Tonal Space in the Music of Antonio Vivaldi [Hardcover]

Tonal Space in the Music of Antonio Vivaldiincorporates an analytical study of Vivaldi's style into a more general exploration of harmonic and tonal organization in the music of the late Italian Baroque. The harmonic and tonal language of Vivaldi and his contemporaries, full of curious links between traditional modal thinking and what would later be considered common-practice major-minor tonality, directly reflects the historical circumstances of the shifting attitude toward the conceptualization of tonal space so crucial to Western art music. Vivaldi is examined in a completely new context, allowing both his prosaic and idiosyncratic sides to emerge clearly. This book contributes to a better understanding of Vivaldi's individual style, while illuminating wider processes of stylistic development and the diffusion of artistic ideas in the 18th century.

Analyzes Antonio Vivaldi's tonal and harmonic language

Bella Brover-Lubovsky is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theory and Composition, Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, and a lecturer and reseach fellow in the Department of Musicology, Hebrew University.

[The] Tonal Space in the Music of Antonio Vivaldi has many strengths. It is rigorous, systematic, comprehensive, and original. . . . Brover-Lubovsky's study is based on the examination of almost all of Vivaldi's available works, currently numbered at 808. This includes substantial quantities of vocal music, some of it still unedited. In contrast to a widely held view that all of Vivaldi's music is written to one formula, she finds endless variety and nuance in his procedures.March 2010

This will be a significant contribution to Vivaldi studies and 17th- and 18th-century harmonic and compositional theory. . . . It opens a new and necessary chapter in the scholarship on Vivaldi.

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Editorial Conventions and Abbreviations
Introduction

Part 1. Estro armonico