Innehåller verkförteckning

Part 1. Identity of a Performer: Napolitano y de buena casta ; Sieur Jule Brancasse, gentilhomme ordinaire de la Chambre du Roy ; II piu veterano tra' soldati. -- Part 2. Bass Song: II basso del Brancazio ; Per basso solo ; Basso alla bastarda -- Part 3. Performance of Identity: Poco preggio di soldato, ma anche di Corteggiano ; Tra novelle sirene ; Canti in dolce tenzon

Brancaccio was a Neapolitan nobleman with long practical experience of military life in the service of Charles V and he later served as a soldier and courtier in France and at the court of Alfonso II d'Este at Ferrara. He was also a virtuoso bass singer whose performances were praised by both Tasso and Guarini - he was even for a while the only male member of the famous Ferrarese court Concerto delle dame, who established a legendary reputation during the 1580s. Richard Wistreich examines Brancaccio's life in detail and from this it becomes possible to consider the mental and social world of a warrior and courtier with musical skills in a broader context. A wide-ranging study of bass singing in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy provides a contextual basis from which to consider Brancaccio's reputation as a performer. Wistreich illustrates the use of music in the process of 'self-fashioning' and the role of performance of all kinds in the construction of male noble identity within court culture, including the nature and currency of honour, chivalric virtu and sixteenth-century notions of gender and virility in relation to musical performance