Casa del Suono Museum

Casa del Suono is a museum hosted by the splendid spaces of the restored former church of Santa Elisabetta, displays a rich collection gathered by don Giovanni Patanè: more than 400 items from phonographs to mp3, including a wide range of vintage radios. The museum is dedicated to the unusual and elusive topic of sound, but unlike a conventional museum it is also a place where educational, research and artistic activities take place alongside an exhibition of sound reproduction apparatus from the end of the nineteenth century to contemporary times.

Giovanni Patanè was born at Giarre in the province of Catania in 1924, and died at Parma in 2000. For twenty years he served as the parish priest at Gaione in the province of Parma. Patanè begin developing his valuable collection of radios and sound reproduction devices in the 1970s. 

The Sonic Chandelier and the White Room constitute the first application in a public place of the technology based on Wave Field Synthesis: a theory developed in its definitive formulation during the 1980s, but which has found a new and original use in the Casa del Suono. They represent not only a futuristic audio installation for the listener, but also instruments for research and artistic creation through scientific and musical activity, which constitute two of the principal functions of the Casa del Suono.

A demonstration of the potential of the WFS system, through a wide range of listening, is regularly made available to visitors. One characteristic that makes the white room unique is that it is itself a ‘musical instrument’, based on the most advanced electronic technology. Courtesy of new technological sound systems, it is a place where musical compositions created expressly for those systems can be performed.