An island in the Mediterranean, 24,090 km2 in area with a population of 1,648,248 (1991 census). Sardinian music owes its richness to the island’s geographical vulnerability; it was dominated in turn by the Phoenicians, the Arabs, Italy (Rome, Pisa and Genoa in succession) and then over a long period (from the 14th to the 18th century) by the Aragonese. It is now a regione of Italy. Despite the efforts of invaders and administrators, Sardinia has managed to remain a remarkably insular cultural area, retaining a strong identity of its own.
The oldest evidence of Sardinian music dates from the 7th or 8th century bce. It is a small bronze statue now in the Cagliari museum, depicting a player of the flute (or more likely the clarinet) resembling a satyr, with several pipes in his mouth. This polyphonic instrument was the ancestor of the launeddas or triple clarinet, still played today by expert musicians, especially in the southern part of the island.
Much later, at the end of the 18th century, Father Madau gave more precise details about this musical instrument and others, adding a useful mention of the practice of four-part polyphony. Accounts by travellers, particularly La Marmora, also provide valuable information about the musical culture of Sardinia, including descriptions of funeral rites and the music associated with them, remarks about the localities where the launeddas were played. The first descriptive and more or less complete musical notations did not appear until the beginning of the 20th century. This was also the period of the first recordings (by G. Gabriel in 1924 and 1933), providing evidence of a unique musical art.
At the beginning of the 21st century, popular Sardinian music is still much alive, and has one of the strongest identities in the Mediterranean area. However, here, as elsewhere, social and musical identity has been endangered by the constant growth of two movements: the trend towards folklorization which, from the beginning of the 1970s, led to a reworking of musical material for purposes of spectacle, and the trend towards globalization in the 1990s, operating through the fusion of cultural material of different origins. Both brought profound change to the production and transmission patterns of a musical art that had developed from within over the course of the centuries.
The traditional music of Sardinia is still chiefly connected with festivals: the processional ceremonies of the religious calendar; the long festivals when men and women live together for nine days within the enclosure of a sanctuary (in this case a small country church); Carnival; patronal festivals centring on the veneration of a saint, which tend to be in summer; and political festivals under the aegis of Unità, the organ of the Italian ex-communist party. All these festivals are particularly lively and cheerful, even the Easter festivities relating to the Passion of Christ, and so are the many spuntini, rural parties on a large or small scale organized within the family or among friends, especially at weekends. These convivial and festive occasions are the normal setting for the performance of music.
The centre, north and south of the island are three historically distinct regions, differing considerably in their dialects and corresponding to the three main provinces of Nuoro, Sassari and Cagliari. Roughly speaking, the centre comprises the mountainous part of Sardinia, Barbagia (the country of the barbarians as the Romans called it). This area, where there is a thriving tradition of pastoral life, and civil and religious administration used to be less dominant than in the other regions, is the traditional location of the tenore, secular vocal polyphony, and the sonettu, a diatonic accordion used exclusively for dance music. Typical of the north is sacred polyphony transmitted within brotherhoods, almost like scholae cantorum, and the still extant practice of canto a chitarra (guitar song). Finally, the launeddas is now confined to the south and west, together with the large chromatic accordion which is tending to replace it. All over the island communal dancing, known generically as ballu, plays an important part.
Naturally this rough musical survey of the island divided into three zones, reflecting the present situation rather than the past, leaves out a number of local features, for instance the flute and drum combination played in the village of Gavoi in Barbagia, and special instruments such as the serragia (a fiddle with a resonator made of a pig’s bladder, used as a carnival instrument). Other instruments are also found, although not with equal distribution: wood or iron idiophones, drums of different kinds, jew’s harps, pipes etc. In all there are about 60 different Sardinian instruments.
Among the musical instruments of Sardinia, the launeddas triple clarinet mentioned above occupies a special place. It consists of three reedpipes (two melodic and one drone). The particular technique of making and playing this instrument, which is specifically Sardinian although related to the Greek aulos and the Egyptian arghūl, and the complex music that the best musicians can draw from it, endow it with an emblematic function. It is still played in processions (fig.1); once it was also used to accompany singing, and particularly to enliven Sunday dancing in the village square.
In central Sardinia, the word tenore means a small chorus consisting exclusively of four male voices of different registers: one who takes the dominant part (most important of all, he sings the text), and three who sing meaningless syllabic phrases, such as bim, bam, bom. The ensemble creates a very dense and characteristic harmonic texture. In the aesthetic of the tenore, the common chord is modulated and explored in all the different components of its timbre. The repertory of this type of polyphony, which has no equivalent elsewhere in the Mediterranean, is large: songs on serious subjects; mutos (interwoven sung verses, usually on amorous themes); gosos (religious hymns); anninnias (lullabies); and various dances. The tenore is also used to accompany improvised poetic jousts (gare poetiche), in which poets compete on contrasting themes such as art and nature revenge and forgiveness.
Firmly rooted in the traditions of the northern part of the island (in Sassarese and Oristanese, and today in the villages of Castelsardo, Santu Lussurgiu and Cuglieri in particular), sacred polyphony probably has its origins in the falsobordone of art music, which was widespread at the end of the 16th century. Its practice is part of the activity of brotherhoods, and in its present form the coro is usually in four parts (occasionally five, as at Aggius in Gallura). In this type of polyphony, as in the tenore, the common chord plays a central part. However, the resemblance goes no further; in sacred polyphony the voices have a different quality of timbre and the harmonic system is much more developed, featuring chromaticisms, the play of unprepared modulations and elements of counterpoint. The basic repertory consists of religious texts such as the ‘Miserere’ and Stabat mater, and it is performed with the greatest emotional charge during Holy Week and at Easter.
This type of singing has spread all over the island, although it originated in the north (Aragonese influence cannot be ruled out). It consists of solo songs, originally simple in texture, which, as their name indicates, are always accompanied by guitar. Over the last 30 years, however, the harmonic component has become considerably greater. The singer directs the musical game by inviting the guitarist to follow him and find the harmonies corresponding to his melodic improvisations. On the amateur level, ‘guitar song’ is performed among friends, in bars or during small rural festivals, but it is also sung by semi-professionals during the main summer festivals, and to village audiences.
The wide variety of musical genres, types and situations in Sardinia renders any attempt at synthesis useless. However, the Sardinian ethnomusicologist Pietro Sassu tried, no doubt from an over-evolutionary point of view, to bring the various musical scales employed together into a basically trichordal form (with three conjoined degrees making up a major 3rd), which he thought had then been progressively broadened. Several other ideas also have been partially explored: the system of continuous variations (in the playing of the launeddas) or of contrasting variations (in the ‘guitar song’), the role of timbre as an essential component of sound (notably in a tenore polyphony) and some harmonic concepts which owe nothing to the principles of tonal music and have a suggestion of polymodality about them (especially in traditional choral practices).
A. la Mamora: Voyage en Sardaigne de 1819 à 1825 (Cagliari, 1826)
G. Fara: Musica populare sarda (Turin, 1909)
G. Gabriel: ‘Canti e cantatori della Gallura’, RMI, xvii (1910), 926–50
G. Fara: ‘Su uno strumento musicale sardo’, RMI, xx (1913), 763–91; xxi (1914), 13–51
A. Boullier: Canti populari della Sardegna (Bologna, 1916)
G. Gabriel: Canti di Sardegna (Milan, 1923)
G. Fara: L’anima della Sardegna: la musica tradizionale (Udine, 1940)
C. Gallini and D. Carpitella: I rituali dell’argia (Padova, 1967) [incl. sound disc]
P. Sassu and L. Sole, eds.: Proposta di analisi di un gruppo di canti popolari sardi (Sassari, 1967)
P. Sassu: La gobbula sassarese nella tradizione orale e scritta (Rome, 1968)
A.-F. Weis Bentzon: The Launeddas: a Sardinian Folk Music Instrument (Copenhagen, 1969)
P. Sassu and L. Sole: ‘Funzione degli stereotipi nel canto popolare sardo’, RIdM, xii (1972), 115–44
G. Dore: Gli strumenti della musica popolare della Sardegna (Cagliari, 1976)
F. Giannattasio and B. Lortat-Jacob: ‘Modalità di improvvisazione nella musica sarda’, Culture musicali, i/1 (1982), 3–36
M. Gualerzi: ‘Discografia della musica popolare sarda a 78 rpm (1922–1959)’, Culture musicali, i/2 (1982), 167–92
B. Lortat-Jacob: ‘Theory and “Bricolage”: Attilio Cannargiu's Temperament’, YTM, xiv (1982), 45–54
B. Lortat-Jacob: ‘Improvisation et modèle: le chant a guitare sarde’, L’homme, xxiv (1984), 65–89
A.M. Cirese: Ragioni metriche (Palermo, 1988)
B. Lortat-Jacob: Chroniques sardes (Paris, 1991)
P. Mercurio: Folklore sardo: Orosei: storia, lingua, canto, poesia (Milan, 1991)
G. Mele and P. Sassu, eds.: Liturgia e paraliturgia nella tradizione orale (Santu Lussurgiu, 1992)
B. Lortat-Jacob: Musiques en fête: Maroc, Sardaigne, Roumanie (Nanterre, 1994)
B. Lortat-Jacob: Sardinian Chromicles (Chicago, 1995)
B. Lortat-Jacob: Canti di passione (Lucca, 1996) [incl. CD]
I cinque aggesi, coll. G. Gabriel, fondo Nazionale A 5369 (1924)
Musica sarda: canti e danze tradizionali, coll. D. Carpitella, L. Sole and P. Sassu, Albatros VPA 8150 to 8152 (1973) [incl. disc notes]
Sardegna 1: organetto, coll. F. Giannattasio and B. Lortat-Jacob, Fonit Cetra SU 5007 (1982) [incl. disc notes]
Sardaigne: launeddas, perf. L. Lai and A. Porcu, Ocora 558.611 (1984) [incl. notes by B. Lortat-Jacob]
Canti liturgici della tradizione orale, coll. R. Leydi, R. Morelli and P. Sassu, Albatros 21 A-i (1987) [incl. disc notes]
Polyphonies de Sardaigne, coll. B. Lortat-Jacob, Chant du Monde LDX 274760 (1991) [incl. notes by B. Lortat-Jacob]
Sardaigne: polyphonies de la semaine sainte, coll. B. Lortat-Jacob and P. Pitoeff, Chant du Monde LDX 274936 (1992) [incl. notes by B. Lortat-Jacob]
BERNARD LORTAT-JACOB