<i>Music and the Making of Medieval Venice</i>. By Jamie L Reuland

describes her book as follows: 'This book is about music's work in raising the medieval city of Venice and in founding the empire on which its fortunes would depend ' (p. 1).The keyword in this first sentence is 'work'.Reuland's project is to show that music did more than entertain or ornament: the act of singing texts (and hearing them sung) in specific recurring political and religious contexts played a central role in maintaining the power and efficacy of the Venetian state and its far-flung colonies: it was 'an element of statecraft' (p.3).The book is a series of case studies from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, each of which weaves together evidence drawing on many different kinds of documents, including historical records, political theory, visual art, music, and liturgy.A central theme of the book is music's role in the concept of repraesentatio, 'the juristic concept of the proxy' (p.14), where re-enactment retains the power of the initial event: not an imitation of the past, but a re-creation and reinforcement of communities, loyalty, and belief in the power of Venice, 'a statecraft of the imagination' (pp.14-16).(Throughout this review I will use 'St Mark' for the saint and 'San Marco' for the Venetian basilica.)Part I (ch. 1, pp. 19-41, and ch. 2, pp.42-78), surprisingly, focuses on Venice's empire in the eastern Mediterranean, especially Crete (pp.7-9).Chapter 1, 'Echoes of Empire: The Laudes in Medieval Venetian Crete', looks at the role of the laudes regiae in the establishment and maintenance of Crete's status as a colony of Venice.The founding document, the 'Concessio insulae Cretensis', requires that all feudatories 'have laudes sung for [the doge] and for [his] successors in the archbishopric and bishoprics four times a year, on Christmas, Easter, the Feast of Saint Mark, and on the feast of the major church of Crete' (p.19) in addition to levying taxes and raising armies.The laudes regiae (famously discussed by Ernst Kantorowicz in 1946) were first