Music, Language and Society in Antonio Planelli

In the full and systematic overview of the arguments treated by Planelli in his Dell'opera in musica (Naples 1772), it is possible to select some essential threads of eighteenth-century aesthetic thought. The most interesting theoretical concerns in the treatise consist of the relation between music and poetry, the structural make-up of the melodrama, the levels of articulation in musical language (with reference also to the concept of 'reception'), and the correlation between spectacle and society. In developing these arguments, Planelli shows himself to be substantially an offshoot not only of Italian treatise-writing, but also of the new philosophical thought in England, France and Germany. In this purview, some essential threads of Planelli's aesthetic thought consist of the adherence to classical rationalism and the empiricist implications. As regards the relation between music and society, Planelli establishes a line of continuity between the theatre and the »corruption« or “formation” of public manners. Nonetheless the Neapolitan critic's position substantially ig¬nores the ideas that Me at the heart of an effective relationship with politics on the part of the melodrama.