Song and season

by Eleanor Selfridge-Field

"Two systems of timekeeping were in concurrent use in Venice between 1582 and 1797: government documents conformed to the Venetian year (beginning 1 March), church documents to the papal year (from 1 January). Song and Season defines the many ways in which time was discussed, resolving a long-standing fuzziness imposed on studies of people, institutions, and cultural dynamics as a result of dating conflicts. It is in this context that the standardization of timekeeping coincided with the collapse of the dramma per musica and the rise of scripted comedy and the opera buffa. Selfridge-Field discloses relationships between the musical stage and the cultures it served, such as the residues of medieval liturgical feasts embedded in the theatrical year. Such associations were transmuted into lingering seasonal associations with specific dramatic genres. Interactions between culture and chronology thus operated on both general and specific levels. Both are fundamental to understanding theatri