Music and the Myth of Arcadia in Renaissance Italy

This book provides insights into the Renaissance fascination with the myth of Arcadia, examining how this was represented in music.

Giuseppe Gerbino (Author)

9780521899567, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 March 2009

456 pages, 5 b/w illus. 25 music examples
25.5 x 17.8 x 2.6 cm, 1.06 kg

The idea that there was a time when men and women lived in perfect harmony with nature and with themselves, though rooted in classical antiquity, was one of the most fertile products of the Renaissance literary and artistic imagination. This book explores one specific aspect of this idea: the musical representation and stylization of the myth of Arcadia in sixteenth-century Italy. Giuseppe Gerbino outlines how Renaissance culture strove to keep this utopia alive and demonstrates how music played a fundamental role in the construction and preservation of this collective illusion. Covering a range of different musical genres, including the madrigal, music for theater, and early opera, the book overcomes traditional barriers among genres. Illustrative music examples, including previously unpublished music, serve to expand the reader's knowledge of this important repertory, and provide insights into the role of music in the preservation of cultural myths.

Introduction: music in Arcadia: an unsettled tradition
1. The idiosyncrasies of chronology
2. The return of the shepherd
3. Musical remedies
4. On the cusp between language and music
5. Musical eclipses: theatre
6. The boundaries of the genre
7. Singing like shepherds, singing like peasants
8. Ruzante's song and the rustic picturesque
9. Re-founding pastoral theatre
10. The (female) performance of high culture: the madrigal
11. A pastoral society
12. The dark side of Arcadia
13. Marenzio's utopia of the senses
14. Lost in Arcadia
Epilogue: pastoral, opera and the impossibility of tragedy.

Subject Areas: Medieval & Renaissance music [c 1000 to c 1600 AVGC2]