Music and Ritual in Venice and its Mediterranean Empire (1200-1500)

Abstract

Uncovering the vital role that musical performance played as a mode of political action and spiritual recourse in one of the most powerful cities in the medieval Mediterranean, "Music and Ritual in Venice and its Mediterranean Empire" demonstrates the ways in which music activated a theology and politics of the voice in late-medieval Venice and in its growing empire in the Greek-speaking world, and shows how the Republic imagined song to effect spiritual change in its leaders and institutions. This project, which claims a common ideological ground for repertories yet to be considered in a single study, reveals the ways in which vocal performances as diverse as stylized cheering, plainchant, simple polyphony, and the erudite motets of Ciconia and his contemporaries all served as expressions of the voice's perceived ability to channel divine powers through political leaders, or to transform sacred objects into agents of government. In Venice's Greek-speaking colonies, many of these same repertories were re-cast within the Orthodox rituals that synthesized local music and ritual practices with Venetian colonial agendas. Through its broad examination of the intersections of music, spirituality, and politics in Venice's late-medieval empire, this study stands to address larger questions about the function of music within the power structures of an increasingly international and multi-faith Mediterranean.