Music as Social and Cultural Practice Essays in honour of Reinhard Strohm
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Music as Social and Cultural Practice Essays in honour of Reinhard Strohm
•
Edited by Melania Bucciarelli Berta Joncus
the boydell press
© Contributors 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2007 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge isbn 978-1-84383-317-8 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk ip12 3df, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, ny 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com with the support of Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice
A catalogue record of this publication is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Designed and typeset in Adobe Minion Pro by David Roberts, Pershore, Worcestershire Music origination by Jeanne Roberts Disclaimer: Printed Great by for inclusion in the eBook. Some images in the printed version of thisinbook areBritain not available Antony To view these imagesRowe pleaseLtd, referChippenham, to the printed Wiltshire version of this book.
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Contents •
List of Figures List of Music Examples List of Tables Preface Contributors Abbreviations
Laudatio Pierluigi Petrobelli
• prologue •
Introduction Melania Bucciarelli & Berta Joncus
viii ix x xi xiii xviii
1 4
• i music in theory and practice •
1 Anonymous Arabic Treatises on Music: Lost Legacies, Hidden Answers Amnon Shiloah
11
2 Compositional Practices in Trecento Music: Model Books and Musical Traditions Anna Maria Busse Berger
24
3 Trompetta and Concordans Parts in the Early Fifteenth Century Margaret Bent
38
4 Recording for Posterity: Some Reflections on the Memorialising of Early Renaissance Music Edward Wickham
74
5 How to Sin in Music: Doctor Navarrus on Sixteenth-Century Singers Bonnie J. Blackburn
86
• ii art and social process: •
music in court and urban societies
6 Traditions and Practices in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony: The Use of Solo Voices with Instrumental Accompaniment David Bryant & Elena Quaranta 7 ‘The City Full of Grief ’: Music for the Exequies of King Philip II Owen Rees 8 Giovanni Alberto Ristori and his Serenate at the Polish Court of Augustus III, 1735–1746 Alina Żórawska-Witkowska
105 119
139
9 ‘Cantate, que me veux-tu?’ or: Do Handel’s Cantatas Matter? Ellen T. Harris
159
10 Two Köchel Numbers, One Work Christoph Wolff
185
• iii creating an opera industry •
11 Identity and Poetic Style: The Case of Rosmene by Giuseppe Domenico de Totis Norbert Dubowy 12 How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? Michael Talbot 13 Venice and the East: Operatic Readings of Tasso’s Armida in Early Eighteenth-Century Venice Melania Bucciarelli
199 214
232
14 Literary Motifs in Metastasio’s and Jommelli’s Ciro riconosciuto Francesca Menchelli-Buttini
250
15 Producing Stars in Dramma per musica Berta Joncus
275
16 The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ Michel Noiray
294
17 Pieces into Works: Cherubini’s Substitute Arias for the Théâtre Feydeau Michael Fend
312
18 At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi: I promessi sposi and the Dramaturgy of La forza del destino Emanuele Senici
336
• iv the crisis of modernity •
19 The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance: Auratic Sonority in Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen Federico Celestini 20 Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ Pamela Potter 21 Et in Arcadia adhuc: Observations on the Continuing Evolution of the ‘Pastoral Idea’ Giovanni Morelli
355 374
391
• epilogue • Reinhard Strohm: List of Publications Janet M. Smith
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414
Index
431
Tabula Gratulatoria
445
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List of Figures •
2.1 Vienna model book, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe (inv. 5003, 5004) 26 2.2 Drawing of the Archangel Gabriel from the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge 27 3.1 Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, fols r59v–60: Loqueville, Gloria 48 3.2 Zwettl, Zisterzienserstift, MS without shelfmark, fols 77, 77v: Loqueville, Gloria 50 3.3 Aosta, Seminario Maggiore, MS 15, fols 68v–69: Grossin, Gloria 54 3.4 Zwettl, Zisterzienserstift, MS without shelfmark, fols 54, 54v: Grossin, Gloria 56 3.5 Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, q15, fols r240v–241: Franchois, Ave virgo/Sancta Maria 60 7.1 Print of the catafalque for Philip II in Seville Cathedral, in Juan Álvarez de Colmenar, Les Délices de l’Espagne et du Portugal, III (Leiden, 1707), facing p. 423 132 13.1 ‘View of the Seraglio on a canal that comes from the open sea. A slave is thrown down from the height of the walls’ (Ibraim sultano, i, i) 236 13.2 ‘Haste ghionglum… / Col Cotogno non m’ impaccio’. From Giovan Battista Donà, Della letteratura de’ Turchi (Venice, 1688) 247 16.1 Floquet, Le Seigneur bienfaisant (Paris, 1781), Act ii, Entr’ acte before Scene i, p. 137 3oo 16.2 Méreaux, Alexandre aux Indes (Paris, 1783), Act iii, Scene iv, p. 257 302 16.3 Lemoyne, Electre (Paris, 1782), Act i, Scene iii, p. 24 304 Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.
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List of Music Examples •
2.1 Paolo da Firenze, Ars discantandi, 8–5–8 progressions (from Seay, p. 138) 31 2.2 Paolo da Firenze, Ars discantandi, 8–6–8 progressions (from Seay, p. 139) 32 2.3 Phrase 1 of Giovanni da Firenze’s La bella stella (after Pirrotta), with contrapuntal frame 33 2.4 MS variants of La bella stella, b. 16 35 7.1 Luis de Aranda, Quomodo sedet sola 135 9.1 Handel, ‘Un pensiero’, Il delirio amoroso: (a) bb. 18–23, melisma on ‘pensiero’; (b) bb. 45–9, extended setting of ‘pace’ 170 9.2 Handel, ‘Fuggi da questo sen’, Lungi da me, pensier tiranno, bb. 1–12 171 9.3 Handel, ‘Per te lasciai la luce’, Il delirio amoroso, bb. 71–6, 86–9 172 9.4 Handel, ‘Per te lasciai la luce’, Il delirio amoroso, bb. 56–67 173 9.5 Keiser, ‘Wallet nicht zu laut’, Octavia, bb. 1–13 174 9.6 Handel, ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’, Il delirio amoroso, bb. 1–17 175 9.7 Handel, ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’, Il delirio amoroso (opening vocal line), bb. 27–33 176 9.8 Handel, ‘S’ agita in mezzo l’ onde’, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, bb. 1–15 177 9.9 Handel, ‘Nehmt mich mit, verzagte Scharen’, Brockes Passion, bb. 1–5 179 9.10 Handel, Symphony, Jephtha, bb. 1–6 183 10.1 (a) Mozart, Fantasy in C minor, k. 475, opening; (b) Sonata in C minor, k. 457/1, opening; (c) Sonata in C minor, k. 457/2, opening 187 10.2 Mozart, Rondo, k. 494: (a) bb. 1–2; (b) bb. 152–7 190 10.3 Mozart, Fragment no. 1, k. Anh. 29 192 10.4 Mozart, Fragment no. 2, k. Anh. 30 192 10.5 Mozart, Fragment no. 3, k. Anh. 33/40 193 10.6 Mozart, Fragment no. 4, k. Anh. 37, opening 194 12.1 Vivaldi, Juditha triumphans, aria ‘Noli, o cara, te adorantis’, bb. 13–22 226 12.2 Vivaldi, Juditha triumphans, aria ‘Gaude felix Bethulia’, bb. 1–8 227 12.3 Vivaldi, Juditha triumphans, accompagnato ‘Impii, indigni tyranni’, bb. 1–9 228
14.1 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, ii. v, ‘Non so: con dolce moto’: (a) first vocal section; (b) middle section 261 14.2 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, i. viii, ‘E pur dagl’ inquieti’:; (a) bb. 1–4; (b) bb. 8–9 263 14.3 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, i. viii, ‘Sciolto dal suo timor’: (a) bb. 1–8; (b) 22–6 265 14.4 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, i. xii, ‘Rendimi il figlio mio’, first vocal section 269 14.5 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, iii. iii, ‘… Ancor lo sento’ 270 14.6 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, iii. iii, ‘… Ed io, tiranna!’ 271 14.7 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, iii. iii, ‘… Veggo di Ciro’ 272 19.1 (a) Schubert, Die Mainacht, d.194, bb. 1–8; (b) Mahler, Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, bb. 5–17 357 19.2 (a) Mahler, Die zwei blauen Augen: ‘Auf der Straße steht ein Lindenbaum’; (b) J. Strauss, Eine Nacht in Venedig, Act iii, Caramello: ‘Ach, wie so herrlich anzuschaun’; (c) Wagner, Rheingold, Act i, Scene ii, Loge: ‘Die goldnen Aepfel’; (d) folksong, Tyrol, Es wird scho glei dumpa 372
• 1.1 2.1 3.1 3.2 16.1
List of Tables •
Comparative table of anonymous treatises 13 Interval progressions in Paolo da Firenze’s La bella stella 34 The a versi repertory: a provisional listing 40 Pieces marked trompetta or tuba, or using related techniques 46 Gluck’s self-borrowing of pantomimic music 297
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Preface •
ike many fruitful partnerships, our collaboration on this project began over lunch. Conversation turned to our respective experiences working with Reinhard Strohm, whose doctoral supervision we had sought because of his unparalleled command of the European musical canon, his influential rethinking, particularly of dramma per musica, and his insights into critical theory and the philosophy of history. In the course of our doctoral studies we had each discovered in Reinhard not only great enthusiasm for our work but also a startling humbleness about his own knowledge. Reinhard’s respect for the irreducible complexity of the past is informed by his extraordinarily broad and penetrating view of its musical, historical and intellectual terrains, and gives him a flexibility of approach, a delight in findings, and a curiosity about new historical perspectives that supported and inspired us in equal measure. This collection, published to mark his 65th birthday, attests therefore both to Reinhard Strohm’s scholarly achievements and to the creative power of his thinking. To bring this testimonial into being required generosity, patience and hard work from many quarters. All the authors who contributed to the volume deserve recognition for the enthusiasm with which they welcomed this initiative and for their prompt replies to our sometimes onerous requests. Many other colleagues and friends have also answered our call with generosity and contributed to the success of this volume with their support, advice and specialist knowledge. Our heartfelt thanks go to Irene Auerbach, Francesco Fanna, Michael Fend, Malcolm Gerratt, Lowell Lindgren, Owen Rees, Susan Wollenberg, and to all our specialist readers: Mario Armellini, Suzanne Aspden, Lorenzo Bianconi, Bonnie Blackburn, Federico Celestini, David Charlton, Teresa Chirico, Alessandro Di Profio, Laurence Dreyfus, Peter Franklin, Simon Keefe, Rainer Kleinertz, Huub van der Linden, Alexander Lingas, Pierluigi Petrobelli, Owen Rees, Angela Romagnoli, David Schulenberg, Vassilis Vavoulis and Adrienne Ward. David Burn generously put his many talents as reader, translator and language editor at the service of the project, and Bonnie Blackburn was a key source of advice and an exemplary copy-editor. Working with such a responsive, professional and dedicated team of scholars has been edifying as well as rewarding. To bring this volume to print took the support and courage of institutions and individuals. We received vital funding from the University of Oxford (Research Development Fund), the Faculty of Music, Wadham College, the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi and Istituto per la Musica at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice), the Royal Musical Association and, of course, the friends and colleagues listed in the tabula gratulatoria.
xii Music as Social and Cultural Practice At Boydell Press Bruce Philips and Caroline Palmer were instrumental in obtaining our publishing contract and guiding this book to publication, and the quality of the finished product has been greatly enhanced by the partici pation of Alexander Campkin and Jeanne Roberts, who prepared the musical examples, and of David Roberts, who compiled the index. Essential help came from the institutions at which we are respectively employed, where meetings over meals or afternoon tea aided the resolution of knotty organisational problems. Finally, our gratitude goes to Brenda Strohm for her support, encouragement and practical help, from initial plotting in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2004 through to the project’s final stages. Our respective husbands Philip Riordan and Andrew Joncus we thank for their patience, support and domestic troubleshooting. Melania Bucciarelli & Berta Joncus Oxford, 27 October 2006
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Contributors •
Margaret Bent is a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She has taught at Brandeis and Princeton Universities and is a past President of the American Musicological Society. She has edited and published studies of English, French and Italian music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including Counterpoint, Composition, and Musica Ficta (London and New York, 2002). B onnie J. Blackburn is an Oxford-based musicologist and editor who specialises in music and music theory of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She has edited the music of Johannes Lupi and, together with Edward E. Lowinsky and Clement A. Miller, A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians (Oxford, 1991). Since 1993 she has been General Editor of the Monuments of Renaissance Music (University of Chicago Press). David Bryant is a researcher in musicology at Ca’ Foscari University, enice, and directs the Centro Studi sulle Fonti Documentali della Vita V Musicale Europea at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice. He is the co-author (with Michele Pozzobon) of Musica devozione città: La scuola di Santa Maria dei Battuti e un suo manoscritto musicale (Treviso, 1995), and together with Elena Quaranta he has contributed to Produzione, circolazione e consumo: Consuetudine e quotidianità della polifonia sacra nelle chiese monastiche e parrocchiali dal tardo Medioevo alla fine degli Antichi Regimi (Bologna, 2006). Melania Bucciarelli is Lecturer in Music at City University, London. Her research interests include eighteenth-century opera, theatre and literature. She is the author of Italian Opera and European Theatre, 1680–1720: Plots, Performers, Dramaturgies (Turnhout, 2000), and co-editor, with Reinhard Strohm and Norbert Dubowy, of Italian Opera in Central Europe, vol. 1: Institutions and Ceremonies, Musical Life in Europe 1600–1900: Circulation, Institutions, Representations (Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2006). Anna Maria Busse Berger is Professor of Music at the University of California, Davis. Her research centres on medieval and Renaissance music history and theory, as well as on cultural history. She is the author of Mensuration and Proportion Signs: Origins and Evolution (Oxford, 1993) and Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkeley, 2006).
xiv Music as Social and Cultural Practice Federico Celestini is currently a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung at the Freie Universität Berlin and Reader in Musicology at the Karl Franzens University in Graz. His publications include papers on medieval polyphony, music of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, music semiotics and aesthetics. His books include Die frühen Klaviersonaten von Joseph Haydn: Eine vergleichende Studie (Tutzing, 2004) and Die Unordnung der Dinge: Das musikalische Groteske in der Wiener Moderne (1885–1914) (Wiesbaden, 2006). Norbert Dubowy received a Ph.D. from the University of Munich with a thesis on seventeenth and eighteenth-century vocal and instrumental music (Arie und Konzert). He was subsequently awarded a research fellowship at the German Historical Institute in Rome, and later at other European academic institutions. He taught at various European universities (Munich, Lecce, Regensburg, Heidelberg, Salzburg, Vienna, Fribourg) before moving to the United States, where he now teaches at the University of Cincinnati. He has published extensively on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian music (opera, concerto) and is currently working on a book on Alessandro Scarlatti and dramma per musica. Michael Fend is Senior Lecturer at King’s College London and Privatdozent at the University of Bayreuth. His research focuses on issues in the intellectual history of music. Together with Michel Noiray (CNRS, Paris) he has edited Musical Education in Europe (1770–1914): Compositional, Institutional, and Political Challenges, 2 vols (Berlin, 2005). Ellen T. Harris, Class of 1949 Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, works primarily in the areas of Baroque opera and vocal performance practice. Her books and editions include Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (Cambridge, Mass., 2001); The Librettos of Handel’s Operas, 13 vols (New York, 1989); Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Oxford, 1987); and Handel and the Pastoral Tradition (Oxford, 1980). Berta Joncus is a British Academy post-doctoral Fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Her research focuses on eighteenth-century vocal genres, music of the mid-eighteenth-century London stage, popular music before 1750, and the relationship between vocalists’ star personae and their music. Her publications include articles in Eighteenth-Century Music and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. She is currently researching a monograph on ballad opera for the British Academy.
Contributors
xv
Francesca Menchelli-Buttini teaches criticism of music at the University of Pisa. She has published articles on eighteenth-century Italian opera, her main research interest. She received the Ph.D. at Oxford University with a thesis on ‘Pietro Metastasio’s Drammi per musica in their Musical Settings (1730–1745)’ . Giovanni Morelli is Professor of Contemporary Music History at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venezia, and Director of the Istituto per la Musica at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. His research interests include Italian Baroque opera and Italian music of twentieth century. His books include Il morbo di Rameau: La nascita della critica musicale (Bologna, 1989), Paradosso del farmacista: Il Metastasio nella morsa del tranquillante (Venice, 1998), and Scenari della lontananza: Il Novecento musicale fuori di sé (Venice, 2005). Michel Noiray is Directeur de recherche at the Institut de recherche sur le patrimoine musical en France (CNRS-Bibliothèque nationale de France) and teaches at the universities of Paris and Tours. His main field of research is opera in the second half of the eighteenth century. He is author of Vocabulaire de la musique de l’époque classique (Paris, 2005) and has edited Musical Education in Europe (1770–1914) together with Michael Fend (Berlin, 2005). Pierluigi Petrobelli was Librarian-Archivist of the Istituto di studi verdiani at Parma from 1964 to 1969, and from 1980 has been its Director. He was lecturer, then the first Reader in Music at King’s College London, where he taught from 1973 to 1980, and was Professor of Music History at the Universities of Perugia (1981–3) and of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ (1983–2005). He is the author of Giuseppe Tartini: Le fonti biografiche (1968) and Tartini, le sue idee e il suo tempo (1992), Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers (1994; It. edition 1998), and is the co-author of the critical edition for the Neue Mozart Ausgabe of Il re pastore. He has also written on the Italian Ars nova, seventeenth-century Italian opera, Mozart, Verdi and Bellini, and Dallapiccola. Pamela M. Potter is Professor of Musicology and German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has written extensively on twentieth-century German music and politics. Her major publications include Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich (New Haven, 1988) and Music and German National Identity (Chicago, 2002), which she co-edited with Celia Applegate.
xvi Music as Social and Cultural Practice Elena Quaranta teaches musicology at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, and is a research collaborator at the Fondazione Cini; she is the author of Oltre San Marco: Organizzazione e prassi della musica nelle chiese di Venezia nel Rinascimento (Florence, 1998). Together with David Bryant she has contributed to Produzione, circolazione e consumo: Consuetudine e quotidianità della polifonia sacra nelle chiese monastiche e parrocchiali dal tardo Medioevo alla fine degli Antichi Regimi (Bologna, 2006). Owen Rees is Reader in Music at the University of Oxford, Fellow of The Queen’s College and Lecturer at Somerville College. His research interests include sacred music in Spain and Portugal from the late fifteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. He has published widely on Portuguese polyphony of the period, as well as studies of the music of Francisco Guerrero, Cristóbal de Morales and William Byrd. Emanuele Senici is Reader in Musicology at the University of Oxford, where he is a Fellow of St Hugh’s College. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Rossini (Cambridge, 2004) and author of Landscape and Gender in Italian Opera (Cambridge, 2005). He is also co-editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal. Amnon Shiloah has been Emeritus Professor of the Department of Musico logy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1997. His research interests include the history and theory of Arab and Jewish Near Eastern musical traditions and medieval writings. He is the author of numerous books, editions and articles, including Music in the World of Islam (London, 1995) and the two-volume The Theory of Music in Arabic Writings for the RISM series (1979, 2003). Janet M. Smith is Staff Development Officer, Imperial College London Library. Her Ph.D. thesis (Yale, 1991) was on ‘The Foundation of Cities in Greek Historians and Poets’, and she continues with classical pursuits. Her interests in music history, stemming especially from a period as Music Librarian, King’s College London, currently include Baroque performance. Michael Talbot is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool. His research interests centre on Italian music of the period 1650– 1750, but he has also written on German music from the same period and on aspects of musical form. His books include The Sacred Vocal Music of Antonio Vivaldi (Florence, 1995), The Finale in Western Instrumental Music (Oxford, 1991) and The Chamber Cantatas of Antonio Vivaldi (Woodbridge, 2006).
Contributors xvii Edward Wickham is a Fellow and Director of Music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He founded the vocal consort The Clerks’ Group in 1992 and has released over two dozen recordings of music from the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including the complete sacred works of Ockeghem. The ensemble was awarded the Gramophone Early Music Award in 1997 for its recording of the Ockeghem Requiem. Christoph Wolff is Adams University Professor at Harvard University. His research interests extend to the history of music from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on Bach and Mozart. His most recent books are Mozart’s Requiem (Berkeley, 1994), ‘Driven into Paradise’: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States (Berkeley, 1999, with R. Brinkmann) and Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York, 2000). Alina Żórawska-Witkowska is Professor in the Institut of Musicology at Warsaw University. Her research interests encompass musical culture and music from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, especially European influences on Polish musical culture. Her books include Muzyczne podróże królewiczów polskich [Musical Journeys of the Polish Crown Princes] (Warsaw, 1992); Muzyka na dworze i w teatrze Stanisława Augusta [Music at the Court and in the Theatre of Stanisław Augustus] (Warsaw, 1995); Muzyka na dworze Augusta II w Warszawie [Music at the Court of Augustus II in Warsaw] (Warsaw, 1997).
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Abbreviations •
MGG
Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume et al., 16 vols (Kassel, 1949–79) 2 Die Music in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, ed. Ludwig MGG Finscher (Kassel, 1994– ) New Grove I The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 20 vols (London, 1980) New Grove II The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell, 29 vols (London, 2001)
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•
• Laudatio • Pierluigi Petrobelli
I
have been asked to draw a ‘profile’ of Reinhard Strohm, to be performed as Ouverture to the opera in various acts composed by his friends, colleagues, students and admirers to celebrate the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Much as I have tried to shape it otherwise, this Ouverture has unavoidably turned out to be the story of our friendship, simply because the strong bond that unites us lies in our common attitude that sees music as an integral part of the history of culture, of history tout court. Our first encounter took place in the late summer of 1964 in Salzburg, during the Seventh Congress of the International Musicological Society; it was my first experience of a truly international gathering of musicologists, and I was strongly impressed by the dazzling variety of attitudes, personalities, methods and ideas all present on the same stage. During an interval, sitting on a lawn bathed in the afternoon sun, I started a conversation with a young student from Munich with blond curly hair, extremely polite and pleasant in manner, who happened to mention, listing them in a plain, matter-of-fact tone, the various flaws he had detected, while preparing a report for the Georgiades seminar on Ars Antiqua, in no less than Ludwig’s Repertorium. The conversation, if I remember correctly, took place in Italian, a language that Reinhard had already mastered, thanks not only to his frequent visits to Italy, but also and especially because of his open attitude towards other cultures. This particular aspect of Reinhard’s personality seems to me closely connected with, in fact derived from, the cultural and intellectual milieu in which he grew up, especially the milieu of his family: his father Hans, a gracious person and a fine classical scholar, was a specialist in Synesius. It was this environment that facilitated, in the best tradition of German education and culture, the development of Reinhard’s interests, especially his view of music as an integral part of our humanistic heritage: books like The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 and Music in Late Medieval Bruges are the direct consequence of this outlook. In 1966 the first issue of the Rivista italiana di musicologia was published. The editorial board, to which I then belonged, had unanimously decided to request a contribution from Reinhard Strohm, to be printed next to those by Nino Pirrotta and Federico Ghisi, in order to emphasise the cultural programme we intended to foster and develop through the Rivista; we felt that Reinhard’s article would exemplify the claim that our attitude was shared by the best young scholars on the international level.
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
In the following years our lives and our careers moved in different directions. But quite unexpectedly they crossed again in 1976, at King’s College in London. The four years we both taught there together was a further occasion for the intense exchange of ideas and the development of common projects, from which I derived, needless to say, a constant and extraordinary stimulus, especially because Reinhard’s cultural interests had in the meantime shifted towards eighteenth-century musical theatre, where I too had also happened to land. Later Reinhard spent the academic year 1988–9 in Rome, at ‘La Sapienza’, as Visiting Professor, and there some of the best students who had taken my courses became his students as well, in an ideal cross-fertilisation of minds and personalities. I have already mentioned en passant some of the features that characterise Reinhard’s intellectual and cultural personality: a strong sense of history, thoroughly grounded in documentary evidence, manifests itself through a broad and cogent reading of the musical event. In order to achieve this, various aspects of the historical moment in which the musical event took place are taken into careful consideration; their comnections and possible mutual influence are closely examined, with the result that in the end the picture with which the reader is confronted is much wider and more illuminating, since it illustrates an entire historical period, and not just a musical event. This astonishing result is achieved thanks to yet another idiosyncrasy of Reinhard’s scholarship: his attitude towards the interpretation of the events or period in question. I would like to define this attitude as dialectic, in the sense that a first, more ‘natural’, interpretation is literally bombarded with other equally possible readings, and even challenging interpretations, the one complementing and enriching the other through a contrasting intellectual dialogue. This is possible because strong emphasis is always placed on the relationship of the musical document to the literary, linguistic and even artistic manifestations of the period. Exemplary in this sense are Reinhard’s studies in the literary tradition—Italian, French, Spanish, German—on which the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Italian librettos were grounded. In this way a libretto becames a sort of touchstone, a primary historical document of the crossing and interchange between different cultural trends. In the end the operatic tradition that emerges from such a study is presented in a completely new way, and its truly European origin and significance are revealed. One last point I would like to make concerning Reinhard’s ‘opus’: his extraordinary skill as a writer, no matter which language he is using. In describing a musical event, or a historical moment, he manages to make it vivid, setting it before the eyes of his reader; it is not by chance, I think, that many of his writings—and this concerns various historical periods—deal with visual matters as well as with musical facts. It is quite obvious that Reinhard ‘sees’, while he is
Petrobelli • Laudatio
writing, the object of his investigation; and he manages to convey to his reader in verbal terms the physical impact the event has provoked in him. Exemplary from this point of view, it seems to me, is the book devoted to music in medieval Bruges, especially the chapter in which the constant presence of different sounds throughout the hours of the day in the life of the Flemish town is evoked and revealed. This is, then, a good occasion to wish that Reinhard—with our deeply felt friendship, admiration and gratitude—may continue his exemplary activity as scholar and as ‘maestro’; and at the same time to hope that in the future we will have the possibility of reading other writings by him as enriching and as stimulating as those we have enjoyed till now. I have no doubt that, from this point of view, many pleasant surprises are already in store; they await only the proper occasion to be written and produced. After all, surprise at the revelation of new, unexpected aspects, relationships and peculiarities is the key feature of our reactions as readers of Strohm’s writings.
• Introduction • Melania Bucciarelli & Berta Joncus
W
hile studies in music history inevitably revolve around musical works, the concept of the ‘musical work’ itself remains as elusive as it is pervasive. The term suggests a range of assumptions about the composer’s agency and aesthetic goals, and about the dissemination or influence of the composition. Philosophers and music scholars have argued that around 1800 the musical work had been conceptualised in its most elaborate, discrete form, crystallising as a specific set of regulative practices in musical production and reception, against which modern and postmodern composers would have to battle. What constitutes the musical work so defined, and why it held sway during the nineteenth century, has become a subject of lively debate. The musical work, however, existed as both artefact and concept for many centuries before 1800. This was the starting point for Reinhard Strohm’s seminal re-evaluation of the historiography and ontology of the work-concept in his article ‘Looking Back at Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical WorkConcept’. Strohm argued against the commonly held view that around 1800 the paradigm of the work-concept had changed dramatically. Examining twentieth-century theorising about the musical work, Strohm showed how it resulted from the methodologies and biases peculiar to the authors and their era. Most importantly, he collapsed the argument for a watershed in Western art music marked by the emergence of a regulative work-concept. He drew attention to discussions about the musical work reaching back to the fifteenth century and insisted that the conceptualisation of the musical work as such was part of a long-standing discourse that continually revisited basic themes: the unparalleled skill of creative artists, the impulse to memorialise their output, and the tension between artistic expression and social function. On this last point Strohm challenged reigning opinion by emphasising that an otherwise autonomous musical work could be integrated with social and cultural practices. The essays in this volume build on Strohm’s argument by demonstrating how social and cultural practices generate different conceptualisations of the musical work at different times and in different places. As such, this collection shifts the debate about the work-concept from the ontological plane onto the historical. These essays attest not only to the accuracy of Strohm’s conclusions about the work-concept, but also to the great number of internationally eminent scholars who have profited from the new perspectives they open. The articles are arranged in four sections, ordered chronologically and bound together by a shared critique. The opening section, ‘Music in Theory
Bucciarelli & Joncus • Introduction
and Practice’, builds on Strohm’s use of medieval and Renaissance sources to explore early conceptualisations of the musical work. The results are often startling. Amnon Shiloah tells us, for example, that authors of medieval Arabic treatises, many of whom were anonymous, recorded for posterity the practices of celebrated musicians who themselves did not notate, and thereby preserve, their music. Because a composition was largely improvised during performance, authors of treatises were describing the musical work and its aesthetic value for later audiences rather than seeking to transmit a sound event. Improvisation is also a touchstone for Anna Maria Busse Berger, who shifts the paradigm of what constituted a fourteenth-century musical work. Studying artists’ model books as well as music and musical treatises from the period, she concludes that visual artists and composers drew on basically the same types of practices to negotiate shared patterns and individual inventiveness in the creative process. Both relied on the extensive memorisation of standard models – images from model books for artists, note-against-note counterpoint for musicians – which masters would embellish to create unique forms. Margaret Bent explores a group of pieces with parts labelled ‘trompetta’ and ‘concordans’ and shows how the practice of adding a contrapuntal line to existing polyphony (usually notated in a versi sections) or of crafting ‘character pieces’ designed probably for instruments or their vocal imitation could in itself constitute, or reconstitute, the musical work. When applied to existing compositions, trompetta-writing could transform the work, ‘attesting that it was valued and had a living existence’ (Bent). Her findings invite further research into the intersection of scribal practices with those of performance. Performance practices were certainly a central concern of the sixteenthcentury Spanish canonist Martín de Azpilcueta, or ‘Doctor Navarrus’, discussed by Bonnie Blackburn. In outlining the competing interests operating in liturgical music between composer, performer and congregation, Azpilcueta pinpointed dilemmas central to sacred music-making: should it be a platform for masterworks, for dazzling performance, or for binding worshippers in devotion? While he commended the last, Azpilcueta conceded the legitimacy of the first two, and their potential for enhancing the service. In their research on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian liturgical music and the Veneto, David Bryant and Elena Quaranta engage with the relationship between tradition and innovation, drawing on the distinction between the daily practice of minor institutions and the musical production of more important establishments. Commissioned by illustrious patrons or institutions, masterpieces belonged to a ‘history of exceptions’ and do not reflect common practice and continuity of tradition in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian sacred music. A study of the archives of local churches, where specific practices and social functions typically overrode other concerns, highlights the continuity
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
in sacred music-making between the centuries, the sharing of local musicians between high- and low-level institutions, and a tendency to use instruments in musical worship during feast days or festivals. Edward Wickham provocatively enquires into the composer- and work-centred perspective of the programming and marketing of recordings of pre-Baroque music. Drawing on his experience directing the celebrated Clerks’ Group, he describes the means by which concert halls and recordings undermine, but at the same time corroborate, a Renaissance conceptualisation of the musical work. The second section, ‘Art and Social Process: Music in Court and Urban Societies’, looks at the social and cultural practices informing composition from the late Renaissance until the mid-eighteenth century. Pace the twentieth-century idealisation of the musical work as freeing itself from social function, works conceived within this time frame were often produced to fulfil such a function, yet could still constitute, and be recognised as, artistic vessels of the highest order. Owen Rees shows in his study of Luis de Aranda’s sixpart motet Quomodo sedet sola that social function could inspire profound self-expression. Aranda’s motet was one artistic element among many in the elaborate exequies staged throughout Spain to mourn the death of King Philip ii in 1598. The exequies featured specially constructed catafalques around which readings and musical ceremonies took place. Designed according to the conventions of these civic duties, Aranda’s music nonetheless conveyed the composer’s unique vision and enjoyed a life beyond the immediate context in which it was created. The same held true for Alberto Ristori, whose innovative serenate for August iii of Poland existed to legitimate the presence of a ruler unwanted in Poland. The works of Handel and Mozart can conjure up contrasting conventional notions of unique masterpieces, timeless and borderless, removed into the domain of the autonomous art work on the one hand, and of routine compositions put together to satisfy immediate demands of various natures on the other. Ellen Harris and Christoph Wolff show how much is left out by such readings. Harris explores the means by which the Italian cantata – a genre notable for its social function and, because tied to a poetic text, considered by some ineligible for consideration as ‘autonomous’ music – provided a medium for Handel to develop musical models fundamental to all his later writing. Her investigation also offers important insights into the evident community of interests between Handel and his patrons. Mozart’s case was similar: as Wolff proves, he published the piano sonata k. 533/494 to stake public claim to his new rank as court composer. Correcting earlier readings, Wolff establishes that k. 533/494, far from being an awkward binding of a new with an old piece (the rondo k. 494), was ‘polyphonically upgraded’ by means of the rondo integrated elegantly into a sonata whose contrapuntal sophistication
Bucciarelli & Joncus • Introduction
and coherent structure (similar to the case of k. 475/457) not only alerted music-buyers to his talents, but also reveals the presence of ‘a forward-looking Mozartean work-concept’ (Wolff). The third section of this volume investigates the social and cultural practices of opera production in different eras, and the means by which musical works emerged within these opera ‘industries’. According to Norbert Dubowy, the nature of the changes made by the seventeenth-century Roman librettist Giuseppe Domenico de Totis to a libretto by Aurelio Aureli served, through its pronounced departure from Venetian practice, to articulate the specific identity and literary ambitions of Roman intellectuals. Comparing eighteenthcentury Venetian opera to oratorio, Michael Talbot uses Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha triumphans to clarify how the conventions of these two genres could intermingle within one work and serve celebratory intents. Melania Bucciarelli investigates more closely the instrumentalising of opera for political ends in early eighteenth-century Venice. Comparing the opera Armida abbandonata (1707) and its sequel Armida al campo (1708) to their source text (Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, 1587), she demonstrates how opera productions could mediate public perception of Oriental cultures and of contemporary gender roles. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the canonisation of Metastasian librettos in dramma per musica productions contrasted starkly with the seeming ephemerality of operatic compositions, which were often designed to suit individual singers or other imperatives of production and typically changed radically between performances. Conceptualisation of the musical work could follow different paths. As Francesca Menchelli-Buttini explains, aesthetic achievement was traditionally ranked according to the success with which librettists adapted established dramaturgical practices for the musical stage. Composers could then expand in music upon the librettist’s poetic achievements, as Jommelli did in his setting of Ciro riconosciuto. As Berta Joncus discusses, the performance event itself could constitute a ‘musical work’ within which the performance of the star singer was often a primary signifier for audiences. Michel Noiray challenges common views of French eighteenth-century opera. Analysing Cherubini’s Médée (1797), he points out that opera during and after the Revolution, while generally viewed as the genre that best represented the spirit of the time, in fact perpetuated earlier Parisian traditions, such as the pantomime ballet and the compositional practices of Gluck and other leading composers. Cherubini is also the point of entry for Michael Fend’s enquiry into the relationship of this composer’s ‘hack work’ with his reputation as a writer of musical art works. Fend concludes that Cherubini’s substitute arias were a vital creative source that the composer drew on elsewhere
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
to establish his reputation; in the light of French eighteenth-century writings on the musical work, Fend also argues against the twentieth-century notion that the genres Cherubini helped cultivate would not admit the creation of ‘musical works’. In the realm of nineteenth-century Italian opera, Emanuele Senici reveals the interactions between Verdi’s Forza del destino and Manzoni’s influential novel I promessi sposi (1827). Tackling the widespread view that the opera lacks cohesion, Senici highlights parallels in the treatment of storia (historical, descriptive passages) and invenzione (narration) by the composer and the novelist, exploring the means by which Verdi created a musical equivalent of Manzoni’s pioneering implementation of storia within a plot. The last section of the volume covers issues of intertextuality and histori ography that affect how we read musical works. In his examination of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Federico Celestini explicates the notion of ‘aurality’, that is, an interpenetration of literature, earlier compositions and an original setting that can deepen and change the resonances sounding within the work. By contrast, Pamela Potter views the Austro-German musical canon in terms of its twentieth-century institutionalisation. She traces the continuity between the agendas of post-1918 German musicologists and those of musicologists working under the Nazis; she explains also the assimilation of these same agendas into post-Second World War German and American musicological institutions. Finally, Giovanni Morelli offers philosophical and interdisciplinary reflections on the trope of the pastoral in the musical work. From their varied perspectives the authors in this volume explore the contribution of social and historical practices to our conception of the musical work. As such, this collection pays tribute to Reinhard Strohm, whose command of repertory, originality of thought and brilliance of insight have transformed our understanding of these practices.
• I • music in theory and practice
• 1 • Anonymous Arabic Treatises on Music: Lost Legacies, Hidden Answers Amnon Shiloah
T
he musicologist studying Arabic music of the past faces from the outset a peculiar and insoluble problem: musical documents do not exist. Owing to the absence of notation, no artefacts transmit the music from remote ages. Yet, though we can no longer recreate how the music sounded, written sources provide much information on the musical culture of the medieval Islamic world. Exploring these sources was the aim of my two rism volumes, The Theory of Music in Arabic Writings. In these, I investigated and analysed over 526 texts from primary manuscript sources in collections housed in Europe, the United States, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Russia, Uzbekistan and Israel. What was startling about this corpus was the high percentage of anonymous treatises, a phenomenon that deserves particular attention. Statistically speaking, out of the 341 treatises described in the first rism volume, seventy-one are anonymous; of the 184 items in the second, fifty-five are anonymous. In other words, the anonymous entries amount to roughly 25 per cent of the body of theory described. Beyond the statistical aspect, impressive in itself, many anonymous works contain a noteworthy amount of original commentary complementing what is often recycled material. New material, although sometimes drawing on theory and speculation from famous classical treatises, more frequently addresses issues about musical works and performing practice; such commentary apparently arises from knowledge earned through a musician’s experience. Generally speaking, the ideas, valuations and aesthetics in anonymous treatises reflect commentary elsewhere about musical structures and their criteria, a pattern that Alan Merriam has termed ‘verbal behavior’. The appraisal of anonymous Arabic treatises that follows pays special attention to the common material between the treatises and related theoretical commentary. The treatises also share a great deal of commentary among themselves, a theme that I will also Amnon Shiloah, The Theory of Music in Arabic Writings, Répertoire international
des sources musicales, b x (Munich, 1979); id., vol. ii, b xa (Munich, 2003) (= Theory I and II).
Alan Merriam, The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, Ill., 1964), p. 114.
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explore. Table 1.1 summarises the overlap of materials among the fourteen anonymous works cited in this study.
the advent and development of arabic writings on music Anonymous treatises shed much light on aspects and themes of a lost Arabic musical repertory. The treatises encompass diverse types of writing, ranging from the anecdotal and entertaining to the philosophical and speculative. The latter treated music as one of four branches of mathematics collectively called the Quadrivium. Writings belonging to this category emerged during the ninth and tenth centuries owing to the comprehensive translations of Greek works covering many areas of knowledge, including music. The musical treatises written under the influence of these Greek sources followed two major trends: one relied on metaphorical descriptions, the other on speculative-mathematic descriptions; in both, the best contributors were mainly Arab philosophers. Exponents of the former, for instance, were al-Kindī (d. 840), H unain ibn Ishāq (d. 873) and the confraternity called the Brethren of Purity (tenth century). They extolled in metaphors the place of music in the cosmos and the interrelation between music’s cosmic or ethical properties and its therapeutic effects. They also made ample use of Pythagorean doctrine, analysing music according to numbers and numerical ratios. On the other hand, the Aristotelian philosophers like al-Fārābī (d. 950), known in Europe as Alpharabius, and Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), known as Avicenna, studied components of music, such as melody, rhythm, acoustics and instruments. A perfect theorist, according to al-Fārābī’s views, was expected to use knowledge inferred from his observations on the foundations of music. This allowed musical material to be analysed in the light of scientific principles. The theorist’s role was to abstract the essence of knowledge contained within music. However, before endowing the study of music with a systematic character, there existed an alternative way of discussing music and its place in man’s life. This perspective placed music in the framework of a variety of disciplines, such as literary, historical, lexicographical, legal and encyclopedic works. In many cases, observations on music were part of the encyclopedic knowledge designed to form the educated individual and stimulate intellectual powers. For instance, biographical stories about famous male and female singers and instrumentalists, observations about the emotional effect of music, musical performance, musical life, and qualities distinguishing the perfect musician followed this didactic programme. Central to these wide-ranging views on music was the strong belief that music possessed therapeutic properties, and
Shiloah • Anonymous Arabic Treatises
13
Table 1.1 Comparative table of anonymous treatises Title
Contents of Part i
Contents of Part ii
Useful matters copied Cairo, Cdk, mt 13/3, from al-Fath iyya Anon. vi; Theory ii concerning music
Location & call no.
Comments on al-Lādhiqī’s treatise: al-Fath iyya
The influence of music with reference to the mystic al-Nābulusī
Al-Fath iyya or Kitāb al-Fath
Extensive summary of al-Lādhiqī’s al‑Fath iyya
The Central Asian shashmaqam compound form
Al-Fath and an Cairo, Cdk, fj 7, Anon. Extensive summary unfounded attribution vii; Theory ii of al-Lādhiqī’s to al-Fārābī al‑Fath iyya
The Central Asian shashmaqam compound form
[Book on Music]
Cairo, Cdk, adab m 21, A vague reference Anon. viii; Theory ii to al‑Lādhiqī’s al‑Fath iyya
The Oriental multisectional nūba and other forms
A Collection concerning the science of music
Vienna, Wn, n. f.474, Five sections of Anon. xxvii; Theory i generalities on music and its virtues
The compound Eastern nūba form and the strophic form of the muwashshah
Book of precision in the theory of modes
Istanbul, Tks, A. 2130, Seven sections of the Anon. xxxiv; Theory i same generalities on music
The maqāmāt and their classifications; analyses of forms
[Introduction to the science of modes]
Istanbul, University, Iu, Four sections of the a. 3556, Anon. xxxv; same generalities Theory i
The tuning of instruments and classification of the maqāmāt
Cairo, Cdk, mt 11, Anon. vii; Theory ii
Treatise on the benefit Berlin, Staats of the science of music bibliothek, We. 1233, Anon. L; Theory i
Five sections of the same generalities
Biographies of celebrated musicians
The tree with chalices London, British containing the Library, Or. 1535, principles of melodies Anon. lx; Theory i
Four sections of the same generalities
The maqāmāt and their classifications
Book on the science of music
Cairo, Cdk, mt 10, Anon. x; Theory ii
Five sections of same generalities
The principal maqāmāt and their branches
Tract on the science of music
Cairo, Cdk, fj 342/2, Anon. ix; Theory ii
Five sections of the same generalities
The twelve maqāmāt and their branches; the influence of the modes
Tract on music
Cairo, Cdk, mt 67/3, Six sections of the Anon. xxxi; Theory ii Same generalities
The art of modes (Fann al-anghām)
Gotha, a 39, Anon. xiii; Theory i
Mubārak Shāh commentary
The maqāmāt and Istanbul, TKS, a 3458, An extensive commentary on Safi Anon. lxii; Theory i important reference al-dīn’s Book of cycles elements to musical compositions
The maqāmāt and their various correspondences
Characteristics of the The twelve maqāmāt skilful musician and their various correspondences; musical forms known in practice
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Music as Social and Cultural Practice
had the power to affect ethical conduct. Therefore music’s influence over the believer’s behaviour and his religious duties could be regulated. In the eternal debates by theologians on the lawfulness of music, the question of music’s influence on external life was vital. Despite being often anecdotal, the aforementioned writings bear witness to the culture concerned, revealing fundamental assumptions about the function and effects of music. The corpus is therefore highly representative, and interested scholars will profit from an acquaintance with this material as well as its related writings described below.
evolving theories of musical practice After the classical period, the two strands of writings on music – the literary-anecdotal and the scientific – co-existed but also merged, incorporating discussions of musical practice and performance. Unlike most of the classical speculative treatises, these writings, to which the majority of anonymous treatises belong, are seemingly by musicians, rather than by philosophers. They are mainly concerned with problems of performance and composition. One can glean from this group of treatises hints about the major characteristics of musical practices and about prevailing musical concepts. The treatises verbalise an art that was transmitted orally and took shape spontaneously, typically with improvisation during performance. The writings remind us of the many factors – performance circumstances, the musician’s creativity and the listeners’ enthusiasm – that contributed to the work’s creation, drawing attention to the means by which nuance and subtlety distinguished Eastern musical artists and their local traditions. Such sensitivity related to the artist’s fondness for the details making up the work, suggesting that structure may have emerged in performance out of the details, rather than being preconceived. One revealing example is a dialogue between two famous musicians of the eighth century, which eloquently summarises the qualities of a perfect musician: Mālik ibn abī᾿l-Samah, one of the greatest musicians of the early Islamic period, asked ibn Surayj, his famous colleague musician, what the qualities of the perfect musician were. He replied: ‘The musician who enriches the melodies, has a long breath, gives proportions to measures, emphasises the pronunciation, respects grammatical inflections, holds long notes to their full values, disconnects short notes distinctly and, finally, uses the various rhythmical modes correctly: such a musician is considered perfect.’ Mālik ibn abī᾿l-Samah adds: ‘I reported this statement
Shiloah • Anonymous Arabic Treatises
15
to Ma῾bad (another famous musician of that epoch), who declared: “If there was a Koran of music it could not be otherwise.” ’ Of course, the features described are not exclusive to the period when this treatise was written. These same qualities remain of importance for subsequent generations, later being combined with factors such as innate talent, creativity, vocal and improvisatory skill and the ability to play more than one instrument. Another treatise combines theoretical-speculative features with literaryanecdotal material in a way that might be called a theory of practice. This eleventh-century treatise, by al-H asan al-Kātib, Kitāb adab al-ghinā᾿ (‘The Perfection of the Musical Knowledge’), appears to sum up the experience of a teacher aiming to improve the knowledge and taste of his musical colleagues. As he states at the outset: ‘Each art has an ideal of perfection and a degree of profit thanks to which the art becomes more perfect and of superior merit. Hence, one should do his utmost in the pursuit of this ideal.’ In forty-three chapters al-H asan outlines the conceptualisation and performance of an oral musical work, while providing theoretical speculation. Al-H asan’s observations do not refer to normative or codified theory; they evidently belong to empirical knowledge gathered from, and limited to, what musicians themselves observed and experienced, which subsequent generations of artists would add to. Many topics in al-H asan’s book show the underlying principles under study: ‘the correct arrangement of the different parts of the music performed’; ‘the favourite sounds and formulae in vocal and instrumental pieces’; ‘the things recommended to be set in relief in melodies, or things that should rather be disguised in melodies’; ‘the regulation of the respiration and things convenient for the larynx’; ‘on borrowing and plagiarism’; ‘the listeners’ applause and demand of repetition’ (to help increase the performer’s imaginative powers); ‘melodic modes and rhythms’; and ‘the entry into rhythm of the piece performed’, among others. Another group of chapters is devoted to the relationship between poetry and music. These chapters are concerned with prosody and rhythm, prosody and compositional forms, and conceiving melodies that work with the poetry. In this context, al-H asan refers to ‘the musical role of the vowels’ in performance, underlining in particular the importance of the semivowels L, M, N, which in See A. P. Caussin de Perceval, ‘Notices anecdotiques sur les principaux musiciens
arabes des trois premiers siècles de l’ islamisme’, Journal asiatique, 7 ser., 2 (1873), pp. 392–397.
Al-H asan al-Kātib, La Perfection des connaissances musicales, trans. A. Shiloah
(Paris, 1972).
Ibid., p. 12.
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Arabic can function as individual syllables. Many Arab authors claimed that because they have a pleasant, melodious sound and their sound can extend like vowels, these consonants are of great importance to the melodies. These letters are in fact specially endowed with emotive accentuation in Koran chanting. The author’s astonishing list of special voice types in art music indicates both the predominance of vocal repertory and important considerations in vocal production. Twenty-eight terms typify distinctive vocal qualities, such as tender, redundant, hoarse, strangled, greasy, in a classification system referring to effects – power, focus, density, volume and timbre – rather than to pitch. In many writings, making basic rules in prosody and poetry the ideal for composing melody, rhythm and form created a particular kind of link between poetry and music. In discussing the criteria for a musical composition or song, theorists and critics always refer to the two constituent elements of the perfect musical work – the poem and the melody – and discuss their ideal association. Melody draws sense or significance from the words it sets; melody in turn extends, reinforces and increases the beauty of the verse set to music. The reference is usually to the poem’s individual verses upon which the structure and modality of the melody are mapped. Analytical criteria draw on versification, prosody and eloquence of the lyrics and various compositional parameters. While admitting that independent melodies without words are possible, authors consider such music less effective and flattering to the ear. Yet, although based on models in literature, musical aesthetics elaborated its own norms and criteria. This was particularly true for the aesthetics of musical performance, for which oral transmission was more important than for the public recitation of poetry.
selected examples of anonymous treatises A group of four anonymous treatises from a manuscript collection in the National Egyptian Library (Dār al-kutub) exemplify through their shared material the characteristics of the corpus to which they belong. Written in bipartite form, they are clearly affiliated with a well-known theoretical treatise, al-Risāla al-fath iyya, by the leading Ottoman author Muhammad ibn ῾Abd al-H amīd al-Lādhiqī (d. 1495). Al-Lādhiqī was a favourite of the See Shiloah, Theory i, pp. 125–6, where the complete list of the forty-three chapters
of al-H asan’s work is provided.
These manuscripts are described in Theory ii, pp. 208–11.
Theory i, pp. 264–7. The Risāla al-fath iyya was published and annotated by
Muhammad al-Rajab (Kuwait, 1986). The Theory i entry includes the description of another treatise by al-Lādhiqī called Zayn al-alh ān … (= Adorning of the melodies).
Shiloah • Anonymous Arabic Treatises
17
Osmanli sultan Bayazid ii (1481–1512), to whom he dedicated the Risāla alfath iyya (Epistle of Victory), probably to commemorate the sultan’s victory (his conquest of Moldavia and the western coast of the Black Sea in 1484). AlLādhiqī’s work enjoyed great popularity and a wide circulation. This probably explains the four anonymous authors’ indebtedness to this work, although none completely represents his work and only one – the shortest – mentions his name. To grasp how those works relate to their source, a short description of al-Lādhiqī’s al-Risāla al-fath iyya is required. This extensive theoretical work (over 100 folios) is divided into an introduction and two major parts. The introduction contains three chapters dealing with the definition of music and other generalities. Part i treats the science of melody and its components: the theory of sound; its production and perception; intervals, scales and systems; the theory and classification of modes together with their appropriate role in composition. Part ii is devoted to the science of rhythm. It defines rhythm generally and then its parameters, dividing rhythmical modes into four classes: the six rhythmical modes of the Ancients; the eighteen rhythmical modes of the Moderns; a group of three little-used modes; and a group of nine modes, which according to al-Lādhiqī had been abandoned at his time. The title of the first anonymous manuscript at the Egyptian National Library (Cdk, Mūsīqā Taymūr 13/3, fols 65–70) carries the title: ‘Useful Matters Copied from al-Fath iyya Concerning Music’. Its first section includes scattered features gleaned from the original work as well as from other sources. Before continuing to the second part, it explains briefly why Al-Lādhiqī called his work Risālat al-fath iyya. The extensive second and third manuscripts (Cdk, Funūn jamīla 7, 60 fols, and Mūsīqā Taymūr 11, 241 pages) are roughly similar in content and structure, and appear under the respective titles The Book of Victory and The Victory, without mentioning al-Lādhiqī.10 On the first page of the second treatise another hand has written ‘This treatise is composed by the perfect philosopher al-Fārābī.’ This inscription was crossed out by yet another hand and replaced by the title The Victory (al-fath iyya). Both manuscripts devote the first section largely to abbreviating al-Lādhiqī’s text while retaining his structure. This abridgement may mirror traditions in the literary mukhtasar, or compendium, a term typically used for writings condensing a longer work. These largely preserved their source’s form and content while adding their Theory ii, Anonymous vi, pp. 208–9.
10 Theory ii, Anonymous vii, pp. 209–10. Because of their similar content I combined
the two manuscripts in one entry.
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own glosses; common in medieval scholarship, they enjoyed considerable popularity among Arab writers.11 From the four treatises under consideration here, two are divided, like alFath iyya, into two major sections, while omitting al-Lādhiqī’s important introduction; the original five discourses are subdivided into twelve brief chapters. In another deviation, the two authors replaced al-Lādhiqī’s refined classification of twenty rhythmical modes in four distinct categories by a plainer list of twenty-one modes (one more than the original), varying somewhat al-Lādhiqī’s nomenclature. As in the original, however, this part concludes with the mode called ‘two hundreds’, or two hundred beats. This unusual mode, mentioned by another anonymous writer listing sixteen rhythmic modes,12 concludes alLādhiqī’s work, while the two anonymous treatises continue into an extensive second part, using the mode in question as an ingenious transitional device. The beginning of the fourth anonymous manuscript (Cdk, adab m 21, 59 fols) is missing.13 But the bulk of its contents and its bipartite structure show a close affinity with the other three treatises. The first part deals with the science of melody, with some important variations. The most essential difference appears in the content of the second part.
the second parts of the bipartite treatises Significantly, in the second part all four treatises contain new material unrelated to the subject and the speculative approaches of the first part. The new material introduces many elements that relate essentially to performance practice. The first, short treatise concludes with a brief section (Mūsīqā Taymūr 13/3, fols 65–70) commenting on sound’s influence through pitch.14 The anonymous author quotes a statement by the famous Syrian mystic, theologian and poet ῾Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731) about the properties of melodies.15 He defended music and the whirling dance of the Mewlevi order to which he belonged in several treatises. By contrast, the second and third treatises pivot between the opening and following section by posing a question about the unusual rhythmic mode of 11 See Mukhtasar Encyclopedia of Islam, new edn (Leiden, 1986), vii, pp. 536–40. 12 Theory ii, Anonymous xxiv, the beginning of which is missing; it contains
aterial drawn from a treatise of Shihāb al-dīn al-῾Ajamī, who wrote at the end of m the fifteenth century (see Theory i, p. 53).
13 Theory ii, Anonymous viii, p. 211. 14 Ibid., Anonymous vi, pp. 208–9.
15 Three treatises by al-Nābulusī are described in Theory i, pp. 290–4.
Shiloah • Anonymous Arabic Treatises
19
two hundred beats. This query was explained as being due to the performer’s particular skill. The question leads us to a far province of the Islamic world; the ‘supreme sultan Ghiyāth al-dīn Muhammad in the Royal residence of Samarqand in Bagh Naqsh’ addresses this query to the treatise’s anonymous author, presumably a musician. At this point the text suddenly changes to a completely different event involving another place, person and subject. The writer describes how during the Muslim month of Sha῾bān 16 in 1573, the eminent sultan of the Tabriz province, Jalāl al-dīn H usein, ordered the author – now using the first person ‘me’ – to compose a nawba or nūba (a suite or compound and cyclic composition) for each day of Ramadan to be performed before him.17 Although his musical colleagues doubted the feasibility of this enormous task, the author succeeded thanks to his gifts and skill. In the treatise’s most revealing section, the author gives a detailed analysis of the nawbāt composed, and catalogues the names and roles of fellow musicians who participated throughout Ramadan. According to the author, each nawbāt had five parts and included Persian poems, which are reproduced. Although I have found no information on either of the two sultans, the precise dating and the description of the technical features lend credibility to this account, at least regarding the essential features described. This story is presumably associated with the compound form of the nawba, or nūba, and its lengthy development throughout a vast geographical region. This passage in the treatise perhaps describes a precursor of the traditional Central Asian Shashmaqom during an earlier, formative stage.18 The fourth treatise based on the al-Fath iyya also appears to attest to the evolution of the nawba form. Its second part, original as in the other treatises, appears as an epilogue after the material after the al-Fath iyya. But unlike the two other treatises discussed, this section describes different compositional forms and performance practices in vogue during the author’s lifetime in various regions. In addition to the nashīd, the author presents the structure of two compound compositions.19 First, he describes the nūba or nawba not of 16 Sha῾bān is the name of the eighth month of the Muslim year preceding the month
of Ramadan. This implies that the musician had only a short time for completing the assignment.
17 Funūn jamīla 7, fol. 55a; Mūsīqā Taymūr 11, p. 209. 18 In the traditional music of the Uzbeks and Tadjiks, Shashmaqom means literally
six maqāmāt and compositions based on them, all having the same internal structure emphasising the cyclic principle. Each maqām composition consists of two main divisions. The first is instrumental, the other, considerably longer, is vocal and comprises an extensive set of accompanied songs.
19 The nashīd is the declamation of poetry, in chant and song. The term also desig-
nates various musical forms including the vocal prelude.
20
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
entral Asia, but of the Near and Middle East, with its traditional repertory.20 C This nawba is composed of five parts, one of which, the murassa῾ (‘adorned’), combines verses in Arabic, Persian and Turkish in one song. Second, he discusses the Turkish fasl: a multi-sectional form including texts in verse and prose, as well as instrumental sections.21 The author, probably a practising musician, also describes the tah rīr, a vocal technique that characterises Persian music, held, according to him, in high esteem.
further instances of anonymous works in bipartite forms The bipartite pattern outlined above – theoretical speculation based on authoritative writings followed by original observations on forms, genres and performance practice – is found in many anonymous works. The authors of such treatises would appear to be professional musicians. A large group of over a dozen, mostly anonymous, treatises follow this pattern, reproducing in their introduction similar general reflections, in the roughly the same order, about music’s purpose, origin and influence. In their second part, the treatises present different material. Nine of them focus on the modal system and its practical application; another three devote their second part to biographies of musicians and a song anthology.22 Two lengthy anonymous treatises, Fann al-anghām (The Art of Modes) and the treatise which became widely known as Sharh Mubārak Shāh, clarify this model.23 The latter treatise is a comprehensive commentary on the Kitāb aladwār (The Book of Cycles or Modes) by the supreme authority on modal theory, Safī al-dīn al-Urmawī (1230–94).24 The Kitāb al-adwār was analysed, commented on and circulated in many copies, becoming an authoritative model for new developments. The first anonymous treatise, Fann al-anghām, is divided into an introduction and two chapters. The introduction describes the skilful musician, who should command all the modes, their derivations and the facility to pass elegantly between modes. Chapter 1 deals with a lost anonymous work on 20 Funūn jamīla 7, fol. 55a; Mūsīqā Taymūr 11, p. 209. 21 The Turkish multi-sectional fasl seems to have developed out of the Eastern
nawba. The term refers to a sequence of various instrumental and vocal genres, allowing a certain amount of freedom; some of the pieces are improvised, others precomposed. Two restrictions had to be observed: the order of the piece and modal unity.
22 See Theory ii, pp. 4–5 and a comparative table in Theory i, pp. 396–7. 23 Theory i, pp. 373–4. 24 Ibid., pp. 419–20.
Shiloah • Anonymous Arabic Treatises
21
the principles of modes. Chapter 2 analyses compositions in different modes; beginning with the ‘father of all modes’, the rasd, the author mentions the Ayyūbid ruler al-Malik al-Ashraf (c.1200–50), ‘one of the composers of our time who mostly excelled in the mode rasd’, thus suggesting that this treatise stems from Syria around the same period. In same context, the author mentions the famous ‘Alī al-Sayyarī, author of five hundred compositions in rasd ’. After describing a nawba in rasd, the author distinguishes between two species of nawba: ‘the nawba of the companions’ and the ‘nawba of the masters’. The former includes four types of pieces, the bayshar, basīt, tasnīf and khafīf, while the latter uses the qawl, ghazal, taran and farudast; the author remarks that ghazal is always in Persian, while others are in Arabic. He adds that the ‘nawba of the masters is a fixed work based on strict rules and composed by a known musician’. The chapter continues with a presentation of the other modes. The Sharh Mubārak Shāh was a well-known commentary on Safī al-dīn’s seminal treatise on the modes mentioned above. The title indicates that the commentary was compiled during the early sixteenth century for Shah Shujā῾, who receives a long and eloquent dedication. H. G. Farmer believes the author is probably ῾Alī Muhammad al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 1413), ‘the only scholar of the time to whom one could attribute it with likeliness’.25 This is unlikely: the anonymous author states that he is a physician who studied the science of music as an indispensable part of his medical training, while alJurjānī did not write any work related to medicine.26 No evidence supports Farmer’s attribution. This manuscript is a good illustration of the technique of systematically commenting on an authoritative work by adding to the original, phrase by phrase, notes and observations. The resulting work is three times the length of its fifteen-chapter source.27 The vast critical apparatus contains many original thoughts and topics. For example, chapter 13’s commentary covers rhythmic theory and discusses composition at length, presenting independent views, without reference to the Kitāb al-adwār. The anonymous author refers to many vocal and instrumental forms (both free or improvised and pre-composed), referring partly to al-Fārābī and partly to modern practices. In chapter 14, titled ‘On the influence of modes’ in the Kitāb al-adwār, the anonymous author interpolates observations on twelve musical genres. The final chapter, titled, as in its source, ‘Remarks and Advice on Musical Practice’, contains explanations about 25 Rodolphe d’Erlanger, La Musique arabe, iii (Paris, 1938), preface, p. xiii. 26 Ibid., p. 186.
27 For further details see Franz Rosenthal, The Technique and Approach of Muslim
Scholarship, Analecta Orientalia (Rome, 1947), p. 46.
22
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
the qawl (a sung poem in Arabic) and ghazal (a sung poem in Persian), adding that the compound form of the nawba includes qawl, ghazal and tarana.
conclusion The anonymous treatises discussed here have a bipartite structure. Typically they take features from, or are based on, the works of famous theorists and combine these with personal observations based on the author’s practical musical experience. Through their dichotomy between theory and practice most of these works belong to what we may call ‘the theory of practice’, a category also masterfully illustrated in two eleventh-century treatises, one by al-H asan al-Kātib, The Perfection of Musical Knowledge,28 and another by Ibn al-Tahhān’s al-Mūsīqī, The Collection of Arts and the Consolation of the Vexed.29 Written around the same period, these two treatises, in combination with the anonymous treatises, represent a common impulse to write about the theory of practice. A further practical aspect of these treatises is their aesthetic appreciation and valuation based on contemporary music-making and its quest for formal perfection. The evident link – except in improvised music – between music and poetry partly heralded the inclusion of such discussions in treatises, since both poetry and music order their materials periodically and structure time artificially. Based on the treatises, the multi-sectional or compound form of nawba or nūba was seemingly omnipresent, with various forms and local styles throughout the vast Islamic civilisation. The principles of a given maqām’s unity, the alternating vocal and instrumental pieces, the defined sequence of pieces, and the contrast through rhythm of heavy versus light movements (and their expression) typically form the basis of different suite traditions of the nawba or nūba. The nūba form developed largely through a slow cultural transmission between different ruling peoples. Where political and cultural exchanges peaked, the transfer of musical features probably did likewise. For example, the traditional capital of the Persian province of Adharbaydjan, the city of Tabriz, was such a location. Cited in anonymous treatises from the Egyptian Library, the majority of its inhabitants spoke a local dialect (AdharbaydjanTurkish) characterised by Persian intonation. Under the Mongols Il Khānids, Tabriz became the true centre of an empire stretching from the Oxus to Egypt 28 See above, n. 4. 29 See Ibn al-Tah hān, H āwī al-funūn wa-salwat al-mah zūn, ed. E. Neubauer,
ublications of the Institute for the Theory of Arabic-Islamic Science (Frankfurt P am Main, 1990).
Shiloah • Anonymous Arabic Treatises
23
where literary, artistic and mystical activity flourished. During the rule of the I ranian Safavids several Turco-Persian wars took place, changing the city’s rulers: Ismā῾īl i occupied Tabriz in 1500; the Ottoman sultan Selim made a triumphal entry into it in 1514; after the Persian reconquest, Suleiman the Magnificent came to Tabriz in 1534; Shah ῾Abbās reoccupied the city in 1603. This period probably brought musicians from diverse areas into contact. That said, because musicians usually followed their patron’s court and belonged to established schools, one must also assume that they preserved their indigenous practices in their new environment. The number and significance of the anonymous treatises raises the question of why authorship was concealed. Definite answers escape us. One banal reason may be the defective state of manuscript sources, which are missing the front page or the first pages. The eminent scholar Franz Rosenthal suggests another possibility: ‘The desire of certain authors to achieve celebrity for their works, even if this meant that their names had to be concealed and replaced by the name of some recognized authority.’30
30 See above, n. 27.
• 2 • Compositional Practices in Trecento Music: Model Books and Musical Traditions Anna Maria Busse Berger
W
e know very little about the process of composition in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Italy. Although the most popular pieces, be they madrigals, ballatas or caccias, are notated and their composers identified, how they came into existence is unclear. Specifically, we are not certain whether writing was necessary for their creation and transmission. Recent studies of compositional process show that much composition was done in the mind before being written down. We are faced with an enormous gap between what musical sources record and what we know about the process of, and instruction in, composition. On the one hand, we have the compositions as they are transmitted in manuscripts, which show the finished product, with voices separately notated and dissonance carefully applied and controlled. On the other hand, we have only music theory treatises devoted to the art of counterpoint to tell us how composers achieved this control and what kind of music education they received; moreover, these treatises seem exceedingly rudimentary. We know that from the fourteenth century onwards theorists often distinguish between noteagainst-note and diminished counterpoint. However, while most of them acknowledge the existence of diminished counterpoint, they describe only note-against-note counterpoint. Ludwig Finscher dates the advent of individualised musical works to the Trecento.
Ludwig Finscher, ‘Zum Problem Komponisten-Individualität und Individualstil in der Musik des 14. Jahrhunderts’, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 6 (1975), pp. 29–45. For the most recent discussion of authorship in Trecento music, see Oliver Huck, Die Musik des frühen Trecento (Hildesheim, 2005), pp. 129–35. Huck believes that many attributions came about as a result of what he calls ‘das retrospektive Interesse der Musikwissenschaft am Komponisten’; ibid., p. 133.
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Compositional Techniques in the Four-Part Isorhythmic
Motets of Philippe de Vitry and his Contemporaries (New York, 1989); Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition (New York and Oxford, 1997); Anna Maria Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkeley, 2005).
For a detailed discussion of this topic, see Claude V. Palisca and Werner Krützfeld’s
Busse Berger • Compositional Practices in Trecento Music
25
Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century artists may provide us with vital insights into creative processes of this period. At the exhibition ‘Prague, the Crown of Bohemia, 1347–1437’ at the Metropolitan Museum of New York (20 September 2005 to 3 January 2006), I was particularly struck by a so-called ‘model book’ from the Viennese Kunsthistorisches Museum, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe (inv. 5003, 5004). The art historian Julius von Schlosser described this particular model book in a benchmark article of 1902, ‘Vademecum eines fahrenden Malergesellen’. (Was he alluding perhaps to Mahler’s song cycle?) He coined the term ‘Modellbuch’ (modern scholars use also the term ‘pattern book’) to describe it. The model book (c.1400) consists of fourteen tablets of maple wood held together by strips of parchment. Each tablet includes four drawings on pieces of paper (95 × 90 mm). There are forty drawings altogether of busts and one skull, and another thirteen of animal heads plus a spider (see Figure 2.1). The model book came with a leather case with hooks, which could easily be attached to a belt. Von Schlosser suggested that the teacher of an itinerant artist made the drawings and showed them to prospective patrons in an attempt to demonstrate that he could paint a wide variety of religious subjects. Von Schlosser pointed out that the drawings cover essentially any face type that an artist might have to paint: Jesus on the cross between Mary and Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, an Ecce homo, an angel, a Madonna with Jesus, a monk, Mary as regina caeli, the heads of the apostles, two old women (probably Anna and Elizabeth), two old men, representatives of upper and lower classes, the skull and the animals. Indeed, a number of drawings and panels seem to be derived from this model book. For example, two small drawings in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge are so closely related to the head of the Virgin and the head of the archangel Gabriel that they might have been copied from the model book. (See Figure 2.2.) Although the artists of these drawings were highly skilled, varying details article ‘Kontrapunkt’, MGG, v (Kassel, 1996), col. 596–628 and Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, Der Contrapunctus im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: Untersuchung zum Terminus, zur Lehre und zu den Quellen (Wiesbaden, 1974).
Prague, the Crown of Bohemia, 1347–1437, ed. Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiri Fajt
(New Haven, 2005), pp. 274–6.
Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 23
(1902), pp. 314–38.
For an excellent discussion of model books, see Robert W. Scheller, Exemplum:
Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900–ca. 1470), trans. Michael Hoyle (Amsterdam, 1995).
For other drawings related to this model book, see Prague, the Crown of Bohemia,
ed. Boehm and Fajt, pp. 275–6.
26
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.
Fig. 2.1 Vienna model book, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe (inv. 5003, 5004). Reproduced with permission of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Busse Berger • Compositional Practices in Trecento Music
27
Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.
Fig. 2.2 Drawing of the Archangel Gabriel from the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass. Reproduced with permission of the Fogg Art Museum
such as hair styles and beards, ‘the types left relatively little room for originality’. As von Schlosser points out, heads are ‘simplified and stylized, as are the locks of hair and the drapery’. Von Schlosser’s article stimulated many studies on the subject and several other model books from the late ninth to the early fifteenth century have been identified and described. In an important study treating the close similarities between Western miniatures and Byzantine mosaics, Ernst Kitzinger distinguishes three different kinds of model books. First are the so-called generic guides that were ‘pictorial manuals designed from the outset for repeated use’. Second are pictorial or iconographic guides, which often supplied only the skeletons of the composition, for example, of a church. Artists could then fill in this skeleton with elements from his third group, the motif books. To quote Ibid, p. 275.
Ernst Kitzinger, ‘The Role of Miniature Painting in Mural Decoration’, The Place
of Book Illumination in Byzantine Art, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton, 1975), pp. 115–16.
28
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
Kitzinger, these are ‘somewhat haphazard collections of drawings of figures, parts of figures, occasional groups and, more rarely, entire compositions copied from various contexts’. Motif books were effectively an ‘artist’s sketch book, a jumble of jottings and notations, not of his own inventions, but of works of art he has seen’.10 They allowed the artist to ‘flesh out sketches, with the help of an established and largely formulaic repertory of figures and scenery elements’.11 Model books helped transmit artistic creations ranging from simple drawings to more complicated designs from one place to another. Sometimes artists reproduced an earlier drawing; at other times drawings became a point of departure for something considerably different. Many of the models were connected with an increasing demand for altarpieces. This demand led to a more structured education of apprentices and ‘more efficient working procedures in the bottega’.12 As the art historian Robert Scheller explains: Collections were formed of models that served various purposes. They were a stock of examples, often collected or designed by the master, which could be used repeatedly by the bottega for any number of commissions. They could also serve as examples for the first drawing exercises of the garzoni, whose trial pieces also found their way into the collection.13 Model books played thus an important role in training artists. In addition, the collected exempla could be consulted by members of the workshop, who could pick suitable samples for their paintings. In the fifteenth century, artists gradually replaced model books with drawings or sketchbooks and these drawings were now considered the property of the master. Students would still copy from their teacher, but at the same time try to forge their own style.14 Model books continued to live on in collections of examples for artisans and decorative artists. Sketch books, like model books, relied extensively on memorisation.15 When Leonardo classified nasal types, he aimed ‘less to categorize nature in 10 Ernst Kitzinger, ‘Norman Sicily as a Source of Byzantine Influence on Western Art
in the Twelfth Century’, Studies in Late Antique Byzantine and Medieval Western Art (London, 2003), ii, p. 1089. See also Kitzinger, ‘The Role of Miniature Painting’, p. 135.
11 Kitzinger, ‘The Role of Miniature Painting’, p. 135. 12 Scheller, Exemplum, p. 79. 13 Ibid., p. 80. 14 Ibid., p. 85.
15 David Rosand, ‘Remembered Lines’, Memory and Oblivion, ed. Adriaan W.
Reinink and Jeroen Stumpel (Dordrecht, 1999), pp. 811–16.
Busse Berger • Compositional Practices in Trecento Music
29
all its variety than … to aid … drawing [those features] from memory’.16 The art historian David Rosand has found numerous quotations from Cennino Cennini to Leonardo, Dürer and Michelangelo about the intimate connection between memorisation of drawn figures and creating something new. For example, Dürer stated that ‘no one can ever make a beautiful figure out of his own thoughts unless he has well stocked his mind by study. … [a] wellpractised artist has no need to copy each particular figure from life. For all he need to do is pour forth that which he has for a long time gathered into him from without.’17 This short excursus shows that art historians have studied compositional process in the Middle Ages more closely than have musicologists simply because they have more evidence to analyse. Despite relating to a different discipline, model books suggest guidelines to help musicologists answer questions posed by art historians. Can we find working methods for composers of medieval polyphony? How did students learn from their teachers? What would be the musical equivalent to a model book? As I have discussed elsewhere, students acquired throughout their life a memorial archive into which they delved when composing or performing polyphony.18 They first memorised chant, then mastered the basics of elementary music theory, and finally proceeded to study counterpoint. Every singer who wanted to learn or perform polyphony had to master counterpoint, and, as I mentioned above, theorists leave little doubt that note-against-note counterpoint represents the central part of the instruction. A number of Italian counterpoint treatises treating Trecento music – Paolo da Firenze’s Ars ad discantandum contrapunctum,19 the regola del grado treatises,20 Prosdocimus de Beldemandis’s Contrapunctus 21 and Ugolino of 16 Ibid., p. 812. 17 Quoted ibid.
18 For a more detailed discussion, see Busse Berger, Medieval Music. 19 Pier Paolo Scattolin, ‘Il trattato teoretico di Paolo da Firenze’, Mensurabilis
musicae tractatuli, ii (Bologna, 1975), pp. 63–79 (including facsimiles of the sources, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 1119, and Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, LV 36). For an earlier transcription and commentary, see Albert Seay, ‘Paolo da Firenze: A Trecento Theorist’, Ars nova italiana del Trecento 1 (Certaldo, 1962), pp. 118–40.
20 Busse Berger, Medieval Music, pp. 131–8; for a transcription with commentary, see
Pier Paolo Scattolin, ‘La regola del grado nella teoria medievale del contrappunto’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 14 (1979), pp. 11–74.
21 Prosdocimus de Beldemandis, Contrapunctus: A New Critical Text and Trans
lation, ed. and trans. Jan Herlinger, Greek and Latin Music Theory i (Lincoln, Nebr., 1984).
30
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
rvieto’s Declaratio musicae disciplinae 22 – can shed further light on the O creative process of composition. These treatises, like those from the north, are all concerned first with memorising consonant and dissonant intervals and then memorising individual note-against-note progressions.23 Paolo da Firenze was one of the most celebrated composers of the Trecento, second only to Francesco Landini. He also wrote a counterpoint treatise that fits squarely within traditions of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century teachings. Because of his compositional talent, his textbook potentially offers keen insights into how an accomplished professional thought counterpoint should be learnt. Like all early theorists of counterpoint, he deals only with composition for two parts. He starts by listing all perfect consonances – he calls them simply consonantie – followed by imperfect consonances, which he calls disonantie.24 That he intended interval classifications to be memorised is shown by his meticulously cataloguing of every perfect and imperfect consonance for every note of the C hexachord (c–d–e–f–g–a), instead of describing generally how perfect and imperfect consonances are composed. Next, he proceeds to give examples of note-against-note interval progressions. Again, it is clear that the three-note formulas were meant to be memorised. The first group of examples deals with various ways of going from the interval of an octave to a fifth and back to the original octave. Paolo is exceedingly thorough: there are six different ways of going from an octave to a fifth within the C hexachord, and he presents each one: the tenor repeated, the tenor ascending a second, the tenor ascending a third, and so on (see Example 2.1). Not only does he present all possible octave–fifth progressions for the first note c ut of the natural hexachord, but he gives these progressions for each of the six notes of the C hexachord, again an indication that the progressions were meant to be memorised. Before proceeding further, Paolo adds a short musical example that combines previous (memorised) material with two notes against one, some even in syncopation. Paolo’s next group of examples shows octave to sixth progressions, examining first the movement 8–6–8, and then 5–6–8; again, he writes these out for every possible note of the natural hexachord (see Example 2.2a). He then shows the motion 8–6–8 with the tenor moving up a second (see Example 2.2b), a third and a fourth. He then turns to examples of progressions of the 22 Ugolino of Orvieto, Declaratio musicae disciplinae, ed. Albert Seay, 3 vols, Corpus
Scriptorum de Musica vii (Rome, 1959–62).
23 Busse Berger, Medieval Music, pp. 131–8. 24 ‘Ars ad discantandum’, in Scattolin, ‘Il trattato teorico’, pp. 63–5. The regola del
grado treatises use the same terminology for perfect and imperfect consonances. Cf. Busse Berger, Medieval Music, p. 135.
Busse Berger • Compositional Practices in Trecento Music
31
Ex. 2.1 Paolo da Firenze, Ars ad discantandum, 8–5–8 progressions (from Seay, p. 138) (a)
8
5
Pari
8
Pari
Pari
Pari
Pari
Pari
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
fifth moving to the sixth and then to the octave (see Example 2.2c); thereafter he gives a group of five examples showing various ways to progress from the twelfth to the octave and back (see Example 2.2d). Between these, as before, he applies two notes against one to the progressions just explained. Four examples follow, each consisting of five notes covering the progression 12–10–8–10–12 (see Example 2.2e). He concludes his explanation with six examples of the progression 12–10–12 (see Example 2.2f). Paolo’s treatise mirrors the procedures standard among contemporary counterpoint treatises, giving plenty of examples, notated and descriptive, of note-against-note progressions for memorisation, with no mention of diminished counterpoint.25 In the absence of written instruction, how did Paolo and other Trecento composers then learn to write diminished counterpoint? Only the compositions as they are transmitted in the manuscripts provide clues to how musicians might have acquired the art of diminished counterpoint. This evidence raises, however, more questions. Did writing down the composition fix the content, such as pitch or rhythmic value, or did Trecento musicians recompose elements of a piece in diminished versions during performance? Was there the expectation that musicians perform the version transmitted in 25 In contrast to other theorists, Paolo gives examples rather than rules, does not
prohibit parallel perfect consonances and does not specify that one should move from the nearest imperfect consonance to a unison, fifth or octave.
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
32
Ex. 2.2 Paolo da Firenze, Ars ad discantandum, 8–6–8 progressions (from Seay, p. 139) (a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
12
(f)
12
8
10
8
10
10
12
12
12
12
10
8
10
10
12
12
12
12
10
8
10
10
12
12
12
12
10
8
10
10
12
12
8
writing? In other words, we might follow three avenues of query. First, after composition – regardless of whether this was transcribed – what features were variable (if any) and what stable? Second, if elements were varied, who was the agent, the composer or someone else? Third, can we speak of finished compositions or are manuscripts testimony of an improviser’s art? The well-known madrigal by Giovanni da Firenze (also called da Caccia)
Busse Berger • Compositional Practices in Trecento Music
33
Ex. 2.3 Phrase 1 of Giovanni da Firenze’s La bella stella (after Pirrotta), with contrapuntal frame
La Quan E
5
-
-
5
-
-
bel do per
-
8
3
-
1
la stel - la me par - v’en u - no che
1
3
che son di
3
1
q = q.
10
su -no so
-
a es pra
-
1
fiam ser bian
ma po cheg
-
6
-
-
6
te lu gia
-
-
8
-
8
-
10
-
8
-
6
17
-
1
-
1
-
-
5
-
5
-
-
-
1
-
6
ne, to, va,
-
5
3
1
La bella stella che sua fiamma tene may suggest answers to these questions.26 F. Alberto Gallo has compared eleven different versions of the piece and determined which versions transmit scribal errors and which a separate version. He ended by establishing a possible stemma that helps us understand Giovanni’s steps in composing this piece.27 26 The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy i, ed. Nino Pirrotta, Corpus Mensurabilis
Musicae viii (Rome, 1954), no. 8.
27 F. Alberto Gallo, ‘Critica della tradizione e storia del testo: Seminario su un
madrigale trecentesco’, Acta Musicologica 59 (1987), pp. 36–45.
34
Music as Social and Cultural Practice Table 2.1 Interval progressions in Paolo da Firenze’s La bella stella Bars
Progression
3–4
8–3
Ugolino, ii-83, bb. 1–2
4–5
3–1
Paolo Exx. 16 & 21
5–6
note repetition
6–7
1–3
7–8
note repetition
8–9
3–1
2–3
5–8
9–10
note repetition
10–11
1–6
11–12
note repetition
12–13
6–8
13–14
note repetition
Remarks
Paolo Ex. 6
8–10 in Paolo Ex. 21 & Ugolino, ii-72 see above Ugolino, ii-83 Paolo Ex. 12 & Ugolino, ii-88
Giovanni would have started with note-against-note counterpoint (Example 2.3 shows diminished counterpoint with its note-against-note counterpoint beneath it). Table 2.1 compares these note-against-note progressions to those discussed by Paolo and Ugolino. Surveying this table, three points are apparent: first, the theorists cover all the interval progressions in the madrigal; the composer/performer would therefore already have memorised these progressions prior to the madrigal’s composition. Second, in all eleven versions the note-against-note structure remains unaltered.28 Third, all the variations are typical of those used by performers. These ornamentations may have originated at the keyboard, as James Haar and Nino Pirrotta suggest, or with singers, as Anne Stone maintains.29 (See Example 2.4 for three variants of bar 16.) Stone argues that some of the pieces were first performed and only later written down. Her point is significant, because she discusses Ars subtilior repertory, which is considered the written text par excellence; due to its complexity, oral transmission is not thought to be an option. Inverting this 28 Although I have not yet investigated all early Trecento pieces, this holds true for
most of the pieces I surveyed. I focused particularly on the madrigals discussed by Marie Louise Goellner because they included so many variants; these turned out to contain the same note-against-note structure. See Marie Louise Martinez [Göllner], Die Musik des frühen Trecento (Tutzing, 1963).
29 James Haar, ‘The Trecento’, Essays on Italian Poetry and Music in the Renaissance,
1350–1600 (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 17–18. Anne Stone, ‘Glimpses of an Unwritten Tradition’, Musica Disciplina 50 (1996), pp. 59–93.
Busse Berger • Compositional Practices in Trecento Music
35
Ex. 2.4 MS variants of La bella stella, b. 16
s s s s s s
(VR PN)
x x e e e e e
(FL FS)
e
e
e
s
e
(FP)
argument, she shows convincingly that performers could vary pieces in many ways. Through musical examples and treatises on notation she explains how ‘the performance was the easy part’, while inventing notation for these pieces was considerably more difficult.30 She applies these conclusions, however, only to songs with unusual note shapes; pieces with canons, proportions and unusual mensuration signs she believes were transmitted in writing. Nevertheless, if it is likely that singers participated creatively in the late fourteenth-century French repertory, such participation is even likelier in Trecento music, which many scholars believe was transmitted orally.31 This practice may help us understand why Paolo, Ugolino and (as I explain below) Prosdocimus de Beldemandis do not discuss diminished counterpoint. I believe that these authors covered all the material they thought was necessary to learn how to sing and compose polyphony, but passed over diminished counterpoint because this art could not be taught in a textbook. Had this been possible, these theorists would have explained it. Diminished counterpoint was not the business of theorists but of composers and performers. This was art easily passed on orally, or mastered by imitating or playing with others, or copying manuscripts. This hypothesis helps us understand a puzzling statement in Prosdocimus’s counterpoint treatise. He closes the section containing rules on interval progressions without giving any musical examples, but says instead: There are many other styles of singing different from these to be found; to write them down would be exceedingly difficult and perhaps impossible, 30 Anne Stone, ‘Glimpses’, p. 91. 31 A number of scholars have compared pieces transmitted in various manuscripts.
They generally agree that early Trecento pieces were more ‘improvised’ than later ones. For example, see Brooks Toliver, ‘Improvisation in the Madrigals of the Codex Rossi’, Acta Musicologica 64 (1992), pp. 165–76; Martinez, Die Musik des frühen Trecento; Haar, ‘The Trecento’, p. 15; and Nino Pirrotta, Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), pp. 73–5, 124 and 161–3.
36
Music as Social and Cultural Practice because these different styles of singing are in a certain way infinite – and they are delightful in different and various ways, on account of which a variety of compositional practices arises. Our intellect cannot grasp the infinite, since it is not of infinite but of finite capacity (otherwise it would be equal to the divine intellect, something not to be alleged). Thus, styles of this sort are omitted from this account; nor could they even be written down, because they are infinite.32
Earlier I argued that Prosdocimus excludes interval progressions because he was a university teacher and therefore did not address his treatise to practising musicians.33 Now, however, I find my argument no longer convincing. That he wrote the last important treatise on Italian mensural notation indicates he was concerned with practical music-making. Note-against-note progressions, which I originally thought he referred to, are by no means infinite. A few generations later Tinctoris and Ramis de Pareja list all possible interval progressions; in fact, Ramis criticises Ugolino for leaving some out.34 If we read the passage by Prosdocimus as referring to diminished counterpoint, or contra punctus fractibilis, as he calls it, this passage makes much more sense. He mentions fractibilis in passing three times in his text, but never elucidates it.35 In other words, because there are too many examples of diminished counterpoint – they are ‘infinite’ – he does not try to record them. Evidence that performers made important decisions during performance of polyphonic music is found as late as 1482. In his treatise, which also fails to explain diminished counterpoint, Ramis de Pareja leaves the final judgement as to how the music should be performed to the singers: For indeed in these few rules [concerning note-against-note counterpoint] the entire art of counterpoint or organum can be contained. But other things which could happen to relate to their singing of counterpoint we leave to the judgement of singers, although they should avoid 32 ‘Reperiuntur etiam tamen multi alii diversi modi cantandi ab istis et etiam inter
se, quos scribere foret valde difficile et forte impossibile, eo quod tales diversi modi cantandi quodammodo infiniti sunt, et diversis diversimode delectabiles, qua propter insurgit diversitas componentium, et quia intellectus noster infinita capere non potest, cum non sit infinite capacitatis sed finite, eo quod aliter in hoc intellectui divino adequaretur, quod non est dicendum. Pro tanto huiusmodi a scriptura relinquendi sunt, nec adhuc scribi possent propter sui infinitatem.’ Belde mandis, Contrapunctus (1984), pp. 66–9; the translation is Herlinger’s. The treatise dates from 1412, but the passage above is from the Lucca revision of 1425.
33 Busse Berger, Medieval Music, p. 146. 34 Ibid., pp. 141–5.
35 Beldemandis, Contrapunctus, pp. 30–8, 44–6, 58–9.
Busse Berger • Compositional Practices in Trecento Music
37
doing anything against the rules because, even if they are approved very little, they still do not depart from the truth.36 In sum, I am convinced that Italian music theorists limit their explanations to note-against-note counterpoint because diminutions belong to performance practice. The note-against-note framework would always remain constant from one performance to the next. Since almost all Trecento composers were performers, the composer/artist could freely reinterpret his note-against-note frame any time he performed the pieces. Compositional process in Trecento music is therefore not fundamentally different from that of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century visual artists. Both make a distinction between the skeletal composition and the formulaic motifs used to flesh out this skeleton. The memorisation of interval progressions is, I believe, the musical equivalent of a model book, and as such was something anyone could learn. But mastery of note-against-note counterpoint did not result in great composers, just as copying of models did not make great painters. In both music and the visual arts, embellishing the frame was the central element for the artist, and the demonstration of his or her true mastery.
•
This article was written while I was Lehman Visiting Professor at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence. I would like to thank Joseph Connors, who invited and advised me, as well as Karol Berger, Julian Gardner and Luke Syson, whose readings and arguments helped sharpen my argument.
36 ‘His etenim paucis regulis tota ars contrapuncti vel organi poterit constringi.
Cetera vero, quae circa organizationem accidere possent, in arbitrio canentium relinquimus, dum tamen contra regulas aliquid facere caveant, quoniam, etsi minime probantur, a veritate tamen non discedunt.’ Musica practica Bartolomei Rami de Pareia, ed. Johannes Wolf, Publikationen der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, Beihefte, Heft 2 (Leipzig), p. 71; trans. Clement Miller, Musicological Studies and Documents xliv (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1993), pp. 127–8, with some adjustments.
• 3 • Trompetta and Concordans Parts in the Early Fifteenth Century Margaret Bent
T
rumpet-style vocal writing and the place of trumpets in early Renaissance instrumental music have been well investigated by a number of scholars, notably including Reinhard Strohm. Most discussion has concerned the musical character of parts so labelled. In this essay I will investigate neither the melodic style nor its relation to instrumental techniques, but a particular compositional strategy sometimes associated with trompetta and related terms. Before considering the term and its use, some background is needed. Many early fifteenth-century mass movements alternate duets and three-part sections. In straightforward alternation, one part (usually the tenor) falls silent during the duets. In an earlier article I discussed a small group of pieces with non-straightforward alternation where the scoring is not merely reduced between sections but changed. In these compositions, usually only two or three voices sing at once, but four are notated and required. With contemporary support, I called this style ‘a versi’, and set out its characteristics and those of five associated manuscript layouts. Editors have often assumed those layouts to be erroneous or confused, but without recognising why they appear so, or indeed that they follow a pattern. I showed, rather, that scribes sometimes Reinhard Strohm, The Rise of European Music 1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993), esp.
pp. 350, 357 ff. Fundamental are the contributions of Lorenz Welker, ‘ “Alta capella”. Zur Ensemblepraxis der Blasinstrumente im 15. Jahrhundert’, Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis 7 (1983), pp. 119–65, and ‘Die Musik der Renaissance’, Musikalische Interpretation. Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, vol. 11, ed. Hermann Danuser (Laaber 1992), pp. 139–215. See also Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, ‘Un libro di appunti di un suonatore di tromba del quindicesimo secolo’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 16 (1981), pp. 16–39; Keith Polk, ‘The Trombone, the Slide Trumpet, and the Ensemble Tradition of the Early Renaissance’, Early Music 17 (1989), pp. 389–97; Vivian Ramalingam, ‘The Trumpetum in Strasbourg m 222 c 22’, La musique et le rite – sacré et profane. Actes du xiiie congrès de la SIM, 1982, ed. Marc Honegger and Christian Meyer, 2 vols (Strasbourg, 1986), ii, pp. 143–60; James Raymond Wheat, ‘The Tuba/Trompetta Repertoire of the Fifteenth Century’ (D.M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994). This dissertation came to my attention after this article was completed; it recognises the ‘harmonically non-essential’ character of many of the trompetta parts discussed here.
Bent • Trompetta and Concordans Parts
39
went to very great trouble to create a different distribution on the page from the layout they must have been copying from, with considerable implications for performance practice. I now extend this investigation to pieces with parts labelled trompetta, concordans, or one of a few comparable terms, showing that some (but not all) were later additions to pieces originally composed in a versi style. Beyond inferences about performance invited by striking differences of layout or by melodic style, such added parts attest the updating and recomposition of existing works in a way which at the same time respects, changes and extends the ‘opus’ status of the earlier composition. Table 3.1 gives a provisional list of a versi compositions thus far identified. A very few of these pieces have one or more short sections scored for all four voices. (Of those listed in Table 3.1, only the Romano pair, the Salinis motet and the Sanctus Papale are affected.) Duets for cantus i and cantus ii alternate with three-part sections for cantus i, tenor and contratenor. Cantus i is therefore the only part that sings throughout. Cantus ii is often equal to it in range. Where it is lower, approaching or equalling the contratenor range, it differs in function from the contratenor of the three-part sections, taking on the tenor function in duets. The cantus parts are always texted but almost never labelled, though they may carry unus, duo or versus markings. Aosta and Ox use the terms duo and chorus for all alternations, whether of the a versi kind or not. q15 uses unus and chorus for the same pieces, and occasionally versus, but only for a versi pieces. Unus and duo thus both indicate duet sections, reflecting the preference of different scribes. I see no reason not to assume that unus signals a duet with one singer to a part, and that duo, besides signalling a duet section, probably also implies solo scoring, because these labels are used interchangeably for the same repertory. The five manuscript layouts associated with sectional pieces composed in this manner are: 1. top-part divisi (equal voices on a single stave), distinguished by colour, mostly by Zacara, and mostly copied before 1425; 2. a versi layout (mostly labelled a versi or versus in Ox and q15 in the 1420s and 1430s), with the second cantus (often but not necessarily Margaret Bent, ‘Divisi and a versi in Early Fifteenth-Century Mass Movements’,
Antonio Zacara da Teramo e il suo tempo, ed. Francesco Zimei (Lucca, 2004), pp. 95–137. Table 3.1 below is an extension of a table in that article.
I allude to the illuminating response to Lydia Goehr in Reinhard Strohm, ‘Look-
ing Back at Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical Work-Concept’, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 128–52.
The MS sigla are listed in the Appendix.
40
Music as Social and Cultural Practice Table 3.1 The a versi repertory: a provisional listing
Composer
Composition & modern edition
Ox
q15 no. & folio
Other sources & no. of voices
Binchois
Credo Kaye 19
2v–4 a versi
no. 1211 r132v–134
Ca11 35–382 Tr92 3v–63
G. Legrant
Gloria Reaney ii, no. 5, p. 53
104v–105 no. 50 a versi r56v–57
Ao 63–4, Tr92 74v–75
G. Legrant
Credo Reaney ii, no. 6, p. 56
105v–107 no. 51 versus a versi r57v–59
unicum
Bartolomeo da Bologna
Credo Reaney v, no. 7, p. 58
136v–138 – a versi
unicum
Antonio Romano
Gloria Reaney vi, no. 1, p. 149
no. 27 versus r26v–28
unicum: Amen a 4
Antonio Romano
Credo Reaney vi, no. 2, p. 154
no. 29 r28v–30
unicum: Amen a 4
Loqueville
Gloria Reaney iii, no. 6, p. 5
no. 52 versus r59v–60
Zwettl 77r–v adds trompetta to duos
Zacara
Credo Deus deorum Reaney vi, no. 15, p. 64
no. 59 versus r73v–76
Boverio 14r–v
Salinis
Salve regina Reaney vii, no. 5, p. 56
no. 232 versus r236v–237
unicum: acclamations a 4
G. Legrant
Credo Reaney ii, no. 7, p. 62
–
Ao 99v–102
Du Fay
Kyrie Missa Sancti Jacobi Besseler ii, no. 2, p. 22
no. 112 r121v–123
Ao 20v–21v Ao 50v–52 Tr93 100v–101 Tr90 69v–70 Tr87, 88v–894
Du Fay
Gloria Missa Sancti Jacobi Besseler ii, no. 2, p.24
no. 113 r122v–124
Tr87, 1–2 Aosta 64v–66,
Du Fay
Credo Missa Sancti Jacobi Besseler ii, no. 2, p. 30
no. 115 r125v–1275
Aosta 119v–1226 Tr87 151v–153v7 Tr92 118v–120
Du Fay
Sanctus Papale Besseler iv, no. 7, p. 45
no. 106 a134v– 136v
Tr92 213v–215 Tr93 350v–352v Tr90 277–279v
–
1 Facsimile of fols 132v–133 in ‘Divisi and a versi’, Ex. 5, and of fol. 133v in ‘Binchois’, Fig. 12.4. 2 Second opening reproduced in ‘Divisi and a versi’, Ex. 6. 3 Second opening reproduced ibid., Ex. 7. 4 Reproduced ibid., Ex. 11.
Bent • Trompetta and Concordans Parts
41
Comments, mensuration & layout
Ranges of cantus ii & contratenor
alternation e o q All sources: cantus II and contratenor conflated from original a versi (as in Ox index), in Ca11 and Tr92 with telltale alternation of texting
cantus ii: G–g (the lower voice of duet sections; labelled contratenor in surviving sources) contratenor (in sections a 3): E–a'
chorus q, duos c Ox, q15 a versi Tr, Ao
cantus ii: f–a" contratenor: d–f '
chorus c, duos C a versi
cantus ii: c–d' contratenor: g–a'
C throughout a versi
cantus ii: f–a" contratenor: f–a"
chorus c, duos C a versi
cantus ii: g–b" contratenor: c–e'
chorus c, duos C a versi
cantus ii: g–b" contratenor: c–e'
chorus c, duos C q15 a versi
cantus ii: g–b" contratenor: b–d'
C throughout a versi
cantus ii: c–e' contratenor: G–a'
Salve c, trope C a versi
cantus ii: a–b' contratenor: c–d'
chorus q duos c; belongs with LeGrant Gloria (q15 no. 50; see above) a versi
cantus ii: f–a" contratenor: d–f '
Tr87 a versi, some disorder; successive duets in q15, Ao 20v–21; a versi in Ao 50v–52
cantus ii: g–c" contratenor: d–f '
successive duets in q15, Tr87; a versi in Ao
cantus ii: g–c" contratenor: d–f '
successive duets in q15, Tr92 cantus ii and contratenor conflated Tr87 first opening, thereafter a versi; Ao a versi
cantus ii: g–c" contratenor: d–f '
some divisi in top part; one successively notated duo in q15; contratenor mostly interleaved with cantus ii
cantus ii in opening duet: c'–c" cantus ii in chorus sections (interleaved with contratenor): a'–a"; contratenor: c–f '
5 First opening reproduced ibid., Ex. 8. 6 Second opening reproduced ibid., Ex. 10. 7 Second opening reproduced ibid., Ex. 9.
42
Music as Social and Cultural Practice equal in range to cantus i) notated separately from i and from a contratenor;
3. successive duet layout: renotated or newly composed pieces with equal duetting voices notated successively within the cantus part, c.1430; 4. concealed a versi layout, conflating cantus ii and contratenor into a single part, interleaved as alternating sections, in copies of the 1430s and early 1440s, camouflaged when these parts share range, awkwardly detectable when they do not; 5. ‘bunched’ parts – voice-parts grouped by section with several such groups on an opening: one symptom that an exemplar had used this layout may be redundant or confused part names or signatures in the rearranged copy. Apart from the rare instances of divisi, equal-cantus pieces originally designed for a versi layout were sometimes adapted later to successively notated duets, notably in the q15 copies of Du Fay’s Missa Sancti Jacobi (layout 3). Where cantus ii is lower than cantus i, however, it was sometimes merged with the contratenor, resulting in a three-voice piece, notably Binchois’ Credo Kaye no. 19 (layout 4). Difficulties arise when conflation is attempted between a cantus ii and contratenor of significantly different ranges, as in the Tr92 copy of Guillaume Legrant’s Gloria.10 Adaptation to this layout may also be betrayed by alternating sections with and without text, or with different part names. Whether layouts are interchangeable depends on whether the cantus parts have the same range; as we saw, different layouts occur in different sources of the same piece. The Credo of Du Fay’s Sancti Jacobi mass survives in all three See ‘Divisi and a versi’, Ex. 1, Legrant Gloria in Ox, and Ex. 4, Zacara Credo
Deus deorum in q15, and my ‘The Early Use of the Sign q’, Early Music 24 (1996), pp. 199–225, Ex. 6, the Legrant Gloria in q15, fols r56v–57, transcribed as Ex. 7.
For successive duets, see ‘Divisi and a versi ’, Ex. 8, Credo, Missa Sancti Jacobi.
For the conflation of a low cantus ii with a contratenor in similar range see the
illustrations of the Binchois Credo Kaye no. 19 in ‘Divisi and a versi’; Ex. 5, q15; Ex 6, Ca11; Ex. 7, Tr92. For ‘Kaye’ see The Sacred Music of Gilles Binchois, ed. Philip Kaye (Oxford and New York, 1992).
For an example of this layout see my ‘The Use of Cut Signatures in Sacred Music
by Binchois’, Binchois Studies, ed. Andrew Kirkman and Dennis Slavin (Oxford, 2000), pp. 277–312 (hereafter ‘Binchois’), Fig. 12.3, Ca11, fols 42v–43, for Binchois, Credo Kaye no. 3b. In ‘Divisi and a versi’ I called this layout rare, but had overlooked the series of eight Magnificats by Dunstaple, Du Fay and Binchois in ModB, fols 31–47 (not included in that manuscript’s fifteenth-century index).
Discussed in ‘Binchois’, pp. 295–300.
10 See ‘Divisi and a versi’, Ex. 2, Legrant Gloria, Tr92, and Ex. 3, its matching Credo
in Aosta.
Bent • Trompetta and Concordans Parts
43
formats, attesting active and presumably purposeful intervention by scribes.11 Such changes sometimes bear the scars of adjustment in cleffing, texting and awkward layout on the page. The q15 scribe changed his policy. Before 1425, he presented such pieces exclusively in a versi layout. Nothing was copied into the manuscript for the next five years. From c.1430, when Ox was still using a versi layout, q15 had abandoned it, using only successive duets within cantus i where the duets were for equal voices, as in the Missa Sancti Jacobi, or camouflaged conflations of cantus ii and contratenor, as in the Binchois Credo no. 19, which immediately follows Missa Sancti Jacobi in q15. Other pieces originally composed a versi may no longer survive in that layout, but their origin as such could be diagnosed from other symptoms. The repertory so far identified that uses a versi layout, or retains symptoms of a versi origin, is shown in Table 3.1. The next instalment of this saga deals with subsequent additions of an extra accompanying voice to duet sections of pieces originally composed with alternating duets and trios, some of them indeed a versi. As with a versi pieces, the affected compositions are marked by anomalies of vocal scoring and/or by unusual voice labels. The additions usually retain the feature of alternating different vocal combinations between sections. In a growing number of cases, the original state of the composition is only indirectly attested. The pieces discussed here are listed in Table 3.2 below. To the class of pieces I have defined as a versi, I now add a related category or sub-genre of pieces with a part labelled trompetta,12 or some demonstrably synonymous voice-label or function. These synonyms include concordans, tuba and, occasionally, contratenor, though all these terms also have more generalised usages. In this subgenre, an additional accompanying part has been added to what were originally self-sufficient duet sections, either an introitus, or duets alternating with three-part sections in a versi compositions, so that different combinations of three parts alternate in successive sections, with only cantus i singing throughout. There may be as many as five notated parts, or even more (in one exceptional case eight). The affected pieces often have nonstandard voice names, especially trompetta and concordans, occasionally tuba and sometimes an additional contratenor, a term occasionally used where the less common concordans might have been more accurate.13 Parts labelled concordans and trompetta present some overlap and synonymy in name and 11 ‘Divisi and a versi’ illustrates the Credo of the Missa Sancti Jacobi in Exx. 8 (q15,
successive duets), 9 (Tr87, a versi), 10 (Ao, a versi).
12 There is no entry for trompetta in New Grove ii. 13 Occasionally one finds a pair of accompanying parts, contratenor and secundus
contratenor; and in one case the concordans is labelled ‘subcontratenor’, in Ao and Tr87: see ‘The Early Use’, Ex. 10, Binchois Gloria 3a, discussed ibid. p. 213.
44
Music as Social and Cultural Practice
function. In all cases the part so labelled is an addition to a piece or section that is self-sufficient without it, in at least one case it also exists without it, and in all cases it was probably conceived without it. In most cases, parts labelled trompetta seem to represent a subset of the more general term concordans; they feature fanfare-like triadic movement or leaps, suggesting (and occasionally confined to) note patterns available through the harmonic series on a natural instrument. The name invites at least a mimetic interpretation, if not an instrumental specification. Two primary exhibits support these statements. Both are Glorias by composers active before c.1420, Loqueville and Grossin; both were unica, respectively in q15 and Aosta, until the discovery of concordances.14 The concordances which throw light on both Glorias are in the Zwettl fragments (Zw), which formed part of a huge paper manuscript of mass music in unusually large format (39 × 29 cm). Parts of leaves from the Gloria section survive, foliated 55, 76/81 and 77/80, with fragments of six Glorias for three to five voices, using major prolation and other mensurations. Annotations associate two of the Glorias (including the Grossin) with Credos some hundred folios distant, thus implying a manuscript of at least 200 folios. Peter Wright has shown Zw to be in the hand of Johannes Lupi, the copyist of the related parts of Tr 87 and Tr 92 he identified as TR. He suggests that it might come from the Strasbourg/ Basel region, and dates the copying of Zw and TR c.1433–40.15 Strohm suggests that Zw was copied either for Duke Frederick iv, Count of Tyrol, or for the conciliar chapel at Basel.16 It adds a part labelled trompetta17 to the duets of 14 Ed. Gilbert Reaney, Early Fifteenth Century Music iii, Corpus mensurabilis
musicae iii (n.p., American Institute of Musicology, 1966), nos. 6 and 16. Strohm, The Rise of European Music, refers to no. 16 (p. 177) as an ‘isolated Gloria’ with a ‘ “trompetta” contratenor like the Mass’, but this is the Gloria of the trompetta cycle, and the only affected Gloria by Grossin.
15 For Zw see Kurt von Fischer, ‘Neue Quellen zur Musik des 13., 14. und 15. Jahr
hunderts’, Acta Musicologica 36 (1964), pp. 79–97 at 94 ff; Reinhard Strohm, ‘Native and Foreign Polyphony in Late Medieval Austria’, Musica Disciplina 38 (1984), pp. 205–30, at p. 220, and The Rise of European Music, pp. 253–7. For the association with TR and the identification with Lupi see Peter Wright, ‘The Compilation of Trent 87 1 and 922’, Early Music History 2 (1982), pp. 237–71, esp. pp. 265– 71, where on p. 265 he expresses the view that the major part of TR was complete by c.1440. In a personal communication of 4 February 2006 he estimated that Zw was also copied in the late 1430s and completed by 1440. See also Peter Wright, ‘On the Origins of Trent 87 1 and 922’, Early Music History 6 (1986), pp. 245–70, at p. 258.
16 The Rise of European Music, p. 253. 17 Not ‘contratenor trompette’ as in The Rise of European Music, p. 152; the function
is distinct from a contratenor, and different from Fontaine’s contratenor trompette. The confusion evidently arose from a layout problem in Ramalingam’s table in
Bent • Trompetta and Concordans Parts
45
the Loqueville Gloria as known from q15; this Gloria thus exists both without the added part (in q15) and with it (in Zw). Zwettl also adds a ‘long’ Amen to replace the two-chord Amen of q15. The voice-part of the Grossin Gloria that in Aosta is labelled trompetta is labelled concordans in Zwettl, as noted above. Trompetta and concordans are used in Zw respectively for these two Glorias, without apparent distinction. In each case, the added part is labelled trompetta in one source; the earlier existence of the Loqueville without its trompetta part is attested by q15; a similar origin for the Grossin trompetta mass is confirmed by the autonomy of its duos without taking account of the trompetta additions. In both these Glorias, Zw labels ‘duo’ the parts that were originally duos, even though their duo status is undermined by the addition of the trompetta and concordans parts. Aosta also retains the original telltale duo label from the Grossin mass for sections now scored a 3. The original physiognomy of certain pieces may be concealed by the addition of a new part, most often a contratenor, as in some Machaut balades and Ciconia motets. A contratenor part usually presupposes a tenor, which is not the case with the present additions to self-contained duets. A part called concordans or trompetta is a special instance of such addition. What has not been emphasised so far is that the part so called is always detectably an addition to a self-contained duo, often but not always for equal voices, in which the discant–tenor function is handled within the duo. Neither part of the duet is labelled tenor, nor does either have the same range or function as the labelled tenor of the three-part sections. The alternation of duos and trios in the original versions of such compositions (whether or not the piece survives in that form) may have been either straightforward or a versi.18 In both the Loqueville and Grossin Glorias the original composition alternated different combinations in the duos and threepart sections, meeting the criteria for a versi compositions. The Loqueville Gloria has one versus label in q15, a four-part a versi layout, and is adjacent to the paradigmatic a versi Gloria and Credo by Guillaume Legrant (Lemacherier), which, although paired in Ox and q15, are not a compositional pair.19 In their adapted forms, both the Loqueville and the Grossin works are in three parts throughout, but with different three-part combinations between sections. Table 3.2 lists pieces with parts somewhere labelled trompetta, tuba or a ‘The Trumpetum’, p. 155, where the Fontaine label appears to apply to the Franchois piece.
18 As in Binchois 3a, 3b, with concordans part. 19 ‘Divisi and a versi’, pp. 98–9, where I propose pairing the Gloria with the Credo
listed as an Aosta unicum in Table I.
46
Music as Social and Cultural Practice Table 3.2 Pieces marked trompetta or tuba, or using related techniques
No. Composer
Work
Remarks
Equal-cantus duos? yes
1 *Loqueville Gloria (Reaney iii, no. 6)
q15 a versi layout, versus marking: Zw adds trompetta part to duos
2 *Grossin
Gloria in Ao has trompetta part, called yes concordans in Zw, added to what was an a versi setting alternating equal-voice duos and trios with contratenor. The ‘duos’ retain this label despite the added third part.
Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (Reaney iii, nos. 15–18)
3 *Gemblaco Ave virgo/ (Franchois) Sancta Maria (DTÖ lxxvi, no. 19)
q15 unicum: adds trumpetta part to selfcontained introitus canonic duo. Eight separately notated notated parts plus the canon.
equal cantus parts throughout
4 *Du Fay
Apostolo glorioso q15 unicum: canonic opening for introitus, yes (Besseler, Dufay giving way to a lower-voice canon with i, no. 10) solus tenor conflation, continued as a normal solus tenor in the body of the motet.
5 *Du Fay
Rite maiorem The solus tenor is a trompetta-like part, (Besseler, Dufay not so called, added to the introitus and i, no. 11) opening duos of each section, continued as a normal solus tenor. This may also apply to other Du Fay motets.
6 *Lantins
Gloria (only) of Mass O pulcherrima mulierum (also known as Verbum incarnatum)1
Gloria in Ox and q15 has tuba sub fuga added to self-contained introitus duet, thus requiring two cantus parts: a versi requirement for four or five parts in a piece where no more than three sing together. BU has a different, non-canonic version of the introitus.
7 *Binchois
Gloria, Credo (Kaye 3a, 3b)2
This Gloria/Credo pair does not survive no in its original a versi format. Cantus ii and contratenor were conflated, leaving the fourth voice in four-voice sections nothing else to do. A concordans/ subcontra part was then added to the duos.
8 *Jean Cousin
Missa tube (DTÖ cxx)
In Tr90 (complete), Tr93 (Kyrie and no Gloria). Some evidence of unstable transmission, additions to duos and other rearrangement as well as fanfare-like motifs.
9 Fontaine
J’ aime bien Ox, a 2; q15, discant, tenor and (Besseler, Dufay contratenor; EscA, discant, tenor and vi, no. 86) contratenor trompette
10 Heinrich of Tuba Heinrici Freiburg de libero castro: Virgo dulcis
Strasbourg
11 Anon.
Tuba gallicalis
12 Du Fay
Gloria ad q15 unicum modum tube (Besseler, Dufay iv, no. 22)
Strasbourg
yes
yes, for introitus only
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similar word, or concordans, and pieces where an equivalent added part may be diagnosed as such. Some of these further disguise an original a versi layout.20 1. Loqueville, Gloria. In q15 (fols r59v–60) this Gloria is in a versi layout with versus label,21 with four notated parts, alternating equal-voice two-cantus duets with three-part sections for cantus, contratenor and tenor in alternating mensurations; see Figure 3.1. The unequal ranges discourage cantus ii–contratenor conflation. The four notated parts of the a versi version in q15 are increased to five by the addition in Zw of a trompetta part to the equal-cantus duos for cantus i and ii. Only cantus i is common to the alternation of two different groups of three, namely cantus i, cantus ii, trompetta, and cantus i, contratenor, tenor. No more than three voices sing at any one time. On the recto of this large leaf (fol. 77) are all five parts, up to magnam gloriam tuam (cantus i, tenor, contratenor, cantus ii, trompetta: see Figure 3.2 left). The trompetta part survives only for the first two duets, Et in terra and Gratias, and even then is severely incomplete because of damage to the manuscript. This leapy and arpeggiated part fits with the existing duet, if not very neatly. The verso (fol. 77v, Figure 3.2 right) gives cantus i and tenor from Domine Deus to the end, with the long Amen mentioned above. The missing facing recto must have contained cantus ii, contratenor and trompetta parts for the remainder of the Gloria. Loqueville died in 1418, shortly before this Gloria was copied into q15 in its original form, in the early 1420s. It seems very likely that the addition was made after Loqueville’s death; as we shall see, other evidence points to the late 1420s or c.1430 as the likely time when such additions became fashionable. 20 I do not here consider the fourteenth-century Credo Bonbarde, nor some works
which use the term concordans to indicate which parts belong together, as in Du Fay’s motet Inclita stella maris. Nor do I take account of a truncated mass by Gaffurius in Milan, Archivio della Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, Sezione Musicale, Librone 2 (olim 2268) listed in the fragmentary index as ‘Missa Trombetta gaffori’, which, like the Cousin Mass and Du Fay's Gloria, has lowervoice trumpet calls.
21 Reaney dismisses the versus markings as errors for or insignificant variants of unus.
Notes to Table 3.2 Five of the items in this table are listed in Ramalingam, ‘The trumpetum’, table 1, as ‘Sources of actual trumpet parts in music up to ca. 1450’. * indicates items using, partially or throughout, the technique of adding a trompetta part to a pre-existing or self-contained duet. 1 Jean Widaman, ‘The Mass Ordinary Settings of Arnold de Lantins: a Case Study in the Transmission of Early Fifteenth-Century Music’ (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1988), vol. ii. 2 The Sacred Music of Gilles Binchois, ed. Philip Kaye (Oxford, 1992).
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Fig. 3.1 Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, q15, fols r59v–60: Loqueville, Gloria. Reproduced by permission
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Fig. 3.2 Zwettl, Zisterzienserstift, MS without shelfmark, fols 77, 77v: Loqueville, Gloria. Reproduced by permission
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2. Grossin’s mass cycle (hitherto known as Missa trompetta) is preserved in Ao (fols 68v–70; see Figure 3.3) with a trompetta part which in Zw (fol. 54r–v, Figure 3.4, with the annotation ‘Patrem huius 167’, i.e. the matching Credo is to be found on fol. 167) is labelled concordans, i.e. the words concordans and trompetta refer to the same part (though, as suggested above, trompetta may be a stylistically specific subset of the general category concordans). As preserved in Aosta, the trompetta part is a contrapuntally inessential addition to the duets of what must originally have been, again, an a versi setting like the Loqueville Gloria, alternating equal-voice cantus duos with trios for cantus, contratenor and tenor. We can now recognise the Loqueville and Grossin works as compositional twins, giving further weight to Strohm’s observation that some works by the two composers are stylistically close.22 All four movements of the otherwise unique Missa trompetta were apparently originally composed as a versi pieces with four notated parts alternating duets and threepart sections, cantus i singing throughout, cantus ii only in duets, tenor and contratenor only in three-part sections, and no trompetta. Apart from the partial concordance in Zw, the mass is transmitted only in Aosta, and then incompletely. The Kyrie (Ao, fols 53v–55) is normal until the final statement. Fol. 53v carries cantus i sections marked duo (C) and chorus (o), followed by tenor in o for the alternating sections, though not specified as chorus. Fol. 54r has cantus ii (in C) for the duo sections, followed by interleaved sections alternately labelled trompetta in C with the duos, and contratenor in o with the original three-part sections. On the next opening, the last Kyrie (marked ‘ultimum’) has an anomalous change of scoring within that final invocation. Fol. 54v presents cantus i as a duo in C followed by chorus in o; on the recto fol. 55, cantus ii of the duo is followed without any mark of division by a final section marked ‘chorus’ – but it is higher in range than and different in style from the contratenor of the rest of the movement. This is followed by a trompetta part for the Kyrie, to accompany the duo, then eight breves rest (sufficient to last to the end of the piece), then, still without a barline break, the tenor part for the closing eight breves preceding the final long. Such a change of parts and functions within an undivided section occurs nowhere else in the mass.
22 The Rise of European Music, p. 177. Strohm is one of the few to have drawn atten-
tion to this construction: ‘Etienne Grossin wrote a cyclic “trompetta” Mass, where duos with a trombone-like lower voice alternate with sections in chanson format, labelled “chorus”.’ While he recognises the underlying duos of the trompetta sections, I here question the association of the trompetta additions with the original composer, and attach these compositions to the a versi genre as defined here and in ‘Divisi and a versi’.
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The Gloria occupies Ao fols 68v–70. On both openings the verso gives cantus i with alternate sections marked ‘duo’ in C and ‘chorus’ in o, followed by the tenor in o for the chorus sections; on the rectos, cantus ii is in C for duo sections, repeating the mensuration sign and ‘duo’ for each section; this is followed by interleaved sections alternately labelled trompetta in C (to accompany the duets) and contratenor in o (for the chorus sections). The Credo is similarly laid out on fols 111v–114. The Sanctus is incompletely transmitted on fols 148v–149.23 Cantus i has the three duo sections only (marked A C E by Reaney), followed by the tenor for the chorus sections, B and D. The recto gives cantus ii for the three duo sections, with the C mensuration sign repeated, followed by the trompetta part (with red script) for those three sections. The chorus sections thus lack cantus i and contratenor. There is no Agnus Dei. Cantus ii is equal in range with cantus i and higher than the contratenor throughout (except for the anomalous ending of the Kyrie), and so did not lend itself easily to the merging of cantus ii and contratenor parts that was sometimes applied to a versi compositions, thereby reducing four notated parts to three. But the Aosta copy of the Grossin mass applies another conflation, this time of the contratenor parts of the original three-part sections with the similar-range trompetta parts that have been added to the duos, thus still permitting performance by four singers. Discounting the added trompetta parts, Zw preserves what must have been the original unconflated form of the a versi Gloria, with four notated parts in addition to the added fifth trompetta voice. The first recto in Zw (fol. 54r) contains cantus ii, concordans (the same as the differently named Ao trompetta part) and contratenor. Contratenor and trompetta are here separate, not interleaved. Cantus ii is likewise labelled duo for sections that are now trios, a clear indication of their original duet status. Cantus i, tenor and contratenor of the next section faced it on the missing fol. 53v, and are continued on the surviving fol. 54v; fol. 55r is missing. The trompetta parts of this mass, from which it has been named, were not part of the original conception and probably do not originate with Grossin; the name should therefore be dropped.
23 Strohm says that the Pleni and Osanna are monophonic (The Rise of European
Music, p. 177); I suspect that the omission of the parts resulted from confusion about the layout of the rearrangement, and indeed attests the likelihood of such rearrangement.
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Fig. 3.3 Aosta, Seminario Maggiore, MS 15, fols 68v–69: Grossin, Gloria. Reproduced by permission
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Fig. 3.4 Zwettl, Zisterzienserstift, MS without shelfmark, fols 54, 54v: Grossin, Gloria. Reproduced by permission
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3. Gemblaco (Jean Franchois de Gembloux), Ave virgo lux Maria/Sancta Maria (q15 no. 236, fols r240v–241, unicum; see Figure 3.5).24 This is a stageii copy datable from c.1430; q15 adds a ‘trumpetta’ part to the self-contained equal-voice textless canonic duo ‘introitus’ (so labelled in cantus i). The trumpetta disappears after the introitus. The canonic voice is notated just once on the left-hand page, followed by a barline preceding the texted portion Ave virgo, when either cantus ii must switch from reading the canonic comes on the left to its own separately notated part on the right-hand page, or, alternatively, two singers must divide within cantus i, with cantus ii remaining silent for the introitus, although it has no rests.25 Franchois’ strict two-part canonic introitus is contrapuntally autonomous, but it is accompanied by a grammatically inessential trumpetta part, notated separately below cantus ii. Cantus i and ii are equal-range parts and sing throughout. This motet differs from the Loqueville and Grossin mass movements in that it was not an a versi piece; cantus ii and contratenor are not in alternation. This motet is exceptional in many ways, with no fewer than eight notated parts (nine if the introitus canon is counted as two). A five-part version of the body of the motet supports the cantus parts with tenor, contratenor and alius tenor; a four-part version has a solus tenor and Contratenor cum solo tenore replacing the tenor, contratenor and alius tenor.26 The economics of performance would surely invite conflation of the eight notated parts to a complement of just four or five singers. The tenor and contratenor are both labelled Sancta Maria, but the twenty-three notes of the Magnificat antiphon of that name appear only in the contratenor. The tenor also appears to be chant but has not been identified.27 24 Ed. in James T. Igoe, ‘Johannes Franchois de Gembloux’, Nuova rivista musicale
italiana 4 (1970), pp. 3–50, at p. 32 ff, and Sieben Trienter Codices: Geistliche und weltliche Compositionen des xiv. und xv. Jahrhunderts. Sechste Auswahl, ed. Rudolf von Ficker, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, lxxvi, Jg. xl/19 (Vienna, 1933). Strohm notes that Franchois ‘prefixes a “trumpetta introitus” without text, consisting of two canonic upper parts and a lower voice with the range A–f '. This voice uses all the diatonic pitches of the scale, and produces many “v–i” cadences …’ (The Rise of European Music, p. 243).
25 The same question, of who sings cantus ii, arises for the unaccompanied canonic
introitus of Du Fay’s Vasilissa ergo gaude. Here, however, cantus ii starts with rests for the duration of the canonic introitus notated in cantus i, whereas the Franchois piece has no rests.
26 For an updating of earlier work on the Solus tenor, see my Counterpoint, Composi-
tion, and Musica Ficta (London and New York, 2002), pp. 38–46.
27 When o and C mensurations (signed or not) are used simultaneously in this
repertory, a minim of major prolation is usually equivalent to a semibreve of tempus perfectum, implying at least mutual adjustment if not the diminution or augmentation of one or the other part, and often symptomising a notational revision.
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Ave virgo was copied in the second layer of q15, c.1430. It may be one of the earliest uses of trompetta as a part designation. Loqueville died in 1418, as observed above; Grossin is said to have flourished c.1418–21, and is not documented beyond that date. Suggestions that he may have been active into the third decade may arise from the presumed later style of the Missa trompetta. Although this mass survives only in a changed version copied in the 1430s (in Zw and Aosta), its original form, as stated above, was a twin of Loqueville’s Gloria and was surely composed about the same time, in the late 1410s, without trompetta, removing any reason to presume Grossin survived much beyond this date. Someone else must have added the trompetta parts, probably in the late 1420s or c.1430, assuming that this became a fashion to which Ave virgo was adapted at the same time.28 4. Two other pieces, both again q15 unica, both by Du Fay, have some points in common with these procedures. Ave virgo immediately precedes Du Fay’s Apostolo glorioso (q15 no. 237), which likewise has an untexted canonic introitus outside the main structure. The introitus has two pairs of canonic entries, each entry occurring after three breves. The opening upper-voice unison canon is abandoned after six breves when a different lower canon enters, for two contratenors, giving the effect of a pseudo double canon for the last six bars of the introitus. The upper-voice duo is self-contained and can stand alone without the lower parts, despite an unusual cadence that is not normalised by the lower parts. There is also a ‘solus tenor’ which conflates the two canonic contratenor parts as a basso seguente in the introitus and then goes on as normal to conflate the tenor and the two contratenors in the body of the motet. Such a solus tenor function for a lower-voice canon has a precedent in a Gloria in double canon by Pycard in the Old Hall manuscript.29 An unusual feature of this introitus canon is that it uses o mensuration against the C of the trumpetta (both signed), but with minim equivalence between them. This, together with the note values, suggests that in this case the o mensuration is unrevised, i.e. original. The q15 scribe therefore comes under suspicion of having retranscribed this canon from the prevailing C into o, the normal direction of notational revision.
28 This accords with Strohm’s judgement that the trompetta parts probably date from
before or around 1430 (The Rise of European Music, pp. 177, 253). However, on p. 152 (referred to from the discussion of ‘a versi technique and trompetta contra tenors’ on p. 253) he links alternatim movements only with the papal chapel at Constance, not necessarily those to which I have applied the more confined definition of a versi.
29 See my ‘Pycard’s Double Canon: Evidence of Revision?’, Sundry Sorts of Music
Books: Essays on the British Library Collections. Presented to O. W. Neighbour on his 70th Birthday, ed. Chris Banks, Arthur Searle and Malcolm Turner (London, 1993), pp. 10–26, repr. in Bent, Counterpoint, Composition, and Musica Ficta.
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Fig. 3.5 Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, q15, fols r240v–241: Franchois, Ave virgo/Sancta Maria. Reproduced by permission
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5. Du Fay’s Rite maiorem, however, likewise unique to q15, has a short noncanonic duet introitus of six bars, accompanied by a solus tenor that is not derived from the (unlabelled) introitus that it accompanies. This is in effect like a trompetta part, and I have thus listed it, although it is not so labelled. The tenor and contratenor enter after the introitus, in bar 7, and from then on the solus tenor switches role to provide the expected basso seguente conflation of tenor and contratenor, as in Apostolo. But the solus tenor has quite a different role when it accompanies the self-contained two-part non-imitative introitus, and the subsequent interludes introducing each talea, where it adds a rhythmically animated accompaniment with a couple of trompetta-like octave leaps, similar to the fourths and fifths of the lower-voice canon in Apostolo. The introitus and subsequent interludes are contained within the main structure. Ave virgo and the two affected Du Fay motets are – suspiciously perhaps – unique to q15. Added voices and unusual voice combinations might indicate possible interference by the q15 scribe. Du Fay’s Ecclesie militantis, for example, is found only in Trent; but had the q15 compiler got his hands on it, he might have provided a similar accompaniment to its long opening duo. Of Du Fay’s motets, only Supremum est mortalibus (q15 no. 168) requires four distinct voices for a largely three-voice piece, where the (unlabelled) introitus duet is expanded to three parts by fauxbourdon. The fauxbourdon part applies only when the tenor is silent, though there is an awkward overlap at bar 71 where the tenor enters on d as the other parts are completing a fauxbourdon cadence on the notes a e' a'. 6. The Gloria of Lantins’ mass O pulcherrima, incorrectly known by the incipit of its Kyrie trope Verbum incarnatum until the model motet was pointed out by Strohm,30 survives with two different beginnings. One (in Ox and q15) is a self-contained introitus fuga for two equal cantus parts, the second (unnotated) voice of which is subsequently not used. To this is added not a trompetta but a tuba sub fuga; but in character and function it behaves exactly like the trompetta parts already discussed. BU has a different opening for all three voices, with no fuga, and no requirement for a second cantus voice; it is a 3 throughout.31 This was probably the original version, and it accords with the other movements of the mass in all sources, raising the possibility that some textless introitus, like Amens, may have been added on afterwards. Fuga a 2 30 The Rise of European Music, p. 177. Strohm points out the resemblance of this tuba
sub fuga to the trompetta voices in mass sections by Loqueville and Du Fay. This fuga is not really ‘underpinned by a contratenor’; the added part is neither strictly a contratenor, nor is it needed to support the self-contained fuga.
31 The recent Capilla Flamenca recording I Fiamminghi, dir. Dirk Snellings (2002,
RIC 207), presents the BU version.
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within a top-voice introitus, as in Du Fay’s Vasilissa ergo gaude, Franchois’ Ave virgo/ Sancta Maria, and this version of the Lantins Gloria, might be seen as special cases of top-part divisi. In the Lantins, the second cantus is not further used, implying divisi within cantus i and at least two singers on that part, requiring at least four singers for the three notated parts. In the Du Fay and Franchois motets the second cantus singer for the canonic introitus either continues in unison with cantus i, or must switch to the facing page for the continuation of his part. Lantins’ tuba has precisely the same function as the trumpetta in Ave virgo. Movements with successive equal-voice duets notated within cantus i, such as the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo of Du Fay’s Missa Sancti Jacobi in q15, obviously require at least two singers on the top part. 7. I turn now to an interesting case whose camouflage has remained undetected until now, the Binchois Gloria/Credo pair published by Kaye as nos. 3a and 3b. I have discussed this pair elsewhere,32 but before I had appreciated the distinguishing features of a versi and trompetta compositions. Armed with evidence of recomposition and rescoring that we can draw from the Loqueville and Grossin cases, I now think that these two movements, which are anomalous in style and transmission, were originally composed a versi with alternating duets and three-part sections, symptomised by the alternation of three-part sections for different combinations with parts inconsistently labelled in various sources as contratenor and concordans. The movements are paired in all three sources in which they both appear, Ao2, Tr87 and Tr92. Kaye’s labelling of the parts is incorrect and misleading: the part he calls ‘contratenor i’ (stave 2) is called concordans in Tr92 and ‘Subcontra’ in Tr87. The part Kaye labels ‘concord’ (stave 3) rarely has any label in the manuscripts, but when it does (Tr87 only) it is as ‘contra’. Ca11 presents the Credo 3b in ‘bunched’ or grouped parts (layout 5), with only the tenor labelled.33 There are also a few four-part fermata passages. Either these were added when the duets were thickened to three-part sections or, more likely, as with a few other a versi pieces (the Salinis Salve regina), this pair was probably always a four-part piece, with short four-part sections. Apart from these, the remainder of each movement was originally composed for alternating duets and three-part sections. Cantus ii is not only in contratenor range, lower than cantus i, but indeed lower than the contratenor, touching G and F also in the four-part sections. When as here there is only a small range distinction between cantus ii and contratenor, the conflation of those two parts is easily camouflaged and must be diagnosed from voice functions rather than from range. 32 ‘Binchois’, p. 287, with tabulations on pp. 288–91. 33 ‘Binchois’, Ex. 12.3.
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The original three-part sections consisted of staves 1, 3 and 4 of Kaye’s transcription, cantus, contratenor (the part mislabelled ‘concord’ in his edition of Gloria 3a) and tenor, for Hominibus, Qui tollis, Cum sancto in the Gloria, Factorem, Genitum, Et resurrexit, Et unam in the Credo. The music of what were the original intervening duets is on staves 1 and 3: stave 3 thus conflates the original cantus ii and contratenor (layout 4). That conflation already takes us one remove from the original. A second change was then implemented: a concordans part (stave 2 of the edition, mislabelled ‘contratenor’ by Kaye) was added to pad out the duets; it also provides something for the fourth voice to do besides singing in the four-part sections, now that the cantus ii duet function has been subsumed into the contratenor.34 (It lacks the stylistic features that would identify it as a trompetta part and is nowhere so labelled.) These changes are corroborated by the copyists’ confusion: in Tr87 and Ao2 the true contratenor of the original three-part sections (already conflated with the original cantus ii, stave 3 of Kaye’s edition) is duplicated (written out or indicated by ut supra or ut infra) within the added voice (stave 2 of Kaye). The two scribes responsible for copying this movement into Tr87 seem not to have been copying literally but to have been rearranging as they went along, the second scribe apparently compensating for the problems experienced by the first. The double conflation has led to this telltale duplication,35 and is also evidenced by text deletions and by massive problems of spacing. Peter Wright has shown evidence of direct or directional copying from Aosta to TR for some pieces in this gathering,36 but this case poses the unique and intriguing possibility that Ao2 could have been copied from Tr87; it correctly reverses the material transcribed on staves 2 and 3 from Et vitam to the end, leaving the lower voice (cantus ii) of the original Amen duet within the conflated contratenor/cantus ii part (stave 3). 34 For a similar alternation of scoring in Busnoys Magnificats, distinguished by cut
circle signatures, see my ‘The Use of Cut Signatures in Sacred Music by Ockeghem and his Contemporaries’ (hereafter ‘Ockeghem’), in Johannes Ockeghem: Actes du xle Colloque international d’études humanistes, ed. Philippe Vendrix (Tours, 1998), pp. 641–80.
35 Part of the Gloria in Tr87 is reproduced in ‘The Early Use’, Ex. 10. 36 Peter Wright authoritatively analyses the shared repertory in ‘The Aosta–Trent
Relationship Reconsidered’, I codici musicali trentini a cento anni dalla loro riscoperta, ed. Nino Pirrotta and Danilo Curti (Trento, 1986), pp. 140–2, dividing the shared repertory into four groups. In the largest (over half), the Ao and TR copies were produced independently of each other. In twenty other cases (comprising the other three groups) there are varying degrees of support (from identical readings to strong evidence) for direct or directional copying from Ao to TR but not vice versa: ‘although there is occasional evidence that might be interpreted as implying a line of transmission from Ao to TR, there is not one shred of evidence that could be construed as implying transmission in the opposite direction’.
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8. The Missa tube by Cousin (Jean Escatefer dit Cousin) has fanfare-like arpeggiated trumpet-like motifs in all parts, especially tenor and contratenor, often in close imitation but not fuga. There is no cantus firmus in this mass, which is in three parts with some four-part sections.37 The Mass appears complete in Tr90, but with the Kyrie detached from the other movements. The Kyrie and Gloria appear in Tr93, but separated, both in the hand of the same scribe as in Tr90 (Wiser).38 The Kyrie is identical in both sources. In Tr93 only, the Qui tollis, the entire second half of the Gloria, has a secundus contratenor marked ad placitum, making a four-part section. For the sections Sanctus, Osanna and the first Agnus, a secundus contratenor appears in their unique source Tr90, similarly making four-part sections; in the Sanctus this can be omitted, but in the Osanna and Agnus it provides essential harmonic support, suggesting inconsistent strategies of rearrangement throughout the mass. As transmitted, the Mass – anomalously – has just one duo, so labelled (the lower part is tellingly labelled ‘duo’, not contratenor), for Et incarnatus. The Pleni, Benedictus and Agnus ii also appear originally to have been duets. They (suspiciously) lack a tenor but have two contratenors, the first of which is a low cantus ii duet part that must at some stage have been conflated with the contratenor, and the second of which is patently a later addition. This recognition relieves the isolation of the Et incarnatus duet, and shows this mass to have some evidence of alternation, possibly underlying disguised a versi composition, and of the later addition of a contratenor part to duos in the manner of the special kind of trompetta composition identified here.39 It is therefore all the more intriguing that the mass may have a double claim to tuba or trompetta status. Any duo marking for a section which is no longer a duet comes under suspicion. I have not listed Du Fay’s Ave Regina mass above, but the following observations hint at such rearrangement. That Du Fay did rework this mass 37 Ed. in Rudolf Flotzinger, Trienter Codices, Siebenter Auswahl, Denkmäler der
Tonkunst in Österreich, cxx (Graz, 1970); the presence of the Kyrie in Tr93 is not noted. The Kyrie is in Tr 90, fols 92v–93, and Tr93, fols 123v–124; the Gloria in Tr93, fols 199v–201, and the Gloria through Agnus in Tr90, fols 436v–444. See The Rise of European Music, p. 415.
38 For the priority of Tr93 in the large part of its repertory copied into Tr90, see my
‘Trent 93 and Trent 90: Johannes Wiser at Work’, I codici musicali trentini, ed. Pirrotta and Curti, pp. 84–111, which includes a tabulation of the shared repertory. The Cousin mass does not appear complete in Tr93 and must have been received independently by Tr90, where it appears in parts of the manuscript not shared with Tr93. On p. 86 of this article I noted that the Cousin Gloria was copied by Wiser into Tr93 across the join of two gatherings.
39 There is obviously more to explore here. The Christe could also have been a duet,
and possibly other sections too.
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has been established from other indications both by Alejandro Planchart and Rob Wegman.40 In Brussels 5557 and ModE m.1.13, there are some ‘duo’ markings not present in StPb80, nor, as far as I can tell, in Poznań.41 In the Gloria and Sanctus these designations indeed refer to duet sections. In the Gloria, Brussels labels the top part of the Gratias ‘duo’; its lower voice (neither labelled nor texted) is notated within the tenor. In ModE the Gratias has no duo label, but text is underlaid in both cantus i and tenor; the other parts have rests. In Brussels and ModE Domine deus agnus dei is a self-contained duo, so labelled in both parts, following cantus i and contra respectively. In ModE both start a new line. In the Sanctus, both Brussels and ModE have the Benedictus duo for cantus i with the lower voice (labelled duo) notated within the contratenor, while the other parts are marked tacet. For Kyrie ii, however, the contrapuntally self-contained ‘duo’, so labelled only in Brussels, is no longer a duo. In all sources of the mass this is a fourpart section. Both extra parts in Brussels are labelled concordans. StPb and ModE silently absorb them into the contra and bassus parts. For the fuga of Christe ii, Brussels provides concordans parts (cum and sine fuga) within the bassus; the recurrence of concordans designations seems to indicate that these temporarily supersede the bassus status. ModE here shows some evidence of an earlier stage, possibly even a surprising vestige of a versi layout: ‘Christe concordans’ is notated below the top part, preceding the tenor! On the facing recto, ‘Christe sine fuga’ is notated within the bassus part. No parts are marked concordans in this mass other than in the Kyrie. Sensitised to ‘duo’ markings retained after one or more further parts have been added to what was originally a self-contained duo, as in the Grossin mass, we might suspect that Kyrie ii was indeed once a duo that has been padded out with additional accompanying parts, not unlike the two contratenors which accompany the canonic introitus to Apostolo glorioso. Kyrie viii in Brussels is another duo (so labelled) with a concordans si placet, confirming its optional status in relation to the essential and self-contained duo. All other sources suppress such telltale labels. Alejandro Planchart (personal communication) comments that to strip out these added parts in Kyrie ii and Christe ii leaves uncharacteristic 40 Alejandro E. Planchart, ‘Notes on Guillaume Du Fay’s Last Works’, Journal of
Musicology 13 (1995), pp. 55–72. For every aspect of the transmission of this mass except the layout aspects raised here, see the excellent study by Rob C. Wegman, ‘Miserere supplicanti Dufay: The Creation and Transmission of Guillaume Dufay’s Missa Ave regina celorum’, ibid., pp. 18–54.
41 For the Poznań fragments see Mirosław Perz, ‘The Lvov Fragments: A Source
for Works by Dufay, Josquin, Petrus de Domarto, and Petrus de Grudenz in 15th entury Poland’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muzikgeschiedenis C 36 (1986), pp. 26–51.
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gaps which Du Fay covered with the concordans parts. If there was an a versi element in the original composition, it is no longer detectable by range or texting. The pieces discussed above, nos. 1–7, and possibly some parts of no. 8, were originally conceived and notated a versi. By contrast, the remainder now to be discussed, nos. 9–13, are not additions to a versi compositions. They use the designations trompetta or tuba in other, more expected, ways to indicate general character. Most are what might be called mimetic or character pieces or parts, in some cases perhaps designed for instrumental performance, in others for vocal imitation of trompetta style. Many are characterised by leaps of fourths and fifths and by repeated notes, what Tinctoris calls redicte, which are to be avoided in composition except to imitate trumpets or bells.42 9. The contratenor trompette of Fontaine’s J’ aime bien could well have been added to the two-voice version of this piece, though the name clearly derives from the character of the line and has nothing to do with the complex and sectional scorings of the other pieces under discussion. The song exists in Ox and MuEm for only two voices, and in q15 and Trent 87 with different contra tenors.43 10. Tuba Heinrici de Libero Castro:44 Virgo dulcis atque pia immediately precedes Tuba gallicalis in Strasbourg (pp. 48–9, fol. 80v). All three parts are fanfare-like, with trumpet imitation.45 This piece is in three sections (cf. Paulus Paulirinus’ criterion for trompetta to be in two or three sections, cited below; it is not, however, a 4) variously labelled secunda pars tenoris tube, secunda pars contratenoris de tuba, tertia pars tenoris de tuba. 42 Liber de arte contrapuncti, iii. 6. Johannes Tinctoris, Opera Theorica, ed. Albert
Seay, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica xxii (Rome, 1975–8), ii, p. 152.
43 See Bent, ‘The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis’, Tonal Struc-
tures in Early Music, ed. Cristle Collins Judd (New York, 1998), pp. 15–59, at pp. 31–2.
44 Thought by Coussemaker to be Fribourg; this is questioned by Ramalingam, ‘The
Trumpetum’. Lorenz Welker, ‘Heinrich Laufenberg in Zofingen. Musik in der spätmittelalterlichen Schweiz’, Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, Neue Folge 11 (1991), pp. 67–77, argues that the melodic style of the Tuba gallicalis tenor and the text of Tuba Heinrici point to German Tagelied traditions. See also Welker, ‘Musik am Oberrhein im späten Mittelalter: Die Handschrift Strasbourg, olim Bibliothèque de la Ville, c.22’ (unpublished Habilitationsschrift, University of Basel, 1993), pp. 157–61.
45 See Strohm, The Rise of European Music, p. 111 for a claim that these can be played
on a natural trumpet. For an account of the tuba metaphor in this piece see Ramalingam, ‘The Trumpetum’, pp. 146–7. On Strasbourg, see Welker, ‘Musik am Oberrhein’.
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11. Tuba gallicalis, Strasbourg (p. 109, fol. 81v). Strohm offers a transcription and a commentary on the performance options for this piece, which might have been one of a few ‘genuine instrumental compositions, not designed to carry a text’.46 The leapy contratenor, obviously the tuba part, uses the partials 4, 6, 7, 8, 10 and perhaps 9, a wider range than Du Fay’s Gloria ad modum tube, as Strohm points out. The piece as transmitted is quite dissonant, however emended; see the passage from Paulus Paulirinus below. This piece is also a 3 but it is not sectional. 12. Du Fay’s Gloria ad modum tube is uniquely so called in q15. Copied there before 1425, it may be the first use of ‘tuba’ for such accompanying parts and, as in some of these other cases (notably the tuba sub fuga of Du Fay’s contemporary and associate Arnold de Lantins discussed above) it accompanies an upper-voice fuga. It differs in that the fuga continues throughout, not merely as an introitus; in addition, the fuga is not self-contained but requires the lower voices to support simultaneous fourths in the canon. This is therefore not a case of an optional added part. The tenor and contratenor, both designated ad modum tube, echo each other at increasingly short distances, only sounding together in the last few bars. Their first sixty bars are in strict canon: the tenor has two units of the ostinato on the notes c' and g only, repeated by the contratenor, each part resting while the other sings. e' is added from bar 62, and g' from bar 102 to the end. Only four notes are used: g' e' c' g, a clear case of mimetic fanfare. Is there any theoretical corroboration for these uses of the terms? A search of the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum produced just three uses by music theorists (probably dating from the late fourteenth century) of trumpeta/-um or trompetta, and no significant uses of tuba that are not included in the citations below.47 One is the Melk Anonymous who, after defining prolation, offers genre definitions for rundele, mutete, viroletum and, surprisingly, trumpetum: But the trumpetum has at least three parts [sections], and if it has a cadence in any part, then that [lit. the same] part is sung twice and then there will be four whole sections.48 46 In The Rise of European Music, pp. 108–11 (Ex. 15). See also the differently emended
version in Ramalingam, ‘The Trumpetum’, p. 154, citing errors in a previous transcription by Charles van den Borren; neither is unproblematic. Nor yet was my reconstruction, recorded by Michael Morrow with Musica Reservata on Music from the Hundred Years’ War, dir. John Beckett (Philips 6747 004 (set 5), 1969]).
47 I am deeply grateful to Leofranc Holford-Strevens for providing translations of
these excerpts. The Breslau and Paulirinus passages were already noted in Ramalingam, ‘The Trumpetum’.
48 ‘Sed trumpetum habet ad minus tres partes, et si habet in aliqua parte clausuram,
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Wolf ’s Breslau anonymous gives a similar and similarly intriguing tour of forms:49 mutetum, rondellum, piroletum (presumably a misreading of viroletum), baladum, stampaniam sive stampetum, katschetum and rotulum. The reference to trumpetum is linked to stampania, and refers to a sectional form: But the trumpetum and estampie may have two or three parts [sections] and often stray to the fifth or the diapason, that is octave, in the manner of the trumpet or lyre, such as Tripudium en / Autentica / Diuum natalicium. Partes must here mean sections, as is clarified by the other passages, and by the sectional nature of the estampie, though ‘delyrant frequenter ad quintam notam uel ad dyapason’ does suggest the melodic style of an individual voice, possibly indicating fanfare-like use of notes of the harmonic series. The Czech theorist Paulus Paulirinus defines mutetus, rundelus, facetum [recte: kacetum?], trumpetum, rotulum, balida, stampania, cantilena: The trumpetum is a mensural song proceeding by four voice-parts in which each, performing its own duty in singing, advances by a direct path of singing, but the fourth encounters them all with a ringing, sometimes rather rough voice in the manner of a French trumpet, without making a cacophony or bad and dissonant sonority with any by its encounter.50 tunc eadem pars bis cantatur et fient tunc quatuor partes integre.’ Tractatulus de cantu mensurali seu figurativo musice artis (MS. Melk, Stiftsbibliothek 950), ed. F. Alberto Gallo, Corpus scriptorum de musica xvi ([Rome]: American Institute of Musicology, 1971), pp. 11–37, at p. 30. Lorenz Welker has pointed out that the first piece in the Buxheimer Orgelbuch, Jesu bone, has a trumpet-like fourth voice and can be considered an example of this kind of trumpetum: ‘Die Musik der Renaissance’, pp. 144–5. On these theorists’ treatment of trumpetum as a genre, and its possible reference to monophonic pieces such as songs by the Monk of Salzburg with titles Dy trumpet, Das taghorn, Das nachthorn, see Welker, ‘Weltliche Musik an den Höfen der Erzbischöfe Eberhard ii. (1200–1246) und Pilgrim ii. (1365-1396)’, Salzburger Musikgeschichte. Vom Mittelalter bis ins 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Jürg Stenzl, Ernst Hintermaier and Gerhard Walterskirchen (Salzburg 2005), pp. 71–87.
49 ‘Sed trumpetum et stampania possunt habere duas uel tres partes et delyrant
frequenter ad quintam notam uel ad dyapason idest ad octauam ad modum tube uel lyre ut Tripudium en / Autentica / Diuum natalicium.’ Johannes Wolf, ‘Ein Breslauer Mensuraltraktat des 15. Jahrhunderts’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1918–19), pp. 331–45, at p. 336.
50 ‘Trumpetum est cantus mensuralis per quatuor choros procedens in quo qui-
libet suo fungens officio in cantando via sua cantacionis directa progreditur
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The specification of ‘trumpetum’ as a four-part vocal piece is also suggestive for the present discussion, since the a versi adaptations all involve more than three voice-parts, but there the resemblance ends. ‘In modum tube’ encourages equating the ‘tuba’ of the Lantins Gloria with the function of the trumpetta in Ave virgo, as suggested above, and recalls Du Fay’s Gloria, where ad modum tube is clearly descriptive. Given the character of the Strasbourg tuba gallicalis (see above), tuba gallicana seems to authorise an instrumental model for an added (contratenor) part whose limitation to the harmonic series introduces harsh-sounding collisions with the existing parts, and could even refer specifically to that piece. There are several connections within the Breslau treatise to items in the Strasbourg repertory, including Apollinis eclipsatur. However, none of the musical uses listed above gives any hint of trumpetum or trompetta as a genre in accordance with these theoretical descriptions. The designation trompetta might seem to prescribe instrumental performance, which cannot be ruled out, especially for the contratenor trompette to Fontaine’s song. But at least the last of the above passages, with formulations such as ad modum tube, suggest vocal imitation of the instrument, rather than the instrument itself, and there is ample evidence, assembled by Strohm, Welker and others, for vocal imitations of trumpets. In discussing instrumental idioms and wind band music, Strohm remarks that ‘Vocalists of polyphonic chapels were able to sing like trumpets and thus we have written polyphony in this style’, and he mentions a 1492 report of singing that sounded like trumpets.51 Assuming vocal performance for the mass music, we might ask to what extent parts recognised as different in function between sections, but of similar range, would have been sung by the same performer. For a versi pieces I argued that the effort required to adapt to different layouts may have been driven by performance preferences, and sometimes by performance economics – why use four performers where three would suffice? The practice of conflation applied to a versi pieces (layout 4) was sometimes extended to trompetta parts alternating with a contratenor, i.e. the same notated part now interleaves the trompetta part (which accompanies the duets) with sed quartus obviat omnibus voce sonora aliquantulum rauca in modum tube g allicane sine hoc quod alicui faciat suo occurrsu caccofoniam seu malam et dissi dentem sonoritatem.’ Josef Reiss, ‘Pauli Paulirini de Praga Tractatus de musica (etwa 1460)’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 7 (1924–5), pp. 261–64, at pp. 261–2. Lorenz Welker points out (personal communication) that Reiss’s reading ‘facetum’ supplies f instead of the likelier k for a missing initial. Paulus Paulirinus is quoted by Strohm, The Rise of European Music, p. 111 n. 257, after Vivian Ramalingam, ‘The Trumpetum’. See also The Rise, p. 357 n. 284.
51 The Rise of European Music, pp. 359 and 508.
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the contratenor of the original three-part sections. Such conflation further discourages any idea that such trompetta parts were intended for instrumental performance. Discussions of trompetta and trumpet designations and associations have usually proceeded from instrumental idioms, constraints and imitations; I have shown that vocal performance is often implied. I demonstrated that some of the earlier trompetta parts were later additions, in a significant number of cases to pieces of the a versi type. Some of those additions are easily diagnosed, others less so, and some pieces have come down to us only in adapted form. The invitation to look closely at all anomalous scorings, sectional scoring changes, ranges, manuscript layouts and labels is clear. In addition, there is a considerable convergence between a versi and the use of q as markers of scoring change, even if the jury is still out on the range of intended meanings for q.52 Taken together, this work on layouts and added parts leads to the following conclusions and agendas for further work: 1. It invites classification for apparently confused or inconsistent layouts which can be understood as deliberate scribal editorial initiatives that need to be taken into account when tracing the transmission history of a piece. 2. It offers a tool for contrapuntal analysis and diagnosis of distinctions between cantus ii and contratenor parts, however they might be labelled, and for detecting changes of role that might indicate when both roles occur in a single conflated part. 3. It alerts us to the possibility of added parts, sometimes in conjunction with conflation, as in the Binchois and Grossin examples. 4. Anomalous aspects of the Cousin and Ave regina masses suggest that there may be more to find around and after mid-century. 5. Detection of such reworkings and additions has implications for mass pairings and similar classifications: it has enabled me to unpair two Zacara movements, to suggest a better pairing for the q15 Legrant Gloria,53 and to propose that the Grossin mass and the Binchois pair were originally a versi compositions. 6. Finally, it offers new leads for performance practice. Parts notated within 52 See my ‘The Early Use’, ‘Binchois’, ‘Ockeghem’, and ‘On the Interpretation of q
in the Fifteenth Century: A Response to Rob Wegman’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 53 (2000), pp. 597–612, responding to his ‘Different Strokes for Different Folks? On Tempo and Diminution in Fifteenth-Century Music’, ibid., pp. 461–505.
53 ‘Divisi and a versi’, pp. 98–9.
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Music as Social and Cultural Practice cantus i as divisi, canons or successive duets are likely to have sung along with that part and bifurcated for duets or fuga. A versi layout positively discourages this, and indeed made hopping from one part to another quite awkward, even if this is sometimes needed in a canonic introitus where the comes then has to cross to the right-hand page, as in the Franchois motet (Fig. 3.5) and Du Fay’s Vasilissa. What if anything do these changes tell us about preferred or available performance forces, especially when they were effected with such effort to a purpose at which we can only guess? Unlike the loincloths in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, we need not decide once and for all whether to remove them in restoration. I hope performers will experiment both with and without such additions.
This essay documents transformative activity by fifteenth-century musicians on the music they transmit to us, and offers instances of pieces which survive only in a changed or revised state, sometimes reflecting changes of policy by the same scribe over time. Analysis of this kind can lead to reconstitution of the piece as originally composed, and several pieces of puzzling or anomalous aspect can thereby be understood afresh in terms of the conventions within which they were originally composed. The work remains recognisable through the transformations, which in turn attest that it was valued and had a living existence, and that no disservice was deemed to have been done by accretions and updatings. These elaborations or reworkings were clearly undertaken, in various combinations, both for aesthetic reasons and to meet performative expedients, constraints and preferences. Far from being isolated cases, they seem to belong to a tradition which enjoyed a short fashion, not necessarily initiated by their composers. Pieces with added trompetta and concordans parts may not be numerous, but additions can disguise the original lineaments of a piece, and many more transformations may await recognition on the basis of the hints uncovered here. These trompetta parts are the newest testimony to the habit of adding extra parts (tripla, contratenors, etc.) to music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a practice which is turning out to be more widespread as we try to proceed beyond face-value examination.
•
Offered in friendly and collegial concord as a fanfare for Reinhard Strohm, who has elucidated many aspects of trompetta. I am grateful to Bonnie Blackburn, Robert J. Mitchell, Alejandro Planchart, Peter Wright and Lorenz Welker for helpful comments on a draft of this article.
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appendix Manuscript Sources q15
Bologna, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna (olim Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale), MS q15 Ao Aosta, Seminario Maggiore, MS 15 (formerly a 1o d 19) Boverio Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria T.iii.2. Facsimile and inventory: Il Codice T.iii.2, ed. Agostino Ziino, Ars Nova iii (Lucca, 1994) Brussels 5557 Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek MS 5557. Facsimile and inventory: Choirbook of the Burgundian Court Chapel, Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek MS. 5557, ed. Rob C. Wegman (Peer, 1989) BU Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 2216. Facsimile and inventory: Il Codice Musicale 2216 della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, ed. F. Alberto Gallo, Monumenta Lyrica Medii Aevi Italica iii.3 (Bologna, 1970) Ca11 Cambrai, Médiathèque municipale, MS 11. Facsimile: Cambrai, Médiathèque Municipale, MS 11, ed. Liane Curtis (Peer, 1992) EscA Escorial, Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Biblioteca y Archivo de Música, MS v.iii.24. Facsimile: Codex Escorial Chansonnier. Biblioteca del Monasterio El Escorial Signatur: Ms. v. iii. 24, ed. Wolfgang Rehm (Kassel, 1958) ModB Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, MS α.x.i.11 (formerly lat. 471) ModE Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, MS α.m.1.13 MuEm Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS clm 14274 (formerly mus. MS 3232a). Facsimile: Der Mensuralcodex St Emmeram, commentary and inventory by Ian Rumbold and Peter Wright, ed. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and Lorenz Welker (Wiesbaden, 2006) Ox Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Canon. misc. 213. Facsimile and inventory: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Misc. 213, ed. David Fallows, Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Music in Facsimile i (Chicago and London, 1995) Poznań Poznań, Mickiewicz University Library, Music section, MS 7022; Mirosław Perz, ‘The Lvov Fragments: A Source for Works by Dufay, Josquin, Petrus de Domarto, and Petrus de Grudenz in 15th-Century Poland’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muzikgeschiedenis 36 (1986), pp. 26–51 StPb80 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, San Pietro b 80. Facsimile: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, San Pietro b 80, ed. Christopher Reynolds (New York and London, 1986) Strasbourg Strasbourg, Bibliothèque municipale (olim Bibliothèque de la ville), MS 222 C.22. Lost through fire; survives in a copy by Edmond de Coussemaker, Brussels, Bibliothèque du Conservatoire Royal de Musique, MS 56286. See Le Manuscrit Musical m 222 c 22 de la Bibliothèque de Strasbourg, ed. Albert Vander Linden, Thesaurus Musicus ii (Brussels [1977]) Trent Codices Trent, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Monumenti e Collezioni Provinciali (olim Museo Provinciale d’ Arte): Tr87 MS 1374 (olim 87) Tr92 MS 1379 (olim 92) TR = Trent 871 and 922 Tr90 MS 1377 (olim 90) Tr93 Trent, Museo Diocesano, Archivio capitolare MS ‘BL’ Zw Zwettl, Zisterzienserstift, MS without shelfmark
• 4 • Recording for Posterity: Some Reflections on the Memorialising of Early Renaissance Music Edward Wickham
I
n the course of a career, the professional classical musician will accumulate numerous stories of performances in inappropriate venues and alienating circumstances. When one is dealing with music of a type which demands a particular atmosphere and acoustic, such occasions can become laughably bizarre. Thus I doubt that those few intrepid souls who witnessed The Clerks’ Group perform in the Royal Festival Hall foyer some years ago in front of an installation which featured a video loop of Yoko Ono’s bare buttocks will be able listen to the sacred polyphony of Busnoys and Dufay in quite the same way again. A more typical, and less disconcerting, example of this type of disjunction occurred in June 2005, when The Clerks’ Group was privileged to take part in the opening of the newly refurbished Philharmonie in Haarlem in June 2005. The programme consisted of two Requiems: Bernd Zimmerman’s Requiem für einen jungen Dichter of 1969 – a work of monstrous proportions, featuring the speeches of notable twentieth-century dictators set alongside the traditional words of the Mass of the Dead – preceded by a selection of movements from Ockeghem’s four-voice Missa Pro defunctis. The producer of the event intended the polyphony of Ockeghem to provide a sober, grave prelude to the frenetic, maniacal main feature, and after a dress rehearsal it was decided to cut two of Ockeghem’s five movements. The job of The Clerks’ Group, it transpired, was to cense the new hall and then depart to make way for the modern and the concrète. The choice of Ockeghem’s Requiem for this task was principally a symbolic one. Its status as the first surviving polyphonic setting of the Mass for the Dead lends it a gravitas which reinforces the stark, almost naive sonorities of its earlier movements. But, in truth, any Renaissance Requiem – sung with suitable dignity and refinement – might have satisfied the requirements of this event. Indeed, in some respects Ockeghem’s work subverts this role. Its texts are not those of the Requiem as we know it today (no ‘Dies irae’, for example, but instead the psalm ‘Sicut cervus’) and in the version which comes down to us, the cycle concludes not in a mood of other-worldly contemplation but in a self-consciously virtuosic display of compositional artifice.
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It is likely that the Requiem as transmitted in the Chigi Codex represents only about two-thirds of the complete Requiem mass cycle. The mass as we have it concludes with the Offertorium, and near-contemporary polyphonic settings by the likes of Antoine Brumel and Pierre de la Rue indicate that it was usual also to set the Sanctus, Agnus Dei and Communio texts polyphonically. The loss of two movements from our Haarlem performance did not therefore represent such a demeaning bowdlerisation as one might imagine. While undoubtedly the audience in the Philharmonie missed out on some of Ockeghem’s most poised and delicate writing, few will have felt that the integrity of the work as a whole was compromised. By contrast, to have cut passages from the ninety-minute Requiem für einen jungen Dichter would have been regarded as a mis-representation of the work, and a (posthumous) insult to its composer. Furthermore, it is not simply that we lack all of Ockeghem’s polyphony. What of the sea of chant which presumably surrounded these islands of polyphony, and all the other liturgical paraphernalia associated with the Officium defunctorum? It might be argued that ‘Ockeghem’s Requiem’, as presented in the Chigi Codex – a series of discrete polyphonic movements – and as performed in concert and on recording, is merely a scribal construct, the result of abstracting certain musical items – chosen on the basis that they display a particular level of compositional ambition – from their intended environment. The aesthetic and rhetorical impact of these items, their function, indeed their essential meaning, are obscured or obliterated in this process of abstraction. It is a common anxiety amongst ensembles performing and recording medieval and Renaissance polyphony that the presentation of masses and motets outside of religious worship necessitates this act of cultural banditry. With greater or lesser success, ensembles have attempted either to recreate the liturgical circumstances for which the polyphony might have been conceived or in some other way present an analogous sequence of items. The fact that a fee-paying public should sit in a church or even concert hall and witness a ‘liturgical reconstruction featuring the music of …’ ought not to bother us, considering the inherently theatrical nature of the Eucharist; and the further abstraction which results from committing such performances to CD can, by providing us with intimate access to a suitable sound-space, furnish Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Chigi c. viii 234.
Discussed in detail in Fabrice Fitch, Johannes Ockeghem: Masses and Models (Paris,
1997), pp. 26–30.
Convincing examples of the former include Andrew Parrott’s recording of
Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas with the Taverner Consort (EMI Reflexe cdc 747998), and of the latter include Winchester Cathedral Choir’s recording under David Hill of Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices (Hyperion cda66837).
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as evocative and convincing an engagement with the music as anything one might experience in a dark side-chapel of Antwerp Cathedral. It is my contention that this anxiety is based not just on an understandable conscientiousness about the use and abuse of musical artefacts from another, and very different, age, but also on an overly focused view of how polyphony – and particularly sacred polyphony – was conceived and functioned in musical culture. We need not reconstruct the circumstances of the first performances of Dufay’s isorhythmic motets – most of them designed for specific and unique occasions – to appreciate them today, as did those in Dufay’s lifetime who saw fit to copy the motets into manuscripts at some chronological and geographical distance from the events they celebrated. We need not be at Compline to enjoy a Salve regina by Josquin, since Pope Leo x famously, and decadently, had one sung to him at dinner. And facsimile enthusiasts need not be embarrassed to try out Josquin’s Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae over an evening drink. Surely the account of Duke Ercole himself singing the mass with his court musicians in an informal gathering is sufficient precedent; and why else would Petrucci print it in 1505 if not to mark Ecole’s death and encourage those with the expertise to celebrate his life by singing through the mass? In the on-going debate on the nature and history of the ‘musical workconcept’, it has been suggested that, in the Western European tradition, the early nineteenth century witnessed a radical change in society’s attitude to music, the most important result of which was the emergence of a concept of the musical work as being autonomous, abstract, self-sufficient. The phenomenon, it is argued, was reinforced by a number of developments in music appreciation: the bifurcation in discourse about music into ‘serious’ and ‘popular’, the recognition in music history of ‘great’ composers and ‘great’ works, the establishment of musical academies and of a musical canon. The purpose of Three of Dufay’s motets, marking specific occasions, stand out in this respect:
Vasilissa ergo gaude (for the nuptials of the Malatesta princess Cleofa in 1420), Supremum est mortalibus (marking the Peace of Viterbo in 1433) and Nuper rosarum flores (for the consecration of Florence Cathedral in 1436). All three of these motets are transmitted in multiple sources.
The incident is mentioned in a dispatch from the Ferrarese ambassador to Rome,
Antonio Pauluzzi, dated 1520, quoted by Lewis Lockwood, ‘Josquin at Ferrara: New Documents and Letters’, Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference, June 1971, ed. Edward E. Lowinsky (London, 1976), p. 121 n. 57. It is unclear which – if either – of the two surviving settings is referred to.
Lewis Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara 1400–1505 (Oxford, 1984), p. 136. Petrucci, Missarum Josquin Liber Secundus (1505).
See Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (Oxford, 1992); also
Richard Middleton, ‘Work-in-(g) Practice: Configuration of the Popular Music Intertext’, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool,
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this essay is not to engage with these claims in detail, but to tackle two specific strands of the argument, the implications of which have direct relevance to Renaissance and medieval polyphony and the ways in which I and The Clerks’ Group, as interpreters and performers, try to understand, package and perform it. Reinhard Strohm identifies the first issue in his penetrating critique, ‘The Problem with the Musical Work-Concept’: ‘What I see as the greatest flaw of these arguments is the idea that function or relevance for social practices should, generally, have been a hindrance to music’s possession of work-character’. He goes on to question the identification of functional with texted music – and by default abstract with instrumental music – and points out that, were this identification valid, many post-1800 compositions would also be disqualified from being regarded as musical ‘works’. One might extend this criticism to the related implication that there was – and is – a necessary dichotomy between a musical aesthetic posited on extra-musical function and significance and one which is absolute and self-sufficient: Music was [in the Middle Ages] predominantly understood as regulated by, and thus defined according to, what we would now think of as extramusical ideals … Such ideals affected everything musical – the theory, the conditions of production, the forms of criticism and appreciation. Usually they were shaped by the functions music served in powerful institutions like the church and the court.10 Such functions included serving the liturgy, expressing love for an unattainable woman, and calming the frenzied spirit of a youthful arsonist.11 Strohm’s criticism of this position focuses on liturgical works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries whose clear functionality is no hindrance to abstract compositional ambition. The early tenor cyclic mass, for example, is structurally independent of the liturgy which it serves: out of a cantus firmus common to all movements, and the consistency of its mensural technique, modality and scoring, is created a unity which offers an aesthetic narrative that may complement but does not replicate the spiritual narrative offered by the unfolding drama of the Mass. Building upon Strohm’s critique, one might argue against 2000), esp. pp. 60–1, and Michael Talbot, ‘The Work-Concept and ComposerCentredness’, ibid., pp. 168–86.
In The Musical Work, ed. Talbot, p. 139.
10 Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, p. 122. 11 The story, recounted in Boethius’ De institutione musica, promotes the beneficial
effects of modal therapy. See Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History: Antiquity and The Middle Ages (New York, 1965), p. 82.
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the perceived necessity of texted music to be functional by pointing out the lack of correspondence between purely musical concerns and the requirements of functional polyphony exemplified by numerous masses from the second half of the fifteenth century. In these masses, because of pre-determined structural priorities, Credo texts, for example, are subjected to telescoping or even cuts. In a few, extraordinary, cases one notes a truly remarkable lack of concern – on the part of scribe and, one assumes, composer – for the mass text, such that even the most pious singer must be content with offering up certain phrases of the Credo in his heart only, without articulating them with his vocal chords. (One particularly telling example of this is the Credo of Obrecht’s Missa Sub tuum praesidium, in which the composer’s commitment to a rigid cantus firmus structure dictates the exact length of the movement and in turn forces drastic cuts in the Credo text. Little indication of how this might be done is provided in the sources.) The structural independence of the later fifteenth-century mass is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by those masses which appear to evolve through the course of their five movements and display a climactic flourish in the final, Agnus Dei movement.12 While it is possible to identify this form of organisation in some mid-fifteenth-century tenor masses, it is with the famous L’homme armé group of mass cycles that we find this phenomenon most boldly pioneered. The final Agnus Dei petitions in all three of the earliest ascribable L’homme armé masses – by Dufay, Ockeghem and Busnoys – all feature compositional tricks and fresh sonorities to quicken the mind and, crucially, engage the listener. Transpositions, inversions, rhythmic augmentation and diminution are all employed to bring about an aurally stimulating display of virtuosic musicianship. While it is possible to locate these masses within liturgical environments, most notably that of the Burgundian court and ceremonies for the Order of the Golden Fleece,13 the stimulus for this compositional artifice appears to lie outside the demands of the liturgy and be related instead to the culture of emulation and competition which is such a notable characteristic of later fifteenth-century music. Analogous in this respect is the cycle of anonymous Missae L’homme armé, which may in fact pre-date the attributable single cycles. Transmitted in a 12 See the author’s ‘Finding Closure: Performance Issues in the Agnus Dei of
Ockeghem’s Missa L’homme armé’, Early Music 30 (2002), pp. 593–607.
13 See e.g. Richard Taruskin, ‘Antoine Busnoys and the L’homme armé Tradition’,
Journal of the American Musicological Society 39 (1986), pp. 272–3, and, for an alternative proposal, Flynn Warmington, ‘The Ceremony of the Armed Man: The Sword, the Altar and the L’homme armé Mass’, Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning and Context in Late Medieval Music, ed. Paula Higgins (Oxford, 1999), pp. 89–130.
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anuscript associated with the court of Charles the Bold,14 this cycle of mass m cycles evolves as, one by one, the phrases of the L’homme armé tune are introduced sequentially and elaborated as cantus firmi. Only in the sixth and final mass is the song presented whole and – in a crowning gesture – set in canon at the fifth below. Possibly this was the inspiration for the segmentation techniques employed by Obrecht in a mass such as Malheur me bat, at the conclusion of which the formerly disparate phrases of the song are bound together. Obrecht is also responsible for one of the most elaborate of mass structures from the period: the Missa Sub tuum praesidium, whose scoring expands from three to seven voices in the course of its five movements. Few sixteenth-century composers felt the need to compete with this feat,15 but by the later sixteenth century the addition of an extra voice for the final movement of the mass had become a compositional cliché. These examples seem to indicate a desire by composers to create structures conceived as much according to a musical rationale as according to liturgical function. This becomes especially clear when one compares the rhetorical trajectory of these mass cycles as compared with the liturgy of the Mass. While the mass cycle reserves for the ending its sonorous and virtuosic climax, the climactic moment in the Mass occurs at the elevation of the host – in liturgical terms in between the Sanctus and the Benedictus.16 The Agnus Dei provided the musical backdrop not to the central drama of the Eucharist, but to its aftermath. Elevation motets from the later fifteenth century do survive, but their rhetorical character is somewhat different from that of the final Agnus Dei: homophonic, declamatory, stately, they most certainly do have the character of works conforming to a particular functional template.17 The second strand of the work-concept debate which is of relevance here is closely related to the first, but impacts upon a different type of repertory from the fifteenth century. It is an important corollary of the argument for the work-concept being an invention of the early nineteenth century that European musical culture before 1800 somehow lacked a crucial self-awareness, a sense of self-importance, and a sense of the trans-historical value of musical activity. 14 Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele iii, MS vi. e. 40. 15 One rare example of a similar procedure occurs in Morales’ Magnificat Octavi
Toni, which expands from three to eight voices.
16 See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven and London, 1992), esp.
pp. 97, 119–21 and 210–11, for evidence of the status of the elevation within the drama of the Eucharist.
17 Examples of elevation motets which adopt this style include Josquin’s Tu solus qui
facis mirabilia and La Rue’s O salutaris hostia.
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Yet there are too many examples to contradict this picture for it to be credible even as a generalised argument: works such as Busnoys’s motet In hydraulis, in honour of Jean Ockeghem, which likens his former colleague to Pythagoras, or Obrecht’s Mille quingentis, which – in the course of a motet supposedly in memory of his father Guillermus – indulges in more than a little self-aggrandisement as he compares himself to Orpheus. It is in these eulogies to fellow musicians and loved ones that musicians of the later fifteenth century express a vision of their place in the cosmos which – teeming with cliché and hyperbole though it might be – is consistent and confident. It is the language of classical mythology and ceremonial which furnishes composers and their poets with their materials. In Nymphes des bois, Molinet exhorts ‘nymphs of the wood, goddesses of the fountain’ to lament the death of Ockeghem, his lifeline cut by Atropos, ‘trés terrible satrappe’. All the while the tenor intones a Requiem before four composers are memorialised alongside their ‘bon père’: Josquin, Brumel, Pierre de la Rue and Compère. The poet of Ockeghem’s own lament on the death of Binchois anthropomorphises Musique and Rhetorique in appropriate classical fashion. But it is the theorist-composer Tinctoris who engages most effusively with the notion of a musical history and the place of contemporary composers within it, delineating – in an oft-quoted passage – the historical parameters of the new age and listing its canonic composers.18 The pride with which he announces, at the end of the passage, that, as Virgil was inspired by Homer, so is he by the Ockeghem generation of composers, demonstrates how imitation and emulation were seen to bestow honour as much on the imitator as on the imitated. The sense of a musical history in the age of Tinctoris is profound. Thus we encounter works whose texts celebrate music both on its own terms and as a trans-historical medium of universal importance, whose master craftsmen are men possessing mythic qualities. The self-conscious sense of importance that such works project is reinforced by a compositional and notational artifice which only a small community of musicians – essentially those who either participate in performances of the works and those who are privy to and understand the music as notated – can appreciate. One might argue that the black notation of Josquin’s Nymphes des bois and the rhythmic and proportional subtleties of Busnoys’s In hydraulis are functional: they are not essential to, but rather they reinforce – through visual and compositional symbolism – the import of the text. Yet to describe the relationship purely in terms of symbol implies a hierarchical relationship between text and compositional/notational device. It might be more helpful to talk of the puzzles, tricks 18 Liber de arte contrapuncti (1477): see J. Tinctoris, Opera theoretica ii, ed. Albert
Seay (Rome, 1975), pp. 12–13.
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and other devices which composers of this period employ in these motets as providing not merely a symbolic representation, but a musical analogy to the spirit and letter of the text. Thus the music is both functional in that it sets and illuminates a text, but it also provides for those participating in the music’s performance the resources for a musical experience which derives its sense of purpose, rationale and satisfaction purely from itself. Consideration for the concept of music as a collective, participatory experience, requiring no audience (at least no human audience) broadens considerably the notion of the autonomous ‘musical work’ and at the same time complicates its history. In particular, it casts doubt on any simple interpretation of the functional in music, whether it be sacred or secular, texted or untexted. A work such as Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum is, on one level, a liturgical work whose function is to serve the greater glory of God, but on another it is a piece of music about music – about rhythm, pitch and the notational system. To understand it, one has to be part of its realisation in sound. Although functionally very different, Josquin’s motet Illibata Dei nutrix is conceived in the same spirit. A prayer sung by singers on behalf of singers (and presumably sung by Josquin on behalf of Josquin, whose name appears as an acrostic in the text), here is a piece whose raison d’ être is the performance itself. The work and its performance are consubstantial, music functioning as a collective act of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual empathy. Inevitably, the heightened artificiality of recording serves to highlight the apparent discrepancies between our post-1800 notion of the musical work and the historical context and function of the music in question. The recording strips away layers of protective contextual clothing, and exposes the naked victim in front of a disembodied crowd of strangers. It deracinates, cleans up and presents its product with half a dozen seconds of ambient hush between items. It is a static medium: every performance is the same, and thus no flexibility of interpretation is possible. Its purpose is entertainment, its principal criteria for success in this respect being quality of music and quality of performance; and so it is marketed on the basis of the perceived quality of and interest in the repertory, the composer and the performing artists. In short, the recording presents the quintessence of the objectified musical work. Anyone who has been involved in the recording and marketing of medieval and Renaissance music – and no doubt this extends to later repertories as well – will have struggled at one time or another with these strictures. A typical concern is over attribution, with the demands of the marketplace and of scholarship sometimes in conflict in a retail system which favours composer-based recordings. The ‘Miscellaneous Early Music’ section is not the most profitable place to be in a record store, and a disc will certainly receive more exposure if it carries the composer title Josquin des Prez than that of
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Not Quite Josquin.19 Indeed, the pressures and prejudices which influence modern-day performers are not unlike those which we encounter in Zarlino’s anecdote concerning Willaert’s Verbum bonum et suave: that the papal choir, disabused by the composer of the belief that it was by the great Josquin, refused thereafter to perform it.20 However, the repertory which suffers most egregiously from the lack of named composers is that wealth of anonymous works contained in mid-fifteenth-century manuscripts from Trent and elsewhere: the mass cycles of the Caput generation, and the anonymous English Caput mass itself, which – if compositional competence and historical importance were sole determining factors – might have been committed to disc as many times as the great masses of Josquin or Palestrina.21 Now that Dufay is no longer credited with its composition, and until such time as a new authorial champion is found – a Dunstable or Power – the fear is that few will be prepared to take up its cause in the recording studio. The Clerks’ Group, at the start of its Ockeghem series, encountered a similar concern about authorial prominence. On the first four discs of the series, Ockeghem’s works shared billing with motets by a number of other composers. As the product edged closer and closer to the Miscellaneous box, the warning came to take care to restrict the number of named composers on a single recording to four or fewer.22 From disc 5 onwards, Ockeghem went unchallenged. Of course, the phenomenon of the complete-works project – in the 1990s regarded as a prestige and marketable enterprise – might itself be regarded as an example of anachronistic composer-centredness and fascination with the autonomous musical work. Even though in most cases such surveys are necessarily incomplete – such is the state of Ockeghem transmission that only remnants of certain mass cycles such as Sine nomine, Fors seulement and the Requiem survive – a great deal of their popularity resides in the fabricated concept of completeness. Thus Radio 3, in its 2005 Christmas survey of the complete J. S. Bach, pulled enthusiastic audiences for a season whose publicity tag-line read as much like a threat as a promise: ‘Every note, day and night’. 19 A worthy and witty attempt to buck this perception was a disc entitled Presque
Josquin by the ensemble Pange Lingua, directed by Robert Rice (ProudSound, proucd 138).
20 Gioseffo Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558), pt. 4, ch. 36, p. 346, quoted
in Rob C. Wegman, ‘Who was Josquin?’, The Josquin Companion, ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford, 2000), p. 25.
21 Gothic Voices, directed by Christopher Page, is alone in having recently recorded
two works from this repertory: the anonymous English Caput Mass (The Spirits of England and France – 4: Hyperion cda66857) and Missa Veterem hominem (The Spirits of England and France – 5: Hyperion cd 66919).
22 This becomes less of a concern once the ensemble becomes well established and is
honoured with a section in the record store devoted exclusively to its product.
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Clearly scholars and performers must never ignore those works whose composers have left no name behind them; but at the same time they might also acknowledge that the instinct which lies behind not only large-scale recording and editing projects based on celebrity composers, but also the desire to attribute works to named individuals, goes beyond extending scholarship, establishing canons, sharing knowledge – activities which might broadly be classed as the recording and transmission of information. For what drives the desire for completeness is an associated but also distinct ambition to memorialise. The Monumentum gains its sense of authority from the ambition of the project itself as well as from the materials it presents.23 (Whether, of course, this sense of authority is justified is for others to decide.) In our culture, the act of memorialising takes varied forms: for example the practice of focusing attention on anniversaries of composers’ birth and death dates, a practice the impulse for which cannot wholly be credited to marketing and publicity departments. To memorialise entails the notion of an act – or series of acts – of remembrance, which goes beyond the mere recording or recollection. While we are most familiar with this concept in a religious and secular ceremonial context, we might extend it so as to help us understand what draws us to gather together the works of known artists, writers and composers, to confer authorship and to concern ourselves over attributions. This instinct to memorialise was surely also present amongst late medieval and Renaissance composers in the laments – discussed above – with which they marked one another’s deaths, and the motets which they composed for their own obsequies and memorials. Neither Cambrai nor Condé sur l’Escaut will have forgotten the names of Dufay or Josquin quickly, since provision for the performance of their music on significant occasions after their deaths was made in their wills.24 Yet memorial anthologies of works by single composers in the fifteenth century are somewhat rare, or difficult to identify as their original profiles are altered by the shifting reportorial agendas of a scriptorium and opportunistic insertions. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the Chigi Codex was intended to present a substantial body of Ockeghem’s work and, since its compilation can be dated to the period just after Ockeghem’s death, that here was at least the beginnings of a memorial volume, whose purpose was to record and to honour. For the scholar and performer, the fact that the Chigi Codex inadequately fulfils the former purpose should not diminish the sense that its 23 The title ‘Monumenta’ being common for musical and literary work collections: for
example, Monumenta Musica Neerlandica, Monumenta Polyphoniae Liturgicae Sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae, and Monumenta Monodica Medii Aevi.
24 In the case of Dufay, the instructions for polyphony are likely to have been
honoured until the later sixteenth century. See Alejandro E. Planchart, ‘Notes on Guillaume Du Fay’s Last Works’, Journal of Musicology 13 (1995), p. 71
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very existence and survival into the twenty-first century magisterially satisfies the latter. If, then, to satisfy the criteria for consideration as a musical work we must show that a piece of music is an autonomous, self-sufficient entity, capable of a meaningful existence outside of its original functional and cultural environment, we might usefully turn to a memorial volume such as Chigi, full of deracinated and incomplete examples of Ockeghem’s work, the value of which to those compiling the manuscript resides primarily in the reputation of a famous composer recently deceased. In these circumstances, the limbless torso of a Requiem becomes in and of itself a musical object to be revered in the same way as an unfinished symphony in the era of the ‘Musical Work’. We are now free to enjoy the cycle how it is, not how it might have been. And how it is, is remarkably satisfactory in structural, aesthetic and rhetorical terms. There is a sense, as the Requiem progresses, of a compositional evolution, from the simplicity of the quasi-fauxbourdon Introit, and a ninefold Kyrie whose final segment introduces for the first time an additional contratenor bassus part, through two movements – Graduale and Tractus – comprising lengthy duos and trios, to an Offertorium whose complex character has encouraged the suggestion that it belongs in another Requiem cycle altogether.25 The upper contratenor part in this section is manipulated through the operation of myriad mensuration signs, a procedure which is most logically organised in the very final section to survive, which sets the text ‘Quam olim Abrahae promisisti, et semini eius’. At the start of this passage, the contratenor operates according to tempus perfectum, prolatio maior (while the other voices maintain tempus perfectum throughout). This is reduced by a diminution stroke soon afterwards, halving the rhythmic value of each breve, relative to the music of the other voice parts. The next sign is an undiminished tempus imperfectum, prolatio maior, followed by its diminished version. Thereafter the contratenor must negotiate the minor prolations: tempus perfectum then imperfectum, each in turn followed by their diminished versions. The movement concludes with a further twofold diminution, indicated by an arabic numeral 2. The aural effect of these mensural changes would, one imagines, be an obvious acceleration in the contratenor voice. If we take the minim at the start of the passage (i.e. in its undiminished state) as representing a single unit, the length of the first note – a breve – is worth nine. After the first diminution, a breve (were it to appear) would be worth 4½ of these same rhythmic units. After that, the (theoretical) breve is valued: 6–3–6–3–4–2–1. Significantly, however, the notational acceleration in the contratenor is not detectable to the listener for it has been largely counterbalanced by Ockeghem’s use of longer note values. It is only apparent to the 25 See Fitch, Ockeghem, pp. 195–6 for a defence of the unity of the Requiem.
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performer that the first breve of the passage is, in performance terms, nine times the length of the breves at the end of the section. Here then is a notational trick typical of the composer, one shared only by those singers participating in the memorial which the Requiem enacts. In search of an explanation for this extraordinary procedure, we are drawn back to the text, telling of God’s promise to Abraham and his seed for ever. As a notational representation of the great Patriarch and his descendants, the division and subdivision of the breve is ingenious and elegant. But it more than represents: it offers a parallel or analogous reading of the text employing a means of expression quite distinct from the literary or pictorial, namely the abstract, the purely musical. It brings to a fitting end a mass cycle without a proper ending, and reminds us that to engage with the music of the past – as performance, as text, as memory – will always entail an act of memorial.
• 5 • How to Sin in Music: Doctor Navarrus on Sixteenth-Century Singers Bonnie J. Blackburn
H
ow many ways are there to sin while singing? Very many, according to the sixteenth-century Spanish canonist Martín de Azpilcueta. In chapter 16 of his Enchiridion sive manuale de oratione et horis canonicis, published first in Spanish in 1545 and then in Latin, both reprinted many times in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, he sets out in considerable detail a panoply of sins committed by singers, all of which cause distraction to listeners and therefore disrupt devotion. These include mispronunciation of words, anticipation of antiphonal responses, singing too fast or too slowly, talking and laughing in choir, singing counterpoint ineptly, singing chant without any variation, and failing to pause between verses. Special attention is devoted to singers of polyphonic music, who prize music over words, vaunt their voices, and insinuate lascivious and other secular songs into the mass. None of this is new: churchmen had been inveighing against unruly singers for centuries. But do they sin, or do they merely err? ‘Peccare’ can mean either. For Azpilcueta it is clear that they do sin, though not mortally. The author of an anonymous treatise of the ninth or tenth century invokes Augustine in this context: ‘The blessed Augustine maintains that he sins so as to incur penance who enjoys the loudness [or height] of the voice more than the meaning of the words; for one must sing not with the voice but with the heart.’ That, the author says, is the reason for the institution of psalmody, for as David in playing the harp soothed the spirit of Saul, so through singing or jubilating singers purge diabolical desires from the hearts of the listeners. The conflict between music as sensual pleasure and music as an aid to devotion has been debated through ‘Beatus Augustinus perhibet, quia penaliter peccat, qui in divinis canticis alti-
tudinem vocis magis quam sensum verborum delectat; quia ideo non voce, sed corde cantandum est. Ad hoc enim usus psalendi constitutus est; ut sicut David in citharizando nequam spiritum in Saule compescebat, ita cantores modulando vel iubilando quaelibet diabolica desideria de cordibus audiencium expellant, et celestibus armoniis interesse persuadeant.’ The brief treatise has been re-edited by Michael Bernhard in Clavis Gerberti: Eine Revision von Martin Gerberts Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, i (Munich, 1989), pp. 33–5; it begins with this quotation. Bernhard refers to Augustine, Ennar. in ps. 18. 2. 1, but it might be Confessions 10 (see below).
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the centuries. Music, on biblical authority, was appropriate for praising God, but it needed to be regulated, in style as well as performance. By the sixteenth century, one might think, the argument had been all but settled, at least for music in the Catholic Church: were not the rites of the papal chapel and St Peter’s celebrated with polyphonic splendour? Contrary voices abounded in northern Europe, however; one has only to think of Erasmus. Yet reforming voices were known in the Catholic Church as well before the Council of Trent, where the question of the place of polyphonic music in the divine rite was aired. The Spanish contribution to the debate is less well known. Azpilcueta’s comments draw us into the world of a canonist who seeks a church music that is fitting for his time, not the masterworks of a Morales or Palestrina but the modest elaboration of plainchant condoned by Pope John xxii in his famous decretal of 1324–5, Docta sanctorum. This preference casts an interesting light on Azpilcueta’s attitude to the musical work, one that he must have shared with a number of his contemporaries whose voices until recently have not been given much credence, when noticed: we prize the elaborate finished compositions of Renaissance masters, and thus it comes as somewhat of a shock and a disappointment to find a sixteenth-century figure who does not. For Azpilcueta the true music of devotion is not the musical work, the opus completum et absolutum, but plainchant; as long as that is preserved and decorously clothed, this churchman will condone polyphonic music in church. Hence his emphasis on performance practice, which focuses on the text as much as the music. Martín de Azpilcueta (1492–1586), born in Navarre (hence his appellation Doctor Navarrus), studied philosophy at Alcalá and law at Toulouse, eventually becoming a renowned moralist and jurist who had taught at Toulouse, Cahors, Salamanca and Coimbra. While at Coimbra he was also Cantor at the cathedral, and was thus occupied with chant in the Divine Office. He was a counsellor of Philip ii in canon law between 1555 and 1567, but his defence For various opinions in the period preceding Azpilcueta’s comments, see Rob C.
Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe 1470–1530 (New York and London, 2005).
See, most recently, ibid., pp. 108–21, 133–65.
See in particular the comments on singers’ abuses by Friedrich Nausea von
Waischenfeld, bishop of Vienne, in De praecipuis quibusdam clericorum et laicorum abusibus pro ecclesia reformanda tollendis, Liber quintus (1543), excerpted in Craig A. Monson, ‘The Council of Trent Revisited’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 55 (2002), pp. 1–37, at pp. 28–9; for earlier figures see pp. 4–5.
And thus during the time when Philip issued the letter of foundation of El Escorial,
prohibiting the monks to sing polyphony, though fabordón was permitted. See Michael Noone, Music and Musicians in the Escorial Liturgy under the Habsburgs, 1563–1700 (Rochester, NY, 1998), pp. 87–96.
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of the Archbishop of Toledo, Bartolomé de Carranza, against charges of heresy led to the loss of the king’s favour. The last nineteen years of his long life were spent in Rome, where he was consultant to the Sacred Penitentiary. An indefatigable scholar who slept no more than five hours a night, he published prolifically on canon law, including a frequently cited tract on usury, and on moral instruction; his justification of mental reservation was to become a hallmark of the Jesuits. The Enchiridion sive manuale de oratione et horis canonicis was originally published in Spanish in 1545 with the title Commento en romance a manera de repeticion latina y scholastica de Iuristas, sobre el capitulo Quando de consecratione dist. prima. On prayer and the canonical hours, it was later followed by his manual for confessors, Enchiridion seu manuale confessariorum et poenitentium (first edition in Spanish, 1553), likewise published frequently in the sixteenth century. In the latter manual he treats music under two headings, blasphemy and the seven mortal sins. Citing Cardinal Cajetan (the Dominican Tommaso de Vio, 1469–1534), who deems it a mortal sin to introduce secular music, whether sung or played on the organ or other instruments, into the divine rite, Azpilcueta remarks that it does not seem to him a mortal sin unless the songs are ‘dishonest’, vain and profane, and sung by those who have been warned against it. The treatise on prayer and the canonical hours is much more expansive on the occasions to sin in church. During his long experience of divine service, Azpilcueta had plenty of occasions to wince. In the preface to the first edition, he says that he had prayed for over forty years, said mass for thirty, and ‘frequently heard sung and sometimes have sung in various kingdoms and cathedrals, and collegiate and simple churches’. Chapter 16 (pp. 257–97 in the Information drawn from the article by Marciano Vidal in the Gran Enciclopedia
RIALP,
, accessed 25 January 2003.
For this reason he has sometimes been called a Jesuit, though others make him a
Dominican. In fact he was neither; in his youth he became an Augustinian.
‘S’ ei procurò di mescolare al culto divino, canti profani, & brutti con voci humane,
o di organi, o di altri stromenti, è peccato mortale, perché si fa ingiuria al culto Ecclesiastico, & a Dio … Ma hora diciamo, che non mi par peccato mortale; salvo che quando le canzoni sono disoneste, vane, & profane, & cantate mentre si dice l’ officio divino da quelli, che sono avisati, che non sono lecite …’. I quote from the Italian translation, Manuale de’ confessori, nel quale si contiene la universale, & particolare decisione de tutti i dubbij, che nelle confessioni de’ peccati sogliono occorrere (Venice, 1579), p. 145. A similar statement occurs on p. 641, in the section on the seven mortal sins. On Cajetan, see below.
‘muchos oydo cantar y a las vezes cantado en diversos reynos & yglesias cathedrales,
colegiales y simples’; Commento en romance, fol. +iiiv. He himself translated the treatise into Latin; I use the edition published in Rome in 1578. I quote from the
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1545 edition) deals with impediments to attention in the context of the divine service, with no fewer than eighty conclusions. Many of these are directed at the celebrants and their assistants and therefore involve recitation or liturgical actions, but a number indict the singers and the organist. Some, however, are directed at worshippers, who are admonished, for example, not to bring dogs, hawks, crying children and the insane into church (§4). Throughout Azpilcueta cites the statements of church councils as authority, particularly the council of Basel. Mispronunciation of words disturbed the Doctor Navarrus. One can make a mistake in pronouncing ‘Jácobus’ rather than ‘Jacóbus’, but if one persists, it is a sin (§4[bis]).10 Various ways of pronouncing ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Christe’ are denounced (§6). Christe, meaning ‘annointed’, should be aspirated; otherwise criste means bird crests. It is wrong to say ‘kyrieleyson’ and ‘Cristeleyson’, dropping a syllable – a practice that indeed reflects contemporary pronunciation since we often find it notated that way in choirbooks.11 Other mispronunciations are ‘Kyrghalayson’ and ‘Cristalayson’, and even ‘Kyson’ and ‘Criston’.12 But it is not enough to pronounce words correctly; the pauses indicated by the punctuation must also be observed, especially in the Salve Regina and Pater noster (§7). It is also a sin to say mass too quickly, which some call the ‘Missa de caçadores’, or too slowly, which others call ‘gastadores de cirios’ (§8). When there is a sung mass, with a lengthy sermon and polyphony, bishops and other celebrants err in censing leisurely and drawing out the preface and Pater noster (§9). Requiem masses should not be sung too fast (§10). A grave Spanish edition because it proves that what seem to be post-Tridentine concerns were in fact current in the early 1540s, but the Latin is given in parallel in the passages quoted in the appendix.
10 This section and the next are misnumbered in the 1545 edition; the Rome, 1578
edition combines 4[bis] and 5.
11 On the problems in underlaying these words in modern editions, see Howard
Mayer Brown, ‘ “Lord Have Mercy on Us”: Early Sixteenth-Century Scribal Practice and the Polyphonic Kyrie’, Text: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship 2 (1985), pp. 93–110. In the Spanish edition Azpilcueta cites Erasmus in this context (annotations on John 14, ‘Paracletus’), reflecting the admiration for the Dutch scholar in sixteenth-century Spain, but all references to Erasmus are dropped in the 1578 edition. The Commento, according to Marcel Bataillon, was based on Erasmus’ Modus orandi; see Érasme et l’Espagne, new edn, ed. Daniel Devoto and Charles Amiel, 3 vols. (Geneva, 1991), i. 622–9.
12 According to a contemporary anecdote, Queen Isabella of Castile was so atten-
tive to mispronunciation in her chapel that she ‘made a note of it, and later, as master to pupil, she emended and corrected it’; see Tess Knighton, ‘Francisco de Peñalosa: New Works Lost and Found’, Encomium musicae: Essays in Memory of Robert J. Snow, ed. David Crawford and G. Grayson Wagstaff (Hillsdale, NY, 2002), pp. 231–57, at p. 249.
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sin, in singing antiphonally, is to anticipate the verse by beginning on the last syllable of the previous verse (§13); here he cites declarations of the councils of Vienne (1311–12) and Basel (1431–49).13 Other actions that distract attention are laughing, joking, or telling stories during mass (§15), and making unusual movements, such as beating one’s breast at ‘Domine non sum dignus’ or drawing one’s sword at the Gospel (§16).14 It is a sin to sing badly, making people laugh, and age is no excuse (§17). Worse are those who sing counterpoint without knowing how to do it, because they distract themselves as well as others (§18; see the appendix). Section 19 (see the appendix) brings us to the longest discussion so far, concerning singers of polyphony (canto de órgano) and those who let them get away with their bad practices. They talk when they are not singing, and they make gestures when they are. Although, Azpilcueta says, popes have allowed singing during the Divine Office to increase attention and devotion, polyphony has the effect that one cannot hear the words, let alone understand them. Here he explicitly faults German, Flemish and French singers, who do not ‘explain’ (1578: ‘barely explain’) the text; they claim that it is through the force of the music alone that they move listeners. Azpilcueta responds that this is contrary to what has been permitted and is an abuse and a sin. Moreover, almost all the singers get up out of their seats and talk and joke together, especially when a verse is being played in alternation on the organ. They neither hear the words nor understand them. Azpilcueta quotes the famous remark of Augustine on this point: ‘When it happens to me that the singing moves me more than the thing being sung of, I confess that I sin so as to incur penance, and then I should prefer not to hear the singer.’15 Two conditions are necessary for music to be permitted in mass, according to the Doctor: first, one should not sing for the sake of giving or receiving pleasure; secondly, one should not sing with the idea that it pleases God more than prayer, again referring to Cardinal Cajetan. The problem is not caused by music per se; it is polyphony that is at fault. The remedy for this situation is ‘contrapuncto’, in its original sense of a voice 13 The passage concerning music in the decretal of the Council of Vienne is given
in Helmut Hucke, ‘Das Dekret “Docta Sanctorum Patrum” Papst Johannes’ xxii’., Musica Disciplina 38 (1984), pp. 119–31, at pp. 125–6.
14 On this practice see Flynn Warmington, ‘The Ceremony of the Armed Man: The
Sword, the Altar, and the L’homme armé Mass’, Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning and Context in Late Medieval Music, ed. Paula Higgins (Oxford, 1999), pp. 89–130; it was properly reserved for the emperor or the king.
15 Confessions 10. 33. 50: ‘Cum mihi accidit, ut me amplius cantus, quam res, quae
cantatur moveat: penaliter me peccare confiteor, & tunc mallem non audire cantantem.’
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or voices added above the chant (also known as singing super librum or ‘alla mente’), which does not disturb the plainchant in the way conventional poly phony does. Here Azpilcueta quotes the decretal of Pope John xxii in Latin, followed by a Spanish translation; this permits, especially on solemn feasts, some consonances that have a melodious quality to them (‘que tengan sabor de melodia’), that is octaves, fifths and fourths and similar intervals above the plainchant, so that ‘the integrity of the chant remains uncorrupted and nothing of its old music is lost’, for these consonances ‘gratify hearing, promote devotion, and prevent those singing from becoming lethargic’ (an interesting admission concerning chant). Azpilcueta praises as worthy of emulation the nuns of Coimbra, who ‘move the listeners to greater devotion the more attentively, modestly, humbly, devoutly and harmoniously they sing together in different voices, not corrupting or changing a note of the plainchant’. And yet, he admits that he would not wish to be so strictly limiting of polyphonic music in church as John xxii, for there are ‘some singers who with humility and devotion sing a motet or something else that is not obligatory, or something that is, equally well or even better, so that one hears and understands the words and is moved by them’.16 Here we see the jurist torn between an ecclesiastical decree that still held force in the sixteenth century and his own personal experience.17 If the objection of John xxii was that singers obfuscated the chant with the superimposition of many voices, small notes and hockets, ignoring the modes (in effect making it sound too much like secular music),18 that did not need to be true of all polyphonic church music; therefore one should be more lenient. The decretal was not concerned with the importance of understanding the text; this is the major difference in Azpilcueta’s time: the delivery of the words is of foremost importance. Music may enhance the text, but it must never take pre 16 Azpilcueta refers to further remarks in the chapter ‘de hymnis supra eadem
istinctionem’, which I have so far not discovered in his works. It may never have d been published, since the 1578 edition submits the matter to the judgement of God instead.
17 On the continued validity of the decretal, see Franz Körndle, ‘Was wusste Hoff-
mann? Neues zur altbekannten Geschichte von der Rettung der Kirchenmusik auf dem Konzil zu Trient’, Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 83 (1999), pp. 65–90. Körndle provides excerpts from §§18, 19 and 21 of the 1578 edition of Azpilcueta’s treatise with a German translation.
18 The relevant passages are quoted in Hucke, ‘Das Dekret “Docta Sanctorum
Patrum” ’, whose article begins with a sample of the misunderstandings of this decretal over the centuries since Burney, mostly interpreting it as a ban on polyphony. Reinhard Strohm has pointed to two Credos in the Apt MS that seem to ‘advertise their compatibility’ with the decretal by labelling the intervals of a fifth, octave and twelfth and refraining from naming the voice parts; see The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 35.
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cedence. This is a well-known post-Tridentine preoccupation, but Azpilcueta is writing in 1545. He says no more about the style appropriate to church music, but we may posit that he approved of the widespread Spanish practice of singing fabordón, four-voice note-against-note harmonisations of the chant (therefore akin to falsobordone rather than faburden or fauxbourdon).19 True, fabordón allows more intervals above the tenor than envisaged by John xxii, but the chant remains prominent and the words are intelligible. This same chordal style, which I have termed the ‘devotional style’, can also be written without plainchant, as in the Elevation motets of the Milanese motetti missales, and it is characteristic of the music Azpilcueta would have known in his youth.20 The remainder of chapter 16 of Azpilcueta’s Commento is concerned with performance. In §20 he criticises those laymen who favour singers, giving preference to music over the divine service; there are some who are happy to have prolix Kyries, Glorias, Alleluias and Credos but cannot bear an hour-long sermon. They sleep during the sermon and wake up during the music, vaunting their own musicality, gushing about how wonderful this or that singer is. Some spend hundreds of ducats on singers ‘who know no Latin’ and are ‘frivolous, dissolute and foolish’. In §21 he defends music in the mass, if abuses are removed, and would regret the loss of its benefits. Section 22 reproves customs associated with Christmas: replying to those who beg for blessing with rude words so that everyone laughs, and ‘singing secular and profane songs; even if they are not dishonest or vain in themselves, during Divine Office they
19 For some late fifteenth-century examples from the Iberian Peninsula see Murray C.
Bradshaw, The Falsobordone: A Study in Renaissance and Baroque Music, Musicological Studies and Documents xxxiv (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1978), pp. 21–30. In these examples the psalm tone is in the highest voice and a fermata marks the end of the first half of the psalm verse. The earliest reference to fabordón dates from the mid-fifteenth century, where it is referred to being sung ‘por uso’ (New Grove ii, viii, p. 615). Kenneth Kreitner points out that five of the six earliest sources for fabordón come from the Iberian Peninsula and Aragonese Naples, thus making it likely that the genre originated there; Kenneth Kreitner, The Church Music of Fifteenth-Century Spain (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music 2; Woodbridge, 2004), p. 52. Bernadette M. B. A. Nelson, ‘The Integration of Spanish and Portuguese Organ Music within the Liturgy’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1987), discusses fabordón on pp. 280–312; while it originated as and remained a vocal genre, it became especially widespread as an organ verset based on psalm tones.
20 See Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘The Dispute about Harmony c. 1500 and the Creation
of a New Style’, Théorie et analyse musicales 1450–1650/Music Theory and Analysis, ed. Anne-Emmanuelle Ceulemans and Bonnie J. Blackburn (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2001), pp. 1–37. For Spanish examples, see Kreitner, The Church Music, pp. 87, 123, 131, 144, 146.
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distract from attention’. The reference is to Christmas villancicos, such as the well-known Ríu, ríu, chíu. Section 23 takes up the displeasure it must be to God when one mixes profane things with the spirituality and seriousness of the Divine Office. Here he mentions ‘a French invention, very popular in Spain, in which singers imitate the sounds of drums and trumpets, the noise of riding horses, taking up of lances, fighting, the shots of the artillery and the tumult of war’, which are better reserved for secular festivities. The reference is clearly to Janequin’s Missa super La bataille, published in 1532 (the 1597 Latin edition adds ‘La guerre vocatur’); the song on which it was based provided the model for a number of parody masses in the sixteenth century, above all in Spain, and these masses were specifically criticised at the Council of Trent. In §25 Azpilcueta turns his attention to organists, who are subject to many of the same faults as the singers. They tend to go on at length, sometimes extending the mass by an hour, and when famous organists and singers compete with each other, seeing who can go on the longest, the psalms and canticles expire.21 Organ music should not take any more time than the chant it replaces, and if the singers and organist alternate, the third verse should preferably be ‘in devout and unhurried plainchant sung by the whole choir’.22 In the following chapter, treating the occasions for praying well, Azpilcueta goes over some of the same material. Lest it be thought that he has too negative an attitude to music in the Divine Office, he cites Ambrose, Scripture, John xxii, Augustine, Thomas Waldensis,23 and Thomas Aquinas on the positive effects of music in worship, but counsels that no more should be sung than is sufficient for arousing devotion. The purpose of music is not to give pleasure, and even if the words cannot be understood or clearly heard, some good may still come of it, for one may meditate on the Creator and Saviour (§14). The same is true of organ music, and here he remarks that there is no 21 ‘Lo otro, porque quando cantores famosos con tañedores yguales se topan, y
porfian sobre qual dellos sera mas prolixo en su verso, tanto mas perdido va todo el cantico u psalmo quanto mejor a su opinion volado y venteado’ (1578: ‘quo magis coram hominibus flatu ventoso, & voce theatrica tractatur’) (pp. 280–1).
22 ‘en canto llano devoto y reposado por todo el choro’. For more on Azpilcueta’s
comments on organ playing, including a transcription of §25, see Franz Körndle, ‘ “Usus” und “Abusus organorum” im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert’, Acta Organologica 27 (2001), pp. 223–40, esp. pp. 230–1 and 232–7.
23 The theologian and Carmelite friar Thomas Netter (c.1370–1430) of Walden in
Essex. An opponent of Lollardry, he is best known for his Doctrinale fidei ecclesiae, refuting the ideas of John Wyclif. Azpilcueta refers to the sixth volume, De sacramentalibus, which was published in the sixteenth century. On Netter’s comments on discant, see Wegman, The Crisis of Music, pp. 149–50, and 218, n. 73.
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organ in the Sistine Chapel. He firmly opposes the use of vihuelas, harps, flutes, bagpipes, trumpets, shawms and other similar musical instruments (‘vihuelas, harpas, flautas, çamproñas, trompetas, chirimias, y otros semejantes instrumentos musicos’;§15; 1578: ‘violas, cytharas, fistulas, lyras, tubas, tibias, & alia non absimilia instrumenta musica’), condemning a very Spanish custom.24 Diversity in chant and the tones of psalms, antiphons, responses, chapters, hymns, verses and prayers is a good thing because it refreshes attention, as different foods do the palate. A steady unison in sermons puts listeners to sleep; the faculty of hearing is the most delicate of all the senses, and rejoices in variety (§17). One should pause at the beginning and middle of each psalm verse, but it should be neither a short pause nor a very long pause, such as some religious make, which gives listeners cause to murmur (§18). For the same reason, Azpilcueta says he never liked the long pause between the consecration of the host and the chalice, especially at High Mass or other masses where the organ is played at the elevation.25 Azpilcueta’s treatise is arranged as a commentary on a question in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, iia iiae, q. 91, ‘De assumptione divini nominis ad invocandum per laudem’ [On the assumption of the Divine Name to be invoked through praise].26 This is divided into two articles: in the first, ‘Utrum Deus sit ore laudandus’ [Whether God should be praised by the mouth], Aquinas considers whether, if God is above all praise (Ecclus. 43: 33), he should be praised with the mouth (Ps. 62: 6), distinguishing between the worship that is God’s due and the praise that is due for his effects, the things that he has done for us. However, vocal praise is useless unless it comes from the heart; external praise must call forth interior affect and induce others to praise God. Moreover, God should not be praised for his own sake but for ours. In the second article, ‘Utrum cantus sint assumendi ad laudem divinam’ [Whether songs are to be adopted for praising God], having cited passages from Scripture and Jerome that suggest music should not be used, Aquinas counters with the example of St Ambrose and then, adducing Aristotle, Boethius and Augustine, asserts that spiritual praise can also lead to devotion when sung. Jerome 24 The mention of vihuelas and harps in 1545 is surprising (though not in the seven
teenth century), since the ministrels normally played wind instruments; see enneth Kreitner, ‘Minstrels in Spanish Churches, 1400–1600’, Early Music 20 K (1992), pp. 533–46.
25 ‘nunca me agrado aquella tan grande tardança, de que algunos usan entre la
c onsagration de la hostia y del caliz, mayormente en la Missa mayor u otra, do se tañe quando se alça’ (p. 317).
26 Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Opera omnia, Cum Commentariis
Thomae de Vio Caietani Ordinis Praedicatorum, ix (Rome, 1897), pp. 294–7.
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criticised only theatrical song; simple song is permitted. Explicating Aristotle (Politics 8. 1341a18–20), Aquinas states that the use of instruments moves the soul more to delight than to a good internal disposition. Instruments were used in the Old Testament ‘because the people were rather hard and carnal’. Finally, delight in song removes the soul from the consideration of what is sung; thus ‘if anyone should sing out of devotion, let him consider attentively what he is singing’. Cajetan, taking these two articles together in his commentary (1507–22), stresses that one should not sing with the idea that the song itself is pleasing to God, nor should one sing for one’s own or another’s delight during the Divine Office. As to instruments, he remarks (rather surprisingly) that in Aquinas’s day organs were not used, as they still were not used in the Pope’s presence. From the Aristotelian quotation it would follow that organs may not be used in church; however, the long-standing custom may be tolerated if they are used to increase devotion, but they are illicit if they are a cause of delight, as with song. But what if the organs play secular songs? Is it a mortal sin? Some think it is. Others say that the sound abstracts the mind from the material; the sound that one person applies to vain material, another may apply to spiritual material. Now it is possible, Cajetan says, to introduce secular melodies in two ways, either per se, for the sake of playing secular music, or per accidens, that is, merely for the sake of the sound. As to the first, if the matter is not only vain but provocative of indecency, it is manifestly a mortal sin, not only in church but outside it. If it is merely vain, then the sin of superstition, whose first species is worship in an inappropropriate manner, is not entirely lacking, and superstition is a mortal sin. But if the material is played only for the sake of its consonances, then the organist is excused from that sin if he would not have played it had he known. However, a very grave and perhaps mortal sin of sacrilege is committed by those who intentionally mix in such worldly things that if expressed in words could not be excused; when that intention is lacking, the act is not inherent sinful, but may become so by reason of use, if such sounds are normally used for music unbefitting a service, such as theatrical music, or of outcome, if listeners’ minds are usually aroused by it to bad or vain things. The sin may be mortal if some sound somewhere commonly incites to lust or distracts from things divine, especially the clerics. If played with a pious intention, such as to console the sick or make the souls of the evil-minded more inclined to divine things, the sin is alleviated, though not totally excused, for evil is not to be done that there may come good (Rom. 3: 8). Cajetan’s remarks are directed at organists, but they would have equal validity if applied to singers who introduce secular music into the Divine Office by singing masses on secular cantus firmi and parody masses based on love songs; even contrafacta could fall into this category.
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At the end of the sixteenth century, Giovenale Ancina recalled the words of Cajetan in the preface to his collection of three-voice laude, Tempio armonico della Beatissima Vergine (1599), but not the Cardinal’s spirit, for he claimed that removing ‘obscene, lascivious or filthy’ words from a composition and substituting a sacred text would make the music entirely suitable.27 But all the theological pronouncements in the world will not vouch for the heart and mind of the listener: for some, the music of Arcadelt’s Il bianco e dolce cigno will evoke no more than a dying swan; for others, remembering the words ‘di mille mort’il dì sarei contento’, another type of death will come to mind; for the musically innocent, the consonances may waft their souls heavenward. Sinning is as sinning does.
•
I offer this essay in homage to Reinhard Strohm, not that he has ever, to my knowledge, dealt with the topic, but his work is so wide-ranging that perhaps he has, in some small corner. At any rate, there is no entry for sin in the index of his magnum opus The Rise of European Music. In writing this article, Franz Körndle was most helpful; I owe him thanks for sending me offprints of two articles, and especially for giving me a photocopy of the 1578 edition of the relevant pages in Azpilcueta’s treatise. I owe thanks too to Tess Knighton, Kenneth Kreitner, Bernadette Nelson, Michael Noone and Owen Rees, who kindly offered comments and suggestions. As always, I have benefited from Leofranc Holford-Strevens’s critical reading.
appendix Parallel passages concerning polyphonic music in Martín de Azpilcueta, Commento en romance (Coimbra, 1545) and Enchiridion sive manuale, de oratione et horis canonicis (Rome, 1578, with variants in the Lyons, 1597 edition), chapter 16. The footnotes appear in the margin in the original; they are numbered irregularly in the Spanish text. El .xviii. peccar tambien los, que por mostrar su voz, y porque sean oydos, sin saber contrapunto, ni por arte, ni por uso cantan, y como dizen chantrean contra todo punto y toda buena consonantia en los officios divinos, dando que reyr a los unos, y que murmurar a los otros, y por conseguiente dando, y tomando occasion de distraher a si mismos, y a los que los oyen …
xviii. Peccare eos, qui ut vocem suam ostentent, & ut audiantur, non callentes arte nec usu cantum, quem contrapunctum vocant, canunt illud, & ut aiunt, cantillant contra omne punctum, & omnem bonam harmoniam in divinis officijs alijs ridendi, alijs vero obmurmurandi ansam præbentes; & per consequens dantes, & sumentes occasionem distrahendi se ipsos, & auditores a debita attentione …
27 See Marco Bizzarini, Luca Marenzio, trans. James Chater (Aldershot, 2003),
p. 232.
Blackburn • How to Sin in Music [p. 272] El .xix. peccar oy comunmente los mas de los que a las horas canonicas, y Missa cantan canto de organo. Peccar iten por conseguiente los que esto procuran, sin el remedio dello devido. Lo uno, porque comunmente oy los cantores mientra non cantan parlan y hazen tanto ruydo, que a todo el choro desasossiegan, y no solamente no dan, pero quitan la attention al officio devida, y la contemplation de Dios, y sus cosas celestiales, y mientra cantan hazen tantos, y tan diversos gestos, y tan poco devotos, que mas distrahen a los que los miran con ellos que con su melodia atrahen. Lo otro, porque para aumentar la attention, y devotion propria, o agena se permittio el canto en el officio divino segun los papas,r y S. doctores lo determinan.s y este canto de organo es comunmente causa, que non se oya la letra que se canta, y menos se entienda, y por conseguiente quita las dos de las tres maneras de attender que ay sobredichas, mayormente entre aquellos Alemanes, Flamencos, y Franceses, que non explican la letra, diziendo que por solo el canto, sin las fuercas della los buenos cantores han de mover a sus oyentes. A lo qual es conseguiente obrar oy este canto comunmente lo contrario de aquello, para que se hallo, y permittio el canto en los officios divinos, y por conseguiente, ser abuso, y peccado.y Lo otro, porque dan ocasion a que quasi todos los choristas se salgan de sus sillas, y entre si uno con otro se hablen, burlen, rian, y negocien, mayormente quando el un verso tañe el organo, y el otra cantan los cantores de su canto. Ca como non oyen bien lo que se canta [p. 273] y menos lo pueden entender y no es facil de subir a la altura de la conversacion divina sin alguna escalera, o cuerda de algun buen dicho leydo u oydo, baxan a la humana, por no poder estar los entendimientos mayormente agudos sin pensar en algo. Lo otro, por que esta vedado en derecho que ningun canto de organo se cante a Missa, y a las otras horas canonicas, como lo muy largamente prove arriba.c Lo otro porque aquel vedamiento hizo por muchas razones, que con mucha elegantia, y no menos providencia toco el Papa Iohan .22. en el decreto,d do esto vedo enseñandonos de camino, porque el canto se permitte en el officio divino, y es bueno a pesar de los
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xix. Peccare hodie communiter aliquot cantores, qui in horis canonicis, & Missa canunt cantum organicum. Eos item per consequens, qui eum non adhibito remedio, ne peccetur, procurant. Tum quod comuniter hodie cantores, dum non canunt, fabulantur, & tantum strepitum excitant, ut totum chorum inquietent, & non modo non excitant, verum adimunt attentionem, & devotionem officio debitam, & contemplationem Dei, rerumque Divinarum, quin & dum canunt, tam parum, modestis gestibus utuntur, ut magis eos aspicientes distrahunt, quam sua melodia attrahant. Tum quia, ut augeretur attentio, & devotio propria, vel aliena, permissus fuit cantus in officio divino, uti Pontifices,a & Sancti Doctores determi[p. 251]nant,b præsertim Ioannes xxij.c in hęc verba. Ideo [1597: Inde] etenim in ecclesijs Dei psalmodia cantanda pręcipitur, ut fidelium devotio excitetur. In hoc nocturnum, diurnumque officium, & Missarum celebritates assidue a Clero, ac populo sub maturo tenore, distinctaque gradatione cantantur, ut eadem distinctione, & maturitate collibeant, & [1597: collibeant, & maturitate] delectent: hęc ille [hęc ille not in 1597]. At is cantus organicus communiter est causa, ut non audiantur, minusque intelligantur voces, quę canuntur, & consequenter adimit duas species supradictarum trium attentionum, præsertim apud Germanos, Flandros, & Gallos, qui vix explicant verba, asserentes solo cantu, citra vim & significationem ullam verborum, peritos cantores movere debere auditores. Cui consequens est, hodie communiter cantum operari contrarium ei, ob quod inventus, & in officijs divinis permissus fuit, ac proinde frequenter esse abusum, & peccatum.d Tum quia dant occasionem, ut fere omnes alii, qui in choro sunt, relictis suis sedilibus, ad alienas se approximent, & mutuo colloquantur, iocentur, rideant, & negotientur, potissimum cum alternatim versum unum organa, et alterum cantores cantus organi concinunt. Nam cum non bene audiant, & minus intelligant id, quod canitur, cumque non sit facile ipsis ascendere ad fastigium conversationis divinæ sine verborum quæ canuntur intellectu (qui serviat pro scala, & gradu) descendunt ad
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Music as Social and Cultural Practice
herejes antiguos en nuestro tiempo por nuestros peccados renovados,e que antes del toco. S. Aug.f y despues S. Tho.g Lo otro, porque deleytarse hombre mas, o querer a otro mas deleytar con el canto en los officios divinos, que con la letra peccado es segun S. Augustin confessoh por estas palabras: Cum mihi accidit, ut me amplius cantus, quam res, quæ cantatur moveat: penaliter me peccare confiteor, & tunc mallem non audire cantantem. Quando me acontece moverme mas por el canto que por la cosa cantada, confiesso que penalmente pecco, y entonces mas queria no oyr al que canta. Lo otro, porque para ser licito el canto en los divinos officios dos cosas son necessarias. La una, que non se cante por dar o tomar delectation. La otra que no se cante con pensamiento de que lo cantado por si agrada mas a Dios, que lo rezado, como lo bien provo aquel car[p. 274]denal doctissimo.i Entiendo empero lo primero del fin principal, que no ha de ser el deleyte. Ca con tanto que el fin principal del que canta, o lo procura sea de espertar la devotion propria, o agena, bien puede menos principalmente, querer agradar a si, o a los otros oyentes para algun buen fin, segun lo arribah a otro proposito dezia, y en otra parte provava.i No sin causa dixe al comienço deste corollario del canto de organo. Porque el contrapunto, que non estorva el llano licito es, conforme a lo que el mismo papa Iohan .22. despues de vedar el canto de organo dezia por aquellas palabras: Per hoc autem non intendimus prohibere, quin interdum diebus festis precipue, sive solemnibus in missis, & præfatis divinis officijs aliquæ consonantiæ, quæ melodiam sapiunt, puta octavę, quintæ, quartæ, & huiusmodi supra cantum ecclesiasticum simplicem proferantur sic tamen, ut ipsius cantus integritas illibata permaneat, & nihil ex hoc de bene memorata musica immutetur: maxime cum huiusmodi consonantiæ auditum demulceant, devotionem provocent, & psallentium Deo animos torpere non sinant. Por esto empero no queremos vedar, que no se pronuncien a las vezes, mayormente las fiestas principales, o solemnes, en las
humanam, quia intellectus [1597: intellectum] potissimum acuti, quales sunt ut plurimum ecclesiasticorum, ad aliquid semper agendum sunt propensi, nequeuntque esse ociosi. Tum quia vetitus est cantus organicus in Missa, & alijs horis canonicis per prædictum Ioannem xxii.e de Illustrissimorum Cardinalium consilio, per multa, & magna verba nervosis innixa rationibus: Tum quod delectari, aut alium delectare velle in officiis divinis magis cantu, quam verbis, est peccatum, uti confitetur B. Augustinusf in hęc verba: Cum mihi accidit, ut me amplius cantus, quam res quæ cantatur [1597: canitur] moveat, poenaliter me peccare confiteor, & tunc [p. 252] mallem non audire cantantem. Tum quia ut sit licitus cantus in divinis officijs duo sunt necessaria. Alterum, ut non canatur delectationis dandæ, vel accipiendę gratia. Alterum ne canatur existimando, quo cantantum per se magis arrideat Deo, quam recitatum, uti recte probavit Cardinalis Caietanus.g Intelligo tamen horum prius de fine principali, id est, quod delectatio non debet esse finis principalis cantus. Nam si finis principalis canentis, aut cantare procurantis sit excitare devotionem propriam, vel alienam, recte potest minus principaliter velle sibi, vel alijs audientibus aliquo bono fine placere, uti suprah ad aliud propositum diximus & alibii probavimus. Non abs re vero in principio huius corollarij dixi de cantu organico, contrapunctus [1597: 2 words] enim qui non turbat Gregorianum, sive planum licitus et, iuxta ea, quę ipsemet Ioan. xxij. postquam vetuisset cantum organicum, in hęc verba dixit. Per hoc autem non intendimus prohibere, quin interdum diebus festis pręcipue, sive solennibus, in Missis, & præfatis divinis officijs aliquę consonantiæ, quę melodiam sapiunt, puta octavę, quintę, quartæ, & huiusmodi, supra cantum ecclesiasticum simplicem proferantur; Sic tamen, ut ipsius cantus integritas illibata permaneat, & nihil ex hoc de bene memorata musica immutetur: maxime cum huiusmodi consonantiæ auditum demulceant, devotionem provocent, & psallentium Deo animos torpere non sinant, hęc ibi [hęc ibi not in 1597]. Dixi supra (aliquot cantores) quia multi adeo modeste devoteque canunt, ut de Deo, deque hominibus bene mereantur,
Blackburn • How to Sin in Music missas, y en los otros officios divinos algunas consonantias que tengan sabor de melodia .s. octavas, quintas, quartas y otras semejantes sobre el canto ecclesiastico, y llano con tanto, que la entereza, quede incorrupta y nada de su antigua musica se mude. Porque tales consonantias ha[p. 275]lagan al oydo, provocan a devotion, y los animos de los que cantan no los permitte entorpecer. Esto me parece, que platican las religiosas desta ciudad [marginal note: Cantoras de los monasterios de Coymbra dignas ser de loor et imitacion.] dignas de ser por todo el mundo imitadas, que a tanto mayor devocion mueven a los oyentes, quanto mas attenta, mesurada, callada, devota, grave y concertadamente cantan a vozes diversas, sin corromper ni mudar un punto de lo llano. Dixe tambien comunmente al dicho comienço deste corollario. Porque algunas vezes se ayuntan cantores tambien callados, tan mesurados, tan devotos, tambien compuestos, que con humildad y devotion cantan un mote u otra cosa, que no es de obligation, o de tal manera cantan lo obligatorio, que tambien o mejor se oye, entiende y mueve la letra cantandola ellos assi, que llanamente en el qual caso por ventura se podria limitar el dicho decreto del dicho Papa Iohan .22. que aqui no determino, remittiendome a lo que mas largo escrivo sobre esto en otra parte.m r
Extravag. 1. Johan .22. de vit. et ho. cleri. Thom. 2. Sec. q. 91. art. 2 y Arg. 1. Legata in utiliter. ff. de admi. leg. et. c. Ad nostram. de appella. c In. c. de hymnis supra ead. dist. d In extravag. 1. Johan .22. de vi. et hon. cleri. e Quod late aperi et persequitur Thomas vualdensis de sacramentalibus. c. 17. 18. et 19. f Lib. 9. confess. g 2. Sec. q. 91. ar. 2. h Lib. 10. confess. i 2. Sec. q. 91. art. 1 h In notabili. 6. n. 12 i c. Inter verba. xi. q. 3. pag. 8. n. 280. et pag. 89 n. 390 m In c. de himnis supra ead. d. s
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præsertim in urbe, & maxime in capella Papę, ad quam de cuiusque gentis artis musicæ callentissimis, & de huiusmodi callentissimis moribus probatissimi deliguntur, & tali cantu organico utuntur, ut eum minime comprehendere videantur rationes, quibus pręfatus Ioan. xxij. cantum organicum prohibuit. Quæ videtur ratio germana, quare in tota urbe non obstante dicta extravagante, usitatur cantus organicus, qui nec au[p. 253]ditum, nec intellectum verborum, quæ cantantur, impedit, ut postquam in urbem appuli animadverti. * Istud videtur in usu esse Sanctimonialibus huius civitatis [1597: Conimbricensibus instead] dignis, quas universus orbis imitetur, quę ad tanto maiorem devotionem excitant auditores, quo attentius, modestius, humilius, devotius, gravius, & convenientius canunt vocibus diversis, non corrupto, vel immutato puncto cantus Gregoriani. Dixi etiam in dicto principio huius corollarii, (Communiter) quia aliquando conveniunt cantores tam modesti, tam compositi, & devoti, qui cum humilitate canunt unum motettum, vel aliud quippiam, quod non est obligatorium, aut ita canunt obligatorium, ut ęque bene, vel melius audiatur, intelligatur, & moveat litera, eis sic canentibus, quam si Gregorianum, & planum cantum canerent. In cuiusmodi cantu non habere locum dictum decretum pręfati Ioan. xxii. dici potest. Quod tamen, ut cætera omnia, Sanctissimi Do. Nos. iudicio submitto. a
Extrav. 1. Io. 22 de vita & honest. cler. inter communes b Thom. 2. sec. q. 91 art. 2 c in dicta extravag. d Arg. 1. legata inutiliter ff. de adimen. leg. &c. Ad nostram de appellat. e In prædicta extrava. f Lib. 10. Confession. [1597: cap. 33] g 2. sec. qu. 91. art. 1 h In notab. 6 nu. 12 i c. Inter verba 11. q. 3. n. 280 & pag. 89 nu. 390
100 Music as Social and Cultural Practice El xx. corollario, es ser causa de gran lastima ver tantos yerros como se hazen oy cerca del canto, assi por los cantores, como por los oyentes en los officios divinos. Ca unos mas estiman el saber cantarlos, que el saber entendellos. Otros piensan ser el canto por si cosa muy agradable a Dios, con no ser mas de una cerimonia inventada para despertar la devotion del que canta u oye. Otros antes permittiran y mandaran dexar o acortar una predication, que un buen canto, vereys procurar a una parte, que los [p. 276] kyries, la gloria, la Alleluya, y el Credo se canten muy prolixos, y a otra mueren, porque el sermon dura una hora, y aun ay quien sale a almorzar de la predication, quien se duerme en ella, o no la escucha, y esta muy attento al canto, no para tomar lo por escalera y medio de subir a la contemplation de Dios, como se devria, sino para apascentar sus oydos que se iacta tenerlos muy musicos, y para dezir: O como canta hulano. Otros vereis gastar ciento, quinientos, mil ducados, y aun un cuento en cantores, que no saben latin, livianos, viciosos, y desatinados, y dudan de dar ciento a un predicador doctissimo, grave, virtuoso, y muy concertado, valiendo mastres sermones suyos delante de Dios, que quanto todo el año cantan los otros, y aun oxala no valiesse nada, con tanto que no dañassen al choro, y a las almas de los mismos, que cantan, y oyen con las parlas, gestos, y desassosiegos que Dios sabe. Otros vereis que mientra cantan tienen gran cuydado de no perder un punto de su canto. Pero de pensar en lo que cantan, y poner los ojos en Dios y tenellos en el ahincados ninguno, y mientra non cantan parlan, rien o riñen, y andan tanto, que ni oyen oration, ni epistola, ni Evangelio, ni aun prefation, ni Pater noster, sino para solo effecto de responder al sacerdote, en lo qual aun muchas vezes se descuydan. Y estos van muy contentos de si, y de que han servido a Dios mucho aquel dia, con non haver cumplido aun el mandamiento de oyr la Missa. Pues no basta oyrla desta manera por lo arriba dicho.
xx. Corollarium est, magnæ miserationis causam esse errores, qui hodie circa cantum tam a cantoribus, quam auditoribus in officiis Divinis fiunt. Alii enim pluris faciunt nosse canere, quam cantata intelligere, Alii existimant cantum per se esse rem Deo valde gratam, quum tamen non sit aliud, quam coeremonia quædam ad excitandam devotionem canentium, vel audientium inventa. Alii, qui potius permittunt, & iubent omitti, vel abbreviari unam bonam concionem, quam bonum cantum. Videas quosdam, qui procurant, ut (Kyrie, Gloria, Alleluia, & Credo) valde prolixe canantur, qui tamen non ferunt, quod concio unam horam duret: Sunt item, qui egrediuntur concione ad ientandum, & qui in ea dormiant vel illam male auscultent, qui tamen ijdem sunt attentissimi ad cantum, non quatenus est scala, & gradus ascendendi ad divina contemplandum, uti oportet, sed ad pascendum suas aures, quas iactitant se habere valde musicas, & ut dicant. O qualiter ille canit. Sunt qui insu[p. 254]munt centum, quingentos, vel mille aureos, quin & myriadem in cantores latini sermonis ignaros, vanos, vitiosos, & fatuos, & renuunt dare centum alicui concionatori doctissimo, gravi, virtutibusque prædito, & valde composito, cuius tres conciones coram Deo pluris sunt, quam aliorum totius anni cantus & garritus. Atque utinam solum nullius valoris foret, & non noceret choro, & animabus ipsorum, & canentium, & audientium, ut sileam loquacitates, gestus, & inquietudinem, quæ Deus novit. Sunt qui dum canunt magnopere solliciti sunt, ne vel unius puncti sui canctus [sic] iacturam faciant, qui tamen nil cogitant de eo, quod cantant, nec oculos suos in Deum defigunt, imo dum cessant a cantu, fabulantur, rident, aut rixantur, & huc illuc ita vagantur, ut neque satis audiant orationem, quę collecta dicitur, neque epistolam, neque evangelium, imo nec præfationem, neque Pater noster, nisi duntaxat, ut respondeant sacerdoti, quod etiam facere non satis curant. Hi tamen sibi suffeni, [note added in small type at end of conclusion in 1597: Hi tamen sibi suffeni. Suffenus poeta fuit qui licet in suis esset versibus ineptissimus, mirum tamen in modum sibi ipsi in eis placebat, unde transfertur ad eos qui in quelibet arte sibi
Blackburn • How to Sin in Music 101 mirum in modum placent, & quoscumque dios præ se contemnunt. Inde Catullus in epigram. sic scripsit. Quem non in aliqua re vedere Suffenum, Possis.] & contenti, videntur magnum eo die obsequium Deo pręstitisse, quum ne pręceptum quidem de audiendo Missam adimpleverint, quando quidem non sufficit illam ita audire, per supradicta.k k in
p. 277. El .xxi. que los herejes antiguos en nuestro tiempo renovados non han quitado del todo el canto de los officios divinos sin gran occasion. Porque los peccados que del abuso del canto y cantores nacen son tantos y tan patentes, que una sin fin de vezes seria menos mal dezirlos rezados, que cantados en tal manera, y con tal intention y tantos yerros. No tienen empero justa causa ni razon. Lo uno, porque aun que cierto es necessario emendar, y quitar tales faltas. Pero no es para ello necessario quitar del todo el canto. Ca basta quitar su abuso, de que ellas nacen. Lo otro, porque quitado del todo el canto, quitadas quedanr daslas commodidades y provechos, que del nacen grandes.s Por lo qual conviene mucho al servicio de Dios, y honrra de la sancta madre yglesia que los cantores sean modestos devotos, concertados, callados, y que teman de offender a Dios, a cuya magestad, y su servitio endereçan principalmente su canto, y no al paladar y oydos del pueblo, conforme a aquello se S. Pablo:t Cantantes & psalentes in cordibus vestris domino. cantando y tañiendo en vuestros coraçones al señor. Lo qual luego lo haran los cantores si conocieren por obras y mercedes de los principes y prelados, que el canto desacompañado de la virtud y devotion tienen en poco, y al acompañado dellas en mucho. r
Arg. 1. Si servum § 1. ff. de acti. emper. c. Veniens de presbit. non bap. s Extravag. 1. de vit. et hon. cleri. Joh. 22. dixi in c. de himnis. supra ead. t Ad Ephes. 5. et ad Colocens. 3.
ca. 13
xxi. Quod hæretici veteres nostro hoc sęculo renovati, & ab inferis revocati, qui omnino sustulerunt cantum Divinorum officiorum, iniustissima id de causa fecerunt: Tum quia licet multi cantores modis præfatis peccent, non tamen sunt pauci, qui debita cum reverentia cantent. Tum quia satis erat emendare, & tollere abusus, & errores, & defectus cantus, eo minime sublato, sufficiebat enim removere abusum, bono usu relicto. Tum quia tollere omnino cantum, esset tollere magnas commoditates ex eo manantes,l quas Ioan. xxij.m insinuavit, & nos supran explicavimus. Quocirca convenientissimum foret cultui Divino, & honori S. Matris Ecclesiæ, cantores esse modestos, devotos, & bene compositos, & timentes offendere Deum, cuius Maiestati, & obsequio cantum [p. 255] suum potissimum devoverent, non autem gustui, oblectationi, & auditui populi, iuxta illud S. Paulio Cantantes & psallentes, in cordibus vestris Domino, quod facile facerent cantores, si per opera, & beneficia Principum, & Prælatorum, cognoscerent parvi eos facere cantum virtute & devotione destitutum, & magni eius comitatum. l
Arg. 1. si servum §. 1. ff. de actio, empt. c. veniens de presbyt. non baptizato. m Extravag. 1. de vita & honest. clerico. inter communes n In c. de hymnis supra eadem o Ad Ephes. 5 & ad Colos. 3
102 Music as Social and Cultural Practice El .xxii. que peccan los que el dia de la navidad del redemptor a los que piden bendition para dezir sus litiones les dizen pullas, o una maldition de chocarreria, que a todo el choro, y pueblo provoque a risa. Peccar tambien los, que aquel dia, u otros cantan cantiones vulgares, y prophanas, [p. 278] aunque de suyo non sean desonestas, u vanas durante ell [sic] officio divino. Porque todo esto distrahe de la attention al officio divino devida, como de suyo se esta claro, y lo determino el concilio de Basilea,z y aun que la intention pia de regozijar la fiesta, y hazella mas alegre adelgaza el peccado, pero no lo quita del todo, segun lo bien determina un Cardenala hablando del son, y añadiendo, que non solamente peccan los que esto hazen, pero aun los, que en ello consienten y lo procuran. z
a
In sess. 21. tit. 8 bis qui in missa In 2. Sec. q. 21 art. 1
El .xxiii. ser poco agradable a Dios cantar en las yglesias y mezclar con la spiritualidad, y gravedad del officio divino la prophanidad y liviandad de una invention Francesa muy recebida ya en españa, con que cantando reprehesentan el son de los atambores y trompetas, el cavalgar, el tomar de la lança, el pelear y los golpes dellartileria, con ellaluoroto dela guerra. Ca aunque esta representation de suyo no sea deshonesta, y para convites, y passatiempos seglares sea buena, Pero muy agena es de los divinos officios, y su fin, que es levantar las almas y spiritus a pensar, contemplar, y afficionarse a Dios, y amarlo mas, que a todo lo al amable, y aborrecer el peccado mortal, que del nos aparta mas que a todo lo al aborrecible.
xxii. peccare illos qui ipso die Nativitatis Redemptoris petentibus benedictionem ad dicendum suas lectiones iocose male imprecantur, ita ut totum chorum, & populum provocent ad risum. Peccare etiam eos, qui eo die, aut aliis canunt cantiones vulgare, & prophanas: licet de se non sint inhonestæ, aut vanæ, durante officio Divino, omnia enim hæc distrahunt ab attentione, & devotione officio divina debita, ut de se patet, & determinavit statutum Gallicanæ Ecclesię. p Et licet intentio pia celebrandi festum, & solemnizandi illud extenuet peccatum, non tamen tollit omnino illud, uti determinavit recte quidam cardinalis Caiet. [1597: Cætanus]q loquendo de sono, & addendo, quod non solum peccant qui hoc agunt, verum etiam, qui consentiunt, & procurant. p tit.
q
de his qui in Miss. In 2. sec. q. 91 ar. 1
xxiii. parum placere Deo miscere spirituali gravitati divini officii prophanum quandam, & levem in Galliis inventam cantilenam [1597 edition adds ‘que La guerre vocatur’], iam nimis in Hispaniis receptam, qua fere ad vivum repręsentatur tumultus praelii cum sonitu tympanarum & tubarum, & toto strepitu bellico. Nam licet hæc repręsentatio de se non sit inhonesta, & conviviis, recreationique sæculari sit apta, inepta tamen valde est officiis divinis quieta mente dicendis, & eorum fini, qui est erigere animas & spiritus ad meditandum divina, & ad Deum super omnia diligibilia diligendum, & peccatum mortiferum (quod nos ab eo separat) super omnia odibilia odio habendum, ad quæ parum promovet strepitus ille bellicus magis ferociens, quam leniens audientium animos.
• II • art and social process music in court and urban societies
• 6 • Traditions and Practices in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Sacred Polyphony The Use of Solo Voices with Instrumental Accompaniment David Bryant & Elena Quaranta
M
odern understanding of uses and performance practices in Italian fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sacred polyphony is based largely on investigations of important institutions (court chapels, cathedrals, important sanctuaries such as Sant’ Antonio in Padua) and important occasions. By virtue of their special status such forums are, however, exceptions to general rules at work in Italy: evidence of what is more characteristic about sacred music of any period is not to be found where repertories and practices are deliberately conceived to transcend the quotidian. In order to identify common practices and grasp the continuity of traditions, systematic research on the lesser-known, yet richly informative, archives of minor institutions (parish and monastic churches, guilds and confraternities) provides a broader and hence more reliable perspective. Some recent studies have taken this direction. However, several of them are partial, insofar as they are based on data regarding only female monasteries or important confraternities; in our view, productive practices are best investigated as a complex but unitary system which embraces institutions of every kind. Our essay draws on a view of medieval and Renaissance church polyphony based fundamentally on the idea of tradition and continuity in the context of a widespread and daily use of the repertories, as we have described elsewhere, and looks at one aspect of Renaissance performance practice through specific evidence interpreted in the context of this new perspective.
Cf. Elena Quaranta, Oltre San Marco: Organizzazione e prassi della musica nelle
chiese di Venezia nel Rinascimento, Studi di Musica Veneta xxvi (Florence, 1998), and David Bryant and Elena Quaranta, ‘Per una nuova storiografia della musica sacra da chiesa in epoca pre-napoleonica’ and ‘Come si consuma (e perché si produce) la musica sacra da chiesa? Sondaggi sulle città della Repubblica Veneta e qualche appunto storiografico’, Produzione, circolazione e consumo: Consuetudine e quotidianità della polifonia sacra nelle chiese monastiche e parrocchiali dal tardo Medioevo alla fine degli Antichi Regimi, ed. D. Bryant and E. Quaranta, Quaderni di Musica e Storia V (Bologna, 2006), respectively pp. 7–16, 17–65.
106 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
daily practice and tradition Our research on the uses of music was conducted with reference to sample cities of various sizes and geographical locations in the Venetian Republic: Venice, Treviso, Conegliano, Salò, Cividate Camuno (in the Valcamonica near Brescia), Šibenik, Veglia and Candia. Studies of other urban centres on the Italian peninsula suggest that the results are no less applicable in their essentials to cities beyond the historical confines of the Veneto. In synthesis, these results are as follows: 1. The musical activities of court chapels and major churches represent a mere fraction of activities as a whole. In Venice, not only the Scuole Grandi (documented in studies by Jonathan Glixon) but also several of the most important monastic churches and richest parish churches maintained more or less permanent groups of musicians. Churches without their own cappella musicale – that is, the majority of churches – engaged professional singers and instrumentalists for their most important feast days. In particular, musicians were employed by some churches during the greatest feasts in the liturgical year: Christmas, Easter and major Marian celebrations (musical activity also increased, sometimes significantly, during Advent and Lent). Feasts honouring a church’s patron and a monastic order’s founder or patron saint used musicians. The dedication of a church might be similarly celebrated. Lay confraternities, which maintained most of the side altars in parish and monastic churches, paid professional musicians on the occasion of their major feast days, especially days celebrating their patron saint (to whom the confraternity’s altar was normally dedicated). On the basis of what little archival documentation is presently available, it can be suggested that singers and instrumentalists were sometimes engaged in the context of liturgical functions normally belonging to the sphere of private (non-institutional) patronage as regards their musical content and other outward forms of worship: the first Masses of newly ordained priests, the ceremonies for the consecration of nuns, baptisms, marriages, funerals and Masses offered for the souls of the dead. Together, the eighty parish churches, the some ninety monastic churches and the over 200 confraternities of Venice and nearby islands sustained, during the entire sixteenth century (but also previously as well as later), a vast cycle of occasions on which music was performed, capable of guaranteeing daily bread for a large number of musicians. Other studies in Produzione, circolazione e consumo regard Florence, Siena, Rome,
Naples and various cities in Umbria.
Cf., in particular, Jonathan Glixon, Honoring God and the City: Music at the
Venetian Confraternities, 1260–1807 (New York, 2003).
Bryant & Quaranta • Traditions and Practices in Sacred Polyphony 107 While the musical chapel of St Mark’s was undoubtedly the most important in Venice, it is no less true that the ducal Basilica produced only a tiny fraction of musical performances in the city’s churches as a whole (perhaps no more than 5–10%). In this sense, the ‘best’, the ‘most beautiful’ and the ‘most representative’ cannot be seen as representing normal patterns of consumption and normal musical sounds. On the contrary, the institutional pre-eminence of St Mark’s (as a great and incomparable church of State) is such that its musical chapel (as a musical symbol of grandeur and pre-eminence) is quite removed from the normal parameters of production, consumption and art. The Basilica and its musical chapel must be seen as veritable exceptions to the general rule, both in terms of their economic potential (insofar as capable of employing an exceptional number of exceptionally talented musicians) and their use of exceptional practices and repertories (the location of groups of musicians in the various pulpits and in the lofts overlooking the choir of the church for the performance of polychoral motets, the presence of unique texts and chants in the ducal liturgy). The unique musical establishment of St Mark’s had the task of providing the sound of what, in ecclesiastical and political terms, was a truly unique institution. 2. Archival research on musical practices in monastic and parish churches in other Veneto cities shows that patterns of sacred music consumption do not differ substantially from those already described for Venice. Only, for obvious reasons, the scale of the phenomenon changes. In sixteenth-century Treviso, for example, the cathedral choir was only one of eight more or less permanent groups of musicians whose activities can be documented in the city’s roughly forty churches. In the smaller Conegliano, archival documents from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries attest the existence of at least four church choirs. In both Treviso and Conegliano, the occasions on which music was performed in those churches which did not possess their own musical chapel corresponds to the model already described for Venice. 3. These practices, well documented for the sixteenth century, are nothing but the natural continuation of traditions that are deeply rooted in previous centuries. Though these traditions are only sporadically documented in the few surviving fourteenth- and fifteenth-century archival sources, their widespread acceptance is sometimes attested by the language used in these documents. Thus, we underline the importance of tradition in determining patterns of use and consumption of church music: the system remains substantially unvaried from the fourteenth century (and, we believe, even earlier: insufficient documentary evidence exists to corroborate or confute this assumption) to the fall of the anciens régimes. Above all, we believe, the use of polyphony may have been much less exceptional in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than has
108 Music as Social and Cultural Practice hitherto been supposed on the basis of the few surviving musical sources and compositions. If, as it seems, the data on the use of church music in Venice and the cities of the Venetian dominions were to represent a general situation, the received history of church polyphony would require substantial revision: present knowledge would have to be defined as representing the mere tip of an enormous iceberg. In the two articles cited in note 1, we underline not only the limitations of what we call the ‘history of exceptions’ – the tendency to study only the greatest, the best, the most representative (but not always the most characteristic), the innovative, and, consequently, the tendency to dedicate particular attention to cultural phenomena deliberately conceived as standing apart from the norm – but also the central role played by market demand in determining the quality and quantity of supply (of both performers and compositions). Above all, in the present context, it is important to note how the published repertories – which themselves represent the lion’s share of what music has survived from the sixteenth century – are, in reality, destined for use by hundreds of potential buyers and will not necessarily take account of the particular requirements of particular institutions with or without particular ceremonial necessities. The generally high level of consumption of music in the many parish and monastic churches taken together is in itself sufficient to guarantee continuity of practices – majority practices which, together, necessarily form the economic backbone of the entire productive system. This effect of continuity is further strengthened by the repetitive and rigidly hierarchical structure of the liturgy during which the music is performed: the recurrence of events on the same level of a fixed hierarchical scale, day after day and (cyclically) year after year, undoubtedly favours the standardisation and perpetuation of musical functions and practices (not to mention, in specific cases, the annual performance of the same compositions). Of course, widespread, repetitive and relatively standardised patterns of musical consumption in the many nonexceptional institutions provide fertile ground for music printing as a commercial activity: the economic success of (relatively) large-scale production is necessarily bound to the dictates of (relatively) large-scale consumption. Publishers invest money in the production of hundreds of copies which, over and above all questions of subventions and/or contractual stipulations which assign partial or total possession of copies to a particular patron, will be sold – presumably – for profit. The contents of at least a part of the printed musical repertories can be expected to reflect the economic necessities of production: A case in point is the use of Johannes de Quadris’s Lamentationes in St Mark’s,
Venice, until 1603 when they were replaced by settings by Giovanni Croce. Cf. Vincenzo Borghetti, ‘Johannes de Quadris’, MGG2, Personenteil 9, col. 1109.
Bryant & Quaranta • Traditions and Practices in Sacred Polyphony 109 the prospect of selling a few copies only to a small number of important institutions must surely have been less appealing to publishers than that of selling a large number of copies to a multitude of minor institutions or to the musicians who sang there more or less regularly or on a piecework basis. The economics of music printing presumably represented a powerful filter in determining the very survival of the different types of repertory: the most marketable pieces (prevalently, perhaps, the least complicated from a technical point of view, and the least bound to the particular needs of given institutions) are retained, to the expense of exceptional repertories, published only – or above all – on commission. In this specific context, it must be remembered that not only the ‘best’ musicians and cappelle musicali but also less able and frankly mediocre singers – the majority, as today – needed written music to perform. The needs of minor institutions and minor musicians were majority needs. For an adequate understanding of the genesis of the published musical repertories, it is thus necessary to take account of the activities not only of the ‘great’ but also – indeed, above all – of the many others, activities which together represent the foundations of the economy of music and musicians. Thoroughgoing investigation of how sacred music is consumed represents, in fact, the sine qua non for a broad-based and comprehensive analysis of the entire productive system in this sector, a necessary reference point for all those who made their living as copyists, publishers, singers or instrumentalists, operating individually or as part of a formally recognised group. The cyclical nature of the liturgical calendar and the repetitive nature of liturgical services guaranteed not only continuity of practices but also maximum economic security: composers, printers, performers and patrons alike were aware that their obligations – and, in the case of performers, earnings – remained substantially unchanged from one year to the next and they were thus more than willing to invest in written musical sources as producers or buyers.
the tradition of solo voices with instrumental accompaniment What sense of tradition, continuity and, at the same time, economic viability is embodied in the solo-voice music of Lodovico Viadana’s Cento concerti ecclesiastici (1602)? On the title page, the solo-voice style is described as a ‘new invention’ (‘nova inventione’). At the same time, Viadana, in his preface, explains how he composed these pieces because singers sometimes wished to perform in an organ, either with three voices, or two, or with one voice alone, [but] were forced through lack of compositions suitable to their purpose to take one, two or three parts of motets in five, six, seven or even eight parts. These … are full of long
110 Music as Social and Cultural Practice and repeated pauses … and sometimes separated by repeated breaks which render the style of performance either imperfect, or wearisome, or ugly and far from pleasing to listeners. The performance of church polyphony with only a few solo voices and organ accompaniment was, then, a fairly common practice; the fact that Viadana’s collection was reprinted at least eight times in Italy by 1612 is proof that the Concerti fell on fertile ground. How far back can the practice of performing sacred polyphony with solo voices and instrumental accompaniment be traced? Viadana himself states that ‘some of these concerti, which I composed five or six years ago while in Rome (when I thought of this new way [of composing]), found such favour among many singers and musicians that not only were they deigned worthy of very frequent performance in many of the most important places but they were also imitated with happy results and sent to be printed’; clearly, ‘solo’ performance of polyphonic motets was already common practice in these years. The following episodes, which span most of the sixteenth century, are documented fairly precisely by archival sources. All apparently testify to the use of solo vocal practices with instrumental accompaniment in the performance of church polyphony. 1. In a recent study on solo practices in late sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury Rome, Noel O’Regan notes that ‘references to singing with the organ (“con organo”, “su l’ organo”, “in organo”) are especially frequent in the liturgical diaries of the Jesuit-run Collegio Germanico from 1583 onwards’. He continues: ‘Volendo alle volte qualche cantore cantare in un organo o con tre voci, o con
due, o con una sola erano astretti per mancamento di compositioni a proposito loro di appigliarsi ad una o due o tre parti di motetti a cinque, a sei, a sette & anche a otto; le quali … sono piene di pause longhe e replicate … & alle volte ancora con disconvenevoli interpositioni disposte, lequali rendevano la maniera del canto o imperfetta o noiosa o inetta & poco grata a quelli che stavano ad udire’.
‘alcuni di questi concerti, che io composi cinque o sei anni sono ritrovandomi in
Roma (essendomi sovvenuto all’ ora questo novo modo), trovorno tanto favore appresso a molti cantori & musici che non solamente furno fatti degni di essere spessissime volte cantati in molti lochi principalissimi; ma alcuni ancora hanno pigliata occasione di imitargli felicemente, & darne alla stampa’.
Noel O’Regan, ‘Asprilio Pacelli, Ludovico da Viadana and the Origins of the
Roman Concerto Ecclesiastico’, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 6/1 (2000), para. 3.1; O’Regan quotes from Thomas D. Culley, Jesuits and Music, i: A Study of the Musicians Connected with the German College in Rome during the 17th Century and of their Activities in Northern Europe (Rome and St. Louis, 1970), pp. 76–87.
Bryant & Quaranta • Traditions and Practices in Sacred Polyphony 111 For example, during the Forty-hours devotion in January of that year two or three soloists sang some melancholy motets, including settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, on the organ every hour or so, which ‘gave great devotion to all’. In April a motet was sung ‘on the bourdon alone (or on some flute) with two or three voices’, while on June 9th, in place of the Deo Gratias after the Benedicamus Domino, a short motet for two voices was sung ‘nel organo’. This practice seems to have been encouraged by Michele Lauretano, rector of the Collegio Germanico from 1573 until 1587: his biographer Schrick tells us that he was happy if ‘now and then, either one voice alone, or several more supple voices, took, together with the organ, some particular verse, either from the psalms or the sacred hymns, or sang in between some skilfully elaborated song proper to the time, which they commonly call motets’. The assumption must be that the singers took one, two or more parts from an existing motet, with the organ supplying the missing parts. 2. O’Regan’s hypothesis that Rome is ‘a more forward-looking centre in this development than has hitherto been recognized’ may indeed be true (at least insofar as Rome is certainly not behind the times). On the contrary, his opinion that the north Italian ‘Viadana perhaps … learned more from Roman musicians during his stay there in the late 1590s than he was prepared to admit’ may seem less secure on the basis of what little documentation has hitherto surfaced in north Italian archives on the subject of solo-voice practices in church polyphony. In Treviso, for example, the performance of polyphonic church music by one or more vocal soloists with organ accompaniment appears to be described in documents of 1575, relating to the unauthorised performance of music in the church of the Dominican nuns of San Paolo on the feast of St Catherine of Siena, an important Dominican saint and dedicatee of a sumptuously decorated chapel in San Paolo. The singers and instrumentalists involved, mostly members of the Cathedral choir, were speedily brought before the ecclesiastical tribunal. One eyewitness, a certain Angelo Minotto, recounts as follows: Zappasorgo played the cornett; pre Pasquale and Lodovico, Vincenzo Massarotto’s brother, played the trombones; the singers were pre Latin, pre Donà, pre Mio, Ferrandin and a friar from Santa Margherita who sang the bass; Camillo Becignol also sang for a while; the Cathedral organist and choirboys were present; I was unable to see the person Noel O’Regan, ‘Asprilio Pacelli’, para. 3.1.
Cf. Giovanni D’ Alessi, La cappella musicale del Duomo di Treviso (1300–1633)
(Vedelago, 1954), pp. 125–6, with some inexactitudes.
112 Music as Social and Cultural Practice singing in the organ loft [‘in organo’], but I think the voice belonged to Francesco the tanner’s son, who is a friar at San Nicolò.10 It is, of course, impossible to identify the types of compositions performed or the number of polyphonic parts. Yet it can reasonably be inferred that the friar from San Nicolò, who was not clearly visible to the eyewitness but whose voice was distinctly audible, sang in proximity to the organist and, presumably, at some distance from the other performers, all of whom were apparently visible to the eyewitness. 3. A Venetian document of 1548 partially describes the duties of specially hired groups of singers and instrumentalists in the Franciscan church of San Giobbe during second Vespers of the patronal feast. One of the instrumentalists (a certain Zuan Maria da Bologna), after a heated discussion with some friars, was accused of heresy. The accusation derived specifically from a discussion regarding the Holy Scriptures, but – as described by another member of the group before the inquisitors of the Santo Uffizio – the ill-feeling between the friars and instrumentalists had its origins in an incident which occurred during Vespers: dicens ex se: In my opinion, the cause of the argument between the said Zuan Maria and the said friars was that, since we had to play at the first psalm, in the absence of the fifth member of our group we found a singer from St Mark’s who sang the fifth part of a motet. And the friars were unhappy with singing canto figurato; this, as far as I can see, was the reason for the argument. And because Zuan Maria is a little vainglorious, he asked for what reason [the friars] did not want canto figurato to be sung.11 The composition performed ‘at the first psalm’ is clearly identified as a motet; 10 ‘El Zappasorgo sonava el cornetto et li tromboni sonavano messer pre Pasquale
et il fradel de messer Vincenzo Massarotto che ha nome Lodovico; cantarono pre Latin, pre Donà, pre Mio, el Ferrandin et basso un fra de S. Margherita et aver per un pezzo cantà messer Camillo Becignol, erano li putti et l’ organista del Domo, in organo cantava un che non distinse, ma dalla voce el m’ha parso el fiol de messer Francesco scorzer, che era frate a S. Nicolò.’
11 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Santo Uffizio, b. 7, fasc. 8, quoted in Quaranta, Oltre
San Marco, p. 291: ‘dicens ex se: io penso chel principio del parlamento tra el ditto Zuan Maria et li ditti fratti fu che havendo noi da sonar al primo psalmo manchandone el quinto compagno trovassemo uno cantor de San Marco el qual cantò la quinta parte de uno moteto, et loro fratti hebbe a mal che se cantasse canto figurato et da questo naque el principio del parlamento per quanto posso pensare, et perché questo Zuan Maria è un pocho vanaglorioso [?simil]mente disse per qual causa non volevano che si cantasse canto figurato’.
Bryant & Quaranta • Traditions and Practices in Sacred Polyphony 113 had the fifth member of the group been present, an entirely instrumental ensemble would presumably have performed this piece.12 Yet the witness, himself a musician (and whose knowledge of contemporary musical practice cannot reasonably be doubted), clearly refers to the possibility of uniting solo voices and instruments in the performance of motets. In the present case, the solution was apparently makeshift: the fifth member of the instrumental group was substituted by a singer on one of the parts. Of particular interest is what might almost be described as the ‘arrogance’ of the musician subsequently accused of heresy, ‘a little vainglorious’, in enquiring ‘for what reason [the friars] did not want canto figurato to be sung’. Had performances of this kind not been regarded as normal, he could never have replied in this way. It seems reasonable, in the present context, to equate the term ‘canto figurato’ not with the type of music performed (the friars wanted a motet and got it: five instrumentalists had been engaged to play what was probably the same five-part music actually performed by a singer and four instrumentalists) but with the way in which the music was performed (the friars wanted an all-instrumental performance but got ‘canto figurato’: this was why they objected). 4. Frank A. D’ Accone documents a ceremony held in Siena Cathedral in honour of the emperor Charles V’s visit to the city in 1546: Charles … entered the cathedral through the main portal. When he reached the high altar he knelt for a few minutes in silent prayer, after which ‘a young boy up in the organ loft suavely sang a lovely motet’. Other ceremonies at the altar followed and at their conclusion the emperor, preceded by mace bearers, left the church and walked to the Petrucci palace, where he was to stay.13 5. An account book from the Venetian female convent of San Zaccaria lists the following payments for music on the occasion of the patronal feast in 1525: ‘four singers of canto figurato £. 18, three sopranos and the boy sang “in organo” 12 The practice of all-instrumental performance of motets – among them a lost piece
by Antoine Busnoys – is documented as far back as 1494 in a letter from the Venetian instrumentalist Giovanni Alvise trombon to Francesco Gonzaga. See, among others, Giulio Ongaro, ‘Gli inizi della musica strumentale a San Marco’, Giovanni Legrenzi e la cappella ducale di San Marco, ed. F. Passadore and F. Rossi, Quaderni della Rivista Italiana di Musicologia xxix (Florence, 1994), p. 218.
13 Frank A. D’ Accone, The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago and London, 1997), p. 669. D’ Accone quotes from Agostino Provedi, Relazione delle pubbliche feste date in Siena negli ultimi cinque secoli fino alla venuta dei reali sourani Ferdinando iii … e Maria Luisa Amalia (Siena, 1791), p. 32 (‘un fanciullo cantò molto soavemente in su l’ organo un leggiadro mottetto’).
114 Music as Social and Cultural Practice £. 2’.14 The indiscriminate dialectal use of verbs in the third person singular (‘cantò’) with singular or plural subjects prevents us from drawing firm conclusions as to who exactly sang ‘in the organ’. Yet it will not pass unnoticed that the expression ‘cantò in organo’, as it appears in the 1525 document, corresponds to the language used by Viadana in his preface to the 1602 Concerti. 6. In 1516 the Venetian confraternity of Sant’ Orsola, which maintained the homonymous altar in the Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, registers a series of payments for music during Mass and Vespers of its patronal feast: ‘to friar Vicenzo and companion singers [who] sang two Vespers and a Mass at our feast in canto figurato’, ‘to six piffari and trumpets who played on the vigil and day of the feast … i.e. Zuane and companions from the Fontego della Farina’ and ‘to the rev. Ettore who played his instrument and the boy who sang two Vespers and a Mass at our feast’.15 The following year, the account books identify friar Vicenzo and his companions as forming the cappella musicale of the host church; payments are also registered ‘to the singer, friar Battista, and companions’, ‘to Zuan Maria dal Cornetto’ and his group of players (the same group, presumably, as in the previous year), ‘to the rev. Ettor who played the instrument’ and to ‘a boy who sang with the said instrument’.16 That payments were made for transporting Ettore’s instrument to and from the church suggest that it was a positive organ; possibly the owner was the same ‘pre Ettore’ who was organist at the Scuola Grande of San Giovanni Evangelista in 1526.17 It is difficult not to conceive of the ‘boy who sang with the said instrument’ as a soloist.
a working hypothesis It is, of course, dangerous to generalise on the basis of a limited number of archival documents drawn from a few circumscribed areas: Rome (or, more precisely, the German College in Rome), Siena, Venice and nearby Treviso. 14 Documentation quoted in Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, p. 336: ‘4 cantorii da canto
figurato £. 18, tre sorani el puto cantò in organo £. 2’.
15 Documentation quoted ibid., pp. 143–4 and 306: ‘a messer fra Vicenzo ett
compagni chanttadori canttò ala nostra festa do vespori ett una messa a cantto figurao’, ‘a ttronbetti ett pifari n.o 6 sonò la vegilia ett el zorno dela festa … i qual fo quelli dal Fontego de la Farina, messer Zuane ett compagni’, ‘a messer pre Ettor che sonò con el suo instrumento ett el putto che canttò ala nostra festa do vespori ett una messa’.
16 Ibid., pp. 144 and 307: ‘a messer fra Battista canttador ett compagni’, ‘a ser Zuan
Maria dal Cornetto’, ‘a messer pre Ettor sonò l’ instrumento’, ‘uno putto canttò con el ditto instrumento’.
17 Glixon, Honoring God and the City, p. 142.
Bryant & Quaranta • Traditions and Practices in Sacred Polyphony 115 orking hypotheses are, however, legitimate. In our opinion, one such hypothW esis might read as follows. The performance of sacred polyphony with one or more solo voices and organ or other instrumental accompaniment was common practice throughout the sixteenth century. This continuity of performance practice provides an apparent link between what, in compositional terms, was Viadana’s ‘new invention’ of 1602 and the surviving polyphonic sources of the fifteenth and, to a lesser extent, early sixteenth centuries which tend to confine texting to one or more upper parts. The idea that textless parts in fifteenth-century church polyphony were largely instrumental, except for certain key passages such as the statements of the name of Christ in the Gloria (where the text is frequently present) or those places where texting follows the use of imitation, proposed by Heinrich Besseler, was challenged by Gilbert Reaney and, subsequently, by David Fallows, Alejandro Enrique Planchart and others,18 who substituted three alternatives: polytextual solutions which envisage, for example, the application to the lower voices of the cantus firmus text in a mass; the subdivision of long notes and ligatures to accommodate the text written out in full under the upper part(s); the vocalisation of lower voices without any text. In any case, it would seem that ‘a cappella ecclesiastical performance was the norm’.19 Yet, as all scholars agree, little clear-cut archival evidence has yet been found in support of this hypothesis. We might add: what few documents are specific with regard to the use of voices with or without instruments in the performance of church music are, in any case, products of exceptional institutions or exceptional circumstances and are not necessarily applicable to the majority use of church polyphony in the fifteenth century;20 Fallows’s a priori elimination of all ‘non-specific’ documentation – i.e. documentation which takes for granted the existence of a consolidated tradition requiring no specific comment – is 18 Guillaume Dufay, Opera Omnia, ii, ed. Heinrich Besseler (Rome, 1960), p. xv;
Gilbert Reaney, ‘Text Underlay in Early Fifteenth-Century Musical Manuscripts’, Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac on his 70th Birthday, ed. Gustave Reese and Robert Snow (Pittsburgh, 1969), pp. 245–51; David Fallows, ‘Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony, 1400–1474’, Studies in the Performance of Late Medieval Music, ed. Stanley Boorman (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 109–59; Alejandro Enrique Planchart, ‘Parts with Words and without Words: The Evidence for Multiple Texts in Fifteenth-Century Masses’, Studies in the Performance of Late Medieval Music, pp. 227–51.
19 James W. McKinnon, ‘Representation of the Mass in Medieval and Renaissance
Art’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 36 (1978), pp. 21–52, quoted in Fallows, ‘Specific Information’, p. 127.
20 In particular, Fallows (‘Specific Information’, pp. 110–21) relies on information
regarding the Burgundian court chapel or drawn from Dufay’s will for all-vocal performances.
116 Music as Social and Cultural Practice methodologically unsound insofar as it potentially eliminates an element of vital importance in understanding how music was normally (i.e. traditionally) performed. As we have seen, the majority use of church polyphony in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is essentially anchored to two types of activity: 1. The routine work of large and, above all, small church cappelle musicali (presumably, on Sundays and the major festivities of the universal church calendar). More or less permanent church choirs are documented in the more important monastic communities of Italian cities in the period here considered. Venice provides a not particularly brilliant example: potentially useful archival sources have largely disappeared, above all for the fifteenth century. Yet a maestro di cappella is known to have been present in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi during the final years of the century;21 and the capitular records of the Dominican friars of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, right from their beginnings in 1496 (nothing survives from earlier periods), contain references to salaried musicians.22 This type of activity probably gives rise to the essentially vocal sound of church polyphony (with or without organ accompaniment). 2. The endless succession of important festivities in individual churches. These provided singers and instrumentalists with what, in the larger cities, was a routine round of annual engagements. In this context, the tradition of utilising groups of instrumentalists during Vespers and Mass on the patronal feast of any parish or monastic church or confraternity is, in Venice at least, well established by the first half of the fifteenth century. This fact is clearly illustrated, for example, by the statutes of the confraternity of Santa Maria e San Gallo degli Albanesi, active in the parish church of San Maurizio. Having ordained that the chief officers of the confraternity must attend Vespers on the vigil of San Gallo, the document, dated 1442, obliges the confraternity to receive as members two or four piffari … exempt from payment on entering the confraternity and, if they do their duty, from payment of yearly dues, and this to honour God in the same way as the other confraternities on their [major] feast days [italics ours]; and these piffari must play on the vigils of San Gallo and San Maurizio at Vespers and, the following morning, at early Mass, and when the chief officer and the other officials of the confraternity get up for the Offering, and at the Elevation …23 21 Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, p. 69. 22 Ibid., p. 70.
23 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Provveditori di Comun, reg. u, fol. 38v: ‘due, overo
Bryant & Quaranta • Traditions and Practices in Sacred Polyphony 117 The practice was no recent development: the statutes of the confraternity of San Giovanni Battista e San Giovanni Evangelista in the church of San Giovanni Decollato, dated 1373, lay down that ‘solemn mass be sung with procession on the feasts of the Nativity and Beheading of St John the Baptist and on the feast of St John the Evangelist’24 and oblige the instrumentalists ‘to come to the said confraternity on the day of St John the Evangelist in Christmastide and on the vigil of the Beheading of St John the Baptist on 29 August; on these days they must play in accordance with the traditional use of the confraternity [italics ours]’.25 The presence of instrumentalists at Mass and Vespers is not made explicit in this document (though the reference to the two patronal feasts cannot fail to arouse suspicions), but the importance attached to respect for normal usage nevertheless places its contents in the tradition of the celebration of major feasts in individual churches. Other documents of this kind, relating to Venice and fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Treviso, are contained in the studies cited in note 1. For the present purposes, it is sufficient to note the substantial continuity in the function of music and musicians and, presumably, musical practice between the fifteenth century and the late sixteenth century, when references to the use of instruments in the performance of church polyphony become increasingly common in the musical sources. Continuity of practice is the natural product of what, at the outset, we described as the ‘widespread and daily use of the repertories’. This context leaves little room for anything but the most gradual change; obvious differences in practice, momentary or linked to the use of specific institutions, must be viewed as definite exceptions to the general rule. While we do not wish to deny the consequences of the natural evolution of musical style, we point out how – in the context of the centuriesold observance of tradition – information regarding later periods can legitimately be used, in general terms, to illustrate earlier performance practices. In the sixteenth century, the presence of instrumentalists alongside the singers quatro pifari … li quali non habbiano à pagar cosa alcuna quando intreranno in scuola, neanco per gli luminari per niun tempo facendo essi il debito loro, et questo per honorare Iddio come fano le altre scuole nelli giorni delle sue feste, et essi pifari debbano sonar la vigilia di san Gallo, et quella di san Maurizio à vespero, et la matina seguente all’ aurora, et quando si leverano il gastaldo et compagni per andare ad offerire, et così quando si leverà il Corpo, e Sangue di Christo … ’ , quoted in Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, pp. 261–2.
24 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Provveditori di Comun, reg. r, fol. 334r: ‘le feste
della natività e della decollazione di san Giovanni Battista, quella di san Giovanni Evangelista … si canti una messa solenne con processione’.
25 Ibid., fol. 337v: ‘de vegnir alla detta scuola, in lo dì de m.r san Zuanne Evangelista
da Nadal, et in la vezilia de misier san Zuane Degolado, la qual festa vien alli venti nove d’ agosto, e là siano tegnudi de sonar secondo l’ usanza della scuola’.
118 Music as Social and Cultural Practice in the performance of church polyphony denotes liturgical and ceremonial solemnity on the greatest occasions; in previous centuries, the same likely held true. Thus, we believe, both a cappella practice and solo vocal performance with instrumental accompaniment (or, indeed, a mixture of the two) are supported by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century archival documentation: the sound of the music in performance is determined less by compositional style than by liturgical and ceremonial context. An obvious question remains: why does the number of sacred works with textless parts dwindle towards the late fifteenth century, to be replaced altogether by a more equal-voice compositional style in the first decades of the sixteenth century? The answer might be purely practical. While the performance of apparently solo-voice compositions is bound to the availability of suitable forces, equal-voice compositions can be performed in a variety of ways: vocally, by a choir or by one voice per part, or by one or more solo voices in any combination with organ and/or other instrumental accompaniment, in accordance with what is available or required in any given time or place. The economic incentives of commercial music printing surely encouraged the development of a compositional style which responded generically to buyers’ needs: the elimination of a style which assigns a solo role to one or more voices can be seen as the composer’s reply to the necessities posed by the economics of production. As printing became more common, individual institutions, musicians, or collectors no longer depended solely on manuscript copies, and composers had to produce music to be distributed en masse in substantially identical copies to purchasers with potentially different needs. In synthesis, the equal-voice style is more adaptable to multiple uses than music conceived for a particular solo voice (or particular solo voices); the disappearance of music conceived for a particular solo voice or voices coincided with the birth of music publishing, an occurrence which was, perhaps, no coincidence at all. When the solo repertory finally surfaces again in the early years of the seventeenth century, it does so against the background of a relatively saturated market for polyphonic music and, above all, a clear awareness of the pitfalls of sixteenth-century practices.
•
We are most grateful to Melania Bucciarelli and Berta Joncus for important suggestions concerning the organisation of our text, and to Bonnie Blackburn for drawing attention to some significant documentation.
• 7 • ‘The City Full of Grief ’: Music for the Exequies of King Philip ii Owen Rees
A
t dawn on 13 September 1598, King Philip ii of Spain died at the Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial. As the news spread through Spain and the other vast territories over which Philip had ruled for more than forty years, preparations began throughout his realms to mark the King’s passing with exequies (exequias reales or honras fúnebres) of a suitable dignity and scale. In the major cities of Philip’s Iberian and New World possessions it was by this time customary following such a death within the royal house to make the exequies a major civic event, with ceremonies usually lasting two days, and centred upon a great túmulo or catafalque, specially commissioned and constructed, and most often sited in the crossing of the cathedral or other principal church. The catafalque represented the most imposing element of what were often lavish and complex iconographic schemes within the church (the interior of which was commonly transformed with drapes of black cloth) and beyond. After preparations occupying several weeks, and with the (often hundreds of) candles on the catafalque lit, there began the two days of liturgical ceremonies. On the first day (the Vigil) Vespers, Matins and Lauds of the Dead were sung, and on the second day there was usually a series of three Masses, culminating in the Missa pro defunctis. Great processions were also a feature of these events. The whole enterprise involved the local architects, painters, poets and, of course, musicians, for music was a prominent element in the exequies. The architecture and art of royal exequies were by nature ephemeral, but fortunately it was quite common to publish an account of the honras performed in a particular city. While such accounts have a natural tendency towards hyperbole (the authors being anxious to emphasise the lavish demonstration of a city’s wealth, prestige and loyalty to the crown manifest in their local exequies), they nevertheless provide abundant evidence, some of it vivid and – as See e.g. Fernando Martínez Gil, Muerte y sociedad en la España de los Austrias
(Madrid, 1993), esp. pp. 624–34; Andrew Arbury, ‘Spanish Catafalques of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1992); Javier Varela, La muerte del rey: El ceremonial funerario de la monarquía española 1500– 1885 (Madrid, 1990); and Carlos Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge, 1995).
120 Music as Social and Cultural Practice for example in the description of catafalques and their iconographic schemes – highly detailed. These accounts remain, however, a largely untapped source of information about music on such occasions. Some of the music for Philip’s exequies in the great cities of Spain does survive. Most famously, there is the six-voice motet by Alonso Lobo, Versa est in luctum, which was published in his Liber primus missarum in 1602 bearing the inscription ‘ad exsequias Philip(pi) ii. Cathol(ici) Regis Hisp(aniæ)’. It is frequently stated that this motet was written ‘for the funeral’ of King Philip. Sometimes the more specific suggestion is advanced that it was for the principal exequies in the monastery church of San Gerónimo in Madrid on 18 and 19 October, although it seems rather more likely that Lobo wrote it for the exequies in Toledo, where he was maestro de capilla of the cathedral. While the Madrid exequies have, indeed, received significant attention in recent years, the subject of music at those held elsewhere – for Philip ii and Iain Fenlon has drawn upon the published account of the Florentine obsequies
for Cosimo i de’ Medici (Descritione della pompa funerale fatta nelle essequie del Serenissimo Sig. Cosimo de Medici (Florence, 1574)) in his study of these 1574 ceremonies (themselves modelled partly on those for Charles v in Brussels in 1558 and perhaps partly on Spanish practice) which established the pattern for subsequent Florentine obsequies (including those for Philip ii of Spain). See ‘Rites of Passage: Cosimo i de’ Medici and the Theatre of Death’, ch. 8 of his Music and Culture in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 2002).
See e.g. Bruno Turner, ‘Glimpses of P-Rex: Aspects of the Gentle Art of Music in
the Reign of Philip ii’, Leading Notes 8, no. 1 (Spring 1998), p. 7. Turner observes, in support of this hypothesis, that Lobo would have been present, with the Toledo Cathedral choir, at the Madrid funeral, in the company of the Archbishop of Toledo, who officiated at the Requiem. However, in the liner notes to a CD issued in the same year, Turner simply states that the motet was written for Philip’s exequies at Toledo. See Mortuus est Philippus Rex: Music for the Life and Death of the Spanish King, Westminster Cathedral Choir, dir. James O’Donnell (cda67046; London, 1998), p. 9. This latter view seems to me much more likely to be correct, not least since the (restricted) space for musicians – that is, we can presume, those of the capilla real – was specifically allocated within San Gerónimo in Madrid for the exequies, and the singing of polyphonic music for the service would clearly have been the responsibility of the capilla real. On these Madrid exequies, including the decisions regarding the place where the musicians sat, see Luis Robledo Estaire, ‘La música en la casa del rey’, Aspectos de la cultura musical en la Corte de Felipe ii, ed. Luis Robledo Estaire, Tess Knighton, Cristina Bordas Ibáñez and Juan José Carreras (Madrid, 2000), pp. 164 and 168–72.
Regarding the Toledo exequies, see François Reynaud, La Polyphonie tolédane
et son milieu des premiers témoignages aux environs de 1600 (Turnhout, 1996), p. 388.
See, most recently, the summary in Robledo, ‘La música en la casa del rey’. For
further discussion of the music which was or might have been performed at the funeral ceremonies, see Turner, ‘Glimpses of P-Rex’, p. 9.
Rees • The City Full of Grief 121 more generally for the Spanish Habsburgs – remains very largely uncharted territory. The present study aims to contribute to our understanding of music’s role in these prominent civic events, as part of a complex artistic and ceremonial nexus, by approaching the subject from two different angles, involving two different types of evidence and two cities. The first evidence is a piece of music: the current study was prompted by the discovery of another musical survival of the exequies for Philip ii, a seven-voice motet by Luis de Aranda, composed – it seems certain – for the ceremonies in Granada. I here present an edition of the motet and explore the ways in which its text and music reflect the context of civic honras, and make their impact partly through the transformation of traditional liturgical elements (texts and chant). The other piece of evidence is a published account of the exequies for Philip held in Zaragoza. Such commemorative accounts of civic exequies for the Spanish Habsburgs are numerous, and my aim here is to suggest through this brief case study their potential richness for music historians. While in an ideal world we would here be dealing with an account and a piece from the same city, no published or manuscript description of the Granada exequies for Philip ii has hitherto been located (although we have the text of the sermon preached in the capilla real). The account of the Zaragoza honras can nevertheless effectively set the scene for consideration of Aranda’s motet, and so I shall begin in Zaragoza, and then proceed to Granada.
zaragoza Zaragoza was the capital city of the Kingdom of Aragon, and seat of the Viceroy. The published account of the exequies for Philip ii held there – a notably vivid and detailed example of the genre – was written by Juan Martínez, racionero (prebendary) of the Cathedral and Vice-Rector of the University: Relacion, de las exequias, que la muy insigne ciudad de Çaragoça à celebrado, por el Rey Don Philipe nuestro señor (Zaragoza, Luis Antonio González Marin, Música para exequias en tiempo de Felipe iv,
onumentos de la música española lxx (Barcelona, 2004), focuses on repertory M from Zaragoza suitable for exequies. The extent to which this repertory can be linked specifically with exequies for Philip iv, however, is limited. It should also be noted that the motet Commissa mea pavesco, here presented as the work of Fray Manuel Correa on the basis of an attribution in a Zaragoza manuscript, is in fact by the Portuguese composer Filipe de Magalhães.
The sermon, delivered by Martín de Castro, is included in Alonso Cabrera,
S ermones funerales en las honras del Rey Nuestro Señor don Felipe Segundo, recogidos por Juan Iñiguez de Lequerica (Madrid, 1601).
122 Music as Social and Cultural Practice 1599). Martínez reports that the news of the king’s death reached the city via a letter written by Philip iii on 17 September (four days after his father’s death) and received in Zaragoza on the 20th. The king writes in order that the city may prepare ‘public mourning and exequies, on the same scale as is customary in such cases’. The jurados of the city duly set about planning the exequies: two túmulos (catafalques) ‘de maravilloso artificio’ [with marvellous craftsmanship] were to be erected, one in the marketplace, the other in the cathedral.10 The former would be the focus for the ceremonies (including the Office of the Dead) on the first afternoon and night of the exequies, the latter for the Pontifical Mass the next day. Designs for these túmulos were invited from the city’s architects, who – we are told – distinguished themselves in their efforts, given the incentive of a large financial reward. The work, on which more than 150 men were engaged, took twenty-seven days. The decoration of the túmulos included numerous Latin epitaphs and Spanish poems specially composed by local writers, many of them clergy, and jeroglíficos (symbolic/allegorical pictures with accompanying inscriptions). In addition, the University announced on 24 September a substantial prize competition for appropriate poems in six categories (most in Spanish, some in Latin), the successful entries (for which the deadline was 25 October) to be read aloud in the theatre of the University, printed, displayed in the city and circulated elsewhere. We thus get a sense of the flood of artistic patronage and production, involving hundreds of citizens, which was released by the news of Philip’s death. The day scheduled for the exequies was 18 October, and large crowds of people from the surrounding districts converged on Zaragoza in order to attend these acts of public mourning. However, the túmulos were not completed in time, and so the ceremonies were postponed until the 20th, exactly a month after the news of the King’s death reached the city. At two o’clock on the afternoon of that day, the numerous candles of the túmulo in the marketplace were lit (one common name for such a túmulo was capilla ardiente, ‘burning chapel’), and the liturgical celebrations began, in the presence of a great crowd. First, the clergy of the church of San Pablo, within which parish the marketplace lay, celebrated Vespers of the Dead, with a choir of very fine singers, ending with the singing of a responso for the King’s soul. However, the principal A copy of this invaluable book survives in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. I am
most grateful to Bernadette Nelson for bringing the existence of this copy to my attention.
‘la demonstracion publica de lutos y honras: tanto major que en semejantes casos
se ha acostumbrado’; Martínez, Relacion, p. 49.
10 Ibid., p. 61. The erection of two catafalques, in the market square and cathedral,
continued to be the normal practice in Zaragoza, for example at the exequies for Philip iii, Baltasar Carlos (son of Philip iv) and Philip iv.
Rees • The City Full of Grief 123 ceremonies commenced with the arrival at the marketplace of various processions of the city’s clergy and prominent laity, totalling some 1,200 people. The main celebration of the Office then began: an area of the marketplace had been temporarily transformed into a choir (coro), with – in its midst – a great blackdraped music stand. Martínez recalls that the singers (those of the cathedral, we are to presume) ‘sang with such sweetness and harmony that they moved everyone to sadness and weeping’ (‘cantando los cantores, con tanta suavidad, y consonancia, que provocavan generalmente a tristeza y llanto’).11 It began to rain as the Office started (with what effect, one wonders, on the books of chant and polyphony!), but Martínez says that this was taken as a sign that the elements wept to demonstrate the general sentiment. Certainly, the multitude of candles stayed lit despite the rain, and Martínez gives a vivid picture of the extraordinary scene and atmosphere as the evening’s ceremonies continued: Night came on, and with it the sadness increased greatly, and the Mausoleum with its innumerable lights, together with the great statues upon it, expressed such majesty and grandeur, that in the eyes of all it seemed so fine that many judged that nothing better had been made in Spain. And truly, what with the darkness of the night, the mass of lights, reflected on the walls hung with black cloth [and] on the ground crowded with men dressed in mourning, and in the choir the sight of the host of clergy, vested in white surplices, and the people crowded together in the square and on the rooftops: all this created a scene so full of grief that the hardest of hearts was moved, and looking upon the Tomb (which with such authority represented the sepulchre of his Majesty) all prayed to God for his soul, which was in glory.12 At the end of the main Office in the mercado the responsory Libera me Domine was sung in polyphony. After the processions then left the marketplace, the clergy of San Pablo once again took over, singing Matins and Lauds of the Dead, which lasted almost until midnight. Throughout the rest of the night 11 Martínez, Relacion, p. 151. 12 ‘Vino la noche, y con ella crecio mucho la tristeza, y el Mauseolo [sic] con su infi-
nidad de luzes, acompañado de aquellas grandes figuras que avia, respresentava tanta magestad y grandeza, que en los ojos de todos parecio tan bien, que juzgaron muchos no se devia haver hecho cosa mejor en España. Y verdaderamente que con la obscuridad de la noche, la muchedumbre de las luzes, reverberando en las paredes colgadas de paños negros; en los suelos cubiertos de hombres enlutados, y descubriendo en el choro, la muchedumbre de Sacerdotes, vestidos de sobrepellizes blancas, y en la plaça y tejados la gente apiñada; todo esto, hazia una representacion tan llena de duelo, que el mas duro coraçon se enternecia, y mirando la Tumba (que con tanta autoridad representava el sepulchro de su Magestad) todos rogavan a Dios por su anima, que goze de gloria.’ Martínez, Relacion, p. 161.
124 Music as Social and Cultural Practice clergy from the church remained there, praying and singing psalms, despite the continuing rain. It was still raining hard when the next morning a solemn procession (in which a thousand took part) moved from the cathedral to the marketplace, where the cathedral choir sang the responsory Ne recorderis in fabordón (simple polyphony based upon the chant), which Martínez describes as ‘muy sentido y contemplativo’ (‘very tender and contemplative’).13 The procession, carrying the tumba representing Philip’s coffin, then returned to the cathedral. During this part of the procession the Psalm ‘Ad te Domine levavi animam meam’ was sung (as was customary in burial processions); the performance was in alternatim fashion, the cathedral singers performing verses in fabordón in alternation with verses chanted by the regular and secular clergy. Upon arrival at the cathedral, Mass was sung (Martínez comments on the great number of the cathedral singers, and emphasises once again the emotive effect of their music), concluding with the Requiescant in pace in fabordón. As noted above, we must, of course, read such accounts with an awareness that they may tend towards hyperbole and eulogy. Their titles alone commonly bespeak their emphasis on the eminence and loyalty of the city concerned, and the natural sense of competitiveness involved in these expressions of civic pride, wealth and artistic talent is apparent. But even if not all citizens present were thus equally caught up in the atmosphere of communal sentiment (and civic pride) which – Martínez tells us – the architecture, art, music and ceremony of these events evoked, his account makes vivid the ostensible aim of such events to create a forum and focus for civic mourning (a theme echoed in several of the poems written for the competition held by Zaragoza University, mentioned above). It is with such purposes in mind that we can best approach the motet by Luis de Aranda, which, I believe, was written for the Granada exequies of 1598.
granada: luis de aranda’s quomodo sedet sola Quomodo sedet sola is a six-voice motet preserved (incompletely: the altus secundus is missing) in a set of partbooks without shelf-mark copied for the capilla real in Granada in the early seventeenth century, and still located there.14 It is attributed to Luis de Aranda (maestro de capilla at Granada Cathedral 13 Ibid., p. 172. 14 See José López-Calo, Catálogo del Archivo de Música de la Capilla Real de Granada,
2 vols (Granada, 1994), i, pp. 59–71, where the manuscript is assigned the number 6. An edition of the motet is given at the conclusion of this study, and there is a recording (with the altus secundus supplied editorially) on Paradisi Portas: Music from Seventeenth-Century Portugal, Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, dir. Owen Rees (gmcd 7296; Ramsen, 2005).
Rees • The City Full of Grief 125 from 1592 until his death in 1627), and bears the date 1598.15 The royal chapel, which adjoins but slightly pre-dates Granada Cathedral, was founded in 1504 by the Catholic Monarchs – Ferdinand and Isabella – following their conquest of the Nasrid emirate of Granada (completed in 1492), the culmination of the long Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula and perceived as the greatest triumph of their reigns. Construction of the capilla real began in 1505 and was completed in 1521. The Catholic Monarchs are themselves buried there, as are their daughter Juana and her husband Philip the Fair. Indeed, the chapel became the pantheon of the Spanish Habsburgs until the construction of the monastery-palace of San Lorenzo del Escorial under Philip ii in the second half of the century and the translation of royal corpses thither in the 1570s: the emperor Charles v (Philip the Fair’s son) had intended, until near the end of his life, that both he and his son Philip ii would be buried in the capilla real in Granada, as were their ancestors as rulers of the Spanish kingdoms.16 The capilla real was (and is) a self-governing institution, independent of the cathedral which it abuts, and it possessed its own musical establishment, with maestro de capilla, organist and a small group of adult singers-chaplains (one for each of the four voice designations, and among them the maestro).17 It was served by some eminent maestros, including Ambrosio Cotes from 1581 until 1596. However, after Cotes’s departure the chapter of the capilla real experienced several years of very poor fortune in their efforts to secure a successor. Indeed – rather disastrously – they were without a maestro de capilla when the news reached Granada in September 1598 of the death of King Philip ii: Juan Martín de Riscos, who had taken up the post of maestro only on 19 June of that year, resigned on 11 September, just two days before the king’s death, to assume the equivalent position at Jaén Cathedral (likewise in Andalucia).18 15 Regarding Aranda, see the article by José López-Calo in Diccionario de la música
española e hispanoamericana, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio et al., 10 vols (Madrid, 1999–2002), i, pp. 555–6. However, the motet Quomodo sedet sola is omitted from the list of works given there.
16 See e.g. Michael Noone, ‘Processions to the “City of the Dead”: The Spanish
Royal Chapel and an Anonymous Requiem from El Escorial’, The Royal Chapel in the Time of the Habsburgs: Music and Court Ceremony in Early Modern Europe, ed. Juan José Carreras, Bernardo García García and Tess Knighton, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music iii (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 145 and n. 7.
17 See Juan Ruiz Jiménez, ‘Patronazgo musical en la capilla real de Granada durante
el Siglo xvi. 1. Los músicos prebendados’, Encomium Musicæ: Essays in Memory of Robert J. Snow, ed. David Crawford and Grayson Wagstaff, Festschrift Series xvii (Hillsdale, NY, 2002), pp. 341–63.
18 See Dionisio Preciado, Alonso de Tejeda (ca. 1556–1628): Obras completas, 2 vols,
(Madrid, 1974), i, p. 49 and pp. 53–4, including n. 13 for the entry concerning his resignation in the chapter acts.
126 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Since the Granada capilla real was a royal foundation, the chapter’s duties to mark the passing of the king were clear. Moreover (as explained below), it is evident that the capilla real – and not the cathedral – was the normal location for Granada’s civic exequies for royalty at this period. The role of the maestro de capilla of the capilla real would thus (in normal circumstances) have been a crucial one in providing and organising suitable music for the exequies. As noted, no commemorative account of these Granada honras for Philip has come to light, although we have the sermon preached in the capilla real.19 We can nevertheless establish the city’s normal approach to Habsburg exequies from subsequent instances for which information is available, namely, following the deaths of Margaret of Austria (wife of Philip iii) in 1611, Isabel of Bourbon (wife of Philip iv) in 1644, Philip iv himself in 1665 and Charles ii in 1700. The normal practice was that ceremonies were held in both the cathedral and the capilla real, with a catafalque constructed in each, and that the two sets of ceremonies represented different constituencies: the city’s own exequies were those held in the capilla real (despite the fact that it is only a fraction of the size of the cathedral), while those in the cathedral were for the Church. This distinction emerges clearly in the case of the exequies for Isabel of Bourbon, regarding which we have two published accounts.20 These exequies for Isabel also exemplify the typical practice in Granada whereby the cathedral honras preceded (by one or two days) the civic honras in the capilla real. In this case, the death having occurred on 6 October 1644, the cathedral exequies were on 9 and 10 December, and those in the capilla real on the 13th and 14th of that month.21 A similar pattern of ceremonies had been adopted following the death of Margaret of Austria on 3 October 1611: the cathedral honras were on 19 Besides the Zaragoza account discussed above, there survive such accounts
(printed or manuscript) or other information regarding the honras for Philip ii in Barcelona, Cuenca, Lisbon, Madrid, Murcia, Oviedo, Pamplona, Salamanca, Seville and Valencia. Concerning the exequies in Oviedo, see Luis Redonet, ‘Honras a Felipe ii’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 139 (1956), pp. 203–34.
20 Diego Fernández Solana, Honras, que celebró la ciudad de Granada, en la muerte
de la Reyna nuestra señora D. Ysabel de Borbón, a 13. y 14. de Diziembre de 1644. años, en su Real Capilla (Córdoba, 1645); Andrés Sánchez de Espejo, Relación historial de las exequias, tumulos, y pompa funeral que el Arçobispo, Dean y Cabildo de la Santa, y Metropolitana Iglesia, Corregidor, y Ciudad de Granada hizieron en las honras de la reyna nuestra señora doña Ysabel de Borbón, en diez las de la Santa Yglesia, y en catorze de Diziembre las de la Ciudad (Granada, 1645).
21 A contemporary print by Anna Heylan of Luis de Orejuela’s catafalque for the
capilla real exequies is reproduced as Illustration 144 on p. 498 of Arbury, ‘Spanish Catafalques’. The city’s responsibility for the catafalque’s construction is noted explicitly in the border of the print: ‘Tumulo que la ciudad de Granada hizo …’.
Rees • The City Full of Grief 127 13 November and those in the capilla real on 15 and 16 November.22 In response to the death of the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, Charles ii, on 1 November 1700, the Granada exequies took place on 30 November and 1 December in the cathedral, and then the civic ones in the capilla real on 3–4 December.23 Given the tendency for continuity of tradition in such exequies for the Spanish Habsburgs, we can assume with some confidence that the pattern of dual ceremonies had been followed in Granada upon the death of Philip ii as well. In late September 1598, then, the civic authorities in Granada will have set to work to prepare for the two days of the city’s honras for Philip, to be held in the capilla real, and which would include the sermon by Martín de Castro. As far as the provision of music for the ceremonies was concerned, there was of course a problem, since, as noted, the royal chapel was at that point without a maestro de capilla, the musician who – presumably – would normally prepare (and perhaps compose) and direct the required music. It may be that the need to solve this problem explains the presence in the capilla real partbooks of the motet Quomodo sedet sola by the cathedral’s maestro de capilla, Luis de Aranda. However, before considering this further one should first establish the grounds for associating the piece with the exequies for Philip ii. The motet (see Example 7.1 at the end of this essay) is headed with the date ‘1598’ (in the tiple book ‘1598 años’) in each of the five capilla real partbooks which are (as far as I know) its only surviving source. The text set by Aranda is as follows (and is discussed in further detail below): 22 See Arbury, ‘Spanish Catafalques’, pp. 167–8, who draws upon Pedro Rodríguez de
Ardila, Las honras que celebró la famosa, y gran ciudad de Granada, en la muerte de la sereníssima Reyna de España doña Margarita de Austria, muger del Rey don Felipe tercero nuestro señor (Granada, 1612). A different date for the capilla real exequies – 11 October – is given in Francisco Henríquez de Jorquera’s Anales de Granada, ed. Antonio Marín Ocete (Granada, 1934), ii, p. 576: ‘En once dias del mes de otubre de este año el ilustrisimo cabildo y regimiento de la ciudad de Granada celebró las onrras y exequia [sic] funerales de la serenisima reina doña Margarita de Austria, nuestra señora, en la real capilla de los serenisimos reyes don Fernando y doña Isabél con grandisima ostentación y grandeça, con afectuosa asistencia de los tres tribunales, acuerdo, inquisición y cavildo.’ This date is presumably erroneous, being too soon (one imagines) after Margaret’s death just eight days earlier to have allowed the news to reach Granada and for subsequent organisation of honras of such ‘ostentation and grandeur’.
23 See Arbury, ‘Spanish Catafalques’, pp. 272–4, drawing (for the honras in the capilla
real) on Joséph de Mena y Medrano, Reales exequias por la católica magestad de nuestro monarca don Carlos ii. el justo, que dedica al rey nuestro señor don Phelipe v. el glorioso, por mano del eminentíssimo señor D. Luis Manuel Fernández Porto carrero … la muy noble, muy nombrada, muy leal, y Gran Ciudad de Granada, que las celebró en la Real Capilla, en los días tres, y quarto de Diziebre de 1700 (n.p., n.d.).
128 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena tristitia: facta es [sic] quasi vidua domina gentium. Princeps provinciarum plorans ploravit dicens: attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus. How does the city sit solitary, full of grief: you – mistress of the nations – have become as a widow. The princess among the provinces weeps saying: behold and see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow. The text does not, then, refer to Philip by name, as does that of Ambrosio Cotes’s Mortuus est Philippus rex, which was clearly written for the exequies in Valencia: Mortuus est Philippus Rex, et fleverunt eum omnis populus planctu magno, et lugebant dies multos, et dixerunt: quomodo cecidit potens qui salvum faciebat populum suum. King Philip is dead, and the whole people wept for him with great lamenting, and mourned for many days, and said: how is the mighty one fallen, the protector of his people? Nor is the inscription attached to Quomodo sedet sola in the capilla real partbooks as explicit as that applied to Cotes’s motet (‘In exequiis Catholici Regis Philippi ii’) in the manuscript partbooks which preserve it, or to Alonso Lobo’s Versa est in luctum in its printed source (see above). There can, nevertheless, be little doubt concerning what the date 1598 attached to Aranda’s motet in the capilla real books signifies. The date stands out starkly within these partbooks, since no other piece bears this type of inscription. Standing thus at the head of the piece it could hardly have been intended merely to signal the date of copying, for example, although the motet may indeed have been copied then: in the source it immediately follows the only piece in the partbooks by the recently departed maestro of the chapel, Juan Martín de Riscos. An inscription in the quinta pars book informs us that this motet – Venite ascendamus – was the piece which Riscos composed for the oposición for the Granada post earlier that year.24 The date 1598 supplied at the head of Aranda’s motet is surely a reminder of the piece’s function and of the context of its composition and performance.25 One should bear in mind that no user of these partbooks would have had any hesitation in naming the most 24 Fols 19v–20: ‘Motete dela oposision [sic] de Granada dela capilla Real / Riscos’.
The piece was entered by a different scribe than the surrounding works: one wonders if Riscos himself perhaps copied it during his few months (from June until September 1598) in post.
25 The inscription might be seen as fulfilling a related (though not, clearly, identical)
purpose to those given to other pieces in the partbooks which specify the
Rees • The City Full of Grief 129 significant event (within the capilla real and indeed the whole of Spain) of the year 1598. We cannot know, of course, whether Aranda (who, as noted, worked for the cathedral, not the capilla real) composed Quomodo sedet sola for the cathedral exequies in 1598 or for those in the capilla real (or perhaps to be sung at both). Nevertheless, that the motet was indeed sung in the capilla real upon this occasion seems very likely given its presence in the chapel’s partbooks; furthermore, the nature of its text made it – as explained below – particularly appropriate to the context of civic mourning which the capilla real exequies (as opposed to those in the cathedral) represented. In this connection it is also relevant to note that Aranda was anxious to move from his cathedral post to the equivalent position in the capilla real, since it carried with it a prebend, which his cathedral position did not, the total income being considerably larger than that associated with the cathedral post.26 Indeed, he had applied for the job in late 1597, and in February 1598 he was declared the runner-up to Juan Martín de Riscos;27 he would thus have had every reason to ingratiate himself with the chapter of the capilla real following Riscos’s departure, since he might realistically have hoped to be successful in gaining the post on this occasion. His capacity for such efforts at ingratiation (or, to put it less cynically, for such assistance to the neighbouring capilla real) was apparent in December 1597: the capilla real was, of course, short-staffed in musical terms, and the chapter was concerned therefore about how Christmas Matins (an occasion for considerable musical elaboration in the form of specially written chansonetas) could be celebrated properly. Aranda offered to help by providing his services and those of the cathedral choirboys, to whom he would teach the chansonetas. (His offer was refused, because he was a candidate for the post of maestro.)28 For Aranda to have supplied (and, perhaps, directed) a motet for the civic exequies in the autumn of 1598 in the capilla real would thus have been unsurprising, and on this occasion the offer could properly have been accepted since the post of maestro had not yet been advertised. calendrical occasion for their performance, such as ‘in die Resurecione [sic]’ and ‘in beata Agata’.
26 See the figures given by Javier Suárez-Pajares, ‘Dinero y honor: Aspectos del
magisterio de capilla en la España de Francisco Guerrero’, Políticas y practicas musicales en el mundo de Felipe ii, ed. John Griffiths and Javier Suárez-Pajares, Música Hispana, Textos viii (Madrid, 2004), Table 3, p. 179 (capilla real) and p. 181 (cathedral).
27 For the relevant extract from the chapter acts, see López-Calo, Catalogo, ii, p. 15. 28 The relevant extract from the chapter acts for 3 December is in López-Calo,
Catalogo, ii, p. 14.
130 Music as Social and Cultural Practice The most striking characteristics of the text of Aranda’s motet – given above – are probably the fact that ‘the city’ – that is, clearly, Granada – is its sole focus, and that the city is personified so that the closing words of lament (‘attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus’) issue from its own lips. The text’s construction is thus notably similar to that of Ambrosio Cotes’s motet Mortuus est Philippus rex for the exequies in Valencia (see above), of which the concluding section is likewise in direct speech, introduced by ‘dixerunt’ (c.f. ‘dicens’ in Aranda’s text), and here representing the words of the mourning population of the city, described in the first section of the text. The text set by Aranda was produced by conflating and altering elements from two of the most familiar Holy Week items. The first of the Lamentations for Tenebrae (Matins) of Holy Thursday begins (after the Hebrew letter ‘Aleph’): ‘Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo: facta est quasi vidua domina gentium. Princeps provinciarum facta est sub tributo.’ The next verse of this Lamentation (after the letter ‘Beth’), begins ‘Plorans ploravit in nocte …’. Finally, there is the famous Holy Week responsory text, ‘O vos omnes qui transitis per viam: attendite et videte si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus’ (from the fifth responsory for Tenebrae of Holy Saturday). In comparing these texts with that set by Aranda, we see first that in the latter the city is not ‘full of people’ (‘plena populo’) as in the original, but ‘full of grief ’ (‘plena tristitia’). Second, unless it is a scribal error, the alteration of ‘facta est’ to ‘facta es’ in Aranda’s text is striking, since the city in mourning is thus addressed directly (see the translation above). Third, ‘the princess among the provinces’ (i.e. the city) is not ‘placed under tribute’ (‘facta est sub tributo’), but instead the source text is here abbreviated, cutting directly to the next verse (‘plorans ploravit’), such that the city ‘weeps saying’ (‘plorans ploravit dicens’); thus are ushered in the words which in the Holy Week responsory are understood to be spoken by Christ of His suffering, but are here uttered by the city itself: ‘behold and see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow’. These words are thus restored to their Old Testament context, for they too are originally from the Lamentations of Jeremiah (1: 12), and are there spoken by the city of Jerusalem. There exists a striking parallel with Aranda’s use here of the ‘attendite et videte’ text, a parallel which further strengthens the supposition that his motet was composed for Philip’s exequies. As Iain Fenlon has noted, Claudio Monteverdi provided music for the Venetian exequies for Grand Duke Cosimo ii de’ Medici in 1621. The service began with an instrumental sinfonia, between the sections of which Monteverdi’s son Francesco sang a setting of the words ‘O vos omnes attendite, et videte dolorem nostrum’.29 29 Fenlon, ‘Rites of Passage’, p. 177, drawing upon Esequie fatte in Venetia dalla
natione fiorentina al Serenissimo D. Cosmo ii. Quarto Gran Duca di Toscana (Venice, 1621).
Rees • The City Full of Grief 131 Aranda’s music correspondingly draws attention to ‘the city’ (see the edition of the piece provided below): he suddenly and unexpectedly turns to homorhythm at ‘civitas’ (b. 13) after employing imitation hitherto for the opening section of the piece. Furthermore, ‘princeps provinciarum’ (b. 27) is highlighted by the first use of a reduced texture and by a striking treatment of the relevant part of the chant tone for the Lamentations to which these words would have been sung in the liturgy.30 Aranda may have been recalling the setting of this textual phrase in Lamentations by his predecessor at the cathedral, Santos de Aliseda; both composers arrange the chant motif in stretto imitation at the fifth between tiple 1 and altus 1. However, Aranda also puts the motif in tiple 2 a third above the altus, and uses a direct chromaticism in this part (b. 29), which is itself striking and which is all the more so given that its F #s are immediately followed by E b in the altus (b. 30). The contemporary listener was thus confronted here with a combination of the familiar (the chant tone) and the unusual and harsh, which must have increased the expressive impact of the piece.31 Aranda also highlights dramatically the closing words of the city (‘attendite …’) by a change of texture and the use of homophony. (Compare the similar effect at the equivalent point in Ambrosio Cotes’s Mortuus est Philippus rex for Valencia, namely the beginning of the direct speech at ‘quomodo’.) The text adapted from the Lamentations of Jeremiah which Aranda set is, I believe, very cleverly conceived to match its context. Firstly and most obviously, it was indeed ‘the city … full of grief ’ that was represented in those attending the honras for Philip ii in the capilla real, so that the motet in a sense speaks for them. In addition, it is in the context of civic pride and the desire (common in such exequies, as noted) to display the city’s outstanding loyalty to the crown through heartfelt and ostentatious mourning that we should hear Granada’s call – in the words of Aranda’s motet – for the onlooker to observe if there 30 The tone is set out (at p. 58) and discussed in Robert Snow, A New-World Collec-
tion of Polyphony for Holy Week and the Salve Service: Guatemala City, Cathedral Archive, Music MS 4, Monuments of Renaissance Music ix (Chicago and London, 1996), pp. 49–62.
31 For the relevant passage in Aliseda’s Lamentation, see Snow, A New-World Collec-
tion, p. 255. Aliseda was maestro at Granada Cathedral from 1557 to 1580. Aranda again refers to the Lamentation tone at ‘plorans ploravit’: compare the rising motif in the bassus and tiple 1 at bb. 32–4 with the relevant chant phrase given by Snow (p. 58) and the setting of these words in Aliseda’s Lamentation, bb. 63–9 of Snow’s edition. It may well be fortuitous (given the chant basis of this phrase) that the upper voice of Aranda’s motet from b. 26 to b. 31 sings (in the soft hexachord) mi, ut, re, mi, fa, mi, re, corresponding to the vowels of the royal title ‘Philippus rex Hispanie’, which had indeed been the source of the soggetto cavato of the Missa Philippus rex Hispaniae of Bartolomé de Escobedo.
132 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.
Fig. 7.1 Print of the catafalque for Philip ii in Seville Cathedral, in Juan Álvarez de Colmenar, Les Délices de l’Espagne et du Portugal, iii (Leiden, 1707), facing p. 423. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Douce a.428
is any sorrow that could match the sorrow of this ‘princess of the provinces’ and ‘mistress of the nations’: Granada’s mourning for Philip is here presented as excelling that of any other city in Spain. Further, Granada is, through the employment of the text from Lamentations, identified with Jerusalem.32 Although the closing words of the motet (‘attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus’) are here spoken by the city, in evoking the Passion of Christ (given their familiar Holy Week context) they may also be seen as 32 The association may have gained power from Granada’s status as the final city
of Muslim Spain to fall to the Christian crusading reconquest. As observed, this was celebrated as the greatest achievement of the Catholic Monarchs, whose tombs are the focal point of the capilla real. Indeed, their conquest of Granada is celebrated on the tombs’ inscriptions. Further, it is possible that the expression ‘domina gentium’ (‘mistress of the nations’) would have been perceived as carrying particular significance in Granada, given both what has just been said and also the revolt of the Granadine Moriscos earlier in Philip’s reign, in 1568–71 (following the king’s decision to implement laws obliging the Moorish population to abandon their traditional dress and other customs), and its successful (from Philip’s viewpoint) suppression.
Rees • The City Full of Grief 133 associating the king’s death with that of the Saviour. The explanation of what to modern eyes might seem a blasphemous association is explicable in terms both of the emphasis in Spain upon the holiness of their kings (within wider traditions of sacred kingship) and, more specifically, of the way in which Philip’s death was presented: it was held up in sermons and written accounts as a model of a ‘good death’, and parallels were drawn not only with figures of the Old Testament but also with Christ.33 In the current context it is instructive to note that the design of the catafalque for Philip ii in Seville Cathedral – the grandest of all the Spanish catafalques of which we have record (see Figure 7.1) – deliberately echoed that of that cathedral’s monumento, the structure representing the sepulchre of Christ.34 As for the words ‘si est dolor sicut dolor meus’ with which the motet concludes, the agonising – and horribly prolonged – final illness of Philip, and the incomparable and admirable Christian fortitude with which he had borne it, were widely emphasised in contemporary accounts which told of the king’s ‘good death’. Aranda’s motet – copied into the capilla real partbooks and there annotated with the year 1598 as a mark of its original purpose – was preserved as that royal institution’s musical memorial of Philip’s death and of the manner in which Granada had loyally observed the occasion. Beyond this, its text – derived from the liturgy – would also have allowed the piece to be used more widely in the capilla real, both during Holy Week and for royal memorials (unlike Cotes’s Mortuus est Philippus rex, for example, which mentions the king specifically). Although the great catafalques erected for Spanish royal exequies were ephemeral, soon dismantled and surviving only as print reproductions or descriptions in funeral books, and while much of the music composed for such occasions is lost to us, it seems very likely that Aranda’s motet 33 See Martínez Gil, Muerte y sociedad, p. 621. More generally on the way in which
Philip’s death was presented, and on notions of sacred kingship in Spain, see Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory, pp. 352–65. As Eire observes (p. 355 n. 21), ‘Martín de Castro, in his sermon at the Royal Chapel of Granada [at Philip’s exequies], proclaimed that Spain had always had the noblest and holiest kings in all of Christen dom, and that among these Philip had been the very best’. Particularly striking – when considering the closing text of Aranda’s motet – is Eire’s observation (p. 350) that according to a manuscript account of Philip’s death by Diego de Yepes ‘the king’s greatest concern … was his wish to be lucid at the moment of death, so he could commend his soul to God “with the same words that His Son uttered when he expired on the cross” ’.
34 See Arbury, ‘Spanish Catafalques’, pp. 56–7, n. 179, pp. 160–1 and Figs 100–3
(pp. 454–7). The 1707 print of the catafalque shown in Figure 7.1 is misleading in two respects. First, it is stated as being for Philip iii rather than for Philip ii; second, the representation of sky suggests that the catafalque was outdoors, whereas it was within the cathedral: the arcade at the centre of which stood the catafalque stretched between the north and south entrances of the church.
134 Music as Social and Cultural Practice enjoyed an afterlife in Granada for several decades into the seventeenth century.35
•
I am most grateful to Emilio Ros-Fábregas for his assistance to my research in Granada, to the staff of the Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía, and to the Dean of the Capilla Real de Granada, Reverendísimo Padre Manuel Reyes Ruiz.
35 The partbooks which contain the motet were copied at least in part during the
chapelmastership of Manuel Leitão de Aviles, who took up the post in 1603 and died there in 1630, and entries in inventories of 1610 and 1629 may well refer to these books. Leitão de Aviles and the capilla real partbooks are the subject of a forthcoming study by the present author. Aranda’s motet apparently influenced at least one other piece: a version of a set of Lamentations by Morales preserved at Puebla and Guatemala Cathedrals (MS 1 and MS 4 respectively, both dating from the very early seventeenth century) includes an added passage setting the words ‘Quomodo sedet sola’, the cantus part of which is remarkably similar to the opening of Aranda’s work (setting these words, of course). See Snow, A New-World Collection, pp. 273–4, bb. 35–8, and Martin Ham, ‘Morales: The Canon’, Cristóbal de Morales, ed. Owen Rees and Bernadette Nelson (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 272–4. Of the other works composed for Philip’s exequies, one achieved a much wider – indeed, international – circulation: Lobo’s Versa est in luctum, printed by the royal press in Madrid in 1602 as part of the group of seven motets within the magnificent Liber missarum. There the work bears (as noted above) a proud declaration of its origins as a work for Philip’s exequies, but once again its text would have allowed much wider use. Indeed the group of motets in the print bears the title ‘Moteta ex devotione inter missarum solemnia decantanda’. Copies of the 1602 print survive in Rome, Coimbra and Mexico (no fewer than five copies).
Rees • The City Full of Grief 135 Ex. 7.1 Luis de Aranda, Quomodo sedet sola tiple 1 Quo
-
mo - do
se
-
det
se - det
so
so
-
la
so
-
tiple 2 altus 1 Quo
-
mo - do
-
la
so
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la
se - det
so -
altus 2 tenor Quo
-
mo - do
se
-
det
se
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bassus Quo
-
mo - do
6
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se
Quo
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-
mo - do
la
so
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quo
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det
so - la
se
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det
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mo - do
se
la
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quo
so
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la
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det
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det
so
-
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la
ci - vi - tas
det
so
-
-
la
ci - vi - tas
la
ci - vi - tas
la
ci - vi - tas
la
ci - vi - tas
quo
-
mo - do
-
la
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det
so
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la
mo - do
se
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quo
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so
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so
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la
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-
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det
11
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se
se
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det
so
se
-
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so
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det
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so
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-
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ple
ple
ple
ple
ple
-
na tri
-
sti - ti - a
tri -
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tri - sti - ti - a
-
na
tri - sti - ti - a tri - sti -
-
na
tri
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-
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na
sti -
tri -
136 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 7.1 continued 16
- sti
-
-
ple
-
-
-
na
-
ti
ti - a
- sti
-
-
tri - sti
-
a tri - sti
tri - sti
-
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fac - ta
ti - a
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fac
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21
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vi
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qua
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do
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du - a
vi
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du - a
du - a
-
-
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si
qua
do - mi - na
si
mi
do - mi - na
vi
-
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na
vi
gen
du - a
-
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du - a
-
ti
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ti - um gen - ti -
do - mi - na
gen - ti - um
-
gen
gen
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ti
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do - mi - na gen - ti -
do
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26
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prin
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um
pro - vin - ci
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ceps
prin
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ceps
pro - vin - ci - a
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prin
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pro - vin - ci - a
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Rees • The City Full of Grief 137 Ex. 7.1 continued 31
-
-
-
rum
-
rum
rum
plo - rans
plo - ra
plo - rans plo
-
-
-
ra
vit
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plo - rans plo -
plo - rans plo - ra
plo
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di
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plo - rans plo -
plo
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36
ii
di
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a
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41
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si
si
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138 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 7.1 continued 46
es
do
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lor
si
si
si
es
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52
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57
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• 8 • Giovanni Alberto Ristori and his Serenate at the Polish Court of Augustus iii, 1735–1746 Alina Żórawska-Witkowska
G
iovanni Alberto Ristori, musical life at the court of August iii of Poland and the eighteenth-century serenata as a genre all deserve much greater scholarly attention than they have received so far. The serenate Ristori composed in Warsaw not only record in music a specific political situation – a function typical for serenate – but were also created to ameliorate tensions at court. These Italianate pieces, depicting the new king as a benign ruler favouring Poles, were intended to persuade Polish magnates to accept an unwanted German ruler with potentially dangerous political alliances. Besides capturing important historical moments, the serenate for August iii by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino, Giovanni Claudio Pasquini and Ristori possess considerable poetic and musical merit: they were painstakingly designed for the refined tastes of the royal couple, accomplished performers and a discriminating audience. In this essay I set the serenate in context, explaining the methods behind their creation. Ristori’s music, after centuries of oblivion, is now being revived. On Ristori see in particular Curt Rudolf Mengelberg, Giovanni Alberto Ristori:
Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte italienischer Kunstherrschaft in Deutschland im 18. Jahr hundert (Leipzig, 1916); Ortrun Landmann, Quellenstudien zum Intermezzo comico per musica und zu seiner Geschichte in Dresden (diss., Rostock, 1972; typescript at Dresden, Sächische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitäts-Bibliothek, Musikabteilung [hereafter D-Dl]); Wolfgang Hochstein, ‘Der verschollene Komponist: Giovanni Alberto Ristori und sein Anteil am Dresdner Hofkirchen repertoire’, Zelenka-Studien ii, ed. Wolfgang Reich and Günter Gattermann, Deutsche Musik im Osten xii (Sankt Augustin, 1997), pp. 59–100. The serenata has found an attentive student in Michael Talbot, author of the relevant entries in the The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992), iv, pp. 317–20 and in New Grove ii, xxiii, pp. 113–15, as well as such studies as ‘The Serenata in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 18 (1982), pp. 1–50, and ‘Zelenka’s Serenata zwv 277’, Zelenka-Studien ii, pp. 217–41. I owe warmest thanks to Ortrun Landmann for her careful reading of my text before publication and her kind suggestions for improvement, which I have done my best to follow.
This is shown in the recordings of Ristori’s music: Calandro. Commedia per musica
(Kammer Ton op. 5/97, kt2005), Messa per il Santissimo Natale (Weihnachten am Dresdner Hof, Carus 83.169), Divoti affetti (Early Music at the Court of Dresden, PGM, 1997). The series of Passion duets Divoti affetti has also been published in
140 Music as Social and Cultural Practice The four serenate discussed here were dedicated to three rulers: Maria Josepha, Queen of Poland (performed on 8 December 1735), August iii, King of Poland (performed on 5 March 1736 and 7 October 1746) and Anna Ivanovna, Tsarina of Russia (performed on 9 May 1736). Three of them, with libretti by Pallavicino, were part of courtly gala celebrations in 1735–6. The fourth (with words by Pasquini), was composed ten years later, after the court had undergone considerable changes, and shows that Ristori was a keen observer of current politics and artistic tastes, adapting his music adroitly.
the composer Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1693–1753) became connected with the Polish-Saxon court in 1716 at the age of twenty-four. He arrived as a young composer of great promise, basking in the glory of his extraordinary success in Venice, where his dramma per musica Orlando furioso had had a record run of nearly fifty performances at the Teatro S. Angelo in 1713–14. Ristori was to spend almost forty years in the employ of August the Strong and August iii in various capacities, as composer of Italian music (1717–33), organist (from 1733) and composer of sacred music (from 1746), finally achieving the distinction of deputy ViceKapellmeister (from 1749). In the musical hierarchy of the Polish-Saxon court, however, he was always a figure of secondary importance, subordinated to a succession of Kapellmeisters including Johann Christoph Schmidt, Johann David Heinichen and Johann Adolph Hasse. All the same, Ristori was one of the more interesting and gifted composers at the royal court, and was fully justified in applying for the post of Kapellmeister following Heinichen’s death in 1729. His application was turned down, ostensibly on the grounds of ‘insufficient industriousness in the performance of his duties’, but at that time the court was probably already seeking to secure a rising star such as J. A. Hasse. One of the symptoms of Ristori’s second-rate status was that he was frequently delegated to Warsaw, a city which played a secondary role in the artistic plans of both August the Strong and August iii, compared to their main score, ed. Bernhard Schrammek, in the series Musik aus der Dresdner Hofkirche iii (Beeskow, 2004).
Michael Talbot, Vivaldi, 2nd edn (London, 1993), p. 30.
See Alina Żórawska-Witkowska, Muzyka na dworze Augusta ii w Warszawie
[Music at the Warsaw Court of August iii] (Warsaw, 1997), passim.
Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden (hereafter SHSA), Loc. 3350, ‘Briefe von
Thioly zu Warschau an den Baron de Gaultier zu Dreßden, und Depeschen des letztern an S.M. 1729’, letter from Warsaw, 27 July 1729, where the high-ranking court official Thioly wrote: ‘Ristori a escrit pour la place de maitre de Chapelle, son peu d’ attention a se ranger a son devoir opere beaucoup contre sa demande.’
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 141 cultural centre, Dresden. Nevertheless, Ristori spent quite a few years in the Polish capital during the reign of August the Strong, and in the days of August iii he came to Warsaw with the royal court in 1735–6, 1746 and 1748. The serenata as a genre played a similarly second-class role in comparison with the dramma per musica. The serenate at the Polish-Saxon court were not usually composed by J. A. Hasse, who wrote only three for Dresden (in 1734, 1743 and 1749) and two for Warsaw (in 1758, and c.1760), but by the likes of Ristori, Johann Michael Breunich or Johann Georg Schürer, who were employed as Kirchen-Compositeurs or composers of sacred music. The serenata became the trademark genre for the courtly galas at the Polish court in the first two decades of August iii’s reign, especially during the royal couple’s first stay at Warsaw, which lasted from 21 November 1734 until early August 1736. It was the longest of the royal couple’s ten visits to Poland, and took place in response to the potentially unstable political situation at the time.
the political context August iii gained the Polish throne as an anti-king, elected on 5 October 1733 by a handful of secessionists with the strong support of the Russian army sent in by Tsarina Anna Ivanovna. Stanisław Leszczyński, supported by France and elected almost a month earlier (12 September) in a landslide majority vote, fled following the Russian military intervention. The double election had led to an international armed conflict, misnamed as the war of Polish succession even though there was no such thing as dynastic succession in Poland, where monarchs were chosen in a democratic election. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the conflict over the Polish ‘succession’ proceeded somewhat lethargically, with the main military action taking place at the Rhine and in Italy, where Leszczyński’s allies (France, Spain and the Kingdom of Sardinia) faced the armies of Russia and Austria backing August Wettin. In November 1733, a large Saxon force entered Poland to boost the position of the Russian troops already stationed in the country. Thanks to this intervention, a hasty and modest coronation of August iii and his wife Maria Josepha became possible on 17 January 1734 in Kraków. After the ceremony, the royal couple prudently returned to Saxony to avoid the fervour stirred up in Poland in favour of the lawful and democratically elected king Stanisław Leszczyński. Numerous ‘confederations’ or local military alliances were formed in Poland to back the legitimate king but eventually proved futile given August iii’s strong international position. In this context, a decision was reached in Saxony and Russia that the last ten days of November 1734 would be the right moment to present the victorious monarch to his country publicly,
142 Music as Social and Cultural Practice even though the situation was still far from quiet. The internal conflict was to be quelled by an appeasement parliament convened by August iii in the autumn of 1735. The session lasted from 17 September until 8 November, when it was terminated by the adherents of the deposed Leszczyński. A second appeasement parliament, taking place in Warsaw between 25 June and 9 July 1736, was successful, and guaranteed the withdrawal of the Russian and Saxon forces. On the international scene, the peace negotiations were preliminarily concluded in Vienna on 5 October 1735, although the final peace treaty (in Vienna) was not signed until three years later (18 November 1738). Under the compact, the Polish throne remained with August iii, and Stanisław Leszczyński had to content himself with the titles of King of Poland and Duke of Lorraine and Bar. Following his official abdication, early in May 1736 Leszczyński left Königsberg and settled in France. August iii then concluded that his presence in Poland was no longer needed and left for his favourite Dresden early in August 1736. Ristori’s last Warsaw serenata was performed in 1746, during one of the royal court’s visits to Poland. At that time, August iii’s position in Poland was already secure, and all that remained to be done was to cultivate his image as a noble and enlightened ruler who was ever kind to his people.
performers and circumstances of the performances It is difficult to explain in a few sentences the complicated situation of the musical and theatrical staff serving the needs of the dual court of August iii. Suffice it to say that in general the artistic centre was located in Dresden, and during the monarch’s infrequent visits to Warsaw, this secondary court had to content itself with the joint forces of two ensembles funded by the Polish court’s treasury: the so-called Polish ensemble (Pohlnische Capelle) and the comici italiani, boosted by a number of Dresden musicians picked to travel to Warsaw for that purpose. When August iii decided to hold his coronation ceremony in Kraków, he wanted his court musicians to travel from Saxony to add lustre to the occasion. Orders were dispatched, and on 21 December 1733 the ensemble, headed by the composer Jan Dismas Zelenka and the Konzertmeister Johann Georg Pisendel, set out from Dresden towards the border. In the event, the Elector’s ensemble never reached Poland. On reaching Bautzen, the musicians received an order to return to Dresden, which they duly did (30 December). According to the Saxon press, the reason for this change of heart was a protest on the part of SHSA, OHMA o i Nr 3, fols 82, 84. See also ‘Exzerpte aus dem Diarium Missionis S.J.
Dresdae’, ed. Wolfgang Reich and Siegfried Seifert, Zelenka-Studien ii, pp. 362, 363.
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 143 the Polish magnates, who offered the services of their own musicians for the coronation ceremony in what was an obvious political manifestation meant to demonstrate Polish national pride. Thus, when planning his first stay in Warsaw in his royal capacity, August iii had to be careful even in the area of music. In 1734, the list of members retained in the Polish ensemble was only six names long, all of whom were former members of the Polish ensemble under August the Strong. This meagre force was supplemented with musicians selected from at least three ensembles: (1) St John’s collegiate church in Warsaw; (2) Count Heinrich von Brühl’s ensemble, newly established in Warsaw c.1735, which included Georg Gebel and Gottlob Harrer; and (3) singers and instrumentalists from the Elector’s Saxon ensemble. From 3 December 1735 until 8 June 1736, there were in Warsaw nine Dresden Cammermusici and four singers – the soprano Giovanni Bindi, the altos Domenico Annibali and Niccolò Pozzi and the tenor Johann Joseph Götzel. The musicians were headed by the Konzertmeister Johann Georg Pisendel.10 The relevant source materials are not available, but it seems obvious that Giovanni Alberto Ristori and Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino must also have been present in Warsaw as their serenate became the musical trademarks of the court. This means that in 1735–6 the Polish court had a sizable and highly accomplished musical ensemble of some thirty people. Annibali must have been the foremost singer: three months after returning from Poland, on 8 September 1736 he was granted a leave of absence and left for London to augment the opera ensemble of George Frideric Handel in the season running from November 1736 to June 1737.11 Pisendel, one of the greatest violinists of the day, a disciple of Antonio Vivaldi and a competent leader of his Dresden orchestra, clearly took pride of place among the instrumentalists. What August iii did not have in Warsaw at the time was a decent theatre: the king had liquidated the theatre houses built previously by his father, August the Strong, and the new Opernhaus was not to be completed until 1748. In such circumstances, the Italian serenata became the most suitable Historischer Kern Dreßdnischer Merkwürdigkeiten, 1734, January, 1. Abth., p. 53.
See also Ortrun Landmann, ‘Die große “Capell- und Cammer-Musique” zur Zeit des zweiten sächsischen Polen-Königs’, Der stille König: August iii. zwischen Kunst und Politik, Dresdner Hefte: Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte, 14. Jahrgang, Heft 46/2 (1996), p. 42.
SHSA, Loc. 464, ‘Die Sächsische Reise-Cammer-Casse 1734–55’, fol. 26.
Ulrike Kollmar, Gottlob Harrer (1703–1755), Kapellmeister des Grafen von Brühl am
sächsisch-polnischen Hof und Thomaskantor in Leipzig (Beeskow, 2006), p. 57 nn.
10 SHSA, OHMA i Nr 74, fols 129–30. 11 Ibid., fol. 174. See also Händel-Handbuch, iv: Dokumente zu Leben und Schaffen,
ed. Otto Erich Deutsch (Leipzig, 1985), pp. 262–81.
144 Music as Social and Cultural Practice genre for courtly celebrations, functioning as a substitute for the dramma per musica. At least ten serenate were performed in Warsaw between 8 December 1735 and 7 June 1736, out of which only three (the Ristori serenate discussed here) have been preserved complete with their music. Interestingly, the Polish press referred to these pieces by their correct appellation of serenata, whereas the German and French court diaries provide less precise descriptions, such as ‘ein schönes Concert von Instrumental- und Vocal-Music’ or ‘très beau concert de musique, tant instrumentale que vocale’. The serenate added lustre to the royal courtly galas that marked the birthdays, name-days and coronation anniversaries of August iii and his wife Maria Josepha, the birthdays and coronation anniversaries of Tsarina Anna Ivanovna, and the birthdays of the Empress Dowager Amalie Wilhelmine, mother of Maria Josepha. Puzzlingly, late in January 1736 the Polish press stated that the assemblées or social functions organised by the Under-Treasurer count Heinrich von Brühl would ‘continue with dinners, cantatas and serenate’,12 but we may guess that it probably meant solo cantatas and excerpts from Italian operas, which must have been presented by the four royal singers referred to above. In the winter, serenate were performed at the Royal Castle (Zamek Królewski), and in the spring at the Saxon Palace (Pałac Saski, no longer extant). They had a place of their own in the ceremonial cycle, and started around 6.00p.m., usually to accompany social functions (assemblées, appartements), or – less frequently – dinners. During carnival, the guests dressed in dominoes and other masque garb (however, always barefaced), listened to the music as they played cards, talked and feasted on dainty dishes. On 8 February 1736, the serenata celebrating the birthday of Tsarina Anna Ivanovna (1693–1740) was performed in an exceptional place and with what must have been an exceptional stage set. August iii owed the Tsarina an enormous debt of gratitude, so her birthday was celebrated at the Royal Castle, first with a devotional service in church, then with a formal lunch and an assemblée in the king’s rooms. Afterwards, the distinguished guests, including senators, ministers and ladies, proceeded to the freshly renovated Senators’ Hall to listen to a performance of the serenata Apollo in Tempe. The names of the poet and composer have been lost but Pallavicino and Ristori would be the obvious candidates. It was a special concert in the largest room in the Castle, with elaborate decorations which were duly described in great detail by the press: For that solemn occasion, the Senate Chamber was decorated as follows: the floor was newly tiled, and the ceiling was renovated in plaster work. … Where the royal throne is situated, a portrait was placed of 12 Gazety Polskie (1736), no. 60.
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 145 Her Most Enlightened Majesty, Empress of Russia, on a velvet covering lined with gold. … A dexteris to the portrait stood a newly built podium for the orchestra. On a piece of velvet, the coat of arms of the Russian Empress, the two-headed Black Eagle … a dextris et a sinistris to the coat of arms, there were letters intertwined with laurel leaves and triumphal palms representing the words Augustus Rex. Beneath the royal crowns, the orchestra podium was very ingeniously decorated and lined with red cloth. The entire floor of the Chamber and the benches were decorated with red cloth, and four boxes were built for the spectators.13 Moreover, the libretto appeared in print.14 This is how we know that the royal throne was replaced with a portrait of Anna Ivanovna flanked by the emblems of the Kingdom of Poland and of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The emblem of Russia was likewise displayed, accompanied with a decorative royal monogram. A dais lined with red cloth was erected for the performers. The same red cloth covered the floor and the benches for the guests. Special guests took seats in four purpose-built theatre boxes. We may suppose that there were some 150 people in the audience, if one can be guided by the number of viewers present at the dramma ridicolo per musica performed three years later in the same room (Il Costantino, with music by Giovanni Verocai).15 After the serenata, the guests went to the royal rooms for a formal dinner accompanied by a concert of vocal and instrumental music while the Senators’ Hall was cleaned and readied for a ball. At the ball, the royal couple diverted themselves with ‘dances Polish and other’ until 1.00a.m. (the other guests celebrated until 5.00a.m.) This was one of the ways in which August iii built his royal authority and conducted his foreign policy in what was then a less than friendly country. Such celebrations also met, albeit in a surrogate form, the king’s penchant for 13 Ibid., no. 83. 14 The libretto’s publication, attested from a copy once held in St Petersburg, is
noted by Karol Estreicher, Bibliografia polska [Polish Bibliography] 12 (Kraków, 1891), p. 164: ‘Apollo in tempo [sic], serenata in musica … con gran pompa d’ Eroi, magnifica illuminatione, famosa musica e canti pretiosi, con artificiosi fuochi, a cannoni, ta[m]burri traversi, e trombette che battino, e non cupi v.v.v. In Varsavia ai 8 di Febraro 1736 … ’ . The ceremony is also described in Königlich Polnischer und Churfürstlich Sächsischer Hof- und Staats-Kalender auf das Jahr 1737. Claudio Sartori, I libretti italiani a stampa dalle origini al 1800, i (Cuneo, 1990), no. 2259, notes only one piece, with a title almost identical with that of the Warsaw libretto: Apollo in tempe. Trattenimento pastorale (Venice, 1712), authors unknown.
15 SHSA, OHMA g Nr 35, k. 273–275. See also Alina Żórawska-Witkowska, ‘Die Oper
in Warschau in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhundert: Vom Hoftheater Augusts iii. zum öffentlichen Theater von Stanisław August Poniatowski’, Musikgeschichte in Mittel- und Osteuropa, 3, ed. Helmut Loos and Eberhard Möller (Chemnitz, 1998), p. 79.
146 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Italian opera. The years of 1735–6 were the heyday of the serenata genre, and although it was performed less frequently in the subsequent years, it continued to be popular at the Polish court of August iii. Today, a total of fifteen serenate are known by title, but there must have been many more. Traditionally, they featured in the celebrations of the queen’s birth- and name-days, which fell in Advent and could not be feted with operas even after the Opernhaus was completed. Until the completion of the Opernhaus, the birthdays of August iii were likewise celebrated with performances of serenate. The texts were originally furnished by the poets of the Polish-Saxon court, Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino (1672–1742), followed after his death by Giovanni Claudio Pasquini (1695–1763). After Pasquini’s resignation (1749), the whole output of Pietro Metastasio was mined for texts. The music was mainly composed by Ristori (until 1746), Breunich (1748–50), Schürer (1754) and Hasse (1758–63). The last of the four Ristori cantatas was performed during the royal court’s fifth stay at Warsaw. The visit only lasted for three months, from 16 September to 14 December 1746. At that time, the Polish ensemble already included twenty-five regular members, but the singers customarily came from Dresden. They included Annibali, already well known to the Polish audiences, and two newcomers, the soprano Ventura Rochetti and the bass Joseph Schuster. The tenor was one Pietro Mira,16 a truly intriguing figure cast in the mould of the perfect eighteenth-century man living by his wits, with a wide range of talents as an artist (violinist, composer, singer, actor and jester), businessman and courtier.17 By 1746, August iii had not only managed to secure his political position firmly, but also gained a degree of trust and partiality on the part of his Polish and Lithuanian subjects. The artistic situation of the Polish-Saxon court had also changed. J. A. Hasse had become the absolute sovereign in musical affairs, and his style was imitated (quite successfully) by Ristori. After his death Pallavicino had been replaced by Pasquini, a poet of a new generation who conformed to Metastasio’s style.
pallavicino’s texts None of the three libretti which we attribute with a high degree of assurance to Pallavicino had been printed. The texts have been preserved only in Ristori’s manuscript scores. The same applies to two Dresden serenate, Diana su l’ Elba with music by Johann David Heinichen (Dresden, 1719) and Questa che il sol produce with music by Jan Dismas Zelenka (zwv 277, Dresden, 1737), whose 16 SHSA, OHMA i Nr 114, fols 25, 50, 103; OHMA t iii Nr 26, fol. 14. 17 See R.-Aloys Mooser, Annales de la musique et des musiciens en Russie au xviiime
siècle, i (Geneva, 1948), pp. 105–10, and Landmann, Quellenstudien, i, pp. 138–40.
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 147 libretti have been attributed to Pallavicino.18 Writing serenata texts was one of Pallavicino’s duties as a court poet at the Polish-Saxon court of August iii, a function that he performed in 1719–42. In any case, the young prince Friedrich August (the future King August iii), travelling in Italy as a young man and completing an Italian opera ensemble for the purposes of his father’s court, envisaged the duties of an Italian poet as providing libretti for oratorios, serenate and cantatas, making cuts and extensions to scenes in works by other poets, introducing changes to arias and adapting them to the fancies of the composer and of the singers.19 The poetic structure and style of the three Warsaw libretti discussed here are very close to the text of Zelenka’s slightly later Dresden serenata. What strikes one in each of those pieces is the frequent occurrence of rhymes in the recitatives. At that time, this was already an outmoded practice, and according to Talbot it was characteristic of the poets belonging to Pallavicino’s generation. The complex syntax of the texts and their highly ornate poetic diction were likewise a thing of the past, dating back to the poet’s youth. Although Pallavicino and Ristori had worked together previously on two comic operas for Dresden (Calandro, 1726 and Un pazzo ne fa cento ovvero Don Chisciotte, 1727), the Warsaw serenate must have been their first collaboration in the genre. • Serenata for the Queen: Cantata à 4 voci per il giorno natalizio di S. M. la Regina l’ Anno 1735 (‘Si disarmi quest’ altiero Amore’)20 This piece was performed on 8 December 1735 at the Royal Castle in Warsaw and (an earlier Holy Mass at the Collegiate Church excepted) it was the first public test of the talents of the four accomplished Saxon singers who had 18 See Michael Walter, ‘Heinichens Serenade, “Diana su l’ Elba” für die Dresdener
Fürstenhochzeit von 1719’, Musik und Szene: Festschrift für Werner Braun zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Bernard R. Appel, Karl Geck and Herbert Schneider (Saarbrücken, 2001), p. 108, and Michael Talbot, ‘Zelenkas Serenata’, p. 226. None of the Palla vicino serenate for the Polish-Saxon court had appeared in Francesco Algarotti’s four-volume edition of Pallavicino (Opere, Venice, 1744).
19 SHSA, Loc. 383 ‘Acta’, fols 49–52, ‘Reponse du Prince Royale sur les observations
que Sa Majesté le Roy a faites … sur son memoire du 30. Janvier 1717’. See also Alina Żórawska-Witkowska, ‘Das Ensemble der italienischen Oper von Antonio Lotti am Hof des Königs von Polen und Kurfürsten von Sachsen August ii. des Starken (1717–1720)’, Musica Antiqua Europae Orientalis ix, Acta Musicologica, Filharmonia Pomorska (Bydgoszcz, 1991), i, pp. 477–504, at p. 482. This publication also contains further details on Pallavicino’s employment at the court of August the Strong.
20 Cantata à 4 Voc: / per il Giorno natalizio di S. M. / la Regina / l’ Anno 1735. / Musica
/ di Gio. Alberto Ristori, D-Dl, MS score Mus. 2455-l-1, voice parts Mus. 2455-l-1a.
148 Music as Social and Cultural Practice recently arrived at Warsaw and undergone (two days previously) an assessment by the influential Count Józef Aleksander Sułkowski.21 Their arrival provoked great interest as Warsaw had not entertained such virtuosi since the beginning of the century, when August the Strong had disbanded his ‘Königlich Pohlnische Capelle’, several dozen people strong and serving the dual requirements of Warsaw and Dresden. A poetic narration of the female virtues vested in Maria Josepha, whose beauty, in Michael Walter’s words, left a lot to be desired,22 called for an ingenious effort on the part of the poet, who was badly in need of an apposite conceit. Pallavicino had previously met the challenge successfully in his serenata Diana su l’ Elba, written for the then young and newly wed Maria Josepha. In 1735 he returned to the tried and trusty idea as he praises the mature Maria Josepha for qualities other than fleeting and deceptive beauty. The queen’s real beauty consists in her character and her ability to bear many children, a quality always desirable in a royal consort. Maria Josepha had just given birth (12 February 1735) in Warsaw to her tenth child (Maria Christina), and at the performance of the serenata dedicated to her she was already expecting (soon afterwards, on 9 February 1736, she gave birth to Princess Maria Elisabeth). This is why Pallavicino seeks to anchor his text in an apotheosis of the female element, and resorts to the ‘contest’ topos.23 The discourse is conducted among four characters: the First Muse (alto = Pozzi?), the Second Muse (soprano = Bindi), Amor (alto = Annibali?) and Time (il Tempo, tenor = Götzel). The Muses, goddesses of poetic song (‘Dee de carmi’), state that the impudent Amor should no longer boast of his conquests. The brief moments of love’s bliss provoked by his arrows are a mere illusion purchased at the price of future contrition and repentance. The Muses resolve to disarm Amor, and make of his arrows a trophy on the top of Mount Parnassus bearing the legend: ‘I was crushed in a contest with the Muses’. Obviously, Amor defends himself, arguing that it is he who provides the Muses with poetic inspiration as he provokes both happy and suffering lovers to sing of their feelings. The Muses are inexorable, and the disarmed Amor bemoans his cruel lot. Without his arrows, 21 Gazety Polskie (1735), no. 73. 22 Michael Walter, ‘Heinichens Serenade’, p. 108.
23 Michael Talbot (‘Zelenkas’s Serenata’, p. 227) identifies two favourite forms of
discourse in the serenata libretto: the ‘contest’ topos and the ‘quest’ topos, which could coexist in a single work. He writes: ‘The first was the “contest” topos (often signalled by the actual words contesa or gara – or their opposites, unione and concordia – in the title). Here, the characters vie with one another in laying claim to, or expressing a view on, the subject. … The second topos is that of the “quest”. Here, the identity of the subject is revealed by stages in a game of questions and answers.’
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 149 he has become a laughing stock among women. The contest is interrupted by il Tempo (Time), Amor’s perennial enemy, who reminds the Muses about the birthday anniversary of a great queen: this is the day they can celebrate the name of the great and magnificent Maria, love and embellishment of Sarmatia and Germania. On that day, the tops of Parnassus compete in song to echo the name of that great woman, bliss of the gods, worthy of male adoration with her innocently charming milky breast. The Muses resort to veiled and poetically sophisticated allusions to wish the queen a successful parturition and many more future fruits of her union with August iii. Time and the vanquished Amor join in with heartfelt wishes, the latter being desirous to experience the force of that thunderbolt of virtue with which the great woman, Maria Josepha, struck the heart of the equally great August. Amor concedes that beauty is like lightning, making the heart burn with a short-lived flame, whereas only Virtue shines with an everlasting light. In the finale, the conflicted characters of the serenata find new harmony (concordia) and sing in chorus their best wishes for the queen.
• Serenata for the King: Componimento per musica da cantarsi in Varsavia il felicissimo Giorno del Nome della Maestà del Rè (‘Su l’ incudine sonora’)24 This serenata was performed on 5 March 1736, on the feast of the king’s second patron (Friedrich) – a celebration inferior in rank to the lavishly feted nameday of August (3 August). Unusually, the score provides the names of the singers: Vulcano – Pozzi (alto), La Fama – Bindi (soprano), La Pace – Annibali (alto), L’ Obblio – Götzel (tenor). Unsurprisingly, in this piece Pallavicino places the male element in the foreground as he bases his dramatic and ideological conceit on allusions to the war of the Polish succession and to the king’s efforts to effect a peaceful resolution of the conflict (that is his attempts to convene the second appeasement parliament). By way of digression, it is worth noting here that another serenata had been composed five months previously at the imperial court in Vienna containing allusions to the same war – Il sogno di Scipione, with a text by Pietro Metastasio and music by Luca Antonio Predieri. At that time, the Viennese composition did not influence the artistic form of the Componimento, but its artistic repercussions can be seen in the Pasquini serenata composed eleven years later (discussed below). 24 Componimento per musica / da cantarsi in Varsavia / il felicissimo Giorno / del
Nome / della Maestà del Rè. / Musica / di Gio. Alberto Ristori. / 1736, D-Dl, MS score Mus. 2455-l-2, voice parts Mus. 2455-l-2a.
150 Music as Social and Cultural Practice In his Componimento, Pallavicino employs the contest topos, with the contest taking place between Peace (La Pace) and Oblivion (L’ Obblio), which imperils the memory of heroes. Initially, Fame and Vulcan take an ambivalent stance in the conflict. Fame is prepared to sing alike the feats of cruel, bellicose warriors and peace-loving heroes; Vulcan can forge with equal diligence deadly weapons and useful peacetime implements. The story is as follows. Vulcan tells his Cyclopes to redouble their efforts because Jove keeps asking for new weapons. The rivers Po, Oder and Rhein are to run with blood. Fame tries to curb the warlike industry of the ancient blacksmiths of the gods. She reminds him that on this special day (meaning the king’s name-day), even the brow of Mars lightens, a longing for love and peace stirs in mortal breasts, and Fame herself, usually a fearsome figure with blooddrenched wings, becomes a messenger of peace and love. She enjoins olives to thrive so that the world may rest in their shade, and desires to hear the noise of peasant songs instead of the noise of mines rending the earth. Oblivion enters the scene, fated to dwell in a swampy, silent marsh shrouded in slothful mists. Oblivion tells his minion Sloth to poison and put to sleep the souls of famethirsty heroes. Hearing this, Fame fears that the sound of her peace-announcing trumpet will go unheard. And since the inhabitants of the earth cannot purchase their laurels without becoming stained with blood, Fame calls for Bellona to be awakened with a whip made of adders. Fame is stopped by Peace, who does not wish to witness new tragedies in Europe. Peace reminds Fame that famous heroes serve her, and no heart can harbour justice and devotion in her absence. She asks Fame to look at the place where the swelling Vistula once threatened to bring ruin to its banks, but where paeans are now heard in praise of the virtues of a magnanimous king; to see how that king quells local conflicts with his mighty grace and brings liberty and law to his subjects. Like the sun dispelling a threatening cloud pregnant with hail, the mighty and wise king dispels with the rays of his virtue the impending storms and tempests. Vulcan and Fame find this argument irrefutable. Vulcan makes assurances that he will not allow Oblivion to triumph, and that instead of weapons he will forge a crown for the king. Fame, who wants to perpetuate the king’s name with the sound of her trumpet, asks the blacksmith of the gods to fashion her a new instrument, whose sound will reach the limits of time and space. In the chorus finale, the characters join forces and call for the fire of the god’s forge to be fanned as it will be used to temper the trumpet which celebrates the peaceful works of the king.
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 151 • Serenata for the Tsarina: Versi cantati in Varsavia nel celebrarsi per Ordine Reggio il Giorno della Coronazione della Maestà d’ Anna Imperadrice delle Russie (‘Dai crini omai scuotete’)25 This serenata was performed on 9 May 1736 to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the coronation of Anna Ivanovna (1693–1740). The coronation was held in the spring (28 April/9 May) of 1730, hence the main character of the serenata, la Primavera (alto = Annibali?). She speaks to la Vittoria (soprano = Bindi), la Pace (alto = Pozzi?) and il Sole (tenor = Götzel). The tsarina ruled the world’s largest country of that time, but she was also a woman, and unlike Maria Josepha she was unmarried and childless. Accordingly, Pallavicino decided to emphasise both the feminine and the masculine elements, bringing the latter to the foreground. Ristori himself, who had personally met the tsarina during his one-year stint at the Moscow court (February 1731–January 1732), must have served as an expert to advise the poet and the king. Among other things, Ristori had taken part in the celebrations of the tsarina’s first coronation anniversary, and composed for the occasion what may have been his first serenate.26 In his Versi cantati, Pallavicino departs from the convention and uses neither of the topoi considered by Talbot as characteristic of the genre27 (the contest or the quest). In this piece, the name of the celebrated personage appears in the first recitative and is repeated numerous times, and the whole is one great panegyric in praise of Anna, August iii’s benefactress. In the piece, Pallavicino bends over backwards in his efforts to amplify the homage, clearly at the express request of the king. August iii was Russia’s ‘faithful and enduring ally; unmatched in this respect by any other Polish king’.28 The plot of the serenata is as follows. The Sun calls nature to join in the number of kingdoms joyously celebrating this glorious day. Spring asks the 25 Versi cantati in Varsavia / nel celebrarsi / per Ordine Reggio / il Giorno della
Coronazione / della Maestà d’ Anna / Imperadrice [sic] delle Russie / 1736. / Musica / di / Giov: Alber:o Ristori, D–Dl, MS score Mus. 2455-g-1, voice parts Mus. 2455-g-1a.
26 He composed the Serenata a 3 voci per il gloriosissimo giorno di nome di Augusto ii.
Re di Polonia, Elettore di Sassonia, performed in Moscow on 5 August 1731 (librettist unknown). It is probable that he also composed the two-voice Cantata per la festa al giorno dell’ incoronazione di Sua Maesta Imperiale. Fedeltà e Amor Vassallo, performed in Moscow on 10 May 1731 to celebrate the first anniversary of the tsarina’s coronation (libretto by Rosalia Della Fantasia). Both libretti are in SHSA, Loc. 3309, ‘Lettres et Copies de[s] relations de Mr. Le Fort à Moscou et à Petersbourg à Mr. le C.te de Lagnasc[o] 1730–1732’, fols 242–3 and 292–5.
27 See above, n. 23. 28 Józef Andrzej Gierowski, ‘August iii’, Poczet królów i książąt polskich [Polish kings
and princes], ed. Andrzej Garlicki (Warsaw, 1978), p. 440.
152 Music as Social and Cultural Practice life-giving Sun to adorn her with flowers and make her particularly joyous as she had been fortunate to witness the moment when the crown of Muscovy alighted on the great Anna’s temples. Victory and Peace join forces in a duet assuring that Anna’s reign is likewise gloriously beneficial to them. Victory enthuses about the vastness of her territories stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Baltic, the unstoppable advance of her armies that had reached as far as the Rhine, and her victory over the faithless Tatar. Victory prides herself on the fact that she has frequently sung the fame of Anna as a warrior and ruler. Peace emphasises the feminine attributes of the tsarina: the gentleness of her government over her many peoples, her love of the arts and generosity shown to promising talents (the latter compliment may allude to Ristori’s stay, together with other artists, at the tsarina’s court – whose generosity, incidentally, proved to be far from magnificent). The Sun states that Anna’s temples should be adorned both with an olive wreath symbolising peace and the victor’s laurel wreath. And even the Sun humbles himself before Anna, as it must come to rest in the waves of the Atlantic at the end of the day’s journey, whereas Anna’s name, brighter than the sun, will never set or fade. Spring calls shepherds and nymphs to adorn this special day with dancing and singing. The general joy culminates in a final chorale (and possibly a dance) of the Shepherds.
giovanni claudio pasquini’s text: an apotheosis of the ideal ruler La liberalità di Numa Pompilio29 was performed on 7 October 1746 to celebrate August iii’s fiftieth birthday. This time Warsaw saw the printed publication not only of the original Italian libretto, but also of its free translation into Polish, probably by Józef Andrzej Załuski (1702–74), the future bishop of Kiev and author of numerous translations from Italian (including works by Metastasio), French, German, English and Latin.30 The translation of this serenata would have been the first translation by Załuski, who had served Stanisław 29 The Italian libretto was published in Warsaw in 1746, Drukarnia JKM i
Rzeczpospolitej Collegium Societatis Jesu. MS score at the D-Dl, Mus. 2455-f-17: La Liberalità / di / Numa Pompilio / Serenata per Musica da cantarsi nel felicissimo / Giorno Natalizio / della / Sacra Real Maestà / di / Augusto iii. / Rè di Pollonia [sic], Elettore di Sassonia etc. / l’ Anno 1746. Poesia del Sig.r Abate Gio: Claudio Pasquini / Musica di Gio: Alberto Ristori.
30 Hoynosc Numy Pompiliusza, serenata, do spiewania z muzyką podana, w dzień
szczęśliwego urodzenia Nayiasnieyszego Augusta iii Króla Polskiego, Xiążęcia Saskiego z rozkazu Nayiasnieyszey Maryi Józefy Krolowy Polskiey, Xiężney Saskiey, z włoskiego przetłumaczona (Warsaw, 1746), Drukarnia JKM i Rzeczpospolitej Collegium Societatis Jesu.
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 153 Leszczyński until 1742, but following a quarrel with his patron may have sought to curry the favour of August iii with a translation of the serenata. Pasquini learned the art of writing libretti for operas, oratorios and cantatas at the imperial court, first alongside Apostolo Zeno, then from Metastasio himself. During the seven years spent in Polish-Saxon service (until 1749), he specialised in operas (collaborations with Hasse) and serenate (collaborations with Ristori and Breunich). Out of Pasquini’s three serenate written for Warsaw, the one discussed here is the only one set to music by Ristori. This is known to have been one of the reasons behind Pasquini’s visit to Warsaw between 10 September (?) and 16 December.31 Pasquini’s last work for the Polish-Saxon court was his festa di camera I lamenti d’ Orfeo with music by Ristori (Dresden, January 1749).32 The serenata La liberalità di Numa Pompilio is completely different from Pallavicino’s other pieces discussed here. It is difficult to escape the impression that Pasquini, who wrote it at the queen’s command (‘per comando della maestà della Regina’), was struggling with a double challenge. On the one hand, he had to live up to the earlier depiction of Numa as presented five years previously in a dramma per musica, Numa, with a libretto by Pallavicino (Hubertusburg 1743, music by Hasse), likewise written at the queen’s request to celebrate the birthday of August iii. On the other, he had to match Metastasio’s serenata Il sogno di Scipione, referred to above (Vienna 1735). The similarities to Metastasio’s work include a cast of ancient Roman characters (itself a great rarity in the serenata genre), but also the general nature of the work as a philosophical and moralising treatise. In both cases, the libretto is preceded by an argomento, which explains – in dramma per musica style – the historic context of the work and the source of the poetic invention. For Pasquini, the inspiration derives from the historical work of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Numa Pompilius, the serenata’s eponymous hero, was the second king of Rome (according to tradition, he reigned in 716–673 bc). In Pasquini’s conceit, he is shaped as August iii’s alter ego. Both rulers had fought victoriously against opposed political factions, and the poet also probably found some similarity between the systems of government of Rome and of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. Reliable scholarship on August iii’s reign in Poland is still scarce and at the moment it is impossible to have an informed opinion on the king’s attitude to serfdom, a social phenomenon practically 31 SHSA, OHMA i No. 114, fol. 31. 32 See Alina Żórawska-Witkowska, ‘Giovanni Claudio Pasquini i Giovanni Alberto
Ristori: Festa di camera “I Lamenti d’ Orfeo” (1749)’, Mit Orfeusza: Inspiracje i reinterpretacje w europejskiej tradycji artystycznej [The myth of Orpheus: inspirations and reinterpretations in the European artistic tradition], ed. Sławomira Żerańska-Kominek (Gdańsk, 2003), pp. 193–209.
154 Music as Social and Cultural Practice akin to slavery, which was widespread in Poland and Lithuania but unknown in western Europe. Pasquini’s serenata may serve as a contribution of sorts to the debate: the noble Numa feels for the oppressed farm labourers, and gives them the lands belonging to the king and to the state. If this idea had ever crossed August iii’s mind, it should be remembered that serfdom was not abolished in Poland until the nineteenth century (1864 in the Russian partition). The heroes of the serenata include Numa Pompilio (alto – Annibali), his wife Tazia (soprano – Ventura Rochetti) and the Roman senators Mamerco (bass – Joseph Schuster) and Orazio (tenor – Pietro Mira). The action takes place in the Forum Romanum on the day of a double feast – the birthday of Numa and the anniversary of the founding of the Eternal City. In the Polish context, there existed similarly a double occasion for celebration – the birthday of August iii and the anniversary of his election (5 October). Tazia (who can be to some extent identified with Maria Josepha) and Mamerco believe that the senate has been summoned to the Forum Romanum to celebrate the double feast. Tazia speaks about the role of the monarch in terms that closely mirror the views formulated by Metastasio for the imperial court. She says that the monarch cannot be the lord of his own thoughts because to rule is to serve the people. The crown is not so much a source of splendour as a burden that weighs down the monarch’s soul. Mamerco asks: who gives the monarch the right to make laws for others? It is the force of reason, replies Tazia. In Mamerco’s paradoxical riposte, reason must then be a tyrant, since it casts kings in a subordinate role, while the lower estates live a happy life. They may suffer material wants but they are contented, untroubled and free from fear. Tazia replies that simple people may be contented with small things, but when these are taken away from them, there can be no greater poverty in the world. Then Numa comes along, so the people (coro del Popolo) ask the gods to save their great king. Numa assures those present that he has devoted his life to Rome, and only values his existence insofar as it can be of benefit to others. He wants to be a father to his subjects more than he wants to be their king, and he has not convened the meeting at the Forum to listen to empty praise, which he abhors and considers a waste of time. His reign is founded on Justice and Mercy, the twin virtues that serve as a pair of firm pillars for every ruler. Accordingly, he wants to announce a new work of Justice and Mercy: as a large section of the Roman plebs lives in abject poverty and can barely eke out a living from the poor soil, he, Numa, has decided to give his royal lands to the people, and if these prove insufficient, public lands will be allotted in like manner. This is the way he intends to celebrate his birthday. In an aria, he goes on to explain that as the sun is the pupil of the world’s eye, the monarch is the pupil of his kingdom. The ruler should always bear in mind the image of the
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 155 sun, the light and life of everything. Tazia and the senators greet Numa’s decision with admiration, perceiving in him a similarity to the Sun and an analogy with a river that is initially still and quiet but having crossed a sea gathers a powerful force capable of bringing down every dam. Numa modestly replies that he tries to deserve glory but cannot bear to hear praise. Still, in return for his goodness his people praises the ruler in a chorus.
ristori’s music The serenate to Pallavicino’s texts have been preserved in Ristori’s manuscript scores and incomplete voice parts (violino primo, violino secondo, violetta, flauto traverso o oboe primo, flauto o oboe secondo, fagotto). The violino primo parts have been variously signed with the monogram or the full name of Pisendel, who used them. There exist also separate copies of the sinfonia from the Componimento and from the Versi, which seems to suggest that those instrumental introductions were also performed as stand-alone works. The serenata with Pasquini’s libretto has survived only in an autograph score and in the printed libretto publications published in Warsaw, as mentioned earlier. Both the scores and the parts have beautiful leather bindings with decorative tooling and gilding characteristic of the music library of Electress Dowager Maria Antonia Walpurgis (1724–80). The scores dating back to 1735–6 can be easily told apart from those dated 1746 on the grounds of size. The Cantata is the shortest at ninety-five pages. The Componimento and the Versi are longer, with 107 and 124 pages respectively. Written ten years later, La liberalità is much longer, 158 pages, owing to its use of longer (rather than more numerous) structural components. The structure of all four serenate is very similar and follows the conventions of the genre. All the Ristori serenate are one-section pieces preceded by instrumental sinfonias, for four male singers (SAAT in the case of the first three and SATB in the last case), containing a similar number of arias (7, 7, 5, 6) and accompagnati (1, 2, 2, 2), ending in choruses (cori dei solisti). Only in La liberalità is there an internal chorus, and the Cantata and the Versi also contain duets. Obviously, all the elements are interwoven with recitativi semplici. Despite the schematic form that characterised the period and the genre alike, Ristori clearly tries to achieve the closest possible union between music and text, and seeks to remain up to date with the changing musical style. The serenate to Pallavicino’s libretti are a group of pieces harking back to Baroque models, with a sonorous style reminiscent of Antonio Vivaldi, whereas La liberalità, composed to Pasquini’s text, seems to incline towards the classicist models of Hasse. In both groups, different instruments are included in the orchestra, and they are orchestrated in a different way. In the case of the three earlier serenate,
156 Music as Social and Cultural Practice in addition to the standard set of 1st and 2nd violin, viola, the basso group (violoncelli, contrabassi, fagotti and cembalo), double flutes, oboes and corni da caccia, there are also instances where the chalumeau and the piva are used. The orchestration methods betray a clear intention to emphasise and differentiate the ensemble’s potential. The 1746 serenata has a more uniform orchestra limited to the basic make-up of violins, basso continuo, double flutes, oboes and horns – producing a much more homogeneous and modern sound. However, Ristori’s scores also share certain similarities: 1. All the serenate form tonal loops, that is they begin and end with movements in the same key. 2. Three of the sinfonias (Cantata, Versi and La liberalità) are in D major, and follow the tripartite form of the Italian operatic sinfonia. Only the sinfonia preceding the Componimento, which is in F major, is a quadripartite composition whose structure is reminiscent of a sonata da camera (Allegro assai – a very short Andante – Allegro – Vivace assai). The first sections of the sinfonia (Allegro, Allegro assai) and the second section of the sinfonia in La liberalità (Andante molto) have a ritornello form. The remaining slow sections (Un poco andante, Andante) and the third sections (Presto, Vivace assai, Allegro) are built of two repeated sections. 3. The arias and duets are preceded by long or very long orchestral ritornelli (twenty-four bars long in Numa’s aria ‘Pupilla del mondo’), which introduce the main motifs, subsequently presented by the solo voice part. 4. The structure of the musical themes, particularly in the sinfonias, but also in many arias, betrays a predilection for triadic arpeggios, symbolising the heroes’ invincibility and bellicosity. 5. The arias, duets and choruses usually take a five-section da capo form with a short Section B whose motif is linked to Section A, but they are reduced, occasionally only to a vocal part and the basso. Less frequently, Section B introduces a contrast through a change of key and metre. 6. In the arias, loci topici, i.e. keywords, are foregrounded by means of extensive coloraturas. In serenate with libretti by Pallavicino these are always the rhyming last words of each of the two aria verses. The words not only stress the affect or the ideological message of the aria, but they also emphasise the elegant structure of the poem. In arias with libretti by Pasquini, there is usually only one keyword contained in the first verse and musically foregrounded with a more modest coloratura. 7. The accompagnati carefully emphasise the verbal content with frequent shifts of tempo and rhythm, dynamics or key. For instance, the accompagnato of
Żórawska-Witkowska • Ristori and his Serenate 157 Amor (in the Cantata) retains the same metre with numerous changes of tempo (tempo giusto – allegro – presto – piuttosto adagio – rissoluto – a tempo), with dynamic changes meticulously transcribed for each transition (non molto forte – forte – piano – pianissimo – un poco forte – fortissimo – forte – un poco piano – forte – più forte – piano – un poco forte – piano – più forte – piano), and contains numerous harmonic modulations (the opening key, B minor, modulates in turns to F sharp minor, E major, D major, G minor, F major, etc.). As mentioned above, serenate with Pallavicino’s texts are distinctive in their colourful orchestration and illustrative music. For instance, in the accompa gnato of the Sun (Versi), the basso part is divided into two separate staves, the first played by the fagotti e violoncelle, and the second by the cembalo e contrabassi. The aria of Peace (‘Voi che appiè del soglio augusto’) in the same serenata is coloured in a specific manner by the chalumeau (the composer mentions the plural chalumeaux; however, the melodic line suggests that a single instrument was actually used) and the ‘violini unisoni con sordini’. The aria of the First Muse, ‘Da chiare e dolci vene’ (Cantata), is in a rare key (E minor) and metre (9/8), and the its instrumental set only contains the flute, the cello and the basso ‘senza bassi ripieni’. The text of the aria makes an analogy between the source of the Hippocrene and the queen’s breast filled with milk, with ‘latte’ serving as the keyword. In Vulcan’s aria ‘Su l’ incudine sonora’, which opens the Componimento and is later repeated in a shortened form, the violins and basso lines contain an articulation imitating the sounds of hammering (‘de’ martelli de’ fabbri’), an effect known (nomen est omen) as martellato. In the aria of Spring, ‘Dal seno mio spuntate’ (Versi), two flutes are introduced. In Section A, the first doubles a voice an octave higher, and the minute violins trills imitate the humming of bees. In Section A', the instruments change their roles to create a new aural quality. Ristori goes even further in his evocative aria of Oblivion, ‘Ozio, che remora sei degli eroi’ (Componimento), where he illustrates the misty, apathetic and lethargic land of Oblivion by using the key of F minor and muting the sound of all the melodic instruments—‘violini con sordini, chalumeaux ovvero oboè sordo, oboè solo sordo’.33 In contrast, the next aria sung by Fame, ‘Colla sferza ch’ è d’ aspidi assorta’, is a kind of aria di bravura. Here, the soprano takes on the main burden of expression in a display of vocal virtuosity including spectacular coloraturas reaching the double octave. Another interesting example of instruments used as musical illustration can be found in the final chorus of the Versi, dedicated to the tsarina. 33 The recitativo accompagnato that precedes this aria carries a composer’s note:
‘Li violini suonano come violette con sordini, e gl’ oboè siano muti, e per il primo suoni un chalumaux [sic], se vi si trova.’
158 Music as Social and Cultural Practice The chorus takes the form of a rustic (pastoral) dance (D Major, metre 3/8), emphasised by Ristori with the use of the piva in section A and its repetition (da capo), where the melodic pipe doubles the first violin part, and the bass pipe augments the basso line. Based on the score alone, which never provides a fully comprehensive record of a piece, it is not possible to identify the specific type of the piva used in this piece. It is worth noticing, however, that the bass accompaniment appears to have been matched to the potential of that instrument, repeating as it does just two tones (the tonic D and the dominant A) in a kind of folksy bourdon. Also noteworthy are the two beautiful polonaise choruses in the finales that crown the works in praise of August iii. Several analyses have been devoted to the symbolism of the polonaise at the Polish-Saxon court, where the dance was linked with such ideas as the crown or royal majesty, both secular and divine34 – a problem recently investigated in detail by Szymon Paczkowski.35 Suffice it to say here that Ristori in both cases employs the polonaise in texts which are an apotheosis of August iii. In the Componimento, the whole chorus has a Tempo di polacca as the characters in the serenata call for the flames of Vulcan’s forge to be fanned to temper the trumpet of Vittoria, which will be used to sound the peaceful achievements of August iii. In La liberalità, the Tempo alla polacca is used only in the middle section of the chorus, in D minor, where the text is a praise of the monarch streaming from the grateful hearts of his subjects. It was around 1737 that Louis de Silvestre, August iii’s court painter, executed a beautiful stately portrait of the king in Polish costume (with an outer garment known as the kontusz and a fur-lined hat) and sporting the Polish hairstyle of closely cropped hair (subsequently reproduced in numerous engravings).36 It was during his first stay in Warsaw that August iii introduced the tradition of commencing courtly balls with a polonaise danced by the king and his consort. It would seem that the polonaise owed its growing international success not only to its purely musical merits (which had been appreciated earlier) but also to August iii’s court politics and his image-building as the king of Poland – with Ristori having a hand in the process. 34 See e.g. Ortrun Landmann, ‘Johann Adolf Hasse und Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
— Anregung zu einer der möglichen Behandlungen des Themas’, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Ein Beitrag zum 200. Todestag. Aufführungspraxis — Interpretation — Edition, Studien zur Aufführungspraxis und Interpretation der Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts xliv (Michaelstein and Blankenburg, 1991).
35 See Szymon Paczkowski, ‘Motet “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied” bwv 225
Johanna Sebastiana Bacha – styl, forma i znaczenie’ [The motet ‘Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied’ bwv 225 by Johann Sebastian Bach – style, form and meaning], Muzyka 50, no. 2 (2005), pp. 17–43, at pp. 38–9.
36 In the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.
• 9 • ‘Cantate, que me veux-tu?’ or: Do Handel’s Cantatas Matter? Ellen T. Harris
T
he French author Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle is said to have asked disparagingly about Italian instrumental chamber music: ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu?’ Today we might ask the same question of the Italian chamber cantata: ‘What good are you?’ For years, little musical importance was attached to this pervasive Baroque form, even in the hands of a composer such as George Frideric Handel. As Reinhard Strohm wrote about Handel’s cantatas in 1985: ‘Although very many of these are works of extraordinary beauty, they are among the least-known of Handel’s compositions.’ Even after valuable archival work added significantly to our knowledge about their chronology and context, Handel’s cantatas continued to be lumped together by most bio graphers as early compositions with relatively uninteresting texts, typically depicting the trials of a lovelorn shepherd and ‘couched in a fashionable pastoral William S. Newman provides this colloquial translation, which strikes me as
better and more accurate than the literal ‘What do you want of me?’ (The Sonata in the Baroque Era [New York, 1972], p. 31).
Reinhard Strohm, ‘Handel’s Italian Journey as a European Experience’, Essays on
Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), p. 7. Strohm’s pioneering work on Handel’s Italian period and on the Italian sources of his operatic libretti presented new data and broad insights and has provided a strong foundation for continuing research. I dedicate this paper to him with deep gratitude. It would be impossible to list all his articles on Handel and on the Italian cantata, but among the many the following must be cited: ‘Handel in Italia: Nuovi contributi’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 9 (1974), pp. 152–74; ‘Handel and his Italian Opera Texts’, Essays on Handel, pp. 34–79; ‘Scarlattiana at Yale’, Händel e gli Scarlatti a Roma, ed. Nino Pirrotta and Agostino Ziino (Florence, 1987), pp. 113–52; ‘Händel und Italien – Ein intellektuelles Abenteuer’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge 5 (1993), pp. 3–43; and ‘A Book of Cantatas and Arias Bought in Florence, 1723’, British Library Journal 21 (1995), pp. 184–201.
Ursula Kirkendale, ‘The Ruspoli Documents on Handel’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society 20 (1967), pp. 222–73; Hans Joachim Marx, ‘Die Musik am Hofe Pietro Kardinal Ottobonis unter Arcangelo Corelli’, Analecta Musicologica 5 (1968), pp. 104–77; Marx, ‘Ein Beitrag Händels zur Accademia Ottoboniana in Rom’, Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1974), pp. 69–86; Marx, ‘Händel in Rom – Seine Beziehung zu Benedetto Card. Pamphilj’, Händel Jahrbuch 29 (1983), pp. 107–18; Marx, ‘Die “Giustificazioni della Casa Pamphilj” als Musikgeschichtliche Quelle’, Studi musicali 12 (1983), pp. 121–87.
160 Music as Social and Cultural Practice convention’. With a few familiar exceptions (such as La Lucrezia and Agrippina condotta a morire) they tended to be summarily passed over on the way to what has been considered Handel’s ‘genuine’ (and much more substantive) musical contributions of opera, oratorio, anthem, suite and concerto. I have always felt differently. While marvelling at their musical richness, I also became increasingly convinced of their importance to Handel’s life and musical development, or, as Strohm put it, that ‘the hundred and more cantatas da camera which Handel wrote in Italy are a kind of musical diary’. Their compositional history paints a distinctive picture of private music patronage, one that is very different from the public arena that quickly absorbed Handel after his arrival in London. The texts, behind a pastoral façade, embody a deeply emotional utterance resonant of personal, political and religious issues, while the music reveals a composer who has already reached the first bloom of maturity both in the musical penetration of his texts and in the development of stylistic features that distinguish his most advanced works. In Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (2001), I looked at Handel’s astonishing corpus of cantatas in these three ways – in terms of context, text and music – and my hope is that in time this book will abet the growing appreciation of these works and more performances. At the very least, it has occasioned more discussion. In this essay, I would like to re-enter that dialogue by focusing on the first of Handel’s cantatas to be named in contemporary documents: Il delirio amoroso. This analysis calls for a re-examination of continuing chronological questions surrounding Handel’s years in Italy. It also provides an opportunity to interrogate the role of pastoral texts in their cultural and social context and to evaluate the competing claims Donald Burrows, Handel (New York, 1994), p. 24.
Strohm, ‘Handel’s Italian Journey’, p. 7. Strohm is here citing Friedrich Chrysander
(1826–1901), one of the earliest enthusiasts for Handel’s cantatas.
Ellen T. Harris, Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas
(Cambridge, Mass., 2001).
This essay grew out of my association with the musical group La Risonanza,
which plans to perform and record all Handel’s instrumental cantatas, giving close attention to the autograph scores and the original performing forces and style. I delivered an earlier version of this essay in Brescia under the auspices of the Ateneo di Brescia during Nuove Settimane di Musica Barocca in Brescia e Provincia (30 September to 5 November 2005). I am very grateful to Fabio Bonizzoni, director of La Risonanza, and to Alessandra Sciabica, manager, for including me as part of the festivities surrounding their inaugural concert of Handel cantatas. I am also grateful to Francesco Lattuada and Emanuele Beschi, the co-directors of Nuove Settimane Barocche, and to the Ateneo di Brescia for their gracious hospitality. The version of this essay presented in Brescia has been published in the Commentari dell’ Ateneo di Brescia (2005).
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 161 of multiple readings, on the one hand, and specific allegory, on the other. It explores the shift in Handel’s music from the French-influenced Hamburg opera to Italian style, as well as his development of specific motivic topoi (musical signifiers) into an evocative musical language that would serve him throughout his career. Finally, it emphasises that for a significant amount of cherished music in Handel’s later corpus, the cantatas provide the original context, in many cases the original text, and certainly the original compositional impetus. An entry in the account books of Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj dated 12 February 1707 provides a detailed bill for copying ‘di musica nella Cantata intitolata Il delirio amoroso … Composta in musica dal S.re Giorgio Hendel’. Although this extremely important document provides the earliest piece of firm evidence about Handel’s compositions in Italy, it does not prove that Il delirio amoroso was the first cantata Handel wrote in Italy, but only that it is the first cantata for which we have documentary evidence. Since the date of the bill follows its composition and copying, and may post-date the performance as well, it points backwards, close to the time of Handel’s arrival in Rome. Francesco Valesio mentions in a diary entry of 14 January 1707 ‘un sassone eccelente sonatore di cembalo e compositore di musica’ who had recently arrived in Rome and who had that day demonstrated his skill ‘in sonare l’ organo nella chiesa di S. Giovanni [Laterano; St John Lateran] con stupore di tutti’. In an anonymous, second-hand vignette of Handel in Rome published in 1737, the young composer is specifically described as playing the organ at St John Lateran with such astonishing facility that some members of the audience thought he had special magical powers hidden in his hat!10 If this undated anecdote can be accepted as a positive identification of the ‘sassone’ mentioned by Valesio (Ursula Kirkendale, for one, calls it a ‘certainty’ as opposed to my ‘likelihood’),11 then his diary entry offers the earliest documentary evidence of Handel’s arrival in Rome – some short time before mid-January 1707. That Handel inscribed ‘Roma 1706’ on a set of duets by Steffani provides no Marx, ‘Giustificazioni’, p. 177.
Ursula Kirkendale, ‘Orgelspiel im Lateran und andere Erinnerungen an Händel:
Ein unbeachteter Bericht in “Voiage historique” von 1737’, Die Musikforschung 41 (1988), pp. 1–9, at p. 1; Otto Erich Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography (New York, 1974), p. 19 (in English translation).
10 Text given in Kirkendale, ‘Orgelspiel’, and Werner Braun, ‘Händel und der
“römische Zauberhut” (1707)’, Göttinger Händel Beiträge 3 (1989), pp. 71–86; Braun identifies the author as Denis Nolhac (p. 72), based on the research of Jean-Daniel Candaux (p. 82 n. 7).
11 Ursula Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli: New Documents from the Archivio
Segreto Vaticano, December 1706 to December 1708’, Studi musicali 32 (2003), pp. 301–48, at p. 304 n. 16.
162 Music as Social and Cultural Practice additional data, since he was most likely using the calendar then customary in Florence, where the new year began on 25 March. Compelling evidence in favour of this resides in the autograph of Dixit Dominus dated April 1707, where Handel originally wrote 1706 but changed it to 1707. As Anthony Hicks points out, ‘one is unlikely to make a mistake writing the year in a date unless it has just changed’.12 Handel most likely left Germany soon after the production of Reinhold Keiser’s Octavia in Hamburg in August 1705, so he was probably in Italy for more than a year before his arrival in Rome. His first biographer, John Mainwaring, places the composer first in Florence for ‘near a year’ and then in Venice. Mainwaring further states that Handel was musically active during this time: ‘The fame of his musical achievements at Florence and at Venice had reached that metropolis [Rome] long before him. His arrival therefore was immediately known, and occasioned civil enquiries and polite messages from persons of the first distinction there.’13 Unfortunately, no documentary evidence has been found connecting any of Handel’s works with this preRoman period. Based on manuscript evidence of the autographs and distinctive stylistic features, I have placed a small group of cantatas towards the end of this north Italian sojourn.14 More speculatively, Kirkendale has suggested that both of Handel’s Italian operas, Rodrigo and Agrippina, were composed and performed before Handel arrived in Rome, Rodrigo for Florence in 1705 and Agrippina for Venice in 1706, turning the later documented performances in Florence (1707) and Venice (1709) into revivals.15 I cannot join Kirkendale in this supposition (see below), but I agree that Handel was a known composer in Italy before he arrived in Rome, and that he spent time in Florence and Venice. Handel’s apparent use of the Florentine calendar in dating his acquisition of the Steffani duets may itself suggest an immediately preceding stay in Florence. Cardinal Pamphilj emerges as an important and early Roman patron of Handel from documented evidence in his account books about cantatas written for him. In addition, if Handel, a Lutheran, played an organ recital at the church of St John Lateran, the ecclesiastical seat of the pope as Bishop of Rome, the opportunity must be attributed to Pamphilj, who had been named 12 Anthony Hicks, ‘Handel’s Early Musical Development’, Proceedings of the Royal
Musical Association 103 (1976–7), pp. 80–9, at p. 83. Kirkendale argues that ‘contrary to Ellen T. Harris . . . it is extremely unlikely that the German Handel used here the stile fiorentino’ (‘Handel with Ruspoli’, p. 303 n. 15).
13 John Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (London,
1760; facs. edn Buren, 1964, repr. 1975), pp. 51, 54.
14 Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 89–90, 269–70. 15 Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli’, pp. 335–8.
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 163 archpriest of the Lateran in 1699, a post he continued to hold until his death in 1730.16 When Handel first arrived in Rome, he probably carried letters of introduction from Florence; alternatively, such letters may have preceded him. The early association of Handel in Rome with Pamphilj suggests that a recom mendation might have come from Cardinal Francesco Maria de’ Medici, a ‘grande amico’ of Pamphilj, according to his biographer Lina Montalto.17 The two men apparently shared musical interests; in 1690 Pamphilj had sent Cardinal Medici a richly bound set of cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti, including a Lucrezia romana with a text by Pamphilj.18 Perhaps in late 1706, Cardinal Medici gave Handel or sent Pamphilj a letter of introduction accompanied by a gift of Handel’s La Lucrezia, a cantata I place into the pre-Rome compositional period,19 which might have been commissioned for that purpose. But, obviously, this is conjecture. In fact, trying to associate Handel’s introduction to Rome with a single patron is simplistic, and probably futile, as the composer was quickly drawn into a network of Italian patronage. A copying bill for music by Handel first appears in the accounts of the Marquis Ruspoli in May 1707, but Ursula Kirkendale suggests a still earlier relationship with her supposition that a copying bill in the Ruspoli accounts of the previous December for ‘una cantata nuova’ (no title or composer is given) refers to Arresta il passo.20 Some time in the spring of 1707, Handel must also have been commissioned by Cardinal Carlo Colonna for the psalms and motets composed for the Festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on 16 July. The patron who plays the most significant role in Mainwaring’s account of Handel’s Roman tenure, however, is none of these but rather Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, about whose relationship with Handel little can be said definitively. Colonna and Pamphilj are mentioned by Mainwaring more briefly, Ruspoli not at all. Mainwaring identifies Ottoboni as one of Handel’s ‘greatest admirers’, specifically mentioning the importance of the cardinal’s ‘large library of Music’ 16 Lina Montalto, Un mecenate in Roma barocca: Il Cardinale Benedetto Pamphilj
(1653–1730) (Florence, 1955), ‘La colomba Pamphilja nella basilica lateranense fra il 1699 e il 1730’, pp. 433–49.
17 Ibid., p. 232. 18 Ibid., p. 330.
19 Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 88–90; 269–70; 49–58, 73–6. Kirkendale, ‘Ruspoli
Documents’, argued that this cantata was written in Rome (pp. 246–7); see also Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli’, pp. 326–7, where she reiterates her argument for a Roman provenance for La Lucrezia and dismisses the possibility of dating this and other works by style or handwriting (although later, p. 337, she cites style and handwriting analysis as evidence for her otherwise unsupported claim that Rodrigo and Agrippina were both composed before 1707).
20 Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli’, pp. 305–6.
164 Music as Social and Cultural Practice and the ‘excellent band of performers’, which included ‘the illustrious Corelli’.21 It seems increasingly clear that in Rome, if not in Italy more broadly, one must speak of a complex system of artistic patronage.22 Pamphilj was not, for example, the only Roman patron with ties to Florence. As Kirkendale emphasises, ancestors on both sides of Ruspoli’s family were from Florence; his mother ‘was a granddaughter of Prince Ottaviano Medici’.23 Ottoboni also kept close ties with Florence and in 1709 succeeded Cardinal Medici as Protector of France, a position he had avidly sought.24 Certainly, the Medici kept in touch with events in Rome. A letter from Prince Ferdinand de’ Medici’s Roman correspondent of 24 September 1707 describes the astonishing skill of a twelve-year-old archlute player, saying that ‘all this can be testified by the famous Saxon [Handel?], who has heard him in the Casa Ottoboni and in the Casa Colonna has played with him and plays there continuously’.25 Handel clearly circulated among a group of Roman patrons, each of whom had close ties with one another and with Florence.26 Regular gatherings at the houses of these patrons, or of outstanding musicians, as well as more formal concerts both in private homes or churches, supported a shared culture of intellectual thought and values. The account from 1737 of Handel in Rome states not only that the concert at St John Lateran was attended by an extraordinary audience, ‘above all Cardinals, Prelates and the Nobility’, but that Handel ‘made visits in Rome to all the respected Musicians of some reputation’. It specifically describes an assembly the evening before the Lateran concert at the house of the Pasqualini family, the ‘famous musicians of the Pope’, which gathered together all the ‘able musicians of Rome known either for their voice or instrument’.27 One member of this family, 21 Mainwaring, Handel, pp. 54–5. 22 Strohm discusses Handel’s ‘wide range of patrons’ in the context of the War of
Spanish Succession in ‘Handel’s Italian Journey’.
23 Kirkendale, ‘Händel with Ruspoli’, p. 331. 24 For his support of the French during the War of Spanish Succession, Ottoboni
was exiled from Venice, his native city, which supported the Austrian interests (see Strohm, ‘Handel’s Italian Journey’, p. 5). For the personal events in Cardinal Medici’s life leading up to his resignation, see Harris, Handel as Orpheus, p. 39.
25 Deutsch, Handel, p. 19. 26 Kirkendale emphasises the interrelationships in many of her arguments despite
a focus on Ruspoli as Handel’s primary patron. She places the performance of andel’s cantata ‘Hendel, non può mia musa’, with its text by Pamphilj, at Ruspoli’s H (Kirkendale, ‘Ruspoli’, p. 241). She suggests further that the oratorio Il trionfo del tempo, also with a text by Pamphilj, was performed on 2 May 1707 at Ruspoli’s and that Clori, Tirsi e Fileno was commissioned by Ruspoli for performance at Ottoboni’s (Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli’, pp. 320 and 325).
27 Kirkendale, ‘Orgelspiel’, p. 3; see also Braun, ‘Römische Zauberhut’.
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 165 asqualino Tiepoli, a soprano castrato in the papal chapel, also appears in P Pamphilj’s account books, and may have been the singer who premiered Il delirio amoroso.28 Pamphilj himself wrote the text of Il delirio amoroso.29 Its story line can be described in traditional terms, as in the liner notes of a recent recording: The text of the cantata is couched in the Arcadian literary conventions that were fashionable in Rome at the time. Clori is distraught at the loss of her lover Tirsi … Narrative recitatives frame the text, but otherwise the ‘voice’ of the singer is that of Clori as she describes her search for Tirsi, using the imagery of the underworld from pagan classical mythology. Eventually she arrives at ‘blessed Elysium’.30 Viewing the text only in this manner misses, I believe, a great deal. The Roman patrons were not only highly educated, but as members of the Arcadian Academy they supported the rescue of Italian literature from seventeenth-century extravagances (‘mannerism’) through a return to classical balance and symmetry. The idealised simplicity of the classical pastoral served as a model, and all members of the Academy took on pastoral pseudonyms, but this should not suggest that the Arcadians themselves were simple or superficial in thought or deed. The pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil they took as a model was itself complex, with political, religious and personal messages lying not so far beneath the surface. Further, their chosen pastoral names indicate the intricate and allegorical nature of their pursuit: for example, Pamphilj’s Arcadian 28 Marx (Händel in Rom’, p. 109) identifies Pasqualino as the singer who gave the
first performance of Il delirio amoroso. Kirkendale (‘Orgelspiel’, p. 5 n. 20), however, points out that the document of 18 February in the Pamphilj accounts listing payments to musicians for the months January and February indicates only four performances and one rehearsal for Pasqualino, while the castrato Checchino (possibly Francesco de Castris, the singer with whom Ferdinand de’ Medici had an intimate affair and who had been exiled from Florence by the Grand Duke, Ferdinand’s father) was paid for seven performances and multiple rehearsals; thus the identity of the singer at the premiere remains a question. For details on the life of Francesco de Castris, see Warren Kirkendale, The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici (Florence, 1993), pp. 437–46, and Carlo Vitali, ‘Un cantante legrenziano e la sua biografia: Francesco de Castris, “musico politico” ’, Giovanni Legrenzi e la cappella ducale di San Marco, ed. Francesco Passa dore and Franco Rossi (Florence, 1994), pp. 567–603.
29 Whether or not it was specifically written for Handel to set is not known; see
Marx, ‘Händel in Rom’, pp. 108 and 116 n. 7, and Montalto, Un mecenate, pp. 335 and 505.
30 Donald Burrows, CD liner notes: Handel, Italian Cantatas with Magdalena
Kožená and Les Musiciens du Louvre, Marc Minkowski conducting (Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon, 2000).
166 Music as Social and Cultural Practice name, Fenicio Larisseo, referred, according to Montalto, to Queen Christina of Sweden, in whose honour the Academy was founded, as ‘the symbolic phoenix under whose influence Pamphilj had spent his youth’.31 With such symbolism embedded even in their choice of names, it seems rash to focus exclusively on the pastoral façade of the cantata texts. The story of Il delirio amoroso can be described as a ‘quest’ narrative, portraying a hazardous journey to recover a valuable object. The trip to the underworld immediately brings to mind similar quest narratives for deceased beloveds, such as that taken by Orpheus for Euridice or Hercules for Alceste, which would have been very familiar to listeners and would have made the similarities and differences between the stories stand out. In the quests for Euridice and Alceste, the goal is to return a cherished beloved to earth, and in both the beloved wishes to be reunited with her lover. These tasks differ in that Orpheus seeks his own beloved but fails to bring her safely back to earth, while Hercules undertakes the quest for his friend Admeto and succeeds in bringing Alceste back to her husband. Il delirio amoroso diverges from both of these in that Clori’s beloved Tirsi has rejected her love on earth and, in her mind, continues to turn his back even when she finds him in Hades, yet she forgives him and proves her undying love by leading him from Hades to Elysium. As I tried to show in Handel as Orpheus, Handel’s cantata texts frequently resonate with multiple meanings, often with overlapping religious, political and personal associations. The text of Il delirio amoroso is no exception. I suggested that the text has religious overtones, perhaps representing a distraught soul who thinks she has been deserted by Christ; she imagines herself descending into Hell, where she still feels rejected; ultimately her journey of faith allows her to be united with Christ in heaven.32 The text might also, in contrast, describe the anguish of a pastor who pursues a lost soul in order to lead him out of darkness into heaven. Obviously, the text could depict a pursuit or quest within a spectrum of personal relationships, ranging from collegial to intimate. The quest metaphor also could apply to politics, representing the search for a political union or treaty, undoubtedly, at this time, relating to the War of the Spanish Succession. Pamphilj, like the Medici, supported the French against the Austrian Habsburgs. Pope Clement xi had tried to maintain neutrality, but with the crowning of Philip v in Madrid in 1701, he was forced to choose sides and aligned himself with the French. Il delirio amoroso could depict this agreement, with Clori as France (or Cardinal Pamphilj himself) pursuing the hesitant Tirsi as Rome (or Pope Clement) all the way to Hell before lifting Tirsi (or the papal state) from the purgatory of non-alliance into a heavenly union. 31 Montalto, Un mecenate, p. 193. 32 Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 81–2.
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 167 The flexible nature of pastoral texts is, in my view, intrinsic to their meaning, and just as seeing only the pastoral façade is too general, so too is a single, fixed reading too limited. It is clear, nevertheless, that the cantatas often referred to specific individuals. Handel is mentioned by name in the text of Hendel, non può mia musa, also by Pamphilj. Ruspoli is mentioned by his Arcadian name, Olinto [Arsenio], in Handel’s cantata Oh, come chiare, which comments specifically on the War of the Spanish Succession and also refers directly to Clement xi as ‘astro clemente’ (a goodly star). Further, the association of the conventional pastoral texts with the lives of the authors and auditors is indicated in watercolour miniatures with Roman backgrounds in two cantata manuscripts compiled for the castrato Andrea Adami, a singer in residence at the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni from 1686 to 1740.33 Typically, however, the value of the pastoral resided in its ambiguity, in the ability to suggest without naming, an aesthetic apparently shared by the miniatures, which imply a Roman analogy without portraying specific people. In contrast, Ursula Kirkendale offers explicit allegories. She suggests, for example, that the couple in Arresta il passo, the cantata she considers the first Handel wrote in Rome, specifically represent ‘Ruspoli, disguised as the shepherd Aminta [who] detains the nymph Phyllis representing Handel’ and that the cantata enacts a ‘playful dialogue’ whose ‘subtext is a serious musical “contract” ’. She then uses this interpretation to reinforce her proposed early dating of the cantata to December 1706 to support her argument that Ruspoli was Handel’s primary and earliest patron in Rome.34 However, there is no evidence for this reading, and most of the cantatas describe similar narratives. For example, Il delirio amoroso could equally represent Pamphilj as the nymph Clori, pursuing Handel, the recalcitrant Tirsi. Given Cardinal Pamphilj’s evident attraction to the young composer, as expressed in two other texts by him that were also set by Handel in 1707, Hendel, non può mia musa and Il trionfo del tempo ed il disinganno,35 it could be tempting, even titillating, to suggest a personification reading depicting Pamphilj’s pursuit, romantic rather than contractual, of the recalcitrant Handel to Hell and beyond. Being able to read homoeroticism, or any other type of personification, into a cantata, however, does not establish its sole meaning, or even one of its 33 Strohm, ‘Scarlattiana at Yale’; see also Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 86–7. Zach
Victor is currently undertaking further research into the meaning of these miniatures, and I am grateful to him for sharing with me his unpublished paper ‘The Ink Miniature and the Cantata in Handel’s Italy’, presented at the American Handel Society Festival (Santa Fe, 2005).
34 Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli’, p. 306; Kirkendale claims that I have presented
a homosexual interpretation of this cantata in Handel as Orpheus, but she has imagined this.
35 Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 43–5.
168 Music as Social and Cultural Practice meanings.36 Nor does the ability to read an undocumented allegory, analogy or personification into a musical work provide evidence for dating, as Kirkendale suggests. As Robert Hume has written, ‘The inclination to construct elaborate parallels and personification readings should be resisted where there is no extrinsic evidence with which to validate them. However ingenious or textually plausible they may seem, they are not a sound form of historical scholarship.’37 What can be said definitively of the text of Il delirio amoroso is that it was written by Pamphilj and comprises a quest narrative allowing multiple interpretations. Handel’s musical setting opens further avenues of investigation. Because of its early date, Il delirio amoroso offers the best example of Handel’s musical style at the outset of his Roman sojourn. The overall movement plan is expansive, including four arias, an instrumental introduction and interior instrumental movements, with the final aria a vocal minuet. The vocal sections of the cantata begin and end in recitative, and individual movements are generous in length and style. In contrast, Handel’s cantatas that can be dated to 1708 demonstrate a new-found restraint and formal regularity, typically falling into the pattern of two recitative–aria pairs with the arias consistently in da capo form. The very use of instrumental accompaniment for a solo cantata seems also to be a trait associated primarily with early works. In contrast, the instrumental cantatas of 1708 and later are typically constructed with two or more characters, not as solo scenas, and individual arias are less impassioned than those of the earlier solo cantatas. Among the earlier works, an unsettled mode of expression – using wide and dissonant intervals, chromatic harmonies and explosions of fioritura in recitatives – is particularly true of solo cantatas, like Il delirio amoroso, that depict the voice of a woman.38 36 While I did not propose a homoerotic interpretation of Il delirio amoroso in Handel
as Orpheus, it certainly exists within the circle of possible, multiple readings.
37 Robert D. Hume, ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’,
Cambridge Opera Journal 10 (1998), pp. 15–43, at pp. 42–3. Kirkendale (‘Handel with Ruspoli’) challenges my association of homoeroticism with the cantatas without addressing either the classical models of pastoralism or the contemporary context, arguing that my general interpretations are ‘implausible’ (p. 306 n. 34) while providing specific, personification readings that are not only unsupported by documentary evidence but more redolent of homoeroticism than anything I suggest. I have responded to Kirkendale’s critique in ‘Homosexual Context and Identity: Reflections on the Reception of Handel as Orpheus’, to be published in the proceedings of the conference held at Cambridge University in July 2002, ‘Queer People: Negotiations and Expressions of Homosexuality, 1580–1850’ (Lewisburg, Penn., forthcoming).
38 For a more detailed discussion of these stylistic traits, see Harris, Handel as
Orpheus, passim.
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 169 By studying the stylistic features of this and other dated cantatas, it is possible to suggest earlier or later dates for works without a fixed chronology. La Lucrezia, for example, is surely an early work, whether or not its composition pre-dates Handel’s arrival in Rome; the copying bill appearing in Ruspoli’s accounts on 31 August 1709, long after Handel had left Rome, clearly represents the creation of a later copy for archival or gift purposes.39 The stylistic features of Il delirio amoroso may also put Johann Mattheson’s criticism of Handel’s early style into perspective. He writes in 1740 that when Handel arrived in Hamburg in 1703, ‘he composed very long, long arias, and really interminable cantatas, which had neither the right kind of skill nor taste, though complete in harmony, but the lofty schooling of opera soon trimmed him into other fashions’.40 Mattheson’s ideal was short, tuneful and natural melodies, in which ‘the French should be imitated more than the Italians’.41 Not that Mattheson himself did not compose in the Italian, virtuosic style, but more typically, as in his opera Cleopatra (1704), his arias are strophic and syllabic with a folklike, somewhat galant, character. The first aria of Il delirio amoroso may, therefore, represent the style that Mattheson censures; if so, we may respectfully disagree with his critique. ‘Un pensiero’ bears no resemblance to Mattheson’s rules for natural melody, for French rather than Italian style, or for conciseness rather than prolixity.42 Rather, it extends over 166 bars in common time and includes an extensive solo violin part, frequently playing unaccompanied at the rate of two semiquaver triplets per crotchet for as long as nine bars at a time. The vocal line also has many extensions of up to six bars each, both of single notes and serpentine runs. Although Handel does not share Mattheson’s aesthetic, he is not, in my view, simply striving towards virtuosity for its own sake. Rather, the aria expresses, even enacts, the text, both in its detail and in its very length. In the A section of this da capo aria, Clori expresses the hope that her thought will fly to heaven if Tirsi, who stole her peace, is there. Handel’s setting vividly contrasts the flight of the thought with the constancy of peace. Whereas the opening, unaccompanied melisma on the word ‘pensiero’ encompasses more than five bars and fifty-five notes over a range of an octave and 39 Kirkendale, ‘Ruspoli Documents’, pp. 268–9 (under the title ‘O Numi eterni’); see
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 55–60, 73–6, 269–70.
40 Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte, p. 93. 41 George J. Buelow, ‘An Evaluation of Johann Mattheson’s Opera, Cleopatra
( Hamburg 1704)’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Music: A Tribute to Karl Geiringer on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. H. C. Robbins Landon (New York, 1970), pp. 92–107, at p. 95; see also Johann Mattheson, Cleopatra, ed. George J. Buelow, Das Erbe deutscher Musik lxix (Mainz, 1975).
42 Buelow, ‘An Evaluation of Johann Mattheson’s Opera’, p. 95.
170 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 9.1 Handel, ‘Un pensiero’, Il delirio amoroso: (a) bb. 18–23, melisma on ‘pensiero’; (b) bb. 45–9, extended setting of ‘pace’, HHA v/4, pp. 11–12, 16–18 (a)
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-
-
-
-
-
- ro,
(b) 46
violin solo
che la
pa
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
bass 48
(ce)
a fourth, the later extension on the word ‘pace’ consists of a single note sustained for five and a half bars against rapid solo figuration in the violin (the full orchestra only entering for the final bar and a half, not shown here; see Example 9.1).43 These depictions are not unique. Each of the emotional states, agitated thought and peace of mind, represents a recurring textual and musical topos in other cantatas from this early period. For example, the continuo cantata Lungi da me, pensier tiranno plays with this contrast throughout, using the same musical means. In the second aria, ‘Fuggi da questo sen’, it becomes the central focus of the A section text: Fuggi da questo sen O barbaro pensier, Lasciami in pace!
Fly from this breast, O barbarous thought, Leave me in peace.
In his setting of the text, Handel places the agitated melisma on the word ‘barbaro’, which defines the quality of the ‘pensier’. Again, as in Il delirio 43 The examples from Il delirio amoroso are taken from the Hallische Händel Ausgabe
[HHA], v/4, ed. Hans Joachim Marx (Kassel, 1995).
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 171 Ex. 9.2 Handel, ‘Fuggi da questo sen’, Lungi da me, pensier tiranno, bb. 1–12, Harris, Cantatas for Alto, pp. 75–6
Fug - gi,
fug - gi da que - sto sen,
o
4
bar - ba - ro
pen - sier,
la - scia - mi_in pa -
ce,
in
pa
-
ce!
7
Fug - gi,
fug - gi da que - sto sen,
o
bar
-
-
-
-
-
-
ba - ro
pen -
10
- sier, la - scia - mi_in pa
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
(ce)
a moroso, the word ‘pace’ is extended on a single note (see Example 9.2, bracketed bars).44 Like La Lucrezia, Lungi da me was copied for Ruspoli only in 1709, appearing in the same copying bill of 31 August, and, also like La Lucrezia, its stylistic characteristics indicate an early date: the cantata contains three arias, not the more typical two of later works, and the last of these, in 3/8 time, resembles a closing minuet, similar to the final aria in Il delirio amoroso.45 44 The example is taken (without ornamentation) from G. F. Handel: Cantatas for
Alto, ed. Ellen T. Harris (Oxford, 2001), pp. 75–6.
45 In another early trait, the ending of the first recitative of Lungi da me recapitulates
the opening line, ‘Lungi da me, pensier tiranno’, and the second recitative ends with a similar phrase, ‘Lungi dunque da me, pensier spietato’. Handel takes the opportunity to model his settings closely on one another, creating the sense of a recitative refrain. Another example of this occurs in a cantata, the authorship of whose text can also be associated with Cardinal Pamphilj, Sarei troppo felice. Like Il delirio amoroso, Sarei troppo felice begins and ends in recitative; like Lungi da me, the refrain opens and closes the first recitative: it recurs at the end of both the second and third, therefore closing the cantata as well. Sarei troppo felice appears in a copying bill in the Ruspoli accounts on 22 September 1707 and therefore had to have been written before that time (see Harris, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 95–8).
172 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 9.3 Handel, ‘Per te lasciai la luce’, Il delirio amoroso, bb. 71–6, 86–9, HHA v/4, pp. 26–7 72
Deh!
fer
-
ma_i pas - si_in - cer
-
ti,
deh! fer - ma,
cello
bass
76
87
deh! fer - ma,
o
As the contrasting depictions of agitated thought and peace illustrate, Handel’s cantatas offer the earliest lexicon of musical topoi that would become an important part of his mature compositional language. Another example is his use of silence. Although silence in music is often thought to have emerged only in the Classical era, Handel increasingly incorporates dramatic silences in his music.46 He adopts the word-painting silences of the Italian madrigal, but extends them well beyond a brief depiction of silence into a gaping absence of sound. In the second aria of Il delirio amoroso, ‘Per te lasciai la luce’, Handel already pushes this technique to an extreme. In the B section, as the lovesick Clori calls out to her departing beloved to stop, Handel twice paints the word ‘ferma’ by stopping the music with five full beats of rest (see Example 9.3). The silences in the A section of the aria are even more compelling in terms of the development of Handel’s mature style. Silence enters the musical fabric after the word ‘partir’, where the two beats of rest separating the dominant and tonic depict the separation of Clori from her beloved. As with the silence after 46 Ellen T. Harris, ‘Silence as Sound: Handel’s Sublime Pauses’, Journal of Musicology
22 (2005), pp. 521–58; one instance of a claim for the later development of silence in music occurs in Enrico Careri, ‘Sull’ interpretazione musicale del silenzio’, ‘Et facciam dolci canti’: Studi in onore di Agostino Ziino in occasione del suo 65º compleanno (Lucca, 2003), ii, pp. 1080–1: ‘Haydn, Mozart e Beethoven sono stati i primi a capire le potenzialità expressive del silenzio, i primi a interrompere il flusso sonoro dove di regola non si dovrebbe, creando attesa, sorpresa, smarrimento.’
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 173 Ex. 9.4 Handel, ‘Per te lasciai la luce’, Il delirio amoroso, bb. 56–67, HHA v/4, p. 26 56
tu vuoi par - tir,
tu vuoi par - tir da
me,
#
62
tu vuoi
par - tir
da
me, tu
vuoi par - tir
da me.
‘ferma’, the silence after ‘partir’ is a form of word painting. But ultimately, in the final vocal phrase of the aria, Handel moves beyond word painting by injecting silence into the musical line as an indication of Clori’s distraught emotional state: that is, her speech becomes emotionally and theatrically fragmented. In the final phrase, ‘tu vuoi partir da me’, the musical line breaks off not only after ‘partir’, but even earlier after the word ‘tu’, when Clori is momentarily unable to move past naming the object of her emotional distress: ‘tu [pause] vuoi partir [pause] da me [pause]’ (see Example 9.4). Handel’s rendering of silence that is emotional and deeply personal, rather than narrative or descriptive, finds an early exemplar here.47 In his use of such pauses, Handel was breaking away from German traditions. Mattheson strongly opposed any break in the vocal line at a nongrammatical point, even with continuous accompaniment. He referred to the result of such breaks as a kind of stuttering, calling the effect unmusical. He strenuously objected to the separation of linked parts of speech, such as the subject and its verb, as occurs in ‘Per te lasciai la luce’, or the possessive and its object.48 Handel, when it suited him, made his own rules, but he did not turn his back on German opera. In the third aria of Il delirio amoroso, ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’, the agitated Clori, having found her beloved in the underworld, leads him, despite his continued resistance, out of that hellish place into the light of heaven. She commands the ship to abandon its black sails for white 47 See Harris, ‘Silence as Sound’, for later examples. 48 Johann Mattheson, Critica Musica 13 (1725), pp. 11–29 and 33–56 (Hamburg,
1722–5; facs. edn Amsterdam, 1964).
174 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 9.5 Keiser, ‘Wallet nicht zu laut’, Octavia, bb. 1–13, HW, Supplement vi, pp. 104–5 Aria con V. V. e Flauto dolci. violin and recorder
3
3
3
violin and recorder 3
3
Wal - let nicht zu laut,
bass
5
wal - let nicht zu laut,
sil - ber - he - le Bach - kri - stal
-
-
-
-
-
-
9 3
-
-
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
-
-
-
3
-
3
-
-
len,
and asserts that she will cause a delightful breeze to propel them. One of the motifs representing the breeze comes from ‘Wallet nicht zu laut’ from Keiser’s Octavia (1705): alternating bars of triplet turns and a threefold rising sequence for flauto dolce and violins in parallel thirds, which Keiser uses to depict a ‘silver-bright, crystal brook’ (see Examples 9.5 and 9.6, bracketed bars).49 Apparently using the motif for the first time here, Handel quickly added 49 The example is taken from G. F. Händels Werke [HW], ed. Friedrich Chrysander
and Max Seiffert, Supplement vi (Leipzig, 1902), pp. 104–5.
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 175 Ex. 9.6 Handel, ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’, Il delirio amoroso, bb. 1–17, HHA v/4, p. 28 recorder f
f
violins
f
soprano
bass f
8
3
3
3
3
p3 solo
3
3
3
3
3
p3
3
3
3
3
3
13 f 3 tutti
3
3
f 3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
solo
tutti
solo
tutti
it to his musical lexicon, making it a topos representative of the pastoral in a number of his cantatas, where he used it to depict flowing sounds of nature – breezes (in Il delirio amoroso), flowing water (in Aci, Galatea e Polifemo; see below) and birdsong (Cor fedel, ‘Va col canto’ and Acis and Galatea, ‘Hush, ye pretty warbling choir’). One may wonder whether he really borrowed, or even needed to borrow, this static four-bar phrase from Keiser, but Handel’s numerous borrowings from Octavia during his Italian years give credence to the idea.
176 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 9.7 Handel, ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’, Il delirio amoroso (opening vocal line), bb. 27–33, HHA v/4, p. 29 27
recorder
violins
soprano La - scia_o mai
le
bru - ne
ve
-
ve - le,
ne
le,
bass
30
la - scia_o - mai
le
bru - ne
-
gro
pin
di
Fle - ge - ton - te,
p
In fact, in one of the later arias using this motif, ‘S’ agita in mezzo l’ onde’ from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (1708), Handel uses more of Keiser’s aria, including the opening instrumental bars at pitch with the bass line intact. The relation of this more distinctively borrowed material from Keiser to ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’ is manifest in the adoption (rhythmically altered) of its, and not Keiser’s, vocal line, which differs completely (see Examples 9.7 and 9.8, bracketed vocal phrases; compare Keiser’s setting in Example 9.5).50 The distinct musical and semantic identities of Keiser’s triplet motif and the opening vocal line of ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’ are evident in Handel’s reuse of this material. Only in ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’ and ‘S’ agita in mezzo l’ onde’ do they occur together. In other cases, Keiser’s accompanimental passage independently serves to depict birds, brooks and breezes, as in Cor fedele and Acis and Galatea.51 The vocal melody has a less defined musical topos. Because of his early association of this melody with a pastoral topos, 50 Example 9.8 is taken from the edition by Wolfram Windszus with Annerose Koch
and Annette Landgraf, HHA i/5 (Kassel, 2000), pp. 52–3.
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 177 Ex. 9.8 Handel, ‘S’ agita in mezzo l’ onde’, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, bb. 1–15, HHA i/5, pp. 52-3 recorder violin 1 p
f
p
f
p
f
p
f
p
f
p
f 3
violin 2
viola
3
galatea 3
3
bass f 3 6 f
p
f
p
3
11 f
3
3
f f
3
S’a - gi - ta
3
3
3
in mez - zo_al l’on - de,
3
51 Handel also uses Keiser’s triplet turns and bass (but not the rising sequence) in
Poppea’s aria ‘Vaghe perle’ from Agrippina, where breezes, brooklets and birds are not directly addressed, but where the chains of triplets would seem to portray the wreath of entwined flowers and pearls in her hair that Poppea prays will help arouse desire.
178 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Handel sometimes uses the vocal phrase in arias that allude to nature: ‘Dopo i nembi’ from Rodrigo describes how after clouds and storms the stars smile, and ‘È un incendio’ from Rinaldo tells of a heart caught between two winds. In the Brockes Passion, however, the vocal line is used without any pastoral overtones. After Jesus has been betrayed and taken into custody, Peter, left alone, pleads to be able to go with him, ‘Nehmt mich mit, verzagte Scharen’, but almost immediately denies knowing Jesus three times. Although Handel’s well-known compositional bricolage does not depend on semantic connections (an example of material borrowed for a dissimilar text is given below), lexical relationships of words and meanings were always an important element of his process and can offer insight into interpretation.52 The motivic self-borrowing from Il delirio amoroso at this moment in the Passion oratorio therefore suggests that the dramatic situation in the cantata of a recalcitrant soul being led to heaven resonated for him, at least in part, with religious implication as well as with the pastoral (see Example 9.9; compare Examples 9.7 and 9.8).53 If it still seems improbable that Handel had to turn to Keiser for a few bars of pastoral, alternating notes in thirds, the likelihood of the borrowing (as opposed to an incidence of common musical language or extraordinary coinci dence) is increased by his direct appropriation of four bars of Keiser’s in the following instrumental movement, which portrays the distracted Clori’s imagined entrance into the Elysian Fields. In recitative, she announces this arrival and cries out, ‘odi il suono soave degli Elisi beati’, after which an instrumental movement follows. Handel borrows this ‘Entrée’ from two sources. The first four bars derive from the opening four bars (with some relatively insignificant rewriting of the inner parts) of the ‘Entry of the spirits in the Elysian Fields’ in Keiser’s opera Claudius (1703); the remainder comes from an Entrée in his own Hamburg opera Almira (1704).54 One can hardly fault Handel for remembering Keiser’s setting of the identical situation, nor for transforming this musical 52 Handel’s combinatorial process of composition from a purely musical point of
view has received significant scholarly attention. See David Ross Hurley, Handel’s Muse: Patterns of Creation in his Oratorios and Musical Dramas, 1743–1751 (Oxford, 2001); George Buelow, ‘Mattheson’s Concept of “Moduli” as a Clue to Handel’s Compositional Process’, Göttinger Händel Beiträge 3 (1989), pp. 272–8; and John H. Roberts, ‘Handel’s Borrowings from Keiser’, Göttinger Händel Beiträge 2 (1986), pp. 51–76. Christopher Hogwood offers a particularly fine overview (and new examples) in Handel: Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks (Cambridge, 2005).
53 Example 9.9 is taken from Brockes Passion, ed. Felix Schroeder, HHA i/7 (Kassel,
1965), p. 52.
54 Reinhard Keiser, Claudius and Nebucadnezar, ed. John H. Roberts, Handel Sources
iii (New York, 1986), pp. xx and 33.
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 179 Ex. 9.9 Handel, ‘Nehmt mich mit, verzagte Scharen’, Brockes Passion, bb. 1–5, HHA i/7, p. 52 Andante
Nehmt mich
mit,
ver - zag - te
Scha - ren, hier ist
Pet - rus oh - ne Schwert!
bass
representation of the heavenly spheres away from that model into music of his own making. The use of an instrumental Entrée in the cantata speaks to Handel’s familiarity with French style through the Hamburg opera. This model also influences the choice of a minuet for the closing movements of Il delirio amoroso. First heard instrumentally, it is repeated for voice and continuo, and then reiterated in a conjoined instrumental–vocal version. Following the concluding vocal recitative, a final repetition of the instrumental minuet closes the cantata. In reverting to a relatively simple and syllabic setting, aided by multiple repetitions, Handel finally adheres to Mattheson’s preference for French rather than Italian style and his stricture that ‘there must be something in all melodies that is familiar to almost everyone’. In Handel’s cantatas, such minuet conclusions typically signify an early work, still responding to his experience at the Hamburg opera. In Il delirio amoroso, however, the distinctive shift from Italian to French style may indicate a political reading of the cantata text in its apparent depiction of the eventual alliance of the pope (Tirsi) with the French after years of trying to maintain neutrality. The analysis of Il delirio amoroso provides valuable information on the development of Handel’s style. It demonstrates that the earliest cantatas already contain potent musical gestures for specific words that define the emotional content of the aria and that these, in turn, frequently become distinctive topoi in his musical language. Handel’s repeated use of these defining motifs provides insight into possible interpretations of individual movements and works. The various motifs in Il delirio amoroso studied here suggest that Handel understood Pamphilj’s text in multiple ways: Keiser’s ‘singing nature’ motif indicates the pastoral; the silences emphasise a personalised or erotic reading; the connection with the Brockes Passion suggests a spiritual meaning; and the shift from Italian to French style suggests Clement xi’s shift from neutrality to French alliance. Because Il delirio amoroso is closely dated, the analysis also offers a chronological insight as it helps to identify Handel’s language at a specific moment in time. As a result, comparison with other cantatas for which archival evidence is lacking, such as La Lucrezia and Lungi da me, assists in dating.
180 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Comparative analysis sheds light on the dating of other works as well. As Strohm discovered, Handel’s first opera for Italy, Rodrigo, was performed in Florence in the autumn of 1707 under the protection of the Prince [Ferdinand] of Tuscany, as stated on the title page of the surviving libretto (Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria).55 Kirkendale points out, however, that this libretto could represent the premiere or a revival, and she suggests, partly in an attempt to align the work with the chronology provided by Handel’s first biographer John Mainwaring (1760), that the first performance might have taken place in the autumn of 1705. She further proposes a similar scenario for Agrippina, that the known performance in 1709 was a revival and that the first performance took place in November 1706.56 Her hypothesis, then, is that both of Handel’s operas were composed and performed before he first arrived in Rome. In my view, Il delirio amoroso proves this theory wrong. The setting of ‘Un pensiero’ appears with different texts in both Rodrigo and Agrippina. A comparison of ‘Un pensiero’ with ‘Per dar pregio’ from Rodrigo clarifies their chronology. The text of the A section of ‘Per dar pregio’ reads as follows: Per dar pregio all’ amor mio, Cederò l’ amato sposo, Ma non già la mia costanza.
To show appreciation to my love, I shall cede my beloved husband, But not, indeed, my constancy.57
The musical depictions in ‘Un pensiero’ that occur on the words ‘pensier’ and ‘pace’ occur in ‘Per dar pregio’ on the words ‘pregio’ and ‘costanza’. While a long, sustained note works equally well for ‘pace’ and ‘costanza’, the lengthy runs on ‘pensier’, illustrating the thought extending up to heaven, fit less well on ‘pregio’ (esteem). Whereas Handel frequently writes long melismas on ‘pensier’ in his cantatas, there is no model for him doing so on ‘pregio’, which calls forth no such depiction and is, therefore, not a part of his musical language. This difference already suggests which setting has chronological priority. Further, while the somewhat rambling quality of ‘Un pensier’ illustrates the troubled mental state of lovesickness (il delirio amoroso), it fails entirely to illustrate the quiet nobility of Esilena’s decision to cede her husband to his mistress in order to avert civil bloodshed. Here is a case where Handel’s wholesale borrowing, expeditious rather than semantic, led to a poor result. As Winton Dean and J. Merrill Knapp write, ‘ “Per dar pregio” 55 Strohm, ‘Händel in Italia’, pp. 156–60; see also Strohm, ‘Handel and his Italian
Opera Texts’, pp. 38–40; Robert L. Weaver and Norma W. Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1590–1750 (Detroit, 1978), p. 210.
56 Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli’, pp. 335–8. 57 English translation by Alan Curtis, in CD liner notes: Handel, Rodrigo (Virgin
Classics Ltd, 1999)
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 181 allows the singer to show off her coloratura in competition with a solo violin and cello, but at disastrous cost to dramatic consistency; the interminable divisions strike a note of inanity, if not of self-parody.’58 This comparison, too, points to the precedence of ‘Un pensiero’, but the most significant proof of the relative chronology of these two arias lies in the autograph of Rodrigo itself. The autograph of Il delirio amoroso does not survive, eliminating the possibility of comparing the arias in autograph to determine which was the composing score and which the copy. Nevertheless, the Rodrigo autograph provides enough documentation to decide the question. The aria ‘Per dar pregio’ appears in the original foliation of the autograph, which represents the earliest layer of the opera’s composition. It is not, however, written out exclusively by Handel, but in tandem with Giuseppe Antonio Angelini, the primary copyist of Handel’s cantatas for the Marquis Ruspoli. Their respective roles are clear: everything that is different from ‘Un pensiero’ (including the opening ritornello, the vocal line where it needs to be adapted to a different text, the addition of a solo cello part, the entire B section) is written by Handel; Angelini copies the rest, which is unchanged from ‘Un pensiero’. As John Roberts has shown, Angelini failed to apply the revision from the opening ritornello to the closing ritornello, forcing Handel to make a metrical alteration to the beginning of the B section.59 Angelini also copied the closing vocal cadence exactly from ‘Un pensiero’, which Handel was forced to correct (writing directly on top of Angelini’s original version) to accommodate the new text. The evidence of the score (paper and watermark) strongly suggests that Rodrigo was composed in Rome in 1707,60 and Angelini’s participation 58 Winton Dean and J. Merrill Knapp, Handel’s Operas: 1704–1726 (Oxford, 1987),
p. 102. Kirkendale implausibly draws the opposite conclusion from this comparison: ‘In Rodrigo the aria is still rather long, pompous, and clumsy; in the cantata, on the other hand, it is polished and elegant, with periods of equal length. Thus it would seem that Handel’s “self-borrowing” in this case proceeded from the opera to the cantata, rather than the opposite direction, as hitherto assumed’ (‘Handel with Ruspoli’, p. 336). ‘Per dar pregio’ is not longer than ‘Un pensiero’; it only seems so because, as Dean and Knapp state, the music is not appropriate to the text.
59 John Roberts, ‘A New Handel Aria, or Hamburg Revisited’, Georg Friedrich Händel
– Ein Lebensinhalt: Gedenkschrift für Bernd Baselt (1934–1993), ed. Klaus Hortschansky and Konstanze Musketa (Halle an der Saale and Kassel, 1995), pp. 113–30, at p. 117.
60 See Donald Burrows and Martha J. Ronish, A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical
utographs (Oxford, 1994), pp. 64–5, 332. The paper is associated with Roman A works in the years 1707–9, but as Rodrigo was certainly not composed later than 1707, when a documented performance took place, the time and place of composition can be more closely determined.
182 Music as Social and Cultural Practice in the copying of ‘Per dar pregio’ probably follows directly from his having copied the original score of Il delirio amoroso for Pamphilj in May.61 Kirkendale’s suggestion, based on her hypothesis that Rodrigo was composed before Handel came to Rome, that Handel first ‘enlisted Angelini’s services in Florence … and then brought his trusted copyist with him when he moved’ to Rome, contradicts the evidence of the autograph.62 Kirkendale’s theory concerning the dating of both Rodrigo and Agrippina derives from her advocacy of Ruspoli ‘as the most important patron of music in Italy during the late baroque era and surely for Handel there’. She speculates on what led him to admit Handel so quickly ‘into his famiglia’ and, in a search for evidence after developing her theory, concludes that if Ruspoli ‘had heard that Handel’s operas Rodrigo and Agrippina had been performed with great success in Florence and Venice, respectively, this could have justified his decision to accommodate’ the composer immediately upon his arrival in Rome.63 This chronological revision, as has been shown above, cannot be maintained in light of the relationship between ‘Un pensiero’ of Il delirio amoroso and ‘Per dar pregio’ of the opera. Further, the larger compositional structure of the opera illustrates a methodical borrowing practice tied to the chronology of the cantatas that indicates Handel was moving from cantata to opera, as continued to be his practice, and not the reverse. The borrowings in the overture and first act of Rodrigo come largely from Hamburg operas: Handel’s own Almira, Keiser’s Octavia and Mattheson’s Cleopatra; those in the second act come from cantatas and a motet by Handel that can be dated exclusively to May and June 1707, and those in the third act derive mostly from cantatas written in Rome through early autumn (in contrast, Agrippina borrows heavily from works written in 1708, such as Il Resurrezione and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo). That is, his use of borrowed material follows chrono logically from music available to him over the course of his Roman sojourn 61 Marx, ‘Giustificazioni’, p. 179; Alessandro Ginelli copied out the performing parts
in February (p. 177).
62 Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli’, p. 336. I have dealt here only with evidence
from Il delirio amoroso itself in refuting Kirkendale’s suggested redating of Rodrigo; much other evidence exists that is equally compelling. To take only one example, the description of Handel in Rome published anonymously in 1737 (reprinted and discussed in Kirkendale, ‘Orgelspiel’) has Handel going to Florence after being in Rome in 1707 and composing an opera (the syntax leaves open whether this refers to an opera in Florence or elsewhere in Italy, so it could refer to Rodrigo or to Agrippina) that was generally applauded, but in either case, the opera follows Handel’s time in Rome in 1707.
63 Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli’, pp. 334–6, where she berates other scholars for
their mistreatment of Ruspoli, writing, for example, that ‘Strohm’s abusive judgement of Ruspoli [is] in the style of the vituperative propaganda of the German Democratic Republic, as motivated by communist ideology’ (p. 334 n. 182).
Harris • Cantate, que me veux-tu? 183 Ex. 9.10 Handel, Symphony, Jephtha, bb. 1–6, HW 44, p. 205 Allegro violins
viola
bass
of 1707, paralleling the same compositional period that has been determined through source analysis. If Rodrigo was written instead in 1705, then one must assume that after Handel borrowed extensively in Act i from German sources, he thereafter ceased altogether working from earlier material in the opera, but later borrowed heavily from Acts ii and iii into the cantatas. Handel’s known borrowing practices make this conclusion unlikely at best: his use of borrowed material in large-scale works tends to be consistent from act to act, and his use of material from the cantatas throughout his life underscores the importance of these works as primary source material. Overall, Handel’s cantatas claim our attention in a number of ways. First, the cantatas call to us for the overriding reason that they are beautiful: variously dramatic, wrenching, lyrical or witty, Handel’s extraordinary settings reach the height of musical expression. Further, by exploring the cantatas we can learn a great deal about Handel’s stylistic development during a critical period of his life, in which the French-inflected influence from Hamburg was modified by his Italian experience. It is in the cantatas that Handel begins to develop a personal musical language related to motivic topoi that helps us to identify his compositional voice. Moreover, the cantatas contain the origins of a significant amount of music in Handel’s later works that have garnered much more attention, providing a vast amount of musical material for Handel’s early operas from Rodrigo (1707) to Il pastor fido (1712), a somewhat lesser amount from Silla to Amadigi (1715), and then continuing movements throughout his life. Il delirio amoroso itself suddenly reappears in Jephtha (1751), Handel’s last oratorio. The opening (and pervasive) motif of ‘Lascia omai le brune vele’ also serves as the opening motif of the symphony depicting the descent of the angel (see Example 9.10, bracketed bars; compare Examples 9.6 and 9.7).64 The symphony in Jephtha has sometimes been criticised for sounding like a common dance, thus failing to depict the descent of the angel with appropriate 64 Example 9.10 is taken from Jephtha, ed. Chrysander, HW 44 (Leipzig, 1886),
p. 205.
184 Music as Social and Cultural Practice gravity.65 Such censure, however, overlooks Handel’s use of musical language. That he borrowed from the aria in Il delirio amoroso portraying the journey from Hades into Elysium for the angel’s entry in Jephtha not only offers another sign that Handel may have associated the cantata, at least in part, with religious connotations, but also affirms the continuing importance to him of specific musical topoi. Handel’s return to this jig-like motif in connection with travelling to and from heaven surely conveys his image of the heavenly spheres even if the depiction does not coincide with our own picture.66 One is reminded of lines written by Alexander Pope about music performed in the Cannons Chapel for the Duke of Chandos; although there is some consensus that these could not refer to Handel’s Chandos Anthems, one has to wonder: Light Quirks of Musick, broken and uneven, Make the Soul dance upon a Jig to Heaven.67
Handel’s chamber cantatas, in addition to their intrinsic beauty, offer important evidence on Handel’s compositional development and his increasing ability to establish meaning through the use of a distinctive musical language. Many movements in Handel’s later, larger and more valued works derive their meaning directly from the texts and musical settings of the cantatas. In short, it may not be possible to understand Handel’s compositional practice fully without first paying closer attention to his earlier chamber cantatas. Happily, doing so is a delight.
65 Anthony Hicks, for example, criticised the movement in his lecture ‘Handel’s
J ephtha: A Sacrifice to Theology?’ (The American Handel Society Lecture presented on 7 November 1998 at the Maryland Handel Festival).
66 Hicks, ‘Handel’s Jephtha’, suggested that the symphony depicting the descent of
Apollo from Semele, which is in the style of a French overture, was possibly more appropriate to the angel’s descent. It seems, however, that Handel distinguished between the appearance of a god (or goddess) and the lighter motion of souls or angels traversing the distance between earth and heaven.
67 From Pope’s ‘Epistle to the right Honourable Richard, Earl of Burlington’ (1731), as
quoted with commentary in Deutsch, Handel, p. 278.
• 10 • Two Köchel Numbers, One Work Christoph Wolff
T
he historical and philosophical quest for the origin of the work-concept must not bypass or neglect the phenomenon – prevalent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – of multiple versions or configurations of one and the same musical work. It is, in fact, this very phenomenon that confirms the existence of the work-concept in the eighteenth century and even earlier. For why should a composer like Heinrich Schütz revise his German Magnificat swv 494 in order to make it suitable for publication in his opus ultimum? Why should Johann Sebastian Bach undertake the trouble of polishing and transposing his C minor Partita bwv 831 for inclusion in the Second Part of his Clavier-Übung, an exemplary juxtaposition of Italian and French style models? These two randomly chosen examples could be expanded in several directions. Considerations made by composers in conjunction with publication projects may shed light on and help us understand significant constituent elements of the work-concept. A particular case in point is offered by two works that figure most prominently in Mozart’s publication plans in 1785 and 1788 respectively, his newest and most ambitious piano sonatas. The works in question represent the first such works composed and published in Vienna, one in C minor, k. 475+457, and one in F major, k. 533+494. All previous piano sonatas had been written before Mozart established residence there in 1781. However, it was in Vienna where he decided to offer the interested public two sets of earlier keyboard sonatas, k. 330–332 as Op. vi (Artaria, 1784) and k. 333 along with k. 284 and k. 454 for piano and violin as Op. vii (Torricella, 1784). We do not know whether it was the success of and response to these publications or a renewed interest in the sonata genre resulting from his intense engagement with composing six string quartets between late 1782 and early 1785 that may have encouraged Mozart to resume writing piano sonatas. At any rate, the two works in question, k. 475+457 and k. 533+494, stand out in a several ways, not only in terms of unprecedented musical weight in the realm of piano sonatas but also with regard to their mode of publication as single works. Mozart’s previous sonata publications followed the widely established pattern of printing a set of preferably three or six works rather than a single piece. However, it was not the unusual publishing format of the two sonatas that underscored a major musical statement made by the composer. Rather
186 Music as Social and Cultural Practice i nternal musical criteria, notably the issue of aesthetic coherence, predominated and played a decisive role in shaping the cyclical structure of the two sonatas. Structural coherence became a compositional concern for Mozart while working on two related sets of cyclical instrumental works: the six quartets k. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464 and 465 later dedicated to Haydn and the three piano concertos k. 413–415 with ‘a quattro’ accompaniment. The issue of musical coherence seems to have been in the air. Heinrich Christoph Koch’s Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt, 1802), intended to suit a broad public and reflecting the needs of the time, contains, among the numerous articles belonging to the standard repertoire of music lexicography, an unusually large number of terms that were newly integrated into the theory and aesthetics of the arts in the later eighteenth century. One of these happens to be the term ‘unity’ (German Einheit), which took on a key role with respect to new artistic objectives. Indeed, it quickly established itself and assumed such fundamental and axiomatic importance in the philosophy of art that it soon disappeared from musical lexicography again. Yet for Koch and late eighteenth-century composers the definition and function of unity as a novel aesthetic concept was by no means self-evident. Koch, who prepared his dictionary while Mozart was still alive, wrote: If the single parts or sections of a musical piece aim with all their means at the purpose of the whole, if they are designed to serve this end and not to lead to incidental and irrelevant ideas, then one can say the total piece has unity. According to Sulzer’s explanation (Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, Leipzig, 1792), unity is what helps us understand how many things can form parts of one and the same thing. All aestheticians agree that unity is an indispensable requirement of all products of the fine arts. This quality is a necessity inasmuch as a work of art, if we are to take pleasure in it, makes only a single total impression. However, this is not possible if the material and its elaboration lack unity. The German word ‘Einheit’, according to Johann Christoph Adelung (1793),
was coined and introduced into philosophical discourse by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff; related discussions of ‘unity’ are to be found in the writings of George Berkeley and David Hume. See E. Heintel, ‘Eine (das), Einheit’, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter, ii (Basel, 1972), col. 377.
The last short article on ‘Einheit’ I found in Hermann Mendel’s Musikalisches
Conversations-Lexicon, iii (Berlin, 1873), p. 336 f. However, after 1800 the issue penetrates discussions of cyclic form and related topics.
Musikalisches Lexikon, pp. 518–19.
Wolff • Two Köchel Numbers, One Work 187 Ex. 10.1 (a) Mozart, Fantasy in C minor, k. 475, opening; (b) Sonata in C minor, k. 457/1, opening; (c) Sonata in C minor, k. 457/2, opening (a)
p
f
pp
(b)
p
f
p
(c)
p
p
That the Fantasy in C minor, k. 475 and the Sonata in C minor, k. 457 belonged closely together has never been seriously disputed despite their separate origins, as are reflected in two different Köchel numbers. The opening motivic gestures of the Fantasy are unquestionably designed to fit the themes of the Sonata’s opening and finale movements. Crucial elements here are the unison antecedent statement and chordal consequent shared by the Fantasy (1+1 bar) (Example 10.1a) and the Sonata Allegro (2+2 bars) (Example 10.1b) as well as the triadic construction leading up to the downward leap of the diminished seventh, A b–B, in all three movements (Example 10.1c). These deliberate-cross references clearly defeat the assumption that it was the publisher who put the two works together, without authoris ation by the composer. In this respect the story of the Sonata in F major, k. 533+494 is quite different because the latter received much unfavourable criticism precisely for its apparent lack of unity. It began with Otto Jahn, who first questioned that the three-movement structure represented a coherent cycle. He knew, of course, that the final movement of the sonata stemmed from 1786, originating as a separate rondo, and that the first two movements were composed in 1788. Hermann Abert later declared emphatically, ‘the addition of the Rondo k. 494 to bring about a Neue Mozart Ausgabe ix/25, ii, p. xiii.
W. A. Mozart, iv (Leipzig, 1859), p. 28.
188 Music as Social and Cultural Practice complete sonata is not by Mozart’. Such harsh criticism, compounded by the separate listing of the three movements in all editions of the Köchel catalogue, is not surprising. The fact that the Sonata was given two numbers, k. 533 and 494, suggested non-cohesion and disjunction and its lasting effect is shown in its unfavourable reception and rare performances. Against the prevailing trend, this essay will focus on the question of musical unity regarding k. 533/494, both with respect to the three-movement cycle and the design of its individual movements. As far as the genesis of the F major Sonata is concerned, the biographical context furnishes a revealing perspective. On 3 January 1788 Mozart placed in his thematic catalogue the entry ‘Ein Allegro und Andante für das Clavier allein’. Less than a month later, in February 1788 – perhaps still in January – these two movements, k. 533 that is, together with the older Rondo k. 494 were published by Hoffmeister in Vienna under the title ‘Sonate Pour le Fortepiano, ou Clavecin, Composé par Mr. W. A. Mozart au Service de sa Majesté J[mperial]. et R[oyal]. à Vienne chez Hoffmeister’. This was the second time Mozart had published a single piano sonata, but in terms of overall length and imitative polyphony the three movements of the F major work exceeded those of the C minor Sonata. Moreover, the title page of the F major piece presented a conspicuous reference to Mozart’s new title of court composer, ‘Compositeur’ and ‘k. k. Hofkammermusicus’ at the Viennese Royal-Imperial court. The appointment was effective 6 December 1787 and a little over two weeks later, on 19 December, Mozart mentioned in a letter to his sister ‘that His Majesty the Emperor has now taken me into his service will probably be news to you. I am sure you will be pleased to hear it.’ The appointment carried an annual stipend of 800 florins, the first and only regular salary Mozart received in Vienna. It hardly seems to be a coincidence when the first of Mozart’s publications immediately following this appointment makes reference to his new court function. The second Mozart piece published by Hoffmeister, again in early 1788, the two-piano version of the Fugue in C minor, k. 426, presented the very same reference, only this time in Italian: ‘all attuale servizio di Sua Maesta J[mperiale]: è R[eale]:’10 Mozart took the opportunity to announce his prestigious new position W. A. Mozart, ii (Leipzig, 1921), p. 427.
Neue Mozart Ausgabe x/33/1, fols 14v–15r.
Gertraut Haberkamp, Die Erstdrucke der Werke von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Bildband (Tutzing, 1986), p. 265.
Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life, ed. and trans. Robert Spaethling (New York, 2000),
p. 396.
10 Haberkamp, Die Erstdrucke, p. 172.
Wolff • Two Köchel Numbers, One Work 189 to the European public and he did it in his very own way. Furthermore, the fact that the sonata in particular represents a work whose large-scale format, intricate compositional design and technical demands are neither without precedent nor immediate parallel, seems to indicate another clear message: the newly appointed imperial court composer presented himself with a work of extraordinary character – hardly with a sonata that was haphazardly put together, let alone by an unauthoris ed publisher. In fact, Mozart delivered a single issue, not a set of sonatas but an extended three-movement piece that at once opens new dimensions and directions for the genre and form of the piano sonata. In particular, it displays a novel handling of idiomatic keyboard writing and a decided concern with aesthetic unity.
the integration of the rondo k. 494 Mozart’s decision to reuse the 1786 Rondo as sonata finale could not have been a foregone conclusion. Many keyboard sonatas up to and including k. 333 feature rondo movements at the end. The C minor Sonata, however, does not include a rondo finale. At the same time, several of the Viennese piano concertos feature rondo movements. Thus, the Rondo k. 494 certainly provided Mozart with a convenient solution to complete and round off a sonata cycle even though it may not have been his first choice. Nevertheless, the addition of the 1786 rondo to the 1788 Allegro and Andante was anything but a mechanical act. For Mozart revised the piece and extended it by an interpolation of no fewer than twenty-six newly composed measures. The mere fact of a substantial revision may simply have been prompted by a desire to include the element of change in the process of integrating an older piece. On the other hand, the very nature of the change indicates a meaningful adjustment because the new section (bb. 143–69) gives the rondo a fresh and original accent. The transition to the newly composed section (bb. 142–3) corresponds directly to a deceptive cadence in the first movement (bb. 21–2). More importantly, however, the core portion of the new insert introduces a densely constructed imitative elaboration of the rondo theme (see Example 10.2). Hence, the revision and expansion of the older rondo reflects a clear sense of polyphonic upgrading. The intention in this direction cannot be considered accidental because it primarily serves the purpose of unity. The revised rondo does not function as a mere finale. Rather, it closes the cycle by balancing the character of the first movement – a balance the unrevised rondo would not provide. The first movement of the sonata is the most sophisticated polyphonic sonata movement Mozart ever wrote. In order to counterbalance it within a three-movement cyclical structure, the old rondo had to be substantially changed.
190 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 10.2 Mozart Rondo, k. 494: (a) bb. 1–2; (b) bb. 152–7 (a)
(b)
non-fugal polyphony, left- and right-hand symmetry, and the bass register The interpolated imitative section just discussed represents a perfect example of a deliberate approach towards redefining the function of the left hand and the function of the fortepiano’s low bass register. First, the left-hand part is no longer predominantly accompanimental. Here a cross-reference to the Gigue in G major, k. 574 seems in order. Mozart entered this piece in the friendship album of the Leipzig organist and impresario Johann Immanuel Engel during his visit in the spring of 1789. The little Gigue was meant to be both a token of gratitude – ‘true friendship and brotherly love’ according to Mozart’s dedication11 – and an acknowledgement of the composer’s debt to two musical idols of the past, Bach and Handel. The short piece refers to the Gigue in Handel’s F minor Suite from Suites de pieces pour le clavecin (London, 1720), which serves as a model for its basic rhythmic-melodic, textural and formal layout. Bach style then enters via the chromatic shape of the theme, the systematic application of thematic inversion in second half of the piece, and the harmonically enriching chords in both right- and left-hand parts. Mozart ingeniously synthesises the elements and peppers the setting with varied and intricate articulation, by constantly oscillating between major and minor modes, and by emphasising an asymmetric and syncopated rhythmic 11 Koechel6 (1965), p. 648.
Wolff • Two Köchel Numbers, One Work 191 drive that hammers out on accented notes (b. 22) B b and A in the left hand, followed by C and B � in the right – spelling out B–A–C–H in German nomenclature. Modelled after an old-fashioned gigue, the piece more properly represents a capricious character piece. Texturally, however, it manifests an absolutely equal treatment of both hands on the keyboard, but without turning to traditional and genuinely fugal devices. In this way the 1789 Gigue closely resembles, complements and in terms of ‘left- and right-hand symmetry’ relates to and refines the textural make-up of the 1788 Sonata. A second aspect of the texture in keyboard music pertains to the left-hand range and use of the bass register. The lower octaves of the fortepiano are no longer off-limits for the right hand or indeed both hands, and Mozart pays increased attention to a more flexible and colourful use of the instrument. The exploration of the bass register as such is not a new phenomenon, for it happens in the C minor Sonata as well, especially towards the end of its finale movement. However, it is quite noticeable how the revisions of the 1786 Rondo add a new dimension to the piece, not only by focusing on imitative textures but also by building up these textures effectively from the bottom of the keyboard. Again, these principal features are not at all isolated within the three-movement structure of k. 533. They play a major role throughout the first movement, but also the Andante prominently displays both complementary obbligato textures and a notable move into the bass register at the end of the piece. Mozart thereby establishes, again in the interest of unity, a deliberate correspondence between all three movements.
weighing alternatives The revision of the older Rondo represented no less than a polyphonic upgrading of the piece. However, Mozart’s conceptual work on an appropriate finale movement for the F major Sonata was apparently not limited to this effort. On the contrary, it seems that the composer experimented with a number of different solutions, for among the fragments dating from 1787 we find four keyboard movement openings in F major that belong together. On the basis of both paper type and musical evidence, they appear to belong to the immediate context of k. 533. As mentioned before, the opening movement of k. 533 provides an exemplary case of contrapuntal refinement. At the same time, this very movement, and especially its opening, represents the strongest possible contrast to its immediate precursor, the C minor Sonata of 1784. For the F major work not only starts the piece literally with one finger, so to speak, but generally presents translucent textures and uses material of a fairly abstract musical nature, that
192 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 10.3 Mozart, Fragment no. 1, k. Anh. 29
Ex. 10.4 Mozart, Fragment no. 2, k. Anh. 30
is, musical thoughts based on constructed substance: scales, triads and the like. Interesting enough, the four pertinent fragments actually reflect this same mode of thinking. Fragment no. 1 (k. Anh. 29 = Konrad 1787r)12 exposes in barely eight bars an ascending triadic motif followed by a descending scale (see Example 10.3). A four-bar antecedent phrase in F major is immediately followed by a four-bar consequent in G minor. This same harmonic pattern is kept in Fragment no. 2 (k. Anh. 30 = Konrad 1787s),13 but the material, fifteen 12 Neue Mozart Ausgabe x/30/4, p. 167. 13 Ibid.
Wolff • Two Köchel Numbers, One Work 193 Ex. 10.5 Mozart, Fragment no. 3, k. Anh. 33/40
bars in length, is much more varied. Also, right and left hand alternate in presenting the principal material, introducing the technique of double counter point (see Example 10.4). Considering their overall character and design, it is hard to imagine that these two corresponding openings of a movement would serve anything but a concluding movement. Hence, both fragments could not be interpreted as rejected drafts for the sonata’s first movement. However, especially on account of its deliberate polyphonic structure and its striking use of double counterpoint, Fragment no. 2 suggests that Mozart apparently wanted the sonata finale to pick up a major feature of the work’s first movement. Fragment no. 3 (k. Anh. 33/40 = Konrad 1787d)14 would do this in a different way, based on a more extended, elaborate and complex thematic idea in 6/8 time. The piece is definitely mislabelled as ‘a fragment of a fugue’ by Alfred Einstein15 and, subsequently, by the Neue Mozart Ausgabe as well,16 for it shows no signs of appropriate fugal entries. On the other hand, it indicates the same double-counterpoint structure as Fragment no. 2 by restating in bars 12 ff the right-hand theme in its entirety in the left hand (see Example 10.5). 14 Ibid., p. 150. 15 Köchel-Einstein (Leipzig, 1937), pp. 476 and 828, defines the fragment as ‘Fuge für
Klavier d-moll’ (sic), k. 383b.
16 Neue Mozart Ausgabe ix/27/2 (ed. Wolfgang Plath, 1982), p. 175, ‘Fragment einer
Fuge in F’ (same heading accepted by Konrad; see previous note).
194 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 10.6 Mozart, Fragment no. 4, k. Anh. 37, opening
The capricious 6/8 subject with its chromatic twist closely resembles the kind of approach Mozart took in the little Gigue k. 574. The unfinished material of sixteen bars is followed by another 6/8 version, Fragment no. 4 (k. Anh. 37 = Konrad 1787t),17 this time a genuine rondo opening of thirty-three bars (see Example 10.6). It goes without saying (and is typical of similar situations elsewhere in the repertoire of Mozart’s fragments) that the attribution, interrelationship and chronological sequence of these four fragments remain to some extent hypothetical. At the same time, we certainly encounter here compositional material that sheds light on the range of Mozart’s exploration of cyclical possibilities for a sonata concept that strives towards a new horizon, a sonata structure that even permits the integration of a fugal finale in the way he ended the Quartet k. 387 or would round off the Jupiter Symphony only a few months after completing k. 533. Perhaps pressed for time, perhaps uncertain about the compositional implications, Mozart decided against a newly composed finale for his 1788 presentation sonata and turned to the Rondo k. 494 instead. The F major Sonata as a whole represents an exemplary case in more than one way: first, its opening movement shows a systematic exploration of a structure involving three distinct subjects;18 second, it features musical material designed for non-fugal, yet strictly contrapuntal treatment; third, it pursues the principal goal of achieving formal unity by multiple means. In this regard, k. 533 has no parallel among Mozart’s other late sonata designs, including that of k. 457. His last two and again more compact piano sonatas of 1789, in B flat, k. 570 and D major, k. 576 (both published posthumously) move yet again into other directions, leaving k. 533 of the previous year to stand out conspicuously. But then, Mozart would have felt conscious of the function of this big sonata in which he presented himself to a wider European public as the newly appointed 17 Neue Mozart Ausgabe, ix/25/2, pp. 182–3, ‘Sonatensatz (Rondo) in F’. 18 Christoph Wolff, ‘Musikalische “Gedankenfolge” und “Einheit des Stoffes”: Zu
Mozarts Klaviersonate in F-Dur (kv533+494)’, Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. H. Danuser et al. (Laaber, 1988), pp. 441–54. The 1988 essay represents an earlier examination of k. 533/494 with a different focus and does not take the sonata k. 457/475 into consideration.
Wolff • Two Köchel Numbers, One Work 195 imperial court composer. Undoubtedly the work was to underscore his prestige as keyboard virtuoso and his stature as a cultured composer. With the ambitious publication of the Fantasy and Sonata, k. 457/475, Mozart’s piano music had reached a pinnacle in terms of both large-scale design and intense expressive pathos. After an interval of three years, he challenged himself by creating a structure of even greater dimensions for k. 533/494, a structure he never surpassed with respect to scale, complexity and unity of material. Whereas true pathos and grand expressive gestures were the composer’s central concern in the C minor work, its F major successor demonstrated greater interest in constructive thinking and transparent design as well as in intellectual and material penetration of the chosen musical substance. There exists another not insignificant difference between the two major keyboard publications of 1785 and 1788. The newer C minor Fantasy was written to fit the earlier Sonata and to serve as its free introductory movement, whereas the older F major Rondo was adapted so that it would make a fitting finale for the two newly composed Sonata movements. The traditional and customary pairing of the Köchel numbers 475/457 and 533/494 respectively reflects both the different origin of the individual sonata components, the different chronological order and the different cyclical sequence of the three- or four-movement structure. At the same time, these very differences affirm the close conceptual proximity of the two piano sonata projects. The two Köchel numbers assigned to what actually constitutes one work obscure the intimate connection and inner coherence of either sonata cycle. In fact, for reasons both practical and philosophical it would make good sense to drop the second Köchel number in listings of the two cyclical works, for neither k. 475 nor k. 533 was conceived as a stand-alone. At the same time, the two Köchel numbers imply and invite just as much the authenticity of a forwardlooking Mozartean work-concept that results in a unified structure created from originally separate entities.
•
III
•
creating an opera industry
• 11 • Identity and Poetic Style: The Case of Rosmene by Giuseppe Domenico de Totis Norbert Dubowy
I
talian opera of the second half of the seventeenth century was shaped and characterised by two contrasting phenomena. The first was the dissemination of Venetian opera over the whole Italian peninsula. This process of dissemination was concerned with two, interrelated elements of what can be called Venetian opera:
1. The production system, known as the ‘impresarial system’, with its entrepreneurial approach, division of economic and artistic competences, and openness to being produced in and for non-courtly environments. This model was predestined to become the paradigm for many other places. 2. The artistic product itself, the musical drama that spread and circulated in the form of a score and/or libretto. With the same drama seen in Venice, Turin or Palermo, dissemination tended to have a unifying, homogenising effect. At the same time, the musical and poetic text confronted regional and local traditions, preferences, conventions, tastes and styles. These continued to exist – despite the general acceptance of the Venetian model – and produced a manifold, regionally diversified operatic landscape on the Italian peninsula spanning major and minor operatic centres, from Milan to Palermo and from Messina to Udine. Besides variations resulting from the Venetian production system and its modifications, diversity within dramma per musica had complex sources. The application of modern categories such as taste and the persistence of local traditions cannot fully explain this diversity. There are many preconditions See Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, trans. David Bryant
(Cambridge, 1987; original edn Turin, 1982), pp. 190–204; Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, ‘Production, Consumption and Political Function of SeventeenthCentury Opera’, Early Music History, 4 (1984), pp. 209–96; see especially the chapter on the provincial repertory of the Veneto (App. 4, pp. 285–93). See also Franco Piperno, ‘Il sistema produttivo, fino al 1780’, Storia dell’ opera italiana, iv: Il sistema produttivo e le sue competenze, ed. L. Bianconi and G. Pestelli (Turin, 1987), pp. 1–72, esp. pp. 17–28. The most complete view of the production of midseventeenth-century opera in Venice is Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon, Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and his World in SeventeenthCentury Venice (New York and Oxford, 2006).
200 Music as Social and Cultural Practice that constitute the basis for this diversity, such as the social and political organisation of the hosting state or city and the place of musical drama in the location’s broader cultural life. On the other hand, there are many ways in which diversity manifests itself, and these would be valid objects of investi gation – for example the style of the music and the peculiarities of dramaturgy. This study, however, explores one specific segment of the broad panorama of Italian opera between 1650 and 1700: the question of language and the options of poetic versification of dramma per musica used by librettists of that period. During this period the nature of the musical drama was not the subject of a broad intellectual debate, and written testimonies are rare. There are, however, traces of critical awareness of differences that can be interpreted as a consciousness of style and as expressions of a specific identity. Conceptualising identity has been an issue basic to anthropological and cultural studies since the 1970s. Identity helps define membership in nations and social or ethnic groups. Language acts as an important criterion for defining membership. Identity has the two aspects: on the one hand, self-definition of the group; on the other, how others define the group from outside. For minorities who feel the need to affirm their ‘self-ness’ against a dominant ‘other’, the issue of identity often becomes especially urgent. Although literary scholars routinely scrutinise how writings shape the recognition of identity, this topic is not common to studies on seventeenth-century opera. The notion is introduced here because it highlights the complex situation of dramma per musica caught between a dominant model and regional trends. The historical situation of mid-seventeenth-century dramma per musica poses the question: can local manifestations be understood as articulating a group’s distinct identity? This study focuses largely – although not exclusively – on one example from Rome. According to extant evidence, the libretto by Giuseppe Domenico de Totis (1644–1707) for the opera Rosmene recognises ‘the self ’ and ‘the other’ in accordance with anthropological and literary theories of identity construction. The libretto shows the way in which language and poetic strategies could be instrumentalised to construct identity. This interpretation of the libretto and the conclusions I draw refer exclusively to the years prior to 1690. To appraise the various developments of dramma per musica during the following decade would require a different approach and interpretation, owing to the variety of See Robert S. Freeman, Opera without Drama: Currents of Change in Italian Opera,
1675–1725 (Ann Arbor, 1981), pp. 1–2.
For a basic definition of identity see the article on ‘Identity’ by Paul V. Kroskrity
in Key Terms in Language and Culture, ed. Alessandro Duranti (Malden, Mass., 2001), pp. 106–9.
Dubowy • Identity and Poetic Style 201 new developments in the history of dramma per musica. Therefore, I do not aspire to generalise the results of this study either geographically or chronologically. Since 1700, when members of the Arcadian Academy launched their critique of dramma per musica, the second half of the seventeenth century has often been considered a period of decline in literary taste accompanied by a lack of criticism. This, however, is not completely true. Closer investigation reveals continuity in the awareness of, and sensitivity to, style and differences in poetic language. The Tuscan region, due to its strong dramatic and literary traditions, provides a good example of persistent interest in the question of language. For example, the Tuscan librettist and playwright Giovanni Andrea Moniglia (1624–1700) prefaced his dramma civile La serva nobile (Florence, 1660) thus: ‘If this Scherzo drammatico comes into the hands of foreigners, it will not be appreciated, because most of it consists of proverbs and colloquialisms of the author’s homeland.’ Moniglia emphasised in particular that the Florentine language makes his drama distinct from expressions by, and understanding of, the ‘other’, a suspicion indicated through the generic expression ‘forestieri’. Moniglia’s Tuscan drama displays cultural pride and documents an identity that refers only obscurely to a potential ‘other’. In opera, expressions of identity can be revealed better when looking at adaptations of mostly Venetian scores and librettos for performances outside Venice. There are numerous examples, throughout the century, of adaptations and subsequent justifications for the fact that the drama had to be reworked in order to fit local tastes, expectations and actual conditions. The alterations consisted generally of cutting, adding or substituting roles and aria texts, or modifying the libretto’s original See Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni’s critique in Freeman, Opera without Drama,
pp. 13 ff.
Robert Lamar Weaver, ‘Florentine Comic Operas of the Seventeenth Century’
(Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1958); James S. Leve, ‘Humor and Intrigue: A Comparative Study of Comic Opera in Florence and Rome during the Late Seventeenth Century’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1998).
La serva nobile, ‘dramma civile’, Florence, 1660, foreword ‘A chi legge’: ‘Se questo
Scherzo Drammatico perverrà in mano di Forestieri poco, o niente sarà per esser gustato, consistendo la maggior parte d’ esso in proverbi, & idiotismi della Patria dell’ autore.’ Quoted after Robert Lamar Weaver and Norma Wright Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1590–1750: Operas, Prologues, Finales, Intermezzos and Plays with Incidental Music (Detroit, 1978), p. 130.
For a broader context of the use of Florentine in Moniglia’s librettos, see Weaver,
‘Florentine Comic Opera’, pp. 104–10.
See e.g. the printed librettos of Teodora clemente (Parma, 1689) (‘m’ è convenuto
inserir nel medemo la parte di Vecchia a sceneggiar col Servo per cavarne a l’ uso
202 Music as Social and Cultural Practice plot, which, on the whole, affected the original libretto at specific points only. In many cases, practical considerations dictated the alterations, such as the number of available singers, the singers’ vocal characteristics or their acting skills.10 In the case of Giuseppe Domenico de Totis’s La Rosmene, a Roman opera of the second half of the seventeenth century, this pattern is contrasted starkly since it involves the entire text of the libretto. Close examination of the libretto allows us to approach the question of language and poetic style from yet another point of view. Despite testimonies from Romans accepting the ‘fame’ and supremacy of Venetian dramma per musica,11 opera in the papal city was quite distinct from that of Venice. Roman opera preserved peculiarities stemming from the political and social organisation of the Eternal City. Papal bans often hindered public opera (especially during the long papacy of Innocent xi, 1676–89), making opera in Rome typically the initiative of single individuals – resident cardinals, ambassadors, nobles – and theatre owners. Opera supporters, or those with access to opera theatres, were artists, papal court functionaries and intellectuals of all kinds – the so-called letterati – who often joined the princes and cardinals to cut through the stratification of high versus middle-class society. Roman opera thereby retained a ‘private’ character, and remained the province of an intellectual minority. De Totis was one of the most prominent writers of musico-dramatic texts during the period under consideration. He was strongly affiliated with Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj (1653–1730), one of the most prominent patrons of the arts and musicians, and author of lyrical and dramatic texts. From 1690 di questo paese et al genio di chi commanda il Ridicolo’) and Penelope la casta (Palermo, 1694) (‘accomodate al gusto del Paese’).
The widespread practice of the addition of newly composed or recycled arias is
discussed in Jennifer Williams Brown, ‘ “Con nuove arie aggiunte”: Aria Borrowing in the Venetian Opera Repertory, 1672–1685’ (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1992).
10 A good example is found in one of the later productions of the opera which is
the subject of this study: La Rosmene overo l’ infedeltà fedele, melodrama … (Lodi: Sevesi, 1693): ‘la scarsezza di ritrovar virtuosi per recitar in questi tempi, che sono quasi tutti impegnati, ha obligato levar una parte, et il gusto de Recitanti ha desiderato l’ aggionta d’ alcune Scene, il cambio, e l’ accrescimento d’ alcune Ariette …’.
11 See e.g. Venice, Museo Civico Correr, MS pd.c. 1066, fol. 295, Settimio Olgiati
in Rome to Polo Michiel in Venice (letter dated 16 December 1679): ‘godetevi fratanto il vostro carnevale con le famose opere, mentre noi con due sole operette, una di Bernardo, e l’ altra dello Scarlatti, la prima di Capranica, la seconda di Bernini passeremo il carnevale con meno malinconia delli altri anni, se pure non vi succede qualche intoppo, che cè nè privi’.
Dubowy • Identity and Poetic Style 203 until his death De Totis served another of Rome’s most powerful patrons, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740). De Totis wrote several librettos which composers such as Bernardo Pasquini, Alessandro Melani and Alessandro Scarlatti (to name a few) set to music. His dramma per musica La Rosmene ovvero L’ infedeltà fedele, first performed in Cardinal Pamphilj’s Roman palace Rome in 1686 with music by Alessandro Scarlatti,12 is thought to be one of his best works.13 Although generally catalogued as originally by De Totis, I discovered that this work is in fact an adaptation of a Venetian dramma per musica by Aurelio Aureli (fl.1652–1708).14 Aureli was one of the most prolific librettists of mid-seventeenth-century Venice and a central figure among the Venetian librettists of the 1660s and 1670s.15 De Totis based his Rosmene on Aureli’s fifth dramma per musica, La costanza di Rosmonda, performed in 1659 at the Venetian theatre of Santi Giovanni e Paolo with music by Giovanni Battista Volpe (c.1620–91), nicknamed Rovettino.16 Although Aureli used the names Agamennone, Clitennestra and Oreste, his plot has virtually nothing to do with the lives of their homonymous predecessors from ancient Greek history and mythology. Instead, it is a comedy centring on testing Rosmonda’s faithfulness to her husband Pelope. She is continuously subjected to the advances of King Agamennone and his son Oreste while her husband, disguised as a mute blackamoor, observes her. De Totis relies on several different strategies to change Aureli’s text. Among traditional procedures he uses, he cuts scenes and slightly modifies the plot. More intriguingly, he almost completely substitutes the names of the dramatis personae with new ones. 12 Any earlier date, which is occasionally found in the literature, is highly question-
able. All questions regarding the dating, the sources, the style and Scarlatti’s setting of Rosmene are treated in more detail in my forthcoming book, Alessandro Scarlatti und das Dramma per musica (ca. 1678–1707).
13 Donald J. Grout, Alessandro Scarlatti: An Introduction to his Operas (Berkeley, Los
Angeles and London, 1979), p. 43.
14 No printed libretto of the 1686 performance is known to survive. The earliest
printed libretto giving De Totis as the author is the libretto for the production in Florence, 1689 (La Rosmene, ovvero L’ infedelta fedele, melodrama del Signor Giuseppe Domenico de Totis (Florence: Vincenzo Vangelisti, 1689).
15 Interestingly, Aureli’s second libretto, Erismena (1655), was also modelled on
the work of another librettist, Giovanni Faustini’s Ormindo. See Ellen Rosand, ‘ “Ormindo travestito” in Erismena’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (1975), pp. 268–91, esp. pp. 285–91.
16 The music is lost; only the printed libretto has survived: La costanza di Rosmonda,
drama per musica di Aurelio Aureli favola quinta. Rappresentata in Venetia nel Teatro Grimano l’ Anno 1659. … (Venice: Valvasense, 1659).
204 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Rosmonda (moglie di Pelope) → Rosmene Pelope (duca d’ Argo) = id. Clitennestra (moglie d’ Agamennone) → Celidora Agamennone (re di Micene) → Linceo Oreste (prencipe di Micene, figlio → Oronte d’ Agamennone e di Clitennestra) Antipatro (cavaliero principal di Micene, amico e seguace di Pelope) → Cleante Cirene/Aurindo (principessa d’ Atene) → Fidalma/Eurillo Alfea (vecchia nutrice di Rosmonda) → Alcea Simo (servo sciocco) ⎫ ⎬ → Liso Vespino (schiavo) ⎭ Floro (servo) — De Totis’s name changes (Agamennone to Linceo, Clitennestra to Celidora and Oreste to Oronte) conformed to Roman taste. He dehistoricised the source text by deleting the inherent historic references of the role names, thereby redefining the plot as a fantastic pseudo-historic play, by far the most preferred dramatic type among Roman writers.17 With these methods, De Totis does no more than adapt the libretto to satisfy local Roman preference for non-historic plots and comedy. Unlike ‘normal’ adaptations, however, De Totis rewrites Aureli’s text entirely, from the first to the last line. We may compare Act ii, Scene xii in La costanza di Rosmonda with its parallel Scene xiii in Rosmene, where the king in the presence of the mute blackamoor attempts to seduce Rosmonda/Rosmene (see Appendix).18 This single scene exemplifies De Totis’s methods of adaptation throughout the entire libretto. He retains the outline of Aureli’s dialogue together with single words and concepts (see the underlined words), but in the Roman version, the scene is longer and more elaborate, especially in the first section. He increases the number of recitative verse lines from Aureli’s forty 17 See, for example, the works of Giovanni Filippo Apolloni (e.g. Amar per vendetta
overo L’ Alcasta) or Flavio Orsini (e.g. Moro per amore). Up to 1690, librettos based on (Roman) history were generally imported from Venice or Vienna, with the exception of Giacomo Sinibaldi’s Lisimaco (1681).
18 Owing to the lack of a printed libretto for the first Roman production of 1686,
the text reproduced here follows the edition of Rome, 1690 (La Rosmene overo L’ infedeltà fedele, melodrama (Rome: Stamperia della Rev. Cam. Apost., 1690). The line ‘Che del muto non curo’ has been inserted from the editions of Naples (1688) and Florence (1689) as well as from the score in Münster, Santini-Bibliothek. The final aria is different in all three editions (1688, 1689, 1690). The aria heard in 1686 was probably ‘Tenti in vano un’ alma forte’, preserved both in the libretto of 1689 and the score in Münster. The libretto for the 1688 production in Palermo (La Rosmene o vero L’ infideltà fedele) was not available for this study.
Dubowy • Identity and Poetic Style 205 to sixty-three. He fills in what under Aureli’s pen was a mere skeletal dialogue with an abundance of poetic ornaments and figures, using every possible conceit, such as antithesis (‘affanni’ – ‘diletto’), metaphor (‘quell cor di scoglio’) and ingenious turns, as the first lines show. As if inspired by Aureli’s expression ‘cortesie’, De Totis’s characters enter into a sophisticated dialogue about the control of human affections and inclinations on a high, almost sublime level, alluding continually to a higher power (‘per cui s’ aman fra lor l’ anime in cielo’; ‘in noi senza di noi non opra il cielo’) – a seeming clash with Linceo’s base intentions. Whether or not intended to be comic, the dialogue confirms De Totis’s extreme erudition. Linceo’s wooing and Rosmene’s refusal are carefully constructed and developed in several stages. After two rounds of alternating arguments (‘E fino a quando’; ‘Rosmene a noi non lice’), the dialogue intensifies when Rosmene’s refusal becomes definitive (‘Nudri in sen vana speranza’). Thereafter attitudes change drastically, although De Totis keeps the speech on the same stylistic level. The king tries initially to intimidate Rosmene (‘Dunque, o Tigre inumana’), then to take advantage of her, but she defends herself by drawing his dagger and threatening to kill herself to save her honour. In this second part, as the scene moves towards a moment of action, De Totis follows Aureli more closely, even shortening the Venetian model. De Totis is apparently more interested in moments allowing him to display his poetic skills than in moments of action. In terms of poetic forms, and in conformity with his penchant for speech and dialogue, De Totis relies heavily on the long endecasillabo (43 per cent of the total number of verses) without overshadowing, however, the shorter settenario verse. A remarkable break in the flow of seven- and eleven-syllable lines occurs in the unexpected shift to ottonario verse (see below); this gives Scarlatti the opportunity to highlight the three-way conflict between the faithful Rosmene, the lecherous king and Rosmene’s powerless husband with a short trio. The change in metre is ingeniously placed in the middle of the scene, marking the king’s switch from wooing to threatening, while Aureli in the same situation uses only the regular seven-syllable verses. Even more striking, however, is De Totis’s use of rhyme. Aureli is quite parsimonious in linking verses by rhyme (shown by boxed words); by contrast De Totis establishes a tight network of rhymed verse lines, using rhyme pairs, alternating rhymes and a single embracing rhyme, thereby leaving very few lines completely free of any rhyme. One may criticise De Totis for his use of rhyming words that have the same root (discolpa – colpa; abbraccia – braccia; esangue – sangue), but the repeated use of this device indicates that
206 Music as Social and Cultural Practice he considered this practice justified by poetic licence, and therefore not a v iolation of poetic rules.19 The emphasis given to rhyme is anything but a superficial feature. Arcangelo Spagna (1632–1726), like De Totis, was a member of Ottoboni’s household and a key figure in developing the libretto of the Roman oratorio volgare. He dedicated a large part of his Discorso intorno a gl’ Oratorii to the principles of the rhyme.20 He described rhyme as ‘the most beautiful, perhaps the only ornament of our Poetry, especially in verses that are destined to be sung’21 and, referring back to the authority Giulio Rospigliosi (1660–69), cardinal, playwright and ultimately pope (Clement ix), Spagna established the rules for rhyme in recitative verses (‘those recitative [lines] must have among each other a corresponding similarity and linkage’).22 Spagna also cited De Totis as an author whose works set examples for others to follow.23 In sum, compared with Aureli’s text, De Totis’s is not simply a libretto, but a piece of ambitious poetry. Rather than functioning merely as dramatic text for a musical setting, the libretto strives to be ‘literature’ on a higher level, through a treatment elevating the text’s style. In fact, De Totis’s reworking moved the text into a higher category of literature. This partly answers the puzzle of why De Totis did not, in adapting the libretto, content himself with using typical additions and substitutions, but undertook instead the complex work of rewriting. To say that he sought acknowledgement as the author (disregarding the fact that he delivered a product of plagiarism) is not enough. The contrast in quality between Aureli’s and De Totis’s versions is too evident to be ignored: De Totis’s ambition was to be recognized as a ‘high’ poet by virtue of his poetic skills. He was perhaps pleased with the plot, but evidently was unhappy with the poetry: he adopted Aureli’s basic invention – the favola or outline of the plot – but he felt the need to elaborate the poetry anew and completely changed the 19 Benedetto Menzini (1646–1704), Florentine poet and, from 1685 onward, in Rome
as a member of Queen Christina of Sweden’s academy, allows occasional rhymes with the same word in his Arte poetica (Florence, 1688), with reference to Torquato Tasso and Dante; Arte poetica di Benedetto Menzini, conforme all’ edizione fiorentina del 1731 (Prato, 1816), Libro iii, p. 76.
20 In Arcangelo Spagna, Oratorii overo melodrammi sacri (Rome, 1706), pp. 10–13;
see the facs. edn by Johann Herczog, Musurgiana xxv (Lucca, 1993), pp. 8–9.
21 Ibid., p. 12 [p. 8]: ‘il più vago, e forse unico ornamento della nostra Poesia, ma
specialmente ne Versi destinati al Canto’.
22 Ibid., p. 11 [p. 8]: ‘dover essi Recitativi havere fra di loro una somigliante cor
rispondenza, & incatenatura’.
23 Ibid., p. 20 [p. 10]: ‘Quelli poi, che … hanno esattamente osservato, secondo la
comune opinione, gl’ avvertimenti sopradetti, degni essendo parimenti d’ imitazione, furono, Monsig. Lorenzo Bernini, e Monsig. Giuseppe de Totis’.
Dubowy • Identity and Poetic Style 207 ‘elocutio’, that is, diction and style.24 The challenge here was apparently to ‘translate’ the libretto into another poetic idiom, while perhaps attempting aemulatio. One reason behind De Totis’s undertaking was the questionable literary quality of Venetian texts. As the Roman Settimio Olgiati remarked to his Venetian interlocutor Polo Michiel: ‘Here in Rome, they talk very unkindly about your operas.’25 Even Venetian writers like Giovanni Matteo Giannini had to admit that ‘they say that in Venice they know nothing about the higher poetic style, and that one has to write verbosely, that is sloppily’.26 If we define De Totis’s Rosmene as a kind of ‘translation’ of Aureli’s libretto, then it is important to underline the fact that a considerable part of the musical dramas to which he gave his name are indeed ‘translations’ and adaptations. In addition to Rosmene, he adapted several Spanish plays for the opera stage. My investigations revealed that Aldimiro o vero Favor per favore (1683), the 24 ‘elocutio’ is a category both of traditional rhetoric (within the system of five
partes rhetoricae: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, actio; see Joachim Knape, ‘Elocutio’, Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, ed. Gert Ueding (Tübingen, 1994), ii, coll. 1022 ff) and of poetics. In poetics, ‘elocutio/elocuzione’ and likewise ‘dictio/dizione’ are essential or qualitative parts of either comedy or tragedy. Here are a few witnesses from the late sixteenth century: ‘Diremo dunque che la prima divisione sia di queste parti come essenziali: favola, costume, elocuzione, sentenze, apparato et armonia’ (Nicolò Rossi, Discorso intorno alla tragedia [1590]; see Bernard Weinberg, Trattati di poetica e retorica del Cinquecento, iv, Scrittori d’ Italia cclviii [Bari, 1974], p. 89). ‘Nunc ad partes qualitatives veniendum est, quae eadem sunt in comoedia ac in tragoedia, id est, fabula, mores, sententia, dictio, harmonia, apparatus’ (Antonio Riccoboni, De re comica ex Aristotelis doctrina [1579]; see Weinberg, Trattati di poetica e retorica, iii, Scrittori d’ Italia ccliii [Bari, 1972], p. 263. According to Gabriele Zinano, Discorso della tragedia (1590), it is in particular the diction that decides the success or effectiveness of a tragedy: ‘Due sono le cose che muovono: la favola e l’ elocuzione. … se duoi narreranno una sola favola, l’ un moverà più dell’ altro’ (Weinberg, Trattati, iv, p. 133).
25 Letter dated 3 February 1680, in Venice, Museo Civico Correr, MS pd.c. 1067,
fol. 338, quoted from Bianconi and Walker, ‘Production, Consumption’, p. 247 n. 100: ‘Qui in Roma delle vostre [opere] se ne discorre molto male.’
26 ‘Dicono, che in Venezia non s’ intende l’ elevatura dello Stile poettico, e che deve
scriversi verbosamente, cioè alla Carlona.’ Giovanni Matteo Giannini, L’ Adone, drama per musica eletto per lo Teatro di San Salvatore l’ anno 1676 (Venice, 1676), preface. Giannini was in a rage about changes made in his text by another writer, Tebaldo Fattorini, in the service of the San Salvatore theatre (published as Adone in Cipro, drama per musica … inventato dal dottor Giannini [Venice, 1676]). The Venetian librettist and historiographer Cristoforo Ivanovich expresses his concerns in a letter to Marchese degli Obizzi: ‘Con una libertà indiscreta si comincia a far Notomia della medema [composizione], … si lacera, si smove, e si scompone il modello, s’ urta l’ invenzione, si difforma la Disposizione, e peggiora l’ Elocuzione’; Cristoforo Ivanovich, Poesie (Venice, 1675), letter 39 (Considerazioni diverse intorno à Teatri, à Drami, ed agli abusi correnti), p. 359.
208 Music as Social and Cultural Practice libretto to Scarlatti’s first opera for Naples, is an adaptation of Fineza contra fineza by the great Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–81).27 His next librettos, Il Fetonte (Naples, 1683) and Psiche o vero Amore innamorato (Naples, 1685), written, like Aldimiro, for the Spanish viceroy, Gasparo de Haro, marquis del Carpio (viceroy 1683–7), are also based on Calderón plays (El hijo del Sol, Faeton and Ni amor se libra de amor).28 A later work, La caduta del regno dell’ Amazzoni (Rome, 1690), commissioned by the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, Luis Francisco de la Cerda, for the wedding of the Spanish king Carlos ii with Maria Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg, was based on the Spanish play Las Amazonas de Scithia by Antonio de Solís y Rivadeneyra (1610– 86). Sources for his earlier librettos, Idalma overo Chi la dura la vince (1680) and Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere (1681), are not yet identified, but these works follow the Spanish model of the comedia de capa y espada, a type of drama whose introduction on the operatic stage was falsely attributed to De Totis after his death.29 De Totis possibly did not independently invent even one plot; rather, he considered poetic elaboration to be the function of the playwright,30 and produced, through this process, librettos that he considered his own. 27 I will treat the reworking of Fineza contra fineza into Aldimiro, to my knowledge a
hitherto unknown case, in a forthcoming study. More information on Aldimiro is also to be found in my study on Alessandro Scarlatti and dramma per musica (see above, n. 12).
28 The identity of Fetonte and Psiche is revealed in Lorenzo Bianconi, ‘Funktionen
des Operntheaters in Neapel bis 1700 und die Rolle Alessandro Scarlattis’, Colloquium Alessandro Scarlatti Würzburg 1975, ed. Wolfgang Osthoff and Jutta Ruile-Dronke (Tutzing, 1979), pp. 13–116, esp. p. 32 n. 106, and p. 80. Some notes on Fetonte are also found in Nancy L. D. D’ Antuono, ‘Calderón a la italiana: El hijo del sol, Faetón en la corte virreinal de Nápoles en 1685’, El texto puesto en escena: Estudios sobre la comedia del siglo de oro en honor a Everett W. Hesse, ed. Bárbara Mujica and Anita K. Stoll (Woodbridge and Rochester, 2000), pp. 22–32. Marquis del Carpio, while still ambassador in Rome, staged the original Spanish plays Fineza contra fineza and Ni Amor se libra de amor (together with No puede ser guardar una mujer by Agustín Moreto y Cavana) in 1682 in his Roman palace. The Italian scenarios are described in Saverio Franchi, Drammaturgia romana: Repertorio bibliografico cronologico dei testi drammatici pubblicati a Roma e nel Lazio (Secolo xvii), Sussidi eruditi xlii (Rome, 1988), pp. 541 f.
29 See the obituary by Mireo Rofeatico (Michele Giuseppe Morei) in Notizie istoriche
degli Arcadi morti, iii (Rome, 1721), p. 10. But see Leve, ‘Humor and Intrigue’, p. 349.
30 His last libretto, Agrippina, only recently discovered, was intended for a perform-
ance at the Tordinona theatre in Rome, sponsored by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. See Teresa Chirico, ‘L’ Agrippina e due cantate sconosciute di Giuseppe Domenico De Totis’, Studi musicali 34 (2005), pp. 51–135. The surviving sources suggest that this drama, too, was not entirely designed by De Totis, but was probably inspired by Ottoboni (see Chirico, p. 63).
Dubowy • Identity and Poetic Style 209 Clues to understanding De Totis’s practice of adaptation-translation and the question of authorship lie in the analogous output and approaches of Carlo Sigismondo Capece (1652–1728), another Roman author active at the same time. Like De Totis, Capece also based his dramma per musica I giochi troiani (1688) on a Spanish play. His model was Los juegos olímpicos by Agustín de Salazar y Torre (1642–75). Capece admits his debt to Salazar, but nevertheless claims the drama as his own work (‘I nevertheless thought I could ascribe it with all certainty to my name’).31 Capece outlined his writing methods precisely: giving new names to the dramatis personae, adding scenes or action, and, most significantly, changing the ‘stile et elocutione’ of the text. For Capece, as for De Totis – who unfortunately did not illuminate his working methods as Capece did – writing dialogue and verses fulfilled the prerequisites of authorship; the plot itself was considered a source open to all. From this perspective, the plot belonged seemingly to the category of numerous stories from the antique tradition – labelled ‘favola ricevuta’ by another contemporary author – handed down without an author to claim possession.32 Such attitudes towards dramatic writing, style and language can only be grasped within the context of post-1650 Roman culture. Unlike Venice, Rome was a sort of closed ‘biotope’ where numerous academies devoted themselves to literary discussions more than elsewhere. Testimony to a highly developed literary consciousness in Rome abound. The quotations of four classical pastoral plays (Il Pastor fido, Aminta, La Filli di Sciro and Arsinda) in the preface to the Roman production of Pompeo (1683, after Nicolò Minato’s Venetian Pompeo Magno from 1666) shows the anonymous author’s knowledge of past literary grandees.33 No contemporary Venetian author would have done this. Even the official of papal censorship, Antonio Politauri, expressed (together with the requested nulla osta) his appreciation for authorial style in the 1690 libretto of Rosmene: ‘I have read Rosmene by Sig. Gioseppe de Totis, and I admire its purity of style, uniqueness of invention with its connection of various events which have a natural but not ordinary expressiveness of affections displayed 31 ‘ho nondimeno stimato di poterlo con ogni sicurezza appropriare al mio nome’.
The full text of the preface is found in Melania Bucciarelli, Italian Opera and European Theatre, 1680–1720: Plots, Performers, Dramaturgies, Speculum musicae vii (Turnhout, 2000), pp. 183 f.
32 See Girolamo Frigimelica Roberti in the preface to his libretto Ercole in cielo
( Venice, 1696): ‘Trà il numero immenso delle favole ricevute hò poi eletta questa trattata da Sofocle nella Tragedia intitolata le Trachinie.’
33 Il Pompeo, dramma per musica del Sig. Nicolo Minato (Rome: Giannini, 1683), p. 6
(facs. in Handel Sources: Materials for the Study of Handel’s Borrowing, vi, ed. John H. Roberts [New York and London, 1986]).
210 Music as Social and Cultural Practice in a noble manner.’34 In his L’ Idalma, De Totis himself showed his interest in issues of poetry, often alluding to, and joking about, terms or notions such as ‘favola’, ‘concetto’ and ‘verosimiglianza’.35 Decoding these meta-theatrical and meta-literary allusions requires an audience whose erudition equals that of the author. De Totis’s Rosmene is deeply connected with the place of literature, musical drama and culture in Roman society. Such drama fostered, and thereby reflects, the aspirations of a specific, highly educated group that comprised a mixture of high-ranking aristocrats with literary interests such as his patron Cardinal Pamphilj, letterati and academy fellows. De Totis wrote Rosmene when a member of the Accademia degli Umoristi, once led by Cardinal Pamphilj. Although we have no records of discussions at the academy or in any similar intellectual gathering, some opinions on poetic matters are shared by a wider group of people: Rosmene is a skilful work by a single author – actually one of Rome’s best and most esteemed authors at the time – but it reflects in a practical manner ideas that may have been discussed and shared by many others, such as those mentioned above, Spagna, Politauri and Capece. In other words, De Totis’s poetic style not only attests to a single author’s competence, but also expresses the views and practices of a larger group. Rosmene may therefore be viewed as a manifestation of group identity in Roman academic and intellectual circles for which literary consciousness is central; moreover, in the light of reigning Roman opinions on Venetian literary style, rewriting the source libretto apparently signalled a proud detachment from Venice. 34 Rosmene (1690), p. [ii]: ‘ho letto la Rosmene del Sig. Gioseppe de Totis, e in essa
ho ammirato il candor dello stile, proprietà dell’ inventione con la connessione di varij successi da naturale, ma non ordinaria espressiva d’ affetti nobilmente rappresentati’.
35 L’ Idalma overo Chi la dura la vince, Comedia per musica (Rome: Mascardi, 1680)
(facs. edn, Italian Opera Librettos, ed. Howard Mayer Brown, vi [New York, 1979]). All allusions – on the distinction between history and fiction, on the concettismo peculiar to Baroque poetry of the seventeenth century, and on the problem of dramatic verisimilitude – come from the mouths of the two comic characters Dorillo and Pantano: In Scene i, 7, Dorillo seizes on the word ‘favola’, first tossed in by Pantano, in his subsequent aria, ‘O favola, o istoria / O vera, o fandonia’. In Scene iii, 11, Dorillo comments on Irene’s aria ‘Si, si morire io vuò’ with ‘Questi sono concettini / Da lasciarli a i Poeti, / Qui non ci vonno aneti, / Ch’ è un inutil conforto / Il sentirsi lodar quand’ uno è morto’. In Scene ii, 12 Pantano summarises the action and the behaviour of the main characters: ‘Credetemi Signor, che chi prendesse / Per tema di Comedia un caso simile, / Da qualche bell’ ingegno / Criticar sentiria d’ inverisimile, / Che faccia un Cavalier tratto si indegno.’ De Totis also wrote a meta-operatic intermezzo without title; the characters are Guglielma, Nina and Antimo. For a full transcript of the text see Leve, ‘Humor and Intrigue’, pp. 428–34.
Dubowy • Identity and Poetic Style 211
I
n 1690, only a few years after Rosmene’s premiere in Pamphilij’s palace, a new force appeared on the Roman scene: the Academy of the Arcadians, whose focus on literary criticism would eventually lead to a new concept of style and profound changes in Italian literature. The Academy had several forerunners: the Accademia reale, established by Queen Christina of Sweden, and the Accademia degli Infecondi, whose role as forerunner Arcangelo Spagna, De Totis’s fellow librettist, later claimed (and perhaps others too). De Totis, with his critical attitude towards dramatic poetry, may be considered another influential figure, paving the way for the foundation of the Arcadia; indeed, in 1691 De Totis himself joined the Arcadia as Filedo Nonacrio. Although his own poetic style was not always congruent with the Arcadian ideals (as members pointed out),36 he is nevertheless important because he anticipates the kind of critical attention for which the Arcadia later became famous. Viewed against this background, the founding of Arcadia in 1690 appears part of an unbroken Roman tradition of literary criticism. During its first decades, despite its pan-Italian aspirations, the Academy aimed at centralisation and cultural hegemony, which can be seen as nothing less than an expression of Roman identity.37
36 Rofeatico, Notizie istoriche degli Arcadi morti, iii, p. 11: ‘Ma per quanto egli
riuscisse in tal genere di Poesia eccellente, e ne riportasse onore, e lode, pare c ontutociò, che non andasse esente da qualche corruttela del secolo, in cui fioriva; osservandosi ne’ detti suoi Drammi di quando in quando delle metafore, e de’ traslati risentiti, benché assai medicati dalla dolcezza del verso, e dalla proprietà del sentimento.’
37 Some clues for this interpretation can be found in Amedeo Quondam, ‘L’ istitu
zione Arcadia: Sociologia e ideologia di un’ accademia’, Quaderni storici 23 (1973), pp. 389–438, esp. pp. 417–24.
212 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
appendix Comparison of one scene of Aureli’s Rosmonda with De Totis’s Rosmene Aureli, La costanza di Rosmonda (Venice, 1659) ii, 12: Rosmonda – Agamennone – Pelope Ros: O che molesto incontro. Ag: O sembianze gradite; Giungi a tempo Rosmonda, e voi partite. Ros: Partirò anch’ io. Ag: Nò ferma; Odi crudele pria Ciò, che d’ oprar in honor tuo risolse Dovuta cortesia Ros: Cortesie non accetto Da chi insidiar procura Il marital mio letto.
Pel: Saggia risposta: è l’honor mio sicuro.
Ag: Ros: Ag: Ros: Pel:
Ah spietata. Ah lascivo. Son rè. Son honorata. Cara moglie adorata.
De Totis, Rosmene (Rome, 1686/1690) ii, 13: Rosmene – Linceo – Pelope
7 Ros: (Molesto incontro.) da se. 7 Lin: E fino a quando, o bella, 11 Gli affanni del mio petto, Diverran tuo diletto? 7 Quando quel Cor di scoglio 7 Addolcirà del suo rigor le tempre? 11 E l’ istesso l’ amarti, e pianger sempre. 7 Ros: Signor, s’ è ver che m’ ami, 7 E d’ Amator sublime a i vanti aspiri, 7 Solleva i tuoi desiri, 7 E lascia che beltà caduca, e frale Un vile Amante alletti; Ma di genio reale, Sieno immortali oggetti Il senno, l’ onestà, la fede, il zelo, Per cui s’ aman fra lor l’ anime in Cielo. 11 Pel: (Che sento! o me felice!) da se. Lin: Rosmene a noi non lice D’ ammorzar quell’ ardore, Che per alto destin ne infiamma il Core. Ros: Questa de folli amanti, E l’ usata discolpa, Per poi chiamar necessità la colpa. Lin: Da le sfere è vibrato D’ ardente amor l’ irreparabil telo. Ros: In noi senza di noi non opra il Cielo. Lin: Non più sdegni Alma severa. 7 Ros: Nudri in sen vana speranza. Pel: (Empio rè!) (da se) 7 Lin: Perché sì fiera? 7 Ros: D’ aspe ho il Cor. Pel: (Cara costanza.) da se Lin: Dunque, o Tigre inumana, Nudrita agli altrui danni, Nel più funesto orror di selva Ircana Così d’ un Regio Cor godi agli affanni? Ma altera non andrai del tuo rigore, Ne’ miei scherniti affetti; Che a impetrarmi i diletti La forza supplirà, se manca Amore. Ros: Che presumi? Lin: Gioir. Ros: Tenti uno scoglio. Lin: Ciò che nieghi donar, rapirti io voglio. Pel: (Tirrannico ardimento!) da se. Ros: Aita, o Numi!
11 7 7 7 11 11 7 11 7 11 7 7 7 11 11 7 7 7 11 7 7 11 7 11 11 8 8 8 8 7 7 11 11 11 7 7 11
11 11 11
Dubowy • Identity and Poetic Style 213
Ag: Già, che soli qui siamo, (Che del muto non curo) Voglio, ch’hora proviamo Chi hà più forza, ò Rosmonda, e più valore: La possanza d’ un Rege, ò dell’Honore. Pel: Scelerato Regnante. Ros: Che pretendi da me Sire, che chiedi? Ag: Un solo abbracciamento. Ros: Pur che questo ti basti io mi contento. Pel: Ohimè vincer si lascia. Ag: Sospirate fortune hor lieto i’ vivo.
7 7 7 11 11 7 11 7 11 7 11
Nel finger Rosmonda d’ abbracciar il Rè, gli toglie dal seno una Draga, e da se lo rispinge
Ros: Pel: Ag: Ros: Ag: Ros:
Ag: Ros:
Ag: Ros: Ag: Ros: Ag:
Adietro empio, lascivo. Respiro. Ferma. Affrena tue voglie Rè tiranno. Che fai? Essercito il dovere D’ una donna honorata, D’ una moglie fedele. Contro te si crudele? Allontanati iniquo, ò questo serto Laverà nel mio sangue Le macchie, che al mio honor fare pretendi. E ’l foco estinguerà di cui t’ accendi. Odi. Parti, o m’ uccido. E non ti penti? Risoluta sono. Pur che tu vivi ò bella Violento me stesso, e t’ abbandono.
Quì Rosmonda getta la Draga à terra, e Pelope la raccoglie. Ros: [Aria] Per me ogn’hor tempeste, e fulmini Vibrar deve irato ciel? Se tal’hor s’ adira il mar, Doppo i turbini Placidetta l’ onda appar, E à scintillar in Ciel tornan le stelle; sol eterne per me son le procelle.
7
11 7 7 7 7 7 11 7
Lin: Contro un Regio potere, Invochi in van le sfere. Pel: (Barbaro!) da se. Lin: Siam qui soli, Che del muto non curo; amo, e son Rè: Onde in questo momento Di goder bramo, Ros: Che?
7 7 7 11 7 7
Un caro abbracciamento. 7 Nè più da tè si chiede? 7 Sol questo. 7 (Oimè già cede 7 L’ avvilita Consorte.) da se. Ros: Son pronta a compiacerti. Lin: O gioie! Pel: (O morte.) da se. 11 Rosmene nel fingere d’ abbracciare Linceo, gli toglie la spada dal fianco, e rivolgendola al petto, dice così. Ros: Vieni, Barbaro vieni. Lin: Oh Dio, che tenti? 11 Ros: D’ illustrar col mio sangue i tuoi contenti. 11 Lin: Ferma. Ros: Vieni, ed abbraccia 7 7 Il cener di Rosmene, 11 Che t’ invita a goder fra morte braccia 7 Pel: (Generosa Costanza.) da se. Lin: Ros: Lin: Pel:
11 Lin: Ascolta. 11 Ros: Parti; O vedrai la mia morte, 11 7 Sù questa spoglia esangue, 7 11 Ergere al vivo onor trofei di Sangue. 11 Lin: Del tuo cieco furor gl’ impeti affrena. 11 7 7 Perché tu viva, o bella, 11 Sarà dolce ad un Rè morir di pena. Parte. 11
Ros: [Aria] Ostenti pur la sorte Tutto il rigor che può Che Pelope, o la morte, Al sen io stringerò.
• 12 • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? Michael Talbot
T
he ‘operatisation’ of oratorio is a commonplace of the discourse around Italian music of the eighteenth century. Like all such grand generalisations, it risks drawing attention one-sidedly to the obvious and banal while overlooking less prominent features that in the end may prove more interesting and characteristic. Since its rediscovery in the late 1920s, Vivaldi’s sole surviving oratorio, Juditha triumphans (1716), has served music historians as a classic, strikingly early example of this operatising tendency. The fact that it has been readily available in more than one modern edition, as well as a facsimile edition, has often been performed and recorded and has commended itself to Vivaldians and the music-loving public alike through the high level of its musical inspiration and colourful instrumental palette only serves to accentuate its representative quality. When, in 1974, I wrote the sleeve notes for the Philips recording of the oratorio under Vittorio Negri, I had no hesitation in subscribing to this consensus. Parodying the well-known reference to Verdi’s Requiem as the composer’s ‘best opera’, I used the same epithet for Juditha triumphans. I do not regret the description, which – let it be remembered – was made at a time when very few of Vivaldi’s operas had achieved a staged, or even a concert, performance and their viability under modern conditions was doubted: in its telegraphic way it conveys something true about both the nature and the quality of the work. But a balanced view demands that we also examine the many respects in which Juditha triumphans does not adopt, or adopts only The full title of the oratorio is Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie, but
no commentators have been known to resist its truncation to the first and second words, or even to only the first word.
An edition by Vito Frazzi appeared from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena,
in 1941, in connection with the work’s modern premiere during the same year’s Settimana Musicale Senese; a version with piano reduction (Rome: Edizioni De Santis) followed in 1949. The same Accademia Musicale Chigiana brought out a facsimile edition of the composer’s autograph score in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Turin (Foà 28, fols 209–302 bis), in ‘pocketbook’ format in 1948, and Ricordi (Milan) issued a serviceable modern edition, prepared by Alberto Zedda, in 1971. The present author’s edition for the New Critical Edition of the Works of Antonio Vivaldi published by the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi (Venice) is in press at the time of writing.
Philips 6599 812-14 (issued in 1975). This recording, which featured the Kammer
orchester Berlin and the Rundfunk Solistenverein Berlin, launched Philips’s pioneering recording of the complete sacred vocal music of the composer.
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 215 in distorted form, operatic norms. These prove to be relevant not only to the aesthetic appreciation of the work itself but also to oratorio and opera librettology in general. What are the symptoms, some already in existence well before the end of the previous century, by which one recognises operatic influence in early Settecento oratorio? First, one notes the diminished role for the chorus, which may not exist except as an ensemble of soloists, and when it does exist separately is limited to short and simple contributions. The fact that, except on those rare occasions when oratorio was acted on stage in costume, members of the chorus did not have to memorise their parts opened the door to more elaborate, madrigalesque numbers: when these are nevertheless rejected in favour of pieces in binary and/or strophic form, the operatic influence becomes very apparent. Second, the celebration of solismo becomes more manifest as a general phenomenon than formerly. One must be cautious here: oratorio was never governed by the strictest canons of propriety that governed (though far from universally) Italian church music, and its propagandistic and edificatory goals were in any case always apt to draw it into the stylistic orbit of secular music as exemplified by opera and, even more, by its closest ‘secular’ counterpart, the serenata. The emphasis on solo numbers featuring ostentatiously florid writing has more to do with the identity of the singers (often active on the operatic stage even if also members of a cappella) than with the choice of subject or locale. It would have been unrealistic, given their highly focused training and the emphasis on technical ability, to expect leading singers to maintain one style (florid) for the theatre and another (sober) for the church or for prelates’ palaces. Compositional habits, too, must have facilitated the transfer of operatic practices to oratorio, especially when oratorio composers who abstained altogether from writing operas (in Venice, contemporary with Vivaldi, the notable figures were Antonino Biffi and Diogenio Bigaglia) became so few. But composers would not have acted as they did without the approval of singers, patrons and the public, and without the cooperation of librettists (for example, in the option for a da capo structure in most arias). One strange, and by no means predestined, side effect of the supremacy of solismo is the diminished role of duets and other ensembles. Their relative scarcity in opera seria in Vivaldi’s day – again, this tendency reaches back far into the Seicento – has a number of understandable practical causes, including the reliance on individual rather than group rehearsal (unavoidable when the singers, recruited from different localities, came together only days before the opening night of an opera), the burden of memorisation and the need to minimise the possibility of friction between singers. In this respect, oratorios part company with concertato liturgical works such as Vivaldi’s multi-movement
216 Music as Social and Cultural Practice psalm settings, each of which has its due quotient of numbers for more than one solo singer. Doubtless, the wish on the part of audiences to hear their divi and dive ‘neat’ rather than ‘mixed’ played its part. On the dramaturgical side, the most conspicuous act of rapprochement with opera is the jettisoning of the Testo (narrator), a practice mentioned approvingly in 1706 by Arcangelo Spagna in the ‘Discorso intorno a gl’ oratori’ with which he prefaced his first book of Oratorii overo melodrammi sacri. The advantage of retaining a separate narrator is that the recounting of the action is fenced off from the dialogue of the characters, who can converse realistically without feeding the audience titbits of essential expository information as they go along. The negative corollary is a loss of realism and immediacy and the removal of one singer from active participation in the drama – no small matter when the solo singers total no more than three to six (the size of cast in the great majority of late Baroque oratorios). A Testo-less oratorio is, in principle, open to all the formal templates (plot lines, organisation into scenes, etc.) adopted for opera, even though its smaller scale, non-staged performance and frequent retention of the traditional division into two parts (leaving room for a sermon or the serving of refreshments to guests in between) arguably make the serenata a more suitable comparator. What are those operatic plot templates that, in theory, a post-1700 oratorio can adopt? Two such templates dominate. The first is the four-stage progress from (1) tranquillity to (2) crisis to (3) reversal of fortune (the ‘catastrophe’, in the original sense of that word) to (4) happy outcome (lieto fine). This para bola occurs with enormous frequency in the mythological, historical and literary (chivalric romance) sources for Baroque operas themselves, and where a lieto fine is absent, one can often be manufactured. The biblical and other scriptural stories that form the basis for the plots of oratorios (we will leave out Arcangelo Spagna, Oratorii overo melodrammi sacri (Rome, 1706), pp. 5–6 and
20.
The brief discussion of conventions in opera that follows is highly synthetic and
cannot do justice to the full range of practices, particularly during a period when some usages (to take a blatant example, the retention of comic characters within the body of the opera itself rather than segregating them in separate comic intermezzos ) were in flux and ‘reform’ principles were making steady but uneven headway. However, I feel that a high level of generalisation is needed for both opera seria and oratorio in order to bring out essential coincidences and contrasts.
On this plot template, see in particular the magisterial, four-instalment account in
Reinhard Strohm, ‘Tragédie into Dramma per musica (i–iv)’, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani 9–12 (1988–91), respectively pp. 14–25, 57–102, 11–26 and 47–75. Strohm emphasises the indebtedness of the first ‘reform’ current in heroic opera after 1700 to French spoken drama of the grand siècle and explains how it thereby sought selectively to recover previously neglected Aristotelian virtues within a rationalist optic.
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 217 of consideration the dialoghi and other subtypes using allegorical characters that are the counterparts of similar serenatas) are often hospitable to exactly the same formula. In Vivaldi’s Juditha, for example, the crisis is clearly the siege of Bethulia, the reversal Judith’s beheading of Holofernes and the happy outcome the defeat of the Assyrians (the phase of tranquillity is not present in the action but can be inferred as a prior state). Because of the canonic authority of sacred texts and the consequent need to guard against accusations of irreverence or even heresy, the opportunity to play fast and loose with outcomes does not exist (the Babylonian exile cannot be averted at the eleventh hour, nor can Peter fail to deny Christ), but within this general constraint many freedoms exist, allowing the verosimile to appear alongside the (presumed) vero, just as it does in history-based opera and even in mythology- or romance-based opera in those many cases where a privileged, canonised version of the tale is accepted as tantamount to fact. Names can be given to unnamed characters (such as Judith’s ancilla, who becomes Abra in Vivaldi’s oratorio); invented subplots, usually no more than fragmentary, can be added; characters can be excised or conflated (often necessary for practical reasons when the singers are so few); parts of the story can be expanded or condensed. The second common template for early Settecento opera seria is the inclusion within the plot of at least one pair, not infrequently two pairs and sometimes even three pairs of successful lovers (i.e. lovers who at the end of the opera are united or reunited, following various vicissitudes, to general acclaim), and then usually at least one unsuccessful lover, whose unrequited amorous designs are finally frustrated; the failure is sometimes accepted with equanimity, sometimes not. Some examples: in Apostolo Zeno’s Teuzzone, first staged in 1706 and set by Vivaldi for Mantua in 1719, the successful lovers are the single couple Teuzzone–Zelinda, the unsuccessful ones Zidiana (in love with Teuzzone), Cino (in love with Zidiana) and Sivenio (similarly enamoured); Nicolò Beregan’s Giustino, first staged in 1683 and set by Vivaldi for Rome in 1724, has two successful couples, Giustino–Leocasta and Arianna–Anastasio, and two unsuccessful lovers, Andronico (in love with Leocasta) and Vitaliano Such would be, for instance, many of the tales in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. For an
interesting discussion of how canonised stories, mythological or fictional, could be regarded as factual (with important consequences for the distinction between the vero and the verosimile), see Piero Weiss, ‘Teorie drammatiche e “infranciosamento”: Motive della “riforma” melodrammatica nel primo Settecento’, Antonio Vivaldi: Teatro musicale, cultura e società, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giovanni Morelli (Florence, 1982), pp. 273–86, at pp. 277–80. Weiss, too, emphasises the connection of the post-1700 tragedia per musica with French spoken tragedy and draws attention to the different inspiration of non-tragic operatic subgenres (for example, the favola pastorale), which drew on elements within the Lullian tragédie en musique rather than on French spoken drama.
218 Music as Social and Cultural Practice (coveting Arianna); Antonio Marchi’s La costanza trionfante degl’ amori e de gl’ odii (1716), which was Vivaldi’s third opera for Venice, contains three pairs of successful lovers (Tigrane–Doriclea, Farnace–Getilde, Olderico–Eumena) and one unsuccessful one (Artabano). To be sure, several librettos dispense with the unsuccessful lover – for instance, both Domenico Lalli’s Ottone in villa, set by Vivaldi for Vicenza in 1713, and Matteo Noris’s Tito Manlio, first staged in 1697 and set by Vivaldi for Mantua in 1719, lack this element (discounting the rapidly slain Geminio in the second work) – but it proved its utility time and again as a mechanism for advancing the plot and generating surprise or dramatic irony. Perhaps of all the variations on the basic formula the one with two successful couples and one unsuccessful lover maps the most neatly on to the typical contemporary cast of six or seven principal singers, leaving space for an extra minor character or two (this time, without amatory involvement) in the role of confidant, captain or servant. Unsuccessful lovers come in many varieties, but foremost among them is the figure of the tyrant, or of his female counterpart, the sorceress, who has the power, it seems, to achieve a desired goal by mere coercion. In the operas so far mentioned Zidiana (female, but a usurpatory monarch), Vitaliano and Artabano all conform to this basic type. For obvious dramaturgical and ethical reasons, the conduct of the tyrant is contrasted with that of the heroic protagonist. Musical expression is given to this contrast through such factors as vocal range, the maturity of the singer and the ‘portfolio’ of affetti displayed (in which at least one fury aria is de rigueur). Not surprisingly, the employment of this template in anything like its complete form was hardly ever feasible in oratorio. Erotic love plays a minor part in Scripture and hagiography, where in any case it is often treated as something dangerous or distracting rather than a laudable goal. And whereas single pairs of eminent lovers (Samson–Delilah, Jacob–Sarah et al.) are common, at least in the Old Testament, double pairs are not. Oratorio thus has to content itself with seeking out whatever fragments of this and other operatic templates it is able to employ and doing its best with them. Where character types correspond to operatic stereotypes, operatic norms tend to apply; where they do not, the treatment is perforce less predictable. Naturally, the librettist, with the presumed approval of the composer, is free, if he wishes, to select and ‘spin’ religious subjects so as to maximise the potential for quasi-operatic dramaturgical (as well as musical) treatment, and this is exactly what Juditha triumphans evidences in high degree. For the sake of completeness, it should be noted briefly that the traffic of The topos of the tyrant in Vivaldi’s operas and in those contemporary with him is
discussed in Anna Laura Bellina, ‘Dal mito della corte al nodo dello stato: Il topos del tiranno’, Antonio Vivaldi: Teatro musicale, cultura e società, pp. 297–313.
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 219 influence between opera and oratorio grew less one-sided as the eighteenth century wore on and Enlightenment ideas promoting the mutual assimilation of philosophy and religion took hold. Already in the ‘first’ reform, that of Zeno’s circle and later Metastasio, we see the aim of moral instruction, previously the prerogative of oratorio, take its place alongside that of entertainment within the ambit of opera seria. Symptomatic of this is the increasing use of the chorus in opera seria as a commentator representing the generalised views of society. The ‘second’ reform, that of Durazzo and Gluck, only intensifies this process, marrying it to a meltdown and reshaping of the structural components of the genre. But this counter-current has hardly begun at the time when Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans comes into being. Any consideration of the presence or absence of operatic features in this oratorio has to take into account what is already a very substantial descriptive literature stretching from an enthusiastic discussion in 1927 by Alberto Gentili, fresh from his discovery of the Vivaldi manuscripts of the Foà donation (the first half of the composer’s own working collection acquired by the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin), to the present writer’s critical notes to a forthcoming edition of Juditha. It is interesting that Gentili, alone of these authors, makes the point that Juditha is in stylistic terms unoperatic (his words are: ‘regna … un diverso stile che nelle opere di teatro dello stesso Vivaldi’ [a style different from that of Vivaldi’s own stage works … predominates]), but his motivation here seems not so much to make a rigorous taxonomic distinction as to distance the oratorio, which he recognises as a masterpiece, from the recovered operas, which, in the 1920s, were still apt to be dismissed quickly as typical expressions of Settecento decadence.10 However, although the quasi-operatic nature of Juditha is otherwise universally perceived in this literature – Denis and Elsie Arnold write, for example, of its affinity with ‘the new world of opera seria, with great singers, a more than efficient orchestra, with some brilliant instrumentalists, and choruses simply written to make a splendid effect, especially at the moment of the lieto fine’11 – the matter is nowhere studied in any great depth. The writings include: Alberto Gentili, ‘La raccolta di rarità musicali “Mauro Foà”
alla Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino’, Accademie e biblioteche d’ Italia 1 (1927–28), pp. 36–50; Lino Bianchi, ‘Intorno alla “Juditha” di Vivaldi’, Nuova rivista musicale italiana 13 (1979), pp. 204–9; Lorenzo Tozzi, ‘Invito alla sacralità vivaldiana’, ibid., pp. 196–203; Eleanor Selfridge-Field, ‘ “Juditha” in Historical Perspective: Scarlatti, Gasparini, Marcello and Vivaldi’, Vivaldi veneziano europeo, ed. Francesco Degrada (Florence, 1980), pp. 135–53; Denis and Elsie Arnold, The Oratorio in Venice (London, 1986), esp. pp. 24–28; Michael Talbot, The Sacred Vocal Music of Antonio Vivaldi (Florence, 1995), esp. pp. 409–47.
10 Gentili, ‘La raccolta’, p. 40. 11 Arnold and Arnold, The Oratorio in Venice, p. 28.
220 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Juditha needs to be viewed against the unusual background of oratorio in Venice, where the genre was not strongly rooted except within the extraordinary milieu of the ospedali grandi, with their all-female singers and instrumentalists. Between 1690 (Mendicanti) and 1716 (Derelitti) the Venetian ospedali went over, one by one, to the Latin oratorio and remained firm in their adherence to it right up to their very last oratorio (Furlanetto’s Joseph, pro-rex Aegypti, given at the Pietà in 1809). This option for Latin, unusual for the time, constituted a form of brand identity reinforcing the status of the ospedali as luoghi pii untainted by the city’s opera houses, advertising the quality of the education offered to their all-female musicians, the figlie di coro, and providing a welcome outlet for the literary efforts of local poets and poetasters seeking an outlet for their erudition. Other characteristic features marked oratorios at the ospedali. All of them – but the Pietà in particular, on account of its larger population – favoured large casts of principals, the better to display the strength in depth that they possessed, and the use of a chorus placing on show the remaining singers. As in a Jesuit school drama, this was an opportunity not only to impress and please an audience (winning donations and legacies in gratitude) but also to reconfirm internal sodality through mass participation and a relative absence of hierarchy. For similar reasons, biblical heroines and female saints formed the core of the chosen subjects. It was these, rather than their male counterparts, whom the figlie di coro (plus the commoners, the figlie di comun, in the audience) could take as role models and portray dramatically with the most credibility. The story of Judith was already a favourite subject for Italian oratorio librettists, having by 1716 been treated over twenty times by composers who included Cazzati (1668), Colonna (1684), M. A. Ziani (1686), F. Gasparini (1689), A. Scarlatti (1693 and 1700), Lotti (1701, at the Incurabili), Freschi (1705) and B. Marcello (1710). The librettist for Juditha triumphans, Giacomo Cassetti, remains a shadowy figure. He is styled both cavaliere and dottore and hailed from Monselice in the Veneto. After writing the texts of vernacular oratorios for Monselice in 1702 and Padua in 1708 he is known only from a series of five Latin oratorios presented at three of the Venetian ospedali grandi during 1716–17,12 one of which 12 The oratorios are Sol in tenebris (Pietà, 1713 or earlier, m. Francesco Gasparini),
Juditha triumphans (Pietà, 1716, m. Antonio Vivaldi ), Rex regum in Veneti maris regia a regibus adoratus (Incurabili, 1716, m. Carlo Francesco Pollarolo), Sacrum amoris novendiale in Dei pariturae Virginis gloriam (Derelitti, 1716, m. Antonio Pollarolo), Rosa inter spinas (Derelitti, 1717, m. Antonio Pollarolo) and Sterilis faecunda armonica exultatio (the same). Vivaldi’s oratorio of 1714, Moyses Deus Pharaonis, formerly believed likewise to have Cassetti as its author (the poet’s
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 221 was Juditha triumphans, whose performance took place at some undetermined point during 1716.13 Before moving on to consider the character of Vivaldi’s music, we must of course evaluate what was set before him by his librettist. Although one would not deny the possibility of continuous cooperation and consultation between the librettist and composer of a new dramatic work, the compartmentalisation of functions in opera seria and similar musico-dramatic works (extending, of course, to scenography, stage machinery, decor, lighting and everything else that we today understand by ‘production’), meant that the normal procedure was to present the composer with a fait accompli, a completed text, which, if it was to undergo further modification, would more likely receive this at the hands of the poet, striving to perfect his work before its publication as a libretto, than at those of the composer. There was, first, a particular topical reason why Cassetti chose – or was induced to choose – the story of Judith. In 1716 the Serenissima was at war with the Ottomans and faring badly – hence the necessity of an active alliance with Austria and the Papacy. Judith’s military exploit provided the near perfect vehicle for a propagandistic allegory conveyed via what Cassetti proudly and pointedly labelled a ‘sacrum militare oratorium’. To make the allegory clear to the audience, the libretto was rounded off with a short Carmen allegoricum supplying a key to the allegory. Juditha stands for Venice; her maid, Abra, for Faith; Bethulia for the Church; Ozias, for the Pope (and also for the Holy League); Holofernes, for the Turkish Sultan; Vagaus, for his general, supposedly a eunuch (probably to be identified with Ali Pasha, killed on the battlefield at Petrovaradin). The biblical account occupies the whole of the Book of Judith, which in the Vulgate, following the Septuagint, is accepted into the Old Testament proper, where it precedes the Book of Esther (the Authorised Version and other Protestant Bibles relegate it, however, to the Apocrypha). The story is summarised in the Appendix. If we compare Cassetti’s version with the original, the most striking alteration is the omission of Achior. Although the Ammonite captain name is given as ‘I.C.’ in the libretto), is now known to have been the work of the Pietà’s chief accountant, Giovanni Cendoni; see Michael Talbot, ‘Miscellany’, Studi vivaldiani 5 (2005), pp. 97–102, at p. 101.
13 The commonly accepted date of November 1716 lacks concrete documentary
foundation. The Pietà certainly presented an unidentified oratorio on 5 March 1716, and this could possibly have been Juditha, even though the Holy League between Venice and the Empire against the Ottomans, to which Cassetti refers in his explanatory poem accompanying the libretto by the phrase ‘christiadum coetus’, had not yet been formally concluded. Since Ali Pasha, who appears to be the military leader represented allegorically by Vagaus, died on 5 August 1716, the libretto was probably completed earlier.
222 Music as Social and Cultural Practice figures in most, though not all, other oratorio versions of the story, his omission was a foregone conclusion, given the allegorical function of the plot: there was in reality, and even in prospect, no turncoat in the Ottoman army whom he could be taken to symbolise. Fortunately, his expulsion from the Assyrian camp and acceptance among the Judaeans is a sideshow with no consequences for the main plot. Cassetti achieves condensation also by amalgamating the persons of Joakim, the high priest in Jerusalem, and Ozias, the Bethulian governor. This is a very acceptable simplification, since there is no dramaturgical need to insist on the separation of spiritual and temporal power. More seriously, Cassetti tampers with the pretext on which Judith gains entry to the Assyrian camp. In the Bible she promises to assist Holofernes by recognising, when it arrives, the divine sign that will guarantee military success for the Assyrians; in the libretto she comes as an envoy seeking terms for a humiliating peace. In fact, Cassetti does not dwell on the nature of her mission at all: even before she appears, Vagaus has assured his master of her beauty with the words ‘Tibi erit amica si lumina cernes’ (‘She will be your friend if you behold her eyes’), and from then on talk of love dominates the dialogue of the protagonists. If there was ever an oratorio erotico, this is the one! Cassetti makes one important, and highly effective, addition to the story. During the feast Judith makes an attempt, apparently sincere, to win Holo fernes over to the true God, warning him (in an aria where fragile mandolin tone is used to signify emptiness) of the transitory nature of this life and the importance of the next. But the general, who is evidently not listening properly, declares that the only divinity he recognises is Judith herself. Always, when the subject of a dramatic work is a story familiar to the audience – which is more than ever the case when it is biblical – huge potential exists for dramatic irony: the audience contrasts what might have been, according to the action portrayed by the drama, with what is already known to be inevitably the case. For reasons about to be explained, Holofernes has already won the sympathy of the audience at the point when Judith makes her bid to convert him, so his refusal to take in her words, brought about by his besotted state and his allconsuming passion for her, achieves a tragic poignancy. Some elements of the operatic plot conventions described earlier are clearly discernible. Abra and Vagaus are perfectly cast as the confidants of their respective mistress and master, whose characters they reproduce at a less heroic level (Abra is plucky rather than courageous, and Vagaus is jovial rather than ebullient). Vivaldi will point up their subordinate status and implicitly younger age by allotting both roles to sopranos, leaving the contralto register to the more mature protagonists. Ozias is recognisable as the stereotypical figure of a captain or high priest – someone who, although he may not belong at the centre of the action, makes authoritative pronouncements at key points in the action.
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 223 The two principal roles, however, conform to no simple stereotype. They are both, in essence, conflations of different character types and thus ambiguous in nature. Judith is the steadfast, unfazed heroine, but at the same time she is the vengeful woman who undoes a man through her feminine wiles rather than via fair and open combat – in that sense, almost approaching the sorceress type. Irrespective of the rightness of her cause, her gruesome assassination of a sleeping man unaware of being her enemy cannot but evoke revulsion at some level. For his part, Holofernes amalgamates the persons of the tyrant (cruel, selfish) and the – usually – successful lover (noble, idealistic). It is the second character that impresses itself more strongly. For while we know that the Assyrians, as pagans, are doomed to destruction, there is no particularly reprehensible action either in the Bible or in Cassetti’s libretto that makes them intrinsically unsympathetic. Nebuchadnezzar has a reasonable casus belli and treats leniently those cities that submit. And while Cassetti lets the Assyrian soldiery have an opening chorus full of blood and thunder, not a single cruel or violent action on their part actually takes place in the course of the plot. The wickedness of Holofernes remains merely theoretical: in the end, his only unredeemable fault is to play for the wrong team. Conversely, the general convinces us utterly of his bluff, but wholly sincere and even gentlemanly, love for Judith. No other male lover is accommodated within the plot, so at an emotional level Holofernes transmutes willy-nilly into the kind of romantic hero represented in opera seria by a primo uomo. Ineluctably, we are drawn into wishing his success. His untimely death resembles more that of an Acis or an Acteon than that of a Haman, and when Vagaus grieves over his loss on discovering his master’s headless trunk, we grieve, too.14 The result is a fascinating – it is hard to tell whether consciously intended – tension between religious belief and emotional response. It is out of the question for there to be a revaluation of Juditha as the evil character and Holofernes as the good in the fashion of the reversal effected for the Queen of the Night and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte, but the listener must feel at least a tug in that direction. At a structural level, Cassetti follows convention closely and achieves a pleasingly near symmetrical design. Each of the two parts has fourteen closed numbers, of which eleven in Part i and twelve in Part ii are solo arias. There are no ensembles for the principals: the remaining numbers in each part are choruses suitable for musical setting in a variety of forms (da capo, binary, 14 The magnificent recitative in which Vagaus enters his master’s tent and discovers
his body is transcribed in full in Talbot, The Sacred Vocal Music, pp. 439–41. No Vivaldi opera contains recitative of greater power and eloquence. Vagaus’s ensuing fury aria, ‘Armatae face et anguibus’, is no less fine.
224 Music as Social and Cultural Practice strophic).15 Neatly, almost wittily, he makes the break between the two parts occur just at the point where Judith sits down with Holofernes and his servants for the banquet. That Vivaldi was chosen to write the music of Juditha triumphans arose from a fortuitous event that had occurred three years earlier, in 1713, when Francesco Gasparini, the choirmaster of the Pietà, obtained an indefinite leave of absence to attend to family business and, effectively, left the coro leaderless for several years. Following a pattern familiar from modern academic life, the Pietà evidently relished its ‘turnover’ savings, and until Vivaldi departed for Mantua in late 1717 used him, on the cheap, as a surrogate maestro di coro. Already, in 1714, he supplied an oratorio, Moyses Deus Pharaonis, today lost. In 1714, similarly, he initiated his activity as a composer for the Venetian stage – with such éclat that already in his inaugural season the Bavarian electress Theresa Kunigunde, resident in Venice, proposed him as maestro di cappella to her husband in Munich.16 One would expect Vivaldi to wish to transfer to the arena of oratorio the musical qualities that had served him so well for his first operas such as Ottone in villa (1713) and Orlando finto pazzo (1714). If one is looking for parallelisms of structure and expression, one finds them easily enough in the three arias in Juditha that possess concordances (with varying degrees of textual correspondence) among his opera arias of the same period: Holofernes’s aria ‘Nox obscura tenebrosa’ shares its main theme and some subsidiary material with Lisea’s aria ‘Porta Amore una tal face’ in Arsilda, regina di Ponto (Venice, autumn 1716); Abra’s aria ‘Si fulgida per te’ opens with the same theme as Mirinda’s ‘Io sono quel gelsomino’ in the same opera; Abra’s aria ‘Non ita reducem’ corresponds fairly closely all the way through to Oronte’s ‘Crudeltà che m’ è pietosa’ in L’ incoronazione di Dario (Venice, carnival 1717). In none of these instances is the sequence of borrowing clear-cut. In general, cross-borrowings between opera and oratorio are not common – at least, they do not seem to have been reported – in Italian music of the period, so their presence here is very noteworthy. It does underline the fact that whatever generic distinctions 15 The chorus ‘O quam vaga, venusta, o quam decora’ halfway through Part i includes
solo contributions for Vagaus in Vivaldi’s setting , while, conversely, the first of two versions of Vagaus’s aria ‘O servi, volate’, occurring later in Part i, has choral interjections. Neither intervention was specified by Cassetti. Vivaldi’s purpose in melding aria and chorus seems – apart from the obvious one of increasing variety and injecting an element of surprise (so typical of music for the Pietà, where the performers were invisible to the audience) – to have been to bolster the image of Vagaus as the leader of Holofernes’s attendants (and, in the allegory, the general of the Sultan’s army).
16 On this episode, see Berthold Over, ‘Antonio Vivaldi und Therese Kunigunde von
Bayern’, Studi vivaldiani 4 (2004), pp. 3–7.
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 225 between oratorio and opera exist – and we shall return to this question later – they do not need to operate at the level of the individual number, at least not in Vivaldi’s case. One respect in which Juditha differs from all of Vivaldi’s operas, however, is its copious, almost superabundant, use of obbligato instruments, many of them extremely rare at the time in Italy. A good half of the arias employ obbligato instruments (viola d’ amore, chalumeau, oboe, organ, mandolin, recorders, theorbos and viol consort), and where these are solo instruments they have the effect almost of turning a solo aria into a duet with a wordless second voice. However, it is the number and variety of the obbligato instruments, not their presence per se, which is so distinctive. In operas, to have more than one or two obbligato instruments (or pairs of instruments), each used only once for an aria, is rare. But we would be mistaken to believe that this wealth of obbligato instruments had anything directly to do with Vivaldi’s (or Cassetti’s) conception of oratorio. It is related, rather, to the unique musical culture at the Pietà, which prized, and wished to show off to the public, its vast and diverse instrumentarium (and the players capable of mastering it). Almost the same profligacy occurs in Giovanni Porta’s serenata Il ritratto dell’ eroe, performed at the Pietà in 1726 – and this in a work that was not an oratorio and was by a composer who, unlike Vivaldi, evinced no special fondness for exotic instrumental colour. What Vivaldi certainly did with even more intensity than in his operatic music was to seize on the opportunities for pictorialism and word- or moodpainting in Cassetti’s texts. As one quite often finds in dramatic compositions (an example from Mozart is given shortly), there appears to be a correlation between the musical quality of a given character’s arias and the degree of empathy shown by the composer towards his/her personality or situation. (Such a connection is ultimately unprovable, since this empathy is only an inference drawn from the musical quality, but it is a fair assumption that enjoys widely currency.) Vivaldi underlines the covert empathy shown by Cassetti towards the two Assyrians, Holofernes and Vagaus, with music of extraordinary depth and feeling that easily matches that of their female counterparts, Judith and Abra. Taken out of context, Holofernes’s serenade to Judith, ‘Noli, o cara, te adorantis’ (of which an extract appears as Example 12.1), is not credible as that of a villain about to suffer a well-merited death a few minutes later. The intertwined lines of singer, oboe and obbligato organ speak of love’s bliss, not of a tyrant’s threats. They transgress the code according to which characters stamp their ethos, and therefore their eventual fate, on the music they sing. The one character to whom Vivaldi seems to deny empathy is Ozias, symbol of papal authority. He is treated in rather the same bland, impersonal manner as, notoriously, Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. His first aria, ‘O sidera,
226 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 12.1 Vivaldi, Juditha triumphans, aria ‘Noli, o cara, te adorantis’, bb. 13–22 (Largo) oboe holofernes No - li,_o
ca - ra,
te_a - do - ran - tis
vo - to
du - cis
ca
ra,
non fa - ve - re,
vo - to
organ
15
du - cis
non
fa
-
ve
-
-
re.
17
19
No - li,_o
ca
-
ra,
-
ca
-
ra,
te_a - do
21
- ran
-
tis
vo - to
du
-
cis
non
fa
-
ve
-
re,
-
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 227 Ex. 12.2 Vivaldi, Juditha triumphans, aria ‘Gaude felix Bethulia’, bb. 1–8 Allegro violin 1, 2
viola
basso
o stellae’, exhibits a frigid majesty, rendered spiteful rather than splendid by its saccadé rhythms in French style. His concluding aria, ‘Gaude felix’, taunts the Assyrians with its mocking syncopation and ostentatious contrary motion (see Example 12.2). In other circumstances, the unbridled exultation of this aria might seem justified (one might liken it, for instance, to the concluding minuet with which Kuhnau expresses the ‘common rejoicing’ over Goliath’s death in the first sonata of the Biblische Historien), but in the light of Holo fernes’s squalid death it comes across as vulgar triumphalism. In short, the lieto fine of the oratorio is a pure formality: in effective dramatic terms, the work is a tragedy with a funesto fine. (Deaths, even merely reported deaths, of principal characters before the end of the work are not so common in Baroque opera. One is tempted to compare Holofernes’s death with that of Catone. But whereas Metastasio’s hero dies by his own hand – he nobly chooses death – Holofernes is brutally snatched away unawares. In itself, the violent manner of his death of course lies in the mainstream of the oratorio tradition. There is no sensibility-sparing reprieve for a Goliath or a St Stephen if Scripture declares otherwise.) Vivaldi seems to betray unease with the outcome by ‘funking’ the depiction of the moment of Judith’s supreme act. Everything appears to be building up to a grand climax. For the heroine’s prayer (a topos of clearly operatic inspiration), he starts with a magnificent scena in which first a dark-hued recitative and then an aria is accompanied by a five-part viol consort symbolising, perhaps more than any other instrumental contribution, the cloistered, feminine world of the figlie di coro and, by extension, female solidarity with Judith.17 Then, at last, comes the execution – which turns out to be a bloodless anticlimax, as if the composer has lost heart for the task. As Example 12.3 shows, Vivaldi has nothing better to offer the listener than a short cascade of note ribattute on a G minor chord: Holofernes’s head rolls meekly down a gentle slope instead of 17 On the feminine associations of the viol (known at the Pietà as the viola inglese),
see Michael Talbot, ‘Vivaldi and the English Viol’, Early Music 30 (2002), pp. 381– 94, at pp. 385–6.
228 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 12.3 Vivaldi, Juditha triumphans, accompagnato ‘Impii, indigni tyranni’, bb. 1–9 strings
juditha Im - pi - i,
in - di - gni ty - ran - ni,
co - no - pe - o
hic ap -
basso 3
- pen - sum
de - nu - do fer - rum
ic - tus
ten -
do,
in - fe - li - cem
ab
5
Ho - lo - fer - nis
bu
-
sto,
Deus, in
no - mi - ne
tu - o
scin - do cer -
7
- vi - cem.
hurtling to the ground. It is as if the composer has become overwhelmed by shame. Let us now return to consider for a final time the opening question. If by ‘operatic’ one refers to no more than the general character of individual movements taken individually, then Juditha triumphans is as operatic as one could wish. Not a single movement, from chorus to aria, from accompanied recitative to recitativo semplice, would be out of place in an opera, even if the relative incidence of the movement-types is slightly different. Where it departs radically, and in a way unexpectedly, from common operatic practice, however, is in
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 229 its treatment of plot and character. The less malleable relationship of the poetic text to its source material has resulted in an original – from a contemporary operatic viewpoint, skewed – dramaturgy in which familiar elements, through displacement or amalgamation, have acquired disturbing new meaning. There is a real sense that, for both librettist and composer, the characters and events have moved out of control, taking on a dramatic life of their own that they, the creators, may not fully have intended. The kind of sympathetic audience response to an officially villainous character that, according to Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare marvellously elicits by ‘making so many different voices persuasive’ is certainly achieved by Cassetti and intensified by Vivaldi.18 At the macrostructural level, to be sure, Juditha remains fully observant of the contemporary generic distinction between opera and oratorio: it is no precocious ‘sacred opera’. One can hardly emphasise too strongly that audience appreciation in the early eighteenth century (one is speaking here of lay audiences rather than of specialists and connoisseurs) continued to orient itself first around genre identity, second around performance quality and only third around composer identity.19 To convince oneself of this, one needs merely study the descriptions of musical events in letters, diaries, chronicles and news-sheets of the time. The shared understanding and acceptance of genre identity – the ‘generic contract’, as, following Jeffrey Kallberg, the concept has become widely known in recent years – was not something to meddle with in Vivaldi’s day.20 The deliberate hybridisation implied by a ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’ (Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata) or a ‘Légende dramatique’ (Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust), which claims for the composer the right to mould genre in a personal way, was still a long way off. So Juditha conforms perfectly to type in length, non-staged manner of performance, division into two parts rather than three acts and, of course, subject and language – and those are not insignificant elements. Where it is operatic, it becomes so rather by stealth. At most, one could say that Juditha in some respects has the ‘mind’ of an opera within the ‘body’ of an oratorio. But the kind of opera in question resembles less that of Vivaldi’s own day than a more modern, or at least less time-bound, variety, so the statement is potentially misleading. In the twenty-first century we all like to ironise and find ambiguities in art works. In this perspective, we are apt to find the world of post-1700 opera seria too cosy: a well-oiled, repetitive machine in which no component dare 18 Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (London, 1997), p. 329. 19 This argument is developed in Michael Talbot, ‘The Work-Concept and Composer-
Centredness’, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 168–86.
20 Jeffrey Kallberg, ‘The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin’s Nocturne in G Minor’, 19th
Century Music 11 (1988), pp. 238–61.
230 Music as Social and Cultural Practice step out of line for fear of disrupting the other components. The way in which the pieces fit together is today incomparably better understood than was the case only a couple of decades ago – in no small measure thanks to the massive contributions over the years of the scholar honoured in the present Festschrift. May I end by noting that the necessarily more varied dramaturgy of late Baroque oratorio awaits a similar sustained and well-focused study. One useful by-product of such an investigation would be to hold up a mirror to the dramaturgy of the opera contemporary with it, illustrating the available paths not taken. We might even come to recognise the oratorio as a ‘missing link’ (along with French opera) connecting pre-Scarlattian opera to opera of the later eighteenth century. But that is a bold thesis perhaps to be proposed on some other occasion.
•
I should like to acknowledge the help and advice in the preparation of this contribution received from Hendrik Schulze and Melania Bucciarelli.
appendix Synopsis of the biblical story of Judith Chapter
1 In the twelfth year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Assyria, instructs all his tributary territories to contribute soldiers for a war with Arphaxad, king of the Medes. His western territories, including Judaea, fail to do so. Notwithstanding this, Nebuchadnezzar prevails over the Medes in the seventeenth year of his reign.
2 The following year, Nebuchadnezzar decides on retribution for the recalcitrants. He orders Holofernes, his senior general, to exact submission from his western territories, sparing none that resist. Holofernes gathers a large army and begins his mission. 3 The inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast submit. Holofernes suppresses their religious cults. 4 Judaea resolves to resist. The citizens of Bethulia are charged by Joakim, high priest of Jerusalem, to defend the passes controlling entry to Judaea. The Bethulians don sackcloth and pray. 5 Holofernes, surprised by the Judaeans’ resistance, enquires after the reason. His Ammonite captain Achior explains that whenever the Judaeans are faithful to Jehovah, he gives them victory; conversely, whenever they sin, he allows them to be defeated. Since they are currently in a state of obedience, attacking them is inadvisable. 6 Holofernes scorns Achior. He decides to make him share the Judaeans’ fate and has him bound and delivered to them. The Judaeans release Achior and take him to the governors of Bethulia, who include Ozias. Achior relates what has happened.
Talbot • How Operatic is Vivaldi’s Juditha triumphans? 231 7 Holfernes decides to seize the Bethulians’ water supply in the lowlands. He does this successfully and surrounds Bethulia. Many Bethulians despair and advise surrender. Ozias asks for five days’ grace. 8 The Judaean matron Judith, three years a widow, reproaches the governors for making demands of Jehovah. She tells them that she has a secret plan. 9 Judith prays for success in her mission. 10 Dressed in her finery, Judith leaves Bethulia with her maid and goes to the Assyrian camp. She tells the Assyrians that she is a fugitive, and asks for an audience with Holofernes, whom she wishes to assist. Judith is brought before Holofernes in his tent. 11 Judith tells Holofernes that Achior’s explanation of Jehovah’s attitude is correct and that the Judaeans are on the point of sinning. She promises to pray to Jehovah by night: He will give her a signal when the Judaeans have sinned, after which it will be safe to attack them. Holofernes agrees to this plan. 12 Judith refuses to eat Assyrian food but does not go hungry, since she has brought her own victuals. She prays on three consecutive nights. On the fourth day Holo fernes ordains a banquet for his servants, to which he does not invite his fellow officers, and asks his steward, Bagoas, to invite Judith to join them. Judith agrees and dresses up. At the banquet she joins in the feasting and drinking. Holofernes drinks more than ever before. 13 All the servants having departed from the tent, Judith is left alone with Holofernes, who is in a drunken stupor. She takes his sword, offers a brief prayer and beheads him. She passes the severed head to her maid, who places it in a bag. The two women return to Bethulia. Judith shows Holofernes’ head to the Bethulians and receives a blessing from Ozias. 14 Judith tells the Bethulians to hang the head on the city walls and then, at daybreak, to feign an attack in order to cause the Assyrian watch to raise the alarm – whereupon, not finding Holofernes, they will take fright. She shows Achior Holofernes’ head. Achior blesses her and converts to Judaism on the spot. Judith’s stratagem proves successful: on hearing the alarm, Bagoas goes to rouse Holofernes, believing him to have been sleeping with Judith. Finding the general dead, he laments greatly and informs the Assyrian army. 15 The Jews drive the fearful Assyrians back beyond Damascus. Joakim arrives from Jerusalem and blesses Judith. As a reward, Judith receives Holofernes’ property. The Bethulian women honour her. 16 Judith gives thanks to Jehovah and exults in her victory. She dedicates the spoils taken from Holofernes to Him. She manumits her maid, retains her spinsterhood and lives to the ripe old age of 105.
• 13 • Venice and the East: Operatic Readings of Tasso’s Armida in Early Eighteenth-Century Venice Melania Bucciarelli
T
he history of Venice unfolded in continuous economic, political and artistic contact with different cultures. Its geographic position and its natural opening to the sea placed the city on the border between East and West, allowing the Serenissima to develop commercial and political relationships with the Near and Far East, and to establish itself as a centre of diplomacy. The cosmopolitan character of the Serenissima was known throughout Europe and travel reports comment on Venice’s unusual ethnic variety: ‘Greeks, Levantines, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Ethiopians, Slavs, Indians, Syrians, Egyptians and others’ cohabited with Venetians and citizens from the Italian peninsula and other European countries. The influence of Islamic art on Venice is still visible today in the architecture of the city, and its centuries-old fascination with the East, especially the Ottoman Empire, emerges through a variety of writings on Turkish history, language and culture published throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Legislation tended to protect Venice’s economic interests and granted Turkish merchants protection and freedom of faith. The relatively liberal attitude that characterised Venice’s domestic and foreign policies, however, coexisted with general feelings of suspicion, fear and hatred towards the Turks. Trade with the East brought wealth and power, but wars with the Ottoman Empire eventually led to the economic decline of the Serenissima during the second half of the seventeenth century and the loss of its central role in European politics. These contrasting attitudes of the Venetian republic towards the East, and more specifically towards the Turks, filter through contemporary legal, diplomatic and historical writings, poetry, novels and operatic representations. This web of texts can provide insights into how the historical and cultural context ‘Grecz, Levantins, Turcs, Arabes, Perses, Ethiopiens, Esclavons, Indiens, Syriens,
Aegiptiens, et autres’. P. Bergeron, Voyage d’ Italie des années 1611–1612. Quoted in Irene Alm, ‘Dances from the “Four Corners of the Earth”: Exoticism in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera’, Musica Franca: Essays in Honor of Frank A. D’ Accone, ed. I. Alm et al. (Stuyvesant, NY, 1996), pp. 233–57, at p. 234.
Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian
Architecture, 1100–1500 (London and New Haven, 2000).
Bucciarelli • Venice and the East 233 of the Republic (of which opera is a part) shapes and is in turn shaped by these writings, exposing more general processes and structures by which a particular culture makes sense of the world. My starting point, as for all studies on Exoticism, is Edward Said’s influential writings on Orientalism, and his understanding of the role of intertextuality in the process of the (Western) mythification of Oriental cultures. Because of the crucial mediating role exercised by diverse writings on the relationship between the specific operatic product and what we might call reality (that is, the political conflict between the Serenissima and the Ottoman Empire, and their mutual, although declining, economic dependence), I have chosen to focus on two operas that openly declare their intertextual character, Armida abbandonata (1707) and its sequel Armida al campo (1708), both modelled on Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (1587). Drawing on the topical conflict between the Christian West and the Muslim East, these operas provide insight into how the world that stood east of the Serenissima was perceived and illuminate the poetic, dramaturgical and musical means employed in its representation. Literary historians have often underlined the complexity and evocative power of Tasso’s poetry and assessed its historical, philosophical and ideological context. Among the most fascinating readings of the poem, that of Sergio Zatti recognises in a woman, the devilish, alluring, mysterious, and Muslim Armida, the real antagonist to Goffredo, the leader of the Christian army, thus opening the poem to a reading dominated by the feminine allegory of the Orient and the exploration, and eventual subjugation, of the feminine Other to the ideal of a modern society dominated by men. Discourses about the East thus overlap with discourses about gender in both the poem and the Armida operas that inherit Tasso’s narrative and ideological construct. Questions about female nature and behaviour held a central place in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venetian thought; Tasso himself had contributed to the debate about women with several writings, most notably Della virtù femminile e donnesca of 1580. As Wendy Heller has shown, opera in seventeenthcentury Venice became a versatile medium for articulating contentious views Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 3rd edn (London, 2003; first published in 1978). See
also his Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993), and Exoticism in the Enlightenment, ed. George S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (Manchester, 1990).
Sergio Zatti, L’ uniforme cristiano e il multiforme pagano (Milan, 1983). See also
Georges Güntert, L’ epos dell’ ideologia regnante e il romanzo delle passioni: Saggio sulla ‘Gerusalemme Liberata’ (Pisa, 1989); Marilyn Migiel, Gender and Genealogy in Tasso’s ‘Gerusalemme Liberata’ (Lewiston, NY, 1993); and esp. Laura Benedetti, La sconfitta di Diana: Un percorso per la ‘Gerusalemme Liberata’ (Ravenna, 1996).
234 Music as Social and Cultural Practice about women’s bodies and role in modern society. When the Armida operas appeared on the Venetian stage, therefore, they found a responsive audience accustomed to debates and polemics about women through pamphlets and other writings, as well as on the stage; as we shall see, the audience of the Armida operas was also familiar with Tasso’s poem and perhaps aware that the peace treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 brought only a temporary relief from the Ottoman wars. Lorenzo Bianconi and Paolo Fabbri have drawn attention to the consolidation of the heroic and patriotic character of a large body of operatic works staged in Venice during the last decades of the seventeenth century. These transformations in subject matter and dramaturgy reflect and exorcise feelings of anxiety determined by recent events of the Venetian–Ottoman conflict that led to the victorious conclusion of the first war of Morea and the peace of Karlowitz (1699), with which the Ottoman Empire ceded Hungary to the Habsburgs and Venice extended its dominions in Dalmatia. Like contemporary poetic and dramatic allegories that traditionally accompanied civic celebrations of the various victories of the Serenissima over the Turks, these operas staged the defeat of Eastern armies and indulged in the representation of cruelty and barbarism of Ottoman leaders. Although Venetian opera had flirted with exotic, Eastern themes since its beginnings, it is indeed during the 1680s and 1690s that we find the first operas specifically based on Muslim subjects, such as the anonymous Il perfetto Ibraim gran visir di Costantinopoli of 1679 (never performed), Il gran Tamerlano, written by Giulio Cesare Corradi and set to music by Marco Antonio Ziani for a production at the theatre of SS. Wendy Heller, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-
Century Venice (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003). For a critical overview of earlier and contemporary Venetian writings on women, see pp. 32–47.
See Lorenzo Bianconi, Storia della musica: Il Seicento, Biblioteca di cultura musi-
cale i/iv (Turin, 1982), p. 190, and Paolo Fabbri, ‘Tasso e la sua fortuna musicale a Venezia’, Formazione e fortuna del Tasso nella cultura della Serenissima: Atti del Convegno di studi nel iv centenario della morte di Torquato Tasso (1595–1995), Padova–Venezia, 10–11 Novembre 1995, ed. L. Borsetto and B. M. Da Rif (Venice, 1997), pp. 251–8.
For a detailed historical account of the Venice–Ottoman wars see Kenneth M.
Setton, Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia, 1991).
Bianconi, Storia della musica: Il Seicento, and Fabbri, ‘Tasso e la sua fortuna
musicale a Venezia’.
For an overview see Jean-François Lattarico, ‘Il soggetto esotico nei melodrammi
veneziani del Seicento’, Le arti della scena e l’ esotismo in età moderna, ed. Francesco Cotticelli and Paologiovanni Maione (Naples, 2006), pp. 157–73. See also Irene Alm, ‘Dances from the “Four Corners of the Earth” ’.
Bucciarelli • Venice and the East 235 Giovanni e Paolo in 1689, and Ibraim sultano, by Adriano Morselli and Carlo Francesco Pollarolo, staged at the theatre of S. Giovanni Grisostomo in 1692. Ibraim sultano, for example, was dedicated to the Imperial officer Johann Albert Ferschen (‘Gio: Alberto di Ferschen, Tenente Colonnello di S[ua] M[aestà] Imperiale Primo Gentilhuomo di Camera …’), who fought against the Ottomans next to the Venetians. Despite the Racinian model of the libretto, the dedication, signed by Nicolini (the printer), invites the reader to recognise the opera as a response to the recent events following the failed Turkish siege of Vienna of 1683. Nicolini makes reference to the entry of Venice in the antiTurkish league, which included Poland and other powers with which Venice had been in disagreement in the past over Eastern politics, such as the Papacy and the Austrian Empire, as well as to the battles of the Imperial troops in Hungary and of the Venetians in Dalmatia, Greece and Morea.10 ‘Terror’ and ‘Barbarous’ in Nicolini’s dedication refer to the Ottomans: ‘images of Ottoman terror described in this barbarous drama’ – and this association is further amplified through the violation of basic requirements of decorum (the staging of death) and of dramaturgy (by enacting it right at the beginning of the drama). Moreover, this violation is illustrated with an engraving of the shocking events that open the drama: the killing of a slave thrown over a wall of the seraglio of Costantinople – in no way a conventional opening for a dramma per musica. The engraving in the libretto (see Figure 13.1) shows the characters of Rosana and Acmat witnessing the execution, while the caption in the dramatic text reads: ‘Vista del Serraglio sopra un canale, che viene dal Mar Maggiore. Dall’ alto delle mura vien gettato nel Mare uno Schiavo’ [View of the Seraglio on a canal that comes from the open sea. A slave is thrown into the sea from the height of the walls] (i. i). The appearance of operas such as Ibraim on the Venetian operatic stage coincided with a surge in the publication of a composite body of Turkish writings of documentary and fictional character. Francesco Sansovino’s Historia universale dell’ origine et imperio de’ Turchi, first published in 1562, enjoyed several reprints throughout the seventeenth century, as did Giovanni Sagredo’s Memorie istoriche de’ monarchi ottomani of 1640. Works published 10 ‘A d’ un magnanimo, che ha saputo muovere dal settentrione il più bravo sangue
che organizzi il corpo guerriero d’ Europa trasferendo dal mare germanico all’ Egeo la più fiorita militia de’ nostri giorni vengono come spoglie anco le immagini del terrore ottomanico descritte ne’ fogli di questo barbaro drama. … Leggerete le soverchierie d’ una potenza che s’ è resa a dovere oltre l’ Unghero nell’ ionico cielo anco sotto le vostre spade, che sono concorse nel titolo del vostro General Commissariato ad agguerrire la regia maestà del militante Leone dell’ Adria contro il furore dei musulmani. Godetene l’ armonia se già godeste il fragore dell’ armi vittrici di quell’ istessa monarchia infedele i di cui vastissimi casi compendiano queste scene …’.
236 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.
Fig. 13.1 ‘View of the Seraglio on a canal that comes from the open sea. A slave is thrown down from the height of the walls’ (Ibraim sultano, i, i). Rome, Istituto Storico Germanico, Sezione Musica
Bucciarelli • Venice and the East 237 towards the end of the century include Gian Rinaldo Carli’s Italian translation of Mustafā Ibn ‘Abd Allāh’s (Kātib Chelebi) Cronologia historica (Venice, 1687), Giovanni Agop’s Rudimento della lingua turchesca (Venice, 1685), reprints of Michel Febvre’s Teatro della Turchia (pseud. for Giovan Battista of Saint-Aignan) (Venice, 1683; 1684), and, most notably, Giovan Battista Donà’s Letteratura de’ Turchi (Venice, 1688), whose appreciation of Turkish literature contrasted greatly with the indiscriminate condemnation that guided Febvre’s didactic intent.11 Poems and novels inspired by Turkish themes and events also proliferated during these years: Pietro Zini’s comic poem commenting on the failed siege of Vienna of 1683, La volpe ha lassà el pelo sotto Vienna; the anonymous Tartana in Morea (1683); the novels Historia delli due ultimi gran visiri by Gomes Fortuna (1683), dedicated to the hero of the Morea war Francesco Morosini;12 Carà Mustafà Gran Visir by De Préchac, translated into Italian in 1686; and La Turca fedele nella presa di Coron by Teodoro Mioni (1696), just to name a few.13 These dramatic works and writings, together with legal and diplomatic documentation concerning the foreign politics of the Dominante, reveal a more composite, complex picture of reality and invention about the Turks and invite a more cautious approach to the study of opera in relation to the surrounding ‘reality’ of an existing conflict with the Ottoman Empire, which they appear to reflect. The cultural historian Paolo Preto has convincingly organised his discussion of this body of writings around the poles of ‘myth’ and ‘reality’, concurring with ideas about cultural representation and Orientalism developed by Edward Said.14 Said critiques the process of representation of Eastern cultures in Western historiography and other writings throughout the centuries, and reveals 11 The full title of Teatro della Turchia, published for the first time (in Italian) in Milan,
in 1681, sets the tone of the whole work: ‘teatro / della / turchia / Dove si rappresentano i disordini di essa, il genio, / la natura, & i costumi di quattordici nazioni, / che l’habitano. / La Potenza degli Ottomani sopragrande, le loro tirannie, / gli insulti, e perfidie tanto contra li stranieri, / quanto verso i suoi popoli. / Il tutto confermato con Esempi, e Casi tragici/ nuovamente successi’. The ‘Avviso al lettore’ clarifies the scope of the enterprise: ‘per profitto universale del Christianesimo la Verità ben nota, intorno la potenza sopragrande del Nemico Ottomano, acciò i popoli dell’ Europa disingannati, e meglio informati della Forza del Barbaro, vie più s’ incoraggissero con nuovi cimenti alla conquista delli di lui Paesi, più facile, che mai possa immaginarsi, supposta l’ unione de’ nostri Prencipi.’
12 Francesco Morosini, Captain of the Venetian Navy during the wars of Candia and
Morea, became Doge of Venice in 1688. He died in 1694.
13 See Paolo Preto, Venezia e i Turchi (Florence, 1975); and id., ‘Il mito del Turco nella
letteratura veneziana’, Venezia e i Turchi: Scontri e confronti di due civiltà, ed. A. Della Valle (Milan, 1985), pp. 134–43.
14 Said, Orientalism.
238 Music as Social and Cultural Practice how this process unfolds by way of comparison and juxtapositions between Western and Other cultures. While he acknowledges the natural impulse to establish boundaries between one’s own culture and other cultures, as well as the auto-referential process involved in organising knowledge of the world outside these boundaries, Said shows how the result of these comparisons invariably leads to a strengthening of the image and role of European culture as a dominant culture.15 He stresses that the advancement of Western knowledge about the history and culture of Eastern populations over time did not substantially modify deeply rooted perceptions about dominant and inferior cultures, and that their persistence over the centuries gave rise to a process of mythification, precisely what Preto describes in relation to many Venetian documentary, literary, poetic and theatrical representations of the Turks. These writings fed on each other, present contrasting attitudes towards Turkish culture and customs, and perpetuated anti-Muslim ideologies and controversies of medieval origin. Such views contradict what legal and diplomatic sources tell us about Venetian– Ottoman relations.16 Operas on Muslim themes participate in this process of mythification. The climate of uncertainty created by the Ottoman menace in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century coincided, as we have seen, with the publication of an array of writings and operatic representations of the Turks. This milieu also witnessed a renewed interest in Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata, written during the difficult years leading to the victory over the Turks at Lepanto (1571). The adventures of the Christian heroes Goffredo, Tancredi and Rinaldo, battling against the Saracens during the crusades of the eleventh century, not only lend themselves to parallels with the Venetian triumphs over the Ottomans in Tasso’s time, but also with the heroic deeds of Francesco Morosini against the Turkish opponents a century later. Operas based on Tasso’s Gerusalemme, while not absent from the programming of the opera houses during the seventeenth century, increased considerably at the turn of the new century, especially at the theatre of S. Angelo, which was managed for some time by Antonio Vivaldi:
15 Said (Orientalism, p. 53) refers to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s ‘science of the concrete’
(The Savage Mind, 1967). See also Jurij M. Lotman’s fascinating discussion of the autoreferential process involved in the study of cultures, in ‘The Notion of Boundary’, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, ed. U. Eco (London, 1990), pp. 131–42.
16 Apart from Preto’s studies cited above, see Larry Wolf, Inventing Eastern Europe:
The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994) and, by the same author, Venice and the Slavs (Stanford, 2001).
Bucciarelli • Venice and the East 239 1687 1693 1703 1707 (autumn) 1708 (carnival) [1707 m.v.] 1711 (autumn) 1718 (carnival) [1717 m.v.] 1720 (carnival) [1719 m.v.]
La Gerusalemme liberata SSGP 17 (G. C. Corradi – C. Pallavicino) Gli avvenimenti d’ Erminia e di Clorinda sopra SSGP il Tasso (G. C. Corradi – C. F. Pollarolo) L’ honor al cimento SF (G. Colatelli – T. Orgiani) Armida abbandonata SA (F. Silvani – G. M. Ruggeri) Armida al campo SA (F. Silvani – G. Boniventi) Armida in Damasco SA (G. Braccioli – G. Rampini) Armida al campo d’ Egitto SM (G. Palazzi – A. Vivaldi) Armida delusa SA (G. M. Buini)
Tasso’s popularity on the operatic stage mirrored its central place in contemporary debates within the circles of the Accademia dell’ Arcadia. Questions of poetic style, language and Italian literary traditions were at the heart of recent Francophile criticism; this gave further impetus to that process of renovation of Italian poetry associated with Arcadia and brought to the fore older sixteenth- and seventeenth-century discussions on the literary merits of Tasso and Ariosto. It is therefore not by accident that the Gerusalemme operas, the fruit of librettists who often shared the artistic ideals of the Arcadia, alternated with a series of operas based on Ariosto’s celebrated chivalric poem Orlando furioso. The arena for such confrontations was, in most cases, again the Teatro S. Angelo, and the competing operas included Antonio Vivaldi’s Venetian debut both as composer and impresario (a debut that coincided with the reopening of the Venetian–Ottoman conflict in December 1714): 1650 1658 1681 1713 (autumn)
Bradamante (P. P. Bissari – F. Cavalli?) Medoro (A. Aureli – F. Luccio) Olimpia vendicata (A. Aureli – D. Freschi) Orlando furioso (G. Braccioli – G. A. Ristori)
SSGP SSGP SA SA
17 SSGP: Teatro dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo; SF: Teatro di San Fantino; SA: Teatro di
Sant’ Angelo; SM: Teatro di San Moisè; SL: Teatro di San Luca; SS: Teatro di San Samuele; SC: Teatro di San Cassiano. m.v.: more veneto, in which the year began on 1 March.
240 Music as Social and Cultural Practice 1714 (carnival) 1714 (autumn) 1714 (autumn) 1715/1618 1725 (autumn) 1727 (autumn)
Rodomonte sdegnato (G. Braccioli – M. A. Gasparini) Orlando finto pazzo (G. Braccioli – A. Vivaldi) Orlando furioso (G. Braccioli – Ristori–Vivaldi) La pazzia di Orlando, prose play (D. Lalli) Alcina delusa da Rugero (A. Marchi – T. Albinoni) Orlando (G. Braccioli – A. Vivaldi)
SA SA SA SL/SS SC SA
The popularity of these subjects could guarantee the interest, if not the success, of operas that could not only channel general and widespread anti-Muslim feelings, but also dramatise the heroic adventures and amorous pursuits of familiar characters, and visualise those far distant and mysterious lands outside reality described in Ariosto’s and Tasso’s poems. Tasso’s verses themselves had entered the realm of common knowledge through the madrigal settings of the previous century, and their numerous adaptations in Venetian and other Italian dialects.19 Even if not all the gondoliers, shopkeepers and maids of Venice could sing Tasso’s octaves (from memory) in contest, as suggested by some seventeenth- and eighteenth-century travel literature,20 we can safely affirm that Tasso’s Gerusalemme enjoyed wide popularity throughout the different strata of Venetian society, inside and outside the intellectual circles. 18 The ‘faccio fede’ granting licence to print Lalli’s play is dated 8 November 1715
(Venice, Archivio di Stato, Riformatori, filza 294). We cannot exclude the possibility that the drama might have reached the stage of the Teatro di San Luca or of San Samuele during the autumn season of 1715, but it is also possible that performances did not start until carnival 1716 (1715 m.v.).
19 Among the numerous studies see especially those in Torquato Tasso tra letteratura,
musica, teatro e arti figurative, ed. A. Buzzoni (Bologna, 1985); Tasso, la musica, i musicisti, ed. M. A. Balsano and T. Walker (Florence, 1988); and Formazione e fortuna del Tasso nella cultura della Serenissima, ed. Borsetto and Da Rif. The latter includes a study of vernacular adaptations of Tasso’s poem: Piermario Vescovo, ‘Una fatica bizzarra e studiosa: El Goffredo del Tasso cantà alla barcariola del dottor Tomaso Mondini’, pp. 259–84.
20 Among the many travel reports that make reference to the popularity of Tasso’s
poem among the lowest strata of the Venetian population, see Casimir Freschot, Nouvelle relation de la ville et république de Venise (Utrecht, 1709), p. 407; Addison, Remarques, p. 71, in Maximilien Misson, Voyage d’ Italie (5th edn, 1722: 1st edn, London, 1691), iv, p. 64; Joseph Jérôme Le Français de Lalande, Voyage d’ un françois en Italie, fait dans les annés 1765 et1766 (2nd edn, Paris, 1786), viii, p. 185; M. l’ Abbé Coyer, Voyages d’ Italie et de Hollande, 2 vols (Paris, 1775), ii, p. 21.
Bucciarelli • Venice and the East 241 Armida abbandonata was produced at the theatre of S. Angelo during the autumn of 1707 and was one of Francesco Silvani’s most successful dramas, maintaining its place in the programming of opera houses until the end of the century. It was first set to music by the Venetian composer Giovanni Maria Ruggeri and provided the debut for the castrato Francesco Bernardi, known as ‘Il Senesino’, in the role of Rinaldo next to the young Marianna Benti, known as ‘La Romanina’. Its sequel, Armida al campo, was produced during the following carnival with music by Giuseppe Boniventi and much of the same cast. Silvani drew from several cantos of Gerusalemme liberata, most notably Cantos xv and xvi, which feature Armida’s enchanted garden where Rinaldo is kept under the sorceress’s spell, and the episode of Armida’s abandonment by Rinaldo and her lament21 – one of the sections most frequently set by the madrigalists of the previous century. As Silvani explains in the Argomento, by freely rearranging episodes from different parts of the poem, he manages to gather all the major characters of the poem in Armida’s garden: Armida, Rinaldo, Ubaldo, as well as Rambaldo, Erminia, Tancredi and Clorinda, who never reach this idyllic spot in Tasso’s poem. Most of the action takes place in the enclosed and autonomous space of Armida’s garden. Tasso, not by chance, had placed it in a far distant land, in the ‘Fortunate Isles’ (Isole Fortunate), outside the Western world. Silvani, instead, initiates a process of familiarisation of Armida’s alien space by locating the garden close to the Christian encampment. We could say that the dramaturgical necessity of ensuring the Aristotelian unities of time and place, as well as the practical demands of the S. Angelo’s limited stage resources, here meet the reality of the Ottoman Empire bordering with the Venetian Republic. Although Silvani reduced geographical distance he maintained intact the cultural and religious gap between the two armies by way of significant quotations from the poem in the libretto – lines that the audience would have recognised thanks to the numerous vernacular adaptations of the poem and the musical settings of the madrigalists. This is particularly significant in two sections of the opera: in the central episode of Rinaldo’s ‘awakening’, when at the sight of his image reflected in the shield presented by Ubaldo, the Christian hero takes off the ‘ornaments of the senses’ (‘fregi del senso’), regains his masculinity and returns to his responsibilities in the conflict against the Muslims (ii. ii); and in the scene that stages the abandonment of Armida, towards the end of the opera (iii. v). 21 More specifically, Silvani uses episodic and poetic material from Cantos ii (the
episodes of Erminia in search of Tancredi and her capture), xiii (the forest of Saron), xiv (the magician of Ascalona, here named Filomaco, who sends Ubaldo in search of Rinaldo), xv and xvi (Armida’s garden where Rinaldo is kept under the sorceress’s spell; her abandonment and lament).
242 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ubaldo’s exordium is a literal quotation of the well-known lines ‘Va l’ Asia tutta e va l’ Europa in guerra’; the entire recitative is modelled on Tasso’s octaves 29–34 (canto xvi) and includes textual borrowings, highlighted in the texts below: Gerusalemme liberata xvi, 29–3422 – 32 – Ubaldo incominciò parlando allora: To him Ubaldo so begins to speak: – Va l’ Asia tutta e va l’ Europa in guerra: ‘All Asia and all Europe are at war, chiunque e pregio brama e Cristo adora and those who worship Christ and yearn for fame travaglia in arme or ne la siria terra. now on the Syrian battlefield fight hard. Te solo, o figlio di Bertoldo, fuora But you alone, son of Bertoldo, rot, del mondo, in ozio, un breve angolo serra; far from the world, in this inglorious place; te sol de l’ universo il moto nulla and you alone the world’s commotion does move, egregio campion d’ una fanciulla. not move, O noble champion of a lass! – 33 – Qual sonno o qual letargo ha sì sopita ‘What lethargy, what sleep has so subdued la tua virtute? o qual viltà l’ alletta? your worth? What cowardice has tamed you so? Su su; te il campo e te Goffredo invita, Up, up! Your field and Godfrey call you back, te la fortuna e la vittoria aspetta. and victory and fate await your arm. Vieni, o fatal guerriero, e sia fornita come, fatal knight, and let us quickly end la ben comincia impresa; e l’ empia setta, our well-begun and holy enterprise. che già crollasti, a terra estinta cada The impious foe you scattered once in terror sotto l’ inevitabile tua spada. – fell with your youthful sword that knows no error.’ – 34 – Tacque, e ’l nobil garzon restò per poco At this, the valiant lad is somewhat dazed, spazio confuso e senza moto e voce. incapable of motion and of word. Ma poi che diè vergogna e sdegno loco, But when great shame surrenders to disdain – sdegno guerrier de la ragion feroce, the fierce disdain of a ferocious mind –, e ch’ al rossor del volto un novo foco and when a higher, more consuming flame successe, che più avampa e che più coce, follows the flush that covers all his face, squarciossi i vani fregi e quelle indegne he tears his rich dress off, of all those lewd pompe, di servitù misera insegne; adornments, symbols of cheap servitude
Armida abbandonata ii. v: Rinaldo, Ubaldo, e Tancredi Ubaldo Và l’ Asia tutta, e và l’ Europa in guerra, E la Franca Bellona L’ ampia Cuna del Sol di Sangue inonda; [Del pio Giordano in Sponda Crescon le nostre palme, e la vittoria Spinge dentro à Sion la nostra gloria.]23
All Europe now and Asia are at war and the Frankish Bellona floods the cradle of the sun with blood; on the banks of the sacred Jordan our palms increase, and victory pushes into Sion our glory.
22 All quotations from Gerusalemme liberata are taken from the edition by Lanfranco
Caretti (Milan, 1957). All translations from Tasso’s poem are from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, trans. and with an introduction by Joseph Tusiani (Rutherford, NJ, 1970). All other translations are mine, unless stated otherwise.
23 Following the practice of the time the bracketed sections were not set to music.
Solo Rinaldo, solo Torpe frà l’ ali de’ lascivi amori? Te sol dell’ Universo il moto nulla Muove egregio Campion d’ una fanciulla? Tancredi Anch’ io, Rinaldo, anch’ io Di sovrana beltà porto nel core L’ eccelsa imago immortalmente impressa, E seguendone l’ orme Ne lacci urtai de l’ infedele Armida, Nella magion infida Vivo però, qual deve Uom forte, e ’l piede Sprigionerò pien di virtù, e di fede. Ubaldo Sù su, Rinaldo, spezza La catena sleal del rio servaggio. Tancredi Vieni, fatal guerriero, Tè ’l nostro campo, te Goffredo invita, Te pronta al lido attende La fatal nave, à cui la Gloria è guida, Te la Fortuna, e la Vittoria aspetta, [Si vieni, e l’ empia Setta, Che già crollasti, à terra estinta cada Sotto l’ inevitabile tua Spada.]
Only Rinaldo alone, you sleep between the wings of lascivious amours? And you alone the world’s commotion does not move, O noble champion of a lass? So do I, Rinaldo, so do I of supreme beauty carry stamped in my heart the sublime image indelibly impressed, and following her steps I run into the snares of the infidel Armida, in the insidious dwelling I live, though, as a strong man should, and, full of virtue and faith, I will set my foot free. Go on, Rinaldo, break The disloyal chain of despicable slavery. Come, fated warrior, you, your field and Goffredo call you back, you, ready by the shores, awaits the fated ship, to whom Glory is guide, and victory and fate await, yes, come, and the impious foe you scattered once in terror fell with your youthful sword that knows no error.
Rinaldo Rinaldo io son? Am I Rinaldo? ... … Tale in Asia trionfo? So I triumph over Asia? Di profumi Sabei sparse le chiome, The hair strewn with Sabean perfumes, E frà lascive spoglie and among lascivious spoils L’ abbattuta Sion così m’ accoglie? so does the fallen Sion welcome me? Nò: già mi spezzo in petto No: now I break from my chest Lo stral d’ amor; Itene à terra, ò vili the arrow of Love; fall to the ground, O vile Divise di servaggio, clothing of slavery, Vani fregi del senso, empie, profane vain ornaments of the senses, impious, profane Spoglie della lascivia, abiette, indegne clothing of lasciviousness, despicable, unloyal Pompe di servitù misere insegne pomp of slavery, miserable signs. Amici hò vinto; Ecco Rinaldo, ed Ecco Friends, I have won; here is Rinaldo, and here is Il core, e ’l piede al gran viaggio accinto; the heart and the foot set for the long journey. Su via voliamo al campo; Amici hò vinto. Let us go, let us fly to the camp; Friends, I have won. Entro à vortici di Sangue In vortexes of blood L’ error mio si perderà; my error will be lost E de miei profani amori and of my profane amours Sotto all’ ombra de’ gl’ allori under the shade of laurels La memoria perirà. memory will vanish. Entro &c. In vortexes. &c.
244 Music as Social and Cultural Practice While the character of Rinaldo is constructed in this scene as the model of the Christian hero as ‘strong’ (forte), ‘virtuous and pious’ (pien di virtù e di fede), a ‘warrior’ (guerriero) to whom ‘glory’, ‘fortune’ and ‘victory’ (gloria, fortuna e vittoria) are promised, Armida’s persona emerges through the use of antithetical terms and the systematic verbal destruction of the world she represents (heralding the unavoidable physical destruction of the Islamic world at the hands of the Christian army). The unrelenting sequel of adjectives such ‘infidel’ (infedele), ‘treacherous’ (infida), ‘impious’ (empia), ‘lascivious’ (lasciva), ‘disloyal’ (sleal), ‘blasphemous’ (profana), ‘despicable’ (abietta), ‘worthless’ (indegna) leads inexorably towards Rinaldo’s stormy concluding aria ‘Entro à vortici di Sangue’. This is Rinaldo’s first heroic aria and one that deploys a revealing mixture of his fragmented and highly emotional musical expression made of short figurations and dotted rhythms, with the stable, heroic utterances more characteristic of Ubaldo, the knight who (in both the poem and the opera) will eventually succeed in bringing Rinaldo back to the Christian camp. Unlike Tasso’s dispositio, whereby Rinaldo’s awakening and abandonment of Armida are closely linked and follow one another, Silvani favours a displacement of these two moments, with an entire act separating the episode of Rinaldo’s return to his duties and Armida’s abandonment and lament, with the latter now placed in Act iii, towards the end of the opera.24 This scene (iii. v) emerges in conspicuous contrast with the preceding one dominated by the theme of the war against Asia, and climaxes with Armida’s striking lament. The entire scene is closely modelled on Tasso’s poetry (canto xvi, 40–63), onto which Silvani grafts two arias: Armida’s lament ‘A queste tante lagrime’ is inserted in correspondence to Tasso’s lines ‘More she would like to say; but now her tears … impede her words’ (‘Volea più dir; ma l’ interruppe il pianto’) (xvi, 51), while Rinaldo’s aria ‘Pupille almen poteste’ grants the Christian knight time to linger a little longer, something denied by Tasso but evoked by Armida’s lines in the poem: ‘Has the harsh traitor felt any remorse or helped me in the least in my dismay?’ (‘Né un momento indugiò, né un breve aiuto nel caso estremo il traditor mi porse?’) (xvi, 63). The operatic convention of the aria here responds to the audience’s desire for the pleasure of tears and emotional involvement, facilitated through the harrowing 24 A similar solution had been adopted by Quinault in his Armide (1686). Quinault
and Lully’s well-known tragédie lyrique might have influenced Silvani’s dramaturgical organisation. Metastasio adopted a similar disposition in his Achille in Sciro. I would like to thank Mario Armellini for drawing my attention to Quinault’s possible model for Silvani. See also Armellini’s book, Le due Armide: Metamorfosi estetiche e drammaturgiche da Lully a Gluck (Florence, 1991).
Bucciarelli • Venice and the East 245 prolongation of the heartbreaking moment of Rinaldo and Armida’s separation.25 Armida al campo, staged the following carnival (1708), picks up the thread where Armida abbandonata had left it. Here the playing of oppositions continues and the opera itself could be viewed as the ‘double’ of Armida abbandonata. The action takes place in the Christian camp, antithetic place to Armida’s garden, and the harsh reality of the war is now in the foreground: the first act stages the failed attack of the Eastern army, the second begins with a strategic meeting in Goffredo’s tent in order to devise a plan to counteract the Muslim coalition, while the third concludes with war cries ‘A Sion, à Sion … All’ armi, all’ armi’. Like Armida abbandonata, the opening scenes unfold a magic rite, but while the Abbandonata showed the male magician Filomaco operating for the good of the Christian world, the Al campo staged Armida’s witchcraft for its destruction. Other parallelisms include the playing with dressing and undressing which provides a concrete image for the acquisition or loss of an identity: while in Armida’s world it was Rinaldo who first acquired and then rejected the ‘vile clothing of slavery, vain ornaments of the senses’ (‘vili divise di servaggio, vani fregi del senso’), that is, chains of flowers adorning his neck, emblems of weakness and effeminacy, here, in the Western world of the Christian camp, it is the women who are dispossessed of their disconcerting attributes. In the attempt to moderate the too feminine and the too masculine (like Rinaldo’s femininity, both are a threat to current principles of social order), Clorinda, the amazon warrior, will discard her armour and dress in feminine clothes, while Armida, already in disguise under the name of Celinda, is forced to hide her gushing femininity under masculine clothes.26 Boniventi’s setting of Armida al campo does not survive, while a good number of Ruggeri’s arias for Armida abbandonata are preserved with only the basso continuo – there are no recitatives or opening sinfonia. Ruggeri’s music does not seem to allude to the oriental or exotic quality of the Eastern dramatis personae in any obvious way and there is no discernible use of or reference to non-European music. Of course it would be impossible for us to 25 See Jean-Jacques Roubine, ‘La Stratégie des larmes au xviie siècle’, Littérature 9
(1973), pp. 56–73, for a discussion of the role of the pathetic in French seventeenthcentury theatre, which suggests analogous considerations about seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian opera.
26 Goffredo: De gravi arnesi / deppor ti piaccia il peso. / Spoglie idonee al tuo sesso
/ havrai non vili: in feminile aspetto / ancor de franchi eroi / l’ amazone d’ Assiria havrà il rispetto. / Gernando: A la bella Celinda / tu pur vietasti in gonna … / Goffredo: Ciò, che in quella danneggia, in questa giova / che se molle bellezza / a l’ anime guerriere è un gran periglio, / esposta de la gloria in mezo al tempio / una beltà feroce è un grand’ esempio. Francesco Silvani, Armida al campo (Venice, 1708) ii. ii.
246 Music as Social and Cultural Practice know precisely what knowledge he might have had of Turkish music. We know that a small community of Asiatic and Balkan Turks, mostly male merchants, resided in Venice for trading purposes. Venice’s chief interest in maintaining peaceful economic relations with the Ottoman Empire meant that the Turks residing temporarily in Venice, although not encouraged to settle in the city by the current legislation, were allowed to live according to their own traditions and beliefs.27 It is possible therefore that Venetians, including composers, could have been exposed to some kind of Turkish music, including that of the Janissary bands playing on the very rare occasions of official visits of the Sultan’s diplomatic representatives (one, for example, took place in 1687).28 Although descriptions and comments on Turkish music and instruments are numerous since the sixteenth century,29 the only notated examples of Turkish music that Ruggeri and other composers of the time could have had easy access to are those included in Giovan Battista Donà’s Letteratura de’ Turchi, published in Venice in 1688 (see Figure 13.2). These transcribed songs (‘canzoni’), set to secular texts, do not appear to be reflected in Ruggeri’s arias. Strictly speaking, and on the basis of these examples and contemporary descriptions of Turkish music, there is no evident musical exoticism in Armida abbandonata.30 This comes as no surprise. As far back as 1950s Miriam Whaples, in her study of musical exoticism in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre, noticed that composers had almost completely ignored any knowledge they might have had of non-European music, and developed alternative strategies to characterise the exotic, such as the use of specific dances and instruments associated with non-European cultures.31 As far as the Venetian operatic repertory of the seventeenth century is concerned, Whaples’s observations find some confirmation in librettos, rather than scores, where captions introduce and sometimes describe esoteric dances and 27 Giorgio Vercellin, ‘Mercanti turchi e sensali a Venezia’, Studi veneziani 4 (1980),
pp. 45–78. Cf. Preto, Venezia e i Turchi.
28 The Sultan did not maintain diplomatic representation in Europe until the 1720s;
before then, all peace treatises were signed in Costantinople. See M. P. Pedani, In nome del Gran Signore: Inviati ottomani a Venezia dalla caduta di Costantinopoli alla guerra di Candia (Venice, 1994); and id., La dimora della pace, Quaderni di Studi Arabi. Studi e testi ii (Venice, 1996).
29 Ivano Cavallini, ‘La musica turca nelle testimonianze dei viaggiatori e nella tratta
tistica del Sei-Settecento’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 21 (1986), pp. 144–69.
30 Significantly, the examples transcribed by Donà belong to a style of Turkish music
which Thomas Betzwieser, in his entry ‘Exotismus’, MGG2, Sachteil, iii, pp. 226– 43, recognises as being consistently absent from examples of eighteenth-century exotic music.
31 Miriam K. Whaples, ‘Exoticism in Dramatic Music, 1600–1800’ (Ph.D. diss.,
Indiana University, 1958).
Bucciarelli • Venice and the East 247
Fig. 13.2 ‘Haste ghionglum … / Col Cotogno non m’ impaccio’. From Giovan Battista Donà, Della letteratura de’ Turchi (Venice, 1688). The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Tenbury f. 4
instruments.32 We do not know whether any dances were performed in Armida abbandonata and what instruments were used (they are not indicated in the librettos or extant scores). Whatever the case might be, Ruggeri seems to have developed yet a different strategy to engage with the concept of Otherness. Taken individually, his arias could easily find a place in any opera set in ancient Rome, northern Europe or China; as a whole, they reveal his manipulations of operatic conventions and aria typologies to avoid subverting the ethnic, religious and gender oppositions inherited from Tasso: the eastern world is represented by the female characters of Armida and Erminia, while the European contingent enlists the male Christian heroes Ubaldo, Tancredi and Rinaldo. The Christian knight Rambaldo, who had converted to Islam out of love for Armida, is destined to die on stage, condemned to double oblivion as, ironically, neither of his two arias survives in the almost complete manuscript collections of arias at the British Library and at the Santini-Bibliothek in Münster.33 With the exception of Rinaldo, who operates between the two worlds and thus enjoys more fluid gender identity and musical expression, the Christian knights are endowed with arias that, in most cases, can be defined as ‘heroic’. Even arias that speak of love, such as Tancredi’s ‘Amo si con tutto il core’ (iii. iii), present the characteristic traits of heroic arias, that is a marked 32 See Alm, ‘Dances from the “Four Corners of the Earth” ’. 33 London, British Library, R.M.23.f.5; Münster, Santini-Bibliothek 188/ii.
248 Music as Social and Cultural Practice regularity of rhythm and of melodic structure, stability in the large diatonic intervals employed and, as a consequence, a general sense of control expected from the singer during the performance of virtuosic passages. Armida and Erminia’s arias, on the other hand, inhabit a much more varied and unstable expressive spectrum, which goes from the tender pathos of ‘Se tu lo sai’ to the playful eroticism of ‘Per capirvi molti amanti’, from the violent rage of ‘Furie, mostri lacerate’ to the ultimate expression of distress in their respective laments. Armida’s striking ‘A quante tante lagrime’, in particular, dominates the final section of the opera and leaves the audience contemplating the ultimate message of Tasso’s poem: the defeat of the pagan sorceress. Her union with Rinaldo will result in her undoing, the demise of her feminine identity, and the defeat of that Otherness she symbolically represents.34 Despite the contrast between the tragic sensuality of Tasso’s Armida and the comic musical language of some of Ruggeri’s arias written for her (music that would be perfectly at home in the recently emerged Intermezzo), a consideration of the arias for the female characters alone reveals what in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera has been identified as the double stereotype of the oriental woman: the sensual seductress (here embodied in Armida) and the submissive slave (Erminia).35 The monochromatic tone of much of the music for the arias of the male characters (excluding Rinaldo) and their unusual arrangement within the same scene in a genre that aimed above all at variety, succeed in providing the aural equivalent of the image of a uniform and ordered Western world clashing with its opposite, a chaotic and varied Eastern universe, which emerges from recent exegeses of Gerusalemme liberata.36 The clash of sensory perceptions, that is the contrast between what the eye sees (the staging of Armida’s enchanted and seductive garden, and the pursuit of pleasure) and what the ear perceives (the heroic music suggestive of an ongoing war), defies 34 Here Silvani closely follows Tasso, Canto xvi: ‘struggi la fede nostra: anch’ io
t’ affretto. / Che dico nostra? ah non più mia …’ (47); ‘Sprezzata ancella, a chi fo più conserva / di questa chioma, or ch’ a te fatta è vile? / Raccorcierolla: al titolo di serva / vuo’ portamento accompagnar servile’ (49); Silvani’s rendition in Armida abbandonata, iii. v: ‘Struggi la fede nostra. / Che dissi nostra? ah non più mia … accorcierò le chiome / in veste umil, qual è l’ uso di serva’.
35 Mary Hunter, ‘The Alla Turca Style in the Late Eighteenth Century: Race and
ender in the Symphony and the Seraglio’, The Exotic in Western Music, ed. J. G Bellman (Boston, 1998), pp. 43–74; Rousseau and Porter, Exoticism in the Enlightenment.
36 This is central to Zatti’s interpretation of the poem in his fundamental and fas-
cinating study L’ uniforme cristiano e il multiforme pagano. See also, by the same author, ‘Dalla parte di Satana: Sull’ imperialismo cristiano nella Gerusalemme liberata’, La rappresentazione dell’ altro nei testi del Rinascimento, ed. S. Zatti (Pisa, 1998), pp. 146–82.
Bucciarelli • Venice and the East 249 contemporary operatic practice, which strove to coordinate stage sets, gesture, words and music, and allows the unfolding of a double narrative: one about love, perceived as fiction, the other about war, perceived as reality. The result is that the audience, immersed in the enchanted and unreal world of Armida, is constantly reminded (at a subliminal level) of an ongoing, non-fictitional conflict that separates Muslims and Christians, East and West and, ultimately, men and women. These conflicts have no resolution; they are inevitable and irremediable.37 None of the Armida operas of this period, with the exception of the comic Armida in Damasco (1711), fully adheres to the operatic convention of the happy ending by staging the eventual and definitive union between Armida and Rinaldo (although this actually happens in Tasso’s Gerusalemme). Handel’s Rinaldo of 1711 went as far as introducing a Western fiancée for the Christian hero in the person of Almirena (daughter of Goffredo), while Vivaldi’s Armida al campo d’ Egitto of 1718, set entirely among Muslims, eliminated Rinaldo altogether. Since it was staged in the same year as the proclamation of the final defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the audience of Vivaldi’s Armida did not need to exorcise fears and anxieties over a Turkish conquest of Europe any more and could begin to look with ironic distance at a once terrifying entity now embroiled in its own disarray and experiencing the effects of its devilish weapon (Armida) turned against its own people. To conclude: Armida abbandonata and its sequel Armida al campo objectify a vision of the oriental world constructed in terms of irresolvable oppositions similar to the cognitive processes of Orientalism critiqued by Said. The choice of Tasso as a literary source allowed these operas not only to reach a wide sector of the population and become part of an international intellectual debate that modelled Italian cultural identity, but also to channel and further popularise an ideology of anti-Muslim propaganda of medieval origin, already absorbed by Tasso. This ideology, historians have shown, never reflected Venice’s foreign politics concerning the Ottoman Empire. In Armida, Silvani and Ruggeri took up the feminine allegory of the Orient implied in Tasso’s poem, but shifted its focus from an ‘exotic’ to a more ‘domestic’ theme, questioning the role of men and women in modern Western society – a theme that Tasso had explicitly tackled in the dialogue Della virtù femminile e donnesca (1580) and subtly woven into the poetry of Gerusalemme liberata.
•
Reinhard Strohm’s love, knowledge and understanding of Italian literature and opera have been guidance, inspiration and encouragement to my work over the last twenty years. I should also like to thank Adrienne Ward and Mario Armellini for their helpful comments on this article.
37 See Benedetti, Ls sconfitta di Diana, esp. pp. 28–31.
• 14 • Literary Motifs in Metastasio’s and Jommelli’s Ciro riconosciuto Francesca Menchelli-Buttini
C
iro riconosciuto was written in Vienna for the birthday of Empress Elizabeth and performed, with music by Antonio Caldara, in the garden of the imperial summer residence (the Favorita) on 28 August 1736. Although not one of Metastasio’s most popular works, after the premiere the libretto was set for several Italian theatres. The subject and plot structure shared with Metastasio’s dramas its descent from ancient sources and successful dramatisations, showcasing Metastasio’s literary ambitions. To discuss the libretto of Ciro riconosciuto in relation to its sources and to Metastasio’s reflections on poetics, recorded in his most important treatise Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile e osservazioni sulla medesima, is a historiographical imperative, as well as a helpful approach to appreciating Metastasio’s output. The assessment of how themes or strategies employed by spoken theatre were translated into eighteenth-century librettos and their settings has been coming into focus since the late 1970s, in no small measure through the studies of Reinhard Strohm. The result has been a definition of musical dramaturgy which provides insight into the complex relationship between opera, contemporary theatrical practice and literary genres. As The Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile was probably conceived at an early stage
of Metastasio’s career, but was written only in 1772 and published in 1782 (in the Herissant edition of Metastasio’s writings). In Italy the most lively debate on Aristotle’s Poetics had taken place in the sixteenth century. Thus the Estratto aims not so much to participate in the literary dispute on Aristotle or to give a new interpretation of the Poetics. Rather, it represents the author’s clear attempt to justify his own output as a dramatist. Some interesting insights are in Piero Weiss, ‘Metastasio, Aristotle, and the Opera seria’, Journal of Musicology 1 (1982), pp. 385–94.
See Reinhard Strohm, ‘Handel, Metastasio, Racine: The Case of Ezio’, Musical
Times 98 (1977), pp. 901–3; id., Die italienische Oper im 18. Jahrhundert (Wilhelms haven, 1979), trans. as L’ opera italiana nel Settecento (Venice, 1991); id., ‘Meta stasio’s Alessandro nell’ Indie and its Earliest Settings’, Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 232–48; id., ‘Auf der Suche nach dem Drama im “Dramma per musica”: Die Bedeutung der französischen Tragödie’, De Musica et Cantu: Studien zur Geschichte der Kirchenmusik und Oper: Helmut Hucke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. P. Cahn and A. K. Heimer (Hildesheim, 1993), pp. 481–93. On the French sources of Metastasio’s librettos, see also Aurora Trigiani, Il teatro raciniano e i melodrammi di Pietro Metastasio (Turin, 1951); Ettore Paratore, ‘L’ Andromaque
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 251 a dramaturgical structure, dramma per musica began to be influenced by spoken tragedy during the last decade of the seventeenth century. Librettists never entirely subscribed, however, to tragedy’s precepts, as comparisons between Metastasian librettos and their dramatic models show. The primary components or codes of the classical tradition (subject, characters, affections, poetry, scenic types, etc.) were nonetheless retained – to the extent that, according to contemporary observers, Metastasio’s librettos were performed without music – while the actual changes in structure were intended to strengthen some plot lines or motifs. Other modifications, on the contrary, preserved the conventions of the operatic genre, such as the three-act structure, the reduced number of characters, loose application of the unity of place, a lieto fine (mostly with a repenting villain), arias and choruses. More controversial is the relationship between the emancipation of librettos as high-level literary works, published in autonomous collected editions and directed to readers alone, and their rearrangement in performance events. del Racine e la Didone abbandonata del Metastasio’, Scritti in onore di Luigi Ronga (Milan and Naples, 1973), pp. 515–47; Piero Weiss, ‘Teorie melodrammatiche e “infranciosamento”: Motivi della “riforma” melodrammatica nel primo Settecento’, Antonio Vivaldi: Teatro musicale, cultura, società, , ed. L. Bianconi and G. Morelli, ii (Florence, 1982), pp. 273–96; and Dino Villatico, ‘In margine al Demetrio di Metastasio: Fonti francesi del melodramma metastasiano’, Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Edizione e cronologia critica delle opere, ed. A. Fanna and G. Morelli, i (Florence, 1988), pp. 273–84. On the question of ‘musical dramaturgy’ see Reinhard Strohm, ‘Zur musikalischen Dramaturgie von Arianna in Creta’, Gattungskonventionen der Händel-Oper: Bericht über die Symposien 1990 und 1991, ed. H. J. Marx (Laaber, 1992), pp. 171–88, trans. as ‘Arianna in Creta: Musical Dramaturgy’, Dramma per musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 220–36; Melania Bucciarelli, Italian Opera and European Theatre, 1680– 1720: Plots, Performers, Dramaturgies (Turnhout, 2000).
An exhaustive view is found in Reinhard Strohm, ‘Dramma per musica B. 18. Jahr-
hundert (opera seria)’, MGG2, Sachteil ii, cols. 1479–93 and 1498–1500, trans. as ‘Introduction: The Dramma per musica in the Eighteenth Century’, Dramma per musica, pp. 1–29, at p. 17.
Goldoni claimed in his Mémoires (Paris, 1787) that ‘Comme on donnoit partout,
dans ce tems-là, les Opéras de Métastase, même sans musique, je mis les airs en récitatifs; je tâchai de me rapprocher le mieux que je pus du style de ce charmant Auteur, et je choisis la Didone et le Siroé pour nos représentations’ (Carlo Goldoni, Tutte le opere, ed. G. Ortolani, i [3rd edn, Milan, 1954], p. 95). Performances of Metastasio’s librettos without music are noted in the Introduction to Pietro Metastasio, Tutte le opere, ed. B. Brunelli (Milan, 1947–54), i, p. xxxv and in Helga Lühning, Titus-Vertonungen im 18. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zur Tradition der Opera seria von Hasse bis Mozart, Analecta Musicologica xx (Laaber, 1983), p. 2. All quotations from Metastasio in this essay are from Brunelli’s edition, giving the number of the volume, page and, for the drammi per musica, act and scene; for the letters the number, place, date and addressee are specified.
252 Music as Social and Cultural Practice When used in staging during the 1730s and 1740s, the recitatives, arias and occasionally the scene sequences were usually reworked. Practical circumstances (cast, theatres), as well as artistic considerations involving the music, libretto or staging sometimes prompted these changes. The transient aspect, however, does not authorise us to underestimate the artistic praise and the ‘work-character’ of eighteenth-century opera in its own terms. In this article I review Metastasio’s dramaturgical choices in Ciro riconosciuto against the background of earlier treatments of this story and of his own thoughts about writing dramas. Beside clarifying Metastasio’s intentions in this work, I also investigate Niccolò Jommelli’s power to express Ciro riconosciuto musically. The opera was premiered at the Teatro Bonaccossi in Ferrara during Carnival 1744. I chose this version over other settings – by Antonio Caldara (Vienna, 1736), Leonardo Leo (Turin, 1739), Baldassare Galuppi (Venice, 1759), Johann Adolf Hasse (Dresden 1752, Warsaw, 1762), Giuseppe Sarti (Copenhagen, 1754) and Niccolò Piccinni (Naples, 1759) – for its combination of pertinence and necessity. Ciro riconosciuto is one of Jommelli’s earliest drammi per musica and circulated in the following fourteen years from Ferrara and Bologna (spring 1744) to Venice (1749), Pisa (1751) and Mantua (1758). Performances of this work (possibly in much revised and altered form) were, however, limited to the 1750s. On the other hand, Jommelli is a prominent figure among the new generation of composers working (during the years 1740–60) towards what Strohm describes as a ‘dramatization of music’ and ‘musicalization of drama’, in which ‘the instrumental and, generally, musical component in the performance of the See Strohm, L’ opera italiana nel Settecento, p. 19, and id., ‘Looking Back at
Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical Work-Concept’, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, ed. M. Talbot (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 128–52, at p. 148.
‘ciro / riconosciuto / dramma per musica / Da rappresentarsi in
Ferrara nel / Teatro Bonacossi a San Stefano. / Il Carnovale dell’ Anno / 1744. / Dedicato al Nobil Uomo / Il Signor Marchese. / virgilio / crescenzi / [rule] / In ferrara, Per Giuseppe Barbieri / Con Licenza de’ Superiori. / [in dark ink:] Jommelli Nicolò, pag. 9’. The Dedication is dated January 1744. A copy is held in Bologna, Biblioteca dell’ Archiginnasio, 8. Letteratura italiana, Componimento drammatico per musica, Caps v, No 11. It is matched closely by the complete threevolume MS score in Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale (GG 64): ‘[with ornamented capitals] Il Ciro Riconosciuto / del Sig:r Nicolò / Jommelli / [ornament]’; another MS, possibly corresponding to a later revision (Venice 1749?), is held by the Archivio Ricordi in Milan. The singers of the Ferrara performance were Domenico Bonifacci (Astiage), Marianna Marini (Mandane), Filippo Elisi (Ciro), Elisabetta Ronchetti (Arpago), Violante Vestri (Arpalice), Rosa Tagliavini (Mitridate) and Alessandro Veroni (Cambise).
A list of performances is given in Claudio Sartori, I libretti italiani a stampa dalle
origini al 1800, ii (Cuneo, 1993), pp. 135–9.
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 253 drama became overwhelming’. The aspects of a new expressivity of voice and (particularly) orchestra also emerge from the totality of Metastasio’s observations about Jommelli. Metastasio’s initial praise highlighted the composer’s success in the treatment of the poetic text, although the poet did criticise Jommelli’s tendency to repeat words and lines. Objections to Jommelli’s style gradually increased over time: recognition of his novel, extended interaction between voice and accompaniment became combined with open complaints about his excessive attention to the orchestra and interruption of the vocal line.10 The question of the integration of music into the theatrical event is explored here by examining Jomelli’s power to convey actions, gestural images and dramatic force. Poetry, music and gesture are co-dependent in his opera. Jommelli’s theatrical, as well as musical, achievements combined to create an example of theatre in the first place and of a well-constructed piece of music in the second, far from the ‘melodramatic imagination’ of nineteenth-century Italian opera (more familiar to us).11
plot, sources and tragic action The pre-history of Ciro riconosciuto goes back to Herodotus (Historiae, i, 107–30), whose account had also served other contemporary librettists.12 Fifteen years before the events which take place in the drama, Astiage had a These concepts are found in Reinhard Strohm, Dramma per musica, pp. 15–16.
In the 1740s Metastasio evaluated Jommelli’s music in two letters: iii, p. 444, no. 330,
Vienna, 12 November 1749, to Carlo Broschi (Farinelli); iii, p. 466, no. 340, Vienna, 28 January 1750, to Carlo Broschi (‘Il Jommelli è il miglior maestro ch’ io conosca per le parole. … È vero il difetto delle repliche, ma è l’ epidemia d’ Italia, della quale si correggerà’).
10 iv, pp. 383–4, no. 1418, Vienna, 6 April 1765, to Niccolò Jommelli (‘Mi è stato caris-
simo il prezioso dono delle due arie magistrali che vi è piaciuto inviarmi; e, per quanto si stende la mia limitata perizia musicale, ne ho ammirato il nuovo ed armonico intreccio della voce con gl’ istrumenti. … ma obbligandovi l’ immaginato concerto ad interrompere troppo frequentemente la voce si perdono le tracce de’ moti che avevate già destati nell’ anima dell’ ascoltante …’). On Jommelli’s attempt to exceed the boundaries of poetry through word repetitions, fragmentation and stronger instrumental accompaniment see also Paolo Gallarati, Musica e maschera: Il libretto italiano del Settecento (Turin, 1984), pp. 59–60.
11 The concept is found in Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination (New Haven
and London, 1976).
12 Herodotus, Historiae, trans. A. D. Godley, i (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1966),
pp. 139–71. The Historiae served, for example, three librettos entitled Il Ciro, by Giulio Cesare Sorrentino (Venice, 1654), Pietro Pariati (Venice, 1709) and Pietro Ottoboni (Rome, 1712, with music by Alessandro Scarlatti).
254 Music as Social and Cultural Practice dream predicting his dethronement at the hands of Ciro, the newborn son of his daughter Mandane. To avoid this fate, the tyrant ordered his daughter to be separated from her husband Cambise and her infant to be killed. Yet Arpago, entrusted with the murder, spared the child. The prince grew up in the wilderness as Alceo, son of the servant Mitridate. Some time after these events, news spreads that Ciro is still alive. Astiage, still fearing dethronement, thinks it convenient to show repentance to try and coax the truth out of Arpago about the infant. Astiage punishes the servant’s disobedience with the murder of Arpago’s own son. Arpago feigns resignation in order to conceal his desire for revenge. Astiage in turn feigns remorse for his cruelty only to seek an opportunity to eliminate his rival. Here the libretto begins. The title identifies the hero’s discovery as the main action, in accordance with an old theatrical practice. In the drama itself, however, the motif of revelation is treated rather unconventionally. Ciro is unknown only to his relatives (i.e. to his grandfather and parents) and this brings him into mortal conflict with his mother Mandane. Interestingly, on the path to the final solution Metastasio places the obstacle of a well-known dramatic theme: the mother who intends to take revenge upon the man whom she believes to be responsible for her son’s death. Only just before accomplishing revenge does she learn that the man whom she is about to kill is her son. Metastasio drew inspiration for this from the tragedies Amasis (1701) by Joseph Lagrange-Chancel and Merope (1714) by Scipione Maffei, and from Apostolo Zeno’s libretto Merope (1712).13 On the one hand Metastasio was probably attracted (and challenged) by the popularity of the Merope theme among contemporary dramatists and, on the other, he could rely on the audience’s and reader’s familiarity with his models to develop the expressive potential of the Merope theme. From a modern perspective the popularity of the subject may appear to weaken expectations; from an eighteenth-century one, however, we can safely assume that audiences were interested in how the poet would achieve a well-known solution rather than in the solution itself.14 Metastasio thus locates the Merope theme in a different dramaturgical context from that of his predecessors. 13 See Joseph Lagrange-Chancel, Œuvres choisies (Paris, 1810), pp. 17–86; Scipione
Maffei, Merope, ed. G. R. Ceriello (Milan, 1954); and Apostolo Zeno, Poesie drammatiche, iv (Orléans, 1806), pp. 95–184. From Amasis Metastasio also drew the theme of the king’s irrational fears (see here, p. 262) and a love plot. Ciro falls in love with Arpago’s daughter, Arpalice, just as Sesostris is charmed by Arthalice, daughter of the confidant Phanes (consider also their similar names). The relationship between Maffei’s Merope and Metastasio’s Ciro riconosciuto was pointed out by Pietro Napoli-Signorelli, Storia critica de’ teatri antichi e moderni, VI (Naples, 1790), p. 267.
14 See Costantino Maeder, Metastasio, l’ Olimpiade e l’ opera del Settecento (Bologna,
1993), pp. 29–30.
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 255 In Lagrange’s Amasis and Maffei’s Merope conflicts arise out of old political feuds. A tyrant (Amasis and Polifonte respectively) has come to power by ordering the murder of the lawful king and his heirs. According to his plans no one should survive the massacre, but the queen (Nitocris and Merope) has managed to save the youngest of her sons (Sesostris and Cresfonte). She has hidden her little child with her confidant in the wilderness, where he has grown up unaware of his origins. His discovery and his murder are necessary to consolidate the tyrants’ rule; Amasis and Polifonte therefore pursue these goals at all costs. Nitocris and Merope, on the other hand, are absorbed by desire for revenge of their persecutors. The sons, Sesostris and Cresfonte, are key to this process, because they represent the last hope to overcome misfortune and injustice. Both the plots of Amasis and (Maffei’s) Merope focus on hatred and rebellion against tyranny. Merope, however, is also a mother deeply concerned for her son.15 By contrast, the possibility of Astiage’s dethronement hardly surfaces in Ciro riconosciuto. The model of the confrontation between the usurper and the lawful heir to the throne is made more tragic – in an Aristotelian sense – by consanguinity.16 Rather than pursue a political opponent, like Amasis and Polifonte, Astiage consciously orders the murder of a relative. This distinction, of course, makes the lieto fine more credible. He finally repents and, overcome by his grandson’s generosity, abdicates in his favour. With few exceptions justice, for Metastasio, lies not only in just retribution for an evil deed, but also in the correction of misguided behaviour, mostly without punishment.17 Astiage’s plot belongs to the fourth kind of tragic action in an Aristotelian sense: a character, aware of what he is doing, conceives a terrible machination, but ultimately does not accomplish it. According to the Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile, Metastasio appreciated the potential of this plot because it 15 See Paola Luciani, Le passioni e gli affetti: Studi sul teatro tragico del Settecento
(Pisa, 1999), pp. 81–109.
16 In this case the reference to Aristotle’s Poetics is all the more appropriate since
Aristotle himself uses the subject of Merope as a concrete example: see Aristotele, The Poetics, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 166–7. In the Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile Metastasio thus grants space to Merope and Aristotle’s considerations (ii, pp. 1076–7).
17 Metastasio adopts an alternative concept of justice to Apostolo Zeno’s and the
older dramatic tradition, which privileged the punishment of villains and made it possible ‘de sauver les bons par la perte des méchants’ (the quotation is in Pierre Corneille, Discours de la Tragédie et des moyens de la traiter selon le vraisemblable ou le nécessaire, 1660: see Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes [Paris, 1963], p. 834). On justice in French spoken tragedy and in Metastasio see Elena Sala di Felice, ‘Virtù e felicità alla corte di Vienna’, Metastasio e il melodramma, ed. E. Sala di Felice and L. Sannia Nowé, Atti del Seminario di Studi Cagliari 29–30 ottobre 1982 (Padua, 1985), pp. 55–87.
256 Music as Social and Cultural Practice allowed display of the characters’ dilemma.18 In the specific case of Ciro riconosciuto Metastasio had the chance to show Astiage torn between the desire for power and the natural love for his grandson, or, more specifically, between his irrational fears and his horror of a vile crime. Such possibilities, however, are not developed in the libretto, and Astiage’s doubts remain marginal. Perhaps Metastasio considered focusing on the subject of a cruel dynastic conflict improper for a work celebrating the empress’s birthday.19 Perhaps he wished to highlight other plot lines rather than Astiage’s psychology. Making Astiage the grandfather of his victim (and thus the father of Mandane), Metastasio enriched the theme of the tyrant–heroine confrontation. Nitocris and Merope can hate their persecutors without shame or remorse because Amasis and Polifonte are simply ‘the enemy’. Consanguinity places Mandane in a different position: her father causes her misfortune. She thus vacillates between her duty to Astiage and her love for both her husband and her son. In this difficult situation Metastasio placed the theme of the unknowing mother who attempts to kill her son. Mandane’s predicament (like that of Nitocris and Merope) belongs to the third kind of tragic action in an Aristotelian sense: a character, lacking decisive information, is about to accomplish a terrible misdeed, but abandons the plan upon revelation of the true circumstances. In the Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile Metastasio found faults with this type of plot and defined it as ‘un-tragic’. He agreed, however, with Pierre Corneille (Discours de la tragédie) that Merope’s case is very theatrical, but claimed that the appeal lies only in the moment of the discovery (namely towards the end of the drama). In such circumstances the dramatist has no opportunity to show a dilemma since the character, by pursuing a stranger and opponent, has no opportunity to experience remorse. Metastasio highlighted instead the dramatic potential of the first kind of tragic action, in which a character conscious of his or her actions follows a terrible scheme while torn between opposed feelings.20 18 Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile, ii, pp. 1076–7. 19 When Metastasio joined the Habsburg court he was asked to write two librettos
per year. The operas written for the birthday of the empress or generic celebrations were pastorals, drawn conventionally from mythology (Olimpiade, Achille in Sciro, Ciro riconosciuto, Zenobia, etc.); heroic dramas, named after a historical hero (Adriano in Siria, La clemenza di Tito, Temistocle, etc.), were chosen for the name day of the emperor, with the exception of Demofoonte (1733). The different status of the two operas and their grouping by occasion is suggested in Reinhard Strohm, ‘Dramatic Dualities: Metastasio and the Tradition of the Opera Pair’, Early Music 26 (1998), pp. 551–61, at p. 558.
20 Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile, ii, pp. 1077–8 (‘Consente Cornelio che il caso
di Merope sia de’ più teatrali che possano immaginarsi; ma dice che tutta la sua bellezza si riduce al solo momento della riconoscenza, cioè sul fine del dramma,
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 257 Unless the spectator is aware of the victim’s true identity, Merope’s repeated attempts to kill her mortal antagonist may fail to engage interest. Zeno and Lagrange pass this crucial information onto the audience by making the heroes Sesostris and Epitide conscious of their birth since the very beginning of the drama. Maffei, on the other hand, only arouses suspicion of the hero’s identity: Cresfonte first learns the truth in Act v, Scene i. Metastasio attempted to improve upon these models with the introduction of a few variants, enhancing the tender, sentimental tones for a pathetic, family drama, as would have been appropriate for the empress’s birthday celebration. At the mid-point of Act i the shepherd Mitridate informs Alceo/Ciro about his identity. Ciro shows himself worthy of the throne by his inner nature and qualities, among which is the ability to exercise control over private emotions (proven, for example, when he follows advice to hide his identity from Mandane). Ciro’s fate and his mother’s threat are the dramatic focus. No longer a queen, Mandane becomes instead a most affectionate mother, whose ignorance arouses fear and pity. Like Lagrange’s Amasis, Zeno’s Merope begins with the arrival home of the (disguised) hero; in Maffei’s Merope the opening scene shows conflict between Merope and the tyrant Polifonte. By contrast, Meta stasio’s opening concentrates on Mandane’s motherly premonitions. Like her tragic models, Mandane then meets her son, and seeing him, she feels tenderness arising instinctively. Even more, although her own son actually identifies himself to her, she does not believe it. Knowing the range of dramaturgies on which Metastasio drew to write his libretto, we will now consider in detail the role of Astiage and the mother–son confrontation in Metastasio’s libretto and Jommelli’s setting. Selected examples will show how the composer used music to enliven the dramatic subtleties embedded in the drama.
in tutto il corso del quale il protagonista rimane sempre nella situazione medesima di voler uccidere una persona che non suppone a sé congiunta né d’ amicizia né di sangue: situazione non tragica, secondo Aristotele istesso. Onde il poeta non trova occasioni di mettere in tumulto gli affetti. Ma che all’ incontro nel primo caso di Medea, la quale si propone, conosce ed eseguisce un atroce misfatto, la continua agitazione del protagonista che sempre ondeggia fra l’ amore e lo sdegno, fra la brama di vendicarsi e l’ orror del delitto, riempie non la sola catastrofe, ma tutta l’ intiera tragedia; poiché le cagioni che a grado a grado lo spingono a proporsi un orribile attentato, le repugnanze della natura, i furori e le tenerezze che alternamente ne nascono, forniscono al poeta ampia materia di mostrare il suo personaggio in situazione sempre nuova, sempre violenta e sempre incerta, sino a quell’ ultimo impulso che lo determina’). Pierre Corneille’s criticism is found in Pierre Corneille, Œuvres complètes, p. 834.
258 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
astiage: villain and ruler Ciro riconosciuto, as we have seen, only touches upon the theme of Astiage’s dilemma without fully developing its potential. The libretto shows, however, different sides of the king’s personality by combining in Astiage the villain with the ruler. In his music, Jommelli does not expand on these aspects of the libretto, nor does he consider reworking and augmenting Astiage’s role. On the contrary, the music even reduces his presence by omitting the monologue in Act ii, Scene iii. Here Astiage claims that men are forced to follow all the stages of crime after committing the first step. He shares this belief with other Metastasian villains of dire misdeed – Artabano in Artaserse (1730) and Learco in Issipile (1732). The opera also combines such old arguments with new ones. Astiage’s regret, signalled by exclamation marks, is foreign to both Artabano and Learco: Artabano (Artaserse, i. iii) Coraggio, o miei pensieri. Il primo passo V’ obbliga agli altri. Il trattener la mano Su la metà del colpo È un farsi reo senza sperarne il frutto.21 Learco (Issipile, i. vii) Si sgomenti al periglio Chi comincia a fallir. Di colpa in colpa Tanto il passo inoltrai Che ogni rimorso è intempestivo ormai.22 Astiage (Ciro riconosciuto, ii. iii) E in qual funesta entrai Necessità d’ esser malvagio! A quanti Delitti obbliga un solo! E come, oh Dio, Un estremo mi porta all’ altro estremo! 23 Metastasio habitually returned to earlier dramatic motifs in later librettos, often improving them. Composers, however, were indifferent to arguments 21 Artaserse, i, p. 363. ‘Take courage, my thoughts! The first step forces further ones.
If one holds back halfway, he is guilty without profit.’
22 Issipile, i, pp. 489–90. ‘The fear of ruin is for a novice. I went so far in pursuing sin
that remorse is inopportune.’
23 Ciro riconosciuto, i, p. 831. ‘What a fatal necessity of wickedness! How many a
crime must follow from the first one! And one end – my God – drives me to another end!’
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 259 over criminal behaviour when these did not involve affects, conflicts and/or ‘actions’ that could be mined for musical gestures. If such abstract reflections (Act ii, Scene iii) offered slim chance for emotional impact, the musical extension of Astiage’s next aria compensated for the loss of verbal meanings engendered by hesitancy or ambiguity in his characterisation. In ‘Non so: con dolce moto’ (ii. v). Astiage confesses to be surprisingly moved at the sight of Alceo/Ciro, as is also shown in the previous recitative: ‘what a noble face!’, ‘in that countenance I find something that I cannot make out and that is not new to me’.24 This reaction parallels that of Clistene in Olimpiade (1733). Agitated by meeting his unknown son Licida, as he states in the aria, Clistene sings ‘Non so donde viene’ (iii. vi) and the recitative lines, ‘what a face is this! at its sight my blood throbs in all my veins’ (ii. vi), ‘his face, his eyes, his voice arouse a sudden leap in my heart’.25 Like Astiage, Clistene is a ruler who, to avoid the events predicted by an oracle, orders the killing of his son (although Clistene shows greater remorse than does Astiage). Clistene and Astiage cannot rationally explain why they are deeply moved by a stranger. The texts contain many cross-references (starting with the incipit), highlighting the congruencies between these passages. Astiage (Ciro riconosciuto, ii. v) Clistene (Olimpiade, iii. vi) Non so: con dolce moto Non so donde viene Il cor mi trema in petto; Quel tenero affetto, Sento un affetto ignoto, Quel moto che ignoto Che intenerir mi fa. Mi nasce nel petto; Come si chiama, oh Dio! Quel gel che le vene Questo soave affetto? Scorrendo mi va. (Ah! se non fosse mio, Nel seno a destarmi Lo crederei pietà.)26 Sì fieri contrasti Non parmi che basti La sola pietà.27 24 Ibid., p. 833. ‘Oh dèi, / Che nobil volto’, ‘In quel sembiante un non so che ritrovo, /
Che non distinguo e non mi giunge nuovo.’
25 The quotations are from Olimpiade, i, pp. 604 and 625. ‘Che volto / È questo mai!
Nel rimirarlo il sangue / Mi si scuote in ogni vena’ (ii. vi), ‘Il volto, il ciglio, / La voce di costui nel cor mi desta / un palpito improvviso’ (iii. vi).
26 Ciro riconosciuto, i, p. 834. ‘I cannot understand why my heart so gently trembles
in my breast; I feel an unknown sentiment which softens me. What is this called, my god!, this sweet feeling? (Ah! if it were not mine, I would think it pity.)’
27 Olimpiade, i, p. 625. ‘I cannot recognise the origin of this sweet sentiment and
impulse, which grow unknown in my breast, and of this chill, which flows through my veins. Pity alone cannot cause such fierce conflict in my breast.’
260 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Jommelli composed no initial ritornello for this scene. After Arpago’s question (‘Perché cambi color? Che mai t’ arresta?’ [Why do you change colour? What holds you back?]), set to a suspended cadence in D minor with an augmented sixth, Astiage suddenly enters in the relative, F major (Adagio, c). Musical elements seem to describe his heartbeat: upbeats, large leaps, dotted rhythms and, in particular, semiquaver sextuplets (second violin), whilst the bass line is static (almost a pedal) and the harmonic ambitus displays the fourth degree as early as bar 2 of the first vocal section (see Example 14.1a).28 The melismas, the repetition of the second and fourth line and the coloratura on the last word of the da capo section delays the cadence, introducing a sense of surprise when the opening of the third line is sung on the marked downbeat of bar 4, and the first violin starts playing colla parte.29 The semiquaver sextuplets of the second violin also pervade the beginning of the middle section (Example 14.1b): the chromatically descending tetrachord in the bass (the so-called Lamentobaß), balanced in some ways by the contrary motion of the first violin, prepares the ground for resignation and regret. The question mark is set once more on a suspended cadence on the fifth degree in D minor with the augmented sixth and a fermata for tense effect. The answer a parte, in 3/8, is thus isolated poetically and musically, and counts as much as sixteen bars, reinforcing the psychological tension of the scenic situation. Emphasis is laid on the last word, ‘pity’. Here Metastasio seemingly planned a musical climax, placing the word within the line and the aria in a marked position. Jommelli follows the poet’s suggestions, but he does not merely echo the poetic concept. He attaches new meanings to the text, developing identification through the means of music. ‘Pietà’ is sung on expectant rising semitones with syncopations, as if, for a moment, Astiage pleaded for peace and for the understanding of the audience. Astiage is also the vehicle of an old and effective dramatic topos, that of the sonno scene (i. viii).30 Having just ordered Mitridate to kill the man who pretends to be Ciro, Astiage is alone on stage and feels almost relieved of fear. A sudden languor overtakes him, creating the standard contrast between 28 The musical examples are transcribed from the MS score in Bologna, Museo
ivico Bibliografico Musicale (see above, n. 6). I have modernised clefs, key C signatures and the use of accidentals, but retained, as is usual, time signatures and the placement of bar lines. I have modernised spelling and punctuation according to the modern edition of Metastasio’s librettos by Bruno Brunelli.
29 The concept of ‘distance of cadence’ is in Reinhard Strohm, Italienische Opern
arien des frühen Settecento (1720–1730), Analecta Musicologica xvi (Cologne, 1976), i, pp. 126–9.
30 The typology of the sonno scene is thoroughly described by Paolo Fabbri, Il
secolo cantante: Per una storia del libretto d’ opera nel Seicento (Bologna, 1990), pp. 174–6.
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 261 Ex. 14.1 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, ii. v, ‘Non so: con dolce moto’: (a) first vocal section, 1–4; (b) middle section (a)
violino 1 tenute
6
violino 2 6
6
6
6
6
6
6
viola tenute
astiage Non so:
con dol
6
-
ce mo - to
6
il
cor
mi tre - ma_in pet - to,
6
6
6
6
cor
il
6
3
mi tre -ma_in pet - to,
sen - to_un af - fet - to_i - gno - to,
(b)
p
6
6
6
( p)
6
6
6
( p)
Co - me si chia - ma,_oh
( p)
Di - o!
que - sto so - a
-
ve_af - fet - to?
(Ah,
262 Music as Social and Cultural Practice the pastoral world and that of the throne.31 The direct model is Maffei’s Merope (iv. iii), in which Cresfonte drops off after reciting a longing monologue redolent of Arcadian aura, pausing the drama before the most climactic event. Seeing Cresfonte open to attack, Merope tries to revenge herself and is poised to kill her real son when the servant Polidoro providentially stops her. There are, however, major differences between Metastasio’s and Maffei’s version of the sonno scene. In Ciro riconosciuto it is the antagonist (not the hero) who falls asleep, and he is thereby exposed to justified revenge by his son-in-law, Cambise. The episode has no consequences, whilst in Merope the plot pivots around the attempt on the hero’s life by his unknowing mother. Moreover, Astiage’s cries for help as he sleeps stop Cambise as he goes to stab him. Astiage exclaims because in his dream Ciro has assailed him. As Cambise realises this, Mandane, who has not recognised her husband, wakes her father. With a dramatic masterstroke, the dream reworks and almost mirrors the on-stage situation.32 Rather than being mere theatrical artifice, the motif of the dream as a materialisation of fears is frequent in Baroque librettos. Throughout Ciro riconosciuto dreaming is peculiar to Astiage’s personality, because from the beginning of the drama dreams communicate his fears.33 Composers doubtless found it difficult to emphasise the ingenious structure of Act i, Scene viii. The confrontation between Cambise and Astiage, once more, gives no opportunity to allegorise concepts, feelings or even gestures in music. Jommelli therefore focuses on Astiage’s monologue, carrying the pastoral content, general nostalgia and hints at the character’s concerns. He chooses to introduce the strings on the last tonic syllable of ‘respirar’ (see Example 14.2a). The lightness of the violins’ semiquaver figures is entrusted 31 Ciro riconosciuto, i, p. 820, Act i, Scene viii. ‘E pur dagl’ inquieti / Miei seguaci timori
/ Parmi di respirar. Non so s’ io deggia / Alla speme del colpo o alla stanchezza / Delle vegliate notti / Quel soave languor, che per le vene / Dolcemente mi serpe. Ah! forse a questo / Umil tetto lo deggio, in cui non sanno / Entrar le abitatrici / D’ ogni soglio real cure infelici. // Sciolto dal suo timor, / Par che non senta il cor / L’ usato affanno. / Languidi gli occhi miei … (s’ addormenta)’.
32 This episode is derived, however, from Baroque librettos, where often the scene
represents the characters’ dreams involving ghosts. In La forza vinta dall’ onore (Venice, 1703), for instance, the tyrant Caligola dreams that he is threatened by Servio’s ghost, and the ghost holding a sword appears on the stage. See also Melania Bucciarelli, ‘Scene di vaticinio nell’ opera italiana del Seicento’ (diss., Roma, La Sapienza, 1990–1).
33 See Ciro riconosciuto, i, p. 810, Act i, Scene i, Arpalice to Mandane: ‘Un sogno,
il sai, / Fu cagion de’ tuoi mali. In sogno il padre / Vide nascer da te l’ arbor che tutta / L’ Asia copria: n’ ebbe timor … / … Nasce il tuo Ciro, e a morte / (O barbara follia!) / Su la fede d’ un sogno il re l’ invia.’
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 263 Ex. 14.2 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, i. viii, ‘E pur dagl’ inquieti’: (a) bb. 1–4; (b) bb. 8–9 (a)
violino 1
violino 2
viola
astiage E
pur
da - gl’in - quie - ti mie - i
se - gua - ci
ti - mo - ri
par - mi di re - spi -
- rar.
(b)
del - le ve - glia - te
not - ti
quel so - a
-
ve
lan - guor,
che per le
ve - ne
264 Music as Social and Cultural Practice with the illustration of the emotional background: the ‘sweet languor’ (see xample 14.2b). These are the longest words and are given two crotchets with E an impressive chromatic step upwards in the bass (functioning to form a diminished seventh). The recitative flows into a sort of arioso without interruption. The second violin describes a circular, waving line, consisting in semiquaver arpeggios with a graceful repeated note (on the long note values of the bass and the other strings): it almost invites Astiage to repose, though the unstable harmony, major/minor opposition (the tenor’s entrance is on a C minor chord) and deep (mostly descending) chromatic inflections may bear some hints of the tyrant’s trouble (see Example 14.3). Astiage’s long, anticipated notes (e.g. ‘par’) are a typical eighteenth-century pattern, perhaps suitable for the technique of messa di voce. The process of falling asleep is also shown in the music. On the last line, long rests interrupt and rarefy the vocal line – not the semiquaver pace of the second violin – before finally breaking down single words, while the accompaniment fades inconclusively on a C major chord. The attempt on the tyrant’s life finds a parallel in Act iii, Scene v: Cambise tries to kill Ciro, because he believes Ciro murdered his real son. This open confrontation between father and son re-elaborates the models of Amasis and the two Merope, as we shall see.
aspects of the mother–son confrontation In Metastasio’s libretto Mandane plays a main role in four scene sequences which lead climactically to the dénouement through sudden reversals of fortune. At the outset she longs to meet the man who pretends to be Ciro; the news of Cambise’s arrival (i. i–iii), however, interrupts her premonitions of seeing her son. The aria ‘Par che di giubilo’ (i. iii) invites almost ecstatic sounds, which Jommelli beautifully realises. When Mandane returns on stage (i. ix) her situation appears strikingly different, to the point that she comes to believe the accidental killing of her son by the shepherd Alceo (i. xi–xii). Mitridate then assures her that Alceo is her son (ii. i); she meets him (ii. viii), but – once more – her emotional state settles in the space of a scene. Cambise, who has in turn been misled into holding Alceo and Mitridate responsible for his son’s death, persuades Mandane that Mitridate has deceived her (ii. ix). The truth emerges when it seems too late to impede the murder of Ciro, but Mandane is still given the opportunity to save her son (iii. ii–v). In her second entrance Mandane accidentally causes the arrest of her husband, and in vain intercedes on his behalf. Her despair culminates in the exclamations explicating the contrasting affects towards her father and her husband
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 265 Ex. 14.3 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, i. viii, ‘Sciolto dal suo timor’: (a) bb. 1–8; (b) bb. 22–6 (a)
A tempo
violino 1 tenute
violino 2
viola astiage
Sciol
-
to
dal
suo
ti - mor,
par
(i. xi).34 Alceo/Ciro’s sudden entrance adds motherly affections to her dilemma. He has escaped from the king’s soldiers after killing a man in self-defence, and now asks Mandane for help. His appearance causes a tumult in her heart; thus she is soon induced to believe that Alceo/Ciro acted in self-defence. 34 Ciro riconosciuto, i, p. 823, Act i, Scene xi. ‘Oh padre! oh sposo! oh me dolente!
e come …’. The following consideration of Mandane’s tumult at the sight of Ciro refers to the line ‘Qual mai tumulto in petto / Quel pastorel mi desta!’
266 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 14.3 continued (b)
lan...
gui - di ...
gli_ oc...
chi...
mie - i...
Maffei’s Merope (i. iii) contains a similar situation (i. iii). Cresfonte’s manners impress his unknown mother, Queen Merope. Although he is accused of murder, Merope feels pity for him while she listens to his account of the events. Thus Metastasio’s dramatic plan of this mother–son confrontation in Act i, Scene xi owes something to Maffei’s example, but the versification is entirely his own. For added effect, for instance, Alceo/Ciro tells the facts in the present, whilst in Merope the hero’s monologue is mostly in the past. To be concise – as libretto writing must be – Metastasio also disposes the episodes that follow. Only from the beginning of Act ii, and initially without any concrete evidence, does Merope begin to suspect that the victim of Cresfonte is her son, a delay which disappears in Ciro riconosciuto. As soon as the account is finished, Metastasio reveals the identity of the man who has been killed. Arpalice joins Mandane and Alceo/Ciro on the stage (Scene xii), and informs us that (the false) Ciro has died by Alceo’s
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 267 hand.35 Mandane’s outburst at the news culminates in her exit aria, ‘Rendimi il figlio mio’. This scene, which involves Arpalice, Mandane and Alceo/Ciro, finds its parallel in Zeno’s Merope, where Merope meets her son Epitide and the confrontation climaxes in the heroine’s aria (Act ii, Scene iii). But narrative technique, plot and rhetorical strategy bring about different effects. In Zeno’s libretto the real heir to the throne, Epitide, aware that others do not know his identity, feigns that Epitide has been murdered on his way to the court. Merope, however, does not find his account convincing, questions Epitide and, finally, accuses him of the killing. Although she laments the loss of her son, her desire for revenge pervades her speech and exit aria (see below). In Ciro riconosciuto the situation is more problematic: Alceo/Ciro has confessed to his ‘crime’, justifying Mandane’s hatred. Although she gives him into the custody of the king’s soldiers, she only touches upon the possibility of revenge. Rather, Mandane expresses sorrow. Even the opening of her exit aria sounds intensely sad, so much so that, despite being addressed markedly to Alceo/ Ciro, it may invoke a more generic entity (such as the fate, gods or simply the audience). Mandane (Ciro riconosciuto, i. xii) Merope (Merope, ii. iii) Col mio figlio sventurato Rendimi il figlio mio: Tu di madre, o scellerato, Ah! mi si spezza il cor. Il bel nome a me togliesti, Non son più madre, oh Dio! E seco la mia pace, ed il mio bene. Non ho più figlio. Ma di madre in questo core Qual barbaro sarà, Resta il duol, resta l’ amore, Che, a tanto mio dolor, 36 Per far le mie vendette, e le tue pene. Non bagni per pietà Di pianto il ciglio?37
In Jommelli’s setting (Allegro assai, c, G minor) the first line is set as a selfcontained four-bar phrase (Example 14.4), in which the ending echoes the very 35 It is fairly common that new crucial information is given as a (sort of) coup de
théâtre through a character’s entrance. The procedure is also found in Metastasio’s librettos, where it often serves to emphasise specific motifs, such as the death and innocence of the main characters.
36 Apostolo Zeno, Poesie drammatiche, iv, p. 135. ‘By depriving me of my unfortunate
son, you villain, you deprived me of the lovely name of mother; you deprived me of my peace and happiness. But motherly sorrow and love remain in my heart: they will prompt my revenge and your pain.’
37 Ciro riconosciuto, i, p. 827. ‘Give me back my son: ah! my heart is breaking. Oh
god, I am a mother no more; I have a son no more. Who could be so cruel as not to weep for pity over my sorrow?’
268 Music as Social and Cultural Practice beginning. Jommelli repeats a bare vocal cadence (possibly to be ornamented by the singer). The musical isolation of the incipit reinforces the indicative gesture of the imperative, and to some extent suggests the atmosphere of the whole aria.38 Jommelli’s music does not seem to express sadness or resignation. Rather, the semiquaver figures of the violins, the setting of the second line in the relative B flat major and the rising motion on the last line of the first quatrain convey a sense of heroic (rather than pathetic) feeling – an aspect absent from the poetry. The second vocal section changes the order and recombines the keywords. It opens by breaking the vocal line (‘Ah! … no … non son più madre/ Ah! … no … non ho più figlio’) with semiquaver figures in the violins. Thus the phrase as a whole appears to be increasingly generated from the interaction of the vocal line and the more determined instrumental sounds. The expression of sadness is left to the middle section, through the minor mode, chromatically descending motion, syncopations and appoggiaturas, bringing about sympathy (rather than admiration) for the character. Mandane’s troubles culminate in the climactic scenes of Act iii, which lead to the hero’s discovery by his parents. In Metastasio’s libretto Mandane does not personally try to kill Ciro, and learns the truth while Cambise is supposed to be murdering Ciro offstage. This solution allows the poet to write a long monologue for Mandane (iii. iii) and to depict the spontaneous fluctuation of feelings: at least remorse, shame and hope, for she cannot know yet whether the crime has been accomplished.39 Jommelli intervenes with horns (also soli), and freely puts an extraordinary effort into exquisite orchestration, developing dramatic identification mostly through the instrumental component.40 From the start, powerful violin figurations and many emphatic tempo changes – often employing tutti pauses for added effect – are probably meant to highlight imbalance. The reminiscing 38 Something similar is found in Jommelli’s setting of ‘Parto, non ti sdegnar’ (ii. xii,
Ciro to Mandane). Here the opening phrase returns as a frame at the end of the second vocal section, with inversion of the line in accordance with the text and dramatic situation. On the common choice of relating an imperative to an indicative musical gesture see the discussion of Handel’s ‘Mirami altero in volto’ (Arianna in Creta, 1734) in Strohm, ‘Arianna in Creta: Musical Dramaturgy’, p. 226.
39 The fluctuation of feelings in monologues is suitable for a setting in accompanied
recitative, according to Stefano Arteaga, Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano dalla sua origine fino al presente (Bologna, 1783–8; repr. Bologna, 1969), i, p. 48 (‘quando l’ anima, ondeggiando in un tumulto d’ affetti contrari, sentesi tormentata dalle proprie dubbiezze senza però sapere a qual partito piegare’).
40 Jommelli chooses to highlight other two recitatives with an instrumental accom-
paniment: Arpalice’s monologue at the end of Act ii and Ciro’s persuasive speech to the rebel crowd in the last scene. It is no surprise that here only the strings are charged with the accompaniment and their figures are not so effective.
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 269 Ex. 14.4 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, i. xii, ‘Rendimi il figlio mio’, first vocal section, bb. 1–6 Allegro assai violino 1 p
violino 2 ( p)
viola
( p)
mandane Ren- di - mi,
ren
-
di - mi_il fi
-
glio
( p)
f
(f)
(f)
mi
-
o,
il
fi
-
glio
mi - o:
p
ah,
(f)
p
over recent episodes (the son’s speech, his resistance to parting),41 in Adagio e piano, is particularly impressive (see Example 14.5). The minor mode, diminished seventh chords and long rests indicate that she finds it painful to remember the past, while the instrumental figures seem to embody her recollections of her son’s voice. The sigh ‘and I, tyrannous!’, joined to this section, leads into the Presto. Here the horns and the semiquaver figures of the violins serve to illustrate the exclamations ‘what horror!’ and ‘what cruelty!’ (Example 14.6). The Larghetto opening that follows deploys imitation to allow the emotions aroused by the vision of Ciro to unfold. This resembles an ombra scene, which until and including Metastasio consists poetically of ‘a succinct, rhetorically 41 Ciro riconosciuto, i, p. 851, Act iii, Scene iii. ‘Ancor lo sento / Parlar; lo veggo ancor.
Povero figlio! / Non voleva lasciarmi: il suo destino / Parea che prevedesse. Ed io, tiranna! … / Ed io … Che orror! che crudeltà!’
270 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 14.5 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, iii. iii, ‘Oh me infelice’, bb. 18–21 Adagio e piano violino 1
violino 2
viola
mandane An - cor
sen
-
to
par - lar, lo veg - go_an - cor.
lo
Po - ve - ro fi - glio!
formulated image’.42 The stepwise, circular motion of the violins, as well as the low pitches, seems to evoke horrific images associated with the tableau of ‘the miserable, disconsolate shade dripping with blood’ (Example 14.7). Other imitative gestures follow in the ‘Forte e presto’ section, and are turned into even more emphatic musical allegories: indeed, the music seems almost to represent the ‘abyss’ as endless and the ‘lightning’ as a fatal weapon.43 The timid rising of hopes is likewise illustrated with accompanying figures filling in long rests in the vocal line. The orchestra is here both a medium of the heroine’s innermost thoughts and a partner functional to a dramatisation of the performer’s skill. These means of expression are rooted in the theory of accompanied recitative itself. It recommended a musical technique of interruptions and effects that 42 Strohm, Dramma per musica, p. 15. 43 Ciro riconosciuto, i, p. 851. ‘Veggo di Ciro / L’ ombra squallida e mesta, / Che stil-
lante di sangue … Ah! dove fuggo? / Dove m’ ascondo? Un precipizio, un ferro, / Un fulmine dov’ è?’
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 271 Ex. 14.6 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, iii. iii, ‘Oh me infelice’, pp. 26–30 Presto corno 1
(f)
corno 2
(f)
violino 1 (f)
violino 2 (f)
viola f
mandane Ed io ti - ran -na!... Ed
i - o...
f
Che_or - ror!
showed the unpredictability of the character’s experience and his/her contrasting feelings. Instruments may thereby penetrate the innermost recesses of the heart, while the voice stops singing.44 44 Arteaga, Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano, p. 49 (‘lo stile [of the recitativo
accompagnato] dee conseguentemente essere vibrato e interciso, che mostri nell’ andamento suo la sospensione di chi parla e il turbamento, e che lasci alla musica strumentale l’ incombenza di esprimere negli intervalli della voce ciò che tace il cantante.’)
272 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 14.7 Jommelli, Ciro riconosciuto, iii. iii, ‘Oh me infelice’, bb. 45–52 violino 1
violino 2
viola
mandane Veg- go di Ci - ro
me - sta,
l’om- bra squal - li - da_e
che stil - lan - te di san - gue...
Ah!
do - ve
Metastasio then stages the attempted murder, but it is Cambise who brandishes the sword against his son. Mandane faints when she sees her husband come onto the stage with a bloody sword (Scene iv). An effective coup de théâtre shatters this untruth: Ciro suddenly enters (Scene v). Unfortunately Cambise, still unaware of his identity, wants revenge; Mandane awakes just in time to inform him that he is killing the real Ciro. She thus prevents the unknowing father from killing his son. By contrast, in Amasis and Maffei’s Merope the unknowing mother is stopped by the confidant just before accomplishing the same crime. Consanguinity renders the situation more pathetic. Similarly, the fact that Mandane lies in a faint causes the scene to be dramatically well planned, with enhanced suspense. But the image of a mother brandishing the sword against her own son is certainly more impressive than that of a father acting in the same way. The solution offered by Merope, on the other hand, would probably not have suited a celebratory occasion such as the empress’s birthday. And had it been adopted,
Menchelli-Buttini • Literary Motifs in Ciro riconosciuto 273 Ex. 14.7 continued Forte e presto
fug - go?
- pi - zio,
Do - ve m’a - scon - do?
un
Un pre - ci -
fer - ro,
there would have been no opportunity to write an affecting monologue for Mandane. Metastasio’s solution also had a precedent. In Zeno’s Merope Epitide finally reveals the truth to his mother, but, not believing him, she orders his killing. When his real identity emerges beyond doubt, it is too late: Merope in vain rushes offstage to stop the murderer, as Trasimede reports on the accomplished deed. Zeno writes a monologue for Merope after she has been told about her son’s death: trying to attract pity for the character, he has Merope lament the death of Epitide in a typical ombra scene. In comparison with Metastasio’s choices in Ciro riconosciuto, this seems a more conventional solution, as is Epitide’s reappearance in the last scene of the drama.45 Moreover, whilst Zeno’s Merope weeps over her loss, Mandane is uncertain – for Ciro’s 45 This procedure is also found in Metastasio. For example, in Siroe, Ezio and
Alessandro nell’ Indie the hero, whose death is generally believed, reappears in the final scene, resolving the conflicts.
274 Music as Social and Cultural Practice death cannot be known for sure. Remorse and shame do not entirely overcome hope: Arpago perhaps arrived in time, or Cambise failed in his plan. These opposite feelings perhaps compensate for the impossibility of developing a true dilemma throughout the drama, a lack which Metastasio criticises in the Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile (see above). His tight organisation of Act iii, on the other hand, is indispensable to the staging of the hero’s attempted murder, as in the tragic models of Amasis and Maffei’s Merope (but not in Zeno’s Merope). Ciro riconosciuto, therefore, creates compassion by appeals to the eye as well as the ear.
conclusion Eighteenth-century opera favoured almost stereotypical formal schemes and conventions for the text and the music but also a thousand variants which guaranteed the flexibility of the genre. Librettists and composers were forced to adapt to circumstances of production. There existed, however, a dialectic between the interpretation of the status of dramma per musica as event-like and work-constituted.46 Metastasio’s librettos were published in collected editions and at the same time underwent rearrangements in the theatres (which often led to a shift in emphasis from verbal to musical content, such as in Jommelli’s characterisation of Astiage). Similarly, the musical settings were often alluded to as a work of a certain composer but in coexistence with the practice of borrowing, transferring arias and creating pasticcio forms. Literary aspirations to establish opera as a theatrical genre in its own right came to be related to an increasing identification of music and drama. Strohm has claimed that this further development was sought in two directions: the cultivation of accompanied recitative and the overwhelming role of the instrumental and musical component.47 Metastasio’s recognition of Jommelli’s skill in translating words into notes shows that he regarded music as subsidiary and a vehicle of poetry. Musical technique could penetrate into the corners of verbal structure without endangering its priority. On the other hand, as I have tried to show in the above discussion, at crucial dramatic points in his Ciro riconosciuto, Jommelli strengthened the musical-orchestral medium, following both current trends in accompanied recitative and the emerging partnership between instruments and voice. These trends can be viewed in terms of a ‘dramatization’ of music and ‘musicalization’ of drama towards a definition of opera as a piece of autonomous music. 46 See above, p. 252. The references to the musical work-concept follow Strohm, ‘The
Problem with the Musical Work-Concept’, pp. 148–9.
47 Strohm, Dramma per musica, p. 15.
• 15 • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica Berta Joncus
S
tars were perhaps more crucial to dramma per musica than to any other musical enterprise in Italy during the eighteenth century. Yet modern research on eighteenth-century singers generally fails to provide any methodology for how stars were produced, and how they interacted with the works they performed. This essay seeks to fill this gap. I will first outline influential twentieth-century theories in musicology on the relationship between the vocalist and the dramma per musica. I will then examine the means by which scholars in other disciplines recognise stars both as historical phenomena and as signifying elements within productions. Finally, I will suggest methods for applying theories about star production to dramma per musica in a manner that fits the historical conditions of this repertory.
the work-concept and the performer Dramma per musica came into being by ‘clothing’ a revered libretto in music written for specific performers; once the cast changed, so did the music. For this genre, the live production as well as the prepared text could constitute the work. This process of realisation challenges two hypotheses central to traditional notions of the ‘work-concept’ and the role of the performer: that ‘works’ are benchmarks that must be preserved and imitated, and that the work emerged as such because composition had divorced itself from social function and from lyrics. Historical evidence tells us that the drammi per musica were considered works without fulfilling either criteria. While the librettos constituted a much revered literary canon, librettos were consistently adapted and music During the last twenty years studies on the history of famous vocalists have flour-
ished; more recently, potential exchange between the persona and the music of the singer has come under scrutiny. See Suzanne Aspden, ‘Identità in scena sul palco lirico londinese: Faustina Bordoni versus Francesca Cuzzoni’, Händel e il dramma per musica, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi (Florence, forthcoming). Other writings on singers are cited in the course of this essay.
Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy
of Music (Oxford, 1992), pp. 89–119. Her theories, as well as those of authors on whom she draws, are critiqued in Reinhard Strohm, ‘The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?’, Looking Back at Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical WorkConcept, ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 128–52.
276 Music as Social and Cultural Practice g enerally newly composed for each run. Social function was a means of helping to fix a work’s status, with court rituals generating elaborate productions that were later commemorated. Acclaimed performances by singers could also be recalled and reinvented; a performance such as Hasse’s 1730 setting of Artaserse with Farinelli could become, like a post-1800 musical work, a ‘fictional object’ existing ‘over and above [other] performances and the score’ that was reimagined in print, iconography and later productions. One query central to grasping the dramma per musica as a work is the means by which singers might mould the work before, during and after its performance. Reinhard Strohm, in his extensive scholarship on the dramma per musica, persistently returns to this point. In his overview of Handel’s operas, he stresses that a famous opera singer shaped the work (the ‘actual theatrical event’). In his words, ‘what was clearly fixed and predetermined about any production … had so little to with the score and so much to do with the presentation of the drama by a single, individual singer that a revival of an opera seria today should really concentrate less on what Handel or Hasse wrote than on what Senesino or Farinelli did with the chief role’. Strohm has also called for theoretical models to clarify how in dramma per musica the principal singer’s ‘voice’ – a term embracing the vocalist’s instrument, casting history, personality, and renowned qualities – interacts with other voices bound up in the work (‘theatrical event’). He criticises modern theories on voice and authorship for excluding the singer’s voice in all its complexity, and offers an alternative perspective on the ‘diffraction’ of voices within Goehr, Imaginary Museum, p. 106. On the history of Farinelli’s appearances in this
opera, see Anne Desler, ‘From Oh virtu che innamora! to Son pastorello amante: Farinelli and Metastasio’s Artaserse’, Music Observed: Studies in Memory of William C. Holmes, ed. Colleen Reardon and Susan Parisi (Detroit, 2004), pp. 117– 38. On the promotion and reception of Farinelli in this role, see Thomas McGeary, ‘Farinelli in England: “The Blazing Star” over Albion’, Il fantasma del Farinelli: Centro studi Farinelli (1998–2003) saggi e conferenze, ed. Luigi Verdi (Lucca, 2005), pp. 9–24 and Leslie Griffin Hennessey, ‘Friends Serving Itinerant Muses: Jacopo Amigoni and Farinelli in Europe’, Italian Culture in Northern Europe in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Shearer West (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 20–45.
Reinhard Strohm, ‘Towards an Understanding of Opera Seria’, Essays on Handel
and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985), p. 98. Strohm revisits this notion throughout this volume, as in ‘Handel’s Pasticci’, ‘Leonardo Vinci’s Didone abbandonata (Rome 1726)’, and ‘Comic Traditions in Handel’s Orlando’, pp. 166, 224, 249–53. He also discusses the centrality of the singer to the work in his Dramma per musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 21, 70–4, 100–1, 105–6, 13, 278, and in ‘Italian Operisti North of the Alps c.1700–c.1750’, The Eighteenth-Century Diaspora of Italian Music and Musicians, ed. Reinhard Strohm (Turnhout, 2001), pp. 15–17, 32–3, 47–8, 56–7.
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 277 the work. Rejecting both the tripartite division of the score into composer/ performer/fictional character (Edward T. Cone) and the perception of ‘multiple musical voices’ emanating from the score alone (Carolyn Abbate), Strohm insists that the ‘work performed’ is made up from a ‘conglomeration of voices’ falling roughly into five categories – stories, authors, fictional characters, performers and listeners/readers. Such an approach requires the integration of musical analysis with information about historical reception to illuminate how a work came to assume a specific form. It calls for an act of reconstruction based on evidence about performers and audiences as well as authors, texts and sources. Because dramma per musica was so frequently designed around a famous singer, a methodology accounting specifically for the vocalist’s contribution is vital.
identifying stardom at work To expand Strohm’s methods for recovering the singer’s voice, we must ask why one vocalist was favoured over another. Historians recognise that certain singers achieved a following unmatched by rivals, and label such performers stars. What is a star? For musicologists, the star is a singer whose virtuosity exceeds that of others. For theatre and cinema scholars, stars are commodities. Unusual talent may (or may not) aid a star’s rise to fame; once a star, however, talent and skill constitute one characteristic among others contributing to the performer’s unique valuation in the marketplace. This valuation of stars depends on their irreproducibility: to obtain and maintain their worth, stars must integrate technical skill with ‘personality’ or other qualities that appear inherent to the individual. The irony of stars is that their value, while seeming to reside in the intrinsic, is fixed by a dynamic entirely extrinsic – consumer demand. That which is attractive at any historical juncture may vary, but the demand for stars remains, so long as the commercial environment that gives rise to it is in place. Scholars recognise stardom at work when a specific performer becomes essential to the marketing and dissemination of an entertainment. That stars were formative in the production and reception of dramma per musica is a commonplace. Interestingly, the earliest use of the word ‘star’ to mean ‘celebrity’ Reinhard Strohm, ‘Zenobia: Voices and Authorship in Opera Seria’, Johann
Adolf Hasse in seiner Epoche und in der Gegenwart: Studien zur Stil- und Quellen problematik, ed. Szymon Paczkowski and Alina Żórawska-Witkowska (Warsaw, 2002), pp. 53–8.
This explanation is informed by the Marxist reading of stardom proposed in
Barry King, ‘The Star and the Commodity: Notes towards a Performance Theory of Stardom’, Cultural Studies 1, no. 2 (1987), pp. 149–51.
278 Music as Social and Cultural Practice of which I am aware was in connection with Farinelli, in 1726. Yet opera historians have never brought approaches in scholarship about modern stars to bear on how stardom might have functioned in the business of dramma per musica. This omission may be due in part to a general misapprehension among scholars that the particular economic, social and technical conditions of the American film industry – an enterprise basically different from Baroque opera – produces the archetypical star and typifies the means for generating stars. Only recently have historians begun to analyse powerful and efficient systems of star production before and outside Hollywood. Scholars are discovering that practices once considered requisite for stardom (such as media reports of the star’s private life, or vehicles showcasing the star’s ‘real’ personality, both of which foster viewers’ identification with the star) were not used to produce stars of, for instance, late nineteenth-century German theatre or the cinema of the Weimar Republic. On the other hand, methods of profiling performers that were once held to impede star production – prizing their virtuosity, or respecting their privacy – actually helped to create non-Hollywood stars. In dramma per musica, a particular kind of virtuosity, such as brilliant passaggi or sustained messa di voce, could distinguish a star not only from inferior singers, but also from other stars. Dramatic style could also flag the star and inspire works on her behalf, as in the case of Marianna Benti Bulgarelli.10 Owen McSwiney, describing Farinelli’s swift rise to fame, wrote from Venice to
the Duke of Richmond in Italy ‘I am just returned from Parma where I heard ye divine Farinelli (another blazing star) …’. Elizabeth Gibson, The Royal Academy of Music (1719–1728): The Institution and its Directors (New York, 1989), Appendix. ‘Star’ is used elsewhere in contemporary English theatrical biography, as in the 1731 biography of actress Anne Oldfield: ‘But Mrs. Oldfield’s Voice, Figure and Manner of Playing soon made her shine out, even here, the brightest Star.’ [Edmund Curll], Faithful Memoirs of the Life of … Mrs Anne Oldfield (London, 1731), p. 31. The online Oxford English Dictionary dates the definition of star as ‘A person of brilliant reputation or talents’ from 1844. See ‘Star’, .
Research on stardom in non-Hollywood entertainment is led by, among others,
Christine Gledhill (on melodrama), Thomas Elsaesser and Joseph Garncarz (on German cinema), Stephen Gundle (on Italian cinema), Ginette Vincendeau (on French cinema), Geoffrey Macnab (on British cinema) and Anna Stettner (on nineteenth-century German theatre).
For example, see Pier Francesco Tosi’s observations on the differences between
the sopranos Faustina Bordoni and Francesa Cuzzoni below, n. 32. Contem porary descriptions of the distinctive vocal strengths of the singers in Merope (1734) are quoted extensively in Sylvie Mamy, ed., La Merope [musica di] Geminiano Giacomelli; [libretto di] Apostolo Zeno e Domenico Lalli (Milan, 1984), pp. xxxix–xci.
10 Strohm, ‘Leonardo Vinci’s Didone abbandonata’, p. 216. Benti was celebrated for
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 279 Such recent evaluations permit a definition of stardom relevant not only to American film, but also to the European screen and stage since the mideighteenth century. These writings describe characteristics which may pertain to dramma per musica stars as well as their modern counterparts. 1. Stars are both product and producer of product. That is, a star is a cultural item acquired for consumption, and one among many who generates that item. As product, a star’s inclusion raises the entertainment’s value to consumers. As producer, would-be stars typically contribute to their own production in one of two ways. Players may either foster an overlap between their ‘real’ and projected selves – leaving control of their persona in the hands of their employers – or they may assert their own control by emphasising discontinuities between their performed and private selves. The star may become both agent and proprietor of an image that exists independently from the work, but in response to the shared beliefs of spectators.11 2. Stars must distinguish themselves from rivals. A star’s characteristic qualities may stem from performance – for instance, an unparalleled skill or typical execution – physiognomy, or projected personality. To foster recognition among audiences, the self-representation or meta-character of a star must be consistent across performances. Rather than dissolving within a fictional characterisation, the star replays herself or himself according to established expectations, often disregarding authorial intent.12 Stars often re-enact this self-representation outside the spectacle, and invite scrutiny of such moments. The star may also resist conventions of conduct; indeed, challenging on- and off-stage norms is often essential to demonstrate the star’s transcendence of strictures binding the average performer or consumer.13 Stars may not break social taboos, however; otherwise they risk alienating their supporters.14 her acting and presence; she became Metastasio’s lover, and she may have helped him write one of her key roles, Didone in Didone abbandonata (1724).
11 Barry King, ‘Stardom as an Occupation’, The Hollywood Film Industry, ed. Paul
Kerr (London, 1986), pp. 168–70.
12 Barry King, ‘Articulating Stardom’, Screen 26, no. 5 (1985), pp. 27–50. 13 Violette Morin, ‘Les Olympiens’, Communications 2 (1962), pp. 105–21. Morin
argues that stars achieve their ranking by appearing to be different in kind from others; this allows them to transcend what is quotidian and become ordered within ‘the superlative’, reaching thereby a different ‘ontological category’.
14 The most famous example of this pattern was Ingrid Bergman, who, by having
an affair, quitting her marriage and bearing the child of her lover (Roberto Rossellini), alienated her backers and her fans. Joseph Garncarz, ‘Die Schauspielerin wird Star: Ingrid Bergman – eine öffentliche Kunstfigur’, Die Schauspielerin: Zur Kulturgeschichte der weiblichen Bühnenkunst, ed. Renate Möhrmann (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), pp. 321–44.
280 Music as Social and Cultural Practice 3. As product, the star fills a semiotic function. The star constitutes a set of signs that the spectator decodes together with other signs – genre, mis-enscène, gesture – within the work. The star embodies multiple and often contradictory meanings, which are finite in number but, like all texts, open to countless interpretations. The semiotic relationship between the star and other signs making up the work is flexible: producers may foreground the star, subordinating other signs to highlight the star’s particular characteristics, or utilise the star as signifier to articulate messages within a production. When using the star for specific aims, producers cannot always determine audience reception, which may unexpectedly impose a new reading of the star’s image. Similarly, publicity and promotion can change the star’s image, which lies not in the work, but in each spectator’s mind. The viewer pieces together the star persona from performances, the subtexts of star vehicles, and evolving public information.15 4. Stardom is a process by which the player is mythologised. ‘Mythologising’, in the pioneering interpretation of Roland Barthes, proceeds by means of a dual signification, wherein a sign is given yet emptied of its primary signification in order to construct a larger narrative. Thus recontextualised, a sign such as an aria is forced to interact with other signifiers, thereby modifying its meaning. Rather than being the end result of signification, the music then becomes a constituent part of a ‘second system’ of meanings aiming to elucidate the subject of the picture, the sitter. ‘Mythologising’ involves both this process of imposing new meanings on a previously signifying object and the attendant impoverishment of that object’s original meaning.16 To mythologise the star efficiently, star production relies on signs readily grasped by the spectator and seeks to disseminate the star’s mythologising materials among audiences. Because of the multiplicity of meanings that iconography can transmit, images rank as one the most effective means of mythologising the player and proliferate as the star’s popularity rises.17 15 Richard Dyer pioneered the analysis of stars according to semiotic theory. Many
leading scholars have taken up his approach, such as Christine Gledhill, John O. Thompson and Christine Geraghty. See Richard Dyer, Stars (1979; rev. edn London, 1998), pp. 87–134. An overview of Dyer’s arguments about the ‘star text’ is found in Jeremy G. Butler, ‘The Star System and Hollywood’, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill et al. (Oxford, 1998), pp. 350–2. Several key articles on the semiotics of stardom are reprinted in Part iii: ‘Performers and Signs’ in Stardom: the Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill (London and New York, 1991).
16 Roland Barthes, ‘Myth Today’, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London, 2000),
pp. 109–59.
17 Richard Dyer, ‘Introduction’, The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations, 2nd
edn (London and New York, 2002), pp. 1–5.
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 281 5. Stars help bind audiences together, generating supporters whose exhibition of shared taste may coalesce into a group identity. Stars thereby expose, and may help regulate, meanings and values commonly held at a specific historical moment. Stars attract fans by mirroring ideals (aesthetic or behavioural), by invoking sympathy, or by stimulating sexual interest. Scholars of stars seek to analyse the shared values and desires (‘ideology of stardom’) symbolised by the star. In addition to being one of the means of binding together audiences, sexual attraction can also function as a promotional nexus. Stars are commonly, although not necessarily, sites of desire: as producers, they negotiate, manipulate or may fall victim to sexual biases; as products, they are the objects of collective impulses.18 This is just one way in which star reception encompasses and conflates public concerns with private responses. Star scholarship must account for both, exploring the social needs to which the image speaks, and describing the ideal intimate spectator that the appeal presupposes. 6. Stars must appear to be available to supporters, but in fact retain distance from them. Demand for the star must outstrip supply, to ensure that the star’s value increases. Yet to encourage support among audiences, the star must seem to remain within reach. This is achieved through publicity recalling the star’s performance and simulating physical proximity to the star. ‘Virtual’ access to the star enables fans both to consume a prized commodity and to affirm a belief system for which the star stands. These can become intertwined: the act of acquiring the star – through attending performances, obtaining publicity items, organising engagements, or seeking personal contact – can add a prerequisite of purchasing power to the community of audience taste discussed above. Music scholars have investigated separate aspects of singers’ histories, notably the dramma per musica star’s involvement with the labour of stardom and differentiation from rivals; the mythologising of and formation of group identity around the star; the erotic pleasures of the voice.19 These studies, 18 Laura Mulvey’s definition of the male gaze is the starting point for multiple studies
on the instrumentalisation of sexuality for promotion and what this tells us about viewers. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16, no. 3 (1975), pp. 14–35. Writings on this topic most relevant to the dramma per musica star would seem those locating ‘lost’ audiences, their desires and their patterns of identification with the star. See, for instance, Jackie Stacey, ‘Feminine Fascinations: Forms of Identification in Star–Audience Relations’, Stardom: The Industry of Desire, ed. Gledhill, pp. 141–63.
19 Musical evidence of a singer’s unique methods of improvisation is given in Franz
Haboeck, Die Gesangskunst der Kastraten. Erster Notenband: A. Die Kunst des avaliere Carlo Broschi Farinelli … eine Stimmbiographie in Beispielen, etc. (Vienna, C
282 Music as Social and Cultural Practice however, demand synthesising into a process of star production. Case studies of individual star singers would show how these means of stardom merged within a star’s career and would point up differences between the production of each stars, and how these differences relate to gender. Such studies would also shed light on the interdependence between producing the star and producing the work, which, as cinema scholars remind us, cannot be separated. Most importantly, evaluating these processes would aid scholars in recognising the star’s agency in creating his or her own persona, and thereby in co-authoring the works that feature it.
stars and their spheres Musicologists may agree that top singers possessed, at least in part, the features of stars described above. Yet they, together with scholars interested in stars, might object that opera stars could neither reflect the taste of their audiences nor leave their imprint on the work, owing to the constraints of star production during the eighteenth century. According to such scholars, the star can reflect audience taste and mould the work only when certain economic, social and technological conditions are met. First, there must be a diversity of potential star product that is priced competitively; this requires a surplus of output and of labour in the entertainment market. Second, to ensure efficient production and distribution, entertainment must be centralised and its forms of labour specialised. Third, consumers must have the financial means to purchase what they want and the freedom to choose. ‘Taste’ must therefore 1923) and George J. Buelow, ‘A Lesson in Operatic Performance Practice by Madame Faustina Bordoni’, A Musical Offering: Essays in Honor of Martin Bernstein, ed. Edward H. Clinkscale and Claire Brooks (New York, c.1977), pp. 79–96. On the vocal characteristics of specific singers see C. Stephen Larue, Handel and his Singers: The Creation of the Royal Academy Operas, 1720–1728 (Oxford, 1995), p. 144 n. 3; Sylvie Mamy, Les Grands Castrats napolitains à Venise au xviiie siècle (Liège, c.1994); and Hubert Ortkemper, Engel wider Willen: Die Welt der Kastraten (Berlin, 1993). The last publication contains many valuable reports combining observations linking individual techniques of stars to their personalities. On the relation between singers’ iconography and their repertory, see Daniel Heartz, ‘Farinelli and Metastasio: Rival Twins of Public Favour’, Early Music 12 (1984), pp. 358–66 and id., ‘Farinelli Revisited’, Early Music 18 (1990), pp. 430–43. See also Franca T. Camiz, ‘The Castrato Singer: From Informal to Formal Portraiture’, Artibus et historiae 18 (1988), pp. 171–86. On individual singers’ portraits, see (among others) Michael Schwarte, ‘ “In des Fedi Parnass …”: Bildnisse des Sangers Anton Raaff (1714–1797)’, Traditionen-Neuansätze: Für Anna Amalie Abert (1906–1996), ed. Klaus Hortschansky (Tutzing, 1997), pp. 587–618 and Giancarlo Rostirolla, ‘Iconografia di un cantante del Settecento: Andrea Adami “il divino Bolsena” ’, Le immagini della musica: Atti del seminario di iconografia musicale, ed. Francesca Zannini (Rome, 1996), pp. 93–122.
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 283 be deinstitutionalised, with opinion-makers belonging to the public sphere instead of to an ideologically normative organisation such as the church. Finally, star marketing demands mass communications through which materials about the star can be reproduced, multiplied and transmitted. These conditions ensure the range, accessibility and affordability of the star product, its direct link with consumer taste and a flexibility of content that permits the work to be shaped in the star’s image.20 What distinguished dramma per musica from other contemporary forms of entertainment, however, was its ‘compromise between the absolutist ethic’ of major patrons and the ‘commercialism of the [operatic] system’.21 Commercialising the spectacle of the privileged introduced market pricing to it, expanded the numbers of potential performers, gave rise to specialisation within its production, and fostered the widespread coordination, if not centralisation, of works and styles. Its audiences became ‘semi-public’, its arbiters of taste the audience members themselves. Paradoxically, even the very exclusivity that continued to be maintained through ticket prices and seating arrangements consolidated a community through which news about the stars might efficiently spread. In short, dramma per musica during the eighteenth century was a nascent industry in which conditions requisite to star production existed in alternative or rudimentary form. How within this historical context dramma per musica met the criteria for star production – talent and entertainment surplus, centralised production, consumer freedom and means for marketing of stars – is discussed below. Musicologists have shown that there was a shift in the supply, training and circulation of Italian singers during the eighteenth century.22 The expanding numbers of singing teachers and the founding in Naples of conservatories – charitable institutions open to the needy as well as to paying attendees – supplemented the traditional forum of professional training, the church, to 20 The sociological parameters of stardom are explored in Francesco Alberoni, ‘The
Powerless Elite: Theory and Sociological Research on the Phenomena of Stars’, Sociology of Mass Communications, ed. Denis McQuail (London, 1972), pp. 75–98. The sociology of stardom is the subject of Barry King’s unpublished dissertation, ‘The Social Significance of Stardom’ (1974), summarised in Dyer, Stars (1998), pp. 7–20.
21 Franco Piperno, ‘Opera Production to 1780’, The History of Italian Opera: Opera
Production and its Resources, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (Chicago, 1998), iv, pp. 1–79.
22 John Rosselli, ‘The Castrati as Professional Group and Social Phenomenon’, Acta
Musicologica 60 (1988), pp. 143–79, and id., ‘From Princely Service to the Open Market: Singers of Italian Opera and their Patrons, 1600–1850’, Cambridge Opera Journal 1, no. 1 (1989), pp. 1–32. These findings are summarised in John Rosselli, Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession (Cambridge, 1992).
284 Music as Social and Cultural Practice g enerate more singers than ever before.23 Naples was the training ground for castrati and for many leading composers of the dramma per musica.24 International demand for opera encouraged Italian musicians to look for work abroad, carrying with them the practices of their earlier workplaces.25 The term ‘opera production’ implies two perspectives: an opera’s creation and its presentation. Dramma per musica was decentralised, but increasingly coordinated into an opera circuit, as the well-known 1764 almanac of opera performances throughout Italy shows.26 The circuit allowed singers to achieve continuity in their engagements and let major theatres pass productions onto smaller provincial houses to reap further profits. Travellers on the Grand Tour incorporated the circuit into their itineraries.27 The creation of ‘works’ was centralised through librettos. Not only were standard sources readapted, but starting from the mid-1720s there was tendency to rely on Metastasian librettos. Composers residing in operatic centres – Naples, Rome and Venice – led musical innovations. Though neither as geographically or administratively centralised as are modern entertainments, dramma per musica was networked through shared dramatic materials, musical vocabulary, performers and productions. Demand for operas led to more specialised jobs, such as the impresario or the agent,28 and categories of employment expanded to include set designers, architects, scene painters, typesetters, carpenters, lighting technicians and legal consultants, among others.29 The most specialised musicians, the star singers, were symptomatic of this trend.30 What of the consumer? Dramma per musica was the entertainment of ‘polite society’. With the rapid expansion of opera after 1700, however, the management of theatres formerly directed by aristocratic owners diversified, 23 Michael F. Robinson, Naples and Neapolitan Opera (Oxford, 1972), pp. 13–23. 24 Reinhard Strohm, Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento (1720–1730)
(Cologne, 1976), ii, p. 287.
25 Strohm, ‘Italian Operisti North of the Alps’, pp. 1–59. 26 Roberto Verti, ‘L’ Indice de’ teatrali spettacoli, Milan, Venise, Rome 1764–1823: Une
source pour l’histoire de l’ opera Italien’, Fontes artis musicae 32 (1985), pp. 209–11.
27 Rosselli, ‘From Princely Service to the Open Market: Singers of Italian Opera and
their Patrons, 1600–1850’, p. 28, and Jeremy Black, The British Abroad: The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century, 3rd edn (Stroud, 2003), p. 279.
28 Until 1760 agents were ‘amateur go-betweens’ rather than professionals. Profes-
sional agents seem to have emerged first in Bologna, which from 1700 replaced Rome as the centre for training and engaging singers. Rosselli, ‘From Princely Service to the Open Market’, p. 26.
29 Piperno, ‘Opera Production to 1780’, p. 41. 30 Strohm, ‘Italian Operisti North of the Alps’, p. 35.
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 285 many passing to associations which both administered and attended performances. Rather than a mass market, a pool of connoisseurs was formed, organised according to social hierarchy. Regardless of whether patrons or associations were in charge, what audiences could choose to watch was, by modern standards, severely restricted. For the principal houses, the major variables were predetermined: a purpose-built house, a canonic dramatic source, a fashionable musical setting, from five to seven singers hierarchically organised and an elite audience. In such an environment, ‘criticism’ was limited to gossip on the one hand and the commentary of cognoscenti in treatises and elsewhere on the other.31 A work’s ‘success’ was, rather than a box-office hit, generally defined as an enactment elegantly hypostatising the values promulgated by the plot; performances were usually judged by the technical skill with which this enactment was achieved.32 Where modern cinema has mass marketing, dramma per musica had a community of producers and consumers. Functions could be flexible in the upper echelons of dramma per musica production. Singers such as Faustina Bordoni, composers such as Vivaldi, and librettists or designers could adopt the role of impresario.33 Critics could be librettists, as was Count Algarotti (without success). Agents were typically amateurs, but might also run opera houses, as did Count Pepoli in Bologna.34 The career of Farinelli, the era’s greatest star, epitomises the intermingling of jobs, personnel and spectators 31 Music journalism did not exist in its modern sense, being at this time limited
to avvisi (weekly news-sheets issued by governing authorities), literary periodicals and ‘aristocratic monthlies’. Eleanor Selfridge-Field, ‘Opera Criticism and the Venetian Press’, Opera and Vivaldi, ed. Michael Collins and Elise K. Kirk (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), pp. 179–90. See also Thomas Edward Griffin and Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Musical References in the Gazzetta di Napoli, 1681–1725 (Berkeley, 1992), Foreword.
32 A celebrated example of this is Pier Francesco Tosi’s comparison between Faustina
and Cuzzoni: ‘Two of the fair Sex [are] of a Merit superior to all Praise … one [Faustina] is inimitable … with a prodigious Felicity in executing, and with a singular Brillant … which pleases to Excess. The delightful soothing Cantabile of the other, joined with the sweetness of a fine Voice, a perfect Intonation, Strictness of Time … are Qualifications particular and uncommon.’ Pier Francesco Tosi, Observations on the Florid Song, trans. John Galliard (London, 1742), pp. 170–1 [orig. published Bologna, 1723]. To such commentary one can also add the many odes to singers published during this period.
33 Piperno, ‘Opera Production to 1780’, p. 24. On Vivaldi, see Reinhard Strohm,
‘Vivaldi’s Career as an Opera Producer’, Antonio Vivaldi: Teatro musicale, cultura, e società, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giovanni Morelli (Florence, 1982), i, pp. 11–63.
34 Pepoli led the management of the Malvezzi theatre and was known in operatic
circles across Europe. Edward Corp, ‘Farinelli and the Circle of Sicinio Pepoli: A Link with the Stuart Court in Exile’, Eighteenth-Century Music 2 (2005), pp. 311–19.
286 Music as Social and Cultural Practice in dramma per musica.35 Engaged initially to sing exclusively for the Spanish king, the primo uomo began assuming impresarial duties and coaching singers, eventually directing all royal musical spectacles.36 In short, although labour within dramma per musica became more specialised, those occupying the more prestigious duties – librettists, singers, composers, impresarios and critics – could move between jobs, provided that they possessed the requisite skills. Within this internationalised community of producers and consumers, news about productions and featured stars travelled quickly. While literati might delineate a singer’s technical strengths or weaknesses, audiences related news of stars in gossip, letters and travel diaries.37 Librettos or music manuscripts, both of which circulated actively in operatic circles, could serve as aides-memoires of a singer’s performance.38 A star’s image could be reproduced in an astonishing variety of forms, ranging from caricatures (with notes about the performer) to print portraits (with epigrams), frontispieces, medallions, miniatures, wax statues and pastel and oil portraits.39 35 Strohm ascribes the ability to switch tasks in production to the impresario system
that permitted ‘personal union between composer, singer, librettist, impresario, theatre architect, and so forth’. Strohm, ‘Italian Operisti North of the Alps’, p. 33.
36 Details of Farinelli’s changing duties in Spain are found in Consolación Morales
Borrero, Fiestas reales en el Reinado de Fernando vi: Manuscrito de Carlos Broschi Farinelli (Madrid, 1972).
37 Theatrical news was a staple in travel journals such as those of Charles de Brosses
and Charles Burney. For commentary by French dignitaries visiting Italy, see Letizia Norci Cagiano de Azevedo, Lo specchio de viaggiatore: Scenari italiani tra Barocco e Romanticismo (Rome, 1992), pp. 13–132. For scandal-mongering about singers in Rome, see Fabrizio della Seta, ‘Il relator sincero (Cronache teatrali romane, 1739–1756)’, Studi musicali 9 (1980), pp. 73–116.
38 Information transmitted by librettos about individual productions is catalogued in
Claudio Sartori, I libretti italiani a stampa dalle origini al 1800: Catalogo analitico (Cuneo, 1990–4). On the spread of Metastasio’s librettos outward from Vienna, see Klaus Hortschansky, ‘Die Rezeption der Wiener Dramen Metastasios in Italien’, Venezia e il melodramma nel Settecento, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro (Florence, 1978), pp. 407–20.
39 Caricatures, dashed off or copied by opera lovers – most prominently Pierleone
Ghezzi, Anton Maria Zanetti and Marco Ricci – carried valuable information and circulated within opera circles. See, among others, Le caricature di Anton Maria Zanetti: Disegni della Fondazione Giorgio Cini, ed. Alessandro Bettagno (Milan, 1970); Edward Croft-Murray, ‘Venetian Caricatures: Introduction, Catalogue, Plates’, Venetian Drawings of the xvii and xviii Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle (London, 1957), pp. 137–211; and id., ‘The Algarotti–Gellman Album of 18th-Century Venetian Operatic Caricatures’, An Album of Eighteenth-Century Venetian Operatic Caricatures formerly in the Collection of the Count Algarotti (Toronto, 1980). Farinelli’s iconography mounted
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 287 The existence of basic requisites for commercial entertainment – surplus of musicians, organised production and distribution and audiences with access to publicity – allowed dramma per musica to be both a repertory and an enterprise in which promoting social privilege and satisfying spectator desire merged. What accommodated this strange partnership between seemingly antithetical entities was the ability of consumers and producers to adapt to changing social and economic environments. Dramma per musica, once considered a tendentious repertory of rigid forms, was a dynamic, self-propagating system. Far from foreclosing audience or singer participation, operatic production relied on exchanges between stars and spectators to stimulate demand for the spectacle. Audience demand for stars was a vital aspect of planning operatic productions at major centres, while stars and their supporters nurtured this demand during and outside performances.
star-gazing: locating the star in the work The specific environment of the dramma per musica set parameters not only for the evaluation of the star persona, but also for the integration and articulation of this persona within the work. The following section examines the star’s signifying function in dramma per musica in the light of modern star theory, looking first at the persona as signifier, second at the interaction between genre and persona, and finally at the star as emblem and embodiment.
Stars as Signifiers Where stardom is at work, scholars try to reconstruct the star persona in order to identify its presence and evaluate its meanings. Stars are distinguished from other players by being commodified, a process that involves their objectification as product, independent of the particulars of work and performance. This entails a reimagining of the performer, which can take place in different forums: in gossip, in the media and during performance. The performer’s own offstage activities can nourish this process. One may define the star persona as the totality of representations of the star at any given historical moment. It is built out of patterns of fictional representation (both live and captured for recollection, as in librettos in music manuscripts), mannerisms of delivery (e.g. characteristic gestures, physical and musical), offstage narratives (transmitted via publicity, scandal and biographical accounts), critical assessments, advertising and self-representation in iconography. Star production enables aspects of the persona to be modified, reorganised or added to during a star’s career, to over fifty representations, which are catalogued in Berta Joncus, ‘One God, so Many Farinellis: Mythologizing the Star Castrato’, British Journal for EighteenthCentury Studies 28 (2005), pp. 437–96 [special issue: Farinelli].
288 Music as Social and Cultural Practice although to function as a marketing tool the persona must remain identifiable. To recover the star as signifier in dramma per musica therefore requires collating historical materials about the star and assessing to what degree they were disseminated. Evidence must be organised chronologically to reflect changes in the myth of the star. Piecing together such a collective view identifies the persona in the work, shows the indebtedness of the work to the persona and clarifies the range of referents for which the persona stands.40 Scholars of stars also seek to determine how audiences read the star. This in turn demands clarity about how works produce meanings for audiences. As Martha Feldman has shown, dramma per musica was a ritual in which fixed elements (poetic and musical forms, narrative structure, plots, the values that plots promulgated, stage gesture, spatial organisation, singer and audience decorum) were bonded to unfixed behaviour (musical improvisation, exchanges between singers and audience, fractured spectatorship, breaks with decorum by audiences and singers). The fixed elements and the unfixed responses created a dialectic from which the meanings of the event emerged. Standard forms were reworked to allow both audience and performer to experience affective climaxes afresh. Within the story, familiar dilemmas – typically between the bonds of kinship and courtship – culminated in moments of resolution whose impact depended on performer and audience alike. The star singer realised full affective display through artistry and the audience generated transformative energy largely through spontaneous response.41 Such culminating moments usually took place during the aria. Here poetry and music left the action alone to frame the protagonist’s state of mind: audiences broke off socialising in their boxes and fixed their attention on the star, whose unique execution – vocal timbre, musicality, improvisation, gesture, appearance, stage habits and presence – transported participants into a state of suspension where performance instantiated poetry. According to Feldman, the ‘aria frame’ filled two functions: signposting the moment and type of audience–singer exchange (‘regulating interaction’) and breaking down the plot’s momentum (‘distancing from stagework’).42 To these I would add a third function: foregrounding the star as signifier. 40 This perspective draws on Janet Staiger, ‘Seeing Stars’, Stardom: Industry of Desire,
ed. Gledhill, pp. 3–16, and Knut Hickethier, ‘Vom Theaterstar zum Filmstar’, Der Star, ed. Werner Faulstich and Helmut Korte (Munich, 1997), pp. 29–47; Dyer, Stars (1998); and Christine Geraghty, ‘Re-examining Stardom: Questions of Texts, Bodies and Performance’, Reinventing Film Studies, ed. Christine Gledhill and Lisa Williams (London, 2000), pp. 183–201.
41 Martha Feldman, ‘Magic Mirrors and the Seria Stage: Thoughts towards a Ritual
View’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 48 (1995), pp. 423–84.
42 Ibid., pp. 460–1
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 289 For the star to function as signifier during performance, audiences need to be able to pick out the star from competing signifiers. Cinema aids this process with filming techniques – camera angles, editing, mise-en-scène and lighting – that frame the star during the course of a narrative; in this way, viewers read the star-text even as the story unfolds. Framing allows the spectator to witness anew the star’s trademarks – the Monroe sexiness, the Dietrich mystique – that were established elsewhere, such as in earlier films or publicity. The ‘aria frame’ worked similarly. Librettos organised passions into a plot whose ethos reflected that of the patron or association promoting/producing the work. In the aria, however, the focus shifted to an individual whose ethical choice, although predetermined, was explored in increasingly subtle ways. This ‘psychologising’ translated into a complex interweaving of passions and poetic conceits whose sophistication only the most skilled performer could illuminate. Enter the star. As a signifier, the star was a fixed element articulating his or her known persona. As a performer, it fell to the star to unfix the spectacle: the star performer’s unique response to the aria supplied tension where the fixed plot resolution did not. As both ‘fixture’ and the source of ‘unfixing’, the star came to exercise extraordinary powers. Producers structured their spectacle to make the star the locus of emotional discharge during the aria while audiences made the star’s performance the nexus of the ritual’s liminal, i.e. boundary-crossing, event. Did the dramatic role represented by the star intertwine itself with the star’s public persona, as modern star scholars might lead us to expect? In mideighteenth-century England, dramatic theorists believed that the reverse pro cess took place: the star persona conditioned how audiences understood the fictional character. For example, David Garrick’s innate ‘violence’ allowed him to highlight the stage hero’s fury; playing the same role, Spranger Barry’s ‘tenderness’ illuminated this very different quality in the hero. Both versions of the protagonist were equally valid because, by corresponding to qualities inherent to the player, the personification resonated with audiences.43 In short, the persona imposed its own signification on the playbook. Whether audiences of dramma per musica read dramatis personae in a similar manner requires 43 ‘Among heroes of tragedy[,] rage or grief are the two great passions … Mr. Garrick,
who is as naturally violent as Mrs. Cibber is melancholy, finds it very difficult to make a transition from anger to sorrow as may be seen in several parts of Jaffeir: and in the same manner, Mr. Barry, whose natural tendency is to elegant distress, finds it hard to pass from that to anger in some parts of the same character. It is therefore these players succeed so happily in different parts of the same character in that play, that no body will ever be able to say, with justice, which of them performs it best.’ John Hill, The Actor, or A Treatise on the Art of Playing (London, 1755), p. 65.
290 Music as Social and Cultural Practice research. Audience demand for Italian stars to replay the same dramatic roles implies that they identified the star with the role and its attendant ethos;44 at the same time, the aria’s reliance on affective content suggests identification between star and affect. Analysing frames within drammi per musica according to the stars who occupied them, and to whom they were fitted, may lead scholars to identify a ‘Carestini aria’ as clearly as one recognises a ‘Garbo shot’.45 Moreover, scholars have yet to scrutinise the patterns behind one of dramma per musica’s most crucial means of star production: so-called arie di baule, those airs interpolated specifically to foreground the star. Strohm’s research indicates that the practice proceeded not from a desire to link the star to a particular aria (i.e. to create ‘signature tunes’), but rather from a drive to have the star appropriate the repertory of rivals.46
Genre and Star Persona The libretto satisfied expectations ordained by genre. Here the term ‘genre’ refers to Bakhtin’s definition of ‘a complex system of means … for the conscious control and finalization of reality’, that presupposes continuities of style – musical, poetic, visual – and of structure to enact and harmonise values and allegiances within the world it constructs.47 Genres are comprehensible because audiences understand them to be distinct both from reality and from each other: we do not confuse horror films with reality, and we grasp horror film conventions qua conventions because they differ from those of romantic comedy. In short, genres create a ‘language of enormous density and complexity’ that audiences 44 Reinhard Strohm, ‘Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’ Indie and its Earliest Settings’,
Essays on Handel, p. 239. Durante notes that the ‘protracted relationship between an actor and a text’ points to a ‘particular sort of identity between the interpreter and the role’, but does not explain what this might be. Sergio Durante, ‘The Virtuosi: Background, Training, Itineraries, Specialties’, The History of Italian Opera: Opera Production and its Resources, ed. Bianconi and Pestelli, iv, pp. 387–8.
45 Daniel Heartz suggests that Carestini became a ‘kind of co-creator with the poet
and the composer’ by transmitting favoured styles from one composer to another. Examining the parallels between Gluck’s and Hasse’s settings for Carestini’s role of Timante in Demofoonte, Heartz concludes that Carestini showed Hasse the suitability of Gluck’s music for his voice, and Hasse followed his suggestion. Daniel Heartz, Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style 1720–1780 (New York and London, 2003), pp. 30–2. He points out that the same process is implied in Dale E. Monson, ‘Galuppi, Tenducci, and Motezuma: A Commentary on the History of Musical Style in Opera Seria after 1750’, Galuppiana 1985: Studi e ricerche, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro and Franco Rossi (Florence, 1986), pp. 279–300.
46 Strohm, Italienische Opernarien, pp. 248–50. 47 P. N. Medvedev and M. M. Bakhtin, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship:
A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Wehrle (Baltimore, 1978), p. 133.
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 291 grasp by suspending disbelief and by being intimately familiar with the practices of different dramatic worlds.48 Typically, stars interact with generic roles in three ways. First, a star may be genre-specific, depending on genre to flag his or her presence; in being linked to a specific type of role the star persona may absorb its generic attributes. Second, the presence of the star can instigate a comparison between star persona and generic role. If the persona ‘fits’ the role, it may strengthen the assumptions that this role promulgates; if not, the star’s image may challenge such assumptions. These challenges, however, are often implied within the generic role. Correlation exists therefore not only between stars and their ‘matching’ roles, but also between stars and their (seemingly) mismatched roles: the disparity – the ‘gap’ between persona and role – may encourage audiences to re-evaluate the generic role. For instance, casting the ‘fiery’ Faustina as the aristocratic Elisa whose love for a shepherd is doomed due to their class differences, might highlight the anger implied by the libretto.49 Third, because spectators scan simultaneously for continuities between generic roles and for star articulation, the generic role can infuse the persona with new meanings. Failing stars frequently seek to revitalise their persona by moving into generic roles alien to it. Giving the old image a new framework allows the star persona to be reread through the lens of genre. Whether stardom in dramma per musica worked in this way may be determined by re-evaluating a star’s works in the light of the history of the persona he or she expresses.50
Emblem and Embodiment ‘Stars sell meanings and affects’, and they do so by emblematising and embodying meanings and affects together.51 The star, in being commodified, externalises in the public sphere as well as in performance those qualities or forces – goodness, evil, pathos, sensuality – motivating action.52 The crucial difference between a dramatic type and a star is that stars are 48 Andrew Britton, ‘Stars and Genre’, Katherine Hepburn: Star as Feminist, rev. edn
(London, 1994), p. 143.
49 Faustina sang Elisa in Handel’s Tolomeo (1728). Larue notes that ‘Elisa sings in
her own language rather than attempting to sing in what she thinks is Tolomeo’s’. Larue, Handel and his Singers, p. 177.
50 Britton, ‘Stars and Genre’, pp. 145–8. 51 Richard Dyer, The Stars (London, 1979), p. 18.
52 Christine Gledhill, ‘The Melodramatic Field: An Investigation’, Home is Where
the Heart Is, ed. Christine Gledhill (London, 1987), pp. 5–39. Gledhill argues that the narrative and acting traditions of melodrama created models for techniques of representation in Hollywood. In her words, melodrama ‘contributed to the institutional and aesthetic formation of “the popular” ’. Ibid., p. 36.
292 Music as Social and Cultural Practice real, not fictional. Because they are living individuals, stars lend authenticity to what they represent, even if spectators know that the star persona is a ‘product’.53 In the eighteenth century, adherence to social decorum in polite society meant that, to some extent, any person mixing in this society was ‘produced’. With all social conduct staged, ‘authenticity’ – considered a key attribute of modern stars – hovered beyond the horizon of manners. Yet because codes for displaying affects and meanings in polite society overlapped with those of the stage, audiences might easily recognise parallels between the star’s on- and offstage representations. The iteration was clear, even if the sincerity might be doubtful. This paradox – the absence of ‘personal authenticity’ – also plays a role in modern stardom. Knowing that stars are ‘produced’ prompts fans to try to access the ‘real’ star, via magazines, TV or the internet. In the eighteenth century, however, social divisions made it unlikely that interest in a star was driven by spectator identification with the performer. Dramma per musica stars filled other functions: distilling social virtues, releasing emotions and above all crossing boundaries. In breaking through the norms of technical capabilities, accepted social and sexual conduct, social hierarchy or gender, these stars, like their modern counterparts, could perhaps also have stood for a wish-fulfilment that eluded the admiring, envious viewer. Perhaps significantly, a key tool in modern star production, the close-up, derives from the use of opera glasses.54
conclusion Stardom in dramma per musica was as significant and complex as it is today. Grasping how stars achieved their rank requires scholars systematically to reconstruct the materials out of which the star personae were produced for a public. Such materials extended beyond singers’ vocal skills and casting history to include the narratives and meanings ascribed to stars as their careers progressed. The agency of singers in producing their own personae deserves special attention, since scholars have traditionally viewed singers more as ‘megaphones’ than as participants in operatic creation.55 Such an approach would recognise the duality of stars as both product and producer. Identifying the star product and its modifications over time prepares us to recognise moments when the star image subsumed the work itself. Scholars 53 Richard Dyer, ‘A Star is Born and the Construction of Authenticity’, Stardom:
The Industry of Desire, ed. Gledhill, pp. 132–9.
54 Alexander Walker, Stardom: The Hollywood Phenomenon (London, 1970), p. 21. 55 Strohm, ‘Zenobia: Voices and Authorship in Opera Seria’, pp. 55–81.
Joncus • Producing Stars in Dramma per musica 293 may thereby measure the extent to which stars organised other signifiers around them. An analysis of the multivalent star product would also shed light on the various proclivities of its consumer. Stars satisfied the dramma per musica’s twinned yet seemingly antithetical needs to pander to consumers and legitimise absolutist prerogatives. As product the star could combine the individual viewer’s desires with the ideals of the privileged class financing the work. The star was high priest in a ritual whose closure depended on star power, energised through audience projection. Product and producer, sign and signifier, the star singer deserves to occupy the attention of scholars of dramma per musica to the same degree as it did its audiences.
• 16 • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ Michel Noiray
W
hile the music historian’s view of the French Revolution was at first dominated by what appeared as the new regime’s specific creation, its repertory of hymns and songs, opera gradually emerged as the genre that best represented the spirit of the period. As might be expected, the revolutionary component in operatic practice has received the most persistent attention, in particular the ephemeral repertoire of ‘faits historiques’ and ‘faits patriotiques’ that became the mainstream of the Opéra’s repertoire between 1792 and 1794. Operas based on heroic or romantic plots, like Cherubini’s Lodoïska or Méhul’s Mélidore et Phrosine, were also brought under the ‘revolutionary’ heading, the former because it involved the storming of a castle, the latter because it presented literary and musical features – incestuous love, daring experiments in musical continuity – which are easily bracketed with representations of social and ideological upheaval. The purpose of the present article is not to question the suitability of a political reading of French opera under the Revolution, but to place it in a wider perspective: operas of the 1790s, compared with the repertoire of the late Ancien Régime, can be viewed just as representative of continuity as of rupture. Similarly, when these works came under fire after the end of the Terror, it is not surprising to see typically Ancien Régime values and turns of phrase surface again, although their undertones were now linked to the new cultural climate that emerged under the Directory. How closely matters of style and taste were correlated with ideological factors, however, will remain shrouded in uncertainty; what can be reconstructed, chiefly, is the framework of intertextuality that makes it necessary to consider Parisian opera of the 1780s and 1790s as a coherent whole. The phrase ‘terrorisme musical’ occurs in a review published in March 1797, one week after the first performance of Cherubini’s Médée: ‘If ever a theme and dramatic idea lent themselves to terrorisme musical, it is certainly that of Médée; furthermore, the composer neglected none of the means at his disposal, and deployed all his talent in this genre.’ By that time, almost three ‘Si jamais sujet et conception dramatique pouvaient prêter au terrorisme musical,
c’ est assurément celui de Médée; aussi le compositeur n’ a-t-il négligé aucun de ses moyens, et a-t-il déployé tout son talent en ce genre.’ La Décade philosophique, 30 ventôse an v (20 March 1797), p. 556; quoted in David Charlton, ‘Cherubini: A
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 295 years had elapsed since the downfall of Robespierre in Thermidor Year ii; the prisons had been emptied of their political prisoners (save for waves of arrests on other counts) and émigrés were steadily coming back to France: speaking of ‘terrorisme’, in allusion to the Terror of 1793–4, was therefore a way of associating Hoffman and Cherubini’s opera with a historical phase which French society was struggling to eliminate from its collective psyche. Beyond the irony, however, ‘terrorisme’ also carried an underlying literary association: the notion from which it was derived, ‘terreur’, allied with ‘pitié’, was one of the two main affections which the tragic playwright, according to Aristotle’s Poetics, should strive to arouse in the spectator’s mind. And the opera of Médée, closely modelled on Euripides, was tragedy par excellence. More clues to an understanding of the critic’s intentions are found in another paragraph of the same review: ‘Could it really be that we have reached the humiliating point where, to be pleased, we need to be astounded, and to be moved, we must be torn apart; that our eyes can no longer be charmed except by murders and fires, and our ears except by dissonances and diminished sevenths!’ To any historian of eighteenth-century opera, this judgement sounds distinctly familiar: a work that so deliberately astounds instead of pleasing belongs to a general category of opera that harks back to the 1770s and 1780s. The ingredients involved, to retain only those that feature prominently in Médée, can be defined thus: massive orchestral tutti, nervous ostinato figures, occasional chromatic instability, accented and prolonged dissonances. Médée’s part is characterised by its breathless unperiodic declamation and shrill high notes while contending with a forceful orchestra. In the prelude to Act iii a thunderstorm serves as a backdrop to an extended nocturnal pantomime, at the end of which Médée parades with a dagger in her hand. In the final scene she flies into the sky while the fire of hell devours the temple and palace on stage. What the critic had in mind, therefore, when he termed Médée a ‘terrorist’ opera, was the virulence of its tone, arising from the dominant affects of hatred and revenge. Cherubini’s musical language, however, has its roots in a wider spectrum of dramatic situations, which include not only violent sufferings, storms and tempests, but also battles, duels, explosions, cannon or gun shots, and the occasional representation of death. All these situations provided composers with a stock of instrumental, vocal and harmonic procedures, some being Critical Anthology, 1788–1801’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 26 (1993), p. 116.
‘Serait-il donc vrai que nous en fussions à ce point humiliant, qu’ il faille nous
étonner pour nous plaire, nous déchirer pour nous émouvoir; qu’ on ne puisse plus charmer nos yeux que par des meurtres et des incendies, et nos oreilles que par des dissonances et des septièmes diminuées!’ Ibid.
296 Music as Social and Cultural Practice fairly interchangeable, which reviewers and theorists perceived as belonging to a common expressive area. The style that culminates in Médée – to remain within the boundaries of the eighteenth century – originates in the courts of the 1750s and 1760s where dramatists, choreographers and composers worked together like scientists in a laboratory. Suffice it here to mention the names of Gluck and of choreo graphers like Hilverding and Angiolini, and such titles as Médée et Jason, choreo graphed by Noverre in Stuttgart in 1763 with music by Rodolphe, or Sémiramis, composed by Gluck to a scenario by Calzabigi and Angiolini (Vienna, 1765). The musical innovations triggered by pantomime ballet can be measured by the extensive borrowings which Gluck made of his own Sémiramis while composing Iphigénie en Tauride for Paris. Table 16.1 shows one of several such passages, the scene in which Orestes suffers from hallucinations, then from mental torture at the hands of the Eumenides; the left-hand column gives the clue to the original meaning of the music, which was meant to accompany a wide variety of pantomimic movements. Such gesture-driven music, combined with several other elements drawn from all possible operatic genres of the 1770s, fell on fertile ground, as the title of a pro-Gluck pamphlet, Le Souper des enthousiastes, implies. However, dissident voices soon made themselves heard, as men of letters realised how threatening the style of Gluck’s music could be to a conception of the French lyric theatre that combined poetic orthodoxy with a leaning towards Italianate periodic regularity. The hostile reaction to Gluck was best formulated by Marmontel in his Essai sur les révolutions de la musique en France, published during his first collaborative period with Piccinni: ‘With a noisy or groaning orchestra, with terrible or piercing vocal sounds, can we believe that we possess the ideal theatrical music?’ Gluck, Marmontel argued, was better equipped to set the subject of Medea than of Iphigenia, and he would work wonders if he decided On the musical consequences of the rise of pantomime ballet, see Bruce A. Brown,
Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford, 1991).
Klaus Hortschansky gives a detailed analysis of Gluck’s adaptation in Parodie und
Entlehnung im Schaffen Christoph Willibald Glucks, Analecta Musicologica xiii (Cologne, 1973), pp. 209–17.
This pamphlet, by François Arnaud, is reprinted in Mémoires pour servir à la
révolution opérée dans la musique par M. le chevalier Gluck [ed. Gaspard-Michel Leblond] (Paris and Naples, 1781); repr. in Querelle des gluckistes et des piccinnistes, ed. François Lesure (Geneva, 1984), i, pp. 62–96.
‘Avec un orchestre bruyant ou gémissant, avec des sons de voix déchirans ou
terribles, croirons-nous posséder la musique de théâtre par excellence?’ JeanFrançois Marmontel, Essai sur les révolutions de la musique en France (Paris, 1777), quoted from Mémoires pour servir à la révolution, p. 163.
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 297 Table 16.1 Gluck’s self-borrowing of pantomimic music Sémiramis
Iphigénie en Tauride, Act II
No. 10: Sémiramis approaches the tomb of her husband Ninus, whom she murdered.
Sc. i: Oreste a les yeux baissés vers la terre et paraît comme abîmé dans sa douleur [orchestral introduction] [Orestes has his eyes lowered towards the ground, and appears lost in his own suffering.]
The tomb opens and Ninus’ ghost springs Orestes, Pylades [recitative], bb. 14–15. forward, bb. 12–13. Sinfonia, bb. 1–16
Sc. iii: Orestes alone [orchestral introduction].
No. 8 from b. 21: Sémiramis approaches an altar, which is struck by lightning.
[Recitative] Tonnez, écrasez-moi!
Terror seizes all present, and the temple is soon empty (Presto).
Le calme rentre dans mon cœur (Andante). [Calm returns to my heart.]
Sinfonia, b. 7 to the end.
Les Euménides sortent du fond du théâtre, et entourent Oreste. Les unes exécutent autour de lui un ballet-pantomime de terreur; les autres lui parlent. Oreste est sans connoissance pendant toute cette scene. [The Eumenides enter at the back of the stage, and surround Orestes. Some perform a terrifying pantomime-ballet around him; the others speak to him. Orestes is unconscious throughout this scene.]
No. 1: Ninus’ ghost appears to Sémiramis Vengeons et la nature et les dieux en asleep; he threatens her with a dagger, courroux. then vanishes. [Let us take vengeance both on nature and the angry gods.]
to set Voltaire’s tragedy of Sémiramis – a shrewd insight, perhaps prompted by Marmontel’s knowledge that Gluck had already cut his teeth on that same subject. For good measure, Marmontel added a touch of social criticism, as was customary among eighteenth-century men of letters, for whom audience interaction and moral issues were inseparable from stylistic ones; here, then, is his interpretation of the idiosyncrasies which he found so objectionable in Iphigénie en Aulide: Ibid., pp. 161–2.
298 Music as Social and Cultural Practice For the masses, it was enough that the music of a particular opera should have character alone, as this was easy to convey through exaggerated expression: one could be sure that, faced with powerful situations, a people that was not at all used to the charms of melody would not be critical of the writing for the voice. Gluck’s supporters found equally appropriate words when they tried to identify the essence of his style, and to define precisely what qualities were missing from Roland, Piccinni’s first tragédie lyrique for Paris: ‘Unlike chevalier Gluck, M. Piccinni does not seem able to express great emotions; the most intense pieces in Roland, such as that portraying his madness, do not produce the powerful and terrible effects that overwhelm the soul in the works of the German.’ Here again, the critic’s intuition was impeccable, since he understood that mad scenes would be Gluck’s forte even before he had the opportunity of adapting the pantomimic music of Sémiramis to Orestes’ fits of madness in Iphigénie en Tauride. The opinion on Roland which has just been quoted touched on three key notions which never stopped recurring thereafter: ‘effet’, ‘énergie’ (a concept that became central in the revolutionary years)10 and ‘terrible’, the adjective that corresponds to the noun ‘terreur’. Gluck’s main legacy, in the 1780s, is to be found in Salieri’s Les Danaïdes, to which Gluck himself also contributed, if we are to believe the testimony of Joseph Martin Kraus.11 In this opera, which derives from a libretto by Calzabigi, though considerably rewritten for the Opéra by Guillard, we have all the possible ingredients of genuine musical ‘terreur’. At the end of Act iv, the offstage murder of forty-nine bridegrooms by their forty-nine brides, though not shown on stage, is evoked by a powerful orchestral crescendo on a single note, played tremolando, a concept that recurs in Berg’s Wozzeck, coincidentally or not, two bars after Wozzeck has killed Marie; in Salieri’s opera, the music subsequently grinds to a halt like a heart ceasing to beat, an effect which Berlioz, ‘Que la musique d’ un tel opéra eût seulement du caractère, comme il est aisé d’ en
donner à l’ expression exagérée, c’ étoit assez pour la multitude: on étoit sûr que dans des situations fortes, un peuple qui n’ étoit point accoutumé aux charmes de la mélodie ne seroit pas sévère sur l’ article du chant.’ Ibid., pp. 160–1.
‘M. Piccinni ne paroît pas avoir, comme le chevalier Gluck, l’ expression des
grandes passions; les morceaux de force de Roland, tels que celui de ses fureurs, ne produisent pas les effets énergiques et terribles qui bouleversent l’ ame dans les ouvrages de l’ Allemand.’ Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la République des lettres en France, depuis 1762 jusqu’à nos jours (London, 1777–89), xi, p. 78 (January 1776).
10 See Michel Delon, L’ Idée d’ énergie au tournant des Lumières (1770–1820) (Paris,
1988).
11 Quoted in John Rice, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera (Chicago, 1998), p. 311.
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 299 a declared admirer of Les Danaïdes, no doubt recalled at the end of his Prix de Rome cantata La Mort de Cléopâtre. The opera ends on an extended ‘pantomime du genre le plus terrible’ in which the Danaids writhe like demented criminals.12 The overture itself is a compendium of bold strokes, including a remake of the opening bars of Alceste – a clear omen of death – and a violent transition to a Presto section through a plethora of diminished sevenths. The public received Les Danaïdes with acclaim, and the work kept being revived right up to 1828. The critics predictably disapproved of the indiscriminate use of loud instruments: it is to be noted, in this respect, that the three trombones are not confined to the evocation of the sacred or the supernatural, as in Orphée or Alceste, but also intervene in the jubilatory chorus ‘Gloire, Evan, Evoé, Bacchus, ô dieu puissant’ (Act iv, Scene iv) with no other function than to reinforce an already powerful orchestral and choral mass. The growth of pantomime in opera was linked to parallel developments in the pantomime ballet, which entered the repertoire of the Opéra in 1779 with Mirsa, a ‘ballet en action’ choreographed by Maximilien Gardel, and which met with an enthusiasm similar to reformed opera. The earliest extensive example of pantomime in an opera performed at the Académie royale de musique occurs in Rochon de Chabannes and Floquet’s Le Seigneur bienfaisant (1780), a highly original work which combines the continuous music of grand opéra with the plot-type of an opéra-comique. The main event in this work is the entr’ acte between Acts i and ii, a full-length symphonic piece entitled ‘Orage’, during which villagers scurry about the stage, a father drives his children before him and a woman faints after a thunderclap. A whole page in the engraved score prescribes the action involved, in a degree of detail equal to that provided by scenarios of pantomime ballets; Noverre in person directed the dancers, although he had already resigned from the staff of the Opéra.13 The highly dramatic topic of this piece makes for drastic musical means, like bars of rest to be synchronised with thunderbolts, or a startling succession of chords (V/⁶₄ – bVI) which wrenches the bass from a dominant pedal it had held for forty-two bars (see Figure 16.1). Being a young composer, Floquet did not command the same respect as Gluck among men of letters, who raised their eyebrows at such a degree of boldness: ‘The music then makes a noise so terrible and so out of place that one would almost believe that the Earth was about to return to chaos.’14 12 [Nicolas-François Guillard], Les Danaïdes, tragédie-lyrique en cinq actes (Paris,
1784), p. 54.
13 See Étienne-Joseph Floquet, Le Seigneur bienfaisant (Paris, [1781]), p. 130, and
Almanach musical, 1781, p. 150.
14 ‘La musique fait alors un bruit si terrible, et si déplacé, qu’ on croirait presque que
la terre va rentrer dans le chaos.’ Almanach musical, 1781, p. 149.
300 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
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Fig. 16.1 Floquet, Le Seigneur bienfaisant (Paris, [1781]), Act ii, Entr’ acte before Scene i, p. 137. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 301 Not only does the critic reduce music to mere ‘noise’, but he finds it ‘out of place’, or even ‘unbecoming’, which is an associated meaning of ‘déplacé’. As in Marmontel’s criticism of Gluck, moral strictures were never far from aesthetic ones: playing on the spectator’s nerves was tantamount to shocking his sense of decency. Another wide expanse open to operatic pantomime was the representation of battles, in the wake of an innovatory wave which started with Gluck’s reform and subsequently affected all possible aspects of dramatic construction.15 A pioneering work, in this respect, was Billardon de Sauvigny and Dezède’s Péronne sauvée (1783). The subject matter, destined to show off the talent of Madame de Saint-Huberty, the Opéra’s star actress, centres on the figure of a woman of humble extraction, Marie, who managed to galvanise the citizens of Péronne while their city was besieged by Emperor Charles v in 1536, and who gave them the strength to wait until they were liberated by the duc de Guise. Act ii contains all the features of future ‘faits historiques’: strident calls to arms, a collective oath – in the line of famous precedents in Armide and Philidor’s Ernelinde – and a ‘combat’ during which a cannon is fired repeatedly. Shortly before the end of Act iii a Flemish soldier sets fire to a tower full of saltpetre and an explosion ensues. The Opéra resumed the battle topic a few months later in Morel and Méreaux’s Alexandre aux Indes, loosely adapted from Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’ Indie. The opera’s last episode is a huge choral piece during which Alexander’s Macedonians besiege the Indian city over which Porus rules. Figure 16.2 shows an alternation of massive chords, crude unisons and agitated runs in the violins; the bottom line is for a bass drum placed backstage, which renders the strokes of a battering-ram. Soon afterwards the city walls crumble and Porus, defeated, emerges from the debris. The vogue of patriotic and historical subjects hit the Opéra-Comique even before it started at the Opéra. A primitive example occurs in Durosoy and Martini’s Henri iv, performed to celebrate Louis xvi’s accession to the throne in 1774. The entr’ acte between Acts ii and iii gives only an auditory version of the battle of Ivry, as the battlefield is situated offstage, but elaborate stage instructions indicate the means by which separate military bands behind the scenes could achieve various spatial effects.16 The epitome of pre-revolutionary battles is to be found in Monvel and Dalayrac’s Sargines (1788): the action is situated in the thirteenth century, at Bouvines, where the French king Philip Augustus defeated the English. In order to stage and direct the long and elaborate battle that takes place in Act iv, the Opéra-Comique borrowed the services of Gaétan 15 On the Opéra’s repertoire in the 1780s, see Julian Rushton, ‘Music and Drama at
the Académie royale de musique (Paris) 1774–1789’ (D.Phil. diss., Oxford, 1969).
16 Jean-Paul-Egide Martini, Henri iv, drame lyrique en trois actes et en prose mêlé
d’ ariettes (Paris, [1775]), p. 100.
302 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
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Fig. 16.2 Méreaux, Alexandre aux Indes (Paris, [1783]), Act iii, Scene iv, p. 257. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 303 Vestris, chief choreographer at the Opéra: by 1788, the craze for the spectacular had eliminated a barrier between genres which, fifteen years earlier, would have been thought to be inviolable. Seen in this light, rescue scenes, which abound in opéras-comiques both before and during the Revolution, merely transpose military fights to the private sphere. In both cases, music serves a mainly functional purpose, that of accompanying the actors’ pantomime and, in many cases, of highlighting the conflagration which destroys the prison where the hero or heroine is held captive. The acknowledged milestone here is the dénouement of Sedaine and Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-lion (1784), whose performers, mainly extras, follow instructions as elaborate as the ones displayed in Le Seigneur bienfaisant or in Sargines. Sedaine and Grétry exploited the same topic in their most tragic opéra-comique, Raoul Barbe-Bleue, first performed in March 1789: the final ensemble stages a duel in which BarbeBleue is killed on stage by the father of one of the wives he had murdered. A last vein of powerful dramatic situations centres on a character in deep disarray. Even before Orestes’ ravings in Iphigénie en Tauride, Gluck had written extensive monologues for Agamemnon, in Iphigénie en Aulide, and a most memorable one for Clytemnestre, at the point when she has a vision of her daughter being struck by the sacrificial knife. Such scenes were probably what a contributor to the Journal de Paris had in mind when he took Gluck to task for depicting graphically the ‘mouvement convulsif ’ of the passions.17 If one looks for a direct link between Gluck’s anguished characters and the peak of expressionism which Cherubini reached in Médée’s last soliloquy, a particularly eloquent demonstration is provided by Lemoyne in his Electre of 1782 (see Figure 16.3). The ascending figure in the basses and first violins represents Electre staggering on stage, physically out of control; the descending line in the three upper staves (flute, oboe, clarinet) expresses the fate weighing on her shoulders; and the short cell in the woodwinds sounds like an inarticulate inner voice, comparable to Agamemnon’s ‘cri plaintif de la nature’ in Iphigénie en Aulide. Just as impressive as Electre’s entry is Clytemnestre’s dream narration at the beginning of Act ii of Electre, with hair-raising orchestral effects signalling the apparition of Agamemnon’s ghost.18 However popular such pathetic, gruesome or heroic episodes might have been, Parisian critics were not ready to condone this irresistible evolution. They frowned upon the prominent place given to pantomime, which promoted to the rank of ‘objet principal’ an element that ought to remain ‘accessoire’.19 In musical terms, this loss in dignity and significance was chiefly 17 Journal de Paris, 16 October 1777, in Mémoires pour servir à la révolution, p. 277. 18 See Julian Rushton, ‘An Early Essay in Leitmotiv: J. B. Lemoyne’s Electre’, Music &
Letters 52 (1971), pp. 387–401.
19 Review of Péronne sauvée, Mercure de France, 7 June 1783, p. 53.
304 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
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Fig. 16.3 Lemoyne, Electre (Paris, [1782]), Act i, Scene iii, p. 24. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 305 caused by the rise of brutal orchestral gestures commonly subsumed under the notion of ‘effet’ – the term being understood not as a consequence in the listener’s mind but as an expressive category in itself, hence the phrase ‘musique d’ effet’, which could be translated as ‘effect-laden music’.20 The term was not intrinsically negative, since Suard used it in praise of Haydn’s symphonies: ‘He brings together the most lovely tunes and the grandest orchestral effects.’21 Men of letters, however, were unanimous in condemning such devices when they perceived them as deliberately audience-catching, at the expense of the word–music relationship, which remained their highest value. Sound effects which were already deemed ‘deafening’ in the 1770s,22 when Gluck first introduced them to Paris audiences, were henceforth associated with the bad taste of a supposedly stultified public, whose lack of judgement and ignorance of good manners led librettists and composers down an everdescending spiral. Most arguments against an allegedly systematic recourse to ‘effet’ are brought together in this extract from a review of Desriaux and Vogel’s La Toison d’ or (1786), later entitled Médée à Colchos, an opera which features a heavy tempest, a conjuration scene with trombones and the Argonauts’ fight against an army of giants: The noisy effects, the modulations, the far-fetched harmonic progressions can dazzle the professors, when they consider only the way in which they are produced; with these means, one can even impress the common man, and draw applause from him; but this applause is short-lived. Loud noise quickly tires the ear, however harmonious it may be, and the greatest masters have always reserved effects for great occasions.23 As transpires from this commentary, and unlike what we might believe today, vulgar effects and the science of composition were not considered as mutually exclusive. On the contrary, a recherché musical style was a sign of bad 20 Pierre-Louis Ginguené, ‘Effet’, Encyclopédie méthodique. Musique, ed. N.-E.
Framery and Pierre-Louis Ginguené, i (Paris, 1791), p. 490.
21 ‘Il réunit aux tournures de chant les plus aimables, les plus grands effets
d’ orchestre.’ Jean-Baptiste Suard, ‘Allemagne’, Encyclopédie méthodique, i, p. 76.
22 Jean-François de La Harpe, ‘Annonce de l’ opéra d’ Armide’, Journal de politique et
de littérature, 3 (1777–8), p. 164, reproduced in Mémoires pour servir à la révolution, p. 261.
23 ‘Des effets bruyans, des modulations, des marches d’harmonie recherchée, peu-
vent éblouir les personnes de l’ art, lorsqu’ elles n’ en considèrent que le mécanisme; on peut même, avec ces moyens, en imposer au vulgaire et lui arracher des applaudissemens; mais ils ne sont pas de longue durée. Le grand bruit fatigue bientôt, si harmonieux qu’ il soit, et les plus grands maîtres ont toujours réservé les effets pour les grandes occasions.’ Mercure de France, 28 June 1788, p. 184.
306 Music as Social and Cultural Practice taste, for the merit of a great artist was his ability to conceal art by art itself. In short, the general category of ‘effet’ became negative as soon as a critic felt that the composer was drawing attention to the music beyond a certain limit: whether this self-assertion was made by way of gross or of refined means mattered less than the feeling that a cumbersome presence hindered the clear transmission of an affect or a dramatic situation. Noisy instruments were a primary cause of irritation, whether they be the ‘wretched drums, without which there is no effect for the greatest number of ears’24 or an indiscriminate use of trombones, as was observed in the case of Salieri’s Danaïdes. Composers themselves, at the end of the Ancien Régime, started lamenting the inexorable rise in volume of sound, the occasional intrusion of pure noise and the taste for an ever spicier musical idiom. Le Sueur, in 1787, defended the necessity to preserve the ‘facultés intrinsèques’ of the musical language, for instance by refraining from rendering a drum roll by a drum roll, or a cannon shot by firing an actual cannon, as was done during the performance of several Te Deum settings.25 Grétry himself wrote almost apologetically of his Raoul Barbe-Bleue: ‘The situations are terrible, and strong things are needed these days as we are beginning to be sated with everything.’26 As far as the pre-revolutionary years are concerned, the final word can be left to Chabanon, the most profound French aesthetician of his time, whose De la musique considérée en elle-même was published in 1785. In the tenth chapter, significantly entitled ‘Quels sont les arts qui plaisent davantage à la multitude, quels sont les jugemens qu’ elle en porte’ [Of the arts that most please the multitude, and the judgements that it passes on them] he stresses that music was not the only performing art affected by a propensity to excess. In his view, actors of the spoken theatre were likewise contaminated by a degeneration of public taste: ‘The convulsive rages of the actors are almost certain to elicit the public’s applause. This violence, which is required in the actors’ performances, has also become a necessity in the works that they 24 ‘timbales maudites, sans lesquelles point d’ effet pour le plus grand nombre des
oreilles’. Ginguené, ‘Effet’, Encyclopédie méthodique, i, p. 490.
25 Jean-François Le Sueur, Exposé d’ une musique une, imitative et propre à chaque
solemnité; où l’ on donne … le plan d’ une musique particulière à la solemnité de la Pentecôte (Paris, 1787), p. 14.
26 ‘Les situations sont terribles et il faut des choses fortes aujourd’hui que nous
commençons à être rassasiés de tout.’ La Correspondance générale de Grétry, ed. Georges de Froidcourt (Brussels, 1962), p. 148. The same image was used by a reviewer of Les Danaïdes, who compared listeners to heavy drinkers who needed ever higher doses of liquor: Correspondance secrète, politique et littéraire (London, 1787–90), 16 (12 May 1784), p. 176. See also Pierre-Louis Ginguené, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicolas Piccini (Paris, 1801), p. 109.
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 307 stage.’27 Chabanon’s concluding remarks are decisively pessimistic, as if the triumph of ‘effet’ amounted to a global defeat of reason and our faculty of judgement: ‘What is becoming of the principle of aiming at effect, and at the greatest effect? This precept brings with it the injunction not to seek, by preference, that which reason most approves.’28 Turning now to the revolutionary period, it would be easy to continue our list of tormented soliloquies, storms, explosions, eruptions, fires, detonations of all kinds, combat pantomimes and war-like symphonies which now extended to cavalry parades.29 What should be stressed is the continuity not only of the superficial devices linked with the spectacular element, in their combined visual and musical guise, but of compositional procedures that survived as engrained musico-dramatic topoi. David Charlton has identified two such recurring scene types, both before and after the questionable limit of 1789: the ‘melodrama model’ in which a character, generally a woman, is either shown in danger of dying or commits suicide, with examples that range from Gluck’s Armide (1777) to Pipelet and Martini’s Sapho (1794); and another tragic situation in which an unjustly jailed hero is awaiting his death in the most fearful surroundings, with examples taken from Grétry’s Le Comte d’ Albert (1787), Dalayrac’s Raoul sire de Créqui (1789) and Gaveaux’s Léonore (1798).30 Both these topoi are to be understood within an intertextual network, and both draw on resources originally associated with melodrama, pantomime ballet, or Gluckian tragedy. A similar line of intertextuality emerges from a recent study of overtures which highlights some musical procedures first tried in Alceste and Iphigénie en Aulide, and that can be traced right up to Médée or Méhul’s Timoléon.31 Of particular interest is the direct filiation that unites two 27 ‘Les fureurs convulsives des acteurs ont un droit presque sûr à ses applaudisse-
mens. Cette violence requise dans le jeu des acteurs, l’ est nécessairement aussi dans les ouvrages qu’ ils représentent.’ Michel-Paul-Guy de Chabanon, De la musique considérée en elle-même (Paris, 1785), p. 375.
28 ‘Que devient le principe de tendre à l’ effet, et à l’ effet le plus grand? Ce précepte
porte avec soi l’ injonction de ne pas chercher, de préférence, ce que la raison doit le plus approuver.’ Ibid., p. 388.
29 See in particular Winton Dean, ‘French Opera’, The Age of Beethoven: 1790–1830,
The New Oxford History of Music vii, ed. Gerald Abraham (London, 1982), pp. 26–69, and M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet, ‘The New Repertory of the Opéra during the Reign of Terror: Revolutionary Rhetoric and Operatic Consequences’, Music and the French Revolution, ed. Malcolm Boyd (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 107–56.
30 David Charlton, French Opera 1730–1830: Meaning and Media (Aldershot, 2000):
‘The French Theatrical Origins of Fidelio’ (ch. 9) and ‘Storms, Sacrifices: The “Melodrama Model” in Opera’ (ch. 10).
31 See Patrick Taïeb, L’ Ouverture d’ opéra en France de Monsigny à Méhul (Paris,
2007), pp. 179, 227, 254.
308 Music as Social and Cultural Practice great overtures in F minor, that of Vogel’s Démophon (1789), which became a staple item of revolutionary ceremonies, and that of Médée: both pieces go through the same motions, leading towards an ending in the tonic major, but Cherubini, unlike Vogel, surprisingly reasserts with renewed violence the F minor of the opening theme. No musically literate listener of the time would have failed to draw a parallel with Démophon, nor to deduce that in Médée, unlike Vogel’s opera, not only the overture but the whole work was heading towards an unhappy ending.32 The continuity with the Ancien Régime was even recognised by some of the contemporaries themselves, though not in the way which one would expect today. While our determinist-minded historiography would strive to show that pre-Revolution conditions favoured an intensification of the musical language, as if social tensions could breed musical ones, we have two statements from the late eighteenth century that propose, to our surprise, that it was the musical developments of the 1770s and 1780s that fostered a change in public opinion. Leclerc, a member of Parliament whose ambition was to extend the conservatoire system and Republican hymn music throughout the entire French territory, claimed that Gluck’s music carried a political message: ‘its vigorous chords awakened French generosity; the souls of the people again found their courage, and revealed an energy that erupted soon after: the throne was shaken’.33 The other statement comes from Grétry, who implicitly referred to Leclerc’s essay in his philosophical tract De la vérité (1801) and added two interesting qualifications. First, he claimed that his own musical style, in opéra-comique, supplemented by Gluck’s later intervention – Grétry did not always earn his first name Modeste – gave the French a new taste for the truth, and breathed into them the ‘énergie’ that enabled them to take their fate into their own hands. Secondly, Grétry was at pains to disconnect the moral intent implied in his and Gluck’s works from the social position which they enjoyed in the system of spectacles under the Ancien Régime: ‘The supporters of my music and of that of Gluck were almost all royalists, because they were closely tied to the court.’34 In other words, however clearly some pre-1789 musical trends, 32 Ibid., pp. 252–3. 33 ‘ses accords vigoureux réveillèrent la générosité française; les ames se retrem-
pèrent, et firent voir une énergie qui éclata bientôt après: le trône fut ébranlé.’ JeanBaptiste Leclerc, Essai sur la propagation de la musique en France, sa conservation, et ses rapports avec le gouvernement (Paris, an iv [1796]), p. 10.
34 ‘les partisans de ma musique et de celle de Gluck étoient presque tous royalistes,
parce qu’ ils dépendoient de la cour’. André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, De la vérité, ou ce que nous fûmes, ce que nous sommes, ce que nous devrions être (Paris, 1801), ii, p. 225.
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 309 according to Grétry, anticipated the rise of anti-absolutist opinion, this pattern of change cannot have taken place except within an institutional and ideological framework that belonged to the highest political circles. Naturally, Grétry’s second reservation does not preclude the possibility to link certain trends in late Ancien Régime opera with an undoing of the social order that led to the Revolution. The irruption of historical subjects, the representation of fights, murders or suicides, the portrayal of villains, like Barbe-Bleue, or of characters incapable of coherent utterances, like Lemoyne’s Electre: all those features indicate that the traditional governing principles of operatic genres were yielding to a strong impetus for renewal. The craze for the pantomime-ballet and the mélodrame testifies that this urge came from a rapidly expanding public whose taste, as Marmontel and Chabanon observed, did not conform to the sacrosanct canons of artistic and moral bienséance. But we should not forget Grétry’s reminder that all these changes, as far as opera was concerned, happened in institutions that were both attended and controlled by the nobility and Louis xvi’s entourage, including the music-loving queen Marie-Antoinette. As early as 1801 there thus came a warning that pre-revolutionary musical developments might well be related to philosophical ideas, but not directly to the political sphere: their origin was rather to be sought, if anywhere, in the evolution of operatic topics, which in turn resulted from a growing taste for spectacular effects, both visual and auditory. A politically inspired line of interpretation, however, is entirely justified when we come to the Revolution itself: after all, operatic topics under the Jacobins’ reign were either chosen or censured by the political authorities, and the ‘iron music’35 which composers felt impelled to produce was a direct response to the needs of the government’s propaganda machine. Similarly, it is not by chance that reviewers, between mid-1792 and 1794, stopped inveighing against noisy music, since their criticism might have implied a disavowal of the operas’ characters and ideological messages – not a prudent stance to have taken in those years. But as soon as the Terror was over, the pendulum swung again in the opposite direction: tongues were untied and no heavily orchestrated music could get performed without being ritually chastened for its excessive noise and bad dramatic taste.36 But what is most remarkable in this forceful return of late Ancien Régime journalistic topics is that they were shared by all men of letters alike, irrespective of their political leanings: La Décade philosophique, which reviewers of music and opera took no kind view of vehement vocal or orchestral expression, was 35 ‘Musique de fer’: Méhul’s words, as quoted by Antoine-Vincent Arnault, Souvenirs
d’ un sexagénaire, ed. R. Trousson (Paris, 2003), p. 289 (orig. edn 1833).
36 See Michael McClellan, Battling over the Lyric Muse: Expressions of Revolution
and Counterrevolution at the Theatre Feydeau, 1789–1801 (Ann Arbor, 2000), pp. 218–28.
310 Music as Social and Cultural Practice nonetheless a periodical led by the Idéologues, a group of intellectuals whose main ambition was to perpetuate Republican ideas at a time when they were again open to challenge. Grétry, who confessed that he had to betray his own style while working for the ‘terribles autorités’ of the Comité de salut public,37 could raise his head again as the legitimate representative of the true spirit of French opera. In the second edition of his Memoirs, published in 1797, he coined two phrases that remained famous: ‘Since the capture of the Bastille, it seems that one cannot make music in France except to the accompaniment of canon fire’ and ‘French music, in our time, has just gained a terrible impetus’, where we recognise a familiar epithet.38 A footnote printed five pages before the latter pronouncement dates this chapter in the Mémoires from September 1794, which makes better sense than if the phrase applied to the publication date. While a sense of respect for a well-placed colleague compelled him to pay lip service to Méhul’s innovations in Euphrosine,39 Grétry’s aesthetic creed clearly revolved around the return to a new simplicity: Today, the more learned we become, the more we lose sight of the truth. The slightest original tune is now preferable to harmonic complexities. The author of a pretty tune has made something for pleasure; he who has produced only calculations has forced us more and more into a labyrinth.40 We note again, in passing, that the ‘harmonic complexities’ of ‘learned’ composers were not to Grétry’s taste, in direct agreement with Marmontel and most Ancien Régime critics. It becomes clear, then, that the first performance of Cherubini’s Médée was untimely: not only because Hoffman and Cherubini had conceived it in 1793, if not earlier, but because by 1797 it was out of step with the new sensibility of the Directory. This is not to say that theatre directors ceased overnight to commission operas based on sombre subjects: Révéroni Saint-Cyr and Berton’s Le Délire, a strange opéra-comique centred on the depiction of madness, dates 37 André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, Réflexions d’ un solitaire, ed. L. Solvay and E.
Closson (Brussels and Paris, 1912–22), ii, p. 113.
38 ‘Il semble que depuis la prise de la Bastille on ne doive plus faire de musique en
France, qu’à coups de canon!’ and ‘La musique française, de nos jours, vient de prendre un élan terrible’. André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, Mémoires, ou Essais sur la musique, 2nd edn (Paris, 1797), ii, p. 57 and iii, p. 13.
39 Grétry, Mémoires, iii, pp. 58–9. 40 ‘Aujourd’hui, plus nous deviendrons savants, plus nous nous éloignerons du vrai.
Le plus petit air original est maintenant préférable aux complications harmoniques. L’ auteur d’ un joli air a fait quelque chose pour le plaisir; celui qui n’ a produit que des calculs, nous a enfoncés de plus en plus dans un labyrinthe.’ Ibid., p. 441.
Noiray • The Pre-revolutionary Origins of ‘Terrorisme musical’ 311 from 1799,41 and Méhul’s Ariodant, whose key character is a villain tortured by jealousy, was first performed in the same year. But it is symptomatic that Ariodant was performed only thirteen times under the Consulate and the Empire, and, more generally, that most works created between 1791 and 1794 were never revived, a remarkable oddity in the French repertoire-based system. Méhul’s Mélidore et Phrosine, created in 1794, dropped from the repertoire of the Opéra-Comique one year later. Médée was performed twenty-nine times in 1797, seven in 1798, once in 1799,42 then vanished not only from the stage but from the general framework of references that one finds in early nineteenthcentury writings on music. Naturally, public taste for spectacular effects did not disappear, especially in view of the continuing growth of a popular audience; neither did the men of letters’ disdain for a dramatic and musical style which they considered as typical of a socially inferior class. The representation of gruesome stories even increased in the years after the Revolution, but expressions of violence or terror were relegated to the popular genre par excellence, the mélodrame, about whose music we know very little. In a word, the French nation rebuilt its musical world on a new basis, which favoured the mellifluous idiom of Dalayrac, Della Maria and Boieldieu at the expense of Cherubini, Méhul and Le Sueur, whose eruptive style earned them the unenviable categorisation of ‘musiciens terroristes’.43 A new musical audience was emerging from a society that had been deeply reshuffled by the Revolution. Its expectations were turned towards the enjoyment of the present, not the deepening of traditions that had just been shattered. It is no surprise, then, that this new public distanced itself from dramatic and musical topics that were redolent not only of the Terror, but of the Ancien Régime.
41 See Patrick Taïeb, ‘De la composition du Délire (1799) au pamphlet anti-dilettantes
(1821): Une étude des conceptions esthétiques de H.-M. Berton’, Revue de musicologie 78 (1992), pp. 67–107.
42 Charlton, ‘Cherubini: A Critical Anthology’, p. 97. 43 This opinion was reported and partially refuted by the librettist, François-Benoît
Hoffman, in the defence of Médée which he published in his own journal, Le enteur, ou le Journal par excellence [1797], no. 26, p. 220. See McClelland, Battling M over the Lyric Muse, p. 227.
• 17 • Pieces into Works: Cherubini’s Substitute Arias for the Théâtre Feydeau Michael Fend
A
t the end of 1788 the composer and violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti, together with Marie-Antoinette’s hairdresser, Léonard Autié, acted as frontmen in a rapacious capitalist venture to seize control of the Parisian opera. They were granted a royal privilege to open a new theatre for the staging of mostly Italian operas with some French operas and plays. In 1791 the institution, originally called the Théâtre de Monsieur, was renamed the Théâtre Feydeau and was merged with the Opéra Comique in 1801. Viotti had shared his apartment with Luigi Cherubini since the latter’s arrival in Paris in 1786. Although Cherubini’s rising stardom had just been dented by the cool reception of his tragédie lyrique Démophoon at the Académie Royale de Musique in December 1788, he was hired as house composer for the new theatre: ‘Viotti assigned me an annual salary of 4,000 francs with the obligation to compose all necessary pieces in the Italian works as well as two French operas.’ According to Cherubini, it was to fulfil the latter part of his contract that he wrote Lodoïska (1791) and Eliza (1794): ‘Since these two works were, by virtue of the contract, the property of the administration, I had no copyright whatsoever. I also composed an opera entitled Koukourgi in fulfilment of my contract. But this work never reached the stage.’ In addition, Cherubini mentions that he had the score of Démophoon printed at his own expense and that in May 1789 he began writing the first act of an opera ‘Viotti m’ assigna 4000 francs par an, à dater de 1789, avec l’ obligation de composer
tous les morceaux nécessaires dans les ouvrages italiens, et en outre deux opéras français. … Comme ces deux ouvrages étaient, par mes appointmens, la propriété de l’ administration, je ne touchais point de droits d’ auteur.’ L. Cherubini, ‘Note relative à L. Cherubini, rédigée par lui-même’, in A. Pougin, ‘Cherubini: Sa vie, ses œuvres, son rôle artistique’, Le Ménestrel 47 (1881), p. 378; reproduced in V. Della Croce, Cherubini e i musicisti italiani del suo tempo, 2 vols (Turin, 1983–6), ii, p. 575. Cherubini’s contract is reproduced in J. Tiersot, Lettres de musiciens écrites en français du xve au xxe siècle (Turin, 1924), pp. 306–8.
The Affiches, annonces et avis diverses of 8 May 1789 believed that there was a
arket for Cherubini’s Démophoon: ‘Cet opéra, comme bien d’ autres, s’ étant m soutenu uniquement par le mérite de la musique, il n’ y a pas lieu de douter que la partition n’ en soit recherchée avec empressement.’ Quoted in A. Devriès-Lesure, L’ Édition musicale dans la presse parisienne au xviiie siècle (Paris, 2005), p. 110.
Fend • Pieces into Works 313 with a royalist topic, Marguerite d’ Anjou, but abandoned the project in 1790, probably for political reasons. Cherubini’s employment can thus be described as encompassing a terminological field of ‘morceaux’, ‘ouvrages’, ‘opéras’, as well as the ‘printed score’ and works over which he had no ‘droits d’ auteur’. My enquiry into the textual, performative and aesthetic aspects of Cherubini’s compositional activities is related to the twentieth-century debate about the historical crises and cultural functions of the ‘work-concept’, which rose to prominence at the height of modernism after the Second World War and which has been thriving in musicology during the last fifteen years. Until the original opera troupe, which Viotti and Cherubini had helped to bring together in 1789, disbanded in the wake of the September 1792 massacres, the most time-consuming part of Cherubini’s contract turned out to be the composition of some fifty substitute arias or ensembles for twenty out of a total of thirty-four Italian operas staged at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau during the years 1789–92. Most of the operas had proved to be successful in earlier Italian productions, and in their transfer to Paris the management clearly hoped to reduce its financial risk. However, most of the repertoire was classified as ‘dramma giocoso’, while most of Cherubini’s previous theatrical experience was in the genre of opera seria. Nor was he the only hack composer on the Feydeau’s payroll. Based on research by Michel Noiray, Michael McClellan, Andrea Fabiano and Alessandro Di Profio, the Appendix lists the performed Italian operas in historical order, followed by their number of arias or ensembles and the number of substitute arias, together with the names of See A. Bottée de Toulmon, Notice des manuscrits autographes de la musique com-
posée par feu M.-L.-C.-Z.-S. Cherubini (Paris, 1843; repr. London, 1967), p. 10.
See e.g. U. Eco, Opera aperta (Milan, 1967); L. Goehr, The Imaginary Museum
of Musical Works (Cambridge, 1992); The Musical Work. Reality or Invention?, ed. M. Talbot (Liverpool, 2000); E. Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt, 2004). For a recent summary of the term’s history and the problems it provokes in contemporary culture see J.-P. Pudelek, ‘Werk’, Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, ed. K. Barck (Stuttgart, 2005), v, pp. 520–88.
Listed in A. Di Profio, La Révolution des Bouffons: L’ opéra italien au Théâtre de
Monsieur 1789–1792 (Paris, 2003), pp. 188–91.
See F. Piperno, ‘Il sistema produttivo, fino al 1780’, Storia dell’ opera italiana, ed.
L. Bianconi and G. Pestelli, iv (Turin, 1987), pp. 66–7.
While a large number of substitute arias and ensembles were borrowings from
pre-existing operas, other Italian composers living in Paris at the time, such as Giacomo Ferrari, in his capacity as maestro al cembalo, also contributed to the up-dating of the music. Singer-composers, such as Mengozzi, Viganoni, Raffanelli or Bianchi, sometimes wrote substitutions for their own use. See Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 184–7.
314 Music as Social and Cultural Practice the relative composers, both of which cannot be established with absolute certainty. In many cases, further changes were made in subsequent performances at the Théâtre Feydeau. The list also contains a number of total performances which the operas enjoyed until the disbanding of the troupe. This list shows that the production rate of the operas and their success dramatically decreased towards 1792, indicating the rising popularity of French operas and plays during this period, apart from the possible exhaustion of existing, successful Italian operas and political problems in staging works. The lack of substitute arias in Louis-Emmanuel Jadin’s and Tarchi’s operas can be explained by the fact that they were the only original productions of Italian operas at the Théâtre. There is no clear correlation between the success of a work and the number of substitute arias it contained. Di Profio noticed that substitutions were far less likely to be made with ensembles than with arias and that famous composers suffered less than supposedly old-fashioned colleagues. The latter is true of Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, the company’s most successful opera overall, but it does not bear upon Paisiello’s Il tamburo notturno, which could not be saved from immediate oblivion despite (or perhaps because of) seventeen substitute numbers, while Sarti’s Le nozze di Dorina became the second most successful work, possibly with the help of many substitutions. Why were the changes to these operas made? They may have been of a purely pragmatic nature responding to practical exigencies, as was common in Italian operas; this, however, remains unknown to us since the Théâtre’s archive has not survived. Still, we can investigate changes to the librettos and scores as they have survived. Given the cut-throat diplomacy with which the administrators of the Théâtre pursued their business, the changes were obviously deemed necessary to improve the chances of success in the Parisian market. In the autobiographical note quoted at the outset Cherubini paints a picture of himself as a servant receiving orders, but could he nevertheless have used the opportunity to develop a style of his own? Although he would have been faced with conflicting demands from singers, instrumentalists, administrators, journalists and the public at large, could he hone his own skills to such a degree that his own music was successful on the French market? To what extent did he develop an ‘authorial voice’ that could ‘formulate and sustain its M. Noiray, ‘Le Répertoire d’ opéra italien au Théâtre de Monsieur et au Théâtre
Feydeau (janvier 1789–août 1792)’, Revue de musicologie 81 (1995), pp. 259–75; M. E. McClellan, ‘Battling over the Lyric Muse: Expressions of Revolution and Counterrevolution at the Théâtre Feydeau 1789–1801’ (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1994); A. Fabiano, I ‘buffoni’ alla conquista di Parigi (Turin, 1998), pp. 252–6; Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 104–5, 128–9, 437–85.
Di Profio, La Révolution, p. 204.
Fend • Pieces into Works 315 identity through contextually and temporally separated utterances’?10 I offer two case studies.
case study i: paisiello, la molinarella Of Cherubini’s works for the Théâtre de Monsieur, La molinarella (‘The Miller Girl’) by Giuseppe Palomba and Giovanni Paisiello presents a particularly complex picture. The plot satirises all its main protagonists: a Notary has prepared a marriage contract for an illiterate, conceited Baron (Calloandro) and his wealthy cousin (Baronessa Eugenia), which is immediately ridiculed by the ensemble since it would leave him free to take another lover. The offended Baronessa is upstaged by a cunning miller girl (Rachelina), who stirs the blood not only of Calloandro, but also of a timid, ageing provincial Governor (Rospolone) and the Notary himself, who promotes his position by agreeing to become a miller.11 Rachelina undermines the strategy of the Baronessa Eugenia as well, who will not have much better luck with an all too eager cicisbeo, Don Luigino, since he is primarily interested in her money. The opera had been created only a year earlier at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples under the title L’ amor contrastato, and when it came out in Paris in 1789 the bilingual libretto unequivocally stated that the music was by the famous ‘signor Giovanni Paisiello’.12 That the compositional reality was quite different, not only in Paris but in most places where Paisiello’s operas were performed, has been demonstrated by the existence of no fewer than twenty-two variants of La molinarella, scrupulously described by Michael Robinson.13 The present enquiry focuses on eight of Cherubini’s nine substitutions for the Paris performance. In Paisiello’s version the Baronessa complains about the mean treatment she has received at the hand of her betrothed (‘Di un’ alma incostante gli affetti non curo’, i. 4). Paisiello set her text as an expression of one 10 J. Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The ‘Transcendental Studies’ of Liszt
(Cambridge, 2003), p. 7.
11 The miller girl presents the baron and the notary with a stark choice: ‘I shall treat
you as equal and take the one who will become a miller.’ While the notary also succumbs to her demand that he change his name to ‘Lesbino’, the baron is more outspoken: ‘I abhor such a vile position. I am a star and I have not read in the celestial signs that there has ever been a miller star.’ See G. Paisiello, La molinara ossia ‘L’ amor contrastato’, ed. A. Rocchi (Lucca, 2005), pp. 249–52. The proposal for the name change and the baron’s rejection are omitted in the French libretto; see La molinarella (Paris, 1789), Paris, Conservatoire (hereafter F-Pc), ThB 3789, p. 41.
12 La molinarella (Paris, 1789), p. 2. 13 M. F. Robinson, Giovanni Paisiello: A Thematic Catalogue of his Works, i (New
York, 1991), pp. 415–40.
316 Music as Social and Cultural Practice stormy affect without any clearly marked subsections.14 Cherubini, by contrast, chose a rondò structure (ABACBA), in which the B-sections modulate from G major to G minor (on the second occurrence enhanced by a chromatically ascending vocal melody over a pedal bass), while in section C the protagonist’s disquiet is revealed in the rhythmic individuality and hence irregularity of the accompanying orchestral parts. As a result Cherubini’s Baronessa achieves greater emotional depth than Paisiello granted to her.15 More striking is the textual and musical substitution of Paisiello’s aria for Calloandro (‘Qual tromba rimbombante’, i. 7) with Cherubini’s ‘Vedrai nel suo bel viso’. Di Profio rightly points out that Paisiello’s version was no less complex but it ‘exaggerated a buffo tone’, presenting the Baron as ‘a caricature of military posturing thanks to a melody that imitates the sound of a horn and a rhythm that accentuates tonic chords’.16 Yet Calloandro (Greek for handsome man) was an ill-defined character who hid his narcissism behind a rumbustious extroversion. Like the Governor, he needs the Notary to promote his amorous intent. ‘Qual tromba rimbombante’ catalogues all the phrases that the Notary is to use on Calloandro’s behalf. The two suitors’ somewhat similar character, presented in direct succession, was appropriate for Paisiello, as he evidently intended to ridicule the nobility. But this double effect was detrimental to the aesthetic purpose pursued in Paris, which aimed, by contrast, to arouse the audience’s empathy. The male characters in Palomba’s libretto threaten to collapse into one, since the Baronessa’s real suitor, Don Luigino, had already delivered an excessively aggressive aria at the beginning of the opera in protest at Calloandro’s high-handed dealings with his betrothed.17 14 This effect is partly due to a recitation of the entire text in the first thirty-two of
the aria’s overall 102 bars; the only modulating area (bb. 34–52) does not contain any distinctive, new thematic material. See Paisiello, La molinara ossia ‘L’ amor contrastato’, ed. Rocchi, pp. 44–8.
15 Cherubini, ‘D’ un alma incostante’, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (here-
after F-Pn), Vm4.597, vol. i, pp. 75–101. For a recent discussion of rondò arias see M. Nahon, ‘Le origini del rondò vocale a due tempi: Tempo musicale e tempo scenico nell’ aria seria tardosettecentesca’, Musica e storia 30 (2005), pp. 25–80.
16 ‘Les airs supprimés de Paisiello … penchaient trop vers un ton buffo. “Qual tromba
rimbombante” de la version de Naples pousse le ténor à une certaine caricature de l’ allure militaire grâce à une mélodie qui imite une sonnerie de clairon (rythmes pointés sur les accords de tonique.’ Di Profio, La Révolution, p. 209, with music examples. The caricature element of Paisiello’s buffo operas was already noted in H. Abert, ‘Paisiellos Buffokunst und ihre Beziehungen zu Mozart’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 1 (1918), p. 403.
17 See Luigino: ‘Signora Baronessa’, Paisiello, La molinara ossia ‘L’ amor contrastato’,
ed. Rocchi, pp. 26–32.
Fend • Pieces into Works 317 The relatively complex structure of Paisiello’s ‘Qual tromba rimbombante’, resulting from the free mixing of phrases from different stanzas and the setting of the same text passages as Recitative and Aria, cannot hide the emotional blandness of both words and music, partly caused by almost the entire aria being written in the tonic.18 First the Governor and then Calloandro lacked the musical inwardness that might have turned them into serious suitors. Furnished with a different text by the theatre’s house poet Antonio Andrei, Cherubini removed the protagonist’s vanity and attempted to make him more vulnerable.19 This is achieved ‘by way of a syntax and forms borrowed from opera seria, that is to say sbalzate notes (jumping intervals), sustained notes and virtuosic passages’, presented in the form of a rondò (Larghetto, 6/8 – Allegro, 4/4).20 Although Palomba’s reference to a ‘tromba rimbombante’ invited orchestral colouring, Paisiello never varied the homogeneous sound of the strings. Cherubini, by contrast, made ample use of oboe, horn and bassoon soli. The administrators of the Théâtre also saw a need to interfere with the Notary’s aria (‘Piano un po’’, No. 11, i. 14). Situated just before the first finale, 18 See Paisiello, La molinara ossia ‘L’ amor contrastato’, ed. Rocchi, pp. 78–85. On
Paisiello’s ‘simplicity’ in general see F. Lippmann, ‘ “Il mio ben quando verrà”: Paisiello creatore di una nuova semplicità’, Studi musicali 19 (1990), pp. 385–405.
19 Paisiello’s librettist Palomba wrote: ‘Qual tromba rimbombante / comincia in tono
altero / del vago mio sembiante / le glorie a raccontar. / Puoi dir che uno sguardo errante / del vago occhietto e nero / e Dame, Ninfe e Fanti / ha fatto innamorar. / Gli stimoli … Gli affanni … / I palpiti … gli affetti / cagion di questi occhietti / potrai ben decantar. / Poi taci, più non dire, / silenzio, e punto qua; / poiché l’ amato bene / da tanti colpi oppresso / in quel momento istesso / impallidir potra’ [Like a resounding trumpet begin with a high tone to recount the glories of my graceful features. You can say that a roving look from a graceful black eye has made women, nymphs and knaves fall in love. Incentives, anxieties, sighs and affections, which are the source of these looks, you can well praise; then be quiet and say no more; silence and stop there, because at that point the beloved might well grow pale, struck by those blows]. Paisiello, La molinara ossia ‘L’ amor contra stato’, ed. Rocchi, pp. 79–85. Andrei wrote instead: ‘Vedrai nel suo bel viso / fra i gigli, e fra le rose / Scherzar le grazie, e il riso / Insieme con amor. / Vanne dal caro bene, / Corri a spiegarle, oh Dio! / L’ acerbo affanno mio. / Che piango … che sospiro, / Che smanio … che deliro / Che mi si spezza il cor’ [In her face you will see a game of grace with smile and love, embedded in lilies and roses. Go to my beloved and explain to her, by God, my bitter sorrow, that I weep and sigh, that I burn and dream, that she is breaking my heart]. See [Paisiello], La molinarella (Paris, 1789), p. 15 and Cherubini, ‘Vedrai ne suo bel viso’, Kraków, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Biblioteca Jagiellońska (hereafter PL-Kj).
20 ‘ “Vedrai nel suo bel viso” de Cherubini se caractérise en revance par une gram-
maire et des formes empruntées à l’ opéra seria … à savoir notes sbalzate (sauts de grands intervalles), notes tenues, passages ornamentaux de grande virtuosité.’ Di Profio, La Révolution, p. 210, with musical examples.
318 Music as Social and Cultural Practice the Notary was cornered by Calloandro and the Governor, as they realised that he was acting solely for his own advantage instead of promoting the happiness of his clients.21 Faced with their anger, the Notary is partly indignant, partly suppliant, but in the end he blames the woman who has bewitched them all. Paisiello set the Notary’s defence (D, 4/4, Allegro) in an effective parlando style, with ubiquitous drum-bass accompaniment and a harmonic style which only touches on secondary dominants. What might have bothered Viotti and his colleagues at first sight are the Notary’s intermittent slips from erudite Latin into broad dialect, since they removed this relic of the commedia dell’ arte from the entire libretto. The bilingual edition of the libretto would have enabled the ‘amateurs’ to understand his singing, if the administrators had opted to keep this expression of his anxiety in play as an element of local colour. By contrast, the removal of the indigenous dialect was part of a strategy to make the opera more international.22 In Cherubini’s version (‘Piano, piano’, E flat, 4/4, Allegro) the Notary’s character was reorientated.23 He shows cunning only by running away in the end, but beforehand he is frightened out of his wits as in this version his clients pursue him with weapons. His first breathless rendition of the entire text (bb. 1–110) is followed by some sixty further bars of garbled lines, reducing him to stammered fragments. While Paisiello’s music was overall stationary, despite its liveliness, Cherubini’s setting shows dramatic pacing. Not only has he mostly avoided one of Paisiello’s fingerprints, the drum bass, but his sequential motifs also lead into harmonically unexpected areas instead of immediately and anxiously harking back to their origins, as Paisiello prefers to do. In Cherubini sections with independent orchestral motifs reinforced by two bassoons are clearly segregated from frequent unisono phrases. By contrasting the characters of the two protagonists, making one more aggressive and the other more timid, the action becomes more gripping and the Notary’s final escape is more convincingly motivated. Another aria that Cherubini rewrote concerns the Baronessa’s sorrow (‘Mi sta nell’ anima l’ ingrato oggetto’, No. 14, ii. 4), unable to forget the man who left her. A close similarity with Paisiello’s version exists, insofar as Cherubini retains the D major key and the A–A' form, but the interior proportions vary considerably. While in Paisiello the two sections are of almost equal length (A bb. 1–56 and A' 63–110), Cherubini condenses the second rendering of the 21 See Paisiello, La molinara ossia ‘L’ amor contrastato’, ed. Rocchi, pp. 138–44. 22 The dialect was also removed in the first commercial recording of the opera in 1959
under the direction of F. Caracciolo (Archivio RAI, Cetra, lar 19), but it is preserved in the recording from 1997 under I. Bolton (Ricordi Opera 74321405862).
23 Cherubini, ‘Piano, piano’, PL-Kj.
Fend • Pieces into Works 319 text into bars 81–114. Paisiello’s setting suffers in particular from an all too cheerful arpeggio melody with a similarly sprightly accompaniment in Allegro tempo, sharply at variance with the protagonist’s melancholy mood. Cherubini selected instead an Andantino tempo, a 2/4 metre, and a more conjunct melody with expressive rests in the second stanza (‘e quando tento di discacciarlo’). For the most intense third stanza (‘Che vita misera!’) Paisiello modulated to the dominant, adding semiquaver accompanimental figures and dynamic contrasts, while Cherubini introduces rhythmically accentuated orchestral figures in demisemiquavers and triplets as well as diminished chords independent of the vocal line. By comparison with Paisiello, Cherubini’s setting is far more persuasive and expressive. At first, the motive for Cherubini’s reworking of the jubilant Notary’s aria ‘Scritti addio’ (No. 16, ii. 7) defies comprehension, because Paisiello’s fast pace and bright sound (Moderato, 4/4, G), supported by oboes and horns, seems totally apt for the Notary’s fantasies, in which he sees his future wife’s body parts as reincarnations of his discarded tools (‘the teeth are the clauses, … those hairs are the footnotes’, etc.). Admittedly, transforming a pompous notary into a passionate lover would have been a difficult task for any composer. It appears that Cherubini or his collaborators found fault with Paisiello for the relative ‘blandness’ of his orchestral accompaniment, restricted to a single ostinato motif. While this strategy fostered a homogeneous sound, it did not alleviate the relative neutrality of the protagonist’s feeling. Nor did Cherubini attempt to solve this problem. He focused instead on the sound of the orchestra and on the formal shape of the text’s rendition. He added bassoons to Paisiello’s oboes and horns and, more importantly, used the winds in no fewer than 129 of the whole 149 bars.24 Although they usually merely imitate one of the string instruments, in combination with multiple dynamic markings the wind section adds considerable sound volume to the aria. Harmonically, Cherubini displays a fondness for the major sixth degree and also uses the second degree, thus opting for a higher degree of chromatic inflection. Regarding the shape of the aria, after beginning in Maestoso, Cherubini accelerates in bar 63 to an Allegro Spiritoso, although he repeatedly inserts rests with fermatas to punctuate its flow. For the same purpose he varies the orchestral figuration. In his second rendition of the text after bar 97 the Notary omits as well as reorders words at will and indulges in musical monotony, which clearly ironises him. The Notary’s decision to make himself eligible for Rachelina by becoming a miller was followed by Calloandro’s cry of grief, for which Paisiello turned to the vocabulary of opera seria, but the production team at the Théâtre de 24 On Cherubini’s instrumentation in general and his employment of wind instru-
ments in particular see D. Charlton, ‘Orchestration and Orchestral Practice in Paris, 1789–1810’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1974).
320 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Monsieur selected a stylistically similar aria from his Pirro instead.25 The boundaries of the dramma giocoso genre are then touched for the first time, when Rachelina is chased by the suddenly ‘mad’ Calloandro. As he threatens to kill his rival, the unexpectedly well-educated and emotionally strong miller girl offers herself as the ‘Angelique’ to Calloandro’s violent ‘Medoro’ hallucination. At that moment the Notary faints with anxiety so that Rachelina, as a last resort, feigns to faint as well. What could possibly have been wrong with this scene or with Paisiello’s setting? Notaro Aimè! (cade svenuto)
Notary Alas! (fainting)
Rachelina Chi mi sostiene?
Rachelina Who will support me?
Rospolone Si muore a due.
Rospolone They are both dying.
Calloandro Che fu? Parla, mio bene!
Calloandro What’s happened? Speak, my love!
Rachelina [Aria] Rachelina [Aria] Ahi, chi mi sostiene, Alas, who will support me? Non mi reggo, non sto bene! I can’t stand up, I don’t feel well! Nel vedervi irato e fiero To see you, full of pride and anger Minacciar quel poverino, Threatening that poor man, Il mio cor, tantin, tantino, I feel my heart is beating faster and faster Nel mio sen divenne già. In my breast. (Ah, trovassi una maniera per (If only I could find a way to make poterli corbellar) fools of them) Un orrore entrambi assale, Horror assails us both, Trema quello, e tremo io He trembles, and I tremble. Quel furor tremendo e rio Calm your terrible and Raddolcite per pietà. Wicked fury, for pity’s sake! Chi mi segna? Chi mi slaccia? Who will bless me? Who will unlace me? Ahi, ahi, l’ affanno cresce! Alas, alas, my distress is increasing! Voglio aceto, erbe odorose I need vinegar, fragrant herbs, Voglio cose da ristoro, I need things to revive me, Deh cercatele … correte. Go and look for them quickly, I beg you. Sommi Dei già manco, e moro, Almighty gods, I’m already failing, I’m dying, 25 See Calloandro, ‘Ohimè! Comincia … Veggo tra l’ ombre’, Recitative and Aria
in Paisiello, La molinarella, pp. 260–8; replaced with ‘Agitato in tante pene’ in G. Paisiello, Pirro (1787), London, Royal College of Music (hereafter GB-Lcm); see also La molinarella (Paris, 1789), p. 42.
Fend • Pieces into Works 321 Nè soccorso alcun mi dà. And no one comes to my aid. (Rachelina finge nuovamente di (Rachelina pretends to faint again, svenire e il notaro imita le sue imitated by the Notary. azioni. Intanto Calloandro e Calloandro and Rospolone leave.) Rospolone escono.) Rachelina e Notaro Son partiti … andiamo adesso, Non si tardi un sol istante, Un bel matto e un vecchio amante Son ben facili a imbrogliar.26
Rachelina and Notary They’ve left … let’s go now, Let’s not lose a moment, A complete madman and an old lover Are very easy to trick.
Paisiello composed this scene in two parts with a short recitative functioning as a bridge passage (Andante – Allegro, 2/4, B flat). The final Allegro section for both protagonists, featuring parlando-style singing shadowed by the orchestra and an elementary harmony, provides release from the previous tension. The Andante section gives prominence to two orchestral ideas: a semiquaver figure, which at first (bb. 1–16) conveys Rachelina’s grief and at its return (bb. 34–49) her need for a herbal remedy, while a demisemiquaver figure is first employed (bb. 20–7) to paint the ‘orrore’ and at its return (bb. 60–70) likewise her need for a herbal remedy. Although such polysemantic orchestral motifs are not necessarily detrimental to an aria’s effectiveness, in the present instance the demisemiquaver figure refers as much to the men running for medicine as to Rachelina’s state of terror. Simultaneously with the men’s disappearance, the music peters out. The emotional ambiguity of musical gestures is evident again in the text of the concluding duet, which refers to both the duped men and the new couple’s happiness. Andrei, the librettist at the Théâtre de Monsieur, made some drastic changes: Pistofolo Ohimè! (Siede su di un sasso mezzo svenuto)
Pistofolo Aah! (Sits on a rock half-fainting)
Rachelina Chi mi sostiene? (Finge svenire anch’ essa)
Rachelina Who will support me? (Also pretends to faint)
Rospolone Si muore a due.
Rospolone They are both dying.
Calloandro Che fu? Parla mio bene!
Calloandro What’s happened? Speak, my love!
26 G. Paisiello, La molinarella (Pisa, 2005), pp. 310–20; English translation (with
some adjustments) by N. Jamieson in G. Paisiello, La molinara (Ricordi Opera, 74321405862), pp. 106–7.
322 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Rachelina [Aria] Ahi! Ahi! Ho male al core, Un po’ d’ acqua, un po’ d’ odore (Se lo credon gli sguarjati, saran bene corbellati.) Ah! Cercate … non tardate … Io d’ affanno manco già. (Via Calloandro e Rospolone) Son partiti?
Rachelina [Aria] Alas! Alas! I am sick at heart. Bring me water, bring me smelling salts. (If they believe it, the hopeless fools, they will be well and truly tricked.) Ah! Search … don’t delay … I am fainting with grief. (Calloandro and Rospolone leave) Have they gone?
Pistofolo Son partiti.
Pistofolo They have gone.
Rachelina Gli ho burlati come va. Dunque, mio bene, Andiamo via. Già d’ allegria Mi balza il cor. Andiam mia vita, Più non tardiamo. Andiamo, andiamo, Ove n’ invita Un fido amor.27
Rachelina I have tricked them as expected. Now, my treasure, Let’s go. My heart rejoices With happiness. Let’s go, my darling, Let’s not delay. Let’s go, let’s go, Where loyal love Invites us.
Andrei trimmed Rachelina’s verbosity to the absolute minimum,28 preserved her remarks a parte that highlight her feigned emotion and substituted the concluding duet with a solo piece for her. Although the scene remained dramatically identical, the emotions expressed have been clarified. The concluding section, beginning at ‘Dunque mio bene’, no longer deals with the suitors but only with Rachelina’s and the Notary’s new happiness. Like Paisiello, Cherubini organised his setting in two sections connected by recitative (Moderato, 4/4 – Allegro, 2/4, B flat) but his orchestral motifs vary to a greater extent. Chromatic progressions feature prominently, taking the form of melodic motifs, ascending/descending bass lines, or appoggiaturas, all figurations being clearly intended as gestures of fainting. While Paisiello’s score imitates emotions that run dry, Cherubini translates the process of the protagonist’s fainting into music, followed by her expression of happiness. Employing a rondò form, though without reusing earlier thematic material in the fast section, gives Rachelina additional status while reducing her prospective husband to a spectator. 27 La molinarella (Paris, 1789), pp. 44–5. 28 This latter aspect is a consistent feature of the adaptations at the Théâtre de
Monsieur, as demonstrated by Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 148–62.
Fend • Pieces into Works 323 In Paisiello’s original version the second duped suitor, the Governor Rospolone (‘big toad’), responded to Rachelina’s ruse with a condemnation of his entire epoch (‘Che secolo è questo!’, Allegro, 6/8, F), but its musical dullness vindicated the chop. Unfortunately, Cherubini’s imagination is found equally wanting despite his starting from a new text, in which the protagonist reveals his misogyny as resulting from earlier unhappy infatuations (‘Or m’ accorgo dell’ orrore’, Allegro sostenuto, 4/4, F). Cherubini’s setting shows some of his own emerging trademarks: he evidently intended to relieve his audience from the boredom of Paisiello’s ranting Governor by harmonically developing the ostinato motif in the the second stanza (bb. 44 ff), and by designing prominent orchestral figures as surroundings for the individual text lines of the third stanza (bb. 79 ff). Likewise, the layout of the first setting of the text is as generous (97 bars), as the repeat of the first two stanzas is condensed (bb. 99–109), while in the aria’s last thirty bars Cherubini freely selects single phrases of the third stanza, offering the protagonist the stage for his uncontrollable anger. Some or all of these compositional features had already been detected in earlier examples. They amount to making the characters less farcical and more dignified. Cherubini exploited the vague boundaries of the genre dramma giocoso in the remainder of the second act, as the frightened ensemble threaten to send Calloandro and the Notary to the madhouse (‘andate ai mattarelli’). Still, a happy end is secured in an extremely short third act, where Rachelina and the Notary are reunited (‘Oh il mio caro pupazzetto’) and the Baronessa declares her will to marry the cured Calloandro. Cherubini sought to strengthen Paisiello’s lightweight conclusion by adding a jubilant chorus (‘Viva amor’).29 Apart from Cherubini’s involvement, La molinarella was further modified by the omission of two more arias and a duet, while a third aria was replaced.30 If we adopt Di Profio’s system of dividing the opera into twenty-four numbers, only eleven were retained for the Paris production, and similarly counting with Robinson twenty-eight numbers, fourteen numbers were either omitted, substituted, or newly composed. In addition, the ‘by far most commonly 29 Of the repertory’s thirty-four operas only six have a chorus, which here and in Il
convitato di pietra (Mengozzi), La bella pescatrice, Le nozze di Dorina (both Ferrari) and Il tamburo notturno (Raffanelli) were added for the Théâtre de Monsieur by its own staff. This is an indication that the genre mostly thematised individuals and that collectives were excluded.
30 The first duet between Rachelina and the Notary ‘Per marito Ussignoria’ and
Amarante’s aria ‘A che far le superbette’ are omitted in the first act, the latter being replaced by Bianchi’s ‘Anch’ io nel seno’. In the second act, the arias by Amarante, ‘Ah, mi fatte ridere’, and Luigino, ‘Estremi portentosi’, were also omitted.
324 Music as Social and Cultural Practice adopted’ ending of the opera excluded the third act altogether except for its duet, which was placed before the second finale.31 In each scenario there is an astonishing number of modifications, which is usually taken to mean that such an Italian opera was not a ‘work’ to be reproduced but a ‘text’ made ready for performance according to local conditions. There is a noticeable trajectory in the contemporary reviews, which at first merely applaud the protagonists while decrying the plot, but eventually praise the musical qualities and Cherubini’s contributions in particular.32
case study ii: cimarosa’s l’ italiana in londra Even by the standards of the Théâtre de Monsieur the score of this opera was of a particularly provisional nature, since one of Cherubini’s substitute arias was later replaced with Cimarosa’s original, probably upon a change of performer, for one aria Cherubini wrote two substitutions, two of Cimarosa’s own arias were not sung and a third one was substituted with an aria from Cimarosa’s oratorio Il Sacrificio d’ Abramo.33 Set in a London coffee-house run by an Italian matron, three visitors contend for the affection of an Italian house guest, Livia, who is eventually reunited with one of them, Milord Arespingh, after he has overcome her wrath for having abandoned her earlier out of a sense of filial duty. Cherubini’s help was called upon early in the opera as the Matron’s complaint about her own infidel lover delivered ad spectatores did not please the Feydeau administrators (‘Modesto mi guardava’, i. 5). At issue was the librettist Petrosellini’s colloquial tone, which Andrei was asked to raise.34 Cimarosa’s aria is through-composed to some extent, though some internal passages are directly repeated, and is clearly intended to be funny if we consider the protagonist’s imitation of some manly phrases. Its slow tempo (Andantino espressivo) hints at a lyrical content that remains, however, unexplored in part due to the simplistic harmony. By contrast, Cherubini selected a rondò form (ABACADD) in accordance with the rendition of the four completely different textual stanzas (‘Al par dell’ onda infida’) and their repetitions. Only in the 31 Robinson, Giovanni Paisiello: A Thematic Catalogue, p. 440. 32 See Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 316–17.
33 See ibid., pp. 465–6; for a copy of the score see GB-Lcm. 34 For example, in Cimarosa’s opera the Matron concludes her address by singing:
‘Pityful women, do never say “yes” to these faithless lovers, moody, irritable, fickle, frenzied.’ See D. Cimarosa, ‘Modesto mi guardava’, L’ italiana in Londra, ed. L. Tozzi (Milan, 1987), pp. 87–95, 94. In Cherubini’s version she ends: ‘I am not saying anything but that man has a certain something that one cannot understand and never will.’ Cherubini, ‘Al par dell’ onda infida’, P-Kj, pp. 17–19.
Fend • Pieces into Works 325 third stanza did he modulate from the tonic G to its minor parallel. A frothy ostinato motif in the first violins, a mezza voce, is separated from a semiquaver arpeggio figure in the second violins sul ponticello and the lower strings’ pizzicati. Flutes, oboes, horns and bassoons are present most of the time with a figuration of their own. The music’s empathy with the protagonist’s sadness is made plain at the climax (b. 127 f with repeat in b. 146 f), where the violin ostinato is briefly abandoned, the bass parts rest and the singer’s staccato A b, supported by the first violins and flute, is in dissonance with a sustained G in both second violins and second flute. Thus, in comparison with Cimarosa, Cherubini’s aria has a much more sophisticated, carefully wrought form, although all sense of humour was lost in the process. The administrators of the Théâtre perceived a further problem in the ambivalent emotions with which Milord is imbued in the original work. In the aria ‘Sire, io vengo ai vostri piedi’, i. 9, he envisages imploring no less than the king in order to overcome his own father’s resistance to his love for Livia. But his impassioned trial aria is performed in front of the Matron and another guest, who meet it with pantomimic laughter or disapproval. The strategy of making Milord’s text and music immediately respond to the reactions of the two other protagonists on stage and thereby accentuate the artifice of the emotional plea, as it is interrupted in full flow, jarred with the administrators’ view of the French public’s operatic expectations. In any case, Cherubini was commissioned to write a new aria, ‘Lungi dal caro bene’, that was devoid of the original’s epic effect and was more lyrical in tone.35 As in the case of Don Calloandro in Paisiello’s La molinarella, Milord’s original aria was not linked to the emotion he was meant to convey. The decisiveness of his tone could not mask his temperamental neutrality so that stepping out of his role hardly amounted to a musical event. In Andrei’s text and Cherubini’s setting the task is clarified and hence the protagonist’s sadness conveyed. He is allowed some depth of feeling because the aim of the opera is no longer to provide laughter at every possible moment. In contrast to the new serious tone adopted in these arias thanks to Cherubini’s substitutions, the administrators did not touch Don Polidoro’s gullibility, fostered by the Matron, in making himself invisible in order to spy on Livia and the Matron. Instead they asked Cherubini to turn Cimarosa’s secco 35 Compare Cimarosa, ‘Sire, io vengo ai vostri piedi’, L’ italiana in Londra, ed. Tozzi,
pp. 161–72 with Cherubini, ‘Lungi dal caro bene’, ibid., pp. 447–52. Cherubini’s earlier substitution, ‘Senza il caro mio tesoro’ (P-Kj), was discarded perhaps for its all too dramatic character, conveyed for example through a rondò form (Adagio – Allegro, with the structure A B A B C B C), voix entrecoupée, leaps up to a tenth and sustained notes. For a reproduction of bars 82–106 showing an exclusive wind accompaniment see Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 216–17.
326 Music as Social and Cultural Practice r ecitative into an extended trio showing Don Polidoro’s illusions at work in the presence of the two women.36 In the second part of the intermezzo the Lord, a baritone role, gives himself up to despair after Livia has rejected him as well as her other admirers. Cimarosa set Milord’s rondò aria ‘Van girando per la testa’ for oboes, horns and strings, including a double bass (ii. 17). Beginning in a 4/4 metre, the larghetto section in D (bb. 1–18) is followed by a short recitative (bb. 18–30). This gives way to an allegro assai (bb. 31–146), with a 6/8 metre from bar 47 onwards, which is initially in A major but becomes anchored again in the tonic after bar 95.37 The harmonic simplicity is mirrored by a rhythmic uniformity which privileges running quavers both for the text’s rendition and the orchestral figurative accompaniment. Indicative of Milord’s mood are the lines: ‘No, I do not fear death, I live for revenge, massacre and fury; I want rivers of blood, finally I want to turn the house to ashes.’38 The repetitive orchestral figures in Cimarosa’s setting combined with their parallel vocal melody could be interpreted as mirroring the protagonist’s entrapment in his affect, but it is more likely that his mechanical rendition of fury was intended to parody the affect that is made obvious by the textual hyberbole. Cherubini used exactly the same words and a rondò contour for the company’s primo tenore Giuseppe Viganoni, but chose slightly slower tempi. An Andante molto sostenuto (4/4, C major) is followed by Recitative (bb. 39–45) and an Allegro section in C minor (bb. 46–201).39 More important than enriching the orchestral sound with bassoons, as he usually did, is his invention of a series of distinctive orchestral motifs, each dominating a section of the aria. But this technique is applied in a somewhat mechanical way too, although Cherubini’s motifs are of a more instrumental kind and display a much greater contrast between each other than Cimarosa’s did. His setting of the equivalent section ‘No, che di morte’ (bb. 75–85 and 150–60) renders a relatively higher degree of disquiet through a circular, mostly chromatic melody, dotted rhythm and staccato articulation; in a similar manner the words ‘e fino l’Erebo farò tremar’ (‘And I shall make the underworld tremble’) are set by Cherubini in a chromatically progressing series of chords (E b–e b–C b–a b (with added sixth)– 36 See Cimarosa, ‘Son due, tre, quattro’, L’ italiana in Londra, ed. Tozzi, pp. 305–14
and Cherubini, ‘Son tre, sei, nove’, ibid., pp. 453–83.
37 Cimarosa, L’ italiana in Londra, F-Pn d2125, fols 192r–201v and Cimarosa, L’ italiana
in Londra, ed. Tozzi, pp. 353–62.
38 ‘No, no, che di morte non ho timore, spiro vendetta, stragi e furore; voglio che
rive di sangue scorrano, vo’ fin la casa mandare in cenere.’ Cimarosa, L’ italiana in Londra, ed. Tozzi, pp. 356–7.
39 Cherubini, ‘Van girando per la testa’, F-Pn Vm4 632 and as vocal score in Cimarosa,
L’ italiana in Londra, ed. Tozzi, pp. 484–502.
Fend • Pieces into Works 327 F7–E b). Contemporary reviewers immediately singled out this version for its ‘grande expression’ and ‘effets … effrayants’; or, as another paper put it: ‘the power and the variety of the [orchestral] accompaniment tear apart the soul of the spectator’.40 Not only did Cherubini erase any trace of irony from Milord’s aria, he was indeed praised for appropriating it to the ‘grand goût’. While the role of Milord was substantially recast through Cherubini’s revisions, Livia remained largely unaffected, with the result that the aria in which she rejects all her companions does not succeed in musically conveying her plight. However, in the scene where she finally reveals her true feelings for Milord, Cimarosa’s secco recitative made way for Cherubini’s recitativo obbligato that gave greater weight to her role.41
conceptions of the musical work of art These analytical observations of the substitution arias thus confirm the contemporary view that Cherubini made the operas altogether more serious. Di Profio, likewise, came to the conclusion that, in line with his earlier compositional expertise, Cherubini’s role consisted in ‘appropriating a lyrical style of serious character’ for the house.42 The surprising degree of homogeneity between the substitutions, when analysed as a group, indicates that there was more to these changes than the addition of musical weight or flexible responses to singers’ demands. In most pieces analysed, the musical techniques combined with textual changes amount to the removal of a certain kind of comedy. While in the earlier versions librettists and composers joined forces to ridicule emotions, Andrei’s and Cherubini’s adaptations intended the protagonists’ emotions to be taken seriously. Whereas before they showed themselves able to suppress their emotions, in Cherubini’s pieces they are meant to show sensibility and arouse the audience’s pity. The object of the operatic endeavour has therefore changed as well, insofar as in the former theatrical illusion is in a flux of creation and destruction, whereas Cherubini’s substitutions promote continuous suspense.43 The enhanced intensity of his dramatic style was in time met with audiences’ expectations as they rejected in turn what they perceived 40 ‘la force et la variété des accompagnemens, tout y déchire l’ ame du Spectateur’.
Journal général de France, 12 September 1790; see the similar reviews in Gazette nationale, Moniteur universel, 14 September 1790; Le Spectateur, 12 September 1790, all quoted in Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 378 and 380.
41 See Cimarosa, ‘Ah generoso amico’, L’ italiana in Londra, ed. Tozzi, pp. 378 ff and
Cherubini, ‘Ah, generoso amico’, P-Kj.
42 Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 192, 204, 214. 43 The ‘epic’ style of theatrical illusion was already noticed by Abert. See his ‘Paisiellos
Buffokunst’, p. 404.
328 Music as Social and Cultural Practice as the ‘feebleness’ and ‘monotony’ of, for example, Anfossi’s operas.44 Cherubini’s compositional strategies, the additional interest afforded by his orchestral motifs, enriched orchestral sonorities and expressive melodic lines can also be seen as a response to Quatremère de Quincy’s demand, voiced in the year of the Feydeau’s opening, for an interest in an opera that was solely sustained by its music.45 Given the large number of Cherubini’s interferences in the case of Paisiello’s La molinarella and the dramaturgical restructuring imposed on Cimarosa’s L’ italiana in Londra, it would be hard to claim that the operas performed in Italy and Paris were the same, although they appear under the same titles and authorship. To further confuse the matter, there is no evidence that the original composers protested against the adaptations made in Paris, just as they themselves changed their scores on subsequent occasions. The reconstruction of Cherubini’s compositional activities around 1790, centred in one genre but diversified in their results, offers a historical glimpse into the institutional realities of the creation, recreation and cultural consumption of musical scores. It would be short-sighted to ascribe the motivation or decision-making behind their creation all to one hand, be it the composer, the administrators, the singers, the audience, or the press. It could be seen that, for the staging of operas at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, sometimes drastic changes were made which were not necessarily politically motivated, as one might assume in the revolutionary period, but which were evidently deemed necessary simply to increase the repertoire’s chance of success with the public. The existence of the varied historical documents at our disposal bears witness to the input by all the parties concerned. Their activities also provoke the question of the status of these various kinds of composition, as evaluated by contemporary writers and, last not least, by the composer himself. As far as Cherubini’s compositional labours around 1790 are concerned, he partly wrote pieces for the chef d’œuvres of other composers, as discussed. He also composed original works without possessing the author’s rights (Lodoïska) and in 1788 he had an opera printed with no performance opportunities in sight. We might conclude that neither his ‘works’ as individual artefacts nor his ‘work’ as an accumulation of artefacts existed. As regards his substitution arias, Cherubini’s authorship does not appear in the librettos. It is selectively 44 See Di Profio, La Révolution, p. 204. 45 ‘On ne demande au poëte que l’ art de connoître les intérêts de la musique, …
d’ amener des contrastes, de motiver ou des morceaux variés de mélodie, ou de grands effets d’harmonie, de susciter des incidens, de produire des nuances, de s’ adapter enfin jusque dans le choix des mots les plus sonores, aux besoin du musicien, comme à l’ intérêt du chanteur.’ A. Quatremère de Quincy, Dissertation sur les opéras italiens (Paris, 1789); quoted in Fabiano, I ‘buffoni’, p. 334.
Fend • Pieces into Works 329 recorded in contemporary press reports and corroborated by existing scores that the composer described in his catalogue. Although the substitution arias are compositional units, they were used as insertions to existing works that remained associated solely with the original composer. As regards an opera exclusively completed by him, such as Lodoïska, Cherubini had no droits d’ auteur, and how could such an opera be regarded as his work, if he had not an author’s rights over it? The printing of Démophoon should not count as a work either, because, since its first run at the Académie Royale in 1788, it has ‘never been revived anywhere apart from a concert at Koblenz in 1926, when extracts were performed’.46 More recently, it was staged in Rome in 1985.47 Such a negative assessment would conform with Lydia Goehr’s set of conditions, according to which ‘the work-concept with its full regulative force emerged around 1800’.48 Under the heading ‘Beethoven paradigm’ and associated with social and aesthetic developments in German-speaking countries, Goehr singled out as its constituent features the ‘composers’ independence’, the ‘autonomy of art’, ‘ownership rights’, the ‘ideal of originality’ and performers’ ‘fidelity to composers’ instructions’.49 Cherubini’s musical production would, by contrast, fall into her earlier paradigm of being ‘without the work-concept’, which she defined as a lack of ‘creative freedom’, the ‘common use of musical material’, ‘incomplete scores’, ‘uncommon rehearsals’, and a ‘functional view of musical performance’.50 To avoid misunderstanding, it should be borne in mind that Goehr herself was writing in ‘reaction to philosophers who took as unproblematic the idea that all objects fall under their respective concepts in exactly the same way’ and that she saw it as her decisive progress to have 46 A. Loewenberg, Annals of Opera (London, 1940), p. 230. 47 See K. Hortschansky, ‘Luigi Cherubini, “Démophoon” ’, Pipers Enzyklopädie des
Musiktheaters, ed. C. Dahlhaus and S. Döhring, i (Munich, 1986), p. 555.
48 L. Goehr, ‘ “On the Problems of Dating” or “Looking Backward and Forward with
Strohm” ’, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention, ed. Talbot, p. 238.
49 See L. Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (Oxford, 1992), pp. 206,
207, 218, 220, 224. Cherubini’s work contract contradicts Jacques Attali’s conclusion that because of a pertinent Conseil du Roi of 1786 ‘the ownership right of authors over their “works” was finally recognised’. See J. Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis, 1985), quoted in Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, pp. 218–19. On this topic see also J. Gribenski, ‘Un Métier difficile: Éditeur de musique à Paris sous la Révolution’, Orphée phrygien: Les musiques de la Révolution, ed. J.-R. Julien and J.-C. Klein (Paris, 1989), pp. 21–36, and F. Karro, ‘Le Musicien et le librettiste dans la nation: Propriété et défense du créateur par Nicolas Dalayrac et Michel Sedaine’, Fêtes et musiques révolutionnaires: Grétry et Gossec, ed. R. Mortier and H. Hasquin, Études sur le xviiie siècle xvii (Brussels, 1990), pp. 9–52.
50 Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, pp. 176, 181, 187, 194, 203.
330 Music as Social and Cultural Practice adopted ‘Wittgenstein’s position that concepts or names acquire their meaning in the complex contexts of their use(s)’.51 We begin to appreciate the complex French contexts by glancing at the relevant entries of the terms ‘œuvre’ and ‘opéra’ in Diderot and d’ Alembert’s Encyclopédie of 1765. Among eighteen meanings of the former term it lists a musical application provided by Rousseau, who also contributed a definition of the latter and then enlarged his views in his own Dictionnaire three years later: Work: This word is masculine and is used to designate one of the musical labours of an author. We say the third work by Corelli, the fifth work by Vivaldi and so on. But these titles are hardly used any more. To the extent that music is becoming more perfect, it is loosing those pompous titles with which our forebearers fancied themselves to glorify it. Opera: It is also a word dedicated to distinguishing the different labours of the same author with respect to the order in which they have been printed or engraved, and which he normally characterises himself by way of figures on the title pages. (See work.) These two words are mainly applied to symphonies.52 To all appearances, Rousseau and the Encyclopédie use the two terms œuvre and opéra interchangably and with particular reference to instrumental music, since the genre of opera was distinguished by its labours’ results from its origins in the early seventeenth century owing to its etymological source ‘opus’.53 51 Goehr, ‘ “On the Problems of Dating” ’, pp. 234–5. The ‘philosophers’ referred to are
primarily Nelson Goodman and Jerrold Levinson.
52 ‘Œuvre: ce mot est masculin pour désigner un des Ouvrages de Musique d’ un
Auteur. On dit le troisième œuvre de Corelli, le cinquième œuvre de Vivaldi etc. Mais ces titres ne sont plus guère en usage. À mesure que la Musique se perfectionne, elle perd ces noms pompeux par lesquels nos Anciens s’ imaginoient la glorifier.’ ‘Opéra: Est aussi un mot consacré pour distinguer les différens ouvrages d’ un même Auteur, selon l’ ordre dans lequel ils ont été imprimés ou gravés, et qu’ il marque ordinairement lui-même sur les titres par des chiffres. (voyez œuvre). Ces deux mots sont principalement en usage pour les compositions de symphonie.’ See D. Diderot and J. le Rond d’ Alembert, ‘Œuvre’ and ‘Opéra’, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, xi (Neufchastel, 1765), pp. 411, 496, and J.-J. Rousseau, ‘Œuvre’ and ‘Opéra’, Dictionnaire de Musique, in Œuvres complètes, ed. B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond, v (Paris, 1995), pp. 948, 962.
53 Rousseau’s back-dating of compositions with opus numbers up to Corelli (1681)
has been extended to Lodovico Viadana’s Motecta festorum, Op. 10 (1597) and Biagio Marini’s set of twenty-two opera (1617–55), while collections with the title ‘opus’ were printed as early as 1537 in striking contemporaneity with Listenius’s
Fend • Pieces into Works 331 Rousseau was clearly indebted to Brossard54 but was alone in noticing a diminishing employment of the term ‘œuvre’.55 These definitions reflect contemporary language also found in the ‘Querelle des Bouffons’ (1752–4) and the ‘Querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes’ (1772–83).56 Likewise, there is no consistency of language used in administrative documents surrounding the foundation of the Théâtre de Monsieur, such as its Règlement in 1789 and the reviews of its Italian repertoire in the Parisian press. Instead, the terms ‘pièce’, ‘ouvrage’, ‘ouvrage nouveau’ and ‘chef-d’œuvre’ are used interchangeably and ubiquitously next to the omnipresent term ‘opéra’ in various specifications.57 Cherubini’s compositional activities, as discussed in this essay with reference to the French eighteenth-century discourse on music, make it hard to conceive of the discussion about the musical work-concept as a ‘quarrel over a date’, even if we leave aside for the moment the varied uses of the terms ‘opus’ and ‘opera’ by music theorists, publishers and in the operatic genres since the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively.58 For the unambiguous affirmation of the terms’ uses by French writers jars with the intricate employment conditions and the treatment composers, such as Cherubini, received for the results of their labours in late eighteenth-century France. This complexity appears as an apposite reflection of the description of famous statement of the musical ‘opus perfectum et absolutum’. See Répertoire international des sources imprimés. Recueils imprimés, xvie–xviie siècles, ed. F. Lesure (Munich, 1960), and N. Listenius, Musica (Wittenberg, 1537), cap. 1. On the earliest definition of stage works as ‘operas’ see E. Rosand, Opera in SeventeenthCentury Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 34–6.
54 ‘opera. Properly means work; from this undoubtedly it comes about that both in
Italy and in France the practice of naming as opera the tragedies, pastorales, and other poetries put to music and mixed with spectacles and dances to be shown on stage arose as if to say a work par excellence.’ S. de Brossard, ‘Opera’, Dictionary of Music [1703], trans. and ed. by A. Gruber (Henryville, Pa., 1982).
55 Rousseau’s chronology was later rejected by Momigny: ‘Malgré ce que dit ici
Rousseau, le mot œuvre s’ emploie toujours, en musique, pour désigner chaque ouvrage des bons comme des mauvais compositeurs.’ J.-J. de Momigny, ‘Œuvre’, Encyclopédie méthodique, ed. N.-E. Framery, P.-L. Ginguené and J.-J. de Momigny, ii (Paris, 1818, repr. New York, 1971), p. 214.
56 In his intervention to the first Querelle Diderot epitomises the language in saying:
‘L’ Opéra d’ Armide est le chef-d’œuvre de Lulli, et le monologue d’ Armide est le chef-d’œuvre de cet Opéra.’ D. Diderot, ‘Au petit prophête de Boesmischbroda’, in La Querelle des Bouffons, ed. D. Launay, 3 vols (Geneva, 1973), i, p. 422; F. Lesure (ed.); Querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes, 2 vols (Geneva, 1984).
57 Thirty-four archival documents, the Règlement and press reviews are reprinted in
Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 237–434.
58 L. Goehr, ‘ “On the Problems of Dating” ’, p. 231.
332 Music as Social and Cultural Practice musical works as ‘ontological mutants’.59 But how can one date an ‘ontological mutant’? How widely has the context of a concept’s uses to be investigated to give some stability to the philosophical discussion? Given the multimedia dimension of the work of art, how representative can its musical ‘prototype’ be, if it is weighed down with so many objective and subjective criteria that most of music’s history does not qualify?60 ‘We keep to the works, but we do know that the works don’t need us. … What happens to them depends on the course of the world.’61 Speaking with such confidence about an almost iconic status of ‘works’ appears to have been not only a donation to but also an achievement of some writers in the twentieth century, clearly fuelled by anger about the barbaric course of the world which exposed the works’ impotence. Cherubini also had the ambition to gain individual authorship, although we may conclude that it eluded him if a chronologically wider section of his compositions is considered. Still, there is a clear stylistic link between his insertion arias and his opera writings in the 1790s and he even reused musical material from Marguerite d’ Anjou in his Lodoïska. The musical property law changed in France at a later date so that he could receive some remuneration. In 1840, when Cherubini came to assemble a catalogue of his compositions in Mozartian fashion, he modestly spoke of his ‘ouvrages’ and numbered them continuously, but three years after his death his assistant Bottée de Toulmon, the librarian at the Paris Conservatoire, published the catalogue with an pre-introductory note saying that ‘toutes les œuvres de Cherubini … sont mises en vente’.62
•
I would like to thank Michel Noiray (Paris) for his selfless support of this project, and likewise the librarians at the Biblioteka Jagiellońska (Kraków) and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris).
59 See A. Tormey, ‘Indeterminacy and Identity in Art’, Monist 58 (1974), p. 207, quoted
in Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, p. 2.
60 See Goehr, The Imaginary Museum, pp. 2, 117–18, and ‘ “The Problems of Dating” ’,
pp. 242–3.
61 H. Arendt and K. Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1926–1969 (Munich, 2001), p. 720. 62 Bottée de Toulmon, Notice des manuscrits autographes, p. 1.
Fend • Pieces into Works 333
appendix
Opera
Composer
Le vicende amorose
Tritto
Date
Arias or ensembles/ substitute arias Composers
Total performances
Italian operas performed at the Théâtre Feydeau
26.1.1789
22/5
Mengozzi 4 Bianchi 1
11
Il re Teodoro in Venezia Paisiello
21.2.1789
22/5
Zingarelli 4 Paisiello 1
39
La serva padrona
Paisiello
12.3.1789
n/a
12
I filosofi immaginari
Paisiello
24.4.1789
15/0
15
L’ impresario in angustie Cimarosa
6.5.1789
13/7
Cimarosa 3 Mengozzi 1 Guglielmi 1 Caruso 1 Giordani 1
24
La villanella rapita
Bianchi
15.6.1789
22/15* Caruso 2 Ferrari 4 Mozart 1 Naumann 1 Paisiello 2 Sarti 2 Guglielmi 2 Soler 1
44
Il barbiere di Siviglia
Paisiello
22.7.1789
19/0
56
L’ isola disabitata
Mengozzi
22.8.1789
17/0
3
Le nozze di Dorina
Sarti
14.9.1789
24/10
Zingarelli 4 Gazzaniga 1 Caruso 1 Ferrari 2 Viotti 1 Cimarosa 1
52
La molinarella
Paisiello
31.10.1789
24/12
Cherubini 9 Bianchi 1 Paisiello 2
26
Il fanatico burlato
Cimarosa
28.11.1789
19/1
Cimarosa
2
La pastorella nobile
Guglielmi
12.12.1789
19/1
Cherubini
23
La buona figliuola
Piccinni
3.2.1790
28/1
Piccinni
6
La grotta di Trofonio
Salieri
15.3.1790
25/2
Cherubini
3
Opera
Composer
Le gelosie villane
Sarti
14.4.1790
24/9
Il geloso in cimento
Anfossi
14.5.1790
21/8
Le due gemelle
Guglielmi
29.5.1790
20/7
La frascatana I viaggiatori felici
Paisiello Anfossi
5.6.1790 30.6.1790
26/3 20/11
Don Quisciotte o sia Il cavaliere errante L’ italiana in Londra
Tarchi
2.8.1790
23/0
Cimarosa
9.9.1790
19/6
Il dilettante La bella pescatrice
Mengozzi 1 Cimarosa 1 Cherubini 3 Tritto 1
pasticcio Guglielmi
13.11.1790 23.12.1790
18/11
22.2.1791
22/6
Cimarosa 3 Raffanelli 1 Giardini 1 Alessandri 1 Mengozzi 1 Ferrari 2 Cherubini 1 Ferrari 2 Cimarosa 1 Cherubini 3
Il burbero di buon cuore Martín y Soler
Date
Arias or ensembles/ substitute arias Composers
Total performances
334 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
Mengozzi 1 28 Sarti 1 Cimarosa 1 Fabrizi 1 Sarti/Tritto 1 Salieri 1 Florido Tomeoni 1 Sarti/Cherubini 1 Guglielmi 1 Ferrari 3 7 Mengozzi 2 Anfossi 1 Cimarosa 1 Paisiello 1 Paisiello 3 3 Cherubini 2 Giordanello 1 Guglielmi 1 uncertain 34 34 Marcello da Capua 1 Anfossi/ Cherubini 2 Cherubini 2 Caruso 2 Astaritta 1 Andreozzi 1 Anfossi 1 3 30
2 4
9
Arias or ensembles/ substitute arias Composers
Opera
Composer
Date
Il tamburo notturno
Paisiello
7.4.1791
24/17
La scuola de’ gelosi
Salieri
20.5.1791
20/5
Le vendemmie
Gazzaniga
1.6.1791
20/12
Il finto cieco
Gazzaniga
12.8.1791
19/3
La pazza per amore Il convitato di pietra
Paisiello Gazzaniga
3.9.1791 24.10.1791
13/1 17/10
Una cosa rara
Martín y Soler
3.12.1791
29/5
La bella locandiera Il Signor di Pursognac Le trame deluse
Salieri Jadin Cimarosa
29.2.1792 23.4.1792 16.6.1792
20/6 19/0 n/a
Ferrari 4 Zingarelli 2 Paisiello 2 Cimarosa 2 Cherubini 3 Mengozzi 2 Sarti 1 Paisiello/ Raffanelli 1 Alessandri/ Mengozzi 1 Mengozzi 1 Viganoni 1 Gazzaniga 1 Zingarelli 1 Ferrari 2 Andreozzi 1 Guglielmi 1 Cimarosa 1 Mozart 1 Mengozzi 1 Tritto 1 Giordaniello 1 Gazzaniga/ Cherubini 1 Sacchini 1 Cherubini 1 Andreozzi 1 Jadin 1 Cherubini Mozart 2 Zingarelli 1 Mengozzi 5 Paisiello 1 Cherubini 1 Viotti 1 Cimarosa 1 Cherubini 3 Cherubini
Total performances
Fend • Pieces into Works 335
4
2
11
5 26 2
21 2 10 6†
* Di Profio counts seventeen substitutions, although it is not clear why two airs by Bianchi himself are not part of his original opera; see Di Profio, La Révolution, pp. 191, 484–5. † However, the Moniteur universel made the general observation on 24 June 1792: ‘On n’ a pas manqué, selon la coutume, d’ interposer plusieurs autres morceaux étrangers à la partition.’ See Di Profio, La Révolution, p. 434.
• 18 • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi: I promessi sposi and the Dramaturgy of La forza del destino Emanuele Senici
T
he first scene of Act ii of Verdi’s La forza del destino is set in a tavern in the Andalusian village of Hornachuelos; the time is the mid-eighteenth century. Don Carlo di Vargas (baritone) has been searching for his sister Leonora (soprano) and her lover Don Alvaro (tenor), who have disappeared after Alvaro accidentally killed Leonora and Carlo’s father in Act i (about eighteen months have passed between Act i and Act ii). But the two lovers have been separated, and Leonora, who has disguised herself in men’s clothing, also arrives at the tavern. She recognises her brother, who pretends to be a law student at Salamanca called Pereda, but is not recognised by him. The gypsy woman Preziosilla encourages the men who are dining at the tavern to join the war currently being fought in Italy. Pilgrims are heard chanting in the distance, and everybody on stage joins their prayer. Then Don Carlo tells everyone how he helped his friend Vargas (i.e. himself) in his search for the man who murdered his father and seduced his sister: the murderer has fled to America, and ‘Pereda’ is on his way back to Salamanca to finish his studies. In the autograph score of the opera the entire scene – sixty-six pages in the current Ricordi piano–vocal score – is simply called ‘Scena osteria’, constituting one of Verdi’s longest musical numbers to date. In 1869, when Verdi revised La forza del destino (premiered in St Petersburg in 1862) for a production at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the only major change he made to this number was the transposition of Preziosilla’s canzone ‘Al suon del tamburo’ from the original B flat major to B major, probably in order to suit better the vocal powers See Martin Chusid, A Catalog of Verdi’s Operas (Hackensack, NJ, 1974), p. 78. The
only earlier number comparable to this ‘Scena’ is perhaps Ulrica’s ‘Invocazione’ in Un ballo in maschera, which in fact comprises the entire second scene of Act i. Of course publishers had to divide Forza’s ‘Scena osteria’ into smaller units; in Ricordi’s piano–vocal score of the first version, published in 1863, there are seven: Coro-Ballabile, Scena, Recitativo e Canzone, Preghiera, Scena, Ballata, Scena; see William C. Holmes, ‘The Earliest Revisions of La forza del destino’, Studi verdiani 6 (1990), pp. 55–98, at p. 57. The piano–vocal score of the second version, published in 1869 also by Ricordi and still in print, substitutes the title of the last section, ‘Scena’, with ‘Scena, Coro e Ripresa della danza’; Giuseppe Verdi, La forza del destino, melodramma in quattro atti di Francesco Maria Piave, ed. Mario Parenti (Milan, n.d., pl. n. 41381), p. 105.
Senici • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi 337 of Ida Benza, the Milan Preziosilla. Given the numerous and often radical revisions of other parts of the score, especially the military encampment scene that closes Act iii, it seems logical to conclude that he must have been broadly satisfied with this ‘Scena osteria’, including its rather peculiar ending. Towards the conclusion, after a round of buonanottes exchanged among the characters, at the chorus’s words ‘È l’ ora di posar’ (‘It’s time for bed’), the seguidilla that opened the act comes back to accompany a brief reprise of the dancing. This makes for an odd moment: why should some of the peasants respond to an invitation to go to bed with dancing? Immediately afterwards something almost as strange happens: Don Carlo repeats the beginning of the ballata ‘Son Pereda, son ricco d’ onore’, which he has just sung, when there is no evident dramatic reason why he should do so. It is perhaps easier to justify Preziosilla’s repetition of the laughing music with which, interrupting her canzone, she had responded to Don Carlo’s claim to be a student, and which had already reappeared immediately after the ballata. But the way in which Verdi abruptly throws together these three themes in a brief tutti episode and then interrupts it equally abruptly to return to the buonanottes and bring the curtain down seems to highlight the narrative incongruity of this moment and the musical disjunction it causes. It is not only what Verdi does that is strange, then, but especially how he does it: it is the explicit foregrounding of Recent research by Philip Gossett, editor of the forthcoming critical edition of the
opera, has brought to light a wealth of previously unknown sources related to Verdi’s revisions of Forza, especially those made between the initial version, intended for performances in St Petersburg in 1861 that never took place, and the following one, prepared by Verdi for the actual premiere of the opera in 1862; see Gossett, ‘Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino: 1861, 1862, 1869’, Program and Abstracts of Papers Read at the American Musicological Society Seventy-First Annual Meeting, 27–30 October 2005, ed. Anna Maria Busse Berger (Philadelphia, 2005), pp. 135–6. While much was changed between 1861 and 1862, the only major change between 1862 and 1869 seems to have been the transposition of Preziosilla’s canzone.
Verdi calls ‘seguidilla’ a fast dance in duple time that has nothing to do with a
traditional Spanish seguidilla, a sung dance in a moderately fast triple time whose best-known and fairly typical operatic example is Carmen’s ‘Près des remparts de Séville’ in Act i of Bizet’s opera. Clearly following the composer’s request, in September 1861 Piave apparently ordered a few samples of seguidilla from Madrid, and in early October brought at least one of them to Verdi at S. Agata, since the composer, in his own words, ‘needed to know its movement and time’ (‘ho bisogno di conoscerne il movimento e il tempo’); one wonders what exactly Piave gave Verdi. See Franco Abbiati, Giuseppe Verdi, 4 vols (Milan, 1959), ii, p. 659; Marco Marica, ‘Le lettere di Verdi a Piave custodite presso l’ Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano di Roma: Problemi dell’ edizione critica del carteggio Verdi-Piave’, Pensieri per un maestro: Studi in onore di Pierluigi Petrobelli, ed. Stefano La Via and Roger Parker (Turin, 2002), pp. 299–312, at p. 310.
See Verdi, La forza del destino, pp. 108–15.
338 Music as Social and Cultural Practice juxtaposition that calls for interpretation. What follows is, in a sense, simply an attempt to answer this call. Let us start from the documents closest to the opera’s creation, then. A survey of the main primary sources for Forza does not prove particularly helpful in finding the reasons for this strange ending. Neither the printed libretto for the premiere of the first version of the opera nor the one for the first performance of the revised version contains any reference to the return of the seguidilla, or to Carlo’s and Preziosilla’s reprise of their music. The staging manual published by Ricordi in 1863 (probably compiled by Francesco Maria Piave, librettist of the opera’s first version and chief metteur-en-scène at La Scala) offers only this brief statement: ‘While at the Alcade’s dismissal everybody gets ready to leave and sings buonanotte, the three couples start dancing again on the right. Taking off their hats to pay respect to the Alcade, everybody leaves.’ This gesture has not elicited much commentary in the secondary literature on Forza either. Most critics do not even mention it; others simply state that the chorus prepares to leave the stage at the sound of the seguidilla; only a few seem to grant a structural, cohesive function to the return of the various themes. The life of the opera in the theatre provides more interesting evidence: the practice of cutting the reprise of previous themes altogether and La forza del destino. Opera in quattro atti. Musica di Giuseppe Verdi. – Sila Sud’by.
Opera v chetyryokh Deystbiyakh. Muzyka Dzh. Verdi (St Petersburg, 1862), p. 16; La forza del destino … nuova edizione, da rappresentarsi al Regio Teatro della Scala, Quaresima 1869 (Milan, 1869), p. 26.
‘Mentre congedati dall’ Alcade tutti s’ accingono a partire, e cantano: Buona notte,
le tre coppie riprendono la danza dalla destra. Tutti scoprendosi il capo per salutar l’ Alcade partono dalle porte n. 1 e 2’; La forza del destino … ordinazioni e disposizione scenica (Milan, n.d. [1863]), p. 21.
According to Julian Budden, ‘the scene is rounded off by the resumption of three
of its most important themes’; Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols, ii: From ‘Il trovatore’ to ‘La forza del destino’, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992), pp. 462–3. Gilles de Van is the most explicit supporter of the structural function of this moment: ‘Am Ende als Synthese all dieser Elemente ein Ensemble umfasst’; de Van, ‘La forza del destino’, Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and the Forschungs institut für Musiktheater of the University of Bayreuth directed by Sieghard Döhring, 7 vols (Munich and Zürich, 1986–97), vi, pp. 465–70, at pp. 467–8; ‘The muleteers’ dance, a few measures of Pereda’s ballata, and a few more laughs from Preziosilla make a dazzling “coda” to the tableau’; de Van, Verdi’s Theater: Creating Drama through Music, trans. Gilda Roberts (Chicago, 1998), p. 255, where he analyses the whole scene in terms of ‘the skillful way the plot and the scenes of couleur locale are blended together’ and its ‘superb mastery of structure’ (p. 254). Only Vincent Godefroy seems puzzled by it: ‘[Verdi] does seem to have found difficulty in closing his tavern scene. Various inconsequent snatches of reprise are flung about’; Godefroy, The Dramatic Genius of Verdi: Studies of Selected Operas, 2 vols (New York, 1976–7), i, p. 109.
Senici • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi 339 going from the first round of buonanottes straight to the final cadences seems to have been fairly widespread until a few decades ago. This practice clearly betrays some discomfort with the closing moments of the scene, evidently considered awkward, or superfluous, or in any case expendable. Why did Verdi include this reprise of previous themes and handle it so peculiarly, then? In short, I believe that the conclusion of the ‘Scena osteria’ allowed him to say something specific about Forza’s peculiar dramaturgy and innovative aesthetic stance. In what follows, therefore, I will use this conclusion as a point of view from which to contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the sources, reasons and meanings of the dramaturgy of this most unusual among Verdi’s works. Before doing so, however, it is necessary briefly to summarise the main points of this debate, which began immediately after Forza’s premiere and has continued to the present day.
the ‘extraordinary perverseness’ of la forza del destino While the thematic recurrences at the end of the tavern scene have received little critical attention, the presence of musical ideas spanning Forza’s entire length, especially the so-called ‘fate motif ’, has always been considered one of the opera’s most prominent characteristics, extensively discussed mostly in negative or ambivalent terms. Joseph Kerman, for example, openly censored it in his classic essay ‘Verdi’s Use of Recurring Themes’. More recently Roger Parker, after pointing out that ‘the presence of recurring themes … has often been mentioned by commentators and is sometimes advanced as exemplifying the score’s “musical unity” ’, cautiously expressed his doubts, suggesting that ‘one could equally well see these recurring elements as an attempt to give This statement is based on the evidence provided by a number of live record-
ings of Forza from the central decades of the twentieth century, when the opera slowly but steadily entered the repertory of all the major opera houses. The practice of cutting the whole ‘Scena osteria’ is also documented. At the Metropolitan Opera, for example, the scene was included between 1918, when Forza entered the theatre’s repertory, and 1944, but it was cut in the new production by Herbert Graf premiered in 1952 and revived ninety-seven times until 1972. In some revivals the overture was played not at the beginning but as a bridge between Act i and the second scene of Act ii (a practice surely influenced by the well-known tradition of executing a version of the so-called ‘Leonore’ overture before the final scene of Beethoven’s Fidelio). The ‘Scena osteria’ was reinstated in the new production by John Dexter premiered in 1975. See the Met Opera Database at (accessed 26 May 2006).
Joseph Kerman, ‘Verdi’s Use of Recurring Themes’ (1968), in his Write All These
Down: Essays on Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), pp. 274–87, at p. 280.
340 Music as Social and Cultural Practice some semblance of musical connectedness to a score that conspicuously lacks the cohesion Verdi so effortlessly achieved in his middle-period works’.10 The issue of recurring themes is here explicitly linked with that of the opera’s connectedness and ultimately coherence. According to Julian Budden, the two most common charges against Forza concern its ‘lack of organic unity’ and the ‘discrepancy between the comic and the serious elements’.11 Gabriele Baldini condemned Forza as ‘a series of separate pieces, not necessarily interconnected; a number of parallel musical and dramatic situations, which were not even taken up in their most essential aspects but were dealt with haphazardly … a dramatic structure in which minor episodes are intentionally and with extraordinary perverseness given greater prominence than the crucial moments’.12 Fabrizio Della Seta has turned Baldini’s judgement upside down, however, claiming that Forza constitutes an almost unique example in Italian opera of what he calls an ‘open’ dramaturgy; according to Della Seta, the opera’s lack of cohesion (‘disorganicità’), its apparently unconsequential succession of unrelated scenes, far from being a defect, constitutes ‘a calculated element of its picturesque, novelistic character’.13 Debates about Forza’s recurring themes and its supposed lack of coherence belong to the larger issue of the opera’s dramaturgy, which has often been addressed in terms of the sources on which Verdi based his conception. Many among those who have tackled the question of the dramaturgical sources of Forza have pointed in the direction already suggested in a review of the premiere published in the Journal de Saint-Pétersbourg, which opens with the following words: The play of the Force of Destiny is conceived according to the ideas so eloquently worded in the preface to Cromwell, and structured following the rules inspired by the studious admiration of Shakespeare of that great French poet to whom modern theatre owes Ruy-Blas, Hernani, Le Roi s’ amuse, Angelo, etc. In this preface, Victor Hugo wrote: ‘The sublime upon the sublime does not easily produce contrast, and one needs to take a rest from everything, even the beautiful. On the contrary, it seems that the grotesque can be a time of repose, a term of comparison, a point of departure from which one rises up to the beautiful with a fresher, more excited perception.’ … The duke of Rivas thought this 10 Roger Parker, ‘La forza del destino’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley
Sadie, 4 vols (London, 1992), ii, pp. 261–4, at p. 264.
11 Budden, From ‘Il trovatore’ to ‘La forza del destino’, p. 442. 12 Gabriele Baldini, The Story of Giuseppe Verdi, trans. Roger Parker (Cambridge,
1980), pp. 282–3.
13 Fabrizio Della Seta, Italia e Francia nell’ Ottocento (Turin, 1993), p. 389.
Senici • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi 341 way, and this play … has tempted maestro Verdi, delighted to find reunited in the same dramatic conception terrible adventures of passion, encampment songs, prayers, and oaths.14 According to this view, then, Forza would be a younger sister of Rigoletto, a cousin of Macbeth, and an important step towards Otello and Falstaff. This argument, however, soon runs into a rather serious impasse. Shakespeare’s and Hugo’s influence can account for the mixture of comic and tragic – what Piero Weiss in a famous essay has called ‘Verdi’s fusion of genres’ – but not for the kind of ‘open’ dramatic construction specific to Forza.15 Macbeth and Rigoletto do mix genres, but, by general agreement, are models of dramatic and musical cohesion, and do not feature anything like Forza’s sprawling, loose action. Much the same can be said of Un ballo in maschera, Forza’s genre-bending immediate predecessor, generally considered a masterpiece of musico-dramatic construction. Moreover, on the one hand, the mixture of comic and tragic and the disregard for the Aristotelian unities are not exclusive property of Shakespeare. On the other, there is more to Forza than fusion of genres and disregard for the unities: among unusual traits in comparison with the remainder of Verdi’s oeuvre one might mention the disappearance of some of the main characters for entire acts, and the proliferation of what are generally considered minor characters, such as Melitone, Preziosilla and Trabuco. The immediate reason for many of these traits is of course Forza’s main source, the Duke of Rivas’s play Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino. But why did Verdi choose to base his opera on this play? What did he find there that caught his restless dramaturgical attention? The question regarding the sources and inspirations behind Forza’s peculiar 14 ‘Le drame de la Force du Destin est conçu dans le sentiment qui a été si éloquem-
ment défendu par la préface de Cromwell, et composé selon les règles inspirées surtout par l’ admiration studieuse de Shakespeare au grand poëte français à qui le théâtre moderne doit Ruy-Blas, Hernani, Le Roi s’ amuse, Angelo, etc. Dans cette préface de Cromwell, Victor Hugo écrivait: “Le sublime sur le sublime produit malaisément un contraste, et l’ on a besoin de se reposer de tout, même du beau. Il semble au contraire que le grotesque soit un temps d’ arrêt, un terme de comparaison, un point de départ d’ où l’ on s’ élève vers le beau, avec une perception plus fraiche et plus excitée”. … Le duc de Rivas a été de cet avis, et ce drame … a tenté la verve du maestro Verdi, ravi de trouver réunis dans la même conception dramatique des terribles aventures de passion, des chants de bivac, des prières et des imprécations.’ This long review, signed ‘Z.’, was reprinted with the title ‘La forza del destino, opéra en 4 actes, musique de Giuseppe Verdi, paroles de F. M. Piave’ in the Parisian journal L’ Art musical 2 (1862) (27 November 1862), pp. 411–18; the quotation appears on p. 411.
15 See Piero Weiss, ‘Verdi and the Fusion of Genres’, Journal of the American Musico-
logical Society 35 (1982), pp. 138–56.
342 Music as Social and Cultural Practice dramaturgy is obviously rather complex, and I have neither the space nor the intention of addressing it head-on here. For the moment, I will simply suggest that the long list of relevant authors, genres and titles includes, besides Shakespeare and Hugo, Meyerbeer’s grands opéras, in particular Robert le diable and Le Prophète; the genre of opéra comique, foremost among its representatives Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment; opera semiseria, especially Mozart’s Don Giovanni (which was mostly categorised as a semiseria in nineteenth-century Italy)16 and the three works that were long considered the classics of the genre, that is, Rossini’s La gazza ladra, Bellini’s La sonnambula and Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix; and the French genre of mélodrame, especially in its romantique incarnation. But Forza’s dramaturgical sources are not restricted to the world of the stage; the genre of the novel also plays a significant role, one that, I would suggest, merits closer attention than the perfunctory mentions encountered in the literature.17 I will concentrate on one specific novel which, I believe, had a crucial influence on Forza’s dramaturgy, Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) (1827, rev. 1840). After discussing some general points of contact, I will focus on a comparative reading of Verdi’s tavern scene and a similar moment in Manzoni’s novel, which will allow me to conclude with some hypotheses concerning the interpretation of the opera’s dramaturgy.
‘one of the greatest books that has come from the human mind’ Immensely popular immediately after its first publication in 1827, I promessi sposi, set in Lombardy, northern Italy, in 1628–31, tells the story of Renzo and Lucia, two peasants from a mountain village near the town of Lecco. The novel begins when the parish priest of the village, Don Abbondio, is informed that the local lord, Don Rodrigo, wants him to refuse to marry the betrothed peasant couple. It turns out that Don Rodrigo has taken a fancy to Lucia, and has made a bet with his cousin that he can have her. Fra Cristoforo, a Capuchin friar who is Lucia’s friend and confessor, goes to Don Rodrigo’s castle to remonstrate 16 See Pierluigi Petrobelli, ‘Don Giovanni in Italia: La fortuna dell’ opera e il suo
influsso’, Colloquium ‘Mozart und Italien’ (Rom 1974), ed. Friedrich Lippmann, Analecta Musicologica 18 (Cologne, 1978), pp. 30–54. The connection between Forza and Don Giovanni is explored with perhaps excessive single-mindedness in Jean-Michel Brèque, ‘Sources, faiblesse et prétentions d’ un scénario’, La Force du Destin, L’ Avant-Scène Opéra no. 126 (December 1989), pp. 22–8.
17 Besides Della Seta’s passing reference to Forza’s novelistic character cited above,
interesting if all too brief remarks can be found in Peter Conrad, ‘War and Peace’, The Force of Destiny / La forza del destino, ed. Nicholas John, Opera Guide no. 23 (London and New York, 1983), pp. 7–14.
Senici • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi 343 with him, to no avail. Don Rodrigo tries to kidnap Lucia, but on Cristoforo’s suggestion and with his help Renzo and Lucia escape on a boat across the lake. The description of Lucia’s thoughts as she sees her village and its familiar mountains disappear – ‘Addio, monti sorgenti dall’ acque ed elevati al cielo …’ – is one of the novel’s most famous passages. Following the friar’s instructions, Renzo goes to Milan and Lucia and her mother Agnese to a convent in Monza. Thus the betrothed couple are separated and the wedding further postponed. Renzo has various adventures in Milan, a city plagued by famine and riots, is arrested, escapes and crosses the river Adda into Venetian territory. Meanwhile Don Rodrigo has discovered Lucia’s refuge and asks a very powerful lord, who remains unnamed, to help him in kidnapping her. This time they succeed and Lucia is transported to the Unnamed’s castle. There she vows to the Virgin to remain chaste if saved. But the Unnamed is going through a religious conversion, and, with the help of the Archbishop of Milan, Federigo Borromeo, he changes his life, becomes a model of Christian love, and releases Lucia. A German army, descending from the Alps into Lombardy, has brought with it the plague. After further adventures, all the main characters are reunited in the lazzaretto of Milan, the place where the sick are confined. Renzo, on discovering Fra Cristoforo tending to Don Rodrigo, declares his hatred for him, but is rebuked angrily by the friar: this is a time for pardon. Renzo forgives the man who had wronged him and becomes worthy of Lucia. Don Rodrigo dies, Fra Cristoforo releases Lucia from her vow, and she and Renzo return to their village and are eventually married by Don Abbondio. I promessi sposi had always been one of Verdi’s favourite books, despite the wide gulf that separated his pessimistic agnosticism from Manzoni’s fervent Catholicism. In a famous letter to Clara Maffei dating from 1867 he claimed that the novel was ‘not only the greatest book of our time, but one of the greatest books that has come from the human mind’. Writers such as Budden and Bruce Alan Brown have suggested that it was the influence of I promessi sposi and especially Verdi’s first meeting with the aging Manzoni in 1868 that brought about the solution of Alvaro’s religious acceptance for the revised version of Forza’s ending, in which the Father Superior blesses Leonora before she dies and convinces Alvaro to kneel and pray. Brown has astutely suggested that the influence of the novel was mediated through the libretto based on I promessi sposi that Antonio Ghislanzoni, who wrote the verses for the revised Forza, prepared for the composer Errico Petrella in 1869, the same year of the premiere of the second version of Verdi’s opera.18 Ghislanzoni casts the 18 See Bruce Alan Brown, ‘ “That Damned Ending” ’, The Force of Destiny / La forza
del destino, ed. John, pp. 37–51; Budden, From ‘Il trovatore’ to ‘La forza del destino’, p. 440. A few interesting observations are also found in Giovanni Macchia, ‘Verdi e Manzoni’, Manzoni e la via del romanzo (Milan, 1994), pp. 162–75.
344 Music as Social and Cultural Practice conclusion of both operas as a soprano–tenor duet followed by a trio for the couple plus the bass, Padre Cristoforo in Petrella’s opera and the Father Superior in Verdi’s, who speak words of consolation and of Christian forgiveness. The difference is, of course, that in Petrella’s I promessi sposi the villain Rodrigo dies, while in Forza it is the heroine Leonora who ‘ascends to God’. The influence of I promessi sposi on Forza, however, goes beyond the similarities between the ending of the novel, the final ensemble of Ghislanzoni’s libretto for Petrella, and the revised finale ultimo of Verdi’s opera. On the level of the characters, the most startling parallel is that between the positive figure of the Father Superior and Manzoni’s Fra Cristoforo and, partly, Cardinal Borromeo, as already suggested by Budden. The Father Superior is the first Catholic priest to appear as a major character in the whole of Verdi’s output – although not the first religious figure, of course, coming after Zaccaria in Nabucco and the title role in Stiffelio – and he is portrayed in a wholly positive way, especially in the revised version of the opera. His saintly demeanour, which is strongly constructed by his solemn, generally slow music, with mostly diatonic and stepwise melodies, could be compared with the Manzonian characters, their few but powerful words and their consolatory and protective role in relation to the two lovers. On the other hand, the behaviour of Alvaro as Padre Raffaele trying to resist Carlo’s challenges in Act iv but eventually accepting the duel is vividly reminiscent of the story of Fra Cristoforo, a proud and fiery young man who becomes a monk to expiate a sinful past. The other side of the Manzonian religious community, the comic one of Fra Galdino, a friar, and, especially, Don Abbondio, becomes in Verdi the buffo Fra Melitone. His verbosity and tendency to lapse into comic patter, especially in his sermon in Act iii, could be compared with the various dialogues in which Manzoni sketches the character of Don Abbondio – in fact Don Abbondio is cast as a buffo in Petrella’s opera.19 19 The comparison becomes more complex when we come to the two lovers, differ-
entiated in the first place by their social class: the poor peasants Lucia and Renzo, the lofty aristocrats Leonora and Alvaro. Leonora and Lucia, however, have in common a constant, almost obsessive concern with their virginity, to the point that in a moment of dispair Lucia, like Leonora, vows to remain a virgin for the rest of her life. Lucia’s purity is constantly recalled in the novel, like Leonora’s: but they are similar also in their love for their family and ‘patria’, to the point of singing an aria about it. Lucia’s famous ‘Addio monti’, the lyrical expression of her sadness and anxiety while abandoning her village and crossing the lake on a little boat under the moonlight, resonates with Leonora’s aria in Act i of Forza, ‘Me pellegrina ed orfana’. Leonora’s obsessive repetition of the word ‘Addio’ at the end of the aria reinforces the parallel with Lucia’s lyrical outburst, in which many sentences begin with an apostrophe to various objects she is leaving behind, all preceded by the word ‘Addio!’, which also closes the episode. The one character of Forza who seems to defy comparison with I promessi sposi is Don Alvaro. It is hard
Senici • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi 345 Of course at least some of these parallels could be established between I promessi sposi and the literary source of Forza, Rivas’s Don Alvaro; perhaps Don Alvaro, first published in 1835, was itself influenced by the Italian novel. In any case, I would argue that Verdi chose Don Alvaro precisely because it offered him the opportunity to write an opera inspired by I promessi sposi. Moreover, the insertion of a military camp scene from Schiller’s Wallensteins Lager in Act iii Scene ii, and the omission of Rivas’s first scene, in which we meet Alvaro and Preziosilla in an inn, deeply transform the dramatic structure and pace of the source and make the opera an altogether different object. If, then, I promessi sposi and Forza have several aspects in common in terms of their plots and characters, why should I promessi sposi influence Verdi’s choice of Rivas’s play as the source of his opera and the changes to that source that the composer requested from his librettists? My contention is that the truly meaningful connection between opera and novel does not concern plot or characterisation, but rather narrative construction and, ultimately, Forza’s dramaturgy.
storia and invenzione = picture and frame With the publication of Manzoni’s novel in 1827 the debate on the historical novel suddenly became the hottest topic in the Italian literary world, to which voices from abroad such as Goethe and Lamartine also contributed. This debate remained alive for decades thanks to the continuous and enormous success of I promessi sposi. The publication of Manzoni’s own essay Del romanzo storico (On the Historical Novel) in 1850 caused a second wave of discussion. As Alessandro Roccatagliati has recently shown, Verdi’s views of Manzoni’s novel, especially as expressed in the letter to Clara Maffei mentioned above, owe much to the critical debate on the relationship between storia and invenzione, the historical parts versus the strictly narrative ones, that surrounded I promessi sposi for decades after his publication.20 Several commentators mantained that the truly great parts of the novel were the ones we would now call the context to the story of Renzo and Lucia: the description of the Thirty Years War, the famine, the plague, the invasion of the Milanese region by German armies, the effects of the Spanish domination, to find points in common between this exotic aristocrat and poor Renzo from near Lecco. Don Alvaro acts more like a kind of Don Giovanni, and therefore could be compared with the evil seducer of I promessi sposi, Don Rodrigo.
20 See Alessandro Roccatagliati, ‘Storia e invenzione: Propaggini d’ una questione let-
teraria e idee drammatiche verdiane’, Convengo internazionale ‘La drammaturgia verdiana e le letterature europee’ (Roma, 29–30 novembre 2001), Atti dei Convegni Lincei (Rome, 2003), pp. 259–91, at pp. 274–6.
346 Music as Social and Cultural Practice and so on.21 This critical position helps to make sense of an interesting and at first slightly cryptic remark made by Verdi in 1869. Commenting on the reactions to Forza by a certain ‘Z…’ in a letter to a friend, the composer wrote: The solos and duos for Colini, Stolz and Fraschini have gone to his head and will send him to the hospital in the end. Imitating the public, he doesn’t mention the vast, varied Pictures which fill one half of the opera and which truly constitute the Musical Drama. It is curious and at the same time discouraging! Everyone cries out for Reform and Progress, but, in general, the public doesn’t applaud and the singers only know how to be effective in arias, romanzas and canzonettas! I know that now the scenes of action are also applauded, but only in passing, as the frame of the picture. The order has been inverted: the frame has become the picture!22 Verdi’s metaphor of frame and picture resonates with the debate on the relationship between storia and invenzione in I promessi sposi, and reveals how the composer thought of Forza in terms comparable with the critical reception of the novel. He too considered la storia, ‘the vast, varied pictures which fill one half of the opera and which truly constitute the Musical Drama’, as the picture, while l’ invenzione, the vicissitudes of Leonora and Alvaro, was the frame. The similarity extends to the realm of reception: just as I promessi sposi was often criticised for a lack of balance between storia and invenzione, the early critics of Forza censored the scenes with Preziosilla, Melitone and Trabuco, while audiences applauded the scene d’ azione ‘only in passing’. In 1869 Verdi wrote that Preziosilla and Melitone ‘are extremely important parts, and in a sense the most important ones’, a claim that might now seem rather far-fetched.23 But the statement begins to make more sense if we keep 21 For an extensive anthology of nineteenth-century critical opinions on I promessi
sposi, see Giancarlo Vigorelli, Manzoni pro e contro, i: L’ Ottocento (Milan, 1975).
22 ‘I pezzi a solo e duetti fra Colini, Stolz, Fraschini gli sono andati al cervello e
finiranno col metterlo all’ ospedale. Dei Quadri svariati, più vasti, che riempiono una metà dell’ opera e che costituiscono veramente il Dramma Musicale, egli, ad imitazione del pubblico, non parla affatto. Cosa curiosa, e nello stesso tempo scoraggiante! Mentre da tutti si grida Riforma, Progresso, in generale il pubblico non applaude, e gli esecutori non sanno far valere che arie, romanze, canzonette! So che ora si applaudono anche le scene di azione, ma più per riverbero e come cornice del quadro. L’ ordine è invertito. La cornice è diventata quandro!!!’; letter dated 17 August 1869, I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro Luzio (Milan, 1913), pp. 619–20.
23 ‘Quelle parti sono importantissime, e sotto un certo aspetto le prime dell’ opera’;
letter to the impresario of the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, dated 18 June 1868, arteggi verdiani, i, p. 112. C
Senici • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi 347 in mind Verdi’s declaration that Forza’s ‘realistic’ scenes, the ones that contain Preziosilla, Melitone and Trabuco, were considered by him ‘the picture’ of the opera. These scenes fulfil the same function of la storia in I promessi sposi, and at a certain point not only the critics, but clearly Verdi himself considered la storia the novel’s most important part. Forza’s peculiar construction – with the heroine dominating Act ii but entirely absent from Act iii and the first half of Act iv, and the hero absent from Act ii – is in fact close to the narrative structure of I promessi sposi, in which, after Renzo and Lucia are separated, several chapters are devoted to his adventures in Milan and his escape to the territory of the Venetian Republic, and then the focus is shifted to Lucia and her vicissitudes in Monza and at the castle of the Unnamed, with the betrothed eventually reunited for the last section of the novel. Verdi, then, experimented with a type of dramatic structure that comprised storia and invenzione, in which the audience could distinguish between frame and picture. Rivas’s Don Alvaro, suitably cut and enriched by the military encampment scene from Wallensteins Lager, provided precisely the kind of dramatic structure Verdi was looking for. Together with the military camp scene, the tavern scene at Hornachuelos clearly constitutes one of those ‘pictures’ that ‘truly constitute the Musical Drama’, and therefore was influenced by the ‘historical’ parts of I promessi sposi. But a closer, more specific connection can be established between this scene and the novel. In search for this connection, I propose that, before we go back to the tavern of Hornachuelos, we stop at another tavern, l’ Osteria della luna piena, the Tavern of the Full Moon, in downtown Milan, on the night of 12 November 1628, in the company of Renzo, the protagonist of I promessi sposi.
poet and composer in the tavern of rhetoric The Tavern of the Full Moon, where chapters 14 and 15 of the novel take place, has been called by literary critic Ezio Raimondi ‘l’ osteria della retorica’, the tavern of rhetoric, a place where narrative registers that are not only normally opposed, but in fact almost always mutually exclusive, are submitted to a process of dialogisation. This process results in a kind of Bakhtinian polyphony, a riotous Babel of linguistic transgression.24 Another critic, Maria Corti, has called attention to the topos of the tavern as the traditional place of social, political, but above all linguistic subversion in European literature.25 Manzoni’s episode fulfils a mimetic function rather than a descriptive or diegetic one: 24 Ezio Raimondi, La dissimulazione romanzesca: Antropologia manzoniana, 2nd
edn (Bologna, 1997), pp. 81–110.
25 Maria Corti, ‘Con Manzoni all’ osteria della luna piena’, Leggere ‘I promessi sposi’:
Analisi semiotiche, ed. Giovanni Manetti (Milan, 1989), pp. 35–48.
348 Music as Social and Cultural Practice replete with allusions to popular sayings, dialect-derived expressions, and lowclass jargon, it also contains fragments in Latin, legal prose and even made-up Spanish. On a larger level, moreover, the text thematises not the simple opposition, but rather the complex give-and-take relationship between orality and writing. Perhaps the most revealing moment of this episode is an extraordinary metanarrative insert on the word ‘poeta’ which, albeit ironically and obliquely, constitutes one of Manzoni’s most effective aesthetic pronouncements: ‘Oh’, said Renzo, ‘that fellow must be a poet. So there are poets here too. You find them everywhere these days. I’m a bit of a poet myself, and sometimes I make some pretty odd remarks … but only when things are going well.’ To understand this nonsense of poor Renzo’s, it is necessary to know that, amongst the common people of Milan, and still more those who live in the countryside nearby, the word ‘poet’ does not at all mean, as it does for the gentry, a consecrated genius, an inhabitant of Pindus, a pupil of the Muses. It means someone with a peculiar mind, a bit crazy, whose speech and actions betray more wit and oddity than reason. For those impertinent common people have the nerve to tamper with words, and give them a meaning poles apart from the real one! Because, I ask you, what is the connection between being a poet and being a bit crazy?26 After emphasising the role of irony in this passage as well as in many of Manzoni’s metanarrative asides – as if the author could speak directly to the reader only in an ironic voice – the literary critic Gregory Lucente has pointed out how ‘rather than affirming or denying either sense of the word or taking any sort of definite stance on the question … of the relation between poetry and irrationality, the narrator lets the whole matter drop with a question of his own. … The narrator’s reaction to the question he raises is neither affirmation 26 ‘ “To”, disse Renzo: “è un poeta costui. Ce n’ è anche qui de’ poeti: già ne nasce per
tutto. N’ho una vena anch’ io, e qualche volta ne dico delle curiose … ma quando le cose vanno bene.” Per capire questa baggianata del povero Renzo, bisogna sapere che, presso il volgo di Milano, e del contado ancora più, poeta non significa già, come per tutti i galantuomini, un sacro ingegno, un abitator di Pindo, un allievo delle Muse; vuol dire un cervello bizzarro e un po’ balzano, che, ne’ discorsi e ne’ fatti, abbia più dell’ arguto e del singolare che del ragionevole. Tanto quel guastamestieri del volgo è ardito a manomettere le parole, e a far dir loro le cose più lontane dal loro legittimo significato! Perché, vi domando io, cosa ci ha a che fare poeta con cervello balzano?’ I promessi sposi, storia milanese del secolo xvii scoperta e rifatta da Alessandro Manzoni (Milan, 1840; photographic reprint, Milan, 1995), p. 281; translation substantially modified from Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed, trans. Bruce Penman (London, 1972), pp. 274–5.
Senici • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi 349 nor denial but instead clever, ironic withdrawal.’27 Raimondi and Corti have interpreted this aside rather differently, as an attempt on Manzoni’s part to justify the inclusion and execution of the whole tavern scene, an ‘odd’ and ‘crazy’ attempt at reproducing the modes of thought and expression of Lombard peasants.28 These two interpretations are not irreconcilable, however: one the one hand, Manzoni calls attention both to the popular sources of his art and to his bold use of language in this episode as well as in the whole novel; on the other, he does so in a cleverly ironic tone, withdrawing from loud proclamations and perhaps even introducing a hint of doubt as to the final aesthetic result of his choices and procedures. With the buzzing sounds of the Tavern of the Full Moon in our ears, let us now return to Hornachuelos. The literary critic Luigi Baldacci has called attention to Piave’s masterfully flexible versification coupled with an adventurously low-style vocabulary, as when the student, Don Carlo in disguise, enquires about the gender of the nameless traveller just arrived at the inn (Leonora en travesti): ‘Per altro, è gallo oppur gallina?’ (‘By the way, is it a rooster or a hen?’).29 This comes more or less intact from Rivas, as do the fragments in Latin, including the Virgilian compliment the student pays to the hostess: ‘Tu das [mihi] epulis accumbere Divum’ (‘You allow me to recline at the feast of the gods’), to which the Alcade answers ‘she does not speak Latin, but cooks very well’. But there is nothing in Don Alvaro like the violent shift to a high linguistic register at the moment when the student remembers he is Don Carlo di Vargas, now Marquis of Calatrava: ‘(Frattanto sul davanti dice) (Ricerco invan la suora e il seduttore … / Perfidi!)’ (‘[The student at the front of the stage, aside] I seek in vain my sister and her seducer … Curse them both!’). While Rivas makes no room for a straightforward, non-ironic use of a high linguistic register, Piave does more than simply throw in this aside: he elevates the level of the elocutio for a long moment by inserting the pilgrims’ litany ‘Padre Eterno Signor … / Pietà di noi’ and the following prayer ‘Su noi concordi e supplici’. What does Verdi make of this moment? In the first act he had systematically ignored Piave’s none too subtle hints at linguistic mixture. Leonora’s maid, for example, probably thinking she is Susanna or Despina, scandalously addresses her mistress as ‘signorina’ (‘Miss’) – as if Leonora were the daughter of a nineteenth-century bourgeois family. But the maid’s verbal language does not influence her colourless, recitative-like musical voice. In this breakneck act 27 Gregory L. Lucente, Beautiful Fables: Self-Consciousness in Italian Narrative from
Manzoni to Calvino (Baltimore, 1986), p. 41.
28 See Raimondi, La dissimulazione romanzesca, p. 89; Corti, ‘Con Manzoni’,
pp. 43–4.
29 Luigi Baldacci, La musica in italiano: Libretti d’ opera dell’ Ottocento (Milan, 1997),
pp. 99–102.
350 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Verdi wants to set the clock in motion: plot, not mimesis, has first priority. But by the opening of Act ii things have changed: we have heard the seguidilla, the quick parlante dialogue, and Preziosilla’s song with its drums and its ‘tra la la la’, and still nothing relevant has happened plot-wise. The refrain of the song ends in a noisy B major (in the revised version), two bars of orchestral unison go up to C and D, and from the wings comes the chant of the pilgrims, in G minor (but with a cadential tierce de Picardie). Everybody on stage answers, in G major, except Leonora, who, unseen by all the characters, high on the staircase, prays the Lord to save her from her own hell in descending, sobbing interjections. The church-music colour of this passage, with plenty of suspensions and subdominant, plagal-sounding harmonies, soon gives way to a new section with arpeggiated accompaniment that belongs only on the operatic stage, and that constitutes the closest Forza ever comes to a largo concertato, complete with its fully-fledged cadenza. Its structural cadence in G major, however, is immediately and repeatedly contradicted by the pilgrims’ B flats, so that the final cadence does not sound entirely convincing. The reprise of the dialogue throws us back into B major with a jolt, as if nothing had ever happened.30 What is the purpose of this piece? Why did Verdi place this grandiose, highstyle, wonderfully moving number in the middle of a bunch of Andalusian peasants dancing, eating, singing and generally having a good time? Why a sublime plea for the Lord’s protection on the heels of a song in praise of war?31 No answer is possible before a larger question is asked: what is the purpose of the whole tavern scene? Its diegetic relevance is highly dubious: nothing narratively important happens in the tavern.32 Why did Verdi and Piave keep it, instead of leaving it out, as they did with Rivas’s first scene? In the light of the connections between I promessi sposi and Forza, I would claim that this is the site of Verdi’s stylistic transgression, in which different and normally opposed musical registers are submitted to a process of dialogisation within a single number. The tavern of Hornachuelos is Verdi’s tavern of rhetoric. The sublime moment of the prayer, then, constitutes the musical equivalent of Don Carlo’s sudden injection of a high linguistic register, and is therefore as necessary as the comic interjections of Preziosilla and Trabuco in order to make the stylistic spectrum of the music as ample and varied as possible. It is in the light of this conclusion that I would like to return to that strange moment at the end of the scene with which I began. Why did Verdi include 30 See Verdi, La forza del destino, pp. 73–90. 31 This piece was added when Verdi returned to Forza in 1862: it did not appear in the
original 1861 skeleton score; see Gossett, ‘Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino’.
32 This is presumably one of the reasons why the scene was sometimes cut in its
entirety.
Senici • At the Tavern with Manzoni and Verdi 351 it? What does it say about the dramaturgy of the scene? At first the most likely explanation may seem that Verdi got scared by his own audacity: afraid that the tavern scene would not hold together, that it would ultimately not make sense, he threw in a reprise of the seguidilla, the ballata and the canzone at the end in a last-minute attempt to give the whole business an apparence of cohesion – a light touch of make-up that does not quite cover up a bad scar. But why would Verdi not change it when given the opportunity in 1869? He knew better than to hope that such a brief and narratively incongruous gesture would have any truly cohesive effect. And, in any case, why do it through stark juxtaposition rather than careful blending? I would suggest that the sudden appearance of previously heard themes, and their equally sudden disappearance, can be interpreted in the same way in which critics have interpreted Manzoni’s metanarrative aside on the word ‘poet’ in chapter 14 of I promessi sposi. I would read Verdi’s gesture as a metamusical comment on the entire scene, a device that calls the listener’s attention to its highly hybrid, multistylistic, dialogic musico-dramatic language. Not a gesture towards unity, then, but rather against it, a way of emphasising its absence. This reading of the conclusion of the ‘Scena osteria’ can be brought to bear on an interpretation of the scene itself, also characterised by heterogeneity and juxtaposition to a degree unprecedented in Verdi – and therefore precisely the kind of context in which the distance from the B major of the transposed version of Preziosilla’s canzone to the G minor of the pilgrims’ chant could, and perhaps even should, be covered in as little as two bars of orchestral unison. But the ‘Scena osteria’ can also stand in a metonymic relationship to the whole opera, and therefore my interpretation of the conclusion of this scene can call attention to the hybrid, multi-stylistic, dialogic musico-dramatic language of the whole work. This moment, therefore, can be heard as a metatextual reflection on the reasons, meanings and results of Forza’s dramaturgy. By virtue of the moment’s narrative incongruity as well as the abruptness with which the different themes are thrown together and then left behind, here Verdi, just like Manzoni, calls attention to the bold mixture of musical-linguistic levels, as well as of storia and invenzione, picture and frame, in the whole opera. But, just like Manzoni, he does so in an ironic tone, as if in passing, and perhaps even introducing a hint of doubt as to the final aesthetic result of his choices and procedures.33 33 The Italian film director Carmine Gallone clearly recognised these aspects of the
opera in his 1950 film-opera La forza del destino, which, according to the film historian Alberto Farassino, makes use of all filmic techniques known at the time, constantly shifting tones and referring to many different genres. More important, however, is the presence among the characters of the Duke of Rivas himself, which allows Gallone to introduce an authorial perspective not dissimilar from
352 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Baldacci’s charge that ‘neither the librettist nor Verdi could find a general point of view’ when writing La forza del destino can be countered by suggesting that ‘a general point of view’ was not what Piave and Verdi were looking for. On the contrary, at the end of the ‘Scena osteria’ Verdi calls our attention to the lack of such a point of view, and invites us to enjoy the narrative and musical incongruities, linguistic mixtures, and sudden shifts of focus and tone that this lack generates. The decidedly mixed responses to this invitation on the part of both performers and critics in the course of the work’s life so far would seem to suggest that Verdi failed to issue it in sufficiently forceful tones for it to be widely heard and properly understood. Some of us might still want to side with Baldini, then, and accuse Verdi of ‘extraordinary perverseness’. But I hope to have encouraged others to hear La forza del destino in the same way many have read and still read I promessi sposi, taking pleasure in its polyphonic mixture of tones, styles, types and genres, and enjoying the occasional intrusion of its author’s voice reminding us of how peculiar what we are reading or hearing actually is.
the one I have advocated here for the conclusion of the ‘Scena osteria’. See Alberto Farassino, ‘ “La parole e il suono”: Il cinema-opera di Carmine Gallone’, Non solo Scipione: Il cinema di Carmine Gallone, ed. Pasquale Iaccio (Naples, 2003), pp. 27– 38, at pp. 34–5.
•
IV
•
the crisis of modernity
• 19 • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance Auratic Sonority in Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen Federico Celestini
the resonance of memory A letter from Mahler to his friend Josef Steiner dated 17–19 July 1879 demonstrates that the nineteen-year-old composer was not only familiar with the world of German Romanticism, but that he had well-nigh transposed himself into it. Among the multitude of Romantic symbols in this letter, those which clearly relate to Wilhelm Müller’s Die Winterreise are particularly conspicuous: an icy heart in need of sunshine, the linden tree as a place of rest and even an organ grinder. A comparison between the linden tree passages in the letter, the final verse of the last of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen – penned by Mahler himself – and Wilhelm Müller’s famous poem from the Winterreise demonstrates Mahler’s peculiar relationship between literature, life experience and his own work. The astonishing dimension of this phenomenon becomes fully apparent only when the wealth of linguistic and musical quotations and allusions contained in Mahler’s Gesellen songs are considered. Alexander L. Ringer has made a major contribution to this. It is well known that the four songs which comprise the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, composed in Kassel in the years 1884–5, resulted from a personal experience, namely Mahler’s unrequited love for Johanna Richter, the first soprano at the opera house there at the time the song cycle was Gustav Mahler, Briefe, ed. Mathias Hansen (Leipzig, 1981), p. 55 f. For a commen-
tary on this letter see Heinz Heinrich Eggebrecht, Die Musik Gustav Mahlers (new edn, Wilhelmshaven, 1999), pp. 11–38.
Mahler adopted the title from the homonymous collection by Rudolf Baumbach
(1878). See Constantin Floros, Gustav Mahler, i: Die geistige Welt Gustav Mahlers in systematischer Darstellung (Wiesbaden, 1977), p. 187 f.
Compare this letter also with the ending of Joseph von Eichendorff ’s novelette
Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts.
Alexander L. Ringer, ‘ “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen”: Allusion und Zitat in
der musikalischen Erzählung Gustav Mahlers’, Das musikalische Kunstwerk: eschichte, Ästhetik, Theorie. Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. G Hermann Danuser, Helga de la Motte-Haber, Silke Leopold and Norbert Miller (Laaber, 1988), pp. 589–602.
356 Music as Social and Cultural Practice written. Rather than the biographical matter per se, hardly a novelty in the genesis of lyrical texts, the manner in which Mahler describes it is revealing. In a letter of 1 January 1885 to his friend Friedrich Löhr, Mahler recounts the preceding New Year’s Eve, spent in Johanna Richter’s apartment. His account of her outburst of tears at the sound of the midnight bells parallels literary texts – Ringer mentions Jean Paul’s story ‘Die wunderbare Gesellschaft in der Neujahresnacht’ as well as the motivic relationship to Heinrich Heine’s poem ‘Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet’, set by Schumann as No. 13 of Dichterliebe, and to Wilhelm Müller’s ‘Tränenregen’, the tenth song in Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin; Jens Malte Fischer also adds the Rome chronicle from Wagner’s Tann häuser. Mahler’s linking of personal experiences and literary loci – in this context one might also think of his autobiographically tinted interpretation of the scherzo of the second symphony, which corresponds to a passage from the first book of Eichendorff ’s Ahnung und Gegenwart – is constitutive in his autobiographical narrative. Literature serves Mahler as the grid upon which he works through and expresses experience, both linguistically and musically. By no means does Mahler display his ‘self ’ in the manner of a literary stylization; rather, he dissolves it in the symbolic sphere of literature. This dissolution is the factor that determines the idiosyncratic link between Mahler’s personal experiences and artistic production. For intertextuality is not only a perspective from which Mahler’s autobiographical text may be approached, but also and above all, his music. There is no doubt that Mahler’s use of quotations, allusions, references to and reminders of music of the past represents one of the most striking characteristics of his compositional method. See Henry Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler: Chronique d’ une vie, i: 1860–1900
(Paris, 1979), pp. 165–202; Jens Malte Fischer, Gustav Mahler: Der fremde Ver traute (Vienna, 2003), pp. 153–65. In a letter to Löhr, Mahler mentions six poems, but only four of them were set to music; see La Grange, Gustav Mahler, p. 186 f.
Ringer, ‘ “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” ’, p. 590; Fischer, Gustav Mahler, p. 162.
The reference to Jean Paul comes from Friedrich Löhr (Gustav Mahler-Briefe, ed. Alma Mahler [Berlin, Vienna and Leipzig, 1925], p. 477). In view of Jean Paul’s real name, it is not surprising that Mahler was reminded of him by Johanna Richter.
Robert Mühlher, ‘Natursprache und Naturmusik bei Eichendorff ’, Aurora. Jahr-
buch der Eichendorff-Gesellschaft 21 (1961), p. 18. See also Floros, Gustav Mahler, i, p. 57 f.
For more detail see Federico Celestini, ‘Literature as Déjà-Vu? The Third Move-
ment of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony’, Phrase and Subject: Studies in Music and Literature, ed. Delia da Sousa Correa (Oxford, 2006), pp. 153–66.
Monika Tibbe, Lieder und Liedelemente in instrumentalen Symphoniesätzen
Gustav Mahlers (Munich, 1971); Eggebrecht, Die Musik Gustav Mahlers, pp. 39–67, 114–26; Marius Flothius, ‘Kapellmeistermusik’, Mahler-Interpretation: Aspekte zum
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 357 Ex. 19.1 (a) Schubert, Die Mainacht, d194, bb. 2–10; (b) Mahler, Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, bb. 5–17 (a) (a)
Ziemlich geschwind
(b) (b)
Langsam
Andante
(a)
(b)
The first of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, starts with a long quotation from Schubert’s Die Mainacht, d194, the setting of a poem by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty,10 from which the entire motivic material of Mahler’s song is derived (see Example 19.1). Indeed, this reference also reflects a phase of Mahler’s own life. Two of his teachers at the Vienna Conservatory, Julius Epstein and Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, worked on the first complete edition of Schubert’s works, which was printed at the end of the century. Fuchs, to whom Mahler was particularly close as a student, was mainly occupied with the Lieder.11 Additionally, the abundance of quotations from and allusions to Wagner’s motifs in all four songs of the cycle demonstrates that the relationship between the life experience of Werk und Wirken von Gustav Mahler, ed. Rudolf Stephan (Mainz, 1985), pp. 9–16; Reinhard Kapp, ‘Schumann-Reminiszenzen bei Mahler’, Musik-Konzepte: Sonder band Gustav Mahler, ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn (Munich, 1989), pp. 325–61; Henry-Louis de La Grange, ‘Music about Music in Mahler: Reminiscences, Allusions or Quotations?’, Mahler Studies, ed. Stephen E. Hefling (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 122–68; Peter Ruzicka, ‘Befragung des Materials: Gustav Mahler aus der Sicht aktueller Kompositionsästhetik’, Erfundene und Gefundene Musik: Analysen, Portraits und Reflexionen, ed. Thomas Schäfer (Hofheim, 1998), pp. 27– 38; Eckhard Roch, ‘Die Musik bringt es an den Tag …: Struktur und Funktion der Wagner-Reminiszenzen in Gustav Mahlers “Das klagende Lied” ’, Gustav Mahler und das Lied, ed. Bernd Sponheuer and Wolfram Steinbeck, Bonner Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft vi (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), pp. 69–88.
10 Ringer describes the manner in which Mahler makes use of Schubert’s model as
‘generous, consistent’ and yet free. He finds the roots of this impression of freedom in the changes to the metrical organisation, while key and melodic profile are retained (Ringer, ‘ “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” ’, p. 593).
11 Ringer, ‘ “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” ’, p. 592 f.
358 Music as Social and Cultural Practice the enthusiastic Wagnerian Mahler and his work comes to be by means of intertextuality.12 A closer examination of the Mainacht quotation, undoubtedly unusual in both extent and placement, shows that this can hardly be interpreted in a programmatical sense, as the context in which the quotation is embedded is itself a text setting: the linguistic content of the passage is already expressed in Mahler’s poem. Rather, it seems that the determining factors for the choice of the quotation are similarities in both the atmosphere and in details of the text. As Ringer observes, in Hölty’s poem the lyrical self, suffering from unrequited love, wanders through the beautiful world of nature. This world, with all its birdsong, cannot alleviate heartache, but contributes instead to an intensification of the pain, leading the wayfarer to seek ‘dunklere Schatten’ (darker shadows) where he cries (‘und die einsame Träne rinnt’). The same contrast between a gloomy refuge for weeping (‘Dunkles Kämmerlein! / Weine! Wein’!) and the beautiful world of nature is experienced by Mahler’s wayfarer in the first poem of his cycle. There are further correspondences in vocabulary (the words ‘sad’, ‘dark’, ‘weep’ and ‘tear’ respectively) and assonance (Entzücken/Ziküth) between the poems.13 The quotation seems to have come about on the basis of associations, and we thus cannot eliminate the possibility that we are dealing with the result of a mémoire involontaire. This associative character is also intensified by the fact that the opening melody demonstrates further congruity, namely with Emmy’s romance from Heinrich Marschner’s Der Vampyr, an opera performed frequently in the nineteenth century.14 Apart from the melodic similarity between the opera aria and Schubert’s lied, which Mahler ‘imports’ through his appropriation, there is a further connection between the moonlight in the first verse of the Mai nacht poem, ‘Wann der silberne Mond durch die Gesträuche blinkt’, and the moonlight which revives the injured vampire Lord Ruthwen in Marschner’s opera. Thus a whole bundle of associations comes into play, enriched even further by means of Mahler’s own text. For Mahler falls back on two verses from the so-called Tanzreime which Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano published and included in their collection of folk poetry Des Knaben Wunderhorn, 12 This observation is also valid for Mahler’s further quotation of Donizetti’s Don
Sebastiano, Marschner’s Vampyr and Schubert’s Wegweiser. Concerning the lastmentioned see also Susan Youens, ‘Schubert, Mahler and the Weight of the Past’, Music & Letters 67 (1986), pp. 256–68.
13 Ringer, ‘ “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” ’, p. 592 f. 14 In his first season as Vice-Director of Music in Kassel, Mahler himself conducted
Marschner’s Hans Heiling, and in the following season Der Templer und die Jüdin.
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 359 treating them in the sense of a free adaptation.15 The painful reality of Mahler’s emotional suffering is dissolved in the abundance of well-known topoi which he adopts from that poetry. There is no doubt that the precondition for such a dissolution is provided by the ‘archaic choice of text’ which ‘deliberately distances itself from the psychologically individualised self ’.16 Through the emulation of a text which is itself a stylistic imitation, the prevailing distance between language and its reference, as well as the distance to the subject of expression, is further increased. Another noteworthy point is the manner in which Mahler treats the Wunderhorn poems: Mahler’s verses are constructed by repeating and adding to words from the lines of the Wunderhorn texts, creating a textual echo which reinforces the musical one. The piano begins the first song of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen by anticipating the initial motif of the vocal line, a turn followed by a leaping fourth – an interval that characterises the entire cycle.17 In the introduction, the motif is heard accelerated to Allegro, additionally reduced rhythmically from quavers to semiquavers and metrically distorted by a change of time signature. This alternation between 4/8 (2/4) and 3/8 causes irritation to the listener. In relation to the vocal line, the introduction – probably an allusion to wedding music – and the piano interjections in bars 8–9, 12–13 and 17–21 give the impression of a cheeky parody of the young man’s suffering. Remarkable for a young Wagner-admirer like Mahler is the extreme simplification of the harmonic means: throughout the first fourteen bars the left hand of the piano part consists solely of octaves and open fifths above the tonic minor D, whereby the latter – as at the start of Schubert’s Leiermann – are flavoured by an acciaccatura. The tonic minor is essentially the only audible harmony until bar 10, where the right-hand melody in thirds is raised by a semitone, forming a diminished chord on the supertonic over the bass fifth, which, however, remains unchanged. Thus, there is no harmonic activity at the beginning of the song, which acts instead as a sounding simulacrum, the phantasm of a musical construction. The role of the piano can hardly be called an accompaniment, as the vocal line is neither supported harmonically nor polyphonically enriched. 15 Concerning the treatment of the text see Zoltan Roman, ‘Editorial Report’, in
ustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen für eine Singstimme mit Klavier, G Sämtliche Werke, xii/1 (Vienna, Frankfurt am Main and London, [1982]), pp. viii–xii.
16 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Mahler: Eine musikalische Physiognomik’, Die musikalischen
Monographien, Gesammelte Schriften xiii (Frankfurt am Main, 1971), p. 223.
17 The chronological relationship between the piano and orchestral versions of
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is unclear. The oldest autograph of the song cycle is indeed a piano version, but as the title contains the description ‘Clavierauszug zu 2 Händen’, the existence of an original orchestral version cannot be excluded. See Roman, ‘Editorial Report’, pp. v–viii.
360 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Rather, the piano enhances the resonance of the vocal line in unison and in thirds, as well as commenting parodistically on the vocal line in the manner described above. The function of the Mainacht quotation also becomes more precise, whether brought about consciously or subconsciously: through the relationship to the already existent music and the further associations set in motion by this relationship, the acoustic resonance of the piano is enhanced by the dimension of memory and is thus transmitted into the inner psyche. Here, Mahler’s music is neither the expression of a suffering subjectivity nor a formalistic construction, but reacts to the images evoked by the text in a manner which may be described as being synaesthetic, in accordance with the sensibilities of the time. Music becomes the resonance of memory, which is transposed into the dimension of the collective by intertextual references.
the spatial proximity of temporal distance Despite Walter Benjamin’s frequent descriptions of the aura, his texts lack a strict definition of the phenomenon. Indeed, this is unsurprising, as hardly anything is more suited to evoking the notion of irreality and the intangible than the aura. In accordance with the Erkenntniskritische Vorrede that opens Benjamin’s book on the Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, he proceeds in a constellatory manner and considers the pseudo-concept of the aura, which he appropriates from the theosophists but expounds against them, from different perspectives.18 Common to each of these deliberations is the assumption that a phenomenon like the aura can be conceptualized only in the moment of its decay. In his Kleine Geschichte der Photographie, written in 1931, Benjamin attempts his first description: What really is aura? A weird weaving of space and time: unique manifestation of a distance, no matter how near it may be. Following a mountain ridge on the horizon or a branch whose shadow falls onto the observer, while at rest on a summer’s afternoon, till the moment or the hour gains 18 Walter Benjamin, ‘Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels’, Abhandlungen,
esammelte Schriften i/1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), p. 214 f. Concerning the G theosophical ideas about the aura see the chapter ‘Von den Gedankenformen und der menschlichen Aura’ in Rudolf Steiner’s book Theosophie: Einführung in übersinnliche Welterkenntnis und Menschenbestimmung (1910). Benjamin’s criticism of the theosophical concept of the aura, which he described as ‘banal’, can be found in Benjamin, Über Haschisch: Novellistisches, Berichte, Materialien, ed. Tillman Rexroth (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), p. 106 f. See also Wolf Frobenius, ‘Über das Zeitmaß Augenblick in Adornos Kunsttheorie’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 39/4 (1979), pp. 287 f.
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 361 part in their appearances – that is what it means to breathe the aura of these mountains, of this branch.19 According to Benjamin, the aura is by no means an attribute of certain things, but something that may be experienced through all objects. It does not possess an objective quality like colour, size or weight. Rather, as suggested by the quoted passage, the aura is an experience which is opened up to the subject if the latter is willing to engage in a special relationship with the object of his or her perception. A few years later Benjamin called this intentional relationship, quoting Novalis, an ‘attention’ [Aufmerksamkeit]. This is a glance pregnant with the expectation ‘of being returned by the recipient’: Thus the experience of the aura rests on the transmission of a form of reaction, familiar in human society, to the relation of the inanimate or nature to the human being. He who is being looked at, or who believes he is being looked at, opens his eyes [schlägt den Blick auf]. Experiencing the aura of an object means to endow [belehnen] it with the ability to open its eyes. The findings of the mémoire involontaire correspond to this.20 The special attention which the subject grants the object thus has the effect of an ‘endowment’ [Belehnung], by which inanimate objects or natural phenomena are given the human capability of returning the gaze of the observer. Thus the experience of the aura appears to be one of special closeness between the subject and object that may occur in sensual perception as well as in the imagination.21 In a footnote Benjamin adds: This endowment is a source of poetry. Wherever human beings, animals or things lacking soul, thus endowed by a poet, open their eyes, they will be drawn into the distance; the view of nature, awakened in this manner, dreams and draws the poet into following his dream.22 Benjamin links the experience of the aura with the manifestation of a ‘distance’ [Ferne], whereby there is little doubt that he means a temporal distance here. Benjamin’s reference to a mémoire involontaire confirms this assumption. 19 Benjamin, ‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’, Aufsätze, Essays, Vorträge, Gesam
melte Schriften, ii/1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), p. 378.
20 Benjamin, ‘Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire’, Abhandlungen, p. 646 f. 21 Ibid.: ‘Where this expectation is reciprocated (and it can attach itself equally well
to a thought, to an intentional, attentive gaze as to a mere glance in the simple sense of the word), the experience of the aura is amply awarded.’
22 Ibid., p. 646 n.
362 Music as Social and Cultural Practice For this unconscious memory is the same psychological phenomenon which triggers Marcel Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu and enables us to penetrate the ‘universe of interlinking‘, according to Benjamin: ‘It is the world in the state of similarity, and it is governed by “correspondences”, first understood by the Romantics and most completely by Baudelaire, but which only Proust managed to reveal in our daily lives.’23 Baudelaire’s famous poem ‘Correspondances’ is based on the experience of synaesthetics, a perception in which ‘Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent’. In his interpretation of this poem, Benjamin describes the correspondences as ‘data of remembrance’. He continues that they ‘murmur’ something ‘past’,24 but from a pre-historical rather than a historical past.25 The experience of synaesthetic perception corresponds to an ‘encounter with an earlier life’,26 as Baudelaire himself proposes in another poem, ‘La vie antérieure’. Here, too, the poet evokes a landscape in which sounds, colours and scents mingle in a ‘façon solenelle et mystique’. This experience alludes to a time long past, specified in the title as an earlier life. These are ‘images of the pre-world’,27 which to Baudelaire appear veiled through the ‘tears of nostalgia’.28 The distance which can be experienced through a perception of the aura is thus, according to Benjamin, that of a pre-subjective time, which may be summoned from the deep layers of the subconscious through poetic vision, as with Baudelaire, or in everyday life through the coincidental spark of an involuntary association of memory, as in Proust, and transferred to the object of perception through ‘endowment’. To experience the aura of an object is thus the ability to engage in a manner of perception which allows a different, third entity to emerge between those of subject and object – an entity through which both subject and object are also changed. This third entity, which comprises the aura, does not, however, represent an ‘outward appearance’ but is only ‘possible as content of the imagination’, like an ‘inner picture, that is, a memory or vision that merges with the outward appearance’.29 Mahler’s auratic 23 Benjamin, ‘Zum Bilde Proust’, Aufsätze, Essays, Vorträge, p. 320. 24 Benjamin, ‘Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire’, p. 640.
25 Ibid., p. 639: ‘[the correspondences] are not historical but data from pre-history’. 26 Ibid.
27 Marleen Stoessel, Aura: Das vergessliche Menschliche. Zu Sprache und Erfahrung
bei Walter Benjamin (Munich, 1983), p. 127.
28 Benjamin, ‘Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire’, p. 640. For more detail about this
and the special role which Benjamin allocates to music in his early writings, see Federico Celestini, ‘Zwischen Konvention und Ausdruck: Walter Benjamin und die Musik’, Barock – Ein Ort des Gedächtnisses, ed. Moritz Csáky, Federico Celestini and Ulrich Tragatschnig (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2007), pp. 199–211.
29 Stoessel, Aura, p. 46; emphases by Stoessel.
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 363 sonority may be interpreted as the attempt to make the ‘inner picture’ musically present as memory and vision through compositional techniques. This will be discussed in more detail below.
the linden tree The linden tree episode from Die zwei blauen Augen, the fourth of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, provides a realisation of the auratic sonority which is paradigmatic for Mahler’s entire oeuvre. Here, the procedure discussed above in connection with the Mainacht quotation, that is bringing music to sound as a resonance of memory through the use of allusions, references and associations, is founded on the particularly evocative power of the motif of the linden tree, a topos of German literature which epitomises the tree of love from Walther von der Vogelweide to Des Knaben Wunderhorn.30 Wilhelm Müller joins this tradition with his ‘Lindenbaum’ poem from the Winterreise. Through its seclusion from the urban locus of bourgeois life (‘vor dem Tor’ [outside the gate]) and its proximity to the ‘Brunnen’ [well], which refers to the source of poetry and thus of ‘true’ life, Müller’s linden tree symbolises an experience of the world which radically opposes the ‘instrumental’ one of bourgeois culture.31 Benjamin’s auratic experience is based on the poetic view, or ‘endowment’, that presupposes a relationship between subject and object which clearly distances itself from the rational, purposeful dealings of everyday actions. By closing his eyes, the wanderer achieves the dreamy depth of synaesthetic perception which Müller evokes through the rustling of branches. In Müller’s poem the linden tree represents the symbolic setting of an auratic experience, with the rustling as its acoustic manifestation. However, it would be rash simply to equate aura with rustling, for Benjamin’s ‘endowment’ seems to be intensified in a curious manner here. Indeed, the linden tree by no means restricts itself to returning the wanderer’s gaze, but assumes a seductive manner, attempting to reach him 30 Peter Gülke, Franz Schubert und seine Zeit (Laaber, 1991), p. 243. Heinrich Heine
underlines this in a poetic and humorous way in the third book of his essay Die romantische Schule (1835). See also Youens, ‘Schubert, Mahler and the Weight of the Past’, pp. 256–68; Youens, Retracing a Winter’s Journey: Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ (Ithaca and London, 1991), pp. 152–9; Youens, ‘ “Der Lindenbaum”: The Turning Point of “Winterreise” ’, The Romantic Tradition: German Literature and Music in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Gerald Chlappe, Frederick Hall and Hans Schulte (Lanham, Md. and London, 1992), pp. 316–19.
31 Concerning the oppositional attitude of the German Romantic movement
towards bourgeois culture see Elmar Bozzetti, ‘ “Am Brunnen vor dem Tore …”: Die Befreiung eines Liedes aus dem Klischee des Idyllischen’, Zeitschrift für Musikpädagogik 18 (1982), pp. 36–43.
364 Music as Social and Cultural Practice even when he has already turned away. As the last four lines of the fourth strophe show, the rustling of the branches transforms itself into a kind of sirens’ song:32 Und seine Zweige rauschten, Als riefen sie mir zu: Komm’ her zu mir, Geselle, Hier findst du deine Ruh! And its branches rustled as if they were calling to me: come here to me, lad, here you will find your rest. Müller and Schubert had already depicted a similar metamorphosis, in which the rustling33 of a brook emerges as the song of nixies, in the second song, Wohin?, of Die schöne Müllerin, fifth strophe, line 1–4: Was sag ich denn von Rauschen? Das kann kein Rauschen sein: Es singen wohl die Nixen Dort unten ihren Reihn. What do I say of rustling? That can’t be rustling; It must be the nixies singing and dancing in the deeps below. The watery end to the young miller’s story in the Schöne Müllerin, anticipated both here at the start of the cycle and also in Tränenregen, affirms the association between the lure of the nixies and the peace of death, an association which Thomas Mann even transfers to the rustling of the linden tree in 32 A similar situation is described in Johann Gleim’s poem ‘An Uz’: ‘Freund, welch
ein liebliches Geschwätze / hier dieser Quelle! Laß dich nieder! / So schwätzete des Tejers Quelle, / wenn er im Schatten seines Baumes / den Rausch der Blätter und die Lispel / des Zephyrs hörte –, laß dich nieder’ [Friend, what pleasant prattling / here this fountain! Sit down! / Thus did the spring of the Tejer prattle, / when in the shadow of his tree / he heard the rustling of the leaves and the lisping / of the zephyr –, sit down]. Johann Gottfried von Herder, whose influential collection of Volkslieder was published in two volumes in 1778–9, discusses the poem in his Viertes Wäldchen. In Mahler’s youthful letter to Josef Steiner, the ‘leaves and blossom’ of the linden tree ‘tenderly’ caress his cheeks.
33 In German, the term ‘Rauschen’ depicts both the sound of the wind in trees and
that of running water.
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 365 Der Zauberberg [The Magic Mountain].34 In Goethe’s ballad ‘Der Fischer’, the erotic implications of this temptation are explored, evoking death in the last strophe:35 Das Wasser rauscht’, das Wasser schwoll, Netzt’ ihm den nackten Fuß; Sein Herz wuchs ihm so sehnsuchtsvoll Wie bei der Liebsten Gruß. Sie sprach zu ihm, sie sang zu ihm; Da wars um ihn geschehn: Halb zog sie ihn, halb sank er hin Und ward nicht mehr gesehn. The water rustled, the water rose, wetting his naked foot; his heart swelled full of longing as though his beloved had called. She spoke to him, she sang to him; and then it was all over: half she drew him, half he sank in and never was seen again. In Heinrich Heine’s ‘Am einsamen Strande plätschert die Flut’ the nixies’ desire for the ‘blossom of mankind’ is depicted in a light-hearted manner. This theme, clearly derived from the twelfth book of the Odyssey, forms the basis of the Lorelei legend and is present in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s opera Undine (from a fairy tale novelette by Friedrich de la Motte-Fouquée).36 34 Thomas Mann, ‘Fülle des Wohllauts’, Der Zauberberg, 4th edn (Frankfurt
am Main, 2004), pp. 894–8. Other writers have taken up this interpretation; see Youens, ‘ “Der Lindenbaum”: The Turning Point of “Winterreise” ’; Reinhold Brinkmann, Franz Schubert, Lindenbäume und deutsch-nationale Identität – Interpretation eines Liedes, Wiener Vorlesungen im Rathaus cvii (Vienna, 2004), pp. 60–5.
35 This poem has frequently been set to music, among others also by Schubert (d225,
1815).
36 Heine dedicates several poems to this motif, among them ‘Auf dem Meere’ and ‘Die
Meerfrau’. In ‘Der Mond ist aufgegangen’ Heine, too, fabricates a metamorphosis from rustling to the lethal song of the sirens: ‘ “Das ist kein Rauschen des Windes, / das ist der Seejungfern Sang, / und meine Schwestern sind es, / die einst das Meer verschlang!” ’ [That is no rustling of the wind, / that is the song of the maidens of the sea, / and it is my sisters / whom the sea swallowed up long ago!]. Jung considers Melusine, nixies, sirens etc. to be archetypal anima figures, see Carl G. Jung, Die Archetypen und das kollektive Unbewußte, Gesammelte Werke, ix/1 (Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau, 1976), p. 34 f.
366 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Joseph von Eichendorff ’s poem ‘Lockung’ [temptation, or lure] contains all of the forest motifs mentioned here: Hörst du nicht die Bäume rauschen Draußen durch die stille Rund’? Lockt’s dich nicht, hinabzulauschen Von dem Söller in den Grund, Wo die vielen Bäche gehen Wunderbar im Mondenschein Und die stillen Schlösser sehen In den Fluß vom hohen Stein? Kennst du noch die irren Lieder Aus der alten, schönen Zeit? Sie erwachen alle wieder Nachts in Waldeseinsamkeit, Wenn die Bäume träumend lauschen Und der Flieder duftet schwül Und im Fluß die Nixen rauschen – Komm herab, hier ist’s so kühl. Don’t you hear the trees rustle outside through the quiet round? Aren’t you tempted to listen, down from the balcony to the ground where the many brooks ripple wondrously in the moonlight and the quiet castles look into the river from the high crags? Do you remember the crazy songs from the good old days? They all awake again at night in the solitude of the forest, when the trees listen dreamily and the scent of the lilac is sultry and in the river the nixies rustle – come down, here it is so cool. Here, too, the rustling of the trees tempts the listener to abandon the scene of bourgeois life (‘from the balcony to the ground’) and submit to the dreamy world of nature. Again, a synaesthetic perception is invoked in which all the senses are beguiled. The first four lines of the second
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 367 strophe, which could well serve as a motto for Mahler’s auratic sonority, form the link between synaesthetic world experience and the resonance of memory.37 This poem, too, closes with an unmistakable allusion to death, again introduced by the seductive image of rustling nixies. The resonance of memory is a murmuring of the past38 which can be perceived through various things. As such, it can be assumed that the auratic experience manifests itself as the audible perception of this rustling. Of course, this rustling, ‘endowed’ by humans to the respective object of perception, differs from the objectively discernible sound made by forests, brooks, winds and similar natural phenomena. The latter, however, are capable of effecting a psychic disposition in the perceiving subject that enables involvement in the auratic experience. This guiding, at times even seductive, function of 37 In Eichendorff, the motif of the resonance of ancient songs in the forest is omnipres-
ent. See, for example, ‘Die Nonne und der Ritter’: ‘Alte Klänge blühend schreiten! / Wie aus lang versunk’nen Zeiten / Will mich Wehmut noch bescheinen, / Und ich möcht von Herzen weinen’ [Old sounds stride along in blossom! / As from times long sunken away / Melancholy wants to shine upon me, / And I want to cry from the bottom of my heart]; ‘Sonett iii’: ‘Wen einmal so berührt die heil’gen Lieder / Sein Leben taucht in die Musik der Sterne, / Ein ewig Zieh’n in wunderbare Ferne!’ [To him whom the holy songs touch once thus / is life submerged in the music of the stars, / An eternal pull into the wonderful distance!]. In the famous poem ‘Sehnsucht’ the motif is combined with images which later occur in Baudelaire: ‘Sie sangen von Marmorbildern, / von Gärten, die übern’m Gestein / in dämmernden Lauben verwildern, / Palästen im Mondenschein / wo die Mädchen am Fenster lauschen, / wann der Lauten Klang erwacht, / und die Brunnen verschlafen rauschen / in der prächtigen Sommernacht’ [They sang of marble statues, / of gardens growing wild over the rock / in dusky arbours, / Of palaces in the moonlight / where the maidens listen at the windows, / when the strum of the lute awakens them, / and the fountains rustle sleepily / in the glorious summer night]. Finally from ‘Wenn die Klänge nah’n und fliehen’: ‘Doch durch dieses Rauschen wieder / Hört er heimlich Stimmen ziehen, / Wie ein Fall verlorner Lieder / Und er schaut betroffen nieder: / “Wenn die Klänge nah’n und fliehen / In den Wogen süßer Lust, / Ach! Nach tiefern Melodien / Sehnt sich einsam oft die Brust!” ’ [But through this rustling again / he hears secret voices enticing / like a cascade of forgotten songs / And he looks down, troubled: / ‘When the sounds approach and flee / In the waves of sweet delight, / Oh! for deeper melodies / often yearns the lonely breast!’]. Heinrich Heine’s Die alten, bösen Lieder comes across as a bitter, ironic counterpoint to this motif. Concerning the rustling motif in Eichendorff, see Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Zum Gedächtnis Eichendorffs’, Noten zur Literatur i, Gesammelte Schriften xi (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), pp. 83–5.
38 See above, n. 25. Benjamin discusses the resonance of memory in Das Passagen-
Werk, m i, 2, Gesammelte Schriften v/1 (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), p. 524. For this see also Bettine Menke, Sprachfiguren: Name – Allegorie – Bild nach Benjamin (Weimar, 2001), pp. 483–5. A very early occurrence of this motif is to be found in a music-related passage at the end of the chapter ‘Hartknopfs Gesellenjahre’ in Karl Philipp Moritz’s novel Andreas Hartknopf: Eine Allegorie (1785).
368 Music as Social and Cultural Practice natural rustling, as well as its symbolic implications, underlies the poems discussed here.
the rustling of memory In his musical setting of the Lindenbaum, Schubert places the rustling of the branches in the foreground. This depiction of rustling, by means of flowing chains of triplets, characterises the instrumental prelude, interlude and postlude of the song. At the beginning of the fifth strophe, in accordance with the text, the rustling transforms into a stormy gale. This is realised musically by sforzati, undulating crescendi and decrescendi and chromatic figurations in the piano part, complementing a development-like variation of those motifs already exposed in the vocal line. In contrast to the Schöne Müllerin, where rustling is ever-present, there are few passages in the Winterreise where it can be perceived. This is not surprising, as in Winter the leaves have fallen and the brooks frozen over.39 The waters flow and the linden trees flower only in the memory of the wanderer, namely in the middle section of Rückblick, the eighth song in Schubert’s cycle. Here (‘wie anders hast du mich empfangen’), the melody, which began in G minor, modulates into the major and the initial, nervous figuration of the piano mellows to a static vibration of octaves on the dominant in the right hand, while the left hand parallels the vocal line in a lyrical duet. An explicit musical depiction of rustling, as frequently realised by Schubert, is absent in Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, where the rustling that sounds is not that of forests and brooks, but the inner rustling of memory. It has already been observed that Schubert’s Winterreise plays a special role here,40 and indeed through musical correspondences as well as those in content. The vocal melody at the start of the fourth song in Mahler’s cycle, Die zwei blauen Auge, bears a clear likeness to Schubert’s Wegweiser – a reference to which Mahler hints in the aforementioned letter to Löhr.41 Characteristically for Mahler, this is again not one particular quotation, but a bundle of associations. For it is exactly this plurality of associations that accounts for the difference between a simple link or reference and the multiplicity which 39 Letzte Hoffnung: ‘Ach, und fällt das Blatt zu Boden, / fällt mit ihm die Hoffnung ab’
[Oh, if the leaf falls to the ground / my hope falls with it]; Auf dem Flusse: ‘Der du so lustig rauschtest, / du heller, wilder Fluß /, wie still bist du geworden’ [You who rustled so merrily, / you river, clear and wild, / how quiet you have become].
40 Youens, ‘Schubert, Mahler and the Weight of the Past’, pp. 256–68; Ringer, ‘ “Lieder
eines fahrenden Gesellen” ’, p. 598 f.
41 Mahler, Briefe, p. 73: ‘My signposts: I have written a cycle of songs, so far six, which
are all dedicated to her.’ See Ringer, ‘ “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” ’, p. 590.
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 369 constitues ‘rustling’. Ringer mentions a section from Wagner’s Siegfried (Act i, Scene i), where melodic similarity is once again matched by similiarity in content: both Mahler’s protagonist and Wagner’s Siegfried are at the point of leaving their familiar surroundings.42 For the middle part of the Mahler song, Ringer draws attention to a reference that he describes as ‘probably the most astounding’ of all, namely the march section of Donizetti’s last opera, Don Sebastiano. The respective passages in both the song and the opera concern people attending their own funeral.43 Mahler’s song is made up of three parts which are interrelated in differing ways. The first section, in E minor, serves as a kind of introduction in which the situation is described: Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz, Die haben mich in die weite Welt geschickt. Da mußt’ ich Abschied nehmen vom allerliebsten Platz! O Augen blau, warum habt ihr mich angeblickt? Nun hab’ ich ewig Leid und Grämen. The two blue eyes of my sweetheart have sent me out into the wide world. I had to take my leave from that most-beloved place! O blue eyes, why did you gaze at me? Now I will have eternal sorrow and grief. The dotted rhythm typical for a funeral march distinguishes both the melody and the accompaniment, establishing thus the basic character of the song. Memory is aroused by the intertextual references already discussed as well as through melodic properties. In a similar way to Mahler’s text construction, 42 The relevant passages in the texts are: Richard Wagner, Siegfried, Act i, Scene
i: ‘Aus dem Wald fort / in die Welt ziehn: / nimmer kehr’ ich zurück’ (Wagner, ichtungen und Schriften, ed. Dieter Borchmeyer [Frankfurt am Main, 1983], D p. 167) [Leaving the forest / going into the world / I will never return]. Mahler, ‘Die zwei blauen Augen’, first and second lines: ‘Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz, / die haben mich in die weite Welt geschickt’ [The two blue eyes of my sweetheart / have sent me out into the wide world]. Several years later Ringer also referred to a Jewish melody, the recitation of the Thirteen Attributes of the Lord; see Ringer, ‘Gustav Mahler und die “conditio judaica” ’, Gustav Mahler und die Symphonik des 19. Jahrhunderts. Referate des Bonner Symposions 2000, ed. Bernd Sponheuer and Wolfram Steinbeck, Bonner Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft v (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), p. 265.
43 Ringer, ‘ “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” ’, p. 599 f. Mahler may have known
Liszt’s piano arrangement. Ringer also draws attention to the fact that Donizetti’s Don Sebastiano was repeatedly performed in Vienna during Mahler’s first year at the conservatory there.
370 Music as Social and Cultural Practice built up using word repetition, his musical setting is a continual variance of smaller ‘cells’, namely a manner of progression which is based neither on the ‘logic’ of motivic development nor on the ‘mechanics’ of literal repetition, but is borne by the imprecise workings of the memory.44 Each new line sounds like a reminiscence of the previous one. A key change to C major/minor marks the start of the middle section, which itself falls into two parts (bb. 17–24; 25–38). Throughout both parts the bass alternates between C and G in crotchets like an uninterrupted pendulum, suggesting the heavy tread of the funeral march. In spite of the clear section break between bars 16 and 17, the propagation of the variation techniques used in the first section ensures continuity: the melodic motif from the opening of the song is retained in the middle section until bar 25, when the vocal line diverges from the upbeat motif for the first time. At the end of this section there is an astounding metamorphosis of the trudge of the funeral march through a heavenly triplet arpeggio figure into the new tonic F major, introducing the linden tree episode. The harmonic motion, already restricted in the middle section by the C–G pendulum, is brought to a complete standstill: the melody soars over the static sonority of F until the end of the piece. There are occasional minor colorations (bb. 50–3) and passing chromatic features in the melody, though these details by no means disturb the fundamental harmonic immobility of the episode. The continual arpeggio figuration in the piano is reminiscent of Schubert’s musical rustling, for which the latter’s Waldesnacht (Im Walde, Friedrich Schlegel) d708 – an uninterrupted pianistic arpeggio etude of epic proportions – merits special mention.45 The metamorphosis from rustling to death, set repeatedly by Schubert, is depicted by Mahler in the reverse order in Die zwei blauen Augen. The static fundament maintained throughout the linden tree episode is achieved through a vibration of tiny elements.46 44 On the variance techniques in Mahler’s symphonic work see Adorno, ‘Mahler:
Eine musikalische Physiognomik’, pp. 233–9.
45 The third verse of Waldesnacht is notable in the context of Mahler’s linden tree
episode: ‘Ewig’s Rauschen sanfter Quellen / Zaubert Blumen aus dem Schmerz, / Trauer doch in linden Wellen / Schlägt uns lockend an das Herz’ [The eternal rustling of gentle springs / Conjures flowers from sorrow, / Yet sadness, in tender waves / beats alluringly against our hearts]. Rückert plays on the word ‘linden’ as an adjective (translated as ‘mild’) and ‘Linden’ as a noun in Dank für den Lindenzweig [Thanks for the Linden Branch], set by Mahler in 1901–2 and published in 1905 as one of the Fünf Rückertlieder with the title ‘Ich atmet’ einen Lindenduft’. See Peter Revers, Mahlers Lieder: Ein musikalisches Werkführer (Munich, 2000), p. 25 f.
46 Concerning this characteristic of rustling see Martin Seel, ‘Über das Rauschen
innerhalb und außerhalb der Kunst’, ‘Laß singen, Gesell, laß Rauschen … ’ : Zur Ästhetik und Anästhetik in der Musik, ed. Otto Kolleritsch, Studien zur Wertungsforschung xxxii (Vienna and Graz, 1997), pp. 70–94.
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 371 Here we perceive, in an introverted, lyrical form, that which Wagner embellishes grandiosely in his prelude to Rheingold, namely the endless swelling of a single chord. Like Schubert’s modestly rustling brook, which began and ended the miller’s story, the mighty symphonic rustling of the Rhine represents the origin and goal of all motion in the Ring tetralogy. In the linden tree episode, as in the opening of Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, the right hand of the piano enhances the sonority of the vocal line, mostly in tonic harmony. The vocal melody, quoted by Mahler himself in the third movement of his First Symphony, is intended to be ‘sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise’ [very simple and straightforward like a folk tune].47 From bar 51, the vocal line takes over the melody from the second part of the middle section of the song. The folk-tone evoked by the linden tree melody is disturbed by the chromatic descent in bars 53–4 but not completely destroyed. Again, an important feature of the vocal line is its capacity to arouse a resonance of reminiscence in the listener. Ringer refers to the socalled ‘Lagoon Waltz’ from the third act of Johann Strauss’s comic opera Eine Nacht in Venedig, first performed in Berlin in 1883.48 Though the rhythmic and expressive contexts differ, both the melodic likeness and the static brokenchord harmony are noteworthy similarities between Strauss and Mahler. Surprise at such musical parallels becomes amusement if one continues to read the vocal text of the waltz: the young barber in Strauss’s opera sings under the ‘dark arch of heaven’, where ‘at night the waves quietly rustle’. Yet again, multiple associations are elicited: Ringer also mentions a Loge-motif in the second scene of Wagner’s Rheingold.49 As discussed, the typology of the linden tree melody points clearly to the realm of folksong, with the Tyrolese Christmas carol Es wird scho glei dumpa deserving special mention (Example 19.2).50 Mahler’s auratic sonority can thus be defined in terms of compositional technique: a melody which summons a bundle of associations by means of reminiscences, echoes and references floats above a continuum of sound in which harmonic progression is renounced in favour of inarticulate rustling. Through his orchestration, Mahler is able to expound fully the differentiation in timbre suggested in the piano version. The harp takes over the rustling figure, while three solo violins envelop the vocal line. The absence of fundamental harmonic motion accounts for the reticence of the double basses, who must 47 Performance instruction by Mahler at bar 82 of the third movement of his
Symphony no. 1 in D Major.
48 Ringer, ‘Johann Strauß und Gustav Mahler’, Johann Strauß: Zwischen Kunst
anspruch und Volksvergnügen, ed. Ludwig Finscher and Albrecht Riethmüller (Darmstadt, 1995), p. 151 f.
49 Ibid., p. 152. 50 I owe this suggestion to Eva Maria Hois.
372 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Ex. 19.2 (a) Mahler, Die zwei blauen Augen: ‘Auf der Straße steht ein Lindenbaum’; (b) J. Strauss, Eine Nacht in Venedig, Act iii, Caramello: ‘Ach, wie so herrlich anzuschaun’; (c) Wagner, Rheingold, Act i, Scene ii, Loge: ‘Die goldnen Aepfel’; (d) folksong, Tyrol, Es wird scho glei dumpa (a)
(b)
(c)
3
(d)
be content with the occasional pluck of a low F in triple piano. The song ends under the shadow of death, as the disappearance of the linden tree music in diminuendo is followed by a final return of the funeral march motif.
individual and collective pasts References to the past, as described by Benjamin in relation to Baudelaire’s Correspondances, are absent in neither Müller’s nor in Mahler’s linden tree poems. Mahler recalls the experience of primal occurences even more clearly than Müller: ‘Auf der Straße steht ein Lindenbaum, da hab’ ich zum ersten Mal im Schlaf geruht!’ [By the road stands a linden tree, there I rested in sleep for the first time!]. The linden tree appears as a commemorative place where an original experience is repeated and remembered. Repetition, a constituent property of the rite, also occurs in Müller’s Lindenbaum: ‘Ich träumt’ in seinem Schatten / so manchen süßen Traum’ [I dreamt in its shadow many a sweet dream].51 In the cyclic recurrence of ritual festivals, mythical time is 51 In many linden tree poems the element of remembrance is provided by the motif
of names carved into the tree bark. This occurs in Müller, too: ‘Ich schnitt in seine Rinde / So manches liebe Wort’ [Into its bark I carved / many a loving word]. In Müller’s poem ‘Die Bäume’, published like those of the Winterreise in the collection Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten, ii: Lieder des Lebens und der Liebe in 1824, ritual repetition is explicitly mentioned in the context of trees: ‘In des Abends Feierstunde / Führt mich die gewöhnte Runde / Immer zu den Bäumen hin’ [In the evening’s hour of leisure / my customary walk / always leads me to the trees].
Celestini • The Acoustic Proximity of Temporal Distance 373 fused with the linear dimension of historical time. These temporal structures are analogous to the differing characteristics of subconscious and conscious memory respectively. Benjamin’s definition of the aura as the ‘unique manifestation of a distance’ also points to the realm of the cult: ‘This definition has the advantage of making the cult-like character of the phenomenon transparent. The essential distance is that which is unapproachable: indeed inapproachability is a main quality of the image of cult.’52 Referring to Proust’s novel, Benjamin remarks that in our day, the mémoire involontaire, to which one owes the experience of aura, is restricted ‘to the inventory of the private person who is isolated in multiple respects’. However, the mémoire involontaire does still bear ‘the traces of the situation out of which’ it was formed: Where experience in its strict meaning reigns, certain contents of the individual past enter into relationships with those of the collective one. Cults, with their ceremonials, their festivities, surely never considered by Proust, led to the fusion, time and again, of these two materials of memory. They provoked reminiscences at certain times and remained instruments of the same for life. Thus deliberate and involuntary reminiscence lose their mutual incompatibility.53 The dissolution of the self into the symbolic order of literature explored in Mahler’s autobiographical narrative is analogous to the fusion of individual and collective pasts which Benjamin considers to be the main function of cultic celebration in traditional societies. In this way, Mahler highlights the link that exists between cult and art. Yet auratic sonority no longer represents an acoustic manifestation of cultic reminiscence, but a melancholy lament of its decay. Aura becomes allegory.
52 Benjamin, ‘Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire’, p. 647. 53 Ibid., p. 611.
• 20 • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ Pamela Potter
A
t the end of the war, as much of Germany lay in rubble, musicology could quietly look back on all it had gained in the previous twelve years. Even at the height of the conflict in 1944, one could boast more musicology departments than anywhere else in the world, an uninterrupted flow of productivity in the form of Denkmäler and Gesamtausgaben, the continued proliferation of German folk music, and impressive archives and collections (fortified in no small part by the seizure of materials from occupied and annexed territories). The reason musicology had fared so well cannot simply be attributed to the entire discipline selling its soul to a totalitarian regime. Instead, the beginning of the Third Reich posed an opportunity for musicology to gain recognition for agendas it had long been pursuing. Ever since the First World War, German musicologists had focused much of their energy on the study of German music, on bridging the gap between the academy and the public, and on pursuing folk music research in order to pay serious scholarly attention to its ‘community-building’ power, which many had experienced first-hand in the military and the youth movement. After failing to exert any significant influence in music policy or educational reform in the Weimar system, musicologists were encouraged to learn that the goals of the National Socialists – to unlock the mysteries of German superiority, to broaden public access to the rich German cultural legacy and to pay greater attention to folk practices – were not very different from their own. Musicologists had not only acquired the means to serve the Nazi state through their earlier endeavours, but also demonstrated a true commitment to the tasks set before them. Ambitious projects initiated in the Weimar Republic and paralysed by the economic crisis were reanimated and expanded by the Nazi Education Ministry and the Propaganda Ministry, while the cultural organisations of Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler’s SS enlisted the services of musicologists in research, education and special wartime plundering actions. All of this might have come back to haunt German musicologists after 1945, had they not taken the initiative to distance themselves from the gains, abuses and even losses that came with their cooperation with the regime. Cutting of 22 January 1944 sent from Hans Albrecht to the Reich Education
Minister, 27 January 1944, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, r 21/11058.
Potter • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ 375 While musicologists had to do relatively little to sell their wares to Nazi cultural authorities beyond highlighting their commitment to German music and the ‘people’s community’, this was not the case in 1945, when the pressure was on to repackage if not reinvent the profession and its past. The denazification process had left the musicological community largely unscathed but prompted them nevertheless to identify a very few unrepentant Nazis among their ranks and designate a few representative works as repellent to post-Holocaust sensibilities. This served the dual purpose of deflecting attention from the Naziera activities of the majority who continued their careers, and of allowing the continued pursuit of agendas inherited from the Third Reich and earlier, even including the largely unsuccessful experiments with race research. The plight of victims was downplayed or ignored, while the numerous gains reaped from the Nazi regime were disassociated from their government- and party-supported origins. A taboo was tacitly imposed on any investigations into German musicology’s recent past, and even with the rise of the sceptical generation of ‘68ers’ who demanded that this prohibition be lifted, the hierarchical structure of the musicological guild served to hinder any investigations until outsiders came along to break the silence. In the past decade, a musicological Vergangenheitsbewältigung (confrontation with the past) has taken place with the publication of numerous investigations into the history of musicology in the Third Reich. While this confrontation has highlighted what was previously downplayed, it has not entirely undone the post-war reinvention. As a legacy of the denazification process and its rather simplistic categories of guilt and innocence, there still lingers a somewhat exaggerated sense of who is a victim and who is a perpetrator, perpetuating two-dimensional portraits of those relegated to one category or the other. Furthermore, despite the recent widespread recognition that intellectual traditions persisted from the Weimar era to the Nazi period and beyond, there is still a palpable mandate to note a special moment of musicology’s ‘nazification’ as part of its history, even though there is little evidence to flesh out the nature and scope of such a phenomenon. The following investigation traces German musicology’s treatment of the Nazi past, from its initial stages of downplaying both the benefits and the atrocities, followed by a code of silence punctuated by the occasional condemnation of isolated Nazis, and ending with the lifting of taboos, largely as the result of developments outside Comprehensive studies on musicology include Musikwissenschaft – eine verspätete
Disziplin? Die akademische Musikforschung zwischen Fortschrittsglauben und Modernitätsverweigerung, ed. Anselm Gerhard (Stuttgart, 2000), and Musik forschung – Faschismus – Nationalsozialismus: Referate der Tagung Schloss Engers (8. bis 10. März 2000), ed. Isolde von Foerster, Christoph Hust and ChristophHellmut Mahling, Gesellschaft für Musikforschung (Mainz, 2001).
376 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Germany. The remainder of the investigation examines the continued exaggerations in the portrayals of victims, perpetrators and the overall ‘nazification’ of the discipline in the current Vergangenheitsbewältigung literature and speculates on why they persist. Just as Reinhard Strohm challenged the notion that the concept of self-contained musical works arose around 1800 and situated the emergence of this notion within specific historical circumstances, I would argue that the perception of musicology in the Third Reich as a nazified intellectual pursuit in the hands of Nazi perpetrators is a lingering by-product of the post-war ‘zero hour’ reinvention of the field. Before an unencumbered exploration of the recent history of German musicology can continue, it will be necessary to exorcise these ghosts from the early post-war years and deconstruct the notion that musicological pursuits in Germany from 1933 to 1945 were a self-contained intellectual outgrowth of Nazi ideology.
the zero hour of musicology The Allied policy of denazification was a way to deal with the atrocities of war crimes by holding all German citizens accountable for their actions of the preceding twelve years. Following mass arrests and immediate release of the least suspect, all Germans over the age of eighteen were required to fill in questionnaires to determine the degree of their involvement in Nazi organisations and activities. After this initial weeding-out process, individual cases were tried, mostly by German tribunals set up under the authority of the Military Government. The denazification of musicologists was a relatively low-key affair, as musicologists managed to escape public attention, probably owing to the perceived ‘apolitical nature of the scholarly discipline’ cited at the trial of Heinrich Besseler. With few exceptions, even those most politically active during the Nazi years managed to resume their careers, if not at their home universities then in other zones of occupation where the scrutiny was less thorough. The musicological establishment in Germany then managed to pick up Reinhard Strohm, ‘Looking Back at Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical
Work-Concept’, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, ed. Michael Talbot, Liver pool Music Symposium i (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 128–52.
Stephen Brockmann, ‘German Culture at the “Zero Hour” ’, Revisting Zero Hour
1945: The Emergence of Postwar German Culture, ed. Frank Trommler and Stephen Brockmann, Humanities Program Report i (Washington, DC, 1996), pp. 12–13.
Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Das Ende des Reiches und die Neubildung deutscher Staaten,
9th edn, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte xxii (Munich, 1980), pp. 112–22.
Besseler file, 25 March 1947, Spruchkammer Heidelberg, University Archive
Heidelberg.
Pamela M. Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the
Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich (New Haven, 1998), pp. 241–53.
Potter • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ 377 where it had left off, erasing institutional memory about the Nazi past in order to continue many of the profitable and productive projects initiated under Hitler. Leaders in the field opted to gloss over the role of government or party politics in any musicological achievements of the past decades, presenting them as the results of scholarly initiative alone, and paving the way for the reestablishment of dismantled Third Reich institutions. Thus in 1948, Friedrich Blume, as president of the newly formed scholarly society, the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, enumerated the unprecedented organisational gains in the Nazi years but never acknowledged the government and party support in these ventures. He emphasised the concentration of musicological activity in the universities alone in the preceding decades but failed to mention the numerous extra-curricular pursuits carried out under the aegis of the Propaganda Ministry, the SS and the Rosenberg Bureau. Four years later Blume submitted a formal proposal to the central church bodies and various administrative branches of the Federal Republic, highlighting the accomplishments of musicology in the 1920s and 1930s (making no mention of the Hitler regime) and emphasising musicology’s past contributions to enriching music education, amateur activities, and radio and recording industries. Blume’s proposal asked, among other things, for the re-establishment of the State Institute for German Music Research, which had been set up by the Nazi education minister in 1935. It also became customary to deflect attention away from the plight of the victims, including the numerous luminaries forced into exile, and from the political engagement of prominent musicologists at a time when everyone was claiming to have been apolitical, allowing even those who had been politically active to resume their tasks. Apart from the martyrdom of Kurt Huber, Blume, in his retrospective of the Nazi years, called little attention to other victims or émigrés, noting only the weakening in systematic musicology brought on by the loss of leading German scholars (obviously referring to the forced emigration of the Jews Curt Sachs and Erich von Hornbostel) and their replacement with underqualified juniors. He further expressed his ‘astonishment’ at the rapid gains in American musicology, making no mention of the circumstances Friedrich Blume, ‘Bilanz der Musikforschung’, Die Musikforschung 1 (1948),
pp. 3–9.
Friedrich Blume, Zur Lage der deutschen Musikforschung. Denkschrift dem Herrn
Bundespräsidenten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, der Regierung der Bundes republik Deutschland, dem Bundesrat der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, dem Bundes tag der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, den Regierungen der westdeutschen Länder, dem Deutschen Städtetag, der Evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands und den deutschen evangelischen Landeskirchen sowie den Bischöfen der römisch-katholischen Kirche in Deutschland vorgelegt von der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung (Kassel, 1952), pp. 5–6, 10–15.
378 Music as Social and Cultural Practice under which German and Austrian scholars such as Sachs, Willi Apel, Alfred Einstein, Manfred Bukofzer, Otto Erich Deutsch, Hans David, Edward Lowinsky, Karl Geiringer and Leo Schrade became ‘American’.10 Blume himself had benefited greatly from both the new attention to musicology garnered by Nazi authorities and the spate of academic posts left vacant by those who fled, winning recognition with his keynote speech on music and race at the Reichsmusiktage, earning the honour of contributing to the Festschrift for Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, rising to the rank of Ordinarius in 1938, and receiving the commission before the end of the war to oversee what was to become one of German musicology’s most ambitious post-war achievements, the reference work Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG). In his post-war musings he simply generalised that all serious scholars had remained true to their moral convictions throughout the Third Reich, even though they were not allowed to express them.11 On the rare occasions that the Nazi past came up thereafter, the musicological establishment took care to distance itself from any potential scandal and seized the opportunity to single out a few individuals to bear the brunt of criticism in order to shield other reputations. Such was the case of Hans Joachim Moser, who continued to adhere to the untenable premise of the existence of distinct ‘races’ and ‘tribes’ among the European nations and identified the Jews as one such tribe. Moser, who in 1940 had pitched a version of his Die Musik der deutschen Stämme to the publishers connected with the research branch of the SS,12 published the completed work in 1957 but did not take care to expunge the suddenly inappropriate references to ‘Berlin Israelites’, ‘Rhenish Jewry’, ‘Mosaic Breslauers’ and ‘Königsberg Jewry’, as well as to the ‘emphatically Jewish musician Arnold Schoenberg’, the ‘Mosaic master Gustav Mahler’, and the ‘three-quarter Israelite Arnold Mendelssohn’. The book also featured a table in which all names of Jews were enclosed in square brackets.13 These transgressions thrust Moser into the spotlight and placed him in a position from which all others could potentially distance themselves. Blume, as president of the Gesellschaft, made the official pronouncement that its journal, Die Musikforschung, would not publish a review of Moser’s book because of its remarks about Jews.14 Moser was later joined by 10 Ibid., pp. 3–4, 9–10, 14–16. 11 Blume, ‘Bilanz’, p. 6.
12 Letter from Moser to Plaßmann, 20 March 1940, Moser/Ahnenerbe file, Berlin
Document Center.
13 Hans Joachim Moser, Die Musik der deutschen Stämme (Vienna, 1957). See also
the review by Wilfried Brenneke, Musica 11 (1957), pp. 478–80.
14 ‘Besprechungen’, Die Musikforschung 10 (1957), p. 344. See also Moser’s reply, ibid.,
p. 463.
Potter • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ 379 Wolfgang Boetticher to represent the few unrepentant ‘Nazi musicologists’,15 while all others, including the highly controversial Besseler (who had dodged several bullets with the help of his student Lowinsky), continued to evade scrutiny. Apart from such isolated incidents, the topic of musicology in the Third Reich remained off-limits to any serious inquiry. Professors who had led successful careers under the Nazis admonished their students not to pursue any inquiries into this dark period of history, insisting that the students lacked the necessary qualifications because they had not experienced the times firsthand.16 The generation that had lived through the Nazi years had no desire to talk about their experiences or activities, and those studying under them considered it inappropriate and even self-defeating to raise questions about the past, as their own success in the field depended on the full support of their mentors.17 They and the generations that followed found themselves facing an impenetrable wall of silence when they tried to investigate the Nazi past. Members of this first generation of students such as Martin Geck, Ludwig Finscher and Peter Gülke now explain their situation as a mixture of respect for their teachers,18 shame about the past and the desire to be accepted into ‘the guild’, resulting in a ‘cartel of silence’ that lasted to the 1960s.19
breaking the silence Signs of change were on the horizon with the coming of age of the 68ers, members of the student movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s whose parents 15 Albrecht Dümling, ‘Wie schuldig sind die Musikwissenschaftler: Zur Rolle
von Wolfgang Boetticher und Hans-Joachim Moser im NS-Musikleben’, Neue Musikzeitung 39, no. 5 (October/November, 1990), p. 9.
16 Hans-Günter Klein, ‘Vorwort. Verdrängung und Aufarbeitung’, Musik und Musik-
politik im faschistischen Deutschland, ed. Hanns-Werner Heister and Hans-Günter Klein (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), p. 9.
17 Ludwig Finscher, ‘Musikwissenschaft und Nationalsozialismus: Bemerkungen
zum Stand der Diskussion’, Musikforschung – Faschismus – Nationalsozialismus, p. 2.
18 ‘ “Schlechter als ein Hund, wer seinen Lehrer nicht ehrt” – dies zitierte Hanns
Eisler 1954 in seinem Vortrag über Schönberg; es galt als halbwegs ehrenwerter Grund zum Verzicht auf einschlägige Fragen auch für die damals junge Generation.’ Peter Gülke, ‘Mit den Wölfen heulend: Überlegungen anläßlich einer Untersuchung über deutsche Musikwissenschaft im “Dritten Reich” ’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 14 November 1998, Zeit und Bild (Wochenendebeilage), p. 2.
19 Martin Geck, ‘ “Cosi fan tutte” oder “Götterdämmerung”? Die national
sozialistische Vergangenheit der deutschen Musikwissenschaft’, Musik und Ästhetik 5, no. 17 (January 2001), p. 88.
380 Music as Social and Cultural Practice were adults during the Third Reich.20 While political and social protests preoccupied American youth during the Vietnam War, German students focused on implementing educational reforms as well as putting an end to the silence surrounding the Nazi years. Students of musicology, attracted to the teachings of Theodor Adorno, staged a rebellion against the older generation and demanded more openness to Marxist approaches and, most importantly, a confrontation with the role of music and musicians in the Third Reich. With regard to musicology’s history, however, the silence was merely punctuated by only a few brief interruptions. The first came in 1970 at the Bonn conference of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, when Clytus Gottwald raised questions about the political undertones of Besseler’s scholarship and claimed to have seen a Meyerbeer score from the Heidelberg musicology collection on which Besseler had stamped the label ‘Jew’. This revelation provoked the ire of Besseler’s disciples and prompted some heated discussion about the politicisation of musicology in the 1920s and 1930s.21 Even as full-fledged investigations into the broader music world picked up momentum in the 1980s and 1990s, these made only brief if any mention of musicology and did not focus much on the leading figures of the discipline,22 leaving the reputations of these luminaries largely untarnished. They also continued to evade scrutiny thanks to the sketchy entries in reference works such as MGG and even the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, both of which generally skipped over their Nazi-era activities and publications.23 It is perhaps not insignificant that any further agitation in this realm would play itself out on foreign soil. In 1982, Wolfgang Boetticher was invited 20 Sabine von Dirke, ‘ “Where Were You 1933–1945?” The Legacy of the Nazi Past
Beyond the Zero Hour’, Revisiting Zero Hour 1945, pp. 71–88.
21 Clytus Gottwald, ‘Musikwissenschaft und Kirchenmusik’ (and following discus-
sion), Bericht über den internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bonn 1970, ed. Carl Dahlhaus, Hans Joachim Marx, Magda Marx-Weber and Günther Massenkeil (Kassel, 1971), p. 666. See also Laurenz Lütteken, ‘Das Musikwerk im Spannungsfeld von “Ausdruck” und “Erleben”: Heinrich Besselers musik historischer Ansatz’, in Musikwissenschaft – eine verspätete Diziplin?, pp. 213–14.
22 Those who do make some mention of musicology are Fred K. Prieberg, Musik im
NS-Staat (Frankfurt am Main, 1982); Michael Meyer, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich, American University Studies ix/49 (New York, 1991); and Erik Levi, Musik in the Third Reich (New York, 1994).
23 Roman Brotbeck, ‘Verdrängung und Abwehr: Die verpaßte Vergangenheits-
bewältigung in Friedrich Blumes Enzyklopädie “Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart” ’, Musikwissenschaft – eine verspätete Diziplin?, pp. 273–9. See also the entries, in both MGG and New Grove i, on Joseph Müller-Blattau, which omit his 1938 book Germanisches Erbe in deutscher Tonkunst (co-published by SS and Hitler Youth organisations) and his wartime position in occupied Strasbourg.
Potter • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ 381 to participate in a Schumann conference at Duke University, and Christoph Wolff and others called attention to his known participation in the plundering activities of Alfred Rosenberg’s special task forces in occupied regions, leading to Boetticher’s withdrawal from the conference.24 An offshoot of this scandal was to reopen the case of Besseler, whose reputation in the United States had been shielded when Lowinsky proposed him for an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago, awarded in 1969. Lowinsky later wrote an obituary for Besseler in 1971, in which he laid out what he knew of Besseler’s situation to portray him essentially as a victim of the system, and made special mention of Besseler’s courageous efforts to salvage Lowinsky’s own career and those of his other Jewish students.25 When Wolff exposed the Boetticher affair in the German press, he revived the suspicion that Besseler had been known to mark books by Jewish authors in the Heidelberg library, but after vain attempts to track down the facts, he had publicly to retract his statement.26 The Boetticher incident was pivotal for drawing attention in the United States to the taboos in Germany and planted the seeds for my own future endeavours. As a student of later-generation German musicologists who had been outspoken about lifting taboos about the Nazi past – Christoph Wolff, Reinhold Brinkmann and especially Reinhard Strohm – I was awakened to the possibilities of exploring this uncharted territory. It was with Strohm’s encouragement and guidance that I went on to write a doctoral dissertation on the discipline of musicology in the Third Reich. I was somewhat unprepared for the wide range of reactions from archivists and librarians in Germany, ranging from full cooperation and complete access to hostility and retraction of privileges once it was ascertained that I was interested in investigating the Nazi era. In one case, I was given full use of materials (among which I discovered items that were meant to be burnt after the war because the author thought they might be incriminating), only then to be requested to destroy all notes I had taken and return all photocopies I had made. From some of Strohm’s contemporaries working in Germany, I learnt how many of them had tried to investigate this topic but failed, owing to the recalcitrance of archivists and the obstructionism of the musicological 24 Anthony Lewis, ‘Facing the Music’, The New York Times, 18 February 1982, a23, and
Christoph Wolff, ‘Die Hand eines Handlangers: “Musikwissenschaft” im Dritten Reich’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 24 July 1982, Zeit und Bild, p. 2; repr. in Entartete Musik: Zur Düsseldorfer Ausstellung von 1938. Eine kommentierte Rekonstruktion, ed. Albrecht Dümling and Peter Girth (Düsseldorf, 1988), pp. 93–4.
25 Edward Lowinsky, ‘Heinrich Besseler (1900–1969)’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society 24 (1971), p. 501.
26 Christoph Wolff, Letter to the Editor, Journal of the American Musicological Society
37 (1984), pp. 208–9.
382 Music as Social and Cultural Practice establishment. Those who had risked their careers in such pursuits urged me to continue my work, believing that only an outsider could successfully carry out such an inquiry. These words of encouragement proved prophetic, for in a short time it became clear that foreigners were the ones who could finally end the silence. The Dutch musicologist Willem de Vries wrote a dissertation on the plundering enterprise under Alfred Rosenberg that engaged several musicologists in the seizure and assessment of musical instruments, libraries and manuscripts, and their transport to public and private German collections.27 The publication of a German translation of De Vries’s book in 1998 led to a full-scale inquiry by the University of Göttingen into the career of Boetticher, then eighty-four years old, and resulted in the termination of his teaching activities and his banishment from the musicology institute.28 After my own study of German musicology from the First World War to denazification was published in the same year, Peter Gülke, a student of Besseler, commented: ‘It is the old, sad story, deduced from countless archival sources – from culpable silence, not knowing, not wanting to know, fraternising and prematurely hasty obedience; civil courage hardly ever comes up. Part of the story is also the fact that it is told so late and – as in the case of the recently published work on the Sonderstab Musik by the Dutch author Willem de Vries – not in Germany.’29 In a later review of my book, Gülke further commented: ‘the gratitude is as emphatic as it is anguished’.30 The floodgates were opened by non-Germans, but the spate of subsequent re-examinations fell to the hands of another group that enjoyed some distance: German scholars born mostly in the 1950s and 1960s. It is understandable that a full confrontation with the past would have to wait for this new generation, for they no longer had any personal connections to those active in the Third Reich. While the long silence may have been maddening, the delay in some ways worked to the benefit of these more recent inquiries. In particular, many of the investigations appearing in the last years highlight the continuities 27 Willem de Vries, Sonderstab Musik: Music Confiscations by the Einsatzstab
Reichsleiter Rosenberg under the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe, trans. Uva Vertalers and Lee K. Mitzman (Amsterdam, 1996; German edn: Sonderstab Musik: Organisierte Plünderung in Westeuropa 1940–45, trans. Antje Olivier [Cologne, 1998]).
28 Christoph Schwandt, ‘Sonderstab Musikplünderung: Uni setzt Lehrveranstalt
ungen von Wolfgang Boetticher aus’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 12 December 1998.
29 Gülke, ‘Mit den Wölfen heulend’, p. 2. This and all other translations are my own. 30 Peter Gülke, review of Pamela M. Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology
and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich, in Die Musik forschung 53 (2000), p. 500.
Potter • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ 383 rather than struggling to isolate the Nazi era.31 That being said, however, a few of the ghosts of the past continue to haunt this realm as well, in the form of a desire to relegate individuals to the rigid categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and the desire to pinpoint the intellectual ‘nazification’ of the discipline. Even the currently used term ‘nazification’ (Nazifizierung) was not coined during the Third Reich, but more likely arose retroactively, as a prequel, so to speak, to the equally problematic nomenclature of ‘denazification’ (Entnazifizierung).
victims and perpetrators The recent revelations about musicology and musicologists have led to more detailed investigations of individuals and their roles. A welcome outcome of all of this was to set the record straight in the reference works New Grove and MGG, both of which have come out with completely revised editions in the last few years and have adopted new policies to correct the omissions of the earlier versions. Yet while these investigations for the most part steered clear from necessarily assigning guilt or innocence, one can detect a tendency to overcompensate and, in the process, often to focus disproportional attention on the years 1933 to 1945 for those whose Nazi-era successes have come to light. Some of the entries in the new MGG, for example, concentrate so much on the Nazi-era activities of individuals that the authors tend to give short shrift to the remainder of their careers.32 More contentious, however, has been the treatment of the victims of National Socialism and the assumption that they were, by virtue of their circumstances, intellectually far more progressive than their Nazi colleagues. The misguided association of all victims with progressive thinking and all perpetrators with conservatism came to light most vividly when questions arose about Kurt Huber’s political sympathies. Huber, along with a group of students known as the White Rose, had secretly distributed fliers warning of the 31 The collection Musikwissenschaft – eine verspätete Disziplin? was preceded by
works on other aspects of musical life that stressed continuities, such as Michael Walter, Hitler in der Oper: Deutsches Musikleben 1919–1945 (Stuttgart, 1995); Fabian Lovisa, Musikkritik im Nationalsozialismus: Die Rolle deutschsprachiger Musikzeitschriften 1920–1945, Neue Heidelberger Studien zur Musikwissenschaft xxii (Laaber, 1993); Eckhard John, Musikbolschewismus: Die Politisierung der Musik in Deutschland 1918–1938 (Stuttgart, 1994); as well as smaller contributions to the history of musicology in individual universities. See the list of works in Gerhard, Musikwissenschaft – eine verspätete Disziplin?, esp. pp. 24–30.
32 For example, ‘Heinrich Besseler’ (by Thomas Schipperges, vol. ii, cols. 1514–
16); ‘Wilhelm Ehmann’ (vol. vi, cols. 132–3); ‘Karl Gustav Fellerer’ (by Dieter Gutknecht, vol. vi, cols. 932–4); and ‘Gotthold Frotscher’ (by Gutknecht, vol. vii, cols. 205–7).
384 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Nazis’ destruction of the German nation and was arrested, tried and executed in 1943. Owing to this heroic martyrdom, the facts of his political views and experiences prior to his execution were grossly distorted after the war in order to depict him as a progressive thinker relentlessly hounded by the Nazis. Huber, in fact, was motivated to compose the fliers out of a growing concern for the perceived spread of Communism, and despite post-war accounts of his constant persecution, he had actually made a name for himself in the 1930s as one of the leading scholars of folk music, had been identified by Besseler as a powerful weapon against Jewish émigrés, served as head of the folk music department of the newly founded State Institute for German Music Research, and was even championed by an SS officer when he faced difficulties within his university. A committed German nationalist and an acclaimed folk music scholar who at one point even acknowledged the potential usefulness of applying race to folk music research, Huber turned to the White Rose only after hearing reports of war atrocities and mourning the compromise of German ideals in a bloody battle that could not be won.33 Not only was his story altered in post-war secondary accounts, but the publications of his texts were ‘sanitised’ of passages that might have remotely connected his views to any racist thinking, in order to maintain the black-and-white distinctions between Nazis and their victims.34 The same desire to preserve the polarity between progressive victims and reactionary perpetrators arises in the cases of Jewish émigrés, who, despite their harrowing experiences at the hands of the National Socialists, arguably shared many views about music history with their teachers, their students and their contemporaries pursuing successful careers under the Nazis. David Josephson, one of many American students of these refugees, has begun to investigate their widespread impact on the formation of American musicology. Germans and German-trained Europeans established or expanded musicology programmes at major universities, became prominent leaders in the American Musicological Society from its beginnings (among them were presidents Curt Sachs and Karl Geiringer; vice-presidents Alfred Einstein, Otto Gombosi and Leo Schrade; and numerous members of the board of directors), provided models for major musicological publications (Ernst Bücken’s Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft served as a model for the Norton series, Johannes Wolf ’s Notationskunde for Apel’s notation book and Arnold Schering’s Musikgeschichte in Beispielen for Apel and Archibald T. Davison’s Historical 33 Potter, Most German of the Arts, pp. 122–4. 34 Peter Petersen, ‘Wissenschaft und Widerstand: Über Kurt Huber (1893–1945)’,
Die dunkle Last: Musik und Nationalsozialismus, ed. Brunnhilde Sonntag, HansWerner Boresch and Detlef Gowony, Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft und Musiktheorie iii (Cologne, 1999), pp. 118–19.
Potter • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ 385 Anthology of Music), and encouraged their students in work that emphasised preparing critical editions and studying the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.35 Yet they also persisted in upholding an essentially German-centred conception of Western music history, prompting the early warnings from Paul Henry Lang in 1945 that ‘some of our newly won colleagues still do not realise that times have changed and that most of all, their surroundings have changed’.36 A full twenty years later, Joseph Kerman could still observe how deeply the German influence had persisted: Until American musicology catches something of the resonance of the American personality, it will remain the echo of the great German tradition. … That tradition was not dictated by objective truths of nature, it arose out of a certain point in its history. … Our identity as scholars depends on growth away from an older alien tradition into something recognizably our own.37 Yet any suggestions that the German émigrés who came to the United States brought with them a strongly Germanocentric view of music history have prompted negative reactions from those who wish to protect these victims from any hint of commonalities with their Nazi colleagues. In German literature, Mark Anderson has suggested that a strict taboo has been imposed against casting a critical eye on the works of anyone, especially Jews, who suffered at the hands of the Nazis.38 The taboo, which seems to have extended to musicology, renders any debates about their work off-limits and prompts ardent defences from those who are uncomfortable with the idea that victims of Nazi xenophobia could nevertheless share the exclusivist orientations of former compatriots. They either claim not to see the nationalist component of émigrés’ teachings, flatly reject the idea as an unjust accusation, or identify the émigrés’ views as an outgrowth of a German intellectual tradition distinct from the ‘nazified’ directions pursued back home. Jürg Stenzl, for one, asserted that he could detect no Germanocentrism in Einstein’s Mozart and The Italian 35 David Josephson, ‘The German Musical Exile and the Course of American Musi-
cology’, Current Musicology 79–80 (2005), pp. 9–53.
36 Paul Henry Lang, ‘Musical Scholarship at the Crossroads’, Musical Quarterly 31
(1945), pp. 374–5; quoted in Josephson, ‘The German Musical Exile and the Course of American Musicology’, p. 23.
37 Joseph Kerman, ‘Profiles for American Musicology’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society 18 (1965), p. 67, quoted in Josephson, ‘The German Musical Exile and the Course of American Musicology’, p. 28.
38 Mark M. Anderson, ‘German Intellectuals, Jewish Victims: A Politically Correct
Solidarity’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 October 2001.
386 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Madrigal, or even in Schrade’s Beethoven in France.39 Albrecht Dümling went even farther, condemning such suggestions as a ‘grotesque accusation’ that émigrés such as Einstein brought ‘ “Nazi (!) notions of German superiority” to America’.40 Reinhold Brinkmann similarly objected to what he identified as the ‘suspicion that émigré anti-Fascist German musicologists brought with them National Socialist thought in their great influence on the American discipline’, and while Brinkmann would not deny a ‘Germanocentric view’ in the textbooks they wrote, he felt compelled nevertheless to ‘undo the demonisation’.41
a ‘nazified’ discipline On the whole, when it comes to analysing German intellectual trends, the products of the recent Vergangenheitsbewältigung are to be applauded for boldly acknowledging and scrutinising continuities from the Weimar era all the way through to the post-war period. Contributions for the most part resist prior temptations to isolate musicological scholarship of the 1930s and 1940s and instead trace common tendencies from the turn of the century through the post-war period. Nevertheless, a subtle undercurrent to isolate a distinct brand of Nazi (or ‘nazified’) musicology also persists, not unlike the visceral need clearly to separate the intellectual orientation of the Jewish victims of National Socialism from that of those who prospered under Hitler. Some have argued that Nazi musicology can be observed in the growing adoption of racial theory, while others have insisted on distinguishing ‘Nazi’ from ‘German’ (or ‘German-National’) and downplaying the continuities. Yet despite the insistence on the existence of such a category, thus far no one has managed successfully to outline its supposedly unique characteristics. The suggestion that no distinct category of Nazi musicology ever existed is challenged most vociferously with the claim that race theory and antisemitism overtook the discipline between 1933 and 1945. It is true that immediately in 1933, the interest in racial matters became fashionable as never before, and the application of racial theory, or at least the adaptation of a racial perspective, received a second chance in scholarly circles even though scholars had completely abandoned it as unsound a decade earlier. After the emigration of 39 Jürg Stenzl, ‘Fascismo – kein Thema?’, Musikforschung – Faschismus – National
ismus, p. 150.
40 Albrecht Dümling, ‘Hat eine Nazifizierung gar nicht stattgefunden? Bemerkun-
gen aus Anlass einer Buch-Rezension’, Neue Musikzeitung 49, no. 12 (December– J anuary 2000), p. 52.
41 Reinhold Brinkmann, ‘Vom “völkischen Lebensraum” der Musik: Pamela Potters
Buch “Die ‘deutscheste’ der Künste” ’, Merkur 55 (2001), p. 158.
Potter • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ 387 leaders in the sub-field of comparative musicology, a few who stayed behind lunged into this methodologically shaky area, but their blatantly opportunistic show of interest in racial research failed to lead to serious inquiries, perhaps owing to the pitfalls already revealed by experts many years before. A musicological confrontation with the Jewish question, similarly promoted for its potential political benefits, failed to inspire more than one or two individuals. Oddly enough, these methodologies, flawed as they were, were never entirely abandoned after 1945. Indeed, some of the most notorious examples continued to be cited as authoritative. The MGG entry on musicology (published in 1961) includes the bibliographic heading ‘Race and Folklore’ and lists Nazi-era works as well as a 1952 article on ‘measurable racial differences in music’. The entry on Germany from 1954 similarly contains a bibliographic subheading consisting almost entirely of works appearing between 1933 and 1945 that dealt with defining Germanness and relied heavily on race theory, including one that criticised the lack of attention to the Jewish question. As the more rigorous studies that highlight continuities demonstrate, there is clearly no interest in excising Nazi-era scholarship from longer musicological traditions, but few are willing to go so far as to abandon the possibility, first posed in the post-war years with the Moser incident, that some distinct category of Nazi musicology might exist. Albrecht Dümling, in an article entitled ‘Did a Nazification Never Take Place?’, was driven to sarcasm in response to the implication that most intellectual trends in Nazi Germany had carried over from the Weimar Republic and found common ground with Nazi goals: National Socialist policy, as we read recently in this journal, ‘proceeded to support institutions whose goals agreed with its cultural-political programme’. Nothing more? Did the Nazis behave like almost all governments that pursued their priorities? Then anyone who may have regarded the role of German musicology in these years as problematic can breathe a sigh of relief. What seemed so reprehensible now turns out to be ‘necessary accompaniments’ in an assimilation process driven overwhelmingly by career interests. There was no radical break at all in 1933. Then why all the excitement?42 Eckhard John similarly concluded that the ‘absurd’ suggestion that no distinct Nazi musicology ever existed rests on an underestimation of the importance of racial research and of its antisemitic emphasis.43 But this has yet to be determined, and despite the outpouring of publications in the past few years, 42 Dümling, ‘Hat eine Nazifizierung gar nicht stattgefunden?’, p. 52. 43 Eckhard John, ‘Wie deutsch ist die Musik? Ansätze zur Vergangenheitsbewältigung
in der Musikwissenschaft’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung 252 (28 October 2000), p. 85.
388 Music as Social and Cultural Practice there has been little, if any, specific attention to demonstrating the primacy of race research. In fact, more thorough investigations thus far suggest instead that any methodological encounters with racial research usually led to dead ends and, to the extent that race studies did exist, tended more to bolster the well-established presumptions about German musical greatness with genealogical evidence rather than to demonstrate the racial ‘inferiority’ of Jews and others.44 The attempt to draw a distinction between ‘Nazi’ and ‘German’ has also made its appearance in this dialogue, and an analysis of this argument actually unlocks some interesting undercurrents submerged in the Vergangenheitsbewältigung discourse. In arguing for the existence of a distinct Nazi musicology, Brinkmann suggests that any attempts to deny that musicology was ‘nazified’ during the years of the Third Reich fail to distinguish between ‘GermanNational’ and ‘National Socialist’.45 Brinkmann defends the German-National angle by providing ample evidence that German music was and is revered not only in Germany, but throughout the world, providing a detailed list of concert halls in the United States whose walls are engraved with the names of German composers.46 Curiously, Dümling makes a similar observation, digressing from his insistence on the existence of a nazification to reveal his own belief in the canon of German musical superiority: ‘But was the notion of the Germans as the “people of music”, which dates back to the nineteenth century, just a propagandistic “legend”? Is the ability of German musicians to adapt foreign elements (Bach and Beethoven are good examples) just a “prejudice”?’47 While not immediately apparent, these opinions seem to share an underlying ambivalence towards the canon of German musical superiority, one that has long been upheld by a majority of musicologists, German and otherwise, but which nevertheless has had a problematic history (Albrecht Riethmüller stands out as one of the few vocal advocates for a critical reassessment of this canon48). Such ambivalence must arise from learning that the notion of German musical predominance could have existed in the Weimar years, blossomed further in the Nazi era, and then gone on to live a long life after the 44 Birgitta Maria Schmid, ‘Musikwissenschaft im “Dritten Reich” ’, Die dunkle Last,
pp. 97, 100–2, and Potter, Most German of the Arts, pp. 176–99.
45 Brinkmann, ‘Vom “völkischen Lebensraum” der Musik’, p. 157. 46 Ibid., p. 158.
47 Dümling, ‘Hat eine Nazifizierung gar nicht stattgefunden?’, p. 52. 48 See Albrecht Riethmüller, Die Walhalla und ihre Musiker (Laaber, 1993), and
id., ‘ “Is that Not Something for Simplicissimus?” The Belief in Musical Superiority’, Music and German National Identity, ed. Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter (Chicago, 2002), pp. 288–304.
Potter • Creating a Concept of ‘Nazi Musicology’ 389 war (and not only in Germany, as Brinkmann correctly points out). A belief in the momentary nazification of German musicology is essential for anyone hesitant to accept that notions to which many of us still subscribe might have existed or even thrived in some form with the encouragement and financial support of Nazi policy-makers. In the drive to protect one’s own scholarly investments – whether those investments lie in continuing after 1945 to focus on the great German masters or in preserving the integrity of Weimar-era figures and trends from the ‘taint of Nazism’49 – many have felt it necessary to find consolation in the assumption of clearly marked intellectual caesuras in 1933 and 1945. But perhaps a healthier response to the current revelations about German musicology in the Nazi years can be found in the reaction of Martin Geck, who, reflecting on all that he had learnt from the generation of scholars who worked in the Nazi regime, admitted: My main area of speciality is and has always been German music and the German masters. … One can rationalise such an approach if it is not interpreted as a continuation of a nationalist or fascist tradition, but rather as a confrontation with it. The music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler and Schoenberg is an expression of extraordinary intellectual activity and, at the same time, a part of our national musical life – a small but not insignificant part. If musicology – also – sees itself as serving society, it should not avoid this area of inquiry, but it should cultivate it much more in meaningful and multifaceted ways, and should open up or deepen familiar ways of thinking and manners of reception. This is my contribution to confronting the past [Vergangenheits bewältigung] – avowedly a discourse motivated by passion and love and without feeling like a victim.50 The spectre of good and evil that has haunted all inquiries into musicology in the Third Reich – whether with regard to arguing the merits of an individual or a scholarly orientation – still drives many to seek out distinct Nazi 49 Tamara Levitz, in her review of Most German of the Arts (Journal of the Ameri-
can Musicological Society 55 [2002], pp. 176–87), strives to disengage Weimar-era musical phenomena from their Nazi-era successors by seeking to discredit any suggestions that prominent figures of Weimar musical life might have had conservative or nationalist leanings. Levitz also reads various phantom ‘critiques’, ‘negative’ representations and even ‘moral’ approbations into passages that are, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than dry accounts, suggesting the reviewer’s discomfort with revelations of similarities between Weimar-era and Nazi-era trends.
50 Geck, ‘ “Cosi fan tutte” oder “Götterdämmerung?” ’, 89.
390 Music as Social and Cultural Practice categories and defiantly shield their own objects of inquiry from the taint of Nazism. They would like to define parameters for identifying Nazis and Nazi musicology in order to highlight how they themselves and the subjects to which they have devoted their work differ from their ‘nazified’ counterparts. But as Geck implies, musicologists today, as in the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1940s and the 1950s, both in Germany and in North America, have every right to pursue an intense engagement with German music history and are under no obligation to feel uncomfortable about doing so. It is also unreasonable to insist that they cease to pass on the fruits of their scholarship to their students. This does not, however, mean that one must continue to accept the canon uncritically, or that one should overlook the political impulses that simultaneously encouraged and gained sustenance from the notion of German musical hegemony at various moments in the nineteenth century, and then almost without interruption through much of the twentieth century.51 The notion of ‘Nazi musicology’ poses, in my view, an unnecessary tension between the revelations of continuities and the pressure to perpetuate the isolation of musicology in the Third Reich. Even if one could detect a certain emphasis or intensification of ideologically favoured areas of scholarship taking shape in the Nazi years, the notion of ‘nazification’ unfortunately implies that one still has the option to slip back into distinguishing the products of the era as something inferior, unscientific and extreme. This, however, inevitably causes problems when we do encounter similar preoccupations in the work of émigrés and their students, or in the work coming out of the years that frame the Third Reich. The zero-hour reinvention of German musicology has conditioned generations of scholars to regard the victims of National Socialism as fighting an intellectual battle against those they left behind, and to view both the Weimar and the post-war periods as progressive eras interrupted by a brief historical blip. Coming face to face with supposedly ‘nazified’ ideas in a ‘non-Nazi’ or ‘anti-Nazi’ context, we feel compelled either to ignore these sentiments or to scratch our heads over how to integrate them into our ideal visions of such anti-Nazi environments. Insisting on a separate category of Nazi musicology will hinder our progress not only in tracing German intellectual trends as broadly as possible, even beyond Germany, but also in seizing the opportunity to observe the amazing resilience and adaptability of these trends within widely divergent political climates.
51 See Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, ‘Germans as the “People of Music”:
Genealogy of an Identity’, Music and German National Identity, pp. 1–35.
• 21 • Et in Arcadia adhuc : Observations on the Continuing Evolution of the ‘Pastoral Idea’ Giovanni Morelli
T
he observations collected here were inspired by Reinhard Strohm’s recent essay, ‘Les Sauvages, Music in Utopia, and the Decline of the Courtly Pastoral’. In an in-depth analysis of Rameau’s celebrated opéra-ballet of 1736, Les Indes galantes, Strohm discusses the significant conceptual and ideological difference between art of ‘utopian’ inspiration and art of ‘pastoral’ inspiration. The former, especially in its musical manifestations (although these are limited in number) is attributed a role of virtuous collaboration in European anthropological self-criticism, often related to a growing awareness of the value of knowledge and a willingness to explore non-European cultures. Art of pastoral inspiration, on the other hand, again especially in its musical manifestations, is attributed a much less virtuous role as a symbolic assertion of the imaginary social peace of the ancien régime. In this role it is described as a kind of decadence commensurate with the precarious social stability it represents. Within the limits of the following few pages, I wish to reopen Strohm’s proposal, and to identify within the pastoral genre a highly flexible, even paradoxical creative world, capable of absorbing contradictions without damaging its own stability, and of widening its structural mesh to contain extraneous subjects and contents – ‘others’. In highlighting the pastoral’s peculiar capacity for self-renewal (including renewal through absorption of ‘utopian’ aspirations), my exposition in no way aims to refute the ideas of my colleague and friend. Rather I aim to confirm our friendship through dialectical discussion, which I hope will be long and lively. The numerous and varied meanings of words and ideas related to the notion of the ‘pastoral’ reveals a diversity that shows how different forms have influenced the concept during the course of its development within Western Il saggiatore musicale 11 (2004), pp. 21–50. With my observations I hope to sup-
port Reinhard Strohm’s aim of moderating the historiographical trend that maintains that, unlike modern repertoires, early music had the sole aim of serving or protecting rituals and social functions. Rather, those early functional practices gave rise to a corpus of cultural artefacts autonomously brought together and transmitted through independent structural developments. Moreover, this happened much earlier than the arbitrary threshold of the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries identified with the birth of aesthetic thought after Kant and the rise and eventual triumph of the bourgeoisie.
392 Music as Social and Cultural Practice culture. This is especially so in relation to dramatic and music-dramatic works. The point can be illustrated by taking a selection of these meanings from a short time-span in the milieu of late sixteenth-century Ferrara, a milieu that counts among the most responsive to the pastoral’s ethos and pathos. Three examples will be given, in reverse chronological order. The first is from Guarini in 1601. In his Compendio della poesia tragicomica he claims that the pastorale is an extrinsic attribute of the true genre, purely adjectival, and concerned only with the stage setting and costumes. Guarini interprets the genre in modern fashion, as misto, that is, a mixture of the earlier classical features of both comedy and tragedy. In short, he interprets it as tragi commedia: The pastoral in the Pastor fido should not be considered as a noun signifying a fable distinct from tragicomedy, but as an addition, as tragi comedy using pastoral folk, in distinction to those portraying townspeople. In this way the term tragicomedy reveals the quality of the fable and the term pastoral that of the people portrayed. Although the latter could have been townspeople, the poet wished it to be known that they were shepherds. A little earlier, in 1598, Angelo Ingegneri (in his introductory Discorso to the treatise entitled Della poesia rappresentativa) claimed that pastorali were a distinct genre. He too, however, described them as mezzano or mixed, the sum of a range of characteristics, including the ‘inability to [sustain] almost tragic gravity’ (this apparent weakness is actually one of the pastoral’s most attractive charms): [The last of the stage genres to be described:] There remain pastorals, which are a delight to behold, with their rustic sets and greenery, and clothes that are more pretty than sumptuous; which, with sweet verse There is perhaps no need to mention the main identifying features of pastoral
taste, such as the obligatory happy ending, the reassuring prominence of the locus amoenus and the genre’s tendency to become an archetype for modern good taste through its average linguistic register and its readiness to indulge in sentimentalism and placidity.
‘Il pastorale nel Pastor fido non si de’ prendere per sustantivo significante favola
separata dalla tragicommedia, ma per l’ aggiunto di tragicommedia composta di pastorali persone a differenza di quelle che rappresentano cittadini. Conciosiacosachè la voce tragicommedia ci dimostra la qualità della favola e la voce di pastorale quella delle persone che in essa si rappresentano, le quali, perciocché potevano essere cittadine, volle il poeta che si sapesse ch’ eran pastori.’ Battista Guarini, Il pastor fido and Compendio della poesia tragicomica, ed. Gioachino Brognoligo (Bari, 1914).
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 393 and delectable phrases, are so very pleasant to the ears and mind … [they] artfully admit a certain comic ridiculousness. Given the presence of maidens in the boxes, and of respectable ladies, which is not permitted at comedies, this gives rise to noble feelings not unbecoming of tragedies themselves. In short, as a mixture of one and the other sorts of poetry, they delight in making others marvel … By identifying a primarily female target audience (‘maidens in the theatre boxes’) Ingegneri claims a generic shift from ‘comedy’ to ‘pastoral’ for the sake of good manners (this has the advantage of introducing gentler versifying and delicacy in expressing general truths). That Ingegneri’s move had been anticipated and surpassed almost ten years prior to his treatise is shown in a letter of 1590 from Caterina Guidiccioni (mother of the much more celebrated poetess Laura) to her son. There, Caterina relates that women were not simply confined to their boxes, but could assume active roles as players on the stage: ‘The princesses and their ladies-inwaiting themselves perform Tassino’s pastoral [l’ Aminta] … and wish to have madrigals for music.’ What is being described here is an explicit statement of a long-standing feature of the pastoral. Something similar is already found much earlier, for example, in the late thirteenth-century Roman de Tristan, when Thomas recounts the concertante involvement of King Marke’s courtly entourage: A ce eis lur li chanberlangs après lui espressist le rangs de chevaliers, de dameseisels, d’ ensegnés de pruz de bels chantent bel suns e pasturels … ‘Restano [ultimo dei generi rappresentativi da descrivere] adunque le pastorali le
quali con apparato rustico e di verdura e con abiti più leggiadri che sontuosi riescono alla vista vaghissime; che co ‘l verso soave e colla sentenza dilicata sono gratissime agli orecchi e all’ intelletto … [esse] patiscono acconcissimamente certi ridicoli comici che, admettendo le vergini in palco e le donne oneste, quello che alle comedie non lice, danno luoco a nobili affetti non disdicevoli alle tragedie stesse e che insomma, come mezzane fra l’ una e le altre sorte di poema dilettano a maraviglia altrui …’. See the edition by Maria Luisa Doglio (Modena, 1989), p. 7.
‘Le principesse con le dame di palazzo fan loro stesse la pastoral del Tassino
[l’ Aminta] … e voglion madrigali per musiche.’ See Angelo Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma (Turin, 1903), i, p.51.
The quotation is from Tristan / Thomas, ed. and trans. Gesa Bonath (Munich,
1985), p. 178, and the translation from Thomas of Britain, Tristan, ed. and trans. Stewart Gregory, Garland Library of Medieval Literature lxxviii, Series A (New York and London, 1991), pp. 65–7, lines 1246–50.
394 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Thereupon along came the chamberlain, Followed by a serried throng Of knights and young gentlemen, All well-bred, brave, and handsome, Singing lovely tunes and pastourelles. Here, musical forms seem to be distributed according to gender: suns (songs) for the knights, and pasturels for the damsels. Guarini’s, Ingegneri’s and Guidiccioni’s near-contemporaneous remarks show the key features of the pastoral: the play of correspondences between a mixed, even uncertain, linguistic register and the metrical type of the eclogue; the props and players responsible for the performances; and, last, but no less importantly, the audience, especially the female audience, some of whom may have taken an active role in commissioning both the text as well as further, especially musical, embellishments. By the late sixteenth century, the imaginative vision (so neatly suggested by Guarini) in which an urban environment is contrasted with the strictly non-urban attire and sets of the pastoral was already very distant in its origins, its linguistic and formal aspects reaching back to an ancient Greek ‘idyllic’ core. Before examining that in its own right, it is necessary to establish some reference points in the development of the pastoral between the age of Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch and the powerful revivals of the This female presence in poetic performance was responsible for ‘distractions’
expanding the limited reality of the tragic and the epic. It continued over the centuries, always sustained by ‘classical’ connotations. See the flourishing of the proto-eighteenth-century Arcadia in the Roman entourage of Christina of Sweden; also Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina’s Ragione poetica (Rome, 1709), where the same theme is mentioned in relation to both prose and verse: ‘Passò tal genere [pastoral-lyric-bucolic] di eloquenza ad Orfeo e Lino ed altri che abbiamo più di sopra accennati, sino ai due più celebri tra tutti i Gentili, Omero ed Esiodo. A questi succedettero i poeti lirici, dei quali si mentovano Stesicoro, Bacchilide, Ibico, Anacreonte, Pindaro, Simonide, Alcmane, Alceo, Arione Metinneo, da cui fu istituito il coro, cantato il ditirambo e furono indotti i satiri a parlare in versi. Di costui si racconta la celebre favola di essere stato ricevuto sul dorso da un delfino e condotto salvo in Tenaro, allor ch’ era stato buttato in mare dai marinari avidi dell’ oro ch’ egli portava seco. Emule della gloria di costoro furono anche le donne, e di queste un numero pari alle Muse e degne d’ esser loro assomigliate, le quali furono Saffo, Mirti, Presilla, Erinna, Corinna, Nossi, Miro, Telesilla, Anita, che si truovano tutte comprese nei seguenti versi di Antipatro: … Queste Elicona ed il pierio scoglio / alme donne nudrì d’ inni divini, / Presilla, Miro, Anita a Omero eguale, / Saffo splendor delle fanciulle lesbie, / Erinna, Telesilla e te, Corinna, / che cantasti di Pallade lo scudo, / Nosside e Mirti di soave suono, / tutte d’ eterni fogli produttrici. / Ha dato il cielo nove Muse, e nove / per letizia immortale a noi la terra.’
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 395 myths of Arcadianism in the Neapolitan circles of the Accademia Pontaniana and the Roman Accademia dell’ Arcadia at the time of Christina of Sweden. An initial element in the medieval reception of Greek idyllic models, via Virgil’s almost mythically skilful formal standardisation, is an explicit flexibility, a flexibility that in itself highlights the author’s choice of the genre in question. Right from its ‘modern beginnings’ the pastoral was interpreted in significantly different ways by the three founding fathers of Italian literature. For example, in his first Ecloga, Dante provides a pastoral setting for explaining his aesthetic-poetic decision to adopt the vernacular in the Commedia. Petrarch also used the vernacular in his bucolic works and in a large number of autobiographic confessions (the exploration of religious expression and the pursuit of glory counting among his reasons for writing verse). Furthermore, Petrarch did not limit his use of the bucolic mode to Arcadian or rural themes, but used it also to comment on genuine historical events, such as the plague, the AngloFrench war, the deeds of Cola di Rienzo, the death of Robert of Anjou, etc. In the meantime, Boccaccio’s Ninfali ingeniously highlighted their borrowings of many bucolic-style features (locus amoenus, groves, nymphs, shepherds, light or delightful labours of love), creating a paradigm for the new or renewed genre of the romanzo. Modelled on the works of Statius and Longinus, the romanzo is characterised by a standardised plot development: amorous adventures that avoid tragedy by being stripped of catastrophe. Not much after Boccaccio, in the mid-fifteenth century, this paradigm was to give rise to a very special phenomenon of structural fusion: the grafting of the romanzo and bucoliasmo (both Hellenistic renaissances). The credit for this achievement can be given to Iacopo Sannazaro, in his prophetic Arcadia. Sannazaro created a strange model for pastoral literature, a model which was, on the one hand, authoritative and predestined to set the trend (indeed his title would be used to baptise any future revival of the pastoral spirit), but which was also lopsided, anomalous and ambiguous (features that might be considered ill-suited for a successful model). Inspired by humanist trends, and the vaguely utopian idylls of distraction from reality that were increasingly popular among the aristocratic circles of the Neapolitan Accademia, the uniqueness of Sannazaro’s work lies in its embroidery of twelve egloghe (possibly conceived and written prior to the final work) within a larger prose structure. Real, non-anonymous authors are necessarily exiles from tradition, sometimes
rebels, but in any case producers of evolutionary events as regards form and c ontent. In resisting influence, they are masters of the games of flexibility and contrast.
The Ninfale fiesolano and the Ninfale d’ Ameto both focus, almost Warburg-like, on
the prevalence of the symbolic language of the ‘Ninfa’.
396 Music as Social and Cultural Practice However, the lyrical-musical eclogues are not simply additions ornamenting the prose romance. They are decisive to the cohesion of the work, owing to the countless exhortations to the reader to hear both prose and poetry as so many ‘songs’, as music in which to participate (excerpts are given in the Appendix). Furthermore, in avoiding the catastrophe-free adventure and a happy ending, Sannazaro transformed a generic norm of the pastoral-romance model that had applied not only in Boccaccio, but right back to Achilles Tatius. The name of Sannazaro’s hero, Sincero, is a Latin translation of ‘Nazaro’, which in turn echoes the Hebrew word for ‘uncorrupted’ – a conceptual representation of the Arcadian experience, midway between reborn utopianism and a nostalgic abandonment to the delights of fantasies about the lost Golden Age. Sincero’s adventure ends midway between the tragic and pathetic with the death of the poet’s beloved. In the work, this death brings a preliminary, timeless immersion in the blessed woods of Arcadia, marking the author’s withdrawal from a poetic design based on flight from the world and the city.10 Sannazaro annuls the Arcadian design with Sincero’s forlorn homecoming to Naples, which he had left to conquer a world animated by the intermingling of human sensibility and nature. Sincero had set out to ‘re-awaken the sleeping woods’ and to ‘show the shepherds how to sing already forgotten songs’, songs to be ‘rewritten on rough beech barks’, rather than on ‘odourless paper’, and scattered in the flowery valleys, where they would be more welcome than those made ‘from musicians’ clean precious boxwood for pompous [town] chambers’. Sannazaro’s poetic design for the pastoral does not depart from an acceptable bucolic type: nature is described as a place of refuge and, anthropomorphised, as sharing in human feelings.11 There is the essential representation of the Golden Age, almost staged by nature and found still intact far from the city. This design works perfectly.12 It is populated by countless small poems engraved on the bark of trees (thus becoming a kind of excessively rich editorial store). As the tradition evolved, later Arcadians were to depart further from the pastoral genre. Sannazaro himself broadened his first Arcadia to other beautiful places – seas rich in fish in his Eglogae piscatoriae, or, under bucolic 10 In this way the solemn affirmation of the pastoral genre creates an almost histori-
cal archetype of the figure of the great author. Such authors are distinguished by sanctioning their own models to the highest degree, in relation to deviations from that standard.
11 Ecloga i, vv. 49–50: ‘Non trovo tra gli affanni altro ricovero / che di sedermi solo
appié d’ un acero.’
12 Ecloga iii, vv. 30–3, 55–60: ‘Non teman de’ lupi/ gli agnelli mansueti / ma torni il
mondo alle sostanze prime / … / per questo il ceco mondo / conobbe castitade, / la qual tant’ anni avea gittata a tergo; / per questo io scrivo e vergo / i faggi in ogni bosco …’.
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 397 irgilian guidance, the Christian nativity scene in De partu Virginis. But as the V decades and centuries elapsed everything conspired to ensure that the pastoral absorbed vastly varied elements without impairing or losing any of its appeal: translations from Latin in terza rima typical of the vernacular of the Virgilian bucolic archetypes; the first political uses of the standard eclogue as courtly panegyric (worth mentioning here is Boiardo’s use of Orpheus for a musical setting of a panegyric by Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, the victor in the war between Modena and Venice); combinations of adventurous stories and Boccaccio-like bucolic, such as is found in Caviceo’s Peregrino or Corfino’s Phileto veronese; a significant broadening of the potential for dialogue in the eclogue; the repeated intrusion of musical references, as is found in works such as Castiglione’s Tirsi, Tansillo’s Due pellegrini, Giraldi’s Egle, and so on up to Guarini and Tasso; and then imaginary or real music, as found in Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone and Sampogna, which respond to the sylvan tragicomedy of Donarelli, Stigliani, Frugoni, Chiabrera and Rinuccini. The pastoral genre was able, without deformation, to absorb elements from tragedy (e.g. the nobility of the characters), comedy (e.g. the emphasis on the happy ending, which, as we have seen, Sannazaro did not share), and Petrarchism (purity of style). The invention of the pastoral idyll (i.e. the eclogue) is ascribed to Theocritus. Nonetheless, a theatrical or para-theatrical derivation cannot be ruled out (see, for example, the works of Sophron and the Sicilian Mimes, especially when the second person is left outside the text). That consolidation into a ‘quasi-genre’ only occurred subsequently can be argued with the aid of a letter by Pliny (to Paternus, 4. 14). In dedicating a short collection of hendecasyllables to his friend, Pliny alludes to eclogues and idylls as if they were works in distinct genres (but in any case short works): ‘sive epigrammata, sive idyllia, sive eclogas, sive, ut multi, poematia seu quod aliud vocare volueris licebit voces’ [you will be able to call them epigrams, or idylls, or eclogues, or (as many people do) little poems, or whatever else you choose to call them]. In fact even in its Theocritan origins the idyll that supposedly gave rise to all future pastoral creative acts has a very uncertain status: only a third of Theocritus’ idylls have a real pastoral setting, and yet the poet’s reputation rests on selecting just these. It was Virgil who allowed and encouraged future developments by not only fully adopting the setting, but also by fully understanding the motivating poetic quality for which the pastoral genre can serve as a vehicle. It is no accident that, in his ideal translations, Virgil, with keen long-term vision, transfers even Theocritus’ idylls with metropolitan settings to bucolically beautiful places.13 Theocritus’ work raises an essential, but also original feature of the pastoral, and one that was to play a permanent role in all the subsequent follow-ups. For there was in Theocritus’ time a precise historical-cultural reason for generating 13 See Theocritus’ Idyll ii, completely transformed by Virgil into Eclogue viii.
398 Music as Social and Cultural Practice pastoral delights. One of the prime cultural phenomena of Ancient Greece was the birth of the megalopolis: huge proliferations of houses built (under the guidance of Hippodamus of Miletus’ teachings) according to urban plans inspired by the cult of the right angle, and with wide street intersections that gave rise to unpoetically tedious and monotonous vistas. The escape routes for the creative imagination were thus inevitably made up, on one hand, of the old towns (untidy chaotic sprawls not regulated by an urban plan, with noisy traffic and not amenable to elaboration in song), and, on the other, the much more promising and open peripheries. Subject to protracted imaginings, the latter were agrarian, rural, pastoral and so on, and gradually became increasingly hermitic. The process of ‘generating the pastoral’ was established here ab origine. It has two necessary determining and distinctive features: distraction from the developed world and the flexibility to absorb and incorporate a full range of influences (for poetic-creative use).14 I will now offer some definitions for the pastoral genre, while remaining aware that fully documented supporting arguments would require more space than is available. The pastoral may be defined primarily in terms of ‘distraction’ (not forgetfulness or oblivion, but rather a real distraction from a complex social, historical and cultural reality). In this distraction there is no Freudian 14 The exemplification of these typical features of the pastoral would require a large-
scale treatment. Here I will simply mention a series of selected titles on explicitly pastoral subjects referring to verse or music. I have excluded works that I treat in more depth elsewhere: 1518 La pastoral (Beolco); 1545 Il sagrifizio favola pastorale (Beccari); 1563 Aretusa comedia pastorale (Lollio); 1569 Pastorale amoureuse (Belleforest); 1584 The Araygnement of Paris. A Pastorall (Peele); 1594 Tragecomedie pastoralle (Bassecourt); 1606 Eumelio, drama pastorale (Agazzari); 1615 Hymen’s Triumph, a pastorall tragicomoedie (Daniel); 1615 L’ Amour triomphant. Pastorale comique (Troterel); 1619 La morte d’ Orfeo Tragicommedia pastorale (Landi); 1638 Amynthas Pastorall (Randolph); 1638 Loves Riddle. A Pastorall Comoedie (Cowley); 1686 Acis et Galatée Pastorale héroïque (Lully); 1707 Cantata pastorale (Bassani); 1710 Silvia Dramma pastorale (Domenico Scarlatti); 1715 La caccia in Etolia Favola pastorale (Chelleri); 1730 Nigella e Clori. Pastorale eroica (Caldara); 1737 Asteria Favola pastorale (Hasse); 1747 Daphnis et Chloé (Boismortier); 1749 Naïs Pastorale héroïque (Rameau); 1761 Arcadia or The Shepherd’s Wedding. Dramatic pastoral (Stanley); 1776 Daliso e Delmita Opera pastorale seria (Salieri); 1780 Cantata pastorale (Cimarosa); 1781 La fedeltà premiata. Dramma pastorale giocoso (Haydn); 1782 Eglé Pastorale (Abbé Vogler); 1792 Philander and Silvia or Love Crown’d at Last. Pastoral opera (Carr); 1831 Field, Pastoral in A major, Op. 142; 1838 Moscheles, Pastoral in D major, in Piano Concerto No. 8, Op. 96; 1843 Kalliwoda, Ouverture pastorale in A Major, Op. 108; 1846 Bennett, Introduction and pastoral in A major, Op. 11; 1860 Heller, Allegro pastorale, Op. 95; 1902 Glazunov, Pastoral'naya from Symphony No. 7; 1912 Schmitt, Scherzo pastorale, Op. 1; 1921 Vaughan Williams, Pastoral Symphony; 1926 Bartók, Pastorale, Mikrokosmos 24; 1935 Milhaud, Pastorale Op. 147; 1938 Milhaud, Fantaisie pastorale, Op. 188; 1943 Dahl, Pastorale montano; 1951 Cage, Two Pastorales for Prepared Piano.
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 399 abreaction or repression of reality but rather the careful creation of what we might call a ‘heightened’ reality. In this heightening, historical-social responsibility is consolingly stripped away and noise is filtered out, in order to ease the pursuit of difficult activities such as fine poetry and beautiful music. Moreover, the history of the pastoral genre shows a strange quality contradicting one of the important (natural) laws of thermodynamics: just when its level of entropy seems to have caused it to lose all meaning and appeal, it revivifies itself and is born again. It almost seems to be a Phoenix-like being – in other words, immortal. Accordingly it might be interesting to examine how the conditions allowing its preservation changed. I will provide only two examples. The renewed popularity of the pastoral on the court stages of Louis xiv, the Regency and Louis xv was probably due to a strange aristocratic class’s need to be distracted from a court that, like the geometric Greek city, was a place from which the imagination needed to escape, a court at which the quondam feudatories were interned by Louis xiv’s very religious dictatorship. Hence, perhaps, the experiment, within the pastoral, of a further removal or distraction, from the stereotyped peace of the standard courtly Arcadia, towards another Arcadia, this time sauvage and American Indian. It was this theatre of ‘another peace’, played out among the smoke of chalumets,15 which seems to have inspired Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, especially in its last, pleading frame, which Reinhard Strohm studied in depth in his essay mentioned above.16 In this sense another equally fine pastoral character is the bourgeois rentier. In his emblematic solitude played out in well-defined time frames of pleasure, the rentier is a good modern metaphorical translation of the Arcadian shepherd. The latter’s life is broken up by ‘musical’ rest sessions and the continuous enjoyment of a good whose function is to ‘yield’ (the unwitting gift of a proletarian flock producing milk, cheese, etc. for the shepherd’s use, while its owner enjoys individual freedom on the weak, but still solid structural condition of owning ovine capital). In the age of nascent capitalism, the rentier removes himself, 15 Substitutes for chalumeaux, connoting the exorcism of standard pastorality. 16 Strohm highlights the contrast between utopian and pastoral music and poetry
in all its pathos. He notes the significant aesthetic aim of utopian unattainability. The pastoral, on the other hand, is described as having a declining fate typical of works affirming the illusory immortality of courtly peace. However, by examining the permeability of the pastoral, it is possible to witness a partial rehabilitation of the genre, radically transformed by a massive input of utopian content (along the lines of what ‘evolutionary’ critics of the metaphysical aspects of Darwinian theory call the process of ‘exaptation’, i.e. a system of characteristics which arises in one context, but which is later exploited in another; see in particular the writings of the anthropologist Ian Tattersall). Strohm’s description made me realise it was time to begin exploring the pastoral’s cannibalistic aptitude towards ethics and utopian theories.
400 Music as Social and Cultural Practice distracts himself or goes into temporary self-exile from the obsessive reality of the profit wars of which he is the daytime protagonist. The wars are re-evoked but transformed by a nocturnal or festive dimension, an abstract purification, a playful placidity typical of the Classical-Romantic Arcadia of idealistic, dialectic and absolute (immortal) ‘music’. The courtly Arcadian pastoral of the Regency foreshadowed the ancien régime’s crisis in its own environment with its incorporation of distraction from both city and court into its aesthetic model, and in its grasping of the need to inject the new blood of utopian content into its poetic play. But then came an ‘Other’, with a capital O, an exotic ethnic testimony to the umpteenth revival of the Golden Age and the new fetish of a legend of peace (the eloquent experiment also fuelled the cultural rejuvenation of the gentleman intellectual). From the early nineteenth century onwards, the socio-economic aspect of the ‘utopian’ discovery of the Other took on a new and real form: that of ‘colonialist’ exploitation. A further transformation was thus imposed on the ideal figure of the good shepherd intellectual.17 This brings us to another two cases in which a transformation clearly takes place in the pastoral search for the Other as a companion for play and song, through a utopian resituation in bucolic nostalgia. But this time what is staged is the loss of the Other and the gradual forgetting of all ‘otherness’, a forgetfulness impotently dragged into a state of irremediable loss. The first case concerns Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Here pastoral solitude is no longer acclaimed as a locus amoenus. Almost a manifesto, this musical narrative poem is a colossal distraction from the woeful events of the artist’s city – Paris. The third episode of the symphony, configured as a strange pastoral, represents the perdition of the artist escaping from social, amorous and other aspects of contemporary life. In a rural setting the hero in his escape finds a distant brother who responds to his solitary song as a kind of animated fraternal echo. But it only takes the time of the movement’s descriptive development to narrate how the dreamed-of consonance dies out into nothingness. By the end of the movement the hero’s companion has fallen silent. He no longer responds or enters into dialogue – not even from a distance. Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is from 1828. At around the same time, 17 In fact the ‘exotic’ pastoral was to be short-lived. It very soon began to seek other
aesthetic experiences – symbolist or decadent. The latter, with their valuable artefacts destined for metropolitan use by metropolitan customers, represent the opposite of nostalgic utopian distraction. The capitals of these later trends were the hyper-cities of Paris and London. As centres of modern finance, their headquarters of monopolies, business empires, etc. comprise the main elements preventing any kind of poetic distraction (exoticism was merely and only their décor).
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 401 in 1820, in his diary depressedly entitled Zibaldone, the major Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi interpreted the fantasy of the pastoral design and its inevitable fate of growing arid as part of an inevitable malaise of social reality and – even more so – of natural reality.18 The poet thus writes to himself, proceeding in stages with philosophical caution: The singing that we do when we are afraid is not to provide ourselves with company, as is commonly said, nor purely to distract ourselves, but to show that we believe that we have nothing to fear. This observation could perhaps be applied to many things, and gives rise to quite a few thoughts. It is clear that, in the face of misfortune, we seek to trick ourselves, and to believe that it is not so, or is less than it really is, and yet we search out those who show it, who are persuaded of it, and, as the last step, to persuade ourselves of it, we pretend to be already persuaded, acting and talking ourselves as such. That is what happens in the abovementioned situation.19 Here the distraction is through singing, versifying or composing music. Similar assertions can be found in many more places than I can cite. Later Leopardi speaks of a wider hermeneutic dimension: [The three ways of looking at the world] The first, and the most blessed, is of those who have more spirit than body. I mean of men of genius and sensibility, to whom there is nothing that does not speak to the imagination or to the heart. The second and more common is of those for whom things have body without having much spirit, of those who, without being sublimated by anything, still find a reality in everything, and they consider things as they appear, and as they are valued commonly and in nature, and according to this they conduct themselves. This is the natural manner, and the most durably happy. The third, the 18 Significantly from the point of view of supposed references to his ‘modern’ neo-
Arcadianism, from 1819 to 1821, Leopardi was to give the title of Idilli to many of his short poems and canti, such as L’ infinito, Alla luna, Lo spavento notturno (initially published with a title perfectly suited to a Classical relic: Frammento), La sera del dì di festa, Il sogno, La vita solitaria …
19 ‘Il cantare che facciamo quando abbiamo paura non è per farci compagnia da noi
stessi come comunemente si dice, né per distrarci puramente, ma per mostrare di dare a intendere a noi stessi di non temere. La quale osservazione potrebbe forse applicarsi a molte cose, e dare origine a parecchi pensieri. E già è manifesto che all’ aspetto del male noi cerchiamo d’ ingannarci e di credere che non sia tale, o minore che non è, e però cerchiamo chi se ne mostri o ne sia persuaso, e per ultimo grado, per persuaderlo a noi stessi, fingiamo d’ esserne già persuasi, operando e discorrendo tra noi come tali. E questo è quello che accade nel caso detto di sopra.’ Zibaldone, ed. Rolando Damiani (Milan, 1997), MS p. 43.
402 Music as Social and Cultural Practice only one that is fatal and wretched, but the only true one, is that of those for whom things have neither spirit nor body, but are all empty and without substance. By this I mean of philosophers, and of men mostly of feeling, who, after the experience and the gloomy cognisance of things, leap from the first way to this last without touching the second. Everywhere, these people find and feel nothingness and the void, the vanity of human cares, of desires and hopes, and of all the illusions inherent in life, such that without them there is no life.20 Even distraction (the main act of bucolic feeling and imagination) is a salto (leap). But unlike science, logic or business, it does not even temporarily restore the enthusiasm of illusions to the person prey to disillusionment, but only the possibility of eventually succumbing or resuccumbing to the condition of those who see a ‘reality’ in things. Distraction as a bridge between two otherwise non-negotiable human points of view: the truth of nothingness and the reality of things. As such, it concedes to man – hostage to paralysing beliefs – the temporary illusion of reality, not fictitious substitutions of one ‘truth’ with another. Arcadian distraction is a temporary, unthinking illusion, insofar as it is an unexpected forgetting of the truth. It is also unwitting, as it comprises the ‘succession’ and ‘variety’ of ‘objects’ and ‘historical cases‘, rather than the acts of individuals seeking to free themselves, to flee the horrible truth, to reconstruct the peace of the Golden Age or the origins of language, or to have the strength to distract themselves creatively. If this is true, then, in the eyes of the disenchanted individual, those who believe in the reality of things live a constant and unwitting illusion. They are mostly distracted, or rather occupied. In the framework of preserving the pastoral spirit, this solemn ambiguity is epoch-making. From then on the renewed pastoral spirit took at least four forms: 20 ‘[Tre le maniere di guardare il mondo:] L’ una e la più beata, di quelli per i quali
esse hanno anche più spirito che corpo, e voglio dire degli uomini di genio e sensibili, ai quali non c’ è cosa che non parli all’ immaginazione o al cuore. L’ altra e la più comune di quelli per cui le cose hanno corpo senza avere molto spirito, che senza essere sublimati da nessuna cosa, trovano però in tutte una realtà, e le considerano quali elle appariscono, e sono stimate comunemente e in natura, e secondo questo si regolano. Questa è la maniera naturale, e la più durevolmente felice. La terza e la sola funesta e miserabile, e tuttavia la sola vera, di quelli per cui le cose non hanno nè spirito nè corpo, ma son tutte vane e senza sostanza, e voglio dire dei filosofi, e degli uomini per lo più di sentimento che dopo l’ esperienza e la lugubre cognizione delle cose, dalla prima maniera passano di salto a quest’ ultima senza toccare la seconda, e trovano e sentono da per tutto il nulla e il vuoto, e la vanità delle cure umane e dei desideri e delle speranze e di tutte le illusioni inerenti alla vita per modo che senza esse non è vita.’ Ibid., MS pp. 102–3.
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 403 1. Ongoing decline. 2. Strange allegories representing the pre-Sartrean existentialist stalemate. As new opere buffe, these can be almost comic. 3. Mind-expanding attempts, recalcitrant to a socialised language, to reach the essentially unrepresentable. 4. Pedagogic relaunchings of socialisation: a return to the Other, followed by fresh loss not only of the Other, but also of self.21 For each of these four categories I will now briefly present a significant and powerful example representing these – for the time being – ultimate acts of the pastoral. They certainly will not be the truly last, if the pastoral really is an immortal genre. Our example of the first kind is an extremely distracted eclogue by Eugenio Montale. Egloga, from his collection of verse from 1920–7 entitled Ossi di Seppia (‘Cuttlefish Bones’), is completely dedicated to elaborating the decline of the pastoral connotations and the metric properties suggested by the title.22 It is not in eclogue metre, not sufficiently distant from the city, and set in an extremely non-beautiful place. This place is also very prominent in the rest of the collection in which Egloga features. Egloga’s dominant content is pastoral distraction, situating the ‘lyrical self ’ in a rejected locus amoenus, deserted and lacking in any noteworthy features, filled partially by the distant sounds of the abandoned city (as in the Arcadian mode), although this abandonment turns out to be pointless, since the outcome of the poetic act is absent song. This absence culminates in doubt being cast on the effective capacity to recover a sense of the social: there is a question mark after the final evocation of the first person plural. A problematic, absent ‘We’, apparently foreshadowing the dissolution of an ossified, almost fossilised, residual ‘I’. Egloga Perdersi nel bigio ondoso Dei miei ulivi era buono Nel tempo andato – loquaci 21 In this category, in addition to the Stockhausen example quoted below, we could
cite the finale of Indianer Lieder, also by Stockhausen, to complete the representation of the dissolutive act. Stockhausen’s exotic Lieder set English translations of American Indian poems. They deliberately exhaust the combinatory processes of a series, from a single note in the first lied to twelve in the last, through the physical extinction of the music and musical actions. The action concerns the long/ eternal parting of two lovers (who might be two women, a man and a woman, or two men, provided they can reach an almost identically high register).
22 Eugenio Montale, Tutte le poesie, ed. Giorgio Zampa (Milan, 1984), pp. 75–6.
404 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Di riattanti uccelli E di cantanti rivi. Come affondava il tallone Nel suolo screpolato, Tra le lamelle d’ argento Dell’ esili foglie. Sconnessi Nascevano in mente i pensieri Nell’ aria di troppa quiete. Ora è finito il cerulo marezzo. Si getta il pino domestico A romper la grigiura; Brucia una toppa di cielo In alto, un ragnatelo Si squarcia al passo: si divincola D’ attorno un’ ora fallita. È uscito un rombo di treno, Non lunge, ingrossa. Uno sparo Si schiaccia nell’ etra vetrino. Strepita un volo come un acquazzone, Venta a vanisce bruciata Una bracciata di amara Tua scorza, istante: discosta Esplode furibonda una canea. Tosto potrà rinascere l’ idillio. S’ è ricomposta la fase che pende Dal cielo, riescono bende Leggere fuori …; il fitto dei fagioli N’ è scancellato e involto. Non serve più rapid’ ale Né giova proposito baldo; Non durano che le solenni cicale In questi saturnali del caldo. Va e viene un istante in un folto Una parvenza di donna. È disparsa, non era una Baccante. Sul tardi corneggia la luna. Ritornavamo dai nostri Vagabondari infruttuosi.
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 405 Non si leggeva più in faccia Al mondo la traccia Della frenesia durata Il pomeriggio. Turbati Discendevamo tra i vepri. Nei miei paesi a quell’ ora Cominciano a fischiare le lepri. Noi chi? Our example of the second category is a case of an opera buffa: the very ‘musical’, tormentedly Arcadian film Pastoral by the Georgian director Otar Iosseliani. Iosseliani belonged to the Soviet Moscow cinema school but defected to France, which he saw as a personal Arcadia. He still works there, and lives in Paris, in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux.23 The film tells the story of a group of three talented young chamber musicians plus an escort, who are sent by the Party, as a kind of prize, on a working holiday. They are to engage in the educational experience of being in contact with nature in a small Georgian kolkhoz. The educational programme for which the musicians leave the metropolis includes full immersion in rehearsals of Corelli in surroundings conceived of as the ideal setting in which to grasp the spiritual feeling of an eighteenth-century Roman Arcadia. This environment, supposedly exercising a beneficial influence on the young artists, should have been imbued with a stereotypical agrarian peace. The oldest of the children in the host family, or rather the youngest of the adults, is in fact a sensitive pastourelle. She works hard to establish relations – possibly affective or amorous – between the two worlds, of the villagers, on one hand, and of the state conservatory students, on the other. In the background, however, what emerges with growing clarity is the daily life of the kolkhoz, a mesh of individual moments of social, mental or atmospheric malfunctioning. The story of the experimental ménage – planned and pedagogical, culturally and classically peaceful – is thus dominated by the small subplots of social suffering, land quarrels between suspicious and selfish neighbours, shocks 23 Pastorali (Georgian title), Pastorale (common European title), Pastoral (English
and Russian title) 1975. First European showing in Paris, 1980. Produced by Studio Film Géorgien idest Grouzia Film. Music by Arcangelo Corelli, revised by Tenghiz Bakouradze, 35 mm black and white. Screenplay by Otar Iosseliani, Rezo Inanichvili. Director of Photography – Abessalom Maissouradze. Directed by Otar Iosseliani. Editing by Djoulia Bezouachvili. Cast: R. Tcharkhalachvili, L. TokhadzeDjougueli, M. Kartsivadze, T. Gabarachvili, N. Iosseliani, L. Zardiachvili, N. Pipia, X. Pipia, M. Naneichvili. N. Davidachvili, P. Kantaria and B. Matsaberidze. Length 91". Prizes: Prix fipresci Berlin, 1982. Critical re-edition in DVD: Paris 2004, Pierre Grise production blackout: edv 1441/div 651© Paramount (Home div10tm), supported by CNC.
406 Music as Social and Cultural Practice resulting from feelings of territorial micro-ownership, the greed for private property (never obtained, but venerated as a tired fetish), venal and hostile mutual group damage, petty and misanthropic micro-politics arising from hardships lived out in the cellars, behind unauthorised walls, and among disputed irrigation ditches, and long-standing muted grumblings against the corrupt collective administration and local bosses, whose personal interests detract from the pastoral enjoyment of the meagre common goods. Despite the best intentions of the idealist pastourelle (who has grasped the spirit of the musicians’ educational plan), the experiment at integrating the group fails, just as the cultural project triggering the strange fable peters out completely. Nothing remains for the young Georgian pastourelle to hope for except a complete reversal in the process: perhaps, after fleeing herself from the ruined and unhappy Arcadia to the city, the hope of once again seeing the Baroque musicians who left the village after the first rains. She expresses her hope by clutching one of their records to her breast. She listens to it repeatedly in a sordid pastoral peace only rarely lit by the pale memories of lost and forgotten songs and the periodic re-emergence of increasingly worn out collective ritual traditions. Her listening to the record is constantly threatened by the daily dose of standard Soviet light music broadcast on the radio from the remote city. The film may be seen as an allegory, a parable, an unhappy philosophical fable or a radical re-examination of the modern difficulty of finding the fundamental criteria that gave birth to civilisation, criteria which, in the case of the pastoral, are badly and partially preserved in an out-of-focus picture of enigmatic and mutated ruins. The first private showing of the film was attended by another former VGIK student and friend of the director, Andrej Tarkovskij. Moved by what he had seen, he is said to have quietly commented when the lights came up: ‘What a strange film!’ The film grows even stranger when it is realised that the mastermind behind the plot is only a barely visible character in the film itself: the party functionary who conceives and sets up the pastoral adventure is the father of one of the Arcadian apprentices (the cellist). It is when this same father’s daughter returns home to throw herself into a frenzy of purely technical exercises, that the disconsolate man tastes the only ‘fruit’ of his initiative – a real fruit, a Georgian apple, given by the shepherdess to the musicians as they depart, along with other apples, in a heraldic basket. In his dismay, the protagonist may even be ready to make the apple and its genuine country goodness the premise for not giving up his neoclassical project. It may even renew his faith in regeneration through the pastoral spirit. Having been censured by the cultural authorities in 1975 without any precise criticisms or reasons being given, Pastoral was little understood until it won the fipresci Prize at the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival.
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 407 Exemplifying the third type of pastoral is a short poem by e. e. cummings from 1935 (in the collection entitled No Thanks).24 Here the pastorality, the escape and the distraction are resolved in an act of pride which cannot be shared by the reader. Indeed it is expressed in a wasteland with no readers, where the escape route is merely an impossible ascent towards an excessively ‘frugal’ height, adorned only by typographical anomalies. Climb and mightily fatally i remark how through deep lifted fields Oxen distinctly move, a yellowandbluish cat (perched why Curvingly at his) window; yes women sturdily meander in my mind, woven by always upon sunset, crickets within the whisper whose erect blood finally trembles, emerging to perceive buried in cliff precisely at the Ending of this road, a candle in a shrine: its puniest flame persists shaken by the sea. Lastly, for our fourth type, we have a pair of so-called ‘intuitive’ compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1968–9 (historic years for American and European daydreaming, years calling for ‘imagination in power’). The composer summons the bystanders and suggests rules in written words for a musical behaviour artfully unrelated to culture, consumption and the precognition of musical experience: pure acts or facsimiles of the original invention of language, perpetrated in historical solitude, in a locus amoenus totally stripped of landscape, objects, subjects, things, desires, ideas, etc. The works have a dimension of apocalyptic distancing, set in a gloomy Golden Age, possibly post-atomic, and anything but reassuring. They are blind pastorals. 24 Mount Vernon: The Golden Eagle Press, 1935 (repr. New York: Liveright, 19784).
408 Music as Social and Cultural Practice für kleineres Ensemble 25 Ü b e r di e G r e n z e Versetze Dich in ein höheres Wesen das von einem anderen Stern kommt die Möglichkeiten Deines Instrumentes entdeckt und Deinen Mitspielern beweist daß es in seiner Heimat Humoristischer Meisterinterpret ist Die kürzeren Stücke seines Repertoires dauern circa eine Erdstunde ———
13. August 1968
Klavier-Duo zu 4 Händen mit geschlossenen Augen zu spielen I n t e rva l l Spiele einzelne Töne in unregelmäßigen Zeit-Abständen, Dauern und Lautstärken. Füge jedesmal, wenn einer Deiner Anschläge mit einem Anschlag des anderen Spielers zusammenfällt, einen Ton hinzu, bis Du einen 10-tönigen Akkord spielst. Wiederhole den 10-tönigen Akkord in unregelmäßigen Zeit-Abständen, Dauern und Lautstärken und transponiere ihn jedesmal, wenn einer Deiner Anschläge mit einem Anschlag des anderen Spielers zusammenfällt, etwas in Richtung der Hände des anderen, bis sich beide Hände überlagern. Dann verringere jedesmal, wenn einer Deiner Anschläge mit einem Anschlag des anderen Spielers zusammenfällt, Deinen Akkord um einen Ton bis nur 1 Ton übrigleibt. Wiederhole diesen Ton, bis Du ihn mit dem einzelnen Ton des anderen Spielers genau gleichzeitig anschlägst. 25 Werk Nr. 33: Für commende Zeiten, 17 Texte für intuitive Musik (Kürten, 1976),
pp. 15–17 and 22–4. Used by permission.
© K. Stockhausen 1976.
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 409 for fairly small ensemble Ac ro s s t h e b ou n da ry Imagine you are a higher being which comes from another star discovers the possibilities of your instrument and proves to your co-players that in its home-land it is a »Humorous Master-Interpreter« The shorter pieces in its repertoire last roughly one earth-hour ———
August 13, 1968
Piano-Duo 4 Hands to be played with closed eyes I n t e rva l Play single notes at irregular time-intervals, duration and intensities. Each time one of your attacks coincides with an attack of the other player add one note until you are playing a 10-note chord. Repeat the 10-note chord at irregular time-intervals, duration and intensities and each time one of your attacks coincides with an attack of the other player transpose it somewhat in the direction of the hands of the other until your hands are superimposed. Then, each time one of your attacks coincides with an attack of the other player decrease your chord by one note until only one note remains. Repeat this note until you attack it exactly together with the single note of the other player.
All scores, CDs, books and videos of Stockhausen’s works may be ordered directly from the Stockhausen-Verlag, [email protected].
410 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Dann öffne die Augen und spiele noch für einige Zeit jeden Anschlag mit dem anderen Spieler zusammen. Summe zugleich mit Anschlägen – ab und zu, dann öfter bis jedesmal – den Ton des anderen mit, und lasse, wenn Du summst, nach und nach den Klavieranschlag weg. Verlasse das Instrument, den Raum, – nicht zugleich mit anderen Spieler –, das synchrone Summen des Intervalls in unregelmäßigen Zeit-Abständen, Dauern und Lautstärken fortsetzsend. Färbe den ganzen Klang einer Aufführung einmalig.
Couvent d’ Alziprato 22. September 1969
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appendix Excerpts from Sannazaro’s Arcadia Prologo: Per la qual cosa ancora, sì come io stimo, addiviene, che le silvestre canzoni vergate ne li ruvidi cortecci de’ faggi dilettino non meno a chi le legge, che li colti versi scritti ne le rase carte degli indorati libri; e le incerate canne de’ pastori porgano per le fiorite valli forse più piacevole suono, che li tersi e pregiati bossi de’ musici per le pompose camere non fanno … Egloga i: Oimè, che quando ella mi vide, in fretta la canzonetta sua spezzando tacque, e mi dispiacque che per più mie’ affanni si scinse i panni e tutta si coverse; poi si sommerse ivi entro insino al cinto, tal che per vinto io caddi in terra smorto … Prosa i: E per men sentire la noia de la petrosa via, ciascuno nel mezzo de l’ andare sonando a vicenda la sua sampogna, si sforzava di dire alcuna nuova canzonetta, chi raconsolando i cani, chi chiamando le pecorelle per nome, alcuno lamentandosi de la sua pastorella et altro rusticamente vantandosi de la sua; senza che molti scherzando con boscarecce astuzie, di passo in passo si andavano motteggiando, insino che a le pagliaresche case fummo arrivati …
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 411 Then open your eyes and for some time play each attack together with the other player. Simultaneously with the attacks – sporadically, then more often until each time – hum the note of the other player and when you hum, gradually leave out the piano attack. Leave the instrument, the room – not at the same time as the other player – continuing the synchronous humming of the interval at irregular time-intervals, durations and intensities. Colour the whole sound of a performance uniquely.
Couvent d’ Alziprato September 22, 1969
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Prosa ii: E così passo passo seguitandole, andavamo per lo silenzio de la serena notte, ragionando de le canzoni cantate e comendando maravigliosamente il novo comin ciare di Montano, ma molto più il pronto e securo rispondere di Uranio, al quale niente il sonno, quantunque appena svegliato a cantare incominciasse, de le merite lode scemare potuto avea. Per che ciascuno ringraziava li benigni Dii, che a tanto diletto ne aveano sì impensatamente guidati. Et alcuna volta avveniva che mentre noi per via andavamo così parlando, i fiochi fagiani per le loro magioni cantavano, e ne faceano sovente per udirli lasciare interrotti i ragionamenti, li quali assai più dolci a tal maniera ne pareano, che se senza sì piacevole impaccio gli avessemo per ordine continuati … Prosa iii: Tutti gli animali egualmente per la santa festa conobbero desiato riposo. I vomeri, i rastri, le zappe, gli aratri e i gioghi similmente ornati di serte di novelli fiori mostrarono segno di piacevole ocio. Né fu alcuno degli aratori, che per quel giorno pensasse di adoperare esercizio né lavoro alcuno; ma tutti lieti con dilettevoli giochi intorno agl’ inghirlandati buovi per li pieni presepi cantarono amorose canzoni. Oltra di ciò li vagabundi fanciulli di passo in passo con le semplicette verginelle si videro per le contrade esercitare puerili giochi, in segno di commune letizia …
412 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Egloga iii: Per cortesia, canzon, tu pregherai quel dì fausto et ameno che sia sempre sereno … Prosa iv: Ma io che non men desideroso di sapere chi questa Amaranta si fusse, che di ascoltare l’ amorosa canzone era vago, le orecchie alle parole de lo inamorato pastore e gli occhi ai volti de le belle giovenette teneva intentissimamente fermati, stimando per li movimenti di colei che dal suo amante cantare si udiva, poteria senza dubitazione alcuna comprendere … Prosa v: Era già per lo tramontare del sole tutto l’ occidente sparso di mille varietà di nuvoli, quali violati, quali cerulei, alcuni sanguigni, altri tra giallo e nero, e tali sì rilucenti per la ripercussione de’ raggi, che di forbito e finissimo oro pareano. Per che essendosi le pastorelle di pari consentimento levate da sedere intorno a la chiara fontana, i duo amanti pusero fine a le loro canzoni. Le quali sì come con maraviglioso silenzio erano state da tutti udite, così con grandissima ammirazione furono da cia scuno egualmente comendate, e massimamente da Selvaggio, il quale non sapendo discernere quale fusse stato più prossimo a la vittoria, amboduo giudicò degni di somma lode; al cui giudicio tutti consentemmo di commune parere. E senza poterli più comendare che comendati ne gli avessemo, parendo a ciascuno tempo di dovere omai ritornare verso la nostra villa, con passo lentissimo, molto degli avuti piaceri ragionando, in camino ne mettemmo … Prosa vi: Mentre Ergasto cantò la pietosa canzone, Fronimo, sovra tutti i pastori inge gnosissimo, la scrisse in una verde corteccia di faggio; e quella di molte ghirlande investita appiccò ad un albero, che sovra la bianca sepoltura stendeva i rami soi. Per la qual cosa essendo l’ ora del disnare quasi passata, n’ andammo presso d’ una chiara fontana, che da piè di un altissimo pino si movea; e quivi ordinatamente cominciammo a mangiare le carni de’ sacrificati vitelli, e latte in più maniere, e castagne mollissime, e di quei frutti che la stagione concedeva; non però senza vini generosissimi e per molta vecchiezza odoriferi et apportatori di letizia nei mesti cori … Egloga vii: Canzon, di sera in oriente il sole vedrai, e me sotterra ai regni foschi, prima che ’n queste piagge io prenda sonno Le Naiadi, Napee et Amadriadi, e i Satiri e i Silvani desterannosi per me dal lungo sonno, e le Tespiadi: e poi per mano in giro prenderannosi, discinti e scalzi, sovra l’ erbe tenere; e mille canzonette ivi uderannosi …
Morelli • Et in Arcadia adhuc 413 Prosa x: Per la qual cosa Titiro lieto di tanto onore, con questa medesma sampogna dilettandosi, insegnò primeramente le selve di risonare il nome de la formosa Amaril lida; e poi, appresso, lo ardere del rustico Coridone per Alessi; e la emula contenzione di Dameta e di Menalca; e la dolcissima musa di Damone e di Alfesibeo, facendo sovente per maraviglia dimenticare le vacche di pascere, e le stupefatte fiere fermare fra’ pastori, e i velocissimi fiumi arrestare dai corsi loro, poco curando di rendere al mare il solito tributo; aggiungendo a questo la morte di Dafni, la canzone di Sileno e ‘l fiero amore di Gallo, con altre cose di che le selve credo ancora si ricordino e ricorderanno mentre nel mondo saranno pastori. … Prosa xi: Che dirò io de’ giochi, de le feste, del sovente armeggiare, di tante arti, di tanti studii, di tanti laudevoli esercizii? che veramente non che una città, ma qualsivoglia provincia, qualsivoglia opulentissimo regno ne sarebbe assai convenevolmente adornato. E sopra tutto mi piacque udirla comendare de’ studii de la eloquenzia e de la divina altezza de la poesia; e tra le altre cose, de le merite lode del mio virtuosissimo Caracciolo, non picciola gloria de le volgari Muse; la canzone del quale, e se per lo coverto parlare fu poco da noi intesa, non rimase però che con attenzione grandissima non fusse da ciascuno ascoltata. Altro che se forse da Ergasto, il quale, mentre quel cantare durò, in una fissa e lunga cogitazione vidi profondamente occupato, con gli occhi sempre fermati in quel sepolcro, senza moverli punto né battere palpebra mai, a modo di persona alienata; et a le volte mandando fuori alcune rare lacrime, e con le labra non so che fra se stesso tacitamente submormorando … A la sampogna: Né ti curare, se alcuno usato forse di udire più esquisiti suoni, con ischifo gusto schernisse la tua bassezza o ti chiamasse rozza; ché veramente, se ben pensi, questa è la tua propria e principalissima lode, pur che da’ boschi e da’ luoghi a te convenienti non ti diparta. Ove ancora so che non mancheran di quegli, che con acuto giudicio esaminando le tue parole, dicano te in qualche luogo non bene aver servate le leggi de’ pastori, né convenirsi ad alcuno passar più avanti che a lui si appertiene. A questi, confessando ingenuamente la tua colpa, voglio che rispondi, niuno aratore trovarsi mai sì esperto nel far de’ solchi, che sempre prometter si possa, senza deviare, di menarli tutti dritti. Benché a te non picciola scusa fia, lo essere in questo secolo stata prima a risvegliare le adormentate selve, et a mostrare a’ pastori di cantare le già dimenticate canzoni. Tanto più che colui il quale ti compose di queste canne, quando in Arcadia venne, non come rustico pastore ma come coltissimo giovene, benché sconosciuto e peregrino di amore, vi si condusse. Senza che in altri tempi sono già stati pastori sì audaci, che insino a le orecchie de’ romani consuli han sospinto il loro stile; sotto l’ ombra de’ quali potrai tu, sampogna mia, molto ben coprirti e difendere animosamente la tua ragione.
Reinhard Strohm: • List • of Publications Compiled by Janet M. Smith books Dramma per musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997). Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Die italienische Oper im 18. Jahrhundert, Taschenbücher der Musikwissenschaft xxv (Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshofen, 1979). — — Second, rev. edn, trans. L. Cavari: L’ Opera italiana del Settecento (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1991). Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento (1720–1730), 2 vols, Analecta Musicologica xvi (Cologne: Volk, 1976). Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). — — Second, rev. edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). The Rise of European Music (1380–1500) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
edited books Italian Opera in Central Europe, vol. 1: Institutions and Ceremonies, ed. M. Bucciarelli, N. Dubowy and R. Strohm, Musical Life in Europe 1600–1900: Circulation, Institutions, Representations (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2006). The Eighteenth-Century Diaspora of Italian Music and Musicians, ed. Reinhard Strohm (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Reinhard Strohm and Bonnie J. Blackburn, The New Oxford History of Music, new edn, vol. iii/1 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
critical editions Haym, Nicola, Antonio Salvi and G. F. Handel, Rodelinda regina de’ Longobardi, critical edn of the libretto, with German singing translation, by Reinhard Strohm (Oxford: The Editor, 2000). On the Dignity and the Effects of Music: Egidius Carlerius, Johannes Tinctoris. Two Fifteenth-Century Treatises, translated and annotated by J. Donald Cullington, edited by Reinhard Strohm and J. Donald Cullington, with an introduction by Reinhard Strohm, Institute of Advanced Musical Studies Study Texts, No. 2 (London: King’s College London, 1996).
416 Music as Social and Cultural Practice ‘That liberal and virtuous art’: Three Humanist Treatises on Music. Aegidius Carlerius, Johannes Tinctoris, Carlo Valgulio, translated, annotated and edited by J. Donald Cullington with an introduction by Reinhard Strohm and the editor (Newtownabbey: University of Ulster, 2001). Vivaldi, Antonio, Giustino, with introduction, critical notes and critical commentary by Reinhard Strohm, 2 vols (Milan: Ricordi, 1991). Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Werke, vol. iii: Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen, ed. Reinhard Strohm and Egon Voss, 5 vols (Mainz: Schott, 1972–91). — — vol. v: Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg (version 1845/1860), ed. Reinhard Strohm, 3 vols (vol. iii ed. Reinhard Strohm and Egon Voss) (Mainz: Schott, 1980–95). — — vol. xxiii: Dokumente und Texte zu ‘Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen’, ed. Reinhard Strohm (Mainz: Schott, 1976). Wiel, Taddeo, I teatri musicali veneziani del Settecento (reprint edn, with epilogue by Reinhard Strohm) (Leipzig: Peters, 1979).
translations Haym, Nicola, Antonio Salvi and G. F. Handel, Rodelinda, piano-vocal score, ed. Ulrich Etscheit (Kassel: Alkor Editions, 1999) (German singing translation of the libretto by Reinhard Strohm). — — piano-vocal score by Michael Rot (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2002) (German translation of the libretto by Reinhard Strohm). Pariati, Pietro, and G. F. Handel, Arianna in Creta (Karlsruhe: Badisches Staatstheater, February 1991) (German translation of the libretto by Reinhard Strohm). Piovene, Agostino, and G. F. Handel, Tamerlano, ed. Terence Best, Hallische HändelAusgabe, vol. ii/15 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1996), pp. lxi–lxxvii (German translation of the libretto by Reinhard Strohm).
essays ‘Alessandro Scarlatti und das Settecento’, Colloquium ‘Alessandro Scarlatti’,Würzburg 1975, ed. Wolfgang Osthoff and Jutta Ruile-Dronke (Tutzing: Schneider, 1978), pp. 153–76. ‘Alexander’s Timotheus: Towards a Critical “Biography” ’, Journal de la Renaissance 2 (2004), pp. 107–34. ‘Ariadne vom Mythos zur Oper’, in Georg Friedrich Händel, Arianna in Creta (Karlsruhe: Badisches Staatstheater, February 1991) (programme notes, with German translation of the libretto). ‘The Ars Nova Fragments of Gent’, Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 34 (1984), pp. 109–31. ‘Aspetti sociali dell’ opera italiana del primo Settecento’, Musica/Realtà 2 (1981), pp. 117–41.
Smith • Reinhard Strohm’s Publications 417 ‘Auf der Suche nach dem Drama im Dramma per musica: Die Bedeutung der französischen Tragödie’, De Musica et Cantu: Studien zur Geschichte der Kirchenmusik und Oper Helmut Hucke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Cahn and Ann-Katrin Heimer (Hildesheim: Olms, 1993), pp. 481–93. ‘Bemerkungen zu Vivaldi und der Oper seiner Zeit’, Vivaldi-Studien: Referate des 3. Dresdner Vivaldi-Kolloqiums, ed. Ortrun Landmann and Wolfgang Reich (Dresden: Sächsische Landesbibliothek, 1981), pp. 81–99. ‘The Birth of the Music Book’, Venezia 1501: Petrucci e la stampa musicale/ Venice 1501: Petrucci, Music, Print and Publishing. Atti del Convegno Internazionale Venezia – Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, 10–13 ottobre 2001, ed. Giulio Cattin and Patrizia Dalla Vecchia (Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi, 2005), pp. 45–55. ‘A Book of Cantatas and Arias Bought in Florence, 1723’, British Library Journal 21 (1995), pp. 184–201. ‘Centre and Periphery: Mainstream and Provincial Music’, Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. Tess Knighton and David Fallows (London: Dent, 1992), pp. 55–9. ‘ “Chi può dir che rea son io”: A Woman Composer Defends Herself ’, Pensieri per un Maestro: Studi in Onore di Pierluigi Petrobelli, ed. Stefano La Via and Roger Parker (Turin: EDT, 2002), pp. 159–70. ‘The Close of the Middle Ages’, Antiquity and the Middle Ages: From Ancient Greece to the 15th Century, ed. James McKinnon, Man and Music, vol. i (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 269–312. ‘Collapsing the Dialectic: The Enlightenment Tradition in Music and its Critics’, Musicology and its Sister Disciplines: Past, Present and Future (Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of the International Musicological Society, London, 1997), ed. David Greer, with Ian Rumbold and Jonathan King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 263–72. ‘A Context for Griselda: The Teatro Capranica, 1711–1724’, Alessandro Scarlatti und seine Zeit, ed. Max Lütolf (Berne: Haupt, 1995), pp. 79–114. ‘The Contribution of Musicology to Metastasio Studies’, Pietro Metastasio – uomo universale (1698–1782), ed. Andrea Sommer-Mathis and Elisabeth Th. Hielscher (Vienna: Verlag der Östereichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), pp. 15–25. ‘Costanza e Fortezza: Investigation of the Baroque Ideology’, I Bibiena. Una famiglia in scena: Da Bologna all’ Europa, ed. Daniela Gallingani (Florence: Alinea Editrice, 2002), pp. 75–91. ‘Costituzione e conservazione dei repertorii polifonici nei secoli xiv e xv: Introduztione’, Atti del xiv Congresso della Società Internazionale di Musicologia: Trasmissione e recezione delle forme di cultura musicale, ed. Angelo Pompilio et al. (Turin: EDT, 1990), vol. i (Round Tables), pp. 93–6. ‘The Critical Edition of Vivaldi’s “Giustino” (1724)’, Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Edizione e cronologia critica delle opere, ed. Antonio Fanna and Giovanni Morelli (Florence: Olschki, 1988), i, pp. 399–415.
418 Music as Social and Cultural Practice ‘Darstellung, Aktion und Interesse in der höfischen Opernkunst’, Musik und Theater als Medien höfischer Repräsentation (Conference report), Händel-Jahrbuch 49 (2003), pp. 13–26. ‘De plus en plus: Numbers, Binchois and Okeghem’, Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned (Festschrift for Margaret Bent), ed. Suzannah Clark and Elizabeth Eva Leach, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music, iv (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 160–74. ‘Does Textual Criticism have a Future?’, L’ edizione critica tra testo musicale e testo letterario. Atti del convegno internazionale, Cremona, 1992, ed. Renato Borghi and Pietro Zappalà (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1995), pp. 193–211. ‘Dramatic Dualities: Metastasio and the Tradition of the Opera Pair’, Early Music 26 (1998), pp. 551–61. ‘Dramatic Dualities: Opera Pairs from Minato to Metastasio’, Italian Opera in Central Europe, vol. 1: Institutions and Ceremonies, ed. M. Bucciarelli, N. Dubowy and R. Strohm, Musical Life in Europe 1600–1900: Circulation Institutions, Representations (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2006), pp. 275–95. ‘Dramatic Time and Operatic Form in Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” ’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 104 (1977/78), pp. 1–10. ‘Einheit und Funktion früher Meßzyklen’, Festschrift Rudolf Bockholdt zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Norbert Dubowy and Sören Meyer-Eller (Pfaffenhofen: Ludwig, 1990), pp. 141–60. ‘Ein englischer Ordinariumssatz des 14. Jahrhunderts in Italien’, Die Musikforschung 18 (1965), pp. 178–81. ‘Die Epochenkrise der deutschen Opernpflege’, Johann Sebastian Bachs Spätwerk und dessen Umfeld, 61. Bachfest der Neuen Bachgesellschaft 1986, ed. Christoph Wolff (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1988), pp. 155–66. ‘European Cathedral Repertories and the Trent Codices’, I codici musicali Trentini: Nuove scoperte e nuovi orientamenti della ricerca, ed. Peter Wright (Trento: Provincia Autonoma, Servizio Beni Librari e Archivistici, 1996), pp. 15–30. ‘European Politics and the Distribution of Music in the Early Fifteenth Century’, Early Music History 1 (1981), pp. 305–23. ‘Filippotto da Caserta, ovvero i Francesi in Lombardia’, In cantu et in sermone: For Nino Pirrotta on his 80th Birthday, ed. Fabrizio Della Seta and Franco Piperno (Florence: Olschki, 1989), pp. 65–74. ‘Fragen zur Praxis des spätmittelalterlichen Liedes’, Musikalischer Alltag im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Nicole Schwindt, Trossinger Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik i (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), pp. 53–76. ‘Francesco Corselli’s Operas for Madrid’, Teatro y música en España (siglo xviii). Simposio Internacional Salamanca 1994, ed. Rainer Kleinertz (Kassel and Berlin: Reichenberger, 1996), pp. 79–106.
Smith • Reinhard Strohm’s Publications 419 ‘Francesco Gasparini: Le sue opere tarde e Georg Friedrich Händel’, Francesco Gasparini (1661–1727). Atti del convegno, Camaiore 1978 (Florence: Olschki, 1981), pp. 71–83. ‘Gattungsprobleme und Realitätsschichten in Beethovens Leonoren-Ouvertüren’, Von der ‘Leonore’ zum ‘Fidelio’. Vorträge und Referate des Bonner Symposions 1997, ed. Helga Lühning and Wolfram Steinbeck, Bonner Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft iv (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 221–34. ‘Gedanken zu Wagners Opernouvertüren’, Wagnerliteratur-Wagnerforschung, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and Egon Voss (Mainz: Schott, 1985), pp. 69–84. ‘Geschichte als Text: Von der Unentrinnbarkeit des Überlieferns’, Musik als Text. Bericht über den internationalen Kongreß der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, ed. Hermann Danuser (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1998), i, pp. 253–62. ‘Gibt es eine Epochenwende in der Musikgeschichte?’ (Conference report ‘Bilanz des Spätmittelalters’, Kaprun/Salzburg, 1999), Oswald von Wolkenstein Jahrbuch 12 (2000), pp. 229–38. ‘Händel in Italia: Nuovi contributi’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 9 (1974), pp. 152–74. ‘Handel, Metastasio, Racine: The Case of “Ezio” ’, Musical Times 118 (1977), pp. 901–3. ‘Händel-Oper und Regeldrama’, Zur Dramaturgie der Barockoper. Bericht über die Symposien 1992 und 1993, ed. Hans Joachim Marx (Internationale HändelAkademie Karlsruhe) (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1994), pp. 33–54. ‘Händels Londoner Operntexte’, Kongreßbericht Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Berlin 1974 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1980), pp. 305–7. ‘Handel’s Operas and the “Hanseatic” Arioso’, Handel Institute Newsletter 17 no. 2 (autumn 2006), pp. 1–3. ‘Händels Opern im europäischen Zusammenhang’, Die Oper im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Herbert Schneider and Reinhard Wiesend, Handbuch der musikalischen Gattungen xii (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2001), pp. 37–45. ‘Händels Pasticci’, Studien zur italienisch-deutschen Musikgeschichte 9, Analecta Musicologica xiv (Cologne: Volk, 1974), pp. 208–69. ‘Händel und Italien – ein intellektuelles Abenteuer’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge 5 (1993), pp. 5–43. ‘Händel und seine italienischen Operntexte’, Händel-Jahrbuch 1975/76, pp. 99–157. ‘ “La harpe de mélodie” oder Das Kunstwerk als Akt der Zueignung’, Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus zum 60.Geburtstag, ed. Hermann Danuser et al. (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1988), pp. 305–16. ‘Hasse, Scarlatti, Rolli’, Studien zur italienisch-deutschen Musikgeschichte 10, Analecta Musicologica xv (Cologne: Volk, 1975), pp. 220–57. ‘Heinrich Isaac und die Musik in Deutschland vor 1492’, Heinrich Isaac und Paul Hofhaimer im Umfeld von Kaiser Maximilian i., ed. Walter Salmen, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft xvi (Innsbruck: Helbling, 1997), pp. 21–41.
420 Music as Social and Cultural Practice ‘Hic miros cecinit cantus, nova scripta reliquit’, Johannes Ockeghem. Actes du xie Colloque international d’ études humanistes, Tours. 3–8 février 1997, ed. Philippe Vendrix (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998), pp. 139–65. ‘How to Make Medieval Music our Own: A Response to Christopher Page and Margaret Bent (Correspondence)’, Early Music 22 (1994), pp. 715–19. ‘The Humanist Idea of a Common Revival of the Arts, and its Implications for Music History’, Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology. Report from the Third Interdisciplinary Conference, Poznań, 1996, ed. Maciej Jabłonski and Jan Stęszewski (Poznań: Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences, 1997), pp. 7–25. ‘Instrumentale Ensemblemusik vor 1500: Das Zeugnis der mitteleuropäischen Quellen’, Musik und Tanz zur Zeit Kaiser Maximilians i. Bericht über die am 21. und 22. Oktober 1989 in Innsbruck abgehaltene Fachtagung, ed. Walter Salmen (Innsbruck: Helbling, 1992), pp. 89–106. ‘Italian Opera in “Central Europe”, 1600–1780: Research Trends and the Geographic Imagination’, Muzikološki Sbornik 40 (2004), pp. 103–12. ‘Italian Operisti North of the Alps, c. 1700–1750’, The Eighteenth-Century Diaspora of Italian Music and Musicians, ed. Reinhard Strohm (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), pp. 1–59. ‘Italienische Barockoper in Deutschland: Eine Forschungsaufgabe’, Festschrift Martin Ruhnke zum 65. Geburtstag (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler, 1986), pp. 348–63. ‘Jan Dismas Zelenkas italienische Arien, zwv 176’, Zelenka-Studien ii. Referate und Materialien der 2. Internationalen Fachkonferenz Jan Dismas Zelenka (Dresden und Prag 1995), ed. Wolfgang Reich and G. Gattermann (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1997), pp. 251–78. ‘Johann Adolf Hasses Oper “Cleofide” und ihre Vorgeschichte’, Johann Sebastian Bachs Spätwerk und dessen Umfeld, 61. Bachfest der Neuen Bachgesellschaft 1986, ed. Christoph Wolff (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1988), pp. 170–6 (also published in the programme book of the Bachfest, 1986, and broadcast with the performance of the opera by WDR on 1 June 1986). ‘Looking Back at Ourselves: The Problem with the Musical Work-Concept’, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, ed. Michael Talbot, Liverpool Music Symposium i (Liverpool University Press, 2000) , pp. 128–52. ‘Magister Egardus and Other Italo-Flemish Contacts’, L’ Ars Nova italiana del Trecento vi (Certaldo: Edizioni Polis, 1992), pp. 41–68. ‘Manoscritti di opere rappresentate a Venezia, 1701–1740’, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani 3 (1982), pp. 45–51. ‘Materialien zur Händelrezeption heute’, ed. Reinhard Strohm, Alte Musik als ästhetische Gegenwart: Bach-Händel-Schütz (Conference Report, Stuttgart 1985), ed. Dietrich Berke and Dorothee Hanemann (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1987), i, pp. 288–310. Reinhard Strohm, ‘Auswahlverzeichnis von Editionen Händelscher Werk außerdeutsche Verleger (besonders in England und den USA), c. 1970–1984’, ibid., pp. 308–10.
Smith • Reinhard Strohm’s Publications 421 ‘Merkmale italienischer Versvertonung in Mozarts Klavierkonzerten’, Kolloquium ‘Mozart und Italien’ (Rome, 1974), Analecta Musicologica xviii (Cologne: Volk, 1978), pp. 219–36. ‘Meßzyklen über deutsche Lieder in den Trienter Codices’, Liedstudien: Festschrift für Wolfgang Osthoff zum 60. Geburtstag (Tutzing: Schneider, 1989), pp. 77–106. ‘Metastasio at Hamburg: Newly-Identified Opera Scores of the Mingotti Company. With a Postscript on Ercole nell’ Indie’, Il canto di Metastasio. Atti del Convegno di Studi, Venezia (14–16 dicembre 1999), ed. Maria Giovanna Miggiani, 2 vols (Bologna: Forni, 2004), ii, pp. 541–71. ‘Metastasios “Alessandro nell’ Indie” und seine frühesten Vertonungen’, Probleme der Händelschen Oper, ed. Walther Siegmund-Schultze (Halle (Saale): Martin-LutherUniversität, 1982), pp. 40–61. ‘Die Missa super “Nos amis” von Johannes Tinctoris’, Die Musikforschung 32 (1979), pp. 34–51. ‘Modal Sounds as a Stylistic Tendency of the Mid-Fifteenth Century: E-, A-, and C-finals in Polyphonic Song’, Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries/Modalität in der Musik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Ursula Günther, Ludwig Finscher and Jeffrey Dean, Musicological Studies and Documents xlix (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler, 1996), pp. 149–75. ‘Music and Urban Culture in Austria: Comparing Profiles’, Music and Musicians in Renaissance Cities and Towns, ed. Fiona Kisby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 14–27. ‘Music, Humanism, and the Idea of a “Rebirth” of the Arts’, Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Reinhard Strohm and Bonnie J. Blackburn, New Oxford History of Music, new edn, vol. iii/1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 346–405. ‘Music in Recurrent Feasts of Bruges’, La Musique et le rite sacré et profane. Actes du xiiie congrès de la SIM (Strasbourg,1982), ed. Marc Honegger and Christian Meyer (Strasbourg, 1986), i, pp. 424–32. ‘Music, Ritual and Painting in Fifteenth-Century Bruges’, Hans Memling: Essays (Quincentenary exhibition), ed. Dirk De Vos (Bruges: Stedelijke Musea, 1994), pp. 30–44. ‘Musical Analysis as Part of Musical History’, Tendenze e metodi nella ricerca musicologica. Atti del convegno internazionale (Latina 27–29 settembre 1990), ed. Raffaele Pozzi (Florence: Olschki, 1995), pp. 61–81. ‘Musik, Malerei, Poesie – und die zwölfjährige Angelika Kauffmann’, Belliniana et alia musicologica: Festschrift für Friedrich Lippmann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Daniel Brandenburg and Thomas Lindner, Primo Ottocento iii (Vienna: Edition Praesens, 2004), pp. 256–67. ‘Muzikaal en artistiek beschermheerschap in het Brugse Ghilde vanden Droghen Boome’, Biekorf 83 (1983), pp. 5–18. ‘Native and Foreign Polyphony in Late Medieval Austria’, Musica Disciplina 38 (1984), pp. 205–30.
422 Music as Social and Cultural Practice ‘The Neapolitans in Venice’, Con che soavità: Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580–1740, ed. Iain Fenlon and Tim Carter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 249–74. ‘Neue Aspekte von Musik und Humanismus im 15. Jahrhundert’, Acta Musicologica 76 (2004), pp. 135–57. ‘Neue Quellen zur liturgischen Mehrstimmigkeit des Mittelalters in Italien’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 1 (1966), pp. 77–87. ‘North Italian Operisti in the Light of New Musical Sources’, Il teatro musicale italiano nel Sacro Romano Impero nei secoli xvii e xviii. Atti del vii Convegno internazionale sulla musica italiana nei secoli xvii e xviii, ed. Alberto Colzani et al. (Como: A.M.I.S., 1999), pp. 423–38. ‘Ein Opernautograph von Francesco Gasparini?’, Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 3 (1978), pp. 205–23. ‘ “Opus”: An Aspect of the Early History of the Musical Work-Concept’, Complexus effectuum musicologiae: Studia Miroslavo Perz septuagenario dedicata, ed. Tomasz Jeż (Kraków: Rabid, 2003), pp. 309–19. ‘Osservazioni su “Tempro la cetra” ’, Rivista italiana di musicologia 2 (1967), pp. 357–64. ‘Otto Jägermeiers symphonische Dichtung “Auf der Alm” ’, Gradus ad Parnassum: Egon Voss zum 40.Geburtstag (Rofan [i.e.Thurnau], 1978; 2nd edn, 1980), pp. 10–19. ‘Partitur und Libretto: Zur Edition von Operntexten’, Opernedition. Bericht über das Symposion zum 60. Geburtstag von Sieghart Döhring, ed. Helga Lühning and Reinhard Wiesend (Mainz: Are Edition, 2005), pp. 37–56. ‘Pietro Pariati librettista comico’, La carriera di un librettista: Pietro Pariati da Reggio di Lombardia, ed. Giovanna Gronda (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990), pp. 73–111. ‘Le polifonie più o meno primitive’, Le polifonie primitive in Friuli e in Europa. Atti del Convegno, Cividale 1980, ed. Cesare Corsi und Pierluigi Petrobelli (Rome: Torre d’ Orfeo, 1989), pp. 83–98. ‘Portrait of a Musician’, Johannes Ockeghem. Actes du xle Colloque international d’ études humanistes, Tours, 3–8 février 1997, ed. Philippe Vendrix (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998), pp. 166–72. ‘Postmoderni problemi v evropskem glasbenem zgodovinopisju (Postmodern Problems in European Music History)’, Muzikološki Sbornik 37 (Ljubljana, 2001), pp. 5–15 (in Slovenian, with English resumé). ‘Postmodern Thought and the History of Music: Some Intersections’, Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia 9 (1999), pp. 7–24. ‘Die private Kunst und das öffentliche Schicksal von Hermann Poll, dem Erfinder des Cembalos’, Musica privata: Die Rolle der Musik im privaten Leben. Festschrift für Walter Salmen, ed. Monika Fink, Rainer Gstrein and Günther Mössmer (Innsbruck: Helbling, 1991), pp. 53–66. ‘Quellenkritische Untersuchungen an der Missa “Caput” ’, Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance ii, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen xxvi (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1984), pp. 153–76.
Smith • Reinhard Strohm’s Publications 423 ‘ “Rienzi” and Authenticity’, Musical Times 117 (1976), pp. 725–7. ‘The “Rise of European Music” and the Rights of Others’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 121 (1996), pp. 1–10. ‘Rulers and States in Hasse’s Drammi per musica’, Johann Adolf Hasse und Polen, Conference Report Warszawa, 1993, ed. Irena Poniatowska and Alina ŻórawskaWitkowska (Warsaw: Instytut Muzykologii, 1995), pp. 15–35. ‘Les Sauvages, Music in Utopia, and the Decline of the Courtly Pastoral’, Il Saggiatore musicale 12 (2004), pp. 21–49. ‘Scarlattiana at Yale’, Händel e gli Scarlatti a Roma. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Rome, 1985), ed. Nino Pirrotta and Agostino Ziino (Florence: Olschki, 1987), pp. 13–52. ‘Schottland und Arkadien: Zu Händels “Ariodante” ’, Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Eine Festschrift für Ludwig Finscher, ed. Annegrit Laubenthal (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1995), pp. 238–47. ‘Sinfonia and Drama in Early Eighteenth-Century Opera seria’, Opera and the Enlightenment, ed. Thomas Bauman and Marita P. McClymonds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 91–104. ‘Song Composition in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: Old and New Questions’, Jahrbuch der Oswald-von-Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft 9 (1996–7), pp. 523–50. ‘Ein Staatskomponist ohne Grenzen’, Händel-Jahrbuch 48 (2002), pp. 261–77. ‘Taddeo Wiel und die venezianische Opernbibliographie’, Deutsches Jahrbuch der Musikwissenschaft, 1973–7 (Leipzig: Peters, 1978), pp. 101–14. ‘Der Tod des Autors und die Wiederbelebung der Musik: Opera seria, Moderne und Postmoderne’, Johann Adolf Hasse in seiner Zeit. Symposium vom 23. bis 26. März 1999, Hamburg, ed. Reinhard Wiesend, Hasse-Studien, Sondernband 1 (Stuttgart: Carus, 2006), pp. 35–43. ‘Die tragedia per musica als Repertoirestück: Zwei Hamburger Opern von Giuseppe Maria Orlandini’, Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 5 (1981), pp. 37–54. ‘ “Tragédie” into “Dramma per musica” (Part One)’, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani 9 (1988), pp. 14–24. ‘ “Tragédie” into “Dramma per musica” (Part Two)’, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani 10 (1989), pp. 57–102. ‘ “Tragédie” into “Dramma per musica” (Part Three)’, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani 11 (1990), pp. 11–25. ‘ “Tragédie” into “Dramma per musica” (Part Four)’, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani 12 (1991), pp. 47–74. ‘Transgression, Transcendence and Metaphor – the ‘Other Meanings’ of Bach’s B Minor Mass’, Understanding Bach 1 (2006), <www.bachnetwork.co.uk/publications>. ‘Ein unbekanntes Chorbuch des 15. Jahrhunderts’, Die Musikforschung 21 (1968), pp. 40–2.
424 Music as Social and Cultural Practice ‘Unwritten and Written Music’, Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. Tess Knighton and David Fallows (London: Dent, 1992), pp. 228–33. ‘Verdi und die Musikwissenschaft’, Die Musikforschung 20 (1967), pp. 300–3. ‘Il viaggio italiano di Händel come esperienza europea’, Terzo festival Vivaldi/Händel in Italia, ed. Giovanni Morelli (Venice: Fondazione G. Cini, 1981), pp. 60–71. ‘Die vierstimmige Bearbeitung (um 1465) eines unbekannten Liedes von Oswald von Wolkenstein’, Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein Gesellschaft 4 (1986–7), pp. 163–74. ‘Vivaldi’s and Handel’s Settings of “Giustino” ’, Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. Nigel Fortune (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 131–58. ‘Vivaldi’s Career as an Opera Producer’, Antonio Vivaldi: Teatro Musicale, Cultura e Società, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giovanni Morelli (Florence: Olschki, 1982), i, pp. 11–63. ‘Vom Internationalen Stil zur Ars Nova? Probleme einer Analogie’, Musica Disciplina 41 (1987), pp. 5–13. ‘Wien und die mitteleuropäische Opernpflege der Aufklärungszeit’, Europa im Zeitalter Mozarts, ed. Moritz Csáky and Walter Pass (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1995), pp. 391–6. ‘Zenobia: Voices and Authorship in Opera seria’, Johann Adolf Hasse in seiner Epoche und in der Gegenwart: Studien zur Stil- und Quellenproblematik, ed. Szymon Paczkowski and Alina Żórawska-Witkowska (Warsaw: Instytut Muzykologii Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2002), pp. 53–81. ‘Ein Zeugnis früher Mehrstimmigkeit in Italien’, Festschrift Bruno Stäblein zum 70. Geburtstag (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1967), pp. 239–49. ‘Zum Verhältnis von Textstruktur und musikalischer Struktur in Verdis Arien’, Atti del primo congresso internazionale di studi Verdiani (Venice 1966) (Parma: Istituto di Studi Verdiani, 1969), pp. 247–51. ‘Zum Verständnis der opera seria’, Werk und Wiedergabe: Musiktheater exemplarisch interpretiert, ed. Sigrid Wiesmann (Bayreuth: Fehr, 1980), pp. 51–70. ‘Zur Datierung des Codex St. Emmeram (Clm 14274): Ein Zwischenbericht’, Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance ii, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen xxvi (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1984), pp. 229–38. ‘Zur Entstehung der Trienter Codices: Philologie und Kulturgeschichte’, Gestalt und Entstehung musikalischer Quellen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Martin Staehelin, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen lxxxiii (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), pp. 11–20. ‘Zur Metrik in Haydns und Anfossis “La vera costanza” ’, Internationaler Joseph Haydn Kongress Wien 1982, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda (Munich: Henle, 1987), pp. 279–94. ‘Zur musikalischen Dramaturgie von “Arianna in Creta” ’, Gattungskonventionen der Händel-Oper. Bericht über die Symposien der Internationalen Akademie Karlsruhe, 1990 und 1991, ed. Hans Joachim Marx (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1992), pp. 171–88.
Smith • Reinhard Strohm’s Publications 425 ‘Zur Rezeption der frühen Cantus-firmus-Messe im deutschsprachigen Bereich’, Deutsch-englische Musikbeziehungen. Referate des wissenschaftlichen Symposions ‘Musica Britannica’ (1980), ed. Wulf Konold (Munich and Salzburg: Katzbichler, 1985), pp. 9–38. ‘Zur Werkgeschichte des “Tannhäuser” ’, Programmheft ‘Tannhäuser’ (Bayreuther Festspiele, 1978), pp. 12–13, 64–76. ‘Zu Vivaldis Opernschaffen’, Venezia e il melodramma del settecento (Atti del convegno, Venezia 1973) (Florence: Olschki, 1978), pp. 237–48. Numerous smaller articles, contributions to CD booklets and opera programmes
contributions to encylopaedias ‘Aria e recitativo: Dalle origini all’ Ottocento’, Storia della musica europea (Enciclopedia della musica, vol. iv), ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez in collaboration with Margaret Bent, Rossana Dalmonte and Mario Baroni (Turin: Einaudi, 2004), pp. 416–29. ‘Il concetto di musica in Occidente: Un approccio culturale e sociologico alla sua storia’, L’ unità della musica (Enciclopedia della musica, vol. v), ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez in collaboration with Margaret Bent, Rossana Dalmonte and Mario Baroni (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), pp. 673–98. ‘Dramma per musica ii (opera seria)’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994– ), Sachteil, ii (1995), col. 1479– 93 and 1498–1500. ‘Isaac, Henricus’ (with Emma Kempson), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), xii, pp. 576–90. ‘Opera, iv. The Eighteenth Century’ (with Michel Noiray), ibid., xviii, pp. 426–34. ‘Pasticcio’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 288–9. ‘Rezitativ’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994– ), Sachteil, viii (1998), col. 224–42. ‘Trienter Codices’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994– ), Sachteil, ix (1999), col. 801–12. Articles on Boubert, Jean; Charlier (with J. Donald Cullington); Edlerawer, Hermann; Ecghaerd; Fabri, Martinus; Legrant, Guillaume; Strohm, Reinhard; Sweikl, Rudolf, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994– ), Personenteil, vols. 3–16, passim. 36 articles on individual operas (by Bononcini, Handel, Hasse, Leo, Porpora, Scarlatti, Vinci, Vivaldi, Wagner) in Pipers Enzyclopädie des Musiktheaters, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater der Universität Bayreuth (Munich: Piper, 1986–96), 6 vols., passim.
426 Music as Social and Cultural Practice
review articles and reviews: books Abert, Anna Amalie, Claudio Monteverdis Bedeutung für die Entstehung des musikalischen Dramas, Erträge der Forschung cvii (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979), in Die Musikforschung 34 (1981), pp. 492–4. Appel, Bernhard R., Karl Wilhelm Geck and Herbert Schneider, eds, Musik und Szene: Festschrift für Werner Braun zum 75. Geburtstag, Saarbrücker Studien zur Musikwissenschaft ix (Saarbrücken: Saarbrücker Druckerei, 2001), in Music & Letters 84 (2003), pp. 87–8. Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400–1550, comp. University of Illinois Musicological Archives for Renaissance Manuscript Studies, vol. iv: V–Z, ed. Charles Hamm, Herbert Kellman, David E. Crawford and Tom R. Ward, Renaissance Manuscript Studies i/4 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, 1988), in Journal of the American Musicological Society 48 (1995), pp. 485–90. — — vol. v: Cumulative Bibliography and Indices, ed. Herbert Kellman, David E. Crawford, Tom R. Ward and Charles Hamm, Renaissance Manuscript Studies, i/5 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, 1988), in Journal of the American Musicological Society 48 (1995), pp. 485–90. Cotticelli, Francesco, and Paologiovanni Maione, ‘Onesto divertimento ed allegria de’ popoli’: Materiali per una storia dello spettacolo a Napoli nel primo Settecento (Milan: Ricordi, 1996), in Rivista italiana di musicologia 32 (1999), pp. 422–5. D’ Accone, Frank A., The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), in Journal of Modern History 71 (1999), pp. 972–3. Dean, Winton, and J. Merrill Knapp, Handel’s Operas, 1704–1726 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), in Music & Letters 69 (1988), pp. 516–18. Fallows, David, Dufay, Master Musicians (London: Dent, 1982), in Music & Letters 64 (1983), pp. 246–8. Finscher, Ludwig, ed., Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance i: Formen und Probleme der Überlieferung mehrstimmiger Musik im Zeitalter Josquin Desprez, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen vi (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1981), in Die Musikforschung 38 (1985), pp. 48–9. Fisher, Alexander J., Music and Religious Identity in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, 1580–1630 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57 (2006), pp. 606–7. Gallarati, Paolo, La forza delle parole: Mozart drammaturgo (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), in Cambridge Opera Journal 11 (1999), pp. 193–8. Gallico, Claudio, Monteverdi: Poesia musicale, teatro e musica sacra, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi ccclxxiii (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), in Die Musikforschung 34 (1981), pp. 492–4. Giazotto, Remo, Antonio Vivaldi – Catalogo delle opere, ed. Agostino Girard (Turin: Edizioni RAI, 1973), in Rivista italiana di musicologia 11 (1976), pp. 323–8.
Smith • Reinhard Strohm’s Publications 427 Gronda, Giovanna, and Paolo Fabbri, eds, Libretti d’ opera italiani: Dal Seicento al Novecento, I meridiani (Milan: Mondadori, 1997), in Cambridge Opera Journal 10 (1998), pp. 313–15. Harris, Ellen T., Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), in Journal of the American Musicological Society 60 (2007), pp. 217–22. Hascher-Burger, Ulrike, Gesungene Innigkeit (Leiden: Brill, 2002), in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56 (2005), pp. 157–8. Herr, Corinna, Medeas Zorn: Eine ‘starke Frau’ in Opern des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Herzbolzheim: Centaurus, 2000), in Die Musikforschung 54 (2001), pp. 462–4. Hopkinson, Cecil, Tannhäuser: An Examination of 36 Editions (Tutzing: Schneider, 1973), in Die Musikforschung 30 (1977), pp. 237–8. Hortschansky, Klaus, Parodie und Entlehnung im Schaffen Christoph Willibald Glucks, Analecta Musicologica viii (Cologne: Volk, 1973), in Die Musikforschung 29 (1976), pp. 346–8. Kmetz, John, ed., Music in the German Renaissance: Sources, Styles and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), in Renaissance Quarterly 50 (1997), pp. 650–1. Kurtzman, Jeffrey, Essays on the Monteverdi Mass and Vespers of 1610 (Rice University Studies lxiv/4 (Houston: Rice University, 1978), in Die Musikforschung 34 (1981), pp. 234–5. Leopold, Silke, Claudio Monteverdi und seine Zeit (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1982), in Die Musikforschung 39 (1986), pp. 69–70. Lockwood, Lewis, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400–1505: The Creation of a Musical Center in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), in Music & Letters 67 (1986), pp. 283–6. Muraro, Maria Teresa, ed., Venezia e il melodramma nel Settecento, Studi di musica veneta vi (Florence: Olschki, 1978), in Melos: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 4 (1978), pp. 355–6. Pagano, Roberto, and Lino Bianchi, Alessandro Scarlatti – Catalogo generale delle opere, ed. Giancarlo Rostirolla (Turin: Edizioni RAI, 1972), in Rivista italiana di musicologia 11 (1976), pp. 314–23. Pirrotta, Nino, and Elena Povoledo, Li due Orfei: Da Poliziano a Monteverdi (Turin: Edizioni RAI, 1969), in Die Musikforschung 31 (1978), pp. 105–6. Speck, Christian, Das italienische Oratorium 1625–1665: Musik und Dichtung (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), in Music & Letters 87 (2006), pp. 656–8. Staehelin, Martin, Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs: Quellenstudien, Publikationen der Schweizerischen musikforschenden Gesellschaft, ii/28 (Bern and Stuttgart: Paul Haupt, 1977), in Music & Letters 60 (1979), pp. 458–61. Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Briefe, iii: Briefe der Jahre 1849–1851 (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1975), in Music & Letters 58 (1977), pp. 96–7.
428 Music as Social and Cultural Practice — — Sämtliche Briefe, iv: Briefe der Jahre 1851–52 (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1979), in Music & Letters 62 (1981), pp. 434–6. Weaver, Robert, and Norma Wright Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater 1590–1750, Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography xxxviii (Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1978), in Die Musikforschung 32 (1979), p. 456. Wiesend, Reinhard, Studien zur Opera seria von Baldassare Galuppi: Werksituation und Überlieferung, Form und Satztechnik, Inhaltsdarstellung, Würzburger musikhistorische Beiträge viii (Tutzing: Schneider, 1984), in Die Musikforschung 40 (1987), pp. 366–7. Wolff, Hellmuth Christian, Die Venezianische Oper in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts, repr. of 1937 edn (Bologna: Forni, 1975), in Die Musikforschung 31 (1978), pp. 218–19. Zelm, Klaus, Die Opern Reinhard Keisers: Studien zur Chronologie, Überlieferung and Stilentwicklung, Musikwissenschaftliche Schriften viii (Munich and Salzburg: Katzbichler, 1975), in Melos: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 3 (1977), pp. 458–9.
reviews: music editions Handel, Georg Friedrich, Lotario: Opera in tre atti, hwv 26, ed. Michael Pacholke, Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, ii: Opern, Bd. 23 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2002), in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 62 (2006), pp. 1054–8. Handel, Georg Friedrich, Oreste: Opera in tre atti, hwv a11, ed. Bernd Baselt, Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, ii: Opern, Suppl. 1 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991), in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 49 (1992), pp. 788–90. Handel, Georg Friedrich, Tolomeo, re d’ Egitto: dramma per musica in tre atti, hwv 25, ed. Michael Pacholke, Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, ii: Opern, Bd. 22 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2000), in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 59 (2003), pp. 980–3. Hasse, Johann Adolf, Ruggiero: ovvero L’ eroica gratitudine, ed. Klaus Hortschansky, Concentus musicus i (Cologne: Volk, 1973), in Die Musikforschung 28 (1975), pp. 365–7. The Mellon Chansonnier, ed. Leeman Lloyd Perkins and Howard Garey (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), in Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 16 (1980), pp. 147–53. Obrecht, Jacob, Missa Malheur me bat; Missa Maria zart, ed. Barton Hudson, Obrecht: New Edition of the Collected Works vii (Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1987), in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 47 (1990), pp. 552–4. Scarlatti, Alessandro, Eraclea, ed. Donald Jay Grout, The Operas of Alessandro Scarlatti i (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), in Die Musikforschung 31 (1978), pp. 113–15.
Smith • Reinhard Strohm’s Publications 429 — — Tigrane, ed. Michael Collins, The Operas of Alessandro Scarlatti viii (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 42 (1985), pp. 146–7. Stradella, Alessandro, Esule dalle sfere: A Cantata for the Souls of Purgatory, Early Musical Masterworks (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1983), in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 42 (1985), pp. 146–7.
major works in progress spring 2007 Cambridge Readings in the Literature of Music: The Late Middle Ages (with Anna Maria Busse Berger) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, c.2008). The Caput Mass and other Mid-Century Masses, critical edition by R. Strohm, Early English Church Music lv (London: The British Academy, c.2007) (in press). The Classicist Ideology: Music and European Culture in the 17th and 18th Centuries (with Ruth HaCohen) (Aldershot: Ashgate, c.2009). The dramma per musica at Venice in the Age of Vivaldi (c. 1680–c. 1740), 2 vols (Florence: Olschki, c.2007–9). Vol. 1: The Operas of Antonio Vivaldi; vol. 2 (with other authors). Lucca, Archivio di Stato, Bibl. Manoscritti, 238 (The Lucca Choirbook), facs. edn, with introduction by Reinhard Strohm (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007) (in press). ‘L’ opera italiana fuori l’ Italia, 1600–1900’ (4 chapters), Storia dell’ opera italiana, vol. 2, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (Turin: EDT, c.2008). Salvi, Antonio and G. F. Handel, Ariodante, piano-vocal score (Kassel: Alkor Editions, c.2007) (German singing translation) (in press).
•
Index •
῾Abbās, Shah 23 Abbate, Carolyn 277 Abert, Hermann 187 Accademia degli Infecondi 211 Accademia degli Umoristi 210 Accademia dell ’ Arcadia 201, 211, 239, 395 Accademia Pontaniana 395 Accademia Reale 211 Achilles Tatius 396 Adami, Andrea 167 Adelung, Johann Christoph 186 Adharbaydjan 22 Adorno, Theodor 380 Agop, Giovanni: Rudimento della lingua turchesca 237 Albinoni, Tomaso: Alcina delusa da Rugero 240 Albrecht, Hans 374 Alcalá 87 Alessandri, Felice 334–5 Alfonso, Duke of Calabria 397 Algarotti, Count Francesco 285 ῾Alī al-Sayyarī 21 ῾Alī Muhammad al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī 21 Ali Pasha 221 Aliseda, Santos de 131 Alvise trombon, Giovanni 113 Amalie Wilhelmine, Empress Dowager of Austria 144 Ambrose, St 93 American Musicological Society 384 Ancina, Giovenale: Tempio armonico 96 Anderson, Mark 385 Andrei, Antonio 321–2, 325, 327 Andreozzi, Gaetano 334–5 Anfossi, Pasquale 328, 334 Il geloso in cimento 334 I viaggiatori felici 334 Angelini, Giuseppe Antonio 181–2 Angiolini, Gasparo: Sémiramis 296 Anna Ivanovna, Tsarina of Russia 140–1, 144–5, 151–2 Annibali, Domenico 143, 146, 148–9, 151, 154
Anonymous Es wird scho glei dumpa 371–2 L’homme armé 79 Missa Caput 82 Missa Veterem hominem 82 Ríu, ríu, chíu 93 Roman de Tristan 393 Tartana in Morea 237 Antwerp Cathedral 76 Apel, Willi 378, 384 Apolloni, Giovanni Filippo 204 Aquinas, St Thomas: Summa theologiae 93–5 Aranda, Luis de: Quomodo sedet sola 6, 121, 124–38 Arcadelt, Jacques: Il bianco e dolce cigno 96 Ariosto, Ludovico: Orlando furioso 239–40 Aristotle 94–5, 216, 250, 255, 295 Arnim, Achim von 358 Arnold, Denis and Elsie 219 Astaritta, Gennaro 334 August ii, ‘the Strong’, King of Poland 140–1, 143, 148 August iii Wettin, King of Poland, Elector of Saxony 6, 139–58 Augustine of Hippo, St 86, 90, 93–4 Aureli, Aurelio 7, 203–7, 212–13, 239 La costanza di Rosmonda 7, 203–7, 212–13 Erismena 203 Medoro 239 Olimpia vendicata 239 Autié, Léonard 312 Aviles, Manuel Leitão de 134 Bach, Johann Sebastian 82, 185, 388–9 Bakhtin, Mikhail 290, 347 Baldacci, Luigi 349, 352 Baldini, Gabriele 340, 352 Barcelona 126 Barry, Spranger 289 Barthes, Roland 280 Bartolomé de Carranza 88 Bartolomeo da Bologna: Credo 40 Basel 44 Council of 90
432 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Bate, Jonathan 229 Baudelaire, Charles 362, 372 Baumbach, Rudolf 355 Bautzen 142 Bayazid ii, Sultan 17 BBC Radio 3 82 Beethoven, Ludwig van 229, 329, 388–9 ‘Moonlight’ Sonata 229 Bellini, Vincenzo: La sonnambula 342 Benjamin, Walter 360–2, 367, 372–3 Bent, Margaret xiii, 5 Benti, Marianna, ‘La Romanina’ 241, 278 Beregan, Nicolò: Giustino 217 Berg, Alban: Wozzeck 298 Bergman, Ingrid 279 Berkeley, George 186 Berlin 371 Berlioz, Hector 229, 299, 400 La Damnation de Faust 229 La Mort de Cléopâtre 299 Symphonie fantastique 400 Bernardi, Francesco See Senesino Bernardini, Marcello 334 Berton, Henri-Montan: Le Délire 310 Besseler, Heinrich 115, 376, 379–82, 384 Bianchi, Francesco: La villanella rapita 333 Bianconi, Lorenzo 234 Biffi, Antonino 215 Bigaglia, Diogenio 215 Billardon de Sauvigny, Louis Edmé: Péronne sauvée 301 Binchois 40, 42–3, 46, 63–4, 71, 80 Bindi, Giovanni 143, 148–9, 151 Bissari, Pietro Paolo: Bradamante 239 Bizet, Georges: Carmen 337 Blackburn, Bonnie J. xiii Blume, Friedrich 377–8 Boccaccio, Giovanni 394–6 Ninfali 395 Boethius 77, 94 De institutione musica 77 Boetticher, Wolfgang 379–82 Boiardo, Matteo Maria 397 Boieldieu, Adrien 311 Bologna 252, 284–5 Boniventi, Giuseppe: Armida al campo 7, 233, 239, 241, 245, 249 Bordoni, Faustina 278, 285, 291 Bouvines 301
Braccioli, Grazio 239–40, 249 Armida in Damasco 239, 249 Orlando finto pazzo 240 Orlando furioso 239–40 Rodomonte sdegnato 240 Brentano, Clemens 358 Brethren of Purity 12 Breunich, Johann Michael 141, 146, 153 Brinkmann, Reinhold 381, 386, 388–9 Brossard, Sébastien de 331 Brosses, Charles de 286 Brown, Bruce Alan 343 Bruges 3 Brühl, Count Heinrich von 143–4 Brumel, Antoine 75, 80 Bryant, David xiii, 5 Bucciarelli, Melania xiii, 7 Bücken, Ernst 384 Budden, Julian 340, 343–4 Buini, Giuseppe Maria: Armida delusa 239 Bukofzer, Manfred 378 Burney, Charles 286 Busnoys, Antoine 74, 78, 80, 113 In hydraulis 80 Missa L’homme armé 78 Busse Berger, Anna Maria xiii, 5 Cahors 87 Cairo, Egyptian National Library 16–17, 22 Cajetan, Thomas, Cardinal (Tommaso de Vio) 88, 90, 95–6 Caldara, Antonio: Ciro riconosciuto 250, 252 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 208 Faeton 208 Fineza contra fineza 208 El hijo del Sol 208 Ni amor se libra de amor 208 Calzabigi, Ranieri de 296, 298 Les Danaïdes 298 Sémiramis 296 Cambrai 83 Candia 106 Capece, Carlo Sigismondo 209–10 I giochi troiani 209 Carestini, Giovanni 290 Carli, Gian Rinaldo 237 Carlos ii, King of Spain 208 Caruso, Luigi 333–4
Index 433 Cassetti, Giacomo 214, 220 Juditha triumphans 214 Castiglione, Baldassare: Tirsi 397 Castris, Francesco de 165 Castro, Martín de 127 Catholic Monarchs 125, 132 Cavalli, Francesco: Bradamante 239 Caviceo, Jacopo: Il peregrino 397 Cazzati, Mauritio 220 Celestini, Federico xiv, 8 Cendoni, Giovanni 221 Cennini, Cennino 29 Cerda, Luis Francisco de la 208 Chabanon, Michel-Paul-Guy de 306–7, 309 De la musique considérée en elle-même 306–7 Chandos, Duke of 184 Charles ii, King of Spain 126–7 Charles the Bold, Duke 79 Charles v, Emperor 113, 125, 301 Charlton, David 307 Checchino (castrato) 165 Cherubini, Luigi 7–8, 294–6, 311–35 Démophoon 312, 329 Eliza 312 Koukourgi 312 Lodoïska 294, 312, 328–9, 332 Marguerite d’ Anjou 313, 332 Médée 7, 294–6, 303, 307–8, 310–11 Chiabrera, Gabriello 397 Christina, Queen of Sweden 166, 206, 394–5 Cibber, Mrs 289 Ciconia, Johannes 45 Cimarosa, Domenico 324–8, 333–5 Il fanatico burlato 333 L’ impresario in angustie 333 L’ italiana in Londra 324–8, 334 Il sacrificio d’ Abramo 324 Le trame deluse 335 Cividate Camuno 106 Clement ix, Pope 206 Clement xi, Pope 166–7, 179 Clerks’ Group, The 74, 77, 82 Coimbra 87 Cola di Rienzo 395 Colatelli, Girolamo: L’ honor al cimento 239 Colonna, Carlo, Cardinal 163 Colonna, Giovanni Paolo 220
Compère, Loyset 80 Condé sur l’Escaut 83 Cone, Edward T. 277 Conegliano 106–7 Corelli, Arcangelo 330, 405 Corneille, Pierre: Discours de la tragédie 256 Corradi, Giulio Cesare 234, 239 Gli avvenimenti d’ Erminia e di Clorinda 239 Il gran Tamerlano 234 La Gerusalemme liberata 239 Correa, Fray Manuel 121 Corti, Maria 347, 349 Cotes, Ambrosio 125, 128, 130–31, 133 Mortuus est Philippus rex 128, 130–31, 133 Cousin, Jean (Jean Escatefer dit Cousin): Missa tube 46, 65, 71 Cuenca 126 cummings, e. e.: No Thanks 407 Cuzzoni, Francesa 278, 285 D’ Accone, Frank A. 113 D’ Alembert, Jean le Rond: Encyclopédie 330 Dalayrac, Nicolas-Marie 301, 303, 307, 311 Raoul sire de Créqui 307 Sargines 301, 303 Dante Alighieri 206, 394–5 Ecloga 395 David, Hans 378 Davison, Archibald T. 384 Dean, Winton 180 Della Maria, Dominique 311 Della Seta, Fabrizio 340 Desriaux, Philippe: La Toison d’ or (Médée à Colchos) 305 Deutsch, Otto Erich 378 Dexter, John 339 Dezède, Nicolas: Péronne sauvée 301 Diderot, Denis 330–1 ‘Au petit prophête de Boesmischbroda’ 331 Encyclopédie 330 Dietrich, Marlene 289 Dilettante, Il (pasticcio) 334 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 153 Di Profio, Alessandro 313, 327 Donà, Giovan Battista: Letteratura de’ Turchi 237, 246–7 Donarelli 397
434 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Donizetti, Gaetano 342, 358, 369 Don Sebastiano 358, 369 La Fille du régiment 342 Linda di Chamounix 342 Dresden 141–3, 147–8, 153, 158 Dubowy, Norbert xiv, 7 Du Fay, Guillaume 39–40, 42–3, 46–7, 59, 62–3, 65–8, 70–2, 74, 76, 78, 82–3, 115 Apostolo glorioso 59, 62, 66 Ecclesie militantis 62 Inclita stella maris 47 Missa Ave Regina 65, 71 Missa L’homme armé 78 Missa Sancti Jacobi 40, 42–3, 63 Nuper rosarum flores 76 Rite maiorem 62 Sanctus Papale 39–40 Supremum est mortalibus 62, 76 Vasilissa ergo gaude 58, 63, 76 Dümling, Albrecht 386–8 Dunstable, John 82 Durazzo, Count Giacomo 219 Dürer, Albrecht 29 Durosoy, Barnabé Farmion: Henri iv 301 Eichendorff, Joseph von 355–6, 366–7 Ahnung und Gegenwart 356 Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts 355 Lockung 366 Einstein, Alfred 193, 378, 384–86 Elizabeth, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire 250 Engel, Johann Immanuel 190 Epstein, Julius 357 Erasmus, Desiderius 87 Ercole d’Este i, Duke 76 Escobedo, Bartolomé de 131 Escorial, El 87, 119, 125 Euripides 295 Fabbri, Paolo 234 Fabiano, Andrea 313 Fabrizi, Vincenzo 334 Fallows, David 115 Fārābī, al- (Alpharabius) 12, 21 Farassino, Alberto 351 Farinelli 276, 278, 285–6 Farmer, H. G. 21 Faustina See Bordoni, Faustina Faustini, Giovanni: Ormindo 203
Febvre, Michel: Teatro della Turchia 237 Feldman, Martha 288 Fend, Michael xiv, 7–8 Fenlon, Iain 130 Ferdinand, Prince of Tuscany 180 Ferdinand ii, King of Aragon 125 Ferrara 252, 392 Ferrari, Giacomo 313, 333–5 Ferschen, Johann Albert 235 Finscher, Ludwig 379 Fischer, Jens Malte 356 Floquet, Étienne Joseph: Le Seigneur bienfaisant 299–300, 303 Florence 76, 106, 162–5, 180, 182 Fontaine, Pierre: J’ aime bien 45–6, 67, 70 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de 159 Fortuna, Gomes: Historia delli due ultimi gran visiri 237 Franchois, Jean (Gemblaco): Ave virgo 45–6, 58–61, 63, 72 Frederick iv, Duke, Count of Tyrol 44 Freschi, Domenico 220 Frugoni, Francesco 397 Fuchs, Johann Nepomuk 357 Furlanetto, Bonaventura: Joseph, pro-rex Aegypti 220 Gallo, F. Alberto 33 Gallone, Carmine 351 Galuppi, Baldassare: Ciro riconosciuto 252 Garbo, Greta 290 Gardel, Maximilien 299 Garrick, David 289 Gasparini, Francesco 220, 224 Sol in tenebris 220 Gasparini, Michel Angelo: Rodomonte sdegnato 240 Gaveaux, Pierre: Léonore 307 Gazzaniga, Giuseppe 333, 335 Il convitato di pietra 335 Il finto cieco 335 Le vendemmie 335 Gebel, Georg 143 Geck, Martin 379, 389–90 Geiringer, Karl 378, 384 Gentili, Alberto 219 Gesellschaft für Musikforschung 377, 380 Ghezzi, Pierleone 286 Ghisi, Federico 1 Ghislanzoni, Antonio 343–4
Index 435 Ghiyāth al-dīn Muhammad, Sultan 19 Giannini, Giovanni Matteo 207 Giardini, Felice 334 Giordanello See Giordani, Giuseppe Giordani, Giuseppe (Giordanello) 334–5 Giordani, Tommaso 333 Giovanni da Firenze (da Caccia): La bella stella 32–5 Giraldi, Giovanni Battista: Egle 397 Glixon, Jonathan 106 Gluck, Christoph Willibald 7, 219, 296–9, 301, 303, 305, 307–8 Alceste 299, 307 Armide 301, 307 Iphigénie en Aulide 303, 307 Iphigénie en Tauride 296–8, 303 Orphée 299 Sémiramis 296–8 Goehr, Lydia 39, 329 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: Der Fischer 365 Gombosi, Otto 384 Gonzaga, Francesco 113 Gossett, Philip 337 Göttingen 382 Gottwald, Clytus 380 Götzel, Johann Joseph 143, 148–9, 151 Graf, Herbert 339 Granada 121, 124–7, 130–2, 134 Gravina, Giovanni Vincenzo: Ragione poetica 394 Grétry, André-Ernest-Modeste 303, 306–10 De la vérité 308–9 Le Comte d’ Albert 307 Memoirs 310 Raoul Barbe-Bleue 303, 306 Richard Cœur-de-lion 303 Grossin, Estienne 44–6, 52–7, 59, 63, 66, 71 Missa trompetta 52, 59 Guarini, Giambattista 392, 394, 397 Compendio della poesia tragicomica 392, 394 Guglielmi, Pietro Alessandro 333–5 La bella pescatrice 334 Le due gemelle 334 La pastorella nobile 333 Guidiccioni, Caterina 393–4 Guidiccioni, Laura 393 Guillard, Nicolas François: Les Danaïdes 298
Guise, duc de 301 Gülke, Peter 379, 382 Haar, James 34 Haarlem: Philharmonie 74–5 Hamburg 161–2, 169, 179 Handel, George Frideric 6, 143, 159–84, 190, 249, 276, 291 Aci, Galatea e Polifemo 175–7, 182 Acis and Galatea 175–6 Agrippina 162, 177, 180, 182 Agrippina condotta a morire 160 Almira 178, 182 Amadigi 183 Arresta il passo 167 Brockes Passion 178–9 Chandos Anthems 184 Clori, Tirsi e Fileno 164 Cor fedel 175–6 Il delirio amoroso 160–1, 166–76, 178–84 Dixit Dominus 162 Hendel, non può mia musa 164, 167 Jephtha 183–4 La Lucrezia 160, 169, 179 Lungi da me, pensier tiranno 170–1, 179 Oh, come chiare 167 Il pastor fido 183 Il Resurrezione 182 Rinaldo 178, 249 Rodrigo 162, 178, 180–3 Sarei troppo felice 171 Silla 183 Suite in F minor (1720) 190 Tolomeo 291 Il trionfo del tempo 164, 167 Haro, Gasparo de, marquis del Carpio 208 Harrer, Gottlob 143 Harris, Ellen T. xiv, 6 Handel as Orpheus 160, 166 H asan al-Kātib, al- 15, 22 Kitāb adab al-ghinā᾿ 15 The Perfection of Musical Knowledge 22 Hasse, Johann Adolph 140–1, 146, 153, 155, 252, 276 Artaserse 276 Ciro riconosciuto 252 Numa 153 Haydn, Joseph 305 Heidelberg 380–1 Heine, Heinrich 356, 365, 367
436 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Heinichen, Johann David 140, 146, 148 Diana su l’Elba 146, 148 Heinrich of Freiburg 46 Heller, Wendy 233 Herodotus 253 Hicks, Anthony 162 Hilverding, Franz 296 Himmler, Heinrich 374 Hippodamus of Miletus 398 Hitler, Adolf 377–8, 386 Hoffman, François-Benoît: Medée 295–6, 310 Hoffmann, E. T. A.: Undine 365 Hoffmeister, Franz Anton 188 Hollywood 278, 291 Hölty, Ludwig Heinrich Christoph 357–8 Homer 80, 365 L’homme armé 79 Hornbostel, Erich von 377 Huber, Kurt 377, 383–4 Hugo, Victor 340–2 Hume, David 186 Hume, Robert D. 168 H unain ibn Ishāq 12 Ibn ‘Abd Allāh, Mustafā: Cronologia historica 237 Ibn al-T ahhān: The Collection of Arts and the Consolation of the Vexed 22 Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) 12 Ibn Surayj 14 Ingegneri, Angelo: Della poesia rappresentativa 392–4 International Musicological Society 1 Iosseliani, Otar: Pastoral 405–6 Isabella i, Queen of Castile 89, 125 Isabel of Bourbon 126 Ismā῾īl i 23 Ivanovich, Cristoforo 207 Jadin, Louis Emmanuel 314, 335 Il Signor di Pursogna 335 Jaén 125 Jahn, Otto 187 Jalāl al-dīn H usein, Sultan 19 Janequin, Clément: Missa super La bataille 93 Jerome, St 94 Johannes de Quadris: Lamentationes 108
John xxii, Pope 87, 91, 93 Docta sanctorum 87, 91 John, Eckhard 387 Jommelli, Nicolò: Ciro riconosciuto 7, 250–74 Joncus, Berta xiv, 7 Josephson, David 384 Josquin des Prez 76, 79–83 Illibata Dei nutrix 81 Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae 76 Nymphes des bois 80 Tu solus qui facis mirabilia 79 Juana the Mad 125 Juan Martín de Riscos 128–9 Kallberg, Jeffrey 229 Karlowitz, Treaty of 234 Kassel 355, 358 Kaye, Philip 42, 63–4 Keiser, Reinhold 162, 174–6, 178–9, 182 Claudius 178 Octavia 162, 174–6, 179, 182 Kerman, Joseph 339, 385 Kindī, al- 12 King’s College, London 2 Kirkendale, Ursula 161–4, 167, 180, 182 Kitzinger, Ernst 27–8 Knapp, J. Merrill 180 Koblenz 329 Koch, Heinrich Christoph: Musikalisches Lexikon 186 Königsberg 142 Kraków 141–2 Kraus, Joseph Martin 298 Kreitner, Kenneth 92 Kuhnau, Johann: Biblische Historien 227 La Motte-Fouqué, Friedrich de 365 La Rue, Pierre de 75, 79–80 O salutaris hostia 79 Lādhiqī, ῾Abd al-H amīd al-: al-Risāla al-fath iyya 13, 16–19 Lagrange-Chancel, Joseph: Amasis 254–5, 257, 264, 272, 274 Lalli, Domenico 218, 240 La pazzia di Orlando 240 Ottone in villa 218 Landini, Francesco 30 Lang, Paul Henry 385
Index 437 Lantins, Arnold de: Missa O pulcherrima 46, 62–3, 68, 70 Lauretano, Michele 111 Le Sueur, Jean-François 306, 311 Leclerc, Jean-Baptiste 308 Legrant, Guillaume 40, 42, 45, 71 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 186 Lemoyne, Jean-Baptiste: Electre 303–4, 309 Leo x, Pope 76 Leo, Leonardo: Ciro riconosciuto 252 Leonardo da Vinci 28–9 Leopardi, Giacomo: Zibaldone 401 Lepanto, Battle of 238 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 238 Lisbon 126 Listenius, Nicolaus 330 Livy 153 Lobo, Alonso: Versa est in luctum 120, 128, 134 Löhr, Friedrich 356 London 74, 400 Royal Festival Hall 74 Longinus 395 Loqueville, Richard 40, 44–52, 59, 63 Lotti, Antonio 220 Louis xiv, King of France 399 Louis xv, King of France 399 Louis xvi, King of France 301, 309 Lowinsky, Edward 378–9, 381 Luccio, Francesco: Medoro 239 Lucente, Gregory 348 Lully, Jean-Baptiste: Armide 244 Lupi, Johannes 44 Ma῾bad 15 Machaut, Guillaume de 45 McClellan, Michael 313 Madrid 120, 126, 166, 337 San Gerónimo 120 Maffei, Clara 343, 345 Maffei, Scipione: Merope 254, 257, 262, 264, 266, 272, 274 Magalhães, Filipe de 121 Mahler, Gustav 8, 25, 355–73, 378–9 Des Knaben Wunderhorn 358, 363 Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen 8, 355–73 Symphony no. 1 371 Mainwaring, John 162–3, 180 Malik al-Ashraf, al- 21
Mālik ibn abī᾿l-Samah 14 Mann, Thomas: Der Zauberberg 365 Mantua 217–18, 224, 252 Manzoni, Alessandro 8, 342–52 Del romanzo storico 345 I promessi sposi 8, 342–52 Marcello, Benedetto 220 Marcello da Capua See Bernardini, Marcello Marchi, Antonio 218, 240 Alcina delusa da Rugero 240 La costanza trionfante 218 Margaret of Austria 126 Maria Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg 208 Maria Antonia Walpurgis, Electress Dowager 155 Maria Christina, Princess of Poland 148 Maria Elisabeth, Princess of Poland 148 Maria Josepha, Queen of Poland 140–1, 144, 146, 148–9, 153–4 Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France 309, 312 Marini, Biagio 330 Marino, Giovan Battista 397 Adone 397 Sampogna 397 Marmontel, Jean-François 296–7, 301, 309–10 Essai sur les révolutions de la musique en France 296–7, 301 Marschner, Heinrich 358 Hans Heiling 358 Der Templer und die Jüdin 358 Der Vampyr 358 Martín de Azpilcueta 5, 86–102 Commento 88–9, 92, 96–102 Enchiridion seu manuale confessariorum 88 Enchiridion sive manuale de oratione 86, 88–102 Martínez, Juan: Relacion, de las exequias … por el Rey Don Philipe 121–4 Martini, Johann Paul Aegidius 301, 307 Henri iv 301 Sapho 307 Martín y Soler, Vicente 334–5 Il burbero di buon cuore 334 Una cosa rara 335 Mattheson, Johann 169, 173, 178–9, 182 Cleopatra 169, 182
438 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Medici, Cosimo ii de ’ , Grand Duke 130 Medici, Ferdinand de ’ , Prince 164 Medici, Francesco Maria de ’ , Cardinal 163–4 Medici, Ottaviano, Prince 164 Méhul, Étienne-Nicolas 294, 307, 310–11 Ariodant 311 Euphrosine 310 Mélidore et Phrosine 294, 311 Timoléon 307 Melani, Alessandro 203 Melk Anonymous 68 Menchelli-Buttini, Francesca xv, 7 Mendelssohn, Arnold 378 Mengozzi, Bernardo 333–5 L’ isola disabitata 333 Menzini, Benedetto 206 Méreaux, Nicolas-Jean Le Froid de: Alexandre aux Indes 301–2 Merriam, Alan 11 Metastasio, Pietro 7, 146, 149, 152–4, 219, 227, 244, 250, 255–6, 273–4, 279, 284, 286, 301 Achille in Sciro 244, 256 Adriano in Siria 256 Alessandro nell’ Indie 273, 301 Ciro riconosciuto 250–74 La clemenza di Tito 256 Demofoonte 256 Estratto dell’ Arte Poetica d’ Aristotile 250, 255–6, 274 Ezio 273 Olimpiade 256 Siroe 273 Il sogno di Scipione 149, 153 Temistocle 256 Zenobia 256 Meyerbeer, Giacomo 342, 380 Le Prophète 342 Robert le diable 342 Michelangelo Buonarroti 29, 72 Michiel, Polo 207 Milan 347 Teatro alla Scala 336, 338 Minato, Nicolò: Pompeo Magno 209 Minotto, Angelo 111 Mioni, Teodoro: La Turca fedele 237 Mira, Pietro 146, 154 Modena 397 Molinet, Jean: Nymphes des bois 80
Moniglia, Giovanni Andrea: La serva nobile 201 Monk of Salzburg 69 Monroe, Marylin 289 Montale, Eugenio: Ossi di Seppia 403 Montalto, Lina 163, 166 Monteverdi, Claudio 130 Monteverdi, Francesco 130 Monvel, Jacques Marie Boutet de: Sargines 301, 303 Morales, Cristóbal de 79, 134 Magnificat Octavi Toni 79 Morel de Chédeville, Étienne: Alexandre aux Indes 301 Morelli, Giovanni xv, 8 Morosini, Francesco 237–8 Morselli, Adriano: Ibraim sultano 235 Moser, Hans Joachim 378, 387 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 6, 185–95, 225, 333, 335, 342, 389 Don Giovanni 225, 342 Fantasy in C minor, k. 475 7, 185, 187, 194–5 Fugue in C minor, k. 426 188 Gigue in G major, k. 574 190–1, 194 Sonata in B flat, k. 570 194 Sonata in C minor, k. 457 7, 185, 187, 189, 194–5 Sonata in D major, k. 576 194 Sonata in F major, k. 533+494 6, 185, 187–95 String Quartet k. 387 194 Symphony no. 41 (Jupiter) 194 Müller, Wilhelm 355–6, 363–4, 372 Die schöne Müllerin 356, 364 Die Winterreise 355, 363, 372 Munich 1 Murcia 126 Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 378, 380, 383, 387 Nābulusī, ῾Abd al-Ghanī al- 13 Naples 92, 106, 208, 283–4, 315 Teatro dei Fiorentini 315 Naumann, Johann Gottlieb 333 Navarre 87 Negri, Vittorio 214 Netter, Thomas 93 Neue Mozart Ausgabe 193 New Grove Dictionary 380, 383
Index 439 Newman, William S. 159 New York 25, 339 Metropolitan Museum 25 Metropolitan Opera 339 Nicolini (printer) 235 Noiray, Michel xv, 7, 313 Noris, Matteo: Tito Manlio 218 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) 361 Noverre, Jean-Georges: Médée et Jason 296 Obizzi, Marchese degli 207 Obrecht, Jacob 78–80 Mille quingentis 80 Missa Malheur me bat 79 Missa Sub tuum praesidium 78–9 Ockeghem, Johannes 74–5, 78, 80–2, 84–5 Missa Fors seulement 82 Missa L’homme armé 78 Missa Pro defunctis 74–5, 82, 84–5 Missa Prolationum 81 Missa Sine nomine 82 Olgiati, Settimio 207 Ono, Yoko 74 Order of the Golden Fleece 78 O’Regan, Noel 110–11 Orgiani, Teofilo: L’ honor al cimento 239 Orsini, Flavio 204 Ottoboni, Pietro, Cardinal 163–4, 167, 203, 206, 208 Ovid: Metamorphoses 217 Oviedo 126 Paczkowski, Szymon 158 Padua 105 Paisiello, Giovanni 314–25, 328, 333–5 Il barbiere di Siviglia 314, 333 I filosofi immaginari 333 La frascatana 334 La molinarella (L’ amor contrastato) 315–25, 328, 333 La pazza per amore 335 Pirro 320 Il re Teodoro in Venezia 333 La serva padrona 333 Il tamburo notturno 314, 335 Palazzi, Giovanni: Armida al campo d’ Egitto 239, 249 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da 82
Pallavicino, Carlo: La Gerusalemme liberata 239 Pallavicino, Stefano Benedetto 139–40, 143–4, 146–53, 155–8 Cantata: ‘Si disarmi quest’ altiero Amore’ 147–9, 155–7 Componimento: ‘Su l’incudine sonora’ 149 Diana su l’ Elba 146, 148 Numa 153 Questa che il sol produce 146 Versi cantati: ‘Dai crini omai scuotete’ 151–2, 155–8 Palomba, Giuseppe: La molinarella 315–24 Pamphilj, Benedetto, Cardinal 161–2, 164–8, 171, 179, 182, 202–3, 210–11 Pamplona 126 Paolo da Firenze: Ars ad discantandum contrapunctum 29–32, 34–5 Paris 7, 298–9, 301, 303, 305, 312–35, 400 Académie Royale de Musique 312, 329 Opéra 299, 301, 303 Opéra-Comique 301, 312 Théâtre Feydeau 312–35 Parker, Roger 339 Pasqualini family 164 Pasquini, Bernardo 203 Pasquini, Giovanni Claudio 139–40, 146, 152–5 La liberalità di Numa Pompilio 152–5 Paul, Jean (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter): Die wunderbare Gesellschaft in der Neujahresnacht 356 Paulus Paulirinus 67–70 Pauluzzi, Antonio 76 Pepoli, Count Sicinio 285 Péronne 301 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) 394–5, 397 Petrella, Errico 343–4 Petrobelli, Pierluigi xv Petrucci, Ottaviano 76 Philidor, François-André Danican: Ernelinde 301 Philip ii, King of Spain 6, 87, 119–34 Philip iii, King of Spain 122, 126 Philip iv, King of Spain 126 Philip v, King of Spain 166 Philip the Fair 125 Piave, Francesco Maria 337–8, 349, 350, 352
440 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Piccinni, Niccolò 252, 296, 298, 333 La buona figliuola 333 Ciro riconosciuto 252 Roland 298 Pipelet de Leury, Constance Marie: Sapho 307 Pirrotta, Nino 1, 34 Pisa 252 Pisendel, Johann Georg 142–3 Planchart, Alejandro Enrique 66, 115 Pliny 397 Politauri, Antonio 209–10 Pollarolo, Antonio 220 Rosa inter spinas 220 Sacrum amoris 220 Sterilis faecunda 220 Pollarolo, Carlo Francesco 220, 235, 239 Gli avvenimenti d’ Erminia e di Clorinda 239 Ibraim sultano 235 Rex regum in Veneti 220 Pope, Alexander 184 Porta, Giovanni: Il ritratto dell’ eroe 225 Potter, Pamela M. xv, 8 Power, Leonel 82 Pozzi, Niccolò 143, 148–9, 151 Prague 25 Préchac, Jean de: Carà Mustafà Gran Visir 237 Predieri, Luca Antonio: Il sogno di Scipione 149, 153 Preto, Paolo 238 Prosdocimus de Beldemandis: Contrapunctus 29, 35–6 Proust, Marcel: À la recherche du temps perdu 362, 373 Pycard: Gloria 59 Pythagoras 80 Quaranta, Elena xvi, 5 Quatremère de Quincy, AntoineChrysôstome 328 Queen Christina of Sweden 211 Querelle des Bouffons 331 Quinault, Philippe: Armide 244 Raffanelli 334–5 Raimondi, Ezio 347, 349 Rameau, Jean-Philippe: Les Indes galantes 391, 399
Ramis de Pareja 36 Rampini, Giacomo: Armida in Damasco 239, 249 Reaney, Gilbert 47, 115 Rees, Owen xvi, 6 Révéroni Saint-Cyr, Jacques-Antoine de: Le Délire 310 Ricci, Marco 286 Richter, Johanna 355–6 Riethmüller, Albrecht 388 Ringer, Alexander L. 355, 358 Rinuccini, Ottavio 397 Riscos, Juan Martín de 125, 128 Ristori, Giovanni Alberto 6, 139–58 Calandro 147 Cantata: ‘Si disarmi quest’ altiero Amore’ 147–9, 155–7 Componimento: ‘Su l’incudine sonora’ 149, 155–8 Don Chisciotte 147 I lamenti d’ Orfeo 153 La liberalità di Numa Pompilio 152–6, 158 Orlando furioso 140, 239–40 Versi cantati: ‘Dai crini omai scuotete’ 151–2, 155–8 Rivas, Duke of (Ángel de Saavedra) 341, 345, 347, 349–51 Don Alvaro 341, 345, 347, 349–50 Rivista italiana di musicologia 1 Robert of Anjou 395 Roberts, John 181 Robespierre, Maximilien 295 Robinson, Michael 315 Roccatagliati, Alessandro 345 Rochetti, Ventura 146, 154 Rochon de Chabannes, Marc-AntoineJacques: Le Seigneur bienfaisant 299, 303 Rodolphe, Jean Joseph: Médée et Jason 296 Romano, Antonio: Gloria/Credo 39–40 Rome 2, 88, 106, 110–11, 114, 161–9, 180–2, 200, 202–4, 206–11, 284, 286, 329 Collegio Germanico 110–11, 114 San Giovanni Laterano 161–4 Rosand, David 29 Rosenberg, Alfred 374, 377, 381–2 Rosenthal, Franz 23 Rospigliosi, Giulio See Clement ix, Pope Rossini, Gioachino: La gazza ladra 342 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: Dictionnaire 330–1
Index 441 Ruggeri, Giovanni Maria: Armida abbandonata 7, 233, 239, 241–5, 247–9 Ruspoli, Francesco, Marchese 163–4, 167, 169, 171, 181–2 Sacchini, Antonio 335 Sachs, Curt 377–8, 384 Safi al-dīn 13 Sagredo, Giovanni: Memorie istoriche de’ monarchi ottomani 235 Said, Edward 233, 237–8, 249 Saint-Huberty, Madame de 301 St Petersburg 336 Salamanca 87, 126 Salazar y Torre, Agustín de: Los juegos olímpicos 209 Salieri, Antonio 298–9, 306, 333–5 La bella locandiera 335 La grotta di Trofonio 333 Les Danaïdes 298–9, 306 La scuola de’ gelosi 335 Salinis, Hymbert de: Salve regina 39–40, 63 Salò 106 Salzburg 1 Sannazaro, Iacopo 395–7, 410–13 Arcadia 395–6, 410–13 De partu Virginis 397 Eglogae piscatoriae 396 Sansovino, Francesco: Historia universale dell’ origine et imperio de’ Turchi 235 Sarti, Giuseppe 252, 314, 333–5 Ciro riconosciuto 252 Le gelosie villan 334 Le nozze di Dorina 314, 333 Sartre, Jean-Paul 403 Scarlatti, Alessandro 203, 207–8, 220 Aldimiro 207–8 La Rosmene 203 Scheller, Robert 28 Schering, Arnold 384 Schiller, Friedrich: Wallensteins Lager 345 Schlegel, Friedrich 370 Schlosser, Julius von 25, 27 Schmidt, Johann Christoph 140 Schoenberg, Arnold 378–9 Schrade, Leo 378, 384, 386 Schrick, Matthias 111 Schubert, Franz 356–60, 363–4, 368, 370 Der Leiermann 359 Die Mainacht 357–8, 360, 363
Die schöne Müllerin 356, 364, 368 Waldesnacht 370 Wegweiser 358 Die Winterreise 368 Schumann, Robert 356, 381 Dichterliebe 356 Schürer, Johann Georg 141, 146 Schuster, Joseph 146, 154 Schütz, Heinrich 185 Sedaine, Michel-Jean 303 Raoul Barbe-Bleue 303 Richard Cœur-de-lion 303 Selim, Sultan 23 Senesino 241, 276 Senici, Emanuele xvi, 8 Seville 126, 132–3 Shakespeare, William 229, 340–2 Shiloah, Amnon xvi, 5, 11 The Theory of Music in Arabic Writings 11 Shujā῾, Shah 21 Šibenik 106 Sicilian Mimes 397 Siena 106, 113–14 Silvani, Francesco 233, 239, 241–5, 247–9 Armida abbandonata 7, 233, 239, 241–5, 247–9 Armida al campo 7, 233, 239, 241, 245, 249 Silvestre, Louis de 158 Sinibaldi, Giacomo 204 Smith, Janet M. xvi Soler, Antonio 333 Solís y Rivadeneyra, Antonio de: Las Amazonas de Scithia 208 Sophron 397 Spagna, Arcangelo 206, 210–11, 216 Discorso intorno a gl’ Oratorii 206 Oratorii 216 Spanish Succession, War of the 164, 166–7 Stanisław i Leszczyński, King of Poland 141–2, 152 Statius 395 Steffani, Agostino 161–2 Steiner, Josef 355 Stenzl, Jürg 385 Stigliani, Tommaso 397 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 403, 407–10 Für commende Zeiten 407–10 Indianer Lieder 403 Stone, Anne 34–5 Strasbourg 44
442 Music as Social and Cultural Practice Strauss, Johann: Eine Nacht in Venedig 371–2 Strohm, Reinhard 1–5, 8, 38–9, 44, 52–3, 58–9, 62, 67–8, 70, 72, 77, 91, 96, 159–60, 164, 167, 180, 182, 216, 230, 249, 250, 252, 275–7, 284–6, 290, 292, 329, 376, 381, 391, 399 ‘A Book of Cantatas …’ 159 Dramma per musica 276 Essays on Handel and Italian Opera 159–60, 164, 276, 290 ‘Handel and his Italian Opera Texts’ 159, 180 ‘Handel in Italia’ 159 ‘Händel und Italien’ 159, 180 ‘Italian Operisti North of the Alps’ 276, 284, 286 Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento 284, 290 ‘Looking Back at Ourselves’ 4, 39, 77, 376 Music in Late Medieval Bruges 1 ‘The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?’ 275 ‘Native and Foreign Polyphony in Late Medieval Austria’ 44 The Rise of European Music 1, 38, 44, 52–3, 58–9, 62, 67, 70, 91, 96 ‘Les Sauvages …’ 391 ‘Scarlattiana at Yale’ 159, 167 ‘Tragédie into Dramma per musica’ 216 ‘Vivaldi’s Career as an Opera Producer’ 285 ‘Zenobia: Voices and Authorship in Opera Seria’ 277, 292 Suard, Jean-Baptiste 305 Suleiman the Magnificent 23 Sułkowski, Count Józef Aleksander 148 Sulzer, Johann Georg: Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste 186 Tabriz 22–3 Talbot, Michael xvi, 7, 148 Tansillo, Luigi: Due pellegrini 397 Tarchi, Angelo 314, 334 Don Quisciotte 334 Tarkovskij, Andrej 406 Tasso, Torquato 7, 206, 232–49, 393, 397 Aminta 393 Della virtù femminile e donnesca 233, 249 Gerusalemme liberata 7, 232–49
Tattersall, Ian 399 Theocritus 165, 397 Theresa Kunigunde, Electress of Bavaria 224 Thirty Years War 345 Thomas of Britain 393 Thomas Waldensis 93 Tiepoli, Pasqualino 165 Tinctoris, Johannes 36, 80 Toledo 120 Tomeoni, Florido 334 Tosi, Pier Francesco 278, 285 Totis, Giuseppe Domenico de 7, 199–213 Agrippina 208 Aldimiro 207–8 La caduta del regno dell’ Amazzoni 208 Il Fetonte 208 Idalma 208, 210 Psiche 208 Rosmene 199–213 Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere 208 Toulmon, Bottée de 332 Toulouse 87 Trent, Council of 87, 92–3 Treviso 106–7, 111, 114, 117 Tritto, Giacomo 333–5 Le vicende amorose 333 Tuscany 201 Ugolino of Orvieto: Declaratio musicae disciplinae 30, 34–6 Valencia 126, 128, 130–1 Valesio, Francesco 161 Veglia 106 Veneto 106–8 Venice 106–8, 112–14, 116–17, 140, 162, 164, 182, 199, 201–3, 215, 218, 220–1, 224–5, 227, 232–49, 252, 284, 397 ospedali grandi: Derelitti 220; Incurabili 220; Mendicanti 220; Pietà 220–1, 224–5, 227 churches: S. Giobbe 112; S. Giovanni Decollato 117; SS. Giovanni e Paolo 114, 116; S. Marco 107–8; Sta Maria dei Servi 116; S. Maurizio 116; S. Zaccaria 113 scuole grandi 106, 114
Index 443 (Venice) theatres: S. Angelo 140, 238–9, 241; SS. Giovanni e Paolo 203, 235; S. Giovanni Grisostomo 235; S. Luca 240 Verdi, Giuseppe 8, 336–52 Un ballo in maschera 341 Falstaff 341 La forza del destino 8, 336–52 Macbeth 341 Nabucco 344 Otello 341 Rigoletto 341 Stiffelio 344 Verocai, Giovanni 145 Vestris, Gaétan 301 Viadana, Lodovico 109–11, 114–15, 330 Cento concerti ecclesiastici 109–10, 114 Vicenza 218 Vienna 25–6, 149, 185, 188, 250, 369 Kunsthistorisches Museum 25–6 Treaty of (1738) 142 Vienne, Council of 90 Viganoni, Giuseppe 326, 335 Viotti, Giovanni Battista 312–13, 333, 335 Virgil 80, 165, 395, 397 Vivaldi, Antonio 7, 143, 155, 214–31, 238–9, 249, 285 Armida al campo d’ Egitto 239, 249 Arsilda 224 La costanza trionfante 218 Giustino 217 L’ incoronazione di Dario 224 Juditha triumphans 7, 214–31 Moyses Deus Pharaonis 220, 224 Orlando finto pazzo 224, 240 Orlando furioso 240 Ottone in villa 218, 224 Teuzzone 217 Tito Manlio 218 Vogel, Johann Christoph 305, 308 Démophon 308 La Toison d’ or (Médée à Colchos) 305 Volpe, Giovanni Battista: La costanza di Rosmonda 203 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet): Sémiramis 297 Vries, Willem de 382
Wagner, Richard 356–9, 369, 371–2, 389 Das Rheingold 371–2 Siegfried 369 Tannhäuser 356 Waischenfeld, Friedrich Nausea von 87 Walter, Michael 148 Walther von der Vogelweide 363 Warsaw 139–43, 147–8, 153, 155 Wegman, Rob 66 Welker, Lorenz 69–70 Whaples, Miriam 246 Wickham, Edward xvii, 6 Willaert, Adrian: Verbum bonum et suave 82 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 330 Wolf, Johannes 69, 384 Wolff, Christian 186 Wolff, Christoph xvii, 6–7, 381 Wright, Peter 44, 64 Wyclif, John 93 Yepes, Diego de 133 Zacara 39–40, 42, 71 Załuski, Józef Andrzej 152 Zanetti, Anton Maria 286 Zaragoza 121–4 Zarlino, Gioseffo 82 Zatti, Sergio 233 Zelenka, Jan Dismas 142, 146 Questa che il sol produce 146 Zeno, Apostolo 153, 217, 219, 254–5, 257, 264, 267, 273–4 Merope 254–5, 257, 264, 267, 273–4 Teuzzone 217 Ziani, Marc’Antonio 220, 234 Il gran Tamerlano 234 Zimmerman, Bernd Alois: Requiem für einen jungen Dichter 74–5 Zinano, Gabriele: Discorso della tragedia 207 Zingarelli, Niccolò Antonio 333, 335 Zini, Pietro: La volpe ha lassà el pelo sotto Vienna 237 Żórawska-Witkowska, Alina xvii Zuan Maria da Bologna 112, 114
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Tabula Gratulatoria •
Fabrizio Ammetto Mario Armellini Suzanne Aspden Irene Auerbach Margaret Bent
Frohmut DangelHofmann Hermann Danuser Stephen Darlington Alessandro Di Profio
James Grier Ruth HaCohen Ellen T. Harris Sieglinde Hartmann Corinna Herr
Sieghart Döhring
Marjorie Hirsch
Laurence Dreyfus
Christopher Hogwood
Norbert Dubowy
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
Barbara Eichner
Wolfgang Horn
Markus Engelhardt
Oliver Huck
Raymond Erickson
Philip Huckin
David Fallows
Mary Hunter
Francesco Fanna
Berta Joncus
Michael Fend
Andrew V. Jones
Eric F. Fiedler
Estelle Joubert
Gioia Filocamo
Konstantinos Kardamis
Bruno Forment
Simon Keefe
Peter Franklin
Martin Kirnbauer
Hans Walter Gabler
Rainer Kleinertz
Jeanette Gallant
Metoda Kokole
Martin Geck
Agnes Kory
Trevor Charles Burton
Mario, Francesca & Ludovico Geymonat
Larisa Kostyukhina
Anna Maria Busse Berger
Teresa M. Gialdroni
Gundula Kreuzer
Federico Celestini
Francesco Giuntini
Walter K. Kreyszig
David Charlton
Philip Gossett
Franc Križnar
Teresa Chirico
Alicia Grant
Reinhold Kubik
Carmel Croukamp
Helen Green
Ortrun Landmann
Christian Berger Lorenzo Bianconi Giorgio Biancorosso Bonnie J. Blackburn M. Jennifer Bloxam Alessandro Borin Carlo Bosi Daniel Brandenburg Manuel Carlos de Brito Peter Brown David Bryant Melania Bucciarelli Michael Burden David J. Burn Donald Burrows Gregory Robert Burton
Kenneth Kreitner
Elizabeth Eva Leach
Owen Rees
Christian Thomas Leitmeir
Vanessa L. Rogers
Huub van der Linden Lowell E. Lindgren Ann & Alexander Lingas Nicoló Maccavino Sarah McCleave Michael E. McClellan Kurt Markstrom
Angela Romagnoli David Schulenberg Emanuele Senici Amnon Shiloah Janet M. Smith Andrea Sommer-Mathis Brenda Strohm Elvidio Surian
Hans Joachim Marx
Michael Talbot
Magda Marx-Weber
Colin Timms
Francesca Menchelli-Buttini
Alessandro Timossi
Hartmut Moeller Giovanni Morelli Margot Galante Garrone Morelli Michel Noiray Berthold Over Szymon Paczkowski Mary Ann Parker Elena Biggi Parodi Pierluigi Petrobelli Gaetano Pitarresi Keith Polk Pamela Potter Elena Quaranta
Vassilis Vavoulis Kees Vlaardingerbroek Adrienne Ward Piero Weiss
Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater, Universität Bayreuth Gerald Coke Handel Foundation Hertford College, Oxford Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi, Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venezia) Istituto per la Storia della Musica, Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venezia) Musikwissenschaftliches Institut Basel Musikwissenschaftliches Institut Saarbrücken
Edward Wickham
Royal Academy of Music Library
Reinhard Wiesend
Royal Musical Association
Christoph Wolff Susan Wollenberg Ronald Woodley Peter Wright Giovanni Zanovello, Villa I Tatti Agostino Ziino Alina ŻórawskaWitkowska
University of Oxford University of Texas at Austin Wadham College, Oxford
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Mary S. Lewis
John H. Roberts
Faculty of Music, Oxford
