Parlar cantando: The practice of reciting verses in Italy from 1300 to 1600 - Hardcover

Abramov Van Rijk, Elena

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3039116703 ISBN 13: 9783039116706

Publisher: Verlag Peter Lang, 2009

Synopsis

This book is a pioneering attempt to explore the fascinating and hardly known realm of reciting poetry in medieval and Renaissance Italy. The study of more than 50 treatises on both music and poetry, as well as other literary sources and documents from the period between 1300 and 1600, highlights above all the practice of parlar cantando («speaking through singing» – the term found in De li contrasti, a fourteenth-century treatise on poetry) as rooted in the art of reciting verses. Situating the practice of parlar cantando in the context of late medieval poetic delivery, the author sheds new light on the origin and history of late Renaissance opera style, which their inventors called stile recitativo, rappresentativo or, exactly, parlar cantando. The deepest roots of the Italian tradition of parlar cantando are thus revealed, and the cultural background of the birth of opera is reinterpreted and revisited from the much broader perspective of what appears to be the most important Italian mode of music making between the age of Dante and Petrarch and the beginning of Italian opera around 1600.

About this title

About the Author

The Author: Elena Abramov-van Rijk received her Ph.D. in musicology from Tel Aviv University. Her main field of interest is fourteenth-century Italian music in the context of cultural history and language. In 2007 she received the Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University for her work on the relationship between music and poetry.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verlag Peter Lang
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3039116703
• ISBN 13: 9783039116706
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416