Early Organ Music

(Publikationen der Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft – Serie II, 48)

Open Access:
https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=psm-001%3A2007%3A48

Reviews:
- Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Samstag/Sonntag 13/14 October 2007, p. 52 (tsr).
- Informazione organistica vol. 18 (2007), p. 272–274 (Pier Paolo Donati).
- Schweizer Musikzeitung 13/5 (2010), p. 36 (Bernhard Billetter).

International Conference
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 24–27 May 2017

Organized by
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
(Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage)

in collaboration with
Basilica Cattedrale di San Marco, Venezia
Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia
Swiss National Science Foundation
Spazio Svizzero (Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, Venice)
Fondazione Svizzera Pro Venezia


On the basis of new perspectives offered by urban history, humanistic geography and historical anthropology, the conference aims to bring together inter- and multidisciplinary approaches to the significance of soundscape in the context of the rich and complex urban system of early modern Venice. As a supreme example of “ceremonial city”, Venice is particularly suitable for investigating how soundscape interacts with urban space in the creation of an elaborate social and cultural identity.

The international conference forms part of The Sound of Eternity. A Digital Platform for the Polyphonic Choir-Books of the Ducal Chapel of St Mark’s, Venice, a research project funded by the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (in continuation of The Sound of Eternity. Investigating the Choir-Books of the Ducal Chapel of St Mark’s, Venice, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation).

The official languages of the conference are English and Italian.

Organizing Committee:
David Bryant, Augusto Celentano, Luigi Collarile, Renzo Orsini
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Knowledge and debate in the field of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Venetian music has greatly benefitted in recent decades from studies of major institutions, composers, repertories and sources, as also from investigations of the quantitative aspects of musical life in what was one of the largest, richest and most commercially oriented cities on the Italian peninsula: the Venetian musical phenomenon includes, on the one hand, regular or sporadic musical activities in the city’s many churches and private palaces (activities which provided significant earnings for large numbers of musicians, whether or not salaried members of the ducal cappella) and, on the other, the auxiliary trades of music printing and instrument making. The transmission of the musical repertories has also received notable attention: in particular, the contemporary and later reception of Venetian musical repertories in different political, linguistic and/or confessional areas. Central, too, have been questions of ‘sound’, both with regard to the particular interaction between musical composition, the spatial peculiarities and the specific liturgical and ceremonial traditions of the Venetian ducal chapel, and in the context of music-making at large.

This collection of essays on the life, times and works of a composer who ranks among the most outstanding musical personalities of his day variously unites these strands in an albeit partial attempt to interpret Giovanni Gabrieli’s output and activities in their Venetian context and, at the same time, cast light on their broader historiographical significance: on the one hand Gabrieli as point of synthesis of a complex Venetian musical tradition, on the other his interaction with and impact on contemporary musical life, his influence on later generations of composers both at home and abroad, the rediscovery of his achievements by nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians and performers, the revisitations of his music by twentieth-century composers.

Reviews:
– Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 53 (2018), p. 285–291 (Michelangelo Gabbrielli)
– Early Music 46 (2018), p. 167–169 (Eleanor Selfridge-Field); reply: Early Music 46 (2018), p. 367–368
– Renaissance Quarterly 71 (2018), p. 776–777 (Tim Shephard)
– Music & Letters 100 (2019), p. 543–546 (Tim Carter)