Lettera Amorosa: Musical Love-Letters in Early Modern Italy

In early modern Italy, letters were not only written and read but, in some cases, sung. Musical settings of love letters rekindled a complex kind of vocality which was rooted in the letters of antiquity and endured in the musical sub-genre of the lettera amorosa. Epistolary poetry served to transform, or, to echo Achillini's lettera set by Monteverdi (1567-1643), to 'distill' a lover's thoughts and emotions into verse, and the music that set it was equally transformative. The history of musical letters spans several centuries. It begins in the early sixteenth with a setting of Ovid's Heroides by Tromboncino; returns in the early seventeenth through the lettere amorose of Monteverdi, D'India, and Frescobaldi; and ends with epistolary cantatas by Carissimi, Melani, and Domenico Scarlatti. This Element traces the breadth and significance of the musical love letter with a focus on the provocative lettere amorose of the seventeenth century.

• | Author: Roseen Giles
• | Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• | Publication Date: Mar 20, 2025
• | Number of Pages: 00104 pages
• | Binding: Hardback or Cased Book
• | ISBN-10: 1009517449
• | ISBN-13: 9781009517447