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her notable article “Music in the Myth of Venice,” by the 16th century
the government had developed an effective system for using music (along
with other elements of Venetian society and culture) to project the idea
that the republic was not only powerful but also was beloved by all its
citizens. the musical establishment at san Marco under willaert was now
the equal of any in europe, and annual and special processions, described
in contemporary accounts, also boasted music performed by confraterni-
ties and others (see below). iain Fenlon has studied the important role
music at special ceremonial occasions in Venetian history, such as the
funerals of doges and, most importantly, at celebrations following and
later commemorating the victory over the turks at lepanto.
Sacred Music Outside of San Marcosan Marco was not, of course, the only venue in renaissance Venice
where sacred music was performed, although that would be difficult to
determine through an examination of the musicological literature before
the late 1950s. the san Marco monopoly was first broken in two impor-
tant articles by Denis Arnold, who wrote about music at two of the great
Venetian lay confraternities, known as scuole grandi: the scuola grande
di san rocco and the scuola grande di san giovanni evangelista. the
former employed as its organist, while he was also at san Marco, gio-
vanni gabrieli, and both institutions hired, as Arnold’s archival investi-
gations showed, ensembles of singers (including several from the ducal
chapel) and instrumentalists, for performance in both religious services at
the scuola or its church, and in processions. while these articles provided
a rather incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, picture of the situation,
they were vital steps forward in our understanding of the Venetian musi-
cal scene in the renaissance. they were the starting point for my 1979
dissertation on music at all five of the scuole grandi active before 1540,
for a series of articles exploring various aspects of their musical activi-
ties, and ultimately a book that broadened the picture to include the sev-
eral hundred smaller confraternities known as scuole piccole (as well as
extending the account through the fall of the Venetian republic and the
suppression of the confraternities in 1806). A new view began to emerge of
a sacred musical landscape that, while still maintaining san Marco as its
center, stretched from one end of the city to the other, with sophisticated,
and sometimes elaborate musical performances at nearly every church in
the city at least once a year. in the 1990s, rodolfo Baroncini examined in