On Music Fit for a Courtesan: Representations of the Courtesan and Her Music in Sixteenth-Century Italy

Drew Edward Davies*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

For modern-day scholars it is hard to differentiate courtesans’ music-making from women’s musical traditions in general. Dawn De Rycke and Martha Feldman have elaborated on how courtesans’ traditions of solo song, though orally transmitted, can be imagined in practice in the absence of a specific musical canon. By contrast, this essay explores courtesans’ music and music-making as mediated through several compositional, visual, and poetic repertories that do not transmit the courtesan’s voice directly but mediate it through various genres, especially paintings that associate specific musical genres with probable courtesan singers. In the process it confirms claims made by Guido Ruggiero and Courtney Quaintance later in this volume that the social register of Italian courtesans was routinely but ambiguously represented as both “high” and “low,” and suggests that courtesans’ music-making consisted likewise of an erudite or effete practice of performing markedly “lower” musical genres.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationThe Courtesan’s Arts
Subtitle of host publicationCross-Cultural Perspectives
PublisherOxford University Press
Pages144-158
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9780197727744
ISBN (Print)9780195170283
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2023

Keywords

  • Accoutrements
  • Compositional
  • Fashionable
  • Junkerman
  • Performing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Arts and Humanities
  • General Social Sciences
  • General Psychology

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