Characterized by an interdisciplinary approach, these essays highlight the relationship between music and poetry in Italian secular works of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, examine the role of images in shedding light on the cultural context in which these and other works came into being (music iconography), and explore the binaries and similarities of the arts in this period. Insights about early opera are complemented by discussions of accompanied solo song, or monody, both genres new to Italian music at the turn of the seventeenth century.
Many chapters focus on specific images, ranging from the figure of Apollo and his significance as the earliest operatic protagonist, to an early eighteenth-century representation of a salon concert and its “ensemblisation” of events that likely occurred serially. Others include discussions and analyses of musical poetics, from Tasso’s influence on the Italian madrigal to Rinuccini’s authorship of the earliest opera libretti. Another focuses on history while narrating the circumstances under which opera came into being in late Renaissance Florence.
Addressed in large measure to teachers and students, Studies in Music, Words, and Imagery in Early Modern Europe presents a range of subjects that broaden our perspective on the era. Certain essays take a specifically pedagogical approach, while others are more apt to interest music historians or those familiar with Italian versification. All are presented with a view toward making more accessible essays that do not fit neatly into one subject area but cross boundary lines between music, words, and images.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Part I: Music and Words
1. Opera Is Born: The Wedding of Music and Drama in Late Renaissance Florence
Originally published in The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera, ed. Jacqueline Waeber. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023, 3–21.
2. Music and the Arts [in the Seventeenth Century]
Originally published in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music, eds. Tim Carter and John Butt. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 111–31.
3. Music in Italy on the Brink of the Baroque
Originally published in Renaissance Quarterly 37 no. 1 (Spring 1984) 1–20.
4. Apologia pro Ottavio Rinuccini
Originally published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society 26 no. 2 (1973) 240--62.
5. The Ending of L’Orfeo: Father, Son, and Rinuccini
Originally published in the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 9/1 (2003)
https://sscm-jscm.org
6. Powerless Spirit: Echo as a Trope on the Musical Stage of the Late Renaissance
Originally published in Word, Music, and Song: Essays on Early Modern Italy, 2 vols., edited by Rebecca Cypress, Beth L. Glixon, and Nathan Link (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013) I: 193–218.
7. Monteverdi’s Three Genera: A Study in Terminology
Originally published in Musical Humanism and Its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca, edited by Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Barbara Russano Hanning. Festschrift Series No. 11 (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992) 145–70.
8. Tasso and the Italian Madrigal
Originally published in Teaching the Italian Renaissance Romance Epic, ed. Jo Ann Cavallo (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2018) 271–79.
9. Love’s New Voice: Italian Monodic Song
Originally published in The World of Baroque Music, New Perspectives, ed. George Stauffer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006) 25–47.
Part II: Music and Images
10. Some Images of Monody in the Early Baroque
Originally published in Con che soavità: Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580–1740, edited by Iain Fenlon and Tim Carter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 1–12.
11. Glorious Apollo: Poetic and Political Themes in the First Opera
Originally published in Renaissance Quarterly 32, no. 4 (Winter 1979) 485—513.
12. From Saint to Muse: Representations of Saint Cecilia in Florence
Originally published in Music in Art (International Journal for Music Iconography) 29,
nos. 1–2 (Spring/Fall 2004) 91–103.
13. The Iconography of a Salon Concert: A Reappraisal
Originally published in French Musical Thought, 1600–1800, ed. Georgia Cowart (Ann
Arbor and London: UMI Research Press, 1989) 129–48.
14. Conversation and Musical Style in the Late Eighteenth-Century Parisian Salon
Originally published in Eighteenth-Century Studies 22, no. 4 (Summer 1989) 512—528.
