Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance - Hardcover

Tomlinson, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0193151510 ISBN 13: 9780193151512

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1987

Synopsis

This is a study of the secular music of Claudio Monteverdi, the foremost Italian composer of the late Renaissance. Gary Tomlinson bases his narrative on the works themselves - nine books of madrigals, three complete operas and a fragment of a fourth, and numerous canzonette, scherzi, and arie, all written between 1584 and 1642 - but his approach is as much literary and cultural as purely musical. The relationship between music, poetry, and cultural ideology is at the core of the discussion, and Tomlinson pays particular attention to Monteverdi's position within the context of late Renaissance humanist and scholastic values. He also shows that the extraordinary variety of responses to poetry in Monteverdi's music was induced by the wide stylistic diversity of the poems themselves. For Monteverdi, the expressive power of music was a function of its relation to its text, and it is the unceasing imagination he brought to musical transfiguration of poetry which this book continually stresses. A book of interest for scholars and students of the music, literature, and culture of the Italian Renaissance.

About this title

About the Author:

Gary Tomlinson is Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania and a 1988 MacArthur Fellow.

From Library Journal:

Working at a time of great conflict between the old scholastic and the new humanist traditions, Monteverdi was subject to influences not only musical but cultural, as represented by changing poetic and ideological thought (especially of the divergent Petrachan and Marinist schools). Tomlinson shows how these influences contributed to the composer's musical and philosophical development. Books on Monteverdi abound, but none from this vantage point. While scholarly, the work is fluent, attractive, and intelligible in style and contains both useful footnotes and an extensive bibliography. Illuminated capitals at the start of each chapter add to the pleasure of handling this beautifully presented book. Recommended for music libraries. Philippa Kiraly, Cleveland, Ohio
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0193151510
• ISBN 13: 9780193151512
• Binding: Hardcover