"The Road to the Baroque - Masterpieces from the Capodimonte Museum"
Music Experience

走進巴洛克—卡波迪蒙特博物館珍藏展
音樂鑑賞

​Immersive Soundscapes

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Parallel to the development of visual effects created through chiaroscuro in Baroque paintings, composers in the late sixteenth century explored new ways to create contrasts in music. Stripping away the highly complex, contrapuntal styles that characterize Renaissance vocal music, Baroque composers amplify affekt (feeling and sensation) through a new style called monody capable of arousing the deepest and widest range of human emotions. Such aesthetics mirrors development in Baroque paintings championed by Caravaggio and his followers. 

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Professor Johnny Poon, Music Director of the exhibition, will curate a programme of music to engage viewers as they experience these masterpieces from the Capodimonte’s collection. A guided audio pairing of music by Baroque contemporaries has been designed to complement select paintings to capture the Zeitgeist (spirit of the time). Musicians from Collegium Musicum Hong Kong will present a series of innovative concert programmes of sound-paintings that will tickle one’s imagination.

Music selected for the performances will include familiar names such as Vivaldi, Lully, and Handel in dramatic music that feature some of the same characters represented in the paintings, namely Judith, Abra, Holofernes, Perseus, and Saint Cecilia. Visitors will also be introduced to music by such lesser known yet brilliant early Italian Baroque composers as Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Andrea Falconieri, Dario Castello, Tarquinio Merula, and more. This programme will promise genuine pleasures and an element of surprise with Baroque classics next to some unexpected contemporary selections to form an eclectic soundscape that encapsulates the Baroque spirit that is rich in drama and passion.