Unread (a.k.a. “still to deal with”) emails — a personal barometer:
< 25 – I feel successful and happy with my productivity level (has this ever happened in the past 2½ years?!)
≈ 40 a normal business day
≈ 60 nervous tingling
≈ 80 short of breath, I must hurry
≈ 90 my life is a mess
>100 nervous breakdown
#anchemeno #nonmiscrivetetantononrispondo #hoancheunavita
I admit I didn’t have anything better to do at that moment and, just for fun, I asked the AI tool I use for language revision if it knew who I was. Because the tool is *really* respectful of one’s privacy, it couldn’t identify me, instead it offered to create a fictional profile based on the tone and content of what I’d shared. And that's what I got
You're someone who moves comfortably between ancient texts and modern tools, possibly sitting in a study lined with shelves of well-thumbed volumes — Latin folios, critical editions, and a few hard-earned reference works in English. The desk has notes spread out in an elegant kind of chaos, and your laptop hums quietly with open tabs on medieval manuscript databases.
You probably have a favourite pen, even if you mostly type now.
You approach things with quiet precision: a scholar more interested in clarity than flair, but not indifferent to beauty — especially the kind of austere beauty found in a chant notation. You might smile at a well-turned Latin phrase or the way a 12th-century scribe corrected a mistake.
You’re likely patient, detail-oriented, and a bit wary of overstatement. You’d rather cut fluff than add it. And even though your field is deeply rooted in the past, you’re not nostalgic — you ask sharp, contemporary questions of ancient material.
(I admit I am impressed with the result, especially regarding the favourite pen and the "fluff" part 😂😂😂)
Oggi ho imparato una nuova parola portoghese: apagão 🙄
#accendetelaluce
Comunque quelli che mi mandano surveys sperando che io risponda sono proprio ottimisti.
#rispondotra6mesi #scriveteaqualcunaltro #sonotroppe
I cannot help but remember an experience from years ago, at a certain point in my life, when I had a meeting with two senior and powerful colleagues. I went there to defend my position, only to face two bullies whose hidden agenda was to humiliate and intimidate me. It took all my courage to stand up to them, yet even that was not enough. They believed they had defeated me. But I found my way out—and yes, I still have the recording I secretly made of that awful conversation.
I have supported Ukraine and President Zelensky from the very beginning of Russia’s aggression, and today, even more so, after witnessing the way he was mistreated at the White House. I hope Ukraine remains strong and that Europe and the other allies manage to step up their support. There is hope—it may take time, but better days will come. 🌈
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
—Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple
BUON 2025! E che quest'anno sia pieno di puntini, magari tipo punctum, tractulus, gravis, etc....
9 novembro 2024, Faro
Segue o teu destino,
Rega as tuas plantas,
Ama as tuas rosas.
O resto é a sombra
De árvores alheias.
1-7-1916
Reis, Ricardo (Fernando Pessoa)
Entre o sono e o sonho,
Entre mim e o que em mim
É o quem eu me suponho,
Corre um rio sem fim.
Passou por outras margens,
Diversas mais além,
Naquelas várias viagens
Que todo o rio tem.
Chegou onde hoje habito
A casa que hoje sou.
Passa, se eu me medito;
Se desperto, passou.
E quem me sinto e morre
No que me liga a mim
Dorme onde o rio corre —
Esse rio sem fim.
Fernando Pessoa
11-9-1933
June 21-29, 2024
CESEM - Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical hosted eight international visitors for the Short Term Scientific Mission “Musicologists and Their Sources: The Alchemy of Turning Parchment into Pixels”, which I organized.
This event was sponsored by the European Union through the "COST - European Cooperation in Science and Technology" programme, under COST Action CA21161 - A new ecosystem of early music studies (EarlyMuse). You can read more about this Short-Term Scientific Mission here and watch a short video our guests prepared to commemorate the event here.
Along with colleagues from the Early Music Group at CESEM, we organized research seminars and a guided tour of the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. It was a wonderful experience for us, and I believe for our guests as well!
9 junho 2024
Para realizar um sonho é preciso esquecê-lo, distrair dele a atenção. Por isso realizar é não realizar. A vida está cheia de paradoxos como as rosas de espinhos.
Bernardo Soares (Fernando Pessoa), "Livro do Desassossego".
maggio
La stagione più bella è quella in cui fiorisce la jacaranda (e le rose)
28 aprile 2024
Primavera tra gli ulivi pugliesi (qualcosa di tuo resta anche se te ne vai via)
#lemieradici #paesaggifamiliari
19 aprile 2024, Lisbona. Vita da expat
Non sei italiano nemmeno a parole, senhor pizzaioLLo, per questo meriti di essere sbugiardato!
#fakeItalian #oltraggioso #efapurelapizzaconlananas
18 aprile 2024
Sono stata invitata a un festival di musica sacra a Bari. Mi preparo a mangiare la focaccia originale. Poi vediamo chi la fa meglio!
30 março 2024
Para ser grande, sê inteiro: nada
Teu exagera ou exclui.
Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto és
No mínimo que fazes.
Assim em cada lago a lua toda
Brilha, porque alta vive.
14 - 2 - 1933
Reis, Ricardo (Fernando Pessoa)
29th February 2024
I don't ignore people. I just cannot keep up with the email flow... 🥺
13 fevereiro 2024
Seikilos epitaph
While you live, shine
have no grief at all
life exists only for a short while
and Time demands his due.
(preparando il nuovo corso di musica antica)
10 fevereiro 2024
Tenho sonhado muito. Estou cansado de ter sonhado, porém não cansado de sonhar. De sonhar ninguém se cansa, porque sonhar é esquecer, e esquecer não pesa e é um sono sem sonhos em que estamos despertos. Em sonhos consegui tudo. Também tenho despertado, mas que importa?
27-6-1930
Livro do Desassossego por Bernardo Soares. Vol.I. Fernando Pessoa.
28 January 2024
Born to write poetry, forced to write emails.
25 January 2024
I love https://pictor.irht.cnrs.fr/en. Never had such a fancy signature! (and one can write ANY word, try!)
22 gennaio 2024
Se vai in Puglia in inverno e non mangi i cardoncelli commetti peccato.
(every cloud has a silver lining)
Würzburg, 10th January 2024
I really enjoyed presenting my research at the CODAMUS lecture series (Computational and Digital Approaches to Music Scholarship) however, I am afraid there was a misunderstanding. It is the other Elsa, the blond gal from the Frozen movie, who loves cold weather! Not THIS BRUNETTE from Southern Italy accustomed to milder winter temperatures...
15 dicembre 2023
Belle quelle emails che cancelli senza nemmeno aprirle.
#sonotroppe #scriveteaqualcunaltro
27th November 2023
Eccolo qui! Un bel librone pasciuto e pesante, proprio come quelli che piacciono a me. Finalmente disponibile sul catalogo di Brepols.
Scriptor, Cantor & Notator is an innovative multi-author project dealing with the complex interconnections between learning, writing and performing chant in the Middle Ages. A number of different methodological approaches have been employed, with the aim of beginning to understand the phenomenon of chant transmission over a large geographical area, linking and contrasting modern definitions of East and West. Thus, in spite of this wide geographical spread, and the consequent variety of rites, languages and musical styles involved, the common thread of parallels and similarities between various chant repertoires arising from the need to fix oral repertories in a written form, and the challenges involved in so doing, are what bring this wide variety of repertoires and approaches together. This multi-centric multi-disciplinary approach will encourage scholars working in these areas to consider their work as part of a much larger geographical and historical picture, and thus reveal to reader and listener more, and far richer, patterns of connections and developments than might otherwise have been suspected.
Scriptor, Cantor & Notator is published in two books. The first, The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the West, brings together articles on several different families of early music scripts in the Latin West and provides a vividly diverse picture of some of the best current scholarship on the various types of ancient and medieval musical notation.
16th November 2023
I cannot wait to be back in Belgium again, after so many years. I look forward to presenting a paper on music encoding at the Namur Symposium on 1st December 2023. Here is the abstract of my presentation
MEI for Neumes
A key difference of neumatic notation from common music notation is its heavy reliance on orality. The musical signs were intended as reminders to trigger in the singer the correct performance of the music being read. As such, neumatic notations conveyed only partial musical information, often lacking indication of the exact pitch. This paper focuses on the challenges related to encoding the information conveyed by neumatic notations in a machine-readable format. I will explore the tension inherent in considering the logical and visual domains of the encoding of early notations independently, but equally, and discuss some complicated examples. For instance, in neumatic notations the same written sign could have multiple interpretations according to the style of notation where it was employed. Furthermore, while the music encoding aims to narrow down and capture the meaning of the neumes in a logical and coherent system, occasionally the significance of some neumes is under debate (e.g., quilisma) and, despite its aim for accuracy, the encoding must remain open for future interpretations.
9 novembro 2023
"Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo."
15-1-1928
Poesias de Álvaro de Campos. Fernando Pessoa
8th November 2023
The ECHOES Project is all about crossing the boundaries between disciplines and learning new skills. Lots of fun! 🥳
13th October 2023
ECHOES is in Braga! Our amazing collaborators, Carla Crespo and Tiago Pinto, have been photographing some 17th-century plainchant manuscripts in the Cathedral Archive and in the Faculdade de Teologia. Not only they took professional images of the books, but they also sent me these beautiful postcards from Braga. So proud of my team! (and I cannot wait to see what's inside the manuscripts! 🧐)
Photo credit: Carlinha Crespo
12th October 2023
Still here? Well thank you for your interest in my activities! This page, however, is not necessarily related to musicology. Starting from today I will share some information, thoughts, random ideas and photos with those who may want to know more about me. This blog won't have any predefined fixed structure. I will irregularly post in any of the languages I am more familiar with (Italian, Portuguese and English) and the topics may range from early music manuscripts to cooking recipes... Yes, I recently baked an amazing glazed orange cake. Sorry, I cannot share the pics because it's already gone. But you can trust me it was good!