Baroque

Abstract: As period, as style, as sensibility, the Baroque remains elusive, its definition subject to dispute. Perhaps this is so in part because baroque vision resists separation of mind and body, form and matter, line and color, image and discourse. In "Quoting Caravaggio", Mieke Bal deploys this insight of entanglement as a form of art analysis, exploring its consequences for both contemporary and historical art, as well as for current conceptions of history. Mieke Bal's primary object of investigation in "Quoting Caravaggio" is not the great 17th-century painter, but rather the issue of temporality in art. In order to retheorize linear notions of influence in cultural production, Bal analyzes the productive relationship between Caravaggio and a number of late-20th-century artists who "quote" the baroque master in their own works. These artists include Andres Serrano, Carrie Mae Weems, Ken Aptekar, David Reed, and Ana Mendieta, among others. Each chapter of "Quoting Caravaggio" shows particular ways in which quotation is vital to the new art but also to the source from which it is derived. Through such dialogue between present and past, Bal argues for a notion of "preposterous history" where works that appear chronologically first operate as an aftereffect caused by the images of subsequent artists. "Quoting Caravaggio" is at once a meditation on history as creative, nonlinear process; a study of the work of Caravaggio and the Baroque; and, a critical exposition of contemporary artistic representation and practice.

Abstract: Musica Poetica provides an unprecedented examination of the development of Baroque musical thought. The initial chapters, which serve as an introduction to the concept and teachings of musical-rhetorical figures, explore Martin Luther's theology of music, the development of the Baroque concept of musica poetica, the idea of the affections in German Baroque music, and that music's use of the principles and devices of rhetoric. Dietrich Bartel then turns to more detailed considerations of the musical-rhetorical figures that were developed in Baroque treatises and publications. After brief biographical sketches of the major theorists, Bartel examines those theorists' interpretation and classification of the figures. The book concludes with a detailed presentation of the musical-rhetorical figures, in which each theorist's definitions are presented in the original language and in parallel English translations. Bartel's clear, detailed analysis of German Baroque musical-rhetorical figures, combined with his careful translations of interpretations of those figures from a wide range of sources, make this book an indispensable introduction and resource for all students of Baroque music.