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Janet K. Page explores the interaction of music and piety, court and church, as seen through the relationship between the Habsburg court and Vienna's convents. For a period of some twenty-five years, encompassing the end of the reign of Emperor Leopold I and that of his elder son, Joseph I, the court's emphasis on piety and music meshed perfectly with the musical practices of Viennese convents. This mutually beneficial association disintegrated during the eighteenth century, and the changing relationship of court and convents reveals something of the complex connections among the Habsburg court, the Roman Catholic Church, and Viennese society. Identifying and discussing many musical works performed in convents, including oratorios, plays with music, feste teatrali, sepolcri, and other church music, Page reveals a golden age of convent music in Vienna and sheds light on the convents' surprising engagement with contemporary politics.
List of contents
Introduction: female convents and music in Vienna, 1650-1785; 1. Columbina in the convent: the music of entrance, clothing, and profession in Viennese convents; 2. Maria Anna von Raschenau and music at the convent of St Jakob auf der Hülben; 3. Court, music, and Counter-Reformation education in an Ursuline convent; 4. 'A virtual picture of Arcadia': musical entertainments for Leopold I and Joseph I; 5. Commedia dell'arte, talking animals, and the three Marys: passion music in Viennese convents; 6. Convents, music, and Habsburg rule in eighteenth-century Vienna; Appendix 1. Plays, oratorios, cantatas, Sepolcri, and Feste teatrali performed in Viennese convents, ca.1660-1774; Appendix 2. Selected documents; Appendix 3. The Habsburgs and their family connections; Appendix 4. Glossary of terms and titles.
About the author
Janet K. Page is Professor of Musicology at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis. Her research explores musical life in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Vienna, performance practice, women and music, and wind instruments and music. Her publications include an edition of the oboe concertos of C. P. E. Bach for the new Complete Works edition, and articles, reviews and reports in Early Music, The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, and Eighteenth-Century Music.
Summary
Janet K. Page explores the interaction of music and piety, court and church, as seen through the relationship between the Habsburg court and Vienna's convents. In the first full-length study of its kind, she reveals a golden age of convent music in Vienna and the convents' surprising engagement with contemporary politics.
