From the introduction:The perspective of scientific realism has the tendency to consider environmental problems leaving aside their ethical, historical and political context. On the contrary, the humanities, philosophy, literature, visual arts, music, help to develop a knowledge of the nature alternative to the one proposed by natural sciences, and often overflowing the limits imposed by rational thought and empirical method. New perspectives of analysis as the ecocriticism, and other related emerging areas of inquiry such as Ecomusicology, are based on the premise that environmental problems, even if analyzed by the standard of the evidence-based empirical science, are essentially generated by the set of ethical, historical, cultural and political values expressed by the civilization that, inhabiting it, modify that specific environment. [. . .]
The aim of this paper is to verify, first of all, the actual presence of the neo-discipline of ecomusicology in the international scene of the sector studies, highlighting the prevalent addresses that, at the time, seem to show a marked ethnomusicological and sociological tendency. Secondly, we would like to draw your attention to the opportunity of intensifying as well the historical and philosophical perspective that analyses in Western literature the quest for a natural foundation of music, whose tradition can be traced back to the theory on the harmonics of Pythagoras (VI BC). In this sense, we intend to propose the foundations of an interdisciplinary and ecocritical research intentionally focused on eurocultivated music, as a typical expression of a civilization seeking the liberation of its artistic imagination in accordance with the progress of its scientific knowledge, in order to acquire an additional key to understand the complex relationship between man and nature in the West.

Contribution to the 3rd International Degrowth Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Venice in 2012.

Italian version below