Event

The rhetorical pronunciatio, subdivided in vox and gestus, was often evoked in musical sources of the Italian Renaissance as a behavioral paradigm that translated sound perception into visual perception. In a context in which musical performance usually involved hearing and sight at the same time, the resources of rhetorical pronunciatio were a necessary support in order to structure the musical event. The new operatic genre, born in courtly context, adopted the precept of a madrigal pronunciatio by heart, specifically developed in musica reservata contexts, and transferred it on stage. The custom of singing from memory thus became an essential need of the new theatrical music of the early seventeenth century. In this respect, according to Pietro Della Valle, opera made ​​the madrigal a genre irremediably old-fashioned, although still practiced.