Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music

by Susan McClary

In this book, Susan McClary examines the mechanisms through which seventeenth-century musicians simulated extreme affective states--desire, divine rapture, and ecstatic pleasure. She demonstrates how every major genre of the period, from opera to religious music to instrumental pieces based on dances, was part of this striving for heightened passions by performers and listeners. While she analyzes the social and historical reasons for the high value...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520247345
• ISBN13: 9780520247345
• Release Date: March 2012
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.0"