registration Court of Siena n ° 1 of 28/01/2010 Publisher and Managing Director Valentina Niccolai.
