Caporaletti's research activity in
musicology started at the end of the 1970s. One of his first researches was a reflection on the concept of
Swing (jazz performance style), developed in his MA thesis taken at the University of
Bologna. Inside this thesis he set the basis of the epistemological concept of audiotactility, that later has been defined Audiotactile Principle (ATP). On this concept, he built the framework of the Audiotactile Formativity Theory that introduced to musicology the category audiotactile music.[3]
《Audiotactility》became an official scientific category in 2008 in Italy, when the Ministry of Education emanated the decrees MIUR 22/01/2008, n. 483/2008[4] and MIUR 03/07/2009, n. 124/2009,[5] which established the new definition frameworks for the subjects taught in Conservatoires of music. These decrees set up two new subjects: "Discipline interpretative del jazz, delle musiche improvvisate e audiotattili" (Jazz, improvised and audiotactile music interpretative disciplines) identifyied with the code CODM/06; "Storia del jazz, delle musiche improvvisate e audiotattili" (History of jazz, improvised and audiotactile music).[6][7] Caporaletti's works have been published in
Italy,[8]France,[9]United Kingdom,[10]Belgium[11] and
Brazil[12] Audiotactile formativity theory has been discussed and recognised as a contribution in the study of improvised music by University researchers (
Frank Tirro[13]Laurent Cugny[14]) and journalists (
Fabio Macaluso,[15]Maurizio Franco.[16] Caporaletti's articles are also listed in Comparative Musicology website, an online bibliografical database[17]
Caporaletti is the founder of the Ring Shout journal[18] a scientific journal on
African-American music. He is the director, along with
Fabiano Araujo Costa and Laurent Cugny of the Revue du jazz et des musiques audiotactiles,[19] edited by the IREMUS centre,
Sorbonne University,
Paris,
France; of the collana Grooves - Edizioni di Musiche Audiotattili[20], published by the Italian editor LIM, Libreria Musicale Italiana, based in
Lucca; and of collana Musicologie e Culture,[21] published by the Italian editor Aracne based in Rome.
Caporaletti obtained the National Scientific Habilitation in Italy as Full Professor in
Ethnomusicology. He teaches General Musicology and Transcultural Musicology at the University of
Macerata in
Italy. He is the director of CeIRM, (Centro Interuniversitario per la Ricerca Musicologica or Interuniversity Centre for Musicological Research) a research centre for
musicology that groups together the University of Macerata, the Conservatory of
Pescara and the Conservatory of
Fermo.[22][23] He has also taught Analysis of Performative and Compositional forms in Jazz Music at the Conservatorio di Musica "Santa Cecilia" in
Rome.[24]
Audiotactile formativity theory
Starting from 2000,[25] Caporaletti focused his research on the formalisation of a phenomenological and taxonomical model of musical experience, that, in his book, he has defined with the expression "audiotactile formativity". This model derives from a multidisciplinary reflection which starts from the analysis of the
Groove (music)[26] and swing[25] phenomena and ending with a global perspective on the
Musical improvisation. Caporaletti identifies with the term "Audiotactile music" those musical practices in which, on the one hand, the formativity of the musical text is fused with the musical actions performed by the musician in real time (Improvisation and/or extemporisation) and, on the other hand, are subjected to a process of phono-fixation through recording technologies. This category encompasses musical practices such as jazz,
rock,
rap,
popular music,
world music,
Brazilian music and so on. In the precedent interpretative theories, they were identified as musical practices that belong to the written music tradition or the oral music tradition.[27] Auditactile music theory categorises musical manifestations opposing the visual matrix to the audiotactile one, depending on the embedded cognitive work model required to perform or play that particular music, and not considering the sociological aspects of music making. Considered from a phenomenological point of view, the form, experience and musical concepts that belong to Western written musical tradition, spanning from 18th until the first half of the 20th century, are based on a "visual cognitive matrix" while the popular one on a "audiotactile cognitive matrix".
The conceptual framework of audiotactile formativity theory, or theory of the audiotactile music is composed of various pieces: the audiotactile principle [ATP], the neoauratic encoding [NAE], the swing-structure and the swing-idiolect. It is rooted on the
philosophy developed by
Luigi Pareyson,[28] on the
semiotics of
Umberto Eco, on the anthropological concepts developed by
Alan Merriam, on
Marshall McLuhan's
mediology and on the
cognitive psychology of Michel Imberty. Audiotactile Music theory has its roots also in
Neurosciences, using them in an athro-cognitive and anthro-cultural perspective for understanding musical experience, starting from the implications of perception and cognitive capacities through the factor constituted by cultural mediation. The distinction between the Audiotactile and Visual matrix, that looms at the bases of Audiotactile Theory, has been scientifically demonstrated.[29]
This theory is employed as an alternative epistemological paradigm for the musicological studies in jazz, Brazilian music,
progressive rock, world music, improvisational and
contemporary music. It is at the centre of musicological debates in Italy, France[30][31][32] and Brazil.[33][34][35] The CRIJMA, Centre international de Recherche sur le Jazz et le Musiques Audiotactiles a centre for the study of Jazz and Audiotactile music, has been founded at the Sorbonne University in 2017.[36] Audiotactile theory undermines and recontextualise the traditional conceptual frameworks of the problematics related to musical analysis, music notation, history of jazz, music ontology, music interaction, music teaching, copyrights and performative arts.
SIAE has reviewed and updated the article n.33 if its statute on December 11, 2016, to include audiotactile music among the ones protected under copyright law.[37] The Italian parliament, on the assembly of November 8, 2017, has added the term "audiotactile" to all the acts emanated in order to define more accurately the musical practices once defined only with the term "popular" or "folk" music.[38]
Selected publications
Caporaletti, Vincenzo (2000). La definizione del swing. Il fondamento estetico del jazz e delle Musiche audiotattili. Teramo, Italy:
Ideasuoni.
ISBN978-88-903155-0-3.
Caporaletti, Vincenzo (2005). I processi improvvisativi nella Musica. Un approccio globale. Lucca:
LIM.
ISBN978-88-7096-420-2.
Caporaletti, Vincenzo (2007). Esperienze di Analisi del Jazz. Armstrong, Parker, Cesari, Monk, Mingus, Intra, Soft Machine. Lucca:
LIM.
ISBN978-88-7096-500-1.
Caporaletti, Vincenzo (2011). Jelly Roll Morton, the 'Old Quadrille' and 'Tiger Rag'. A Historiographic Revision. Lucca:
LIM.
ISBN9788870966275.
Caporaletti, Vincenzo (2014). Swing e Groove. Sui fondamenti estetici delle Musiche audiotattili. Lucca:
LIM.
ISBN978-88-7096-778-4.
Caporaletti, Vincenzo; Cugny, Laurent; Givan, Benjamin (2016). Improvisation, culture, audiotactilité. The Reinhardt, South, Grappelli Recordings of J.S. Bach's Double Violin Concerto : A Critical Edition. Lucca:
LIM.
ISBN978-88-7096-840-8.
Caporaletti, Vincenzo (2019). Introduzione alla teoria delle musiche audiotattili. Un paradigma per il mondo contemporaneo. Roma:
Aracne.
ISBN978-88-255-2091-0.
BETHUNE, Christian (2008). Le Jazz et l'Occident. Klincksieck.
ISBN978-2252036747.
CHIANTORE, Luca (2014). Beethoven al pianoforte: Improvvisazione, composizione e ricerca sonora negli esercizi tecnici. Milano: Il Saggiatore.
ISBN9788865763940.
D'ATTOMA, Donatello (2014). Charles Mingus: composition versus improvisation. lulu.com.
ISBN9781291839715.
DE NATALE, Marco (2004). La musica come gioco. Il dentro e il fuori della teoria. Bern (CH): Peter Lang.
ISBN978-3039104840.
GARBUGLIA, Andrea (2007). Nelson Goodman e le tipologie. Verso una classificazione dei media statici e dinamici. Edizioni Nuova Cultura.
ISBN9788874621798. {{
cite book}}: |journal= ignored (
help)
MARINO, Gabriele (2013). Musichaosmos. Intersoggetività, gioco e costruzione nell'improvvisazione eterodiretta. Edizioni Nuova Cultura. pp. 101–110.
ISBN9788868121556. {{
cite book}}: |journal= ignored (
help)
MICHEL, Philippe;
LOIZILLON, Guillaume (26 May 2009). "Jazz et musique électroacoustique: Le rôle de la technique dans deux approches "audiotactiles" de la création musicale". Actes du Colloque Eurêka! (2).
TIRRO, Frank (2009). "Reviewed Works: I processi improvvisativi nella musica (2005); Esperienze di analisi del jazz (2007) by Vincenzo Caporaletti". Il Saggiatore musicale. 16 (1): 174–175.
JSTOR43030018.
^Enrico Deregibus. Dizionario completo della Canzone Italiana. Giunti Editore, 2010. (
ISBN8809756258)
^Caporaletti, Vincenzo (2000). [La definizione del swing. Il fondamento estetico del jazz e delle Musiche audiotattili. Teramo, Italy: Ideasuoni. (
ISBN9788890315503)
^Caporaletti, Vincenzo; CUGNY, Laurent; GIVAN, Benjamin, Improvisation, culture, audiotactilité. Édition critique des enregistrements du Concerto pour deux violons et orchestre en ré mineur BWV 1043 de Jean-Sébastien Bach par Eddie South, Stéphane Grappelli et Django Reinhard, Paris, Outre Mesure, 2016(
ISBN9782907891899)
^Caporaletti, Vincenzo, "Neo-Auratic Encoding: Phenomenological Framework and Operational Patterns", in: BORIO, G., Musical Listening in the Age of Technological Reproduction, Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing, 2015, pp. 233 - 252 p. (
ISBN9781472442161)
^Caporaletti, Vincenzo, Milhaud, "Le bœuf sur le toit" e o paradigma audiotátil, in: CORREA DO LAGO, M., O boi no telhado – Darius Milhaud e a música brasileira no modernismo francês, São Paulo, Instituto Moreira Salles, 2012, pp. 229-288 p. (
ISBN9788586707872
^Tirro, Frank (31 May 2018). "Review of I processi improvvisativi nella musica. Un approccio globale, ("Quaderni di Musica/Realtà", 54), ; Esperienze di analisi del jazz: Armstrong, Parker, Cesàri, Monk, Mingus, Intra, Soft Machine, ibid., ("Grooves", 1), Vincenzo Caporaletti". Il Saggiatore musicale. 16 (1): 174–175.
JSTOR43030018.
^Cugny, Laurent, La Gaia Scienza, Musica Jazz Journal, July 2017, ISSN 0027-4542
^
abCaporaletti, Vincenzo, La definizione dello swing. I fondamenti estetici del jazz e delle musiche audiotattili, Teramo, Ideasuoni Edizioni, 2000, 302 pp. (
ISBN9788890315503)
^Caporaletti, Vincenzo, Swing e Groove. Sui fondamenti estetici delle musiche audiotattili, Lucca, LIM-Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2014, 386 p. (
ISBN9788870967784)
^MICHEL, Philippe, LOIZILLON, Guillaume;, « Jazz et musique électroacoustique: Le rôle de la technique dans deux approches "audiotactiles" de la création musicale », Actes du colloque Eurêka! n° 2, programme de recherche CREAPRO, 25 et 26 mai 2009, Université Rennes 2, France., 2011