What role did sacred music play in mediating Louis XIII's grip on power in the early seventeenth century? How can a study of music as 'sounding liturgy' contribute to the wider discourse on absolutism and 'the arts' in early modern France? Taking the scholarship of the so-called 'ceremonialists' as a point of departure, Peter Bennett engages with Weber's seminal formulation of power to consider the contexts in which liturgy, music and ceremonial legitimated the power of a king almost continuously engaged in religious conflict. Numerous musical settings show that David, the psalmist, musician, king and agent of the Holy Spirit, provided the most enduring model of kingship; but in the final decade of his life, as Louis dedicated the Kingdom to the Virgin Mary, the model of 'Christ the King' became even more potent - a model reflected in a flowering of musical publication and famous paintings by Vouet and Champaigne.
- ISBN13 9781108830638
- Publish Date 27 May 2021 (first published 7 May 2021)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Cambridge University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 350
- Language English