In 17th- and 18th- century Europe, both musical culture and what anthropologists call the sex/gender system were important sites for ordinary human beings (not philosophers) to confront and engage with the epistemological and social anxieties that characterized the age. This paper will explore the myriad relationships of gender and Baroque musical culture, with special emphasis on the most foreign aspects of those relationships-the roles that courtesans, castrati and their most elite patrons played in ensuring that music-making was a means for both the representation and the circulation of power and desire.
Baroque Music; Music and Gender Studies; cortesans; castrati