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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Shaping the Urban Soundscape in Spanish Palermo

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My research focuses mainly on official music making, that is promoted by the politic and religious power, in Palermo in the age of the Spanish domination. What I discuss in my chapter, is: 1) how music contributed specifically to shape the urban space, 2) which was the relation between musical experience and political power during the Spanish domination. I will focus on the second half of the seventeenth-century, the final years of the Spanish rule. In this period of time, two important events marked the musical shaping of the urban space: 1) in 1682, the creation of a permanent venue for performing music “en plein air”, the so-called “teatro della musica” in the Strata Colonna; 2) in 1693, the construction of the first Opera theater, the Santa Cecilia theater in the area called the Fieravecchia. Both facts had a great impact on the urban soundscape under different aspects that I discuss. I also discuss the use of visual sources and their meaning for urban musicologists; moreover, I make reference to ways of listening to music in Baroque Palermo.