Singing Dante: The Literary Origins of Cinquecento Monody

Singing Dante: The Literary Origins of Cinquecento Monody
Author: Elena Abramov-van Rijk
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1317054873

This book takes its departure from an experiment presented by Vincenzo Galilei before his colleagues in the Florentine Camerata in about 1580. This event, namely the first demonstration of the stile recitativo, is known from a single later source, a letter written in 1634 by Pietro dei Bardi, son of the founder of the Camerata. In the complete absence of any further information, Bardi’s report has remained a curiosity in the history of music, and it has seemed impossible to determine the true nature and significance of Galilei's presentation. That, unfortunately, still remains true for the music, which is lost. Yet we know a crucial fact about this experiment, the poetic text chosen by Galilei: it was an excerpt from the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the Lament of Count Ugolino. Starting from this information the author examines the problem from another angle. Investigation of the perception of Dante’s poetry in the sixteenth century, as well as a deeper enquiry into cinquecento poetic theories (and especially phonetics) leads to a reconstruction of Galilei’s motives for choosing this text and sheds light on some of the features of his experiment.

Essays on Italian Poetry and Music in the Renaissance, 1350-1600

Essays on Italian Poetry and Music in the Renaissance, 1350-1600
Author: James Haar
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520329961

These essays illuminate the changing nature of text-music relationships from the time of Petrarch to Guarini and, in music, from the madrigals of Giovanni da Cascia to those of Gesualdo da Venosa. Haar traces a line of development from the stylized rhetoric of Trecento song through the popularizing trends of Quattrocento music and on to the union of verbal and musical cadence that marked the high Renaissance in sixteenth-century Italian music. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Antonio Gardano, Venetian Music Printer, 1538-1569

Antonio Gardano, Venetian Music Printer, 1538-1569
Author: Mary Lewis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 566
Release: 1997-10-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1136802061

Antonio Gardano's publications are among the most important sources of 16th-century music. The second volume describes the output of this leading Italian music press in its cultural, bibliographical, and musical context. The first part of the book consists of an overview of Gardano's repertory from the fifties and the cultural and musical milieu in which he worked. It includes discussions of the continuing popularity of his earlier repertory, the music of the younger generation introduced in the fifties, the music of the composers around San Marco, and genres such as the multi-movement madrigal, the canzoni villanesche, instrumental works, and new anthologies. Also discussed are the dating of some undated editions, unconfirmed and doubtful prints, and ordering within the editions. A chapter on binder's copies describes groups of editions bound together by their early owners and serves as a valuable index to the tastes of the collectors. The catalog section covers all Gardano's known publications of the fifties, and provides full titles, bibliographical information, contents with concordant sources for each piece, and locations of individual copies with notes on their bindings, owners' marks, annotations, and other significant characteristics. The catalog is indexed by composer, first line, and short title, and includes a list of primary and secondary sources consulted.

Music in Golden-Age Florence, 1250–1750

Music in Golden-Age Florence, 1250–1750
Author: Anthony M. Cummings
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2023-05-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226822788

"Florence is justly celebrated as one of the world's most important cities. It enjoys mythic status and occupies an enviable place in the historical imagination. But its music-historical importance is less well understood than it should be. If Florence was the city of Dante, Michelangelo, and Galileo, it was also the birthplace of the madrigal, opera, and the piano. This is the only book of its kind, a comprehensive account of music in Florence from the late Middle Ages until the end of the Medici dynasty in the mid-eighteenth century. It recounts the principal developments in the history of Florence's contributions to music and how music was heard and cultivated in the city, from civic and religious institutions to private patronage and the academies. Scholars from sister disciplines and a general readership interested in the history and culture of Florence will find this book an invaluable complement to studies of the art, literature, and political thought of the late-medieval and early-modern eras and the quasi-legendary figures in the Florentine cultural pantheon"--

Renaissance Culture in Context

Renaissance Culture in Context
Author: Jean R. Brink
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351904469

Scholarly traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have led us to assume that national traditions were defining in a way that they may not have been during the Renaissance, when Latin remained an international language. This collection interrogates the historical importance of national traditions, many of which depend upon geographical boundaries that took their shape only after the emergence of the nation state in the modern period. Each of the essays in this collection makes a distinctive contribution to a particular discipline and national culture. Taken together, they interrogate divisions between historiography and the fine arts, literature and the history of ideas as well as the boundaries between national traditions. The essays in this volume offer a compelling and persuasivejustification for an interdisdiplinary and international approach to the study of Renaissance culture.

Musical Notation in the West

Musical Notation in the West
Author: James Grier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2021-02-18
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1009038230

Musical notation is a powerful system of communication between musicians, using sophisticated symbolic, primarily non-verbal means to express musical events in visual symbols. Many musicians take the system for granted, having internalized it and their strategies for reading it and translating it into sound over long years of study and practice. This book traces the development of that system by combining chronological and thematic approaches to show the historical and musical context in which these developments took place. Simultaneously, the book considers the way in which this symbolic language communicates to those literate in it, discussing how its features facilitate or hinder fluent comprehension in the real-time environment of performance. Moreover, the topic of musical as opposed to notational innovation forms another thread of the treatment, as the author investigates instances where musical developments stimulated notational attributes, or notational innovations made practicable advances in musical style.

The Language of the Modes

The Language of the Modes
Author: Frans Wiering
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2013-10-11
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1135683344

The Language of the Modes provides a study of modes in early music through eight essays, each dealing with a different aspects of modality. The volume codifies all known theoretical references to mode, all modally ordered musical sources, and all modally cyclic compositions. For many music students and listeners, the "language of the modes" is a deep mystery, accustomed as we are to centuries of modern harmony. Wiering demystifies the modal world, showing how composers and performers were able to use this structure to create compelling and beautiful works. This book will be an invaluable source to scholars of early music and music theory. in early music through eight essays, each dealing with a different aspects of modality. It codifies all known theoretical references to mode, all modally ordered musical sources, and all modally cyclic compositions. This book will be an invaluable source to scholars of early music.

Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France

Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France
Author: Jeanice Brooks
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2020-04-23
Genre: Music
ISBN: 022676771X

In the late sixteenth century, the French royal court was mobile. To distinguish itself from the rest of society, it depended more on its cultural practices and attitudes than on the royal and aristocratic palaces it inhabited. Using courtly song-or the air de cour-as a window, Jeanice Brooks offers an unprecedented look into the culture of this itinerant institution. Brooks concentrates on a period in which the court's importance in projecting the symbolic centrality of monarchy was growing rapidly and considers the role of the air in defining patronage hierarchies at court and in enhancing courtly visions of masculine and feminine virtue. Her study illuminates the court's relationship to the world beyond its own confines, represented first by Italy, then by the countryside. In addition to the 40 editions of airs de cour printed between 1559 and 1589, Brooks draws on memoirs, literary works, and iconographic evidence to present a rounded vision of French Renaissance culture. The first book-length examination of the history of air de cour, this work also sheds important new light on a formative moment in French history.

Gender, Sexuality, and Early Music

Gender, Sexuality, and Early Music
Author: Todd Michael Borgerding
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2002
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780815333944

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Honoring God and the City

Honoring God and the City
Author: Jonathan Glixon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2008-06-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199711380

This is the first detailed history of musical activities at Venetian lay confraternities. Based on over two decades of research in Venetian archives, the book traces musical practices from the origins of the earliest confraternities in the mid-thirteenth century through their suppression under the French and Austrian governments of Venice in the early nineteenth century. The first section of the book treats the scuole grandi, the largest and most important of the Venetian confraternities, and the only ones to maintain musical establishments for long periods. The second portion of the book is concerned with the scuole piccole, the numerous less-important confraternities, sometimes as many as 300 of which were active simultaneously, located in churches throughout Venice. Appendices include an attempt to reconstruct a calendar of musical events at all Venetian confraternities in the early eighteenth century, demonstrating the vital role they played in the cultural and ceremonial life of this great city.