Review
"This is an important, sometimes brilliant, and often thought-provoking book, exceptionally informative and useful in its overview of Milanese music, geography, institutions, liturgy, and culture. Kendrick's knowledge is vast and his insight keen; the book is a mine of detailed information and original ideasno future study of any topic in this period can fail to take into account the context and broad perspective established by Kendrick, as well as his methodology, in so ably exploring music as a function of it's social, liturgical, devotional, iconographical, and geographical environment." -- Journal of the American Musicological Society
"This book is an extraordinary achievement, and will doubtless remain the definitive work on music in early modern Milan."--Notes
"This is a highly significant work of musical scholarship. Robert Kendrick has provided the definitive guide to Milanese music for his chosen perious but, much more than that, he has once again made a hugely important contribution to the writing of music history: Milan is the workshop in which he has honed a whole new approach to the study of early modern musical culture in the urban context, one which will form a model for a long time to come."--Music and Letters
Product Description
In this book, a follow-up to his 1996 monograph Celestial Sirens, Robert Kendrick examines the cultural contexts of music in early-modern Milan. This book describes the churches and palaces that served as performance spaces in Milan, analyses the power structures in the city, discusses the devotional rites of the Milanese, and explores the connections among city-politics, city-scape and music. Milan's music, Kendrick argues, was the best representation of that city's symbolic system. More than a typical "patrons and institutions" analysis of music's influences, The Sounds of Milan makes use of social anthropological methods to illuminate the roles of composers, performers and audiences. Kendrick traces the rise of polyphony from early appearances in secular music to an important feature of devotional music, all occurring under the careful regulation of the church hierarchy. He illuminates how lay musicians, organised into professional guilds, collaborated on civic festivals and even borrowed from one another's work. Reflecting extensive research into architecture, art, politics, religion, this book offers a complete and interdisciplinary portrait of Milan, one of the most vibrant -- and most musical -- cities in early-modern Italy.
