Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods: Music and Theatre in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Oxford Monographs on Music)

This is the first comprehensive survey of seventeenth-century Spanish theatrical music to be written, and the first book-length study devoted to the music of the Spanish baroque in English. While particular aspects of the field have been explored before, no previous single study has succeeded in defining the place and function of music in the Spanish theatre of the Golden Age, and the nature of the extant repertory. This book explains the various musical-theatrical genres that flourished in seventeenth-century Spain, answers essential questions about their nature and development as court and public entertainments, and looks at the anomalous production of three operas in a period dominated by genres such as the semi-opera and the zarzuela. Based on a thorough study of the extant music, the plays, numerous historical documents, and descriptions from the period, Stein builds a complete picture through a historical and contextual approach illustrated by musical and literary analysis. This book considerably advances our understanding of the culture of the baroque period in Spain, by making important statements about the nature of the Spanish musical baroque and its relation to European musical and theatrical developments.