Wilbourne, Emily – Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence

Description

Features new archival work documenting the presence of enslaved and racially-marked individuals in seventeenth-century Italy
• Integrates historical facts and data with a critical-theoretical analytic that considers the consequences of early modern slavery at an epistemological and historiographical level
• Includes sound, music, and the voice in the history of race and race in the history of Western classical music

Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence argues for the power of sound — particularly musical and vocal sounds — to systems of racial and ethnic difference. Foregrounding newly discovered archival sources, Emily Wilbourne documents the significant presence of foreign and racially-marked individuals in Medici Florence, many of whom were living under conditions of slavery or unfree labor. This book considers how the musical and verbal sounds of these individuals were recruited to represent or communicate access to subjectivity, agency, and voice.

Contents

1. Prologo
2. Introduction
3. ACT ONE
4. Scene 1: Songs to Entertain Foreign Royalty
5. Scene 2: Comic Songs Imitating Foreign Voices
6. Scene 3: Music all’usanza loro (or Performed in a Foreign Way)
7. Scene 4: Turkish Music in Italy
8. Scene 5: Trumpets and Drums Played by Enslaved Musicians
9. Scene 6: Scholarly Transcriptions of Foreign Musical Sounds
10. Scene 7: Music Proper to Enslaved Singers
11. Intermezzo: Thinking from Enslaved Lives
12. ACT TWO
13. Scene 8: Introducing Giovannino Buonaccorsi
14. Scene 9: Buonaccorsi Sings on the Florentine Stage
15. Scene 10: Buonaccorsi as Court Jester
16. Scene 11: Buonaccorsi as a Black Gypsy
17. Scene 12: Buonaccorsi as a Soprano
18. Scene 13: Buonaccorsi Sings on the Venetian Stage
19. Intermezzo II: Thinking from Giovannino Buonaccorsi’s Life
20. Epilogo (Axiomatic)
21. Index