PhD Programme – 42st Cycle: Musical Heritage and Soundscapes: Sources, Spaces, Instruments, Pedagogical and Performative Practices

Description of the Training Project

The PhD Programme in Musical Heritage and Soundscapes: Sources, Spaces, Instruments, Pedagogical and Performative Practices arises from the need to respond to an epistemological and cultural urgency of our time: to understand and enhance the role that sound—in its manifold manifestations, whether musical, environmental, or performative—has played and continues to play in shaping cultures, territories, and communities.

In a society dominated by digital mediation, which filters, selects, and often marginalises the complexity of sonic heritage, it becomes essential to rethink musical and auditory memory through critical tools, embodied practices, and interdisciplinary strategies that restore to music its value as a historical and social agent.

At the core of this project lies a conception of performance as the midpoint between tangible and intangible heritage: both the result and the source of knowledge, a space for verification of sources and contexts, and a field of interaction between historical-critical research and sonic corporeality. In this perspective, performance is understood as embodied research practice, a situated epistemological space, and a transformative agent.

The PhD aims to train researchers capable of integrating theoretical reflection and artistic practice, in a continuous dialogue among theory, documentation, action, and transmission.

The project is part of the development strategies of the third cycle of Higher Artistic, Musical and Coreutic Education (AFAM), serving as an experimental laboratory open to intersectoral collaboration with universities, research centres, archives, museums, libraries, collections, and cultural institutions, both Italian and international.

The Doctoral Board, composed of distinguished scholars and professionals from different disciplinary fields (music, musicology, the humanities, sound studies, architecture, museology, and digital technologies), reflects the markedly transdisciplinary nature of the programme, conceived as a place of convergence for knowledge and practices in constant negotiation.

The PhD develops a thematic and methodological framework based on a complex network of interconnected axes: musical sources (written and oral), instruments and construction techniques, architectures and performance spaces, soundscapes, pedagogical practices, documentation and restitution technologies. The sonic element is thus recognised as a formative force that shapes matter, generates space, moulds collective memory, and activates dynamics of cultural transmission and transformation.

The main research areas include the reconstruction and re-creation of historical performance contexts, sound mapping of territories, situated pedagogical practices, investigation of the relationships between sound, architecture, and environment, and the documentation and promotion of neglected sonic heritages—such as acoustic minorities, ephemeral repertoires, and marginal oralities.

In line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, the PhD promotes the enhancement of cultural heritage (Goal 11), the building of inclusive and dialogical communities (Goals 5 and 16), the strengthening of culture’s social role (Goal 12), and the creation of effective partnerships between research entities and territorial institutions (Goal 17). Music and sound thereby become tools for active citizenship, critical awareness, and participation.

The doctoral pathway is grounded in a strong connection with the local territory, in the awareness that artistic knowledge, to be truly generative, must be rooted in real contexts and directed towards shared dissemination. Through the activation of AFAM networks, Erasmus+ collaborations, and partnerships with European conservatoires and foreign universities, the project builds a training and research infrastructure oriented towards innovation, social responsibility, and the production of shared knowledge.