5 - Spaces for music in late Renaissance Mantua

Summary

Precise identification and detailed knowledge of the spaces, both indoor (rooms, theatres, churches) and outdoor (gardens, courtyards, public squares, towers) in which individual musical works or whole repertories were performed, or for which they were conceived, should be essential for study of the production, composition and performance of music in any age. The realisation of this objective, however, often turns out to be impossible because of gaps in documentation or remodelling of the places concerned. The presence in this Companion of a contribution specifically devoted to the spaces in which Monteverdi's music was heard, and for which he composed during his employment at Mantua, demonstrates how such an approach, once only vaguely acknowledged, has in recent years become a recognised methodology. Monteverdi himself, speaking of the madrigals in his Fifth Book (1605), reminded its dedicatee, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, of the many times in which he had heard them ‘in his royal chamber’ before they were published, as if himself to spur us on to this final, interdisciplinary frontier of musicological research.

An investigation of the relationship between music and spaces for music during Monteverdi's Mantuan years runs into various problems. The configuration of the Gonzaga palace today consists of numerous buildings added over the centuries to the original medieval nucleus, which faces on to the Piazza Sordello (formerly the Piazza San Pietro). Various individual buildings have been joined together to form inner courtyards, gardens, galleries and elevated walkways, resulting in the complex structure of a palace ‘in the form of a city’ (Baldassare Castiglione) which is still visible today, albeit partially demolished and rearranged.