Music in the flesh : an early modern musical physiology /
Music in the Flesh reimagines the lived experiences of music-making subjects (composers, musicians, listeners) in the long European seventeenth century. There are countless historical testimonies of the powerful effects of music upon early-modern bodies, described as moving, ravishing, painful, dang...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Chicago :
University of Chicago Press,
[2023].
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| Series: | New material histories of music.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Music in the Flesh reimagines the lived experiences of music-making subjects (composers, musicians, listeners) in the long European seventeenth century. There are countless historical testimonies of the powerful effects of music upon early-modern bodies, described as moving, ravishing, painful, dangerous, curative, miraculous and encompassing "the circulation of the humors, purification of the blood, dilation of the vessels and pores. In asking what this all meant at the time, the author considers musical scores and their surrounding texts as "somatic scripts" that afford a range of somatic actions and reactions and can give us a glimpse into the historical embodied experience of organized sound. Starting from the Lutheran hymns and their accompanying intellectual traditions and ritual practices in German-speaking lands, the book moves with ease across repertories and regions, sacred and vernacular musics, domestic and public settings in order to sketch a "physiology of music" that is as historically illuminating as it is relevant for present-day performing practices and that sheds unprecedented light on how subjectivity was embodied through sound in early-modern Europe. |
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| Physical Description: | xxiii, 355 pages : illustrations, music ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780226826882 0226826880 |