Studies in Music, Words, and Imagery in Early Modern Europe (Variorum Collected Studies)

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.Anoth