Summary
Valerio Morucci has been a musicologist and faculty member at the University of Nevada, Reno since 2015. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in musicology at various universities. His primary area of research focuses on Renaissance and Baroque music, particularly on patronage, performance practice and theory from the 16th to the early 18th centuries. His secondary interests concern music in medieval monastic liturgy, musical paleography, music in fascist Italy and popular music. He has presented papers at many national and international conferences and his articles appear in leading peer-reviewed journals in the field. His first book, Baronial Patronage of Music in Early Modern Rome, was supported by the American Musicological Society. Morucci is now working on various research projects, including a monograph on music, patronage and religious reform in the 17th and early 18th centuries. He is the founder and director of the early music ensemble Musica antica.
Selected publications
Book
- Baronial Patronage of Music in Early Modern Rome (New York and London: Routledge, 2018), supported by the American Musicological Society.
Peer-Reviewed Journals
- "Music, Patronage, and Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy: New Light on Cardinal Carlo Borromeo," Early Music 47, no. 4 (2019): 1–16
- “Musical Patronage and Diplomacy: The Case of Prince Paolo Savelli (+ 1632),” Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 24 (2019): https://sscm-jscm.org/jscm-issues/volume-24-no-1/morucci-musical-patronage/
- “La musica nella filosofia mistica ebraica medioevale e rinascimentale: Una prospettiva storiografica,” Rivista internazionale di musica sacra 37 (2016): 23–38
- “Poets and Musicians in the Roman-Florentine Circle of Virginio Orsini (1572-1615),” Early Music 43, no. 1 (January 2015): 53–61
- “Improvisation in Vocal Contrapuntal Pedagogy: An Appraisal of Italian Theoretical Treatises of the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” Performance Practice Review 18, no. 1 (2013): 1−19
- “Reconsidering cori spezzati: A New Source from Central Italy.” Acta Musicologica 84, no. 1 (2013): 21–41
- “Cardinals’ Patronage and the Era of Tridentine Reforms: Giulio Feltro della Rovere as Protector of Sacred Music.” Journal of Musicology 29, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 262–91
- “Francesco Lupino, a Mid Sixteenth-Century Composer From the Marche.” Musica Disciplina 55 (2010): 75-128
Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
- “Cori spezzati/polychoral music.” Oxford/Grove Music Online, revised ed. 2014
- “Lupino, Francesco.” Oxford/Grove Music Online, revised ed. 2013
Book reviews and conference reports
- “The Politics of Ballet,” review of Dancing Queen: Marie de Medicis' Ballets at the Court of Henri IV, by Melinda Gough. Early Music 48, no. 1 (2020), 1–3
- "Florentine Patricians, Art, Music and Culture around 1600," Early Music 47, no. 3 (2019): 445–447
- Review of “Words and Music in Medieval Europe,” by Nigel Wilkins. Mediaevistik: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Medieval Research 25 (2012): 585–587
Baronial Patronage of Music in Early Modern Rome
This is the first dedicated study of the musical patronage of a Roman baronial family in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Bringing to light new archival documentation, this book examines the intricate network of patronage interrelationships in Rome. Unlike other Italian cities where political control was monocentric and exercised by single rulers, sources of patronage in Rome comprised a multiplicity of courts and potential patrons, which included the pope, high prelates, nobles and foreign diplomats. Morucci uses archival records and the correspondence of the Orsini and Colonna families in particular, to investigate the local activity and circulation of musicians and the cultivation of music within the broader civic network of Roman aristocratic families over the period. The author also shows that the familial union of the Medici and Orsini families established a bidirectional network for artistic exchange outside of the Eternal City and that the Orsini-Colonna circle represented a musical bridge between Naples, Rome and Florence.
ISBN-13: 978-1138235335
ISBN-10: 1138235334
This title is available for purchase in hardback and Kindle editions at amazon.com.
Education
- Ph.D., musicology and criticism, University of California, Davis
- Laurea, University of Rome