MUSIC BEFORE THE MIND’S EYES: THE SUBLIME PRACTICE OF MUSICA RESERVATA AND SECONDA PRATTICA IN THE LIGHT OF THE TRANSFORMATIVE LUDUS PERFORMING AND LISTENING EXPERIENCE

Milena Medić

doi:10.5937/newso2260269M

Milena Medić university of Arts in Belgrade, Faculty of Music, Department of Music Theory

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5937/newso2260269M

Keywords: Ekphrasis, madrigalisms, musica reservata and seconda prattica, musica osservata and prima prattica, ludus

Abstract

The paper starts from a critical confrontation of the modern, deforming and the ancient, original meaning and use of the term ekphrasis with regard to the concepts of pictura and logos as their contrasting basis. The ancient rhetorical meaning of ekphrasis was revived on a continuous cultural line from the mannerist musica reservata to the baroque seconda prattica at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries as the poetic foundation of the vocal practice of madrigals and motets, whose new expressive and representational compositional manners of defamiliarization (madrigalisms) rooted in the logos concept were deviations from the Renaissance practice of musica osservata and prima prattica. The two distinctive lines of vocal practices are illuminated through their ludic functions in culture.

Author Biography

Milena Medić, university of Arts in Belgrade, Faculty of Music, Department of Music Theory

Milena Medić received her PhD at the Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Music in Belgrade in the class of Dr. Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman and has been an assistant professor at the Department of Music Theory of the same faculty since 2010. In addition to numerous scientific articles and chapters, she published two monographs: The Archetype of Anime and the Transformation of Creative Consciousness from Wagner's Isolde to Berg's Lulu (2012) and Musica Ante Oculos: Ekphrasis and Its Virtues of Enargeia and Ekplexis in Vocal Music at the Turn of the 16th and the 17th Centuries (2020). She is co-editor of Histories and Narratives of Music Analysis by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2013) and editor of Musica Movet: Affectus, Ludus, Corpus (2019).