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4 - Narrative Fragments

Vespers for the Apparition of Saint Mark’s Relics

from Part III - Relics and the Horizons of Musical Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2023

Jamie L. Reuland
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

Chapter 4 examines one of the most spectacular music-liturgical programs of the fourteenth century: the narrative office for the feast of Saint Mark’s Apparition. A work of enormous rhetorical ingenuity and historical imagination, the Apparitio office, I argue, was a product of the state’s heightened attention to and generative engagement with the cult of relics. Found as a late addition to Basilica San Marco’s thirteenth-century antiphonal (VAM¹), the office celebrated the present-day virtue of the state’s most cherished possession: the body of its patron saint, the Evangelist Mark. Careful comparison between the Vespers office chants and the legend source from which the story derives reveals an inventive process of selection, omission, and invention of texts, and as well as a high degree of sensitivity in musical setting. The result was a compelling public ritual that represented the contract between the body of Mark and the Venetians who venerated him and, at the same time, made a self-reflexive bid for music and liturgy as the means for that contract’s renewal.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Narrative Fragments
  • Jamie L. Reuland, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Music and the Making of Medieval Venice
  • Online publication: 12 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009425032.007
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  • Narrative Fragments
  • Jamie L. Reuland, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Music and the Making of Medieval Venice
  • Online publication: 12 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009425032.007
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Narrative Fragments
  • Jamie L. Reuland, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Music and the Making of Medieval Venice
  • Online publication: 12 October 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009425032.007
Available formats
×