Polychoralities. Music, Identity and Power in Italy, Spain and the New World

Written by an international team of distinguished scholars of the social and cultural history of music in the early modern world, this collection of essays brings together contributions that deal not only with the origins and early history of polychoral music, but also its widespread diffusion. From its first manifestations in Venice and the Veneto, the distinctive technique of composition for more than one choir spread initially to Rome, and from there to Latin America via the Iberian peninsula, acquiring in the process new emphases and procedures, both compositional and performative, in a host of different contexts and locations. In place of the traditional and simple model of transmission from centre to periphery, what is argued for here is a more complex process of reception in which a variety of polychora procedures is articulated not only by different ideological concerns, but also by the individual characteristics of particular performance conditions. Played and sung in environments both secular and sacred, and as part of rituals both civic and devotional, polychoral music functioned as a powerful marker of both collective identity as well as hierarchical political and social structures, through the transmission of messages of splendour and magnificence achieved by an alliance of appropiate texts and sheer sonic power. From this book emerges a new picture of the complexity and sophistication of the phenomenon.

CONTENIDO:

Presentazione / Presentation, by Davide Croff, presidente della Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi

Introduction, by Juan José Carreras and Iain Fenlon

-Iain Fenlon: Polychorality: The Origins and Early Diffusion of an International Genre
-Noel O?Regan: From Rome to Madrid: the polychoral music of Tomás Luis de Victoria
-Francesco Luisi: Policoralità a Roma. Alcuni casi emblematici
-Juan José Carreras: La policoralidad como identidad del "Barroco musical español"
-Alfonso de Vicente: Los comienzos de la música policoral en el área de la Corona de Castilla. Algunas hipótesis y muchas preguntas
-Pablo L. Rodríguez: Il ?lleno de música? e la ?grandeza de Vuestra Majestad?: Potere, cerimonia e policoralità nella Cappella Reale spagnola nel XVII secolo
-Luis Robledo Estaire: Hacer choro con los ángeles. El concepto de policoralidad en la teoría musical española de Cerone a Nassarre
-Andrea Bombi: Villancicos policorali nella Corona aragonese
Geoffrey Baker: Polychorality, ethnicity and status in colonial Cuzco, Perú
-Ricardo Miranda: Éxtasis de luz y fe: la policoralidad en la Nueva España a través de la obra de Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla

Bibliography
The Authors
Index of names