Mary, Music, and Meditation

"This meticulously researched book investigates popular piety directed toward the Virgin Mary in post-Tridentine Milan. Encouraged by Archbishop Carlo Borromeo and given added impetus by the plague of 1576, Milanese citizens increasingly turned to Mary as miracle worker, font of mercy, protector of humanity and their city, and intercessor with her Son for the practical and spiritual relief of supplicants. Through her imaginative and insightful study of five major cults of the Virgin, Prof. Getz uncovers in these Marian devotions consistent programmatic relationships among theological concepts, their textual and musical expression, and their visual representation in church iconography"—Jeffrey Kurtzman, Washington University, St. Louis

"Mary, Music, and Meditation provides a comprehensive and well-documented view of how Marian devotion worked, socially and sonically, in one important early modern city. By looking at confraternities, church devotion, and little-known music, Getz shows how central this piety was to sacred culture in Milan across several generations, with music being one of its primary conduits."—Robert L. Kendrick, University of Chicago

"Mary, Music and Meditation contains a wealth of scholarship of great interest to historians and musicologists alike. The appendices to the book supply nearly 150 pages of archival transcriptions, and musical examples that will serve many scholars as research and teaching resources."—Journal of Jesuit Studies

"A welcome and growing trend in scholarship on Renaissance sacred music is an expanding view of the spiritual concerns and devotional practices that surrounded and impelled the composition, performance, listening, and perception of music. Christine Getz's study of institutional, ritual, and personal Marian devotion in Milan joins that conversation. Getz bases her findings on primary-source documents, on music printed or published in close conjunction with the institutions, and on the scholarship of Italian and Milanese religious culture of the period."—Rennaisance Quarterly