Insider and outsider views in early modern correspondence involving patrons and musicians

In this chapter Dinko Fabris proposes a reassessment of the heuristic value of correspondence in the light of a cognate-theory sensitivity toward the body of private letters preserved in the Archivio Bentivoglio, a complex type of historical source in demand of a respectful interpretation as a communicational device between past insiders, now in the hands of present outsiders; that is, those scholars aiming to reconstruct a past artistic and cultural milieu as a whole. For this purpose, the author draws on the distinction between “outsider” and “insider” made by cultural historians and moves within the framework of “urban musicology,” discussing the figure of Enzo Bentivoglio as a case study.