{"title":"Was Carlo Gesualdo’s Honour Killing Liturgical?","authors":"JEFFREY LEVENBERG","doi":"10.1017/rma.2023.4","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, musicologists have dropped the murder charges against Carlo Gesualdo because criminal law in Renaissance Italy permitted cuckolds to execute their unfaithful wives. As Annibale Cogliano has expounded, Gesualdo had the right to perform an ‘honour killing’. Still, the known facts of this case are few, and the extent to which Gesualdo premeditated his attack has remained a mystery. Through a new investigation of the surviving sources, this study proposes that Gesualdo coordinated his honour killing with the church liturgy: fearful of breaking the fifth commandment, Gesualdo attacked on a day when the Bible lesson sanctioned vendetta killing.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2023.4","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MUSIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In recent years, musicologists have dropped the murder charges against Carlo Gesualdo because criminal law in Renaissance Italy permitted cuckolds to execute their unfaithful wives. As Annibale Cogliano has expounded, Gesualdo had the right to perform an ‘honour killing’. Still, the known facts of this case are few, and the extent to which Gesualdo premeditated his attack has remained a mystery. Through a new investigation of the surviving sources, this study proposes that Gesualdo coordinated his honour killing with the church liturgy: fearful of breaking the fifth commandment, Gesualdo attacked on a day when the Bible lesson sanctioned vendetta killing.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of the Royal Musical Association was established in 1986 (replacing the Association"s Proceedings) and is now one of the major international refereed journals in its field. Its editorial policy is to publish outstanding articles in fields ranging from historical and critical musicology to theory and analysis, ethnomusicology, and popular music studies. The journal works to disseminate knowledge across the discipline and communicate specialist perspectives to a broad readership, while maintaining the highest scholarly standards.