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Italian Music and Art History: Venice's Golden Age – St. Mark's and Beyond with Kate Bolton-Porciatti

Italian Music and Art History: Venice's Golden Age – St. Mark's and Beyond with Kate Bolton-Porciatti


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Can't make this time? A video recording will be sent to all participants after the seminar.

A series of inter-disciplinary excursions led by cultural historian and musicologist Kate Bolton-Porciatti exploring the relationships between music, art, architecture, social and religious life in Italy’s most historic cultural centers. The six seminars may be taken individually or as a series.

The towering musical edifices that appeared in Venice in the 16th and early 17th centuries were every bit as splendid as the buildings for which they were written. This seminar explores how a distinctive musical repertory grew up in the ‘Serenissima’ in response to the lagoon city’s architectural and acoustical spaces, as well as its distinctive religious and civic rituals.  

During our conversation, we transport ourselves to St Mark’s Basilica, where glimmering mosaics, symbolic architectural forms, the effects of light, and music exploiting the distinctive acoustics and spaces of the building all combine to suggest the ineffable divine.  We also visit some of the city’s 'Scuole Grandi' – charitable confraternities who developed their own, equally unique and progressive musical repertoire. Particularly splendid was the music of San Rocco, performed against a backdrop of some of Tintoretto’s greatest paintings. 

Our conversation will be illustrated with vocal and instrumental works by Monteverdi, Willaert, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, and other composers associated with ‘the Serene republic’, illuminating the inextricable relationships between music, art, and architecture in Venice’s Golden Age.

Led by an expert on Italian culture and music, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, this Conversation will show how music was interwoven into the fabric of Venetian life. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with an increased appreciation of Venice's Golden Age.

Kate Bolton-Porciatti is a professor of Italian cultural history and music at the Istituto Lorenzo de'Medici in Florence, where she teaches BA and MA courses in the humanities. She also lectures at the British Institute, Florence, and at the Chigiana Music Academy in Siena. Kate has published extensively as an academic and a journalist; she is a music critic for BBC Music and a travel writer for The Daily Telegraph, UK. Before moving to Italy permanently in 2005, she was a senior producer and broadcaster for BBC Arts & Classical Music in London and has won prestigious Jerusalem and Sony Awards for her programs. She did her M.Phil. thesis in Italy, exploring the musical culture of early Renaissance Florence.

Not suitable for children under age 13 (sensitive content).

90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.

Customer Reviews

Based on 11 reviews
91%
(10)
9%
(1)
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S
Suzette Shelmire (Oxford, US)
Saint Marks and beyond

Kate Bo;lton Porciatti is fantastic! I never got to see St. Marks when I was there as I saw it today with her! and to hear the wonderful music that enhanced her show - and to find out that the 1st public opera house was built in Venice! I can't wait to listen and look at the recording!I just loved her seminar more than I can express!

M
Margaret Hiscoke (Uxbridge, CA)
Best yet

An excellent presentation combining art and music with interesting descriptions of musical instruments, quotes by historic figures, the presenter is an excellent story teller.

S
S.M. (New York, US)
Music and Art History: Venice's Golden Age

Another lovely seminar with Kate Bolton-Porciatti with clips of music and gorgeous art that just made this 90 minute seminar fly!

G
G.G. (Seattle, US)
Italian art history and music-St Marks and beyond

Excellent presentation.

G
G.L. (Jersey City, US)
Brilliant

A beautifully presented history of art and music in the Basilica of San Marco and how its architectural structures and acoustics created the development of the polychoral style. Wonderful musical presentations were done with, in the case of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, a montage of the singers, architecture, and mosaics of St Marks were interspersed.

Customer Reviews

Based on 11 reviews
91%
(10)
9%
(1)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
S
Suzette Shelmire (Oxford, US)
Saint Marks and beyond

Kate Bo;lton Porciatti is fantastic! I never got to see St. Marks when I was there as I saw it today with her! and to hear the wonderful music that enhanced her show - and to find out that the 1st public opera house was built in Venice! I can't wait to listen and look at the recording!I just loved her seminar more than I can express!

M
Margaret Hiscoke (Uxbridge, CA)
Best yet

An excellent presentation combining art and music with interesting descriptions of musical instruments, quotes by historic figures, the presenter is an excellent story teller.

S
S.M. (New York, US)
Music and Art History: Venice's Golden Age

Another lovely seminar with Kate Bolton-Porciatti with clips of music and gorgeous art that just made this 90 minute seminar fly!

G
G.G. (Seattle, US)
Italian art history and music-St Marks and beyond

Excellent presentation.

G
G.L. (Jersey City, US)
Brilliant

A beautifully presented history of art and music in the Basilica of San Marco and how its architectural structures and acoustics created the development of the polychoral style. Wonderful musical presentations were done with, in the case of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, a montage of the singers, architecture, and mosaics of St Marks were interspersed.