Front cover image for Music in the seventeenth century

Music in the seventeenth century

The seventeenth century was a period of profound change in the history of music. In this volume Lorenzo Bianconi considers the radical developments of the century as long-lived musical traditions died out and others were created in response to new social functions. This period saw, for example, the flowering of the polyphonic madrigal and its subsequent decline in favour of a new concertato style, the rise of the basso continuo and the growth of purely instrumental composition. Most importantly it saw the rapid rise and persistent growth of a new genre of immeasurable significance: opera. In examining the plurality of coexistent musical styles Lorenzo Bianconi also discusses the socio-historical and cultural aspects of seventeenth-century music history: the opening out towards rational modes of scientific enquiry and theoretical speculation; the social position of the musician in the age of the first theatrical and musical entrepreneurs; the decline of Italian music publishing and the spread of the market to northern Europe. In considering these problems Lorenzo Bianconi presents a fresh picture of musical life in the seventeenth century, taking, like other books from the Italian series Storia della Musica, a broadly contextual approach
Print Book, English, ©1987
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [Cambridgeshire], ©1987
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xii, 346 pages ; 23 cm
9780521262903, 9780521269155, 0521262909, 0521269156
15628213
Italian versification: a note Steven Botterill
Part I. The Early Decades: 1. The seventeenth-century madrigal
2. Giovan Battista Marino and the poesia per musica
3. Music for solo voice
4. Claudio Monteverdi before 1620
5. The 'crisis' of the seventeenth century
6. 'Concerto'
7. Monteverdi after 1620
8. The classification of styles
9. Scientific thought and musical theory
10. Theory and practice
11. Musical publicity
12. Music publishing and music collecting
13. Social condition of the musician
14. Instrumental and dance music
Part III. Sacred Vocal Music: 15. Music in the Catholic liturgy
16. Catholic devotional music
17. The music of the lutheran Church: Heinrich Schü
tz
18. Sacred music as music of the State: France and England
Part IV. Opera: 19. The historiography of opera
20. Opera before 1637
21. The Venetian theatres
22. The diffusion of opera in Italy
23. Formal and dramatic convention
the lament
24. Opera in German-speaking lands: Vienna and Hamburg
25. The tragé
die lyrique: Jean-Baptiste Lully
26. Theatrical music in England and Spain.
Translation of: Il Seicento