The Grand Theater of the World

Music, Space, and the Performance of Identity in Early Modern Rome

Valeria De Lucca, Christine Jeanneret, Valeria De Lucca, Christine Jeanneret

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781315465876
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Music and space in the early modern world shaped each other in profound ways, and this is particularly apparent when considering Rome, a city that defined itself as the "grande teatro del mondo". The aim of this book is to consider music and space as fundamental elements in the performance of identity in early modern Rome. Rome's unique milieu, as defined by spiritual and political power, as well as diplomacy and competition between aristocratic families, offers an exceptionally wide array of musical spaces and practices to be explored from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Space is viewed as the theatrical backdrop against which to study a variety of musical practices in their functions as signifiers of social and political meanings. The editors wish to go beyond the traditional distinction between music theatrical spectacles – namely opera – and other musical genres and practices to offer a more comprehensive perspective on the ways in which not only dramatic, but also instrumental music and even the sounds of voices and objects in the streets relied on the theatrical dimension of space for their effectiveness in conveying social and political messages. While most chapters deal with musical performances, some focus on specific aspects of the Roman soundscape, or are even intentionally "silent", dealing with visual arts and architecture in their performative and theatrical aspects. The latter offer a perspective that creates a visual counterpoint to the ways in which music and sound shaped space.

Part I

The spaces of music in Rome

1 Exploring the soundscape of early modern Rome through Uberti’s Contrasto musico

Valeria De Lucca and Christine Jeanneret

“What a headache, what a pain in my ears” says Severo complaining about shrieking coming from a music school: “they make such harmony that mice are running away; they sound like a bunch of cats yowling.”¹ Grazioso Uberti’s Contrasto musico, a treatise from 1630 written in the conventional format of a fictional dialogue between two men, is articulated around a stroll through the most important spaces in which music was made in Rome at the time of pope Urban VIII Barberini. The two friends converse about the virtues and defects of music, Severo (the “strict” one) taking a rather dismissive stand against music, and Giocondo (the “cheerful” one) advocating the usefulness of music as an intellectually edifying practice and a remedy to balance the affects. In Giocondo’s opinion, music has two main functions: first to sing the praise of God, and second as a recreation for the soul and a consolation from everyday harshness.² Trying to convince his friend of the benefits of music, Giocondo takes Severo on a journey for the ears that will see them stop to contemplate the use of music in a variety of spatial contexts, starting with the schools from which the above mentioned shrieking comes, then the houses and the palaces, churches and oratorios, piazzas, and eventually the houses of composers. Along the way, almost as a constant soundtrack to their walk, Giocondo and Severo experience also a variety of sounds and noises, described in an unusually detailed way that gives us a chance not only to imagine an aural dimension of the city that is otherwise irremediably lost, but also to “hear” sounds, music and noise that we, with our modern ears, might disregard and ignore. Not only are the sounds lost, but people experienced, listened to and interpreted them in a different way.³ At a time when the ambient sounds’ levels were far lower than today’s, everyday sounds such as conversations, insults, the noises of craftsmen’s tools and of speeding carriages played a major role in the urban soundscape, along with loud charivaris, fireworks, and the omnipresent bells.⁴

Uberti (1574–1650), a lawyer in the Roman curia under pope Urban VIII, was born in Cesena in 1574 and came from a noble family. As many noblemen of the time, he was a music dilettante and was an assiduous visitor to many of the venues where music-making took place in Rome and that are described in such vivid details in his Contrasto. Uberti was also an amateur composer and three of his madrigals survive in a manuscript preserved in Berlin. The madrigal “Augelletto gentil, voce canora”, which is mentioned in the Contrasto as one of the pieces performed during a concert in the aristocratic palace, is probably one of his own compositions.⁵ In this chapter, following our two strollers, we undertake a journey of discovery of the soundscapes of early modern Rome, considering in particular the ways in which sound, noise, and music defined space, and how space in turn shaped the production and perception of sound.⁶

Along their stroll, Severo and Giocondo engage in the discussion of several opposing categories that are still crucial for sound studies today: not only noise/sound, urban/rural, but also indoor/outdoor, and private/public.⁷ Following their footsteps, we focus on the exploration of the noises and music of the outdoor spaces in the city and the countryside; we will then concentrate on the permeability of sound and its power to cross physical boundaries, considering outdoor music that penetrates indoor spaces, but also music and sounds made indoor that spill outside, expanding in the surrounding areas. Finally, we follow our guides through an exploration of the music and sounds that characterized indoor spaces, not only looking at the aristocratic palace but also entering the houses of common people, musicians and working families, a scholar’s study and the house of courtesans, the taverns and the schools. Each of these spaces represents a “theater” for both domestic and public music practices, but also for the rejection of sound in the opposite search for quiet and silence. In this light, Uberti’s Contrasto can be considered not only as a rare lens through which to explore the lost soundscapes of early modern Rome, but also an essential source for the recovery of an original social micro-history of sound and music. To this end, this essay does not take into account only the sounds of the privileged few, but also everyday music enjoyed by everyone, along with the omnipresence of noises from animals, tools, or loud bickering.

Outdoor noise: urban and rural soundscapes

In their stroll around the city, Giocondo and Severo spend much time outdoors, in the squares, the streets, and the narrow alleys where noise seems to be their constant and predominant preoccupation, creating an interesting counterpoint in a treatise that is devoted to the discussion of music. Uberti’s unusually close attention to the sounds and noises around his two protagonists takes at times the form of rhetorical devices, such as onomatopoeia, in his prose—as in the description of the “woody” sounds of “these knicky-knockys of lutes and theorbos” (“quelli trinchi tronchi di leuti, e tiorbe”), in which the repetition of the plosive sounds clearly conveys Severo’s dislike of instrumental music. At other times, it takes the form of detailed and long lists of the sounds they hear.⁸ The sounds and noises described by Severo and Giocondo, we discover quite soon, are essential in defining the space in which they are produced:

The bells are discordant, the craftsmen’s hammers hurt the ears, the shrieks of the saws make the bowels shiver, the uproars in the streets and the squares are annoying, the course of carriages and carts discombobulate the mind. Nevertheless, those who enjoy living in the city tolerate every noise.⁹

Early modern cities were noisy, and we can imagine that Rome must have been noisier than others because of its size, its multicultural society, the frantic activity of the locals as well as the voices and steps of numerous visitors and pilgrims.¹⁰ Everyday life in the city was punctuated by the distinctive noise of the bells of countless churches, and the activities of the Romans were accompanied by a multitude of sounds, including the variety of noises and sounds described by Uberti.¹¹ And yet, even though some of them could be considered utterly unpleasant and undesirable, the advantages of living in the complex and contradictory social reality of early modern Rome made many grow accustomed to this boisterous sonic environment. In fact, the distinctive soundscape of the city was inextricably connected to the very identity of urban life and shaped it in numerous ways. As some recent studies on the early modern urban soundscape have argued, control over the sonic experience of the city and the power to manipulate, appropriate and use sounds and noises, was as desirable as the control of images and visual culture and was a powerful symbolic tool to control and manipulate not only the territory but also the rhythms of days and nights.¹²

Figure 1.1 Matteo Gregorio de Rossi, “Prospetto della nobil piazza Navona,” in Prospectus locorum Urbis Romae (Rome, 1666). © Ghent University Library BHSL.RES.1991, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Sounds, such as those of bells, not only signaled the passing of time and alerted people in the surrounding areas of threats, celebrations, and of the need to gather for services; but with their specific pitch, distinctive tone and event-specific rhythm, they also defined the boundaries of a parish or a quarter.¹³ Indeed, as Giocondo tells us, “bells ring every day to assemble the people there; but on occasions of major joyfulness and to attract more worshippers during the solemn and festive celebrations, they ring twice as much.”¹⁴ Bells signal and attract the worshipper to churches, where music, space, and theatricality played a fundamental role in the performance of liturgical rituals. The processions, as we read, extended the church’s territory by momentarily taking possession of the streets: “and during the processions, through the squares and streets people sing to pray and thank God with greater affect and greater pomp.”¹⁵ These gatherings of devotees in motion, preceded and announced by the sounds they produced, created an ephemeral presence and functioned as a spatial and acoustic signal of ritual practices and identities.

Some outdoor sounds and noises could not be controlled and limited, especially when it came to those produced by animals, first and foremost the rhythmic clapping of the omnipresent horse hooves and the loud spinning of the wheels of carriages and carts, which were essential for many everyday activities. However, other sounds were considered such a nuisance that laws could be promulgated to regulate them. For example, from Severo and Giocondo we learn that the use of hammers by the smiths was regulated around churches and the houses of scholars so as not to disturb religious worship and intellectual activities:

The laws and the magistrates, who take care of every problem, do not judge the noise coming from music schools to be significant enough. They only imposed some legal ruling over the noise of the blacksmiths’ hammers, by barring them around the churches, c. pridem 18.q.2 and by getting them away from besides some famous scholar, so that they do not disturb his studies, as the jurists wrote in the law I. ff. solut. matrim.¹⁶

Similarly, the production of noise was considered an indecent act and prohibited also on the occasion of performances by companies of actors and actresses, for example as we read in an edict printed in 1661: “the production of racket, noises and whistles, or any other indecent action is prohibited in the playhouse as well as in entering and exiting it […].”¹⁷ The shrieks produced by the above-mentioned children in the schools, however, were not banned by any law, much to Severo’s disappointment.

But the sounds that Severo and Giocondo hear while walking around the city were not only limited to noise. The voices, screams, calls and songs of street vendors, travelers, pilgrims, and drivers of carriages filled the piazze, the markets and the streets of the city as well. Giocondo even notices the work songs of sellers, artisans and workers, who sing to themselves to ease their tiredness.¹⁸

The kinds of noises and sounds one could hear in the outskirts of the city or in the countryside were quite different (see Plate 1):

Even those who like the villa hear the dogs barking, other animals screaming, the workers yelling, the peasant women singing, the cicadas deafening, the owls disquieting, the crickets bothering, the frogs pestering.¹⁹

In any context, so it seems, noise was present—and both our strollers are constantly bothered by it—even when it comes to the sounds of nature. Far from the urban crowded setting, in the countryside the noises, sounds, and music that were heard were connected to the life of the animals that worked in the fields, the work song of the farmer, who “comforts the ox at the strenuous plow with his sing-song” while “the sound of the bells lightens the weight of the laden mule” and “the horse submits to the orders, persuaded by the sound of the curry comb, accompanied by the song of his groom.”²⁰

The sounds and noises of everyday life and activities were in stark contrast to the extraordinar...

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• PART I: The spaces of music in Rome
• PART II: Palaces and theatres
• PART III: Devotional spaces
• PART IV: Streets and squares
• PART V: Villas and gardens
• PART VI: Crossing boundaries
• Bibliography
• Index