Allegri: Music for an Academic Defense (Rome, 1617)

Thesis defenses were extravagant events in seventeenth-century Rome, public demonstrations of erudition staged with all the trappings of baroque spectacle and framed within a festive apparatus of art, poetry, and music. For such events it was customary to perform music composed especially for the occasion, such as that composed by Domenico Allegri for the 1617 defense of Ilario Frumenti, a young nobleman from Como who studied philosophy at the Collegio Romano in Rome. The work consists of three parts—"Sol," "Saturnus," and "Mercurius"—and is scored for two choirs, soloists, and instruments. This edition recreates Frumenti's thesis defense, exploring the role of the music in the pageantry surrounding the occasion and the close relationship of the music to the printed images and poetry commissioned to accompany it. In reconstructing Frumenti's defense, this edition provides a unique perspective on a remarkable tradition.