Music in Venice: A Historigraphical Overview

Abstract

The way in which scholars have approached Renaissance music in Venice until the second half of the 20th century, however, has been quite limited, conditioned by the models established by the first two monumental works of research in the field: Carl von Winterfeld's Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter and Francesco Caffi's Storia della Musica Sacra nella gia cappella ducale di San Marco in Venezia dal 1318 al 1797 . San Marco was not the only venue in Renaissance Venice where sacred music was performed, although that would be difficult to determine through an examination of the musicological literature before the late 1950s. Renaissance Venice was a center not only for the performance of instrumental music but also for the manufacture of the instruments themselves. With the ubiquity of music in the culture of Renaissance Venice, it is not surprising that musical images were prominent in the work of Venetian painters. Keywords: Giovanni Gabrieli; Myth of Venice; Renaissance music; Renaissance Venice; San Marco; Venetian Painting