Harmonizing in the Islands: Overview of the multipart singing by chording in Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily

The essay deals with the Multipart Singing by chording that is a specific and very characterized sphere of the Mediterranean Multipart Music. In the introduction, the main features of this typology of music makings and its geo-cultural spread are defined. In particular, the essay points out the relevance of the singing by chording in the three largest Mediterranean Islands: Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily. On the basis of almost thirty years of field research experience of the authors, the paper offers firstly a general framework of the multipart singing practices of the three regions, underling the most significative performative features and contexts. For all the three islands a specific case study is analyzed both in the musical patterns (that are represented by means of temporized music transcriptions) and in the main meaning of the performance shared by the relative singers groups. Far from any comparative aim, the three case studies offers an articulate image of the complexity and relative variety of the multipart singing by chording, both from the musicological and symbolical point of views. Beyond the case studies, the essay claims how the particular sound overlappings of multipart singing by chording have an iconic worth since they could be read as representations of both inter-individual and collective relationships.