Dalla 'Potentia auditiva' all'universal genio de' spettatori. La ricezione della musica nel pensiero teorico tra Rinascimento e Barocco (I)

Abstract

This survey proposed in this study aims, at an introductory level and from an inter-textual angle, to identify certain fundamental aesthetic conceptions of the Baroque cultural environment. These conceptions that have a genuine point of intersection in the implication of audiences and hence in the recourse – in music (as in the other arts) – to every possible resource to conquer the public's attention. The poetics of the marvellous, of psychological effect and of imaginative enticement are all traits that effectively belong to a rhetorical project, in which the ultimate end is the persuasion of the recipient. In this perspective the dominant motivation – in every field of experience (even the liturgical!) – is movere, often to the extent of eclipsing docere.
Subsequently, with the benefit of selective texts, the article examines certain instances of Renaissance theoretical thought (from Tinctoris to Vicentino) that are important precisely for how they aim to go beyond the abstract, intellectualistic and speculative approach of the tradition, and instead adopt a more pragmatic orientation by acknowledging the fundamental role of reception in the aesthetic event. Implied is a marked accentuation of the demands of hearing, of delight and above all of the effects of music on the mind. The significance of this is evident, if only for the light it throws on the importance the early Baroque was to attribute to such themes as aesthetic pleasure, the translation-impression of the affects and the alteration of the passions.