The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera is a much-needed introduction to one of the most defining areas of Western music history - the birth of opera and its developments during the first century of its existence. From opera's Italian foundations to its growth through Europe and the Americas, the volume charts the changing landscape - on stage and beyond - which shaped the way opera was produced and received. With a range from opera's sixteenth-century antecedents to the threshold of the eighteenth century, this path breaking book is broad enough to function as a comprehensive introduction, yet sufficiently detailed to offer valuable insights into most of early opera's many facets; it guides the reader towards authoritative written and musical sources appropriate for further study. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including undergraduate and graduate students in universities and equivalent institutions, and amateur and professional musicians.

The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera is a much-needed introduction to one of the most defining areas of Western music history - the birth of opera and its developments during the first century of its existence. From opera's Italian foundations to its growth through Europe and the Americas, the volume charts the changing landscape - on stage and beyond - which shaped the way opera was produced and received. With a range from opera's sixteenth-century antecedents to the threshold of the eighteenth century, this path breaking book is broad enough to function as a comprehensive introduction, yet sufficiently detailed to offer valuable insights into most of early opera's many facets; it guides the reader towards authoritative written and musical sources appropriate for further study. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including undergraduate and graduate students in universities and equivalent institutions, and amateur and professional musicians.

Shows how poetic recitation and the interweaving of music and poetry contributed to the advent of a German identity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.The art of reciting a text out loud, known as Vortragskunst, be it in a private circle or in a concert hall, originated in German-speaking countries in the 1760s, and by the nineteenth century had become a well-established practice subjected to an artistic blossoming unparalleled in the rest of Europe.In this book Jacqueline Waeber explains and examines how and why this happened, focusing on the origins of poetic recitation and its development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a period essential to the development of modern German literature and theatre, bookended by the two main figures who contributed to the theoretical and aesthetical tenets of poetic recitation, the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Poetic recitation quickly gained attraction for the Lied and the musical melodrama, both musical genres that were driven by a search for new declamatory styles. As a result, poetic recitation became increasingly 'musicalized' by the frequent addition of a musical accompaniment. As the book shows, this intertwining of music and poetry made a huge contribution to the advent of German identity through the reappraisal of its language.

The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera is a much-needed introduction to one of the most defining areas of Western music history - the birth of opera and its developments during the first century of its existence. From opera's Italian foundations to its growth through Europe and the Americas, the volume charts the changing landscape - on stage and beyond - which shaped the way opera was produced and received. With a range from opera's sixteenth-century antecedents to the threshold of the eighteenth century, this path breaking book is broad enough to function as a comprehensive introduction, yet sufficiently detailed to offer valuable insights into most of early opera's many facets; it guides the reader towards authoritative written and musical sources appropriate for further study. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including undergraduate and graduate students in universities and equivalent institutions, and amateur and professional musicians.

The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera is a much-needed introduction to one of the most defining areas of Western music history - the birth of opera and its developments during the first century of its existence. From opera's Italian foundations to its growth through Europe and the Americas, the volume charts the changing landscape - on stage and beyond - which shaped the way opera was produced and received. With a range from opera's sixteenth-century antecedents to the threshold of the eighteenth century, this path breaking book is broad enough to function as a comprehensive introduction, yet sufficiently detailed to offer valuable insights into most of early opera's many facets; it guides the reader towards authoritative written and musical sources appropriate for further study. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including undergraduate and graduate students in universities and equivalent institutions, and amateur and professional musicians.

Shows how poetic recitation and the interweaving of music and poetry contributed to the advent of a German identity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.The art of reciting a text out loud, known as Vortragskunst, be it in a private circle or in a concert hall, originated in German-speaking countries in the 1760s, and by the nineteenth century had become a well-established practice subjected to an artistic blossoming unparalleled in the rest of Europe.In this book Jacqueline Waeber explains and examines how and why this happened, focusing on the origins of poetic recitation and its development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a period essential to the development of modern German literature and theatre, bookended by the two main figures who contributed to the theoretical and aesthetical tenets of poetic recitation, the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Poetic recitation quickly gained attraction for the Lied and the musical melodrama, both musical genres that were driven by a search for new declamatory styles. As a result, poetic recitation became increasingly 'musicalized' by the frequent addition of a musical accompaniment. As the book shows, this intertwining of music and poetry made a huge contribution to the advent of German identity through the reappraisal of its language.