Massimo Ossi
Indiana University, Musicology, Department Member
- Massimo Ossi is the author of Divining the Oracle: Claudio Monteverdi’s Seconda Prattica (University of Chicago Press... moreMassimo Ossi is the author of Divining the Oracle: Claudio Monteverdi’s Seconda Prattica (University of Chicago Press, 2003); articles on Vivaldi, Monteverdi, and other Renaissance topics have appeared in The Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music and Letters, The Journal of Musicology, Seventeenth-Century Music, and other journals and edited books. Much of this work focuses on text-music relations and on the cultural and aesthetic context of early modern secular music. He is currently working on an archival study of musicians in Venetian society (1600-1650).
His secondary interests include Baroque historiography; the music of Antonio Vivaldi, especially the concertos; mid-18th century opera, particularly the librettos of Goldoni in their Venetian cultural context; and music collectorship in the early 19th century. He was the recipient of the 1993 Einstein Award from the American Musicological Society, has been a fellow of the Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti in Florence, has held a Summer Fellowship from the NEH, and has received research grants from, among others, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. He edits the series "Music and the Early Modern Imagination" for Indiana University Press. Ossi has served as vice-president of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, and as a board member of the American Musicological Society.edit
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Dieser Sammelband umfasst Beitrage zu jenen Themenfeldern, zu denen Helen Geyer selbst geforscht und gelehrt hat: Musik in und aus Italien, Osteuropa – insbesondere Polen –, Mitteldeutschland, das Werk und Wirken Luigi Cherubinis sowie... more
Dieser Sammelband umfasst Beitrage zu jenen Themenfeldern, zu denen Helen Geyer selbst geforscht und gelehrt hat: Musik in und aus Italien, Osteuropa – insbesondere Polen –, Mitteldeutschland, das Werk und Wirken Luigi Cherubinis sowie Oper, Oratorium und Filmmusik.
Claudio Monteverdi's historical position in music has been compared to that of Shakespeare in literature: almost exact contemporaries, each worked from traditional beginnings to transform nearly every genre he attempted. In this book,... more
Claudio Monteverdi's historical position in music has been compared to that of Shakespeare in literature: almost exact contemporaries, each worked from traditional beginnings to transform nearly every genre he attempted. In this book, Massimo Ossi delves into the most significant aspect of Monteverdi's career: the development, during the first years of the 17th century, of a new compositional style he called the "seconda prattica" or "second manner". Challenged in print for the unconventional aspects of his music, Monteverdi found himself at the centre of a debate between defenders of Renaissance principles and the newest musical currents of the time. The principles of the "seconda prattica", Ossi argues in this sophisticated analysis of Monteverdi's writings, music and texts, were in fact much more significant to the course of Monteverdi's career than previously thought by modern scholars - not only did they affect Monteverdi's output for the rest of his life, but as his works became widely known they influenced subsequent composers more than is often imagined. Ossi "divines the oracle" of Monteverdi's ambiguous theoretical concepts in a clear way and in terms of pure music; his book should enhance our understanding of Monteverdi as one of the most significant figures in western music history.
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Vivaldi's concerto titles draw ambivalent reactions from historians, who see them as commercial hooks, rarely reflecting musical substance. But titles condition a work's reception, connecting it to a cultural context by which to... more
Vivaldi's concerto titles draw ambivalent reactions from historians, who see them as commercial hooks, rarely reflecting musical substance. But titles condition a work's reception, connecting it to a cultural context by which to steer a listener's reactions, both intellectual and affective. Eighteenth-century writers on aesthetics recognized the role of textual “ideas” in the reception of music. Vivaldi's Il Proteo, ò Il mondo al rovverscio is regarded as a “trick piece” in which the solo violin and cello parts are “reversed,” each being written in the other's clef. The concerto, however, invokes a deeper conception of the mundus inversus metaphor, in that it constitutes a remarkably sophisticated exploration of upside-down compositional practices. While the opening movement challenges notions of “correct” musical syntax, evoking the Carnival celebrations of the “world upside down,” the last presents a well-ordered example of Vivaldian ritornello form. Vivaldi in...
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... Nino Pirrotta, in his survey of Monteverdi's poetic choices, affords the Scherzi only limited space within a digression, engendered by a discussion of schematic forms in Orfeo, on Chiabrera and French-influenced... more
... Nino Pirrotta, in his survey of Monteverdi's poetic choices, affords the Scherzi only limited space within a digression, engendered by a discussion of schematic forms in Orfeo, on Chiabrera and French-influenced classicism.'" Claudio Gallico, in one of the few studies specifically ...
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... What emerges is a setting as rich in its allusions to the conventions of musical genre as Marino's ... Press, 1988), 7-9. Marino imitated this poem directly in the sonnet titled "Imita alcuni versi di... more
... What emerges is a setting as rich in its allusions to the conventions of musical genre as Marino's ... Press, 1988), 7-9. Marino imitated this poem directly in the sonnet titled "Imita alcuni versi di Catullo" (In imitation of some verses by Catullus): Baciami, bacia e dammi, o cara Fille ...