Moved by Sound: Emotions in Early Music

This volume brings together contributions from musicology, philosophy, cognitive science, and performance studies to explore how emotional content in Early Music can be understood and interpreted. Topics include philosophical and aesthetic theories of the passions, reflections on the Affektenlehre and its historiography, vocabularies of emotion in musical and non-musical sources, approaches from the history of emotions, and performative perspectives on historically informed interpretation. The essays reflect the diversity of ways in which emotional content in Early Music can be studied today, offering performers and scholars fresh perspectives on the ways Early Music's expressive dimension can be approached and interpreted.

About the author

Agnese Pavanello is a musicologist at the Hochschule für Musik Basel, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. She specialises in Renaissance sacred polyphony and Italian instrumental music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Her recent publications include critical editions of motetti missales and studies on Giuseppe Tartini. She is co-editor of Tanz und Musik: Perspektiven für die historische Musikpraxis (BBHM 42).

Summary

This volume brings together contributions from musicology, philosophy, cognitive science, and performance studies to explore how emotional content in Early Music can be understood and interpreted. Topics include philosophical and aesthetic theories of the passions, reflections on the Affektenlehre and its historiography, vocabularies of emotion in musical and non-musical sources, approaches from the history of emotions, and performative perspectives on historically informed interpretation. The essays reflect the diversity of ways in which emotional content in Early Music can be studied today, offering performers and scholars fresh perspectives on the ways Early Music’s expressive dimension can be approached and interpreted.

Foreword

Exploring emotion in Early Music

Product details

• Assisted by: Agnese Pavanello (Editor)
• Publisher: Schwabe Verlag Basel
• Languages: English, German
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 11.12.2025
• EAN: 9783796554391
• ISBN: 978-3-7965-5439-1
• No. of pages: 324
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 25 mm x 227 mm
• Weight: 616 g
• Illustrations: 9 SW-Abb., 2 Tabellen
• Series: Basler Beiträge zur historischen Musikpraxis; Basler Beiträge zur Historischen Musikpraxis 44
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music; Musikgeschichte, Performance, Musikinstrumente, Musik: Stile und Gattungen, Musik: Musizieren, Techniken, Anleitungen, Chormusik, Vokalmusik, History of Emotions, Rhetoric, Affektenlehre, Philosophy of Music, Geistliche und religiöse Musik, Affects, music cognition, Musical expression, Psychology of music, Interdisciplinary music studies