The Theatre of Death
Noble Funerals with Music in Early Modern Europe
Hardback (Forthcoming)
(February 2027)
ISBN: 9782503627267
Price: $0.00
This volume analyses the development and reception of funerary practices designed to assert and perpetuate power.
The public nature of funerals for the noble elite was a new phenomenon in early modern Europe. During this period, sophisticated, solemn rituals and theatrical ceremonies were deployed, in which music played an important role in the political, ideological and memorial instrumentalisation of death, in terms of its liturgical, acoustic, conceptual and performative aspects. Combining social history, cultural art history, urban musicology and historical anthropology, this volume studies the production and reception of these funerary practices designed to assert and perpetuate power. Taking music and sound as its starting point and spanning a long period of time (from the 16th to the 19th century), this work explores the meaning, perception and transformation of these funeral events, which lie at the origin of the ritualisation of urban space — a place where the collective imagination is forged and where the various strata of society at the time intersected.
Other Titles in this Series
Vivaldi, Motezuma and the Opera Seria
Essays on a Newly Discovered Work and its Background
Volume 13
Remapping the Classics
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in Spain during the Long Nineteenth Century
Volume 54
Singing Speech and Speaking Melodies
Minor Forms of Musical Theatre in the 18th and 19th Century
Volume 43
La Musique religieuse en France au XIXe siecle
Le sentiment religieux entre profane et sacre (1830-1914)
Volume 44