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3 - Singing Effigies

An Annunciation Drama for the Festa delle Marie

from Part II - The Fictive City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2023

Jamie L. Reuland
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

Chapter 3 turns to the medieval Venetian ritual of the Festa delle Marie, a multiday celebration that began on the eve of the Feast of Saint Mark’s Translation (31 January) and ended on the Feast of the Purification (2 February). The feast centered around twelve wooden effigies of the Virgin Mary, each sumptuously dressed, adorned with gemstones and pearls, and crowned with a golden headpiece. From around 1267 until 1379, when the feast was abolished, the state threw all its financial backing behind a new facet of the celebration: a procession made on 31 January to the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where a sung Annunciation exchange, unique within the medieval dramatic corpus, was performed. This chapter provides the first in-depth musical study of this unique Annunciation drama and its sung ceremonial context. Using previously lost sources, I reconstruct the dialogue’s melodies, all based on the antiphonal repertory of San Marco, and show how this preexisting repertory was refashioned into a version of the Annunciation story that helped aligned the Festa delle Marie celebration with the interests of the state and its empire. Central to this chapter is a concern with the ways song worked in tandem with the plastic arts (effigies, thrones, costumes) to create the ceremony’s special representational effects.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Singing Effigies
  • Jamie L. Reuland, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Music and the Making of Medieval Venice
  • Online publication: 12 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009425032.006
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  • Singing Effigies
  • Jamie L. Reuland, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Music and the Making of Medieval Venice
  • Online publication: 12 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009425032.006
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Singing Effigies
  • Jamie L. Reuland, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Music and the Making of Medieval Venice
  • Online publication: 12 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009425032.006
Available formats
×