Perfect Harmony and Melting Strains: Transformations of Music in Early Modern Culture between Sensibility and Abstraction

Published by De Gruyter 2021

Perfect Harmony and Melting Strains

Transformations of Music in Early Modern Culture between Sensibility and Abstraction

Edited by: Cornelia Wilde and Wolfram R. Keller

Volume 34 in the series Transformationen der Antike

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110422061

Overview
Contents

About this book

Perfect Harmony and Melting Strains assembles interdisciplinary essays investigating concepts of harmony during a transitional period, in which the Pythagorean notion of a harmoniously ordered cosmos competed with and was transformed by new theories about sound - and new ways of conceptualizing the world. From the perspectives of philosophy, literary scholarship, and musicology, the contributions consider music's ambivalent position between mathematical abstraction and sensibility, between the metaphysics of harmony and the physics of sound. Essays examine the late medieval and early modern history of ideas concerning the nature of music and cosmic harmony, and trace their transformations in early modern musico-literary discourses. Within this framework, essays further offer original readings of important philosophical, literary, and musicological works. This interdisciplinary volume brings into focus the transformation of a predominant Renaissance worldview and of music's scientific, theological, literary, as well as cultural conceptions and functions in the early modern period, and will be of interest to scholars of the classics, philosophy, musicology, as well as literary and cultural studies.

Author / Editor information

Cornelia Wilde and Wolfram R. Keller, Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Introduction: Perfect Harmony and Melting Strains: Transformations of Music in Early Modern Culture Between Sensibility and Abstraction Cornelia Wilde and Wolfram R. Keller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Disharmonic Spheres: Metapoetic Noise in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls Wolfram R. Keller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
In Search of the Word: Speech-like Chants and Confessional Identity in Counter-Reformation Mission to England Barbara Swanson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
Patrizi’s and Mersenne’s Critiques of Ficino’s Interpretation of the Harmony of the Spheres Jacomien Prins Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Divine Harmony, Demonic Afflictions, and Bodily Humours: Two Tales of Musical Healing in Early Modern England Katherine Butler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
The Powers and Effects of Music: English Theories from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment Penelope Gouk Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
»Cecilia’s Name does all our Numbers grace«: Musico-poetics in Joseph Addison’s St Cecilia’s Day Odes Cornelia Wilde Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
Index of Names Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Classics, philosophy, musicology, literary and cultural studies
Pages
- Front matter: 6
- Main content: 156
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 12
Keywords: Reception of anitquity; music theory; Pythagoreanism

eBook

Published: May 10, 2021
ISBN: 9783110422061

Hardcover

Published: May 10, 2021
ISBN: 9783110426373