Copyright

Tim Shephard; Chenxi Xiao;

Published On

2026-07-27

Language

  • English

Print Length

20 pages

THEMA

  • AVM
  • NHDL
  • NHF
  • JBCC

BISAC

  • MUS020000
  • MUS015000
  • HIS037020
  • HIS020000
  • SOC002010

Keywords

  • Renaissance
  • Italy
  • Asia
  • music
  • sound
  • travel
  • knowledge

1. Italy, the East, and Music

Chapter of: The Khan’s Pifferi: Reading about the Musics of Asia in Late Fifteenth-Century Italy

Italian printed books recounting travels in Asia must be read against the backdrop of Italy’s long-standing and deep engagements in Western Asia, for purposes of diplomacy, trade, security, and pilgrimage. This chapter sets out that context, and draws together the scant but tantalising threads of known evidence suggesting the varied musical consequences of those engagements in the fifteenth century. It concludes by making a strong case for further, more detailed and nuanced primary research on this topic.

Contributors

Tim Shephard

(author)
Professor of Musicology at University of Sheffield
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4053-8916
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/music/people/academic-staff/tim-shephard

Tim Shephard is Professor of Musicology at the University of Sheffield. He has led two major research projects funded by The Leverhulme Trust, “Music in the Art of Renaissance Italy” (2014-17), and “Sounding the Bookshelf 1501: Music in a Year of Italian Printed Books” (2020-23). He is author of Echoing Helicon: Music, Art and Identity in the Este Studioli (OUP, 2014), co-author of Music in the Art of Renaissance Italy (Harvey Miller, 2020) and Sounding the Bookshelf 1501 (OBP, 2025), and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture (Routledge, 2014), The Museum of Renaissance Music: A History in 100 Exhibits (Brepols, 2023), and Music and Visual Culture in Renaissance Italy (Routledge, 2023), among many other publications. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/music/people/academic-staff/tim-shephard https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4053-8916

Chenxi Xiao

(author)
Graduate Student in Musicology at University of British Columbia

Chenxi Xiao is currently a graduate student in musicology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, following undergraduate study at the University of Sheffield. Her research focusses on music and warfare in early modern Europe, and the musical culture of early modern Italy.