Lettera amorosa

In early modern Italy letters were not only written and read but in some cases sung. Musical settings of love letters rekindled a complex kind of vocality which was rooted in the letters of antiquity and endured in the musical sub-genre of the lettera amorosa. Epistolary poetry served to transform or to echo Achillini''s lettera set by Monteverdi (15671643) to ''distill'' a lover''s thoughts and emotions into verse and the music that set it was equally transformative. The history of musical letters spans several centuries. It begins in the early sixteenth with a setting of Ovid''s Heroides by Tromboncino; returns in the early seventeenth through the lettere amorose of Monteverdi D''India and Frescobaldi; and ends with epistolary cantatas by Carissimi Melani and Domenico Scarlatti. This Element traces the breadth and significance of the musical love letter with a focus on the provocative lettere amorose of the seventeenth century.