Music and communication in Enlightenment Rome: doctrine, instruction, socialization, and style in the vocal works of the Collegio Nazareno (1704-1784)

Prats Arolas, Ignacio

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/78626 Copy

Description

Title

Music and communication in Enlightenment Rome: doctrine, instruction, socialization, and style in the vocal works of the Collegio Nazareno (1704-1784)

Author(s)

Prats Arolas, Ignacio

Issue Date

2015-04-23

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Hill, John Walter

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Hill, John Walter

Committee Member(s)

• Bashford, Christina
• Moersch, Charlotte Mattax
• Ward, Tom

Department of Study

Music

Discipline

Musicology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Cultural History of Music
• Eighteenth-century
• Rome
• Collegio Nazareno
• Piarists
• Scolopi
• History of Theology
• Jansenism
• Church Music
• Oratorio
• Cantata
• Pastorale
• Sinfonia
• Ecotypes
• Rhetoric
• Musical Semiotics
• Social Theory
• Metaphor
• Style Criticism
• Music Theory
• Joseph Riepel
• Fortspinnung
• Absatz
• Niccolò Jommelli
• Rinaldo di Capua
• Marcello di Capua
• Gian Luca Bandini
• Martino Natali
• Giambattista Molinelli
• Joseph Calasanz
• Taste
• Baroque
• Classical
• Galant Style

Abstract

This is a cultural and stylistic study of the main corpus of unpublished musical works currently preserved in the Archivio Generale Storico delle Scuole Pie (AGSP), in Rome. This corpus is primarily made up of forty-nine Italian-texted, religious cantatas, oratorios (or componimenti sacri), and pastorales, commissioned by and performed at the Collegio Nazareno, in Rome, as part of the accademie literarie that took place annually there, at least, between 1681 and 1784. The Collegio Nazareno, a Piarist educational institution founded in 1622, became a prestigious school during the eighteenth century. A leading school, as far as the practice of letters and empirical sciences is concerned, it also hosted important Jansenist-influenced theologians. This cultural environment is commensurate with the intellectual, religious, and political aims of the so-called Catholic Enlightenment. The highly elaborated librettos, musical compositions, and performances produced in this institution were an essential part of a series of specific practices and rituals embodying that cultural atmosphere. They were thus important communicational vehicles for doctrine, instruction, and socialization. In this regard, and with heavy reliance on rhetoric, semiotics, and social theory, special attention is paid to how theological, literary, and scientific elements were combined and presented in the musical compositions. Particularly, Niccolò Jommelli’s oratorio Giuseppe glorificato in Egitto (1749) and Rinaldo di Capua’s L’angelo di Tobia (1768) are analyzed as musical portrayals of St. Joseph Calasanz, in correspondence with Catholic-Enlightenment ideals of holiness. References to music-style features, based on period theory, principally Joseph Riepel’s theory of musical phrase, run across this study also in connection with broader cultural aspects.

Graduation Semester

2015-5

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/78626

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2015 Ignacio Prats Arolas

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