Honoring God and the City: Music at the Venetian Confraternities, 1260-1807
Abstract
This book presents a history of musical activities at Venetian lay confraternities - institutions that were crucial to the cultural and ceremonial life of Venice. It traces musical practices from the origins of the earliest confraternities in the mid-13th century to their suppression under the French and Austrian governments in the early 19th century. It first discusses the scuole grandi, the largest and most important of the Venetian confraternities. The scuole grandi hosted some of the most elaborate musical events in the Venetian calendar, including lavish annual festivities for each scuola's patron saint and often enlisting such high-profile musicians as Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudio Monteverdi. They also employed singers, instrumentalists, and organists on a salaried basis for processions and regular religious services. The book places detailed descriptions of these events in the context of the scuole grandi's long histories, as the roles of musicians evolved over the centuries. The book's second part is concerned with the scuole piccole, the numerous smaller confraternities born in churches throughout Venice. These local organizations usually did not employ salaried musicians, but hired singers and players as needed for their annual festivities and other occasions. Detailed appendixes include a calendar of musical events at all Venetian confraternities in the early 18th century and a complete listing of musicians for an important 17th century festival. The book demonstrates the vital role of confraternities in the musical and ceremonial life of Venice.
Giorgio de Castelfranco y los violines perdidos de Las Bodas de Caná del Veronés (1563). Tercer y Cuarto Consorts.
La causa de la aparición de instrumentos “de tránsito” (violines) en brazos del Veronés, antes de la resolución del consort definitivo como uno de violas da gamba, hay que buscarla entre las prácticas de las escuelas musicales de los monasterios y confraternidades venecianos durante las décadas anteriores a la elaboración del lienzo.
En torno a 1530, las cofradías de la ciudad comenzaron a sustituir el tradicional “sonido medieval” de las formaciones mixtas (cuerdas pulsadas y frotadas), por un nuevo consort con violines que ofrecía un “sonido moderno” y más potente, y que por su manejabilidad permitía a los músicos participar en las numerosas procesiones y funerales de la ciudad.
Este proceso parece haber estado completo ya a mitad del siglo, como indica la evidencia disponible. Una vez establecido el consort de laúdes (Consort 2), a Paolo no le hubo de resultar ya tan difícil actualizar un poco más el diseño suprimiéndolos de nuevo.
The successive musical consorts that are observable through the analysis of the Veronese’s canvas The Wedding at Cana (1563) were transformed from one to another through a graphic-evolutionary process, both in terms of their nature and their instrumental configuration. The authors present here, and illustrate graphically, a documented model that accounts for these transformations. The purpose of this book is to offer the reader a map that serves as a guide throughout the investigations carried out.
Los sucesivos consort musicales observables en el análisis de Las Bodas de Caná (1563) de Veronés fueron transformándose de uno en otro a través de un proceso gráfico-evolutivo, tanto en cuanto a su naturaleza como en su configuración instrumental. Los autores exponen, e ilustran gráficamente, un modelo documentado que da cuenta de estas transformaciones. El propósito de este libro ofrecer al lector un mapa que le sirva de guía a lo largo de las indagaciones realizadas.
Giorgio de Castelfranco, llamado Giorgione, era el personaje central a cuyo alrededor Paolo Caliari estructuró en origen la disposición del grupo instrumental de Las Bodas de Caná.
Para ello se sirvió de un diseño basado en un consort vocal junto a Giorgione y su laúd, acompañado de sí mismo al clavicémbalo. La escena incluía también algunos laúdes “silenciosos” sobre su propio instrumento. Este diseño original no incluía en cambio a Tiziano y Tintoretto en sus posiciones actuales, sino como parte del cuarteto de voces leyendo una partitura frente a ellos. La mano derecha del cantante que sostenía esta partitura sigue formando parte aún hoy del lienzo actual como los cuatro dedos que sobresalen por detrás del cornetto de Bassano (en realidad por su espalda), y que no corresponden ni a este mismo pintor ni tampoco al bufón (Jester) junto a él, ni a nadie presente hoy en el lienzo. Ambos coro (cuarteto) y clavicémbalo (hoy una mesa) fueron desechados en favor de un consort de laúdes que ya mostramos anteriormente.
Music played an essential part in raising the city of Venice and in founding the empire on which its fortunes would depend. This book focuses on a set of musical projects - played out in liturgy and civic ritual - that formed the city's history and framed and interpreted its unique material culture as it was in the process of taking shape. Jamie L. Reuland shows the state's most imaginative musical endeavors bound up with legal culture, stemming from the chancery's engines of historiography, or situated within the rich material environment of relics and reliquaries, mosaics and wall paintings, icons and statues. Arguing for music's technical ability to fabricate a sense of place and give form to history, Reuland recovers Venice's fascinating early propensity for a statecraft of the imagination, the consequences of which would be the better-known history of its material decay.
In the summer of 1630 a catastrophic plague epidemic struck Venice and its subject cities in the Veneto region, killing around 100,000 inhabitants, disrupting travel and trade, and affecting all aspects of life over the course of its 18-month duration. In response to the outbreak, the Venetian State and other local governments and boards of health implemented widespread plague controls and other initiatives, such as quarantine, travel restrictions, and citywide prayers. The 1630-31 plague generated a rich visual and material culture, both during the epidemic and in its aftermath. Works related to this outbreak range from modest ex-votos created during the plague by individuals, to large-scale architectural and decorative campaigns designed as memorials to the tragedy, commissioned by the Venetian Senate, confraternities, and other social institutions. This dissertation explores the making and the efficacy of art associated with the 1630-31 plague in Venice and the Veneto. Building on iconographic conventions and motifs introduced during earlier plague epidemics, artists such as Domenico Tintoretto, Antonio Zanchi, and Giambattista Tiepolo took up the challenge of representing the plague visually. The imagery in altarpieces, votives, and confraternity halls emphasized disease-stricken bodies, ubiquitous body-removers (pizzigamorti), and timely sacred intercession by saintly protectors. A balance was struck between evoking the dire conditions of plague, affirming the power of the Venetian State to manage the epidemic, and instilling a sense of order in the community. In this way, visual art promoted social cohesion, countering the destabilization caused by the outbreak. In later memorials and retrospective works, the triumph over the 1630-31 plague became a topos used to characterize local civic and religious identities. Following the Introduction, Chapter 2 of this dissertation presents a timeline of the progression of the 1630-31 plague epidemic and introduces the most important social and religious institutions responding to plague in seicento Venice. Chapter 3 explores Venice’s two plague hospitals (lazzaretti), which operated continuously and exerted influence over life in Venice and its subject cities during plague epidemics and in times of general wellness. The second half of the dissertation offers detailed analyses of individual works of art representing the 1630-31 plague. Chapter 4 examines case studies of works of art that were created in Venice during the outbreak, addressing issues related to patronage and the challenges affecting art production during major outbreaks of plague. Topics include Venice’s relationship with its colonies in Dalmatia, and the common themes related to holy intercession that were shared across media, linking sacred music composed by Claudio Monteverdi to painted plague votives. The focus of Chapter 5 is Antonio Zanchi’s monumental painting created for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in 1666, arguably the most extensive visualization of plague’s effects on a city in the early modern world. This chapter considers the conceptual frameworks shared by seventeenth-century painting and the performance arts, particularly public opera. The dissertation concludes by leaving Venice proper in Chapter 6 to explore the impact of the 1630-31 plague epidemic on art production in Este, a subject city in the province of Padua. A series of commissions are tracked, from an ex-voto completed during the seventeenth-century outbreak, to a commemorative altarpiece created by Giambattista Tiepolo in 1759. The role of plague in generating collective memories and supporting socio-cultural identity in the eighteenth century is examined.
El gigantesco lienzo del Veronés para la congregación de San
Giorgio Maggiore acabó siendo, durante los quince meses que
tardó en completarse, una empresa bastante accidentada sobre
un andamio muy transitado: había sido encargado por los
monjes venecianos pocos meses después de comenzar la última
convocatoria del Concilio de Trento, y fue entregado dos meses
antes de su conclusión.
Su idea original para la escena central, o al menos la que
convinieron los Caliari con los responsables del monasterio y con
los patronos del lienzo ― probablemente la familia Grimani ―,
consistía en la misa fúnebre cantada que Giorgione nunca pudo
tener a su muerte prematura en el Lazzaretto. Este era un
derecho veneciano establecido desde más de un siglo atrás, y que
finalmente sus protectores, los Grimani, junto con sus colegas
pintores-músicos, habían decidido brindar al maestro ausente en
el refectorio de San Giorgio Maggiore, uno de los recintos más
renombrados de la ciudad.
La presente tesi indaga la dimensione rituale e cerimoniale di un soggetto municipale sottoposto al dominio veneziano: la città di Bergamo. Il punto di partenza dell’analisi è costituito dal « Libro de Cerimoniali » della città, redatto dai cancellieri bergamaschi a partire dalla fine del secolo XVII. L’analisi viene quindi condotta secondo tre direttive, tra di esse intrecciate. La prima considera gli aspetti definenti l’identità culturale e rituale della Città di Bergamo e ha come obiettivo quello di ricostruire il calendario civico festivo, nonché quello di illustrare alcune delle ricorrenze rituali cicliche più ricorrenti. La seconda, invece, mira ad individuare gli usi e le funzioni della ritualità devozionale - pubblica e collettiva - durante il secolo XVIII, chiarendone gli effetti sociali e politici. Sono quindi ricostruite alcune delle vicende concorrenziali insorte tra l’istituzione ecclesiastica e quella civile nella gestione del « patrimonio immateriale » cittadino. La terza, infine, intende chiarire la relazione politico-culturale dispiegatasi tra l’istituzione civica bergamasca e quella repubblicana entro la dimensione rituale. A tale scopo, sono state prese in considerazione alcune delle cerimonie principali che si costituirono attorno ai Rettori di Terraferma, quali le entrate e le uscite cerimoniali dalla città, le cerimonie di battesimo dei loro figli, le elezioni al « patronato », nonché analizzati dei casi studio in cui alcune di queste cerimonie furono turbate e alterate in funzione dell’espressione di istanze contrarie o contestatorie.
How Paolo Caliari buried the great master Giorgione for a second time under the colors of his palette, and the swings of the protagonists of the monumental work that marveled Europe for centuries. The work recounts, in a literary tone, the rugged and laborious remodeling of the central scene of the painting from its beginnings to the providential arrival of Ortiz, along with the vicissitudes and misadventures suffered by its author.
De cómo Paolo Caliari sepultó al gran maestro Giorgione por segunda vez bajo los colores de su paleta, y de los vaivenes de los protagonistas de la monumental obra que durante siglos maravilló a toda Europa. La obra relata, en un tono literario, la accidentada y laboriosa remodelación de la escena central del cuadro desde sus comienzos hasta la providencial llegada de Ortiz, junto con las vicisitudes y desventuras que sufrió su autor.
Diego Ortiz, the Spanish maestro de cappella of the Naples’ Viceregal Court, seems to be portrayed next to Paolo Caliari Il Veronese in his famous canvas The Wedding at Cana, which was delivered with some delay to Benedictine abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore, on October 6th of 1563. Several evidences allow us to conjecture his presence: the obvious resemblance to the only known portrait (engraved) in his Trattado de glosas (Rome, 1553); the edition of his second book in 1565 Venice; and other new related historical and musicological findings. He is the only character at the musical ensemble wich remains unidentified and the only one who has been repeatedly ignored in the literature to our days. Some authors referred him, following the unproven 1771 Zanetti the Younger’s theory, as “Tintoretto”, making no mention of the soprano player‘s indentity. Indeed, new evidence points to Ortiz was not dead in 1570, but he went to Rome with the Colonna ‘s family as famigliare, at least until 1576.
The well-known title page used by Michael Praetorius for several of his publications provides a starting-point for a discussion of the way large-scale music was directed in early seventeenth-century Germany. The practice of depicting composers with rolls of paper is discussed, as is the nature of seventeenth-century time-beating and how it differed from modern conducting.
The Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music - edited by Iain Fenlon January 2019
The Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music - edited by Iain Fenlon January 2019
The Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music - edited by Iain Fenlon January 2019
En el año 2015 se conmemora el quinto centenario de la fundación en Jaén de una importante cofradía adscrita a la iglesia parroquial de San Andrés y conocida con el nombre de Santa Capilla. Lo que diferencia a esta hermandad de otras creadas en la España de la época es la presencia, estatutariamente establecida, de una capilla de música con el propósito de enaltecer sus celebraciones religiosas. El presente artículo ofrece un estudio panorámico sobre la Santa Capilla como institución musical durante el siglo XVI, basándose en nuevos hallazgos archivísticos. El trabajo incluye un análisis de los modelos de mecenazgo que pudo tener en mente su fundador, el protonotario apostólico Gutierre González Doncel; una revisión crítica de las actividades musicales de cantores, instrumentistas y maestros de capilla al servicio de la cofradía; algunas hipótesis sobre el repertorio musical empleado; y un estudio específico, acompañado de la edición crítica, de dos singulares juegos de versos para ministriles de Gil de Ávila, únicas piezas del único maestro de la Santa Capilla del siglo XVI del que conocemos música.
Several new evidences about the biography, the production and the musical activity of Natale Monferrato (1610-1685), important personality in the Venetian musical life of the second half of the 17th century, are presented and discussed in this article. The first paragraph contends new biographical data, that concern principally the first period of Monferrato's life. He was baptized in Venice at 5 May 1610. In September 1634 he has been consecrated priest after at least ten years spent at the Venetian seminario gregoriano. In this context he became his first musical formation. In February 1639 he was hired as singer in St Mark's chapel. In this institution he spent his whole musical career. In January 1647 he assumed the charge of vicemaestro and in April 1676 succeeded Francesco Cavalli as maestro di cappella. Important is also Monferrato's activity at the Ospedale dei Mendicanti (1642-1676). The second paragraph focuses some questions that concern the transmission of his musical production. Between 1647 and 1681 Monferrato brought out nineteen individual musical editions. There is a very important editorial production for his time. She must considered however to the light of the active engagement of the musician in the editorial field. Monferrato is the main backer of the editorial house that Giuseppe Sala founded in the spring of the 1676. Three editions are now lost: the op. 10, 14 and 15. Thanks some checks it is possible to establish the title of op. 10: Messe concertate à 3, 4 et 5 voci senza violini et una à 5 voci con due violini et viola ad libitum. The analysis of the manuscript transmission allows to identify an autograph source (I-Nc, Mus. Rel. 1217). In the third paragraph Monferrato's musical production is considered in relation with the two main contexts in which he worked: the St Mark's chapel and the Ospedale dei Mendicanti. Monferrato's last will, drawn up at 16 November 1684, is a precious documental source to focuse some aspects of the social entourage in which he worked: it is discussed in the fourth paragraph.
Originally published in Italian in 2004, Todeschini's studies highlight the relationship between the development of the Franciscan movement and medieval economic thinking and practice. While not the "first economists" the early Franciscans approached the marketplace out of their rigorous Christian religiosity and showed clearly the necessary connection between morality and business. © Societá editrice il Mulino Bologna, 2004. All rights reserved.
Burdened by famine, the plague, and economic hardship in the 1500s, the troubled citizens of Milan, mindful of their mortality, turned toward the veneration of the Virgin Mary and the creation of evangelical groups in her name. By 1594 the diversity of these lay religious organizations reflected in microcosm the varied expressions of Marian devotion in the Italian peninsula. Using archival documents, meditation and music books, and iconographical sources, Christine Getz examines the role of music in these Marian cults and confraternities in order to better understand the Church’s efforts at using music to evangelize outside the confines of court and cathedral through its most popular saint. Getz reveals how the private music making within these cults, particularly among women, became the primary mode through which the Catholic Church propagated its ideals of femininity and motherhood.
This book is a sweeping historical portrait of the floating city of Venice from its foundations to the present day. Joanne M. Ferraro considers Venice's unique construction within an amphibious environment and identifies the Asian, European, and North African exchange networks that made it a vibrant and ethnically diverse Mediterranean cultural center. Incorporating recent scholarly insights, the author discusses key themes related to the city's social, cultural, religious, and environmental history, as well as its politics and economy. A refuge and a pilgrim stop; an international emporium and center of manufacture; a mecca of spectacle, theater, music, gambling, and sexual experimentation; and an artistic and architectural marvel, Venice's allure springs eternal in every phase of the city's fascinating history.
Claudio Monteverdi is one of the most important figures of 'early' music, a composer whose music speaks powerfully and directly to modern audiences. This book, first published in 2007, provides an authoritative treatment of Monteverdi and his music, complementing Paolo Fabbri's standard biography of the composer. Written by leading specialists in the field, it is aimed at students, performers and music-lovers in general and adds significantly to our understanding of Monteverdi's music, his life, and the contexts in which he worked. Chapters offering overviews of his output of sacred, secular and dramatic music are complemented by 'intermedi', in which contributors examine individual works, or sections of works in detail. The book draws extensively on Monteverdi's letters and includes a select discography/videography and a complete list of Monteverdi's works together with an index of first lines and titles.
Once upon a time, before Music television, before remote controls, before books on tape and Internet streaming media, a possible method of enjoying a basic art form was this: a person would sit down and listen to an entire symphony, for however long that took. It is not so easy anymore… Halfway through the adagio they feel a tickle somewhere between the temporal and occipital lobes and realise they are fighting an impulse to reach for a magazine… With all the arts making their small sacrifices to hurriedness, music lovers can hardly expect to be immune. There is a special kind of pain, though. Music is the art form most clearly about time. James Gleick, Faste Please play I am in the middle of the Roundhouse, North London. The only thing in the centre of the bare circular space, once used for reversing trains, is an old harmonium. On the floor in front, it says PLEASE PLAY. It looks like a normal harmonium, except that out of the back of the instrument, an array of wires and leads stretches away, up and around the building. So I sit down. I press the keys, but instead of familiar sounds from the instrument, the whole circular building comes alive. Some keys produce metallic clanks on the pillars, some produce motor noises far away in the ceiling, some produce wheezing notes of indeterminate pitch … There is no skill required, no score of instructions: whatever you do is the performance. During the time I am there children, backpackers, a virtuoso with a self-timing camera to record the incident all try. The sounds are varied, random, striking. This is David Byrne's Playing the Building.
Detailed payment records and notes preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze allow us to reconstruct the relationship of music and space in the Florentine church of Santissima Annunziata. In the late fifteenth century different musical styles and repertories came to define ritually the composite space of the church, one of the main houses belonging to the mendicant order of the Servants of Mary.
This special role of music came into focus in the early 1470s and even more in the 1480s, when subsequent priors increased the musical activities, possibly to negotiate the new spatial features of the church after a consequential remodeling. Music thus helped organize key areas that had undergone architectural transformations, linking each part of the building to the specific rituals performed there through special sounds directed at the likely participants.
The remodeling also involved a shift in the balance of power, with private patrons coming to control the virtual totality of the church. Music helped address this problem as well, by acoustically marking and reclaiming certain spaces as the friars' dedicated ritual sites, but also creating in its variety a nuanced representation of the community—both ordained and lay—that frequented the building.
Despite recent scholarly interest in Monteverdi's Selva morale et spirituale (1641), many aspects of this large, complex print remain enigmatic, and the intended context for much of the music in the collection has long been a matter of pure conjecture. Yet two of the most anomalous features of the Selva morale, the solo motets Ab aeterno ordinata sum and Pianto della Madonna, can now be placed into the context of the Habsburg court in Vienna during the reign of Ferdinand III (1637––57).
Both of these works play directly into the most important aspects of Habsburg Marian devotion. Ab aeterno is a setting of Proverbs 8:23––31, a text that although very rare for seventeenth-century motets would nonetheless have been widely understood as a celebration of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. The Pianto, a Latin contrafactum of Monteverdi's celebrated Lamento d'Arianna, would have been perfectly suited for the Habsburgs' Fifteen Mysteries Celebration, a Lenten devotion in praise of the Most Holy Rosary. Various types of evidence, including liturgical and other religious writings, Habsburg sermons, and additional musical works, support these interpretations of Monteverdi's motets and reveal their importance to the imperial court. That the composer did indeed include the motets in his print with the Habsburg court in mind is further indicated by similarities between the Selva morale and an earlier publication stemming directly from Ferdinand III's court: Giovanni Felice Sances's Motetti a voce sola of 1638.
For both (primarily local) Jews and (primarily immigrant) Muslims, becoming Catholic in seventeenth-century Venice entailed a prolonged process of social transformation and insertion into new relations of patronage and surrogate kinship. This article traces these converts' long trajectories after baptism and their ongoing relationship with a charitable institution, the Pia Casa dei Catecumeni (Holy House of the Catechumens). It shows how the Pia Casa was instrumental in shaping distinct forms of charity and surveillance that brought together Venetian élites' corporate spiritual and civic claims while also furthering their individual and family interests by weaving dense networks of patronage. Ultimately, the article considers how conversion operated as a project of metropolitan subject making in the context of Venetian–Ottoman imperial competition.
Antonio Gardano's publications are among the most important sources of sixteenth-century music. This final volume in Mary Lewis's three volume set completes the catalogue of Antonio Gardano's publications, covering the years 1560-1569.
Although the Renaissance is typically most closely associated with the city of Florence, recent scholarship on the history of Venice provocatively calls this connection into question. While humanism and classicism have traditionally characterized the Renaissance in Florence, historians now argue that the vibrancy of early modern culture also resulted from inc reased cross-cultural interaction, the development of capitalism and markets, and the process of statebuilding. When one views the Renaissance in this light, Venice takes on a new importance in the early modern world as the epicenter from which the energies of the early modern world emanated. Recent Venetian scholarship also hotly debates a variety of other topics, such as gender and women's history and religious culture, all suggesting that the Venetian archives offer a particularly rich and abundant site at which to study the early modern world.
As patrons of art, the Venetian scuole, or lay devotional confraternities, are normally associated with the narrative cycles that some of them commissioned for their meetinghouses. But, as this article seeks to show, the scuole were even more important as donors of church altarpieces, especially in the six decades between Giovanni Bellini's Saint Vincent Ferrer Polyptych (ca. 1465) and Titian's Death of Saint Peter Martyr (ca. 1526-30). On the basis of an appendix of examples, some of which are identified as scuola commissions for the first time, their achievement is assessed, their various motives as patrons are analysed, and the relationship between some of the most important commissions is discussed.