Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy

The early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far—reaching consequences—such as tonal music—began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the displacement of aristocratic music—makers by a new professional class of performers. In this book, Andrew Dell’Antonio looks at a related phenomenon: the rise of a cultivated audience whose skill involved listening rather than playing or singing. Drawing from contemporaneous discourses and other c...