Song and Season Science, Culture, and Theatrical Time in Early Modern Venice [Hardcover]

Two systems of timekeeping were in concurrent use in Venice between 1582 and 1797. Government documents conformed to the Venetian year (beginning 1 March), church documents to the papal year (from 1 January).Song and Seasondefines the many ways in which time was discussed, resolving a long-standing fuzziness imposed on studies of personnel, institutions, and cultural dynamics by dating conflicts. It is in this context that the standardization of timekeeping coincided with the collapse of thedramma per musicaand the rise of scripted comedy and theopera buffa. Selfridge-Field discloses fascinating relationships between the musical stage and the cultures it served, such as the residues of medieval liturgical feasts embedded in the theatrical year. Such associations were transmuted into lingering seasonal associations with specific dramatic genres. Interactions between culture and chronology thus operated on both general and specific levels. Both are fundamental to understanding theatrical dynamics of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.Eleanor Selfridge-Field is Consulting Professor of Music and Co-Director of the Center for Computer-Assisted Research in the Humanities at Stanford University. She is the author of many books and articles in various fields, includingBeyond MIDI(1997);The Music of Benedetto and Alessandro Marcello(1990); andVenetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi(1975). What a wonderful resource for lovers ofLa Serenissima. These books give one a terrific sense of the place and its vibrant culture. One wants to travel back in time to be a part of it. Song and Seasonis a work of history, in that it reconstructs on a documentary basis the calendrical system that underlies the theatrical life of Venice, the city which played a central role in the development of opera.Song and Seasonis also an essay in historical anthropology, discussed with perspicacity and expertise. It demonstralS)