Rhetoric and Gesture in the Performance of Seventeenth-Century Vocal Music

Abstract

In this document I approach the performance of seventeenth-century vocal music via rhetorically-informed analytical procedures. I draw from primary sources such as Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria and several seventeenth and eighteenth-century treatises, as well as secondary literature on rhetoric and Historically Informed Performance. I then provide three case studies of analytical procedures in the performance of seventeenth century vocal music.