The Academy of Domenko Venier, Music's Literary Muse in Mid-Cinquecento Venice

Abstract

I in the Mid-Sixteenth Century Venetian writers, artists, scholars, and musicians came increasingly to play out their cultural ideals within informal academies. These academies made no bylaws or statutes, nor did they keep the sorts of membership lists, minutes, and systematic records that were to become commonplace by the end of the century. In essence they were regular gatherings, chiefly in private homes, for discussion, debate, and performance. The diffuse demography of the republican city-state made it well-suited to the dynamic processes of artistic and intellectual interchange that such gatherings provided.