Harmony of two worlds

Abstract

The conference ‘Harmony of two worlds? Song, image and space in the early modern Atlantic world’, which was held 14–15 March 2008 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, reconsidered many questions of cultural exchange from international and interdisciplinary perspectives. Sponsored by the University's Atlantic Studies Initiative, the conference organizers musicologist Louise Stein and historian David Hancock, sought to bring studies of music and visual arts into a larger conversation about the early modern Atlantic world between musicologists, and historians of art and architecture, anthropologists and historians from the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Canada. The opening session was held at the beautiful William L. Clements library, with Benjamin West's painting The death of General Wolfe looking over the shoulders of the participants and audience. Although the conflict between England and France in North America captured in the painting spotlights the accepted geography and periodization of Atlantic studies, scholars of the colonies of Spain have led the effort to assess cultural interaction between the New World and the Old. Some session titles set up hypothetical oppositions: ‘Spatial appropriation and misappropriation’, ‘Translation and mistranslation’, but perhaps more indicative of conference-long discussions were ‘Constructing cult, gender and race’ and the ‘Role of travel, discovery, and encounter’. A compelling array of images related to the arts, music and geography of the Americas enhanced many presentations and became reference points throughout the conference. Among music examples heard were an 18th-century Mexican composer's galant-style devotion to St Peter, liturgical settings by Brazilian ‘mulatto’ composers, a motet in the North American Abenaki language, and an aria for Montezuma by Vivaldi, abundant reminders that cultural influences indeed harmonized in two worlds.