Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani

Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani

Freitas, Roger

Hardcover

Series: New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism, Book 19

Biographies GeneralGeneral Music

ISBN10: 0521885213
ISBN13: 9780521885218
Publisher: Cambridge
Published: May 14 2009
Pages: 452
Weight: 2.35
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.70 Depth: 9.80
Language: English
This book explores the fascinating life of the most documented musician of the seventeenth century. Born in 1626 into a bourgeois family in Pistoia, Italy, Atto Melani was castrated to preserve his singing voice and soon rose to both artistic and social prominence. His extant letters not only depict the musical activities of several European centers, they reveal the real-life context of music and the musician: how a singer related to patrons and colleagues, what he thought about his profession, and the role music played in his life. Whether Atto was singing, spying, having sex, composing, or even rejecting his art, his life illustrates how music-making was always also a negotiation for power. Providing a rare glimpse of the social and political contexts of seventeenth-century music, Roger Freitas sheds light on the mechanisms that generated meaning for music, clarifying what music at this time actually was.

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