Sardinia As A Crossroads In The Mediterranean 47
Sardinian music and dance have several unique qualities that differentiate
them from other regions and countries. The isolation geographically inher-
ent to the island explains why local cultural traditions are so well preserved in
Sardinia. Giampaolo Mele is the pioneer of the history of music in Sardinia,
particularly ecclesiastical music, bringing together evidence of the aural rites
of the liturgical calendar from what remains of church manuscripts (see also
infra Turtas). Mele considers Sardinian music, from the Middle Ages onwards,
to be consistent with the liturgical practices of the church. Here, Mele’s sur-
vey begins with Ambrose of Milan, the fourth-century father of Latin liturgical
hymns. It is pertinent to remember that prayers, sermons, and most acoustic
rituals were performed either with singing, dancing, or the playing of musical
instruments. What is interesting is that, despite the long ecclesiastical tradition,
there is also evidence of homegrown rituals taking place inside churches (albeit
after the Mass), that continued to be enacted for centuries. In the sixteenth cen-
tury, men and women performed these celebrations together, going against the
rules of gender separation. In his Sardiniae brevis historia et descriptio (1550),
the jurist and cartographer Sigismund Arquer mentions that it was customary
to sing and dance secular repertoires inside the churches during All Saints’ Days
in Sardinia.126
Architectural historian, Roberto Coroneo, updated the foundational 1952
work of Raffaello Delogu, Le chiese medievali della Sardegna, through a number
of monographs, including a magnificent survey of all the medieval churches in
Sardinia, accompanied by beautiful photographs and accurate maps. Coroneo
deserves considerable praise for integrating new data that has emerged from
archaeology and a reevaluation of documents. He incorporated art history,
urbanism, and paleography. The broad base of his interests saw him recently
start to approach the architectural and decorative impact of the Islamic world
on ecclesiastical architecture.
Finally, the recent work of Marco Cadinu on the transformation of the urban
plans of Sardinia’s existing towns and cities, has focused on the early medieval
phases, recognizing what appears to be the residual patterns of a type of urban
planning found generally in the North African towns. He recounts that early
medieval towns adopted compounds with internal open courtyards but no ex-
ternal windows, had curvilinear roads, and diverged from classical orthogonal
plans. The design of the domestic compounds, the layout and enclosed nature
126 Marcello M. Cocco, Sigismondo Arquer: dagli studi giovanili all’autodafé (Cagliari, 1987),
p. 414; Giampaolo Mele, “Ad mortem festinamus. Pellegrini e una Danza della Morte di
fine Trecento (Montserrat, còd. 1, Llibre Vermell, sec. XIVex., ff. 26v–27r),” in Pellegrinaggi e
peregrinazioni, ed. Giuseppe Serpillo (Cosenza, 2011), pp. 50–151.