Modal subjectivities : self-fashioning in the Italian madrigal / Susan McClary.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McClary, Susan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Madrigals, Italian--Italy--16th century--Analysis, appreciation.

Madrigals, Italian.

Musical form--History--16th century.

Musical form.

Music theory--History--16th century.

Music theory.

Music and language.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (388 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

In this boldly innovative book, renowned musicologist Susan McClary presents an illuminating cultural interpretation of the Italian madrigal, one of the most influential repertories of the Renaissance. A genre that sought to produce simulations in sound of complex interiorities, the madrigal introduced into music a vast range of new signifying practices: musical representations of emotions, desire, gender stereotypes, reason, madness, tensions between mind and body, and much more. In doing so, it not only greatly expanded the expressive agendas of European music but also recorded certain assumptions of the time concerning selfhood, making it an invaluable resource for understanding the history of Western subjectivity. Modal Subjectivities covers the span of the sixteenth-century polyphonic madrigal, from its early manifestations in Philippe Verdelot's settings of Machiavelli in the 1520's through the tortured chromatic experiments of Carlo Gesualdo. Although McClary takes the lyrics into account in shaping her readings, she focuses particularly on the details of the music itself-the principal site of the genre's self-fashionings. In order to work effectively with musical meanings in this pretonal repertory, she also develops an analytical method that allows her to unravel the sophisticated allegorical structures characteristic of the madrigal. This pathbreaking book demonstrates how we might glean insights into a culture on the basis of its nonverbal artistic enterprises.

Contents:

Night and deceit : Verdelot's Machiavelli

The desiring subject, or subject to desire : Arcadelt

Radical inwardness : Willaert's Musica nova

The prisonhouse of mode : Cipriano de Rore

The Coney Island of the madrigal : Wert and Marenzio

The luxury of solipsism : Gesualdo

The Mirtillo/Amarilli controversy : Monteverdi

I modi.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9780520929159

0520929152

9781597347570

1597347574

OCLC:

475933700