Shaping the Urban Soundscape in Spanish Palermo

Abstract

My research focuses mainly on official music making, that is promoted by the politic and religious power, in Palermo in the age of the Spanish domination. What I discuss in my chapter, is: 1) how music contributed specifically to shape the urban space, 2) which was the relation between musical experience and political power during the Spanish domination. I will focus on the second half of the seventeenth-century, the final years of the Spanish rule. In this period of time, two important events marked the musical shaping of the urban space: 1) in 1682, the creation of a permanent venue for performing music “en plein air”, the so-called “teatro della musica” in the Strata Colonna; 2) in 1693, the construction of the first Opera theater, the Santa Cecilia theater in the area called the Fieravecchia. Both facts had a great impact on the urban soundscape under different aspects that I discuss. I also discuss the use of visual sources and their meaning for urban musicologists; moreover, I make reference to ways of listening to music in Baroque Palermo.