Lettera amorosa
Musical Love-Letters in Early Modern Italy

An innovative rexamination of musical settings of epistolary poetry from early modernity tying together the histories of literature, music, art, and classics.

Roseen Giles (Author)

9781009517447, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 March 2025

104 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 1.1 cm, 0.31 kg

In early modern Italy, letters were not only written and read but, in some cases, sung. Musical settings of love letters rekindled a complex kind of vocality which was rooted in the letters of antiquity and endured in the musical sub-genre of the lettera amorosa. Epistolary poetry served to transform, or, to echo Achillini's lettera set by Monteverdi (1567–1643), to 'distill' a lover's thoughts and emotions into verse, and the music that set it was equally transformative. The history of musical letters spans several centuries. It begins in the early sixteenth with a setting of Ovid's Heroides by Tromboncino; returns in the early seventeenth through the lettere amorose of Monteverdi, D'India, and Frescobaldi; and ends with epistolary cantatas by Carissimi, Melani, and Domenico Scarlatti. This Element traces the breadth and significance of the musical love letter with a focus on the provocative lettere amorose of the seventeenth century.

Preface
List of Figures and Music Examples
Prologue
1. Voices of Antiquity
2. The Epistolary Madrigal
3. Monteverdi's Love Letters
4. Lettera amorosa in the Seventeenth Century
5. The Epistolary Cantata
Epilogue
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Music [AV]