2019-01, Menke, Johannes

Music for the 'Iron Era': Rubens, Seneca and Monteverdi's Eighth Book of Madrigals - In the preface to his Libro ottavo, Monteverdi presents an aesthetic and genre-theoretical concept that involves, on the hand, a new composing style - concitato genere - and, on the other hand, aims for a contrasting and symmetrically organised formal structure in which madrigali guerrieri and madrigali amorosi are placed in opposition. The essay attempts to relate this concept to the work of the contemporaneous painter Peter Paul Rubens and the reception of the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Whereas Rubens thematises war and love in his pictures and adopts a clear pacifist position, Seneca presents a theory of the war-triggering affect of anger, which Monteverdi's concitato genere attempts to portray.