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Architecture and Music Reunited: A New Reading of Dufay's Nuper Rosarum Flores and the Cathedral of Florence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Marvin Trachtenberg*
Affiliation:
Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Abstract

The proportions of the voices are harmonies for the ears; those of the measurements are harmonies for the eyes. Such harmonies usually please very much, without anyone knowing why, excepting the student of the causality of things.

—Palladio(1567)

The chiasmatic themes of architecture as frozen music and music as singing the architecture of the world run as leitmotifs through the histories of philosophy, music, and architecture. Rarely, however, can historical intersections of these practices he identified. This study proposes a transient nexus of architecture, sacred music, and theology in early modern Florence.

Type
Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2001

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