The Music Room in Early Modern France and Italy Sound, Space and Object

by Howard, Deborah; Mauretti, Laura

• ISBN13: 9780197265055
• ISBN10: 0197265057
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-07
• Publisher: British Academy

Summary

This interdisciplinary book investigates the use of secular space for music making in Early Modern France and Italy. The fact that many artists of the time also had musical skills underlines the close relationship between music and the visual arts. This era is remarkable for the growing importance of music in domestic life, ranging from elaborate court festivities to family recreation. In parallel with the emergence of the theatre as a separate building type, music-making in elitecircles became more specialised through the employment of paid musicians, as opposed to amateur participation by the inhabitants and their guests. Meanwhile, however, music printing and the mass-production of instruments, especially lutes, allowed music-making to diffuse down the social scale. We see how spaces specifically designed for music began to appear in private dwellings, while existing rooms became adapted for the purpose. At first, the number of rooms specifically identifiable as 'music rooms' was very small, but gradually over the following 150 years, specialised music rooms began to appear in larger residences in both France and Italy. A major theme is the relationship between the size and purpose of the room and the kinds of music performed - depending on the size,portability and loudness of different instruments; the types of music suited to spaces of different dimensions; the role of music in dancing and banqueting; and the positions of players and listeners. Musical instruments were often elaborately decorated to become works of art in their ownright.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Music-making in Residential Space

The Visual Dimension

Seduction and Spirituality: The Ambiguous Role of Music in Venetian Art

When is a Room a Music Room? Sounds, Spaces, and Objects in Non-Courtly Italian Interiors

The Place of Music in the Artist's Home

The Spatial Dimension

Music in the French Domestic Interior (1500-1600)

The Role of Music in the Venetian Home in the Cinquecento

Women on the Edge: The 'Saletta delle Dame' of the Palazzo Salvadego in Brescia

The Aural Dimension

The Balance on the Lute: The Role of the Strings

Settings for the Lute's Use in Early Modern France and Italy

Assessing the Acoustic Performance of Small Music Rooms. A ShortIntroduction

The Intellectual Dimension

'With Tempered Notes, in the Green Hills and Among Rivers': Music, Learning, and the Symbolic Space of Recreation in the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha.F. 9.9

Spaces for Music in Sixteenth-Century Paduan Noble Residences

Caccini's stages: Identity and Performance Space in the Late Cinquecento Cour

Counrtly Contexts

Spaces for Musical Performance in the d'Este Courtin Ferrara (c. 1440-1540)

Music Rooms in the Ducal Palace in Mantua: From Andrea Mantegna to Giovan Battista Bertani

Queen Christina of Sweden as a Patron of Music in Rome in the 1650s

The Developmentof Purpose-BuiltSpaces for Music

The Acoustic Analysis of Palladio's Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza

Music atHome: Spaces for Music in French Seventeenth-Century Residential Architecture

Spaces for Musical Performance in Seventeenth-Century Roman Residences

Afterword: Strategies for Future Research

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