Holy Concord ithin Sacred Walls Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575-1700 [Hardcover]

This volume examines musical culture both inside and outside seventeenth-century Sienese convents. In contrast to earlier studies of Italian convent music, this book draws upon archival sources to reconstruct an ecclesiastical culture that celebrated music internally and shared music freely with the community outside convent walls. Colleen Reardon argues that cloistered women in Siena enjoyed a significant degree of freedom to engage in musical pursuits. The nuns produced a remarkable body of work including motets, lamentations, theatrical plays and even an opera. As a result, the convent became an important cultural center in Siena that enjoyed the support and encouragement of its clergy and lay community.

Reardon's engaging book is a meticulously documented and clearly presented study of the musical lives of women whose names did not find their way intoLe pompe sanesi.....The breadth of scholarship and clarity of presentation make this book a valuable resource for musicologists, theater historians, and students of early Italian culture. --Journal of the American Musicological SocietySociety

An adept and fascinating account of many facets of early modern life, both within and without the cloister, refracted through the prism of musicology. --Music and Letters

Walls has done a fine job of showing us how the study of the afterlife deserves to be featured more prominently in contemporary theological discussion. --First Things

The strength of the book is in Reardon's command of the sources, and in her ability to present.a compelling picture not only of music in Sienese convents, but also of an entire female world that might have been male -dominated....Reardon is thorough and informative...It is a well-written, intelligent, well researched account of music in Sienese convents, and of Siena in this period. --Notes