A Reconstruction of Late Renaissance Music in Nono's Prometeo

This paper attempts to stress that the composer Luigi Nono never overlooked early music, particularly Renaissance music, and his avant-garde works were created on the basis of late Renaissance and early Baroque music. Furthermore, this paper has tried to shed light on the relationship between music and space, which was an essential parameter of musical composition in the twentieth century as well as in the Renaissance. The sound modulated by live electronics transports the listener into synesthetic and perceptive listening and sonic space. As a result, it is demonstrated that Nono indicated the power and fascination of the voice, the polychoral structure, and the influence of the interaction between sound and space in his Prometeo.

The Thesaurus Approach to Shakespearean Studies

Изучение творчества Шекспира в парадигме междисциплинарности является актуальной задачей. Тезаурусный подход исследований Шекспира и его современников позволяет сосредоточиться на междисциплинарном изучении шекспировского творчества. В статье анализируются основные направления шекспировских исследований, которые давно вышли за пределы англоязычной культуры. Во многих университетах мира изучают не только литературу позднего Ренессанса, эволюцию шекспировской поэтики, шекспировские реминисценции в национальных литературах, но и другие, казалось бы далеко стоящие от художественной литературы явления. Важными в научной и преподавательской деятельности стали исследования, ориентированные на философское прочтение творчества великого драматурга. Новые возможности открывают Интернет и цифровые технологии. Тезаурусный подход в современной гуманитаристике должен трансформироваться и стать методом анализа концептов и концептосфер, которые образуют тезаурусы. Как инструмент познания, метод способствует формированию полноты и глубины знания в междисциплинарных исследованиях. Каждый их сегмент открывает шекспировскую семантику культурных констант, объединяющих человечество и расширяющих тезаурус мировой культуры, не только национальный, но и мировой тезаурус творчества Шекспира. The background for Shakespearean studies gains importance in an interdisciplinary context. The thesaurus approach of studying Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and the daily life of his epoch helps to concentrate on the aspect of interdisciplinary studies of Shakespeare's creative works. Following this task, the author of the article researches the key areas of Shakespearean studies. Today, Shakespeare is not only the genius of Anglo-Saxon literature, but also one of the pillars of Anglo-American educational system both at school and at university. Shakespearean studies have long gone beyond the framework of the English-speaking cultures. Turning to Shakespeare, researchers of the largest educational centers of the world study not only the literature of the late Renaissance period, the evolution of Shakespearean poetics in the context of world culture, Shakespearean allusions in national literatures, not only the development of dramaturgy, the history of the theatre, music, the cinema, but also other disciplines seemingly unconnected to the world artistic culture. The research oriented at philosophical understanding of the great playwright's work has gained special significance for scientific and teaching activity. Studying Shakespeare's work in the 21st Century is closely connected to the Internet and information technologies. In a sense, the thesaurus approach in modern humanities should be transformed and become a method of analyzing the concepts and conceptospheres that form thesauri.

Introduction: The Twenty-First Century Vittoria Colonna

Although—unusually, for an early modern woman writer—Vittoria Colonna has long been considered part of the canon, several factors have inhibited a true appreciation of her importance as a literary innovator and model. The current critical moment is conducive to a re-examination of her significance, in the light of recent research on the early modern Italian tradition of women’s writing, on the Catholic Reform movement and its literary expression, and on developments in Italian literature in the last four decades of the sixteenth century. Consideration of these factors reveal Colonna as a figure of wide-reaching influence in her time and a powerful shaping influence on later traditions of Italian literature, in the late Renaissance and beyond.

Regulating sense and space in late Renaissance Florence

This article examines the sounds and smells of late Renaissance Florence by analysing stone inscriptions posted in public streets and squares by the city's policing officials, the Otto di Guardia, during the Medici grand ducal period (1569–1737). The plaques contain sensory regulations prohibiting sounds, smells and sights considered socially and environmentally polluting. Unpublished archival records, printed materials and material artifacts reveal how sensory legislation developed as an increasingly public element of late Renaissance Florentine governance, while at the same time revealing how Florentines often resisted or ignored sensory regulation. Digitally mapping the sensory legislation plaques visualizes the intersections of sense, space and social history in new ways.

Complete Motets from Florilegium Portense

Martin Roth was a student and later cantor at the Pforta school near Leipzig. His sixteen surviving motets are contained in the anthology Florilegium Portense, issued in two volumes in 1618 and 1621. Consisting largely of double-choir motets, this collection is a retrospective of late Renaissance style, intersecting with seventeenth-century usage in Lutheran churches. The collection consists of 165 pieces by about ninety composers and was used widely in schools and churches throughout central Germany. These motets were performed on a weekly basis as late as 1770 for services at the main churches in Leipzig; J. S. Bach purchased new copies in use at the St. Thomas School in 1729, mentioning that the old copies had been sung to pieces (zersungen). The fact that such late-Renaissance motets were performed in rotation for some 150 years in Leipzig lends depth to our understanding of baroque performance practice.