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CONCLUSIONS

Jonathan E. Glixon

in Honoring God and the City: Music at the Venetian Confraternities, 1260-1807

This chapter provides a brief final overview of the role of both scuole grandi and scuole piccole in the musical life of Venice.

Mare Maggiore, 500–1500

Charles King

in The Black Sea: A History

The Byzantine empire, with its capital in Constantinople, was a quintessentially Black Sea power, yet profiting from the empire's own geography proved difficult. Relations with northern barbarians ... More

The Byzantine empire, with its capital in Constantinople, was a quintessentially Black Sea power, yet profiting from the empire's own geography proved difficult. Relations with northern barbarians were a constant concern. In time the Byzantines ceded control of the sea to the commercial Mediterranean empires of Venice and Genoa. The Italians helped to revive the trading relations that had flourished under the ancient Greeks.Less

 Movements of Ritual and Sincerity

Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett, and Bennett Simon

in Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity

This chapter looks at different cultural examples of the tensions between ritual and sincerity over time. First, it discusses the interplay of law and love, Judaism and Christianity, and ritual and ... More

This chapter looks at different cultural examples of the tensions between ritual and sincerity over time. First, it discusses the interplay of law and love, Judaism and Christianity, and ritual and sincerity in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Second, it looks at the history of architectural ornament, which is ritual-like in its repetitions and rhythms and in its concern with boundaries and framing. Here the ritual/sincerity tension plays out typically as conflict between ornament and pedagogy. Iconoclasm is a core theme of this section. Finally, it compares the formal features of music to those of ritual. Like ritual, music is a way of establishing and crossing boundaries, and of ordering a messy world through techniques of intonation, rhythm, and ornament. The tension between ritual and sincerity culminates in 20th-century attempts to move beyond the conventions of tonality completely.Less

Seduction and Spirituality: The Ambiguous Roles of Music in Venetian Art

FORTINI BROWN PATRICIA

in The Music Room in Early Modern France and Italy: Sound, Space and Object

This chapter examines the tensions between the sacred and profane in attitudes towards the art of music as manifested in Venetian Renaissance painting. Choirs of pious music-making angels playing a ... More

This chapter examines the tensions between the sacred and profane in attitudes towards the art of music as manifested in Venetian Renaissance painting. Choirs of pious music-making angels playing a variety of musical instruments were a notable feature of Venetian altarpieces from the fourteenth century on. And yet, by the early years of the sixteenth century, these concerts of sacred music were eclipsed by secular images of flute-playing shepherds and lute-strumming youths. While household inventories tell us that musical instruments played a central role in family congeniality, paintings of the time also associate musical performance with ladies of dubious respectability. Thus, while music was treasured for its spiritual enlightenment and contribution to refined domesticity, it was also suspect because of its seductive sensuality.Less

The Role of Music in the Venetian Home in the Cinquecento

DEBORAH HOWARD

in The Music Room in Early Modern France and Italy: Sound, Space and Object

This chapter considers the role of music and dance in the definition of identity by families and individuals in Renaissance Venice, with particular reference to the use of domestic space for ... More

This chapter considers the role of music and dance in the definition of identity by families and individuals in Renaissance Venice, with particular reference to the use of domestic space for music-making. The integration of music into its social and architectural context is discussed in terms of the class identity of different groups. The contexts range from domestic entertainment to family festivities such as marriages. The chapter goes on to explore the kinds of music-making in different spaces in the Venetian dwelling, in terms of the size and loudness of the instrument; the type of music performed; and the size, function and decoration of the room. During the sixteenth century, increasingly specialised rooms were created for music-making, often linked to theatrical performance and/or dance. In parallel, the employment of professional musicians by elite families began to supersede amateur participation on important festive occasions.Less

Hebrew Manuscripts in an Age of Print

Yaacob Dweck

in The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice

This chapter posits Leon Modena's writing practices within the context of early modern Venice, capital of Hebrew printing and center of manuscript production. The circumstances of Modena's life as ... More

This chapter posits Leon Modena's writing practices within the context of early modern Venice, capital of Hebrew printing and center of manuscript production. The circumstances of Modena's life as well as the cultural world of early modern Venice offer some context for why Ari Nohem (The Roaring Lion, 1840) did not appear in print in the seventeenth century. As a work of criticism, Ari Nohem reflected upon the transmission of Jewish tradition, particularly the transmission of esoteric information and the principles of Jewish law. Modena argued that the printing of legal and kabbalistic books had effected a radical change in the transmission of Jewish tradition, a change that he decried in no uncertain terms at several points. Ari Nohem polemicized against one medium, print, in the form of another, manuscript.Less

Historical Insights

Dominique Guellec

in The Economics of the European Patent System: IP Policy for Innovation and Competition

This chapter addresses the genesis and evolution of the patent system, since the first patent statute was issued in Venice in 1471, until the international harmonization pressures of patent regimes ... More

This chapter addresses the genesis and evolution of the patent system, since the first patent statute was issued in Venice in 1471, until the international harmonization pressures of patent regimes at the end of 20th century. The European Patent Office (EPO), which began its activity in 1978, has established a common examination procedure and common standards for patenting all over Europe. The main characteristics of modern patent systems are discussed, which include the subject matter (technical inventions in Europe), priority rule (first to file), inventive step, a statutory duration of twenty years after filing, prior examination of applications before grant, inventive step as minimum degree of novelty, disclosure of the protected invention, and the possibility of various restrictions on patent rights, such as compulsory licensing or working requirements.Less

Éblouissement

Christopher Prendergast

in Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic

This chapter examines éblouissement in Marcel Proust's Venice in À la recherche du temps perdu. It suggests that Proust's sensibility and imagination were “religious” insofar as they were animated by ... More

This chapter examines éblouissement in Marcel Proust's Venice in À la recherche du temps perdu. It suggests that Proust's sensibility and imagination were “religious” insofar as they were animated by the wish to intuit from a “feeling.” From the perspective of more rigorously conceived religious belief and doctrine, however, the chapter argues that such wish was pure folly, in many ways the blind alley of a writer for whom religious faith was not a plausible option, but who was also indifferent to what had come to replace religion—the secular narratives of “progress” underpinning the enlightenment project of “modernity.” That Proust suspected it was folly is clear from his indictment of John Ruskin with the charge of idolatry.Less

The Merchants and the Jew of Venice: Wealth’s Communion and an Intruder

C. L. Barber

in Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom

This chapter examines Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. This play as a whole is not shaped by festivity in the relatively direct way as in Love's Labour's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The ... More

This chapter examines Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. This play as a whole is not shaped by festivity in the relatively direct way as in Love's Labour's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play's large structure is developed from traditions which are properly theatrical; it is not a theatrical adaptation of a social ritual. And yet analogies to social occasions and rituals prove to be useful in understanding the symbolic action. The chapter pursues such analogies without suggesting, in most cases, that there is a direct influence from the social to the theatrical form. Shakespeare here is working with autonomous mastery, developing a style of comedy that makes a festive form for feeling and awareness out of all the theatrical elements, scene, speech, story, gesture, role which his astonishing art brought into organic combination.Less

The Controversy over the Interdetto and the Attacks against Bellarmine’s Theory

Stefania Tutino

in Empire of Souls: Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth

This chapter analyzes the repercussions of Bellarmine’s theory in the controversy over the Venetian Interdetto. It starts by examining the very problematic issue of clerical exemption, from which the ... More

This chapter analyzes the repercussions of Bellarmine’s theory in the controversy over the Venetian Interdetto. It starts by examining the very problematic issue of clerical exemption, from which the controversy over the Interdetto started. It then examines in detail the polemical battle that opposed Bellarmine to Paolo Sarpi, and then it explains the political context in which the controversy has to be situated through an analysis of the trials conducted by the Roman Inquisition and by the Index against some theologians who wrote in support of Venice. By looking at the controversial resolutions on those cases, this chapter explains the significance of the political and religious issues at stake for the definition of the nature and limits of political authority and its relationship with ecclesiastical authority.Less

CASE STUDIES: COMPANIES AND OPERA PRODUCTION AT FOUR VENETIAN THEATERS

Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon

in Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice

This chapter comprises case studies of four different 17th-century theaters that present a variety of impresarial models. Despite being the first public opera theater, S. Cassiano had difficulty ... More

This chapter comprises case studies of four different 17th-century theaters that present a variety of impresarial models. Despite being the first public opera theater, S. Cassiano had difficulty maintaining a stable opera company, and had a number of different impresarios during the first two decades of mounting opera. The Novissimo was a newly built theater dedicated to opera, built on the grounds of a monastery. Although it attracted operatic stars and enthusiastic audiences, it too suffered continual financial difficulties. S. Aponal was owned by cittadini rather than patricians, and provided an inexpensive, if small, venue for opera. S. Luca, which began to present opera only after Marco Faustini left S. Cassiano, managed to present high quality opera within a short time, after a rather shaky start.Less

THE HOUSES OF SCOTTO AND GARDANO: Two Printing Dynasties

Jane A. Bernstein

in Print Culture and Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice

This chapter focuses on the two most important music printing presses of 16th-century Venice: the House of Scotto and the House of Gardano. It presents histories of the two dynastic firms, tracing ... More

This chapter focuses on the two most important music printing presses of 16th-century Venice: the House of Scotto and the House of Gardano. It presents histories of the two dynastic firms, tracing their development from the founding of the presses through several generations of bookmen.Less

Introduction

DAVID LAVEN

in Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs: 1815-1835

This introductory chapter places this work within the historiography of the Austrian domination of Venice and Venetia.