Ritualising a Resilient City: Soundscape, Collective Performances and Construction of Urban Imaginary

This study focuses on the urban musical experience in eighteenth-century Catania. Through the methodological perspective of urban musicology, the article deals with a paradigmatic case of musical ritualities: the festive celebration of St Agatha. The aim of my enquiry is to observe how the form of the city of Catania has been improved and reorganised over the centuries according to the configuration of the feast, which employs various types of symbolic and ritual (not exclusively musical) practices revolving around the celebration of the patron saint. Among these, the procession with the relics throughout the city has to some extent reshaped the town plan. Also, ecclesiastical chant and instrumental music may have played an important role in the (re-)construction of an ideal place for such collective rituality. Nonetheless, the spatial hierarchy and the privileged itineraries derived from the rebuilding project trace a pivotal point in the ritual: the orthogonal subdivision of the urban space gives shape to a city redesigned as a marvellous open-air theatre that annually, according to an ancient ceremonial, hosts a complex visual and sound spectacle on the occasion of the feast.