Monteverdi's Unruly Women: The Power of Song in Early Modern Italy (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521120265)

Monteverdi's Unruly Women examines the composer's madrigals and music dramas for what they can tell us about the musical and cultural world of singing and the voice in early modern Italy. Monteverdi's music demanded trained, female voices to make dramatic and expressive statements. At a time when singing was not entirely acceptable for respectable women his music allowed women to use their voices to gain power. Bonnie Gordon also explores the social and musical environment in which the singers lived and worked. Using key primary source material such as singing treatises and Renaissance writings on medicine and acoustics, Gordon contributes to two distinct disciplines: she brings an increased engagement with medical and literary representations of the female body to the growing field of scholarship treating gender and music, and adds to a well-established industry of scholarship devoted to the perception of gender and the body in early modern Europe.

Author: Bonnie Gordon
ISBN-10: 0521120268
ISBN-13: 9780521120265
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/24/2009
Pages: 248
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d