Music And Power At The Court Of Louis Xiii

What role did sacred music play in mediating Louis XIII's grip on power in the early seventeenth century? How can a study of music as 'sounding liturgy' contribute to the wider discourse on absolutism and 'the arts' in early modern France? Taking the scholarship of the so-called 'ceremonialists' as a point of departure, Peter Bennett engages with Weber's seminal formulation of power to consider the contexts in which liturgy, music and ceremonial legitimated the power of a king almost continuously engaged in religious conflict. Numerous musical settings show that David, the psalmist, musician, king and agent of the Holy Spirit, provided the most enduring model of kingship; but in the final decade of his life, as Louis dedicated the Kingdom to the Virgin Mary, the model of 'Christ the King' became even more potent - a model reflected in a flowering of musical publication and famous paintings by Vouet and Champaigne.

• • Author: Peter Bennett
• • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• • Publication Date: Dec 21, 2023
• • Number of Pages: 340 pages
• • Language: English
• • Binding: Paperback
• • ISBN-10: 1108822436
• • ISBN-13: 9781108822435