1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910450083003321

Autore

McClary Susan

Titolo

Modal subjectivities [[electronic resource] ] : self-fashioning in the Italian madrigal / / Susan McClary

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2004

ISBN

0-520-92915-2

1-59734-757-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (388 p.)

Disciplina

782.4/3/0945

Soggetti

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

Musical form - History - 16th century

Music theory - History - 16th century

Music and language

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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.