Why write music theory and publish it? In the thesis I investigate the reasons for a seeming over-abundance of practically oriented music treatises in early seventeenth-century Italy. Throughout I challenge our conventional assessment of the study of music theory: I suggest that we can define a music-theoretical text in terms of its material form in addition to its content. Adriano Banchieri (1568-1634) was the most prolific theorist in early seventeenth-century Italy. His music-theory books exemplify contemporary printing patterns, an overt practical focus, and a synthesis of contemporary theoretical innovations. In Chapter 1, after considering the meaning of 'music theory' and how it is typically classified, I discuss the process of and purposes for writing and publishing music theory. In Chapter 2 I explore Banchieri's practical and philosophical motives for writing music theory, and thus introduce the reader to his music-theoretical corpus. The focus of the thesis then broadens: in Chapter 3 I survey the typical authors, publishing houses, content, material form, function and readers of the various kinds of theoretical texts printed in Italy between 1600 and 1630. In Chapter 4 I examine the widespread practice of publishing second and revised editions of music-theory books in order to establish the extent to which a new edition corresponds to a seeming demand for a particular text. The case study of the paratext of Banchieri's Conclusiones de musica (Bologna, 1627) in Chapter 5 demonstrates the great extent to which the preliminary matter of an early Seicento music-theory book is embedded in its socio-cultural context and how a paratext projects ideas contained in the text proper. Lastly, in Chapter 6 I explore to whom and in which particular forums theoretical writings circulated. Here I focus principally on Banchieri's printed letters, which provide evidence of how an author circulated his music books.

Research on English Catholic Music after the Reformation has focused almost entirely on a small number of Catholic composers and households in England. The music of the English Catholic colleges, convents, monasteries and seminaries that were established in Continental Europe, however, has been almost entirely overlooked. The chief aim of this thesis is to reconstruct the musical practices of these institutions from the Reformation until 1700, in order to arrive at a clearer understanding of the nature of music in the post-Reformation English Catholic community. To this end, four institutions have been selected to serve as case studies: 1. The Secular English College, Douai. 2. St Alban’s College, Valladolid. 3. The Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of the Assumption, Brussels. 4. The Augustinian Monastery of Our Lady of Nazareth, Bruges. The music of these institutions is evaluated in two ways: firstly, as a means of constructing, reflecting and forming English Catholic identity, and secondly, in terms of the range of influences (both English and Continental) that shaped its stylistic development. The thesis concludes that as a result of the peculiarly domestic nature of religious practice among Catholics in England, and interactions with Continental Catholicism, the aesthetic and ideological bases for English Catholic music were markedly different from those of its Protestant counterpart. The marked influence of Italianate styles on the sacred music of English Catholic composers and institutions in exile demonstrates a simultaneous process of cultural alignment with the aesthetic and theological principles of the Counter-Reformation, and dissociation from those of English Protestantism. Finally, it is clear that music was an important formational tool in both the seminaries and convents, where it shaped both community and self-identity, and created affinities with the locales in which these institutions were situated – although it is also clear that these uses of music had the potential to conflict.

Although early Venetian operas by composers such as Claudio Monteverdi and Francesco Cavalli offer today's listeners profound moments of emotion, the complex codes of meaning connecting emotion (or affect) with music in this repertoire are different from those of later seventeenth-century operatic repertoire. The specific textual and musical markers that librettists and composers used to indicate individual emotions in these operas were historically and culturally contingent, and many scholars thus consider them to be inaccessible to listeners today. This dissertation demonstrates a new analytical framework that is designed to identify the specific combinations of elements that communicate each lifelike emotion in this repertoire. Re-establishing the codes that govern the relationship between text, musical sound, and affect in this repertoire illuminates the nuanced emotional language of operas by composers such as Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, Antonio Cesti, and Francesco Lucio. The new analytical framework that underlies this study derives from analysis of seventeenth-century Venetian explanations and depictions of emotional processes, which reveal a basis in their society's underlying Aristotelian philosophy. Chapters III and IV examine extant documents from opera librettists, composers, audience members, and their associates to reveal how they understood emotions to work in the mind and body. These authors, many of whom were educated by Aristotelian scholars at the nearby University of Padua, understood action and emotion to be bound together in a reciprocal, causal relationship, and this synthesis was reflected in the way that they depicted affect in opera. It also guided the ways that singer-actors performed and audiences interpreted this music. In contrast, post-1660 Baroque operas from France and Italy express affect according to the musical conventions of the Doctrine of Affections (based in the ideas of René Descartes) and aim to present a single, clear emotion for each large semantic unit (recitative or aria). This paradigm does not hold true for operas composed before 1660; thus, this vibrant repertoire requires a new analytical approach that respects its pre-Cartesian musical aesthetics. Early Venetian opera composers express not just one, but many affects in each semantic unit. In their operas, musical sound interacts directly with text and dramatic action on a line-by-line basis to produce an unprecedented fluidity of emotional meaning. Chapter II describes a new analytical framework based in this understanding to reveal the means that librettists, composers, and performers used to communicate emotion in this repertoire. Chapters V through X contain hermeneutic and musical analyses (according to the method described in Chapter II) of case studies drawn from Venetian operas performed between 1640 and 1658. These chapters illustrate how this repertoire uses a flexible but well-defined system of musical and textual markers to convey characters' emotions. This new approach unlocks an aesthetic system that privileges the fluid, real-time emotional reactions of the individual in accordance with Aristotelian emotional understanding. In Chapters XI and XII, supporting information gleaned from seventeenth-century acting treatises, reception documents, and conduct books enables an examination of the singer's role in depicting these textual and musical representations of affect in performance. These two chapters address seventeenth-century views on affective communication through voice acting and physical gesture, together with recommendations for today's singers who perform this repertoire. In taking a systematic approach to the identification of specific textual, musical, and gestural means for communicating affect in early Venetian opera, this dissertation offers a new approach to analyzing and performing its dynamic emotional content.

By examining Renaissance criticism both literary and musical, framed in the context of the contemporaneous obsession with the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Horace, among others, this thesis identifies the parallels in poetic and musical practices of the time that coalesce to form a unified idea about the poet-as-singer, and his role in society. Edmund Spenser and John Milton, who both, in various ways, lived in periods of upheaval, identified themselves as the poet-singer, and comprehending their poetry in the context of this idea is essential to a fuller appreciation thereof. The first chapter addresses the role that the study of rhetoric and the power of oratory played in shaping attitudes about poetry, and how the importance of sound, of an innate musicality to poetry, was pivotal in the turn from quantitative to accentual-syllabic verse. In addition, the philosophical idea of music, inherited from antiquity, is explained in order elucidate the significance of “artifice” and “proportion”. With this as a backdrop, the chapters following examine first the work of Spenser, and then of Milton, demonstrating the central role that music played in the composition of their verse. Also significant, in the case of Milton, is the revolution undertaken by the Florentine Camerata around the turn of the seventeenth century, which culminated in the birth of opera. The sources employed by this group of scholars and artists are identical to those which shaped the idea of the poet-as-singer, and analysing their works in tandem yields new insights into those poems which are considered among the finest achievements in English literature.