A Harmonious Armistice: Music in Diplomatic Negotiations for the Peace of Asti

Abstract

In the spring of 1615, the English ambassador Dudley Carleton, an envoy of King James I, travelled to Turin to negotiate the Peace of Asti, an armistice that temporarily halted the War of the Montferrat Succession between Savoy and Spain. Political historians have traditionally depicted this diplomatic intervention as a series of talks between Carleton and other elite male state officials. As the present article will illuminate, however, Carleton’s communications were mediated by many other people and cultural experiences that have been overlooked. The Peace of Asti was, in fact, a highly musical affair. I examine seventeenth-century diplomatic papers to reconstruct the English embassy’s multifaceted engagement with music and musicians throughout Northern Italy during Carleton’s peacemaking expedition, including his retinue’s music tourism to convents, attendance at court masques, patronage of a number of chamber and cavalry musicians, and attention to political ballads sung in the region. Notably, I provide new evidence suggesting that music directed or composed by Salamone Rossi was performed at the Gonzaga Court to entertain Carleton’s entourage. This article analyzes the Peace of Asti from the critical standpoint of the New Diplomatic History, making a case for the significance of music and musicians to early modern emissarial protocol, sociality, and strategy.