I tiptoed gingerly around the garden, taking care to dodge the fallen figs from the tree outside the kitchen. Every couple of steps I would have to gently roll one out of the way with the tip of my shoe. It was hot outside. The sun was directly overhead, and the plants looked thirsty. So I watered them. This is not my garden. Nor are these my plants, I thought to myself. But it was nice to step away from my work and get outside briefly into the Campanian sunshine, to shoo away the pigeons from their shady pool party underneath the leaky water spigot, and to hear the intermittent explosive bursts of crackly dry leaves as the garden lizards skittered away to avoid me and the bright blue plastic watering can. I would have watered them too, if they gave me the chance. The albicocco ('apricot tree') was not doing too well, its remaining fruit looking shriveled and decrepit. Purtroppo... sfortunata... sfortunatamente, I mumbled to myself, practicing various ways to say 'unfortunate(ly)' in Italian. The lizards bobbed their heads at me in agreement as they paused their clambering up the stone walls for a moment before disappearing into their darkened cracks and crevices. I finished watering the thirsty plants and thanked the giant rosemary bush for providing us with a bounty of seasoning for almost every meal we cooked in the tiny green and yellow kitchen. Squish. I looked down at my shoe, sighed, and mumbled again, sfortunatamente; one poor fig. But the lizards and pigeons would get a snack.
[Caption: Overlooking La Certosa di San Lorenzo di Padula.]
One evening after a big group picnic up above Padula in la pineta (the 'pine forest'), we hopped in a car and made our way down the mountainside to the Certosa in the valley below, a former monastery and 'charter house' founded in the year 1306, now turned into a museum. Within the amazing buildings and grounds of the Certosa is housed an archaeology museum with a diverse collection of artifacts from various digs in the surrounding countryside, along with items from the Certosa itself. The archaeological artifacts consist mainly of ceramic vessels and grave goods dating back to the Bronze and Hellenistic Ages, including those made by the Lucanians. Also referred to as the Lucani, these were a pre-Roman, Oscan-speaking culture that inhabited the mountains and valleys of what is now the regions of Campania and Basilicata. They were the southern neighbors of the Samnites, and throughout their contemporaneous existence with them were either allies or foes or allies again. They wrote and spoke the same language, Oscan, but used the Greek alphabet or altered Oscan-Greek alphabet, as they were in direct contact with the Greeks of Magna Graecia, their own neighbors to the south and west. Padula is located in what was once Lucania, the land of the Lucani.
[Caption: Through a keyhole at the Certosa.]
[Caption: In and around the Certosa, including some chants notated in neumes from the Medieval period. I took a moment to sing a few of the melodies, my voice echoing pleasantly around the reverberant, vaulted ceilings.]
[Caption: A couple panoramic views of the inside courtyard of the Certosa.]
Although the Lucani are not the sole focus of my research, they are an important digression, played key roles throughout their shared history with the Samnites, and (most importantly) further support my 'Pythagorean' hypothesis. They offer a solid view into the cross-cultural interaction, intermingling, cross-pollination, and flow of goods, languages, religious beliefs, art, and (most importantly) music, that shaped and was shared by the non-Roman cultures of the Italian peninsula in the several centuries before Rome's eventual domination, assimilation, and absorption of their neighbors.
[Caption: Testing acoustics with overtone singing in one of the chapel rooms at the Certosa.]
The Lucani may or may not have descended directly from the Samnites. Whether or not it is supported by the archaeological record, the ancient literary record supports the notion that the Samnites underwent several ver sacrum, or 'sacred springs,' which indicate ritualized migration. The Roman writer Strabo (c. 63 BCE to c. 24 CE) in his Geography (6.1.2), wrote that "before the coming of the Greeks there were no Lucani." After the Samnites had entered into what is now Lucania, having first "expelled" the previous residents of the region (known as the Khones and Oinotrians), they drove "the Lucani into this region." And further on he states that the Lucani "are of Samnite origin."
[Caption: Top row: A spherical ceramic vessel dating to the 6th century BCE. It depicts scenes of figures dancing (top left), figures playing a musical instrument resembling a phorminx, one of the most ancient of string instruments (top center), and two figures beating a drum and another wielding an axe (top right). Bottom row: several vessels in which one can see Greek influence, dating between the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Figures are playing other types of ancient kithara or lyres. After the Greek colony of Elea (modern Velia) was founded on the coast between 540-530 BCE, one can see the obvious shift in design--compare the top and bottom rows here. It is worth noting that the Pythagorean philosophers Parmenides (c. late 6th to 5th century BCE) and Zeno (c. 490 to c. 430 BCE) were born in Elea.]
Inspired by the Lucani, and by spending a few weeks in what was once their homeland, I was inspired to compose a piano piece, which will eventually exist as a Jazz trio and also be transcribed into a string quartet.
[Caption: Sketch for my piece 'The Lucani.' They were referred to by the Romans with the Latin word 'Leucani,' which is perhaps a Latinization of the Greek 'Leukanoi.' I have based the title on what the Oscan version of the Greek name would be, spelled phonetically: LEUKANÚÍ.]
The chords are all new and intriguing to me, and offer more tonal complexity than what I have been recently gravitating towards. The harmonic language shifts chromatically from dissonance to consonance and back again, using deceptively dominant-acting altered major 7 chords (i.e. A major 7 sharp 5 going to C major 7; or Cb major 7 flat 5 to Bb sus4 to Bb minor 7 to A major 7 sharp 5 to A major 7). These opening chords are contrasted by a middle section which revolves around D minor, being almost modal, but using upper and lower chromatic neighbor chords to create harmonic motion forwards (D minor 7 to Eb major 7, and D minor 9 to Db major 7 flat 5). The melody throughout the middle section is simply transcribed chromatically or (slightly) diatonically.
[Caption: A brief play-through of the melody for my piece 'The Lucani.' Recorded on 25 July, 2024, in a flat in London.]
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