Geographies of Sound: Sounding and Listening to the Urban Space of Early Modern Italy With a Contemporary Perspective

Sound is an essential element of human experience. It is part of the complex semiotic system that enables human communities to orient themselves in time and space, to be informed, to participate in social life as conscious listeners, capable of deciphering and giving meaning to the collective action of the urban space in which they live. Deeper sound horizons reverberate at different levels on the sonic dimension of reality, contributing to a more complex semantic process of the collective civic rituality and the construction of institutional and individual sound identities. In order to investigate the urban soundscape, it is important to define the nature of the sound phenomena to be examined, but also the dynamics concerning their perception as part of complex anthropological processes. These perspectives can be considered from a historical point of view. The studies collected in this volume aim to investigate sound as an element of urban space in early modern Italy. They consider different phenomenologies investigated through innovative methodological perspectives. Particular importance is given to the sound of urban rituality, to its declinations and local connotations, to its ability to interact with public and private dimensions, to the social and aesthetic dynamics that regulate it, and to the definition of the sonic identity of early modern urban space.