The Noisy Renaissance
Sound provides a more dynamic alternative to the visual paradigm that has dominated many approaches to the study of
the Italian Renaissance. This panel will explore the ways in which sound actively triggers and coordinates a wide
variety of social behaviours and spatial relations, hierarchical, personal, communal, political, domestic, sexual,
spiritual or religious. More far reaching and universally understood than the written word, the ephemeral nature
of sound gave even the most mundane noises a significance that could communicate specific meanings. By day and
night the city was animated by a changing sonic landscape: storytellers sang tales and itinerant preachers
enraptured crowds in the piazza, fanfares heralded governmental decrees and announced triumphal entries, bells
called people to arms and to prayer. Encompassing the full spectrum of sound, from noise to music to silence, this
rich acoustic landscape penetrated the architectural barriers that confounded the Renaissance eye, confronting and
melding with a whole range of interior sounds emanating from homes, workshops, hospitals, town halls, prisons,
churches, convents and monasteries. Both inside and out, social relations of all kinds expressed and were governed
by a plethora of sounds that consequently became the subject of intense social scrutiny and increasing legislative
control.
Encouraging innovative approaches to this subject, we welcome contributions from a range of perspectives that
reconfigure our understanding of how sound choreographed interactions between the social, spatial and material
realms of the city.
Please send submissions to Flora Dennis ([log in to unmask]) – University of Sussex – and Niall Atkinson
([log in to unmask]) – Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – by May 20 2008.
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