Fruits of the Cross : Passiontide Music Theater under the Hapsburgs

In this first detailed study of seventeenth-century sepolcri — sacred operas written for court performance on Holy Thursday and Good Friday—Robert L. Kendrick delves into the political and artistic world of Habsburg Vienna, in which music and ritual combined on the stage to produce a thoroughly original art form based on devotion to Christ’s Tomb. Through the use of allegorical characters, the musical dramas ranged from the devotionally intense, to the theologically complex, to the ugly anti-Jewish, but played a unique role in making Passion piety relevant to wider cultural concerns. Fruits of the Cross suggests that understanding the sepolcri has implications for the theatricalization of devotion, the power of allegory, the role of queenship in court ideology, the interplay between visuality and music, and not least the intellectual centrality of music theater to court self-understanding. "In this first detailed study of seventeenth-century sepolcri, semi-staged sacred operas performed on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, Robert L. Kendrick delves into the political and artistic world of Habsburg Vienna, where music and ritual combined on the stage to produce a thoroughly original art form that would impact music and performance across early modern Europe. Through the use of allegorical characters, the messages in the plays ranged from the devotionally intense to the theologically complex to the ugly anti-Jewish and played a unique role in making Passion piety both articulate and relevant to wider cultural concerns. Beyond the slightly worn historiographic generalizations on Habsburg religiosity (pietas Austriaca), Fruits of the Cross suggests that understanding the sepolcri has implications for ritual theater in early modern Europe, the theatricalization of devotion, the power of allegory, the role of queenship in court ideology, the interplay between visuality and music, and not least the intellectual centrality of music theater to court self-understanding"-- Provided by publisher Intro Subvention Title Page Copyright Epigraph Contents List of Illustrations List of Music Examples Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Notes on Sources Introduction 1. Passion and Theater 2. Devotional Strategies 3. Social Others and Selves 4. Music and Its Affects Epilogue: The Power of the Cross Appendix 1. Checklist of Sepolcri, 1660-1711 Appendix 2. The Preserved Repertory, 1660-1705, and Its Possible Tonalities Appendix 3. Possible Burnacini Drawings for Sepolcri Notes Bibliography General Index Index of Sepolcri by Short Title.