Baroque Gesture

Isabella Leonarda 400th anniversary

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Isabella Leonarda:

the Soul of Music in Women’s Hands



This article celebrates the 400th anniversary of Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) – Ursuline nun, singer & composer – in connection with the Earthly Angels performance and recording project.
Listen to her music here.

An extended version of this article will be published on this blog soon.



 

The Soul of Music

 

In 1601, song-composer Caccini proclaimed the Baroque priorities of his ‘New Music’ as ‘Speech and Rhythm’.

Tempo


The first character to sing in the first opera (1600) was Tempo – the personification of Time – commanding: “Act with the hand, act with the heart!” For us today, tempo is the speed of music, but for Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) it was Time itself, defined by Aristotle as a ‘number of movement’ perceived by the Soul.

The up-and-down hand-beat of Tactus connected musical notation to real-world Time. Period iconography shows singers beating Tactus, even in solo songs.

 

 

Zacconi (1592) characterises Tactus as ‘regular, solid, stable, firm… clear, sure, fearless, and without any perturbation’. Mersenne (1636) calibrates Tactus as 1 second per minim, shown by a 1m pendulum. At the end of the century, Carissimi (1696) defines tempo as subjective ‘quality’, the way time feels.

 

17th-century ‘time-signatures’ are relics of much older Mensural notation. Long notes are divided by 2 or 3 to create short notes. Signs of Proportion recalibrate note-values in triple time. Within these fixed multiples, Leonarda employs modifying words to specify fine gradations of tempo.

 

Amidst ‘passionate vocal effects and contrasting movements’ Frescobaldi (1615) shows how to ‘guide Time’, using Tactus. Transitions between movements are made by keeping steady Tactus (no tempo change, or strict Proportion), or by 

suspending the Tactus-hand in the air momentarily, then starting the new movement with modified Tactus, steady time that now feels adagio (literally ‘easy’) or allegro (happy).

 

For Leonarda’s contemporaries, ‘Time is the Soul of Music.’ Read more here.  Zacconi explains that Time breathes life into dry notation: a minim is a dead symbol, until we animate it with the Divine Hand, symbolised by Tactus. Carissimi’s tempo is perceived as an Aristotelian ‘affection of the Soul’, an emotion. Leonarda’s precise notation contradicts 20th-century assumptions that performers choose their own tempo, or that expressiveness requires rubato.

 

Rhetoric

In Baroque speech and music, Rhetoric aims to ‘move the passions’. Read more about musical rhetoric here. Sensual love-lyrics arouse fervour that Leonarda’s music re-directs towards the Divine. Delightful hand-gestures explain the text and communicate passionate contrasts. Rhetorical Delivery combines Pronunciation of words and music with Action of gestures and facial expressions, to channel Enargeia, the emotional power of detailed description. Read more about Enargeia here

 

 

Poetic imagery brings a scene to life, as if the audience could see it with their own eyes. ‘Here’, ‘Now’, ‘Behold!’: Gesture directs the audience’s attention to significant details of the imagined vision. In baroque Madrigalism (word-painting), the music sounds like what the words mean. Fragments of melody create ‘passionate vocal effects’ corresponding to gestures of the hand.

 

Period Medical Science categorises emotion into Four Humours: warm Sanguine (love, hope), dry Choleric (anger, desire), dark Melancholy and cold, wet Phlegmatic.

 

In Leonarda’s Volo Jesum (1670), ‘you fly’ (volate) up a triple-proportion fast-note scale to ‘love God’ on a long high note. After a tempo change to happy allegro, a contrasting 64 movement cites the love-sick Melancholy harmonies and descending bass-line of an operatic lament: ‘the heart is burning’ amidst Choleric ignis et flamma  (fire and flame) with high notes and flickering vocal effects. A ‘happy mountain’ of Sanguine ‘joys’ rises boldly, Phlegmatic ‘rivers’ flow smoothly down, Paradisi has the highest note of all. Descending notes move Choleric passion to Sanguine Humour – et in flammis es dulcis spes – whilst Leonarda’s hand shows the Holy Spirit coming down to earth as Christ: ‘in flames, You are sweet hope’.

 

 

Poetic detail, moving passions, vocal effects, contrasts of tempo, expressive gestures: Leonarda does ‘act with the hand, act with the heart’. The composer’s hand notates subtle tempo changes, in which the serene movement of the Divine Hand is reflected in the diverse pulse-rates of a lover’s human heart. Violinists’ and continuo-players’ hands give life to instrumental music, a microcosm of heavenly perfection, yet swayed by the human passions of the Four Humours. All this is guided by Tactus and expressed by gestures.

 

 

Invisible music

 

Nevertheless, all Leonarda’s handiwork – composition, Tactus, instrumental-playing and rhetorical gestures – remained unseen. Hidden from the congregation by the grille that closed nuns off from the world, the woman who simultaneously embodied an ardent lover and a religious mystic communicated energia (the baroque spirit of performance), by the aural Enargeia of detailed text and precise tempo. Unlike an opera or court singer, she ‘moved the passions’ and warmed her listeners’ hearts to love by evoking ‘affections of the soul’ in sensual visions that were entirely imagined, not seen.

 

Invisible to her 17th-century listeners, almost unnoticed by musicologists until recently, women’s hands are the heart and soul of Leonarda’s music.


Listen here

 

 

Tubae mirae sonus: Mozart & Latin, Gesture & Enargeia

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The wondrous trumpet – not!

It’s the most famous solo of all time for this instrument, representing the Last Trumpet on the Day of Judgement, and Mozart’s autograph score gives the short title by which we all know it: Tuba mirum, the wondrous trumpet. 



Unfortunately, that’s quite wrong.

 

 

The well-known fact that Mozart wrote this sombre fanfare for trombone, not for trumpet, is not the only problem. Tuba mirum simply does not mean “wondrous trumpet”.

In Latin, tuba (nominative case) is a feminine noun meaning trumpet. But mirum is the masculine-accusative form of the adjective ‘wondrous’. Gramatically, the two words do not agree. It is not the trumpet that is wondrous.

When we compare another famous solo, representing the very same Biblical scene, we have to ask two questions. Why did Mozart choose a trombone, and why does his fanfare go downwards?


Handel’s trumpet


Handel’s well-known setting of The Trumpet shall sound in Messiah features an actual trumpet playing upward-directed fanfares, with a thrilling ascent to high A in the second phrase. That’s more like it, isn’t it?

The expressivity of 18th-century music is rooted in the ancient Greek concept of Enargeia, the emotional power of detailed description. Read more about Enargeia. Enargeia employs Rhetorical language to describe a scene so vividly, that the audience feel they can almost see it with their own eyes. The visions in their imagination send the energia – the energetic spirit of emotional communication – from the mind to the body, producing the physical and emotional responses, the physiological and psychological manifestations of Affekt.

Composers aligned their music as closely as possible to the detailed imagery of the text, creating aural Enargeia, like the sound effects in a stage or cinematic drama. These Effects were intended to induce emotional response, to instill Affekt amongst listeners. So rhetorical Enargeia creates embodied Energia, sound Effects create emotional Affekt.

The power of Enargeia is in the detail. So when we hear the words ‘The Trumpet shall sound’, the emotional communication is reinforced when we indeed hear the sound of a trumpet. And when the dead are ‘raised’, the vocal and instrumental sounds are also raised in pitch. The powerful connection created by this Word-Painting (also known as Madrigalism) is further reinforced by the gestures with which a singer (in the theatre, or in concert) or a preacher (in church) would accompany the text.

At ‘The Trumpet shall sound’ the right hand would be extended from its resting position at the waist, probably to shoulder height. Since ‘Dead’ were still in their graves, the gesture on this word would be downward, perhaps even with the left hand. And then both hands ‘shall be raised’ (the right hand leading), and (the text repeats) raised again, perhaps beyond the normal limit of shoulder-height, lifting eyes and hands towards heaven. The crucial word ‘incorruptible’ might be pointed out with the gesture for ‘pay attention’. 



Every detail of text, each baroque gesture of the hand, is paralleled in Handel’s music. Enargeia will have its effect. 

The biblical text itself is from Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians, powerfully declaring the Gospel which he preaches (verse 1). The sound of the trumpet (verse 52) is introduced by the recitative ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery’ (verse 51). ‘Behold’ – look! – is the defining signal that Enargeia is about to be employed. The audience is literally commanded to see the ‘mystery’ that they are told by the words and music.



Mozart’s trombone

Mozart’s tuba provides sound effects for a scene described in the Sequence Dies irae, part of the Requiem Mass. ‘The day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes’. The context is not the good news of Paul’s declaration of the Gospel, but a dark prophecy from Zephania 1, verse 15.

That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness; a day of the trumpet and alarm…

The third stanza of the Requiem Sequence describes how the trumpet’s sound is heard in the graves all around, to summon everyone to the Final Judgement. When we consider the image in detail, as if we could see it in front of our own eyes, it becomes evident [the Latin term for Enargeia is Evidentia] that this Last Trumpet sounds below, in the graves, even in Hell itself.

Whereas the Baroque Trumpet is associated with glorious majesty, heraldry and heaven, the Trombone (in English, Sackbut) was associated with solemnity and the underworld. Trombones accompany the lower voices in Monteverdi’s settings of liturgical psalms, and set the scene in Hell for Act III of Orfeo (1607). Trombones represent the Furies of Hell in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and the supernatural power of the statue of the Commandatore in the cemetery scene of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787).

The blast of this solemn instrument is appropriately directed downwards in Mozart’s Requiem (1791, incomplete), to resound per sepulchra regionum – throughout the regions’ graves. So whilst we hear the word Tuba, we simultaneously hear that ‘dread Trumpet’ sustaining a low note – as if down amongst the graves. 

Whilst the Gesture for these words might commence medium-high for tuba, it will inevitably descend (and probably leftwards) towards sepulchra regionum. So Mozart’s choice of Trombone and a downward-directed fanfare are perfectly in keeping with the principles of Enargeia.

Two bars later, listeners find themselves down in the graves with the singer on low Bb, whilst the dread sound is diffuse, scattered from way above, solemn even mournful with expressive Ab and even Gb. The picture is complete and detailed, and the emotional effect for the vision-imagining listener is very different from that of Handel’s trumpet.

Handel’s listeners are triumphant, given the promise of eternal life: “… and we shall be changed. We shall … be changed!”. Mozart’s congregation are called to be judged for their sins, whilst they reflect on death.

Every detail of the texts, each baroque gesture of the hand, two contrasting imagined visions are paralleled in Handel’s and Mozart’s musics. Enargeia will have its effects. 


Detail 

Enargeia is all about detail, and there still remains one niggling difficulty with Mozart’s setting. Tuba mirum does not mean ‘wondrous Trumpet’, or even ‘dread Trumpet’. The adjective mirum is gramatically attached to the noun sonum, the object of the verb (present participle) spargens. The trumpet, scattering its dread sound throughout the regions’ graves, calls everyone before the Throne [of Judgement].

It is not the trumpet itself, but its sound, that is wondrous. In terms of Enargeia, the effect of sound is to create Affekt. The instrument itself is a real-world 18th-century trombone, but the Enargeia of its sound creates the emotional effect of the Day of Judgement.

Why does this nit-picking of Latin grammar matter? In a word, punctuation. In music, that means phrasing.

The English word-order makes it clear that a comma needs to be understood, between ‘The trumpet’ and ‘scattering its dread sound’. Latin allows spargens sonum mirum to be re-ordered as mirum spargens sonum (for the sake of the rhymed verse), but that comma still needs to be understood after tuba.

But ever since 1791, the well-known short title has encouraged us to think of the text as Tuba mirum. Whoops! The sense of the text suggests rather the musical phrasing Tuba // mirum spargens so………num with the word for ‘sound’ extended for great Enargeatic effect. If that phrasing sounds strange to your ears, that’s entirely the point of this article.

Phrasing


A frequently-encountered 18th-century principle of phrasing [see Quantz for example] is that notes which move by step tend to be legato, jumps suggest staccato or a break in the phrase. At first glance, the sound of Mozart’s wondrous trumpet [in Latin, that would be Tubae mirae sonus] seems to be all jumps, there is no step-wise movement at all. But if we consider that the trombone is representing a trumpet, then (in the 18th century) adjacent notes in the harmonic series could count as ‘steps’, not jumps.

In this sense, Tuba is linked as two adjacent notes, and there is a marked jump upwards (wondrously: the gesture to open the hands palms upwards and raise the eyes to heaven in awe, admiratio) for mirum, from where the harmonics continue smoothly downwards.

(OK, the harmonic series more-or-less continues: depending on which octave you imagine has the fundamental Bb, the descending phrase either includes a low D which is not strictly in the series, or wondrously avoids middle C. But poetic imagery does allow some poetic license!)





Every detail of text, each historical gesture of the hand, is paralleled in Mozart’s music. Enargeia will have its effect. 


Tactus and Tempo


 

In the 18th-century, tempo defines not just speed, but the emotional quality of the movement, conveyed not by modern conducting, but by Tactus-beating. The dramatic timing of the Enargeatic visions depends on musical rhythm. As many period writers expressed it: Tactus is the Soul of Music.

Although Mozart clearly wrote C-slash, Andante, many printed editions show the time-signature C. See this article by Douglas Yeo on the wondrously-named blog The Last Trombone for more. 



To beguile, or not to beguile: Purcell’s ‘Music for a while’

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Music for a while is one of Purcell’s best-known and most loved songs, published posthumously in Orpheus Britannicus, Book 2 (1702). Listen here.

The tortured chromaticism of the ground bass and dark references to Alecto, the Fury from Hell with snakes for hair and a whip in her hand. indicate that there is more here than just a pretty melody.  So it comes as no surprise to discover that the song was written for a revival in 1692 of Dryden & Lee’s 1679 Tragedy Oedipus, loosely based on Sophocles.

But what was the function of this music in the play? What is happening on stage ‘for a while’? And what happens next, when Music can no longer ‘beguile’? Whose ‘cares’ and ‘pains were eas’d’?  The clue is that Alecto should indeed ‘free the dead from their eternal bands’.

At the time of writing, the best secondary sources freely available online were a couple of GCSE commentaries, which fail to address these questions and mislead on the placement of the song within the play, as well as by hinting that Alecto might even be a character in the drama. She is not, but the mythological reference to her is utterly appropriate for the dramatic situation.

 

 

A dark Grove

Fortunately, a primary source is only a click away. The library of the University of Michigan has made the full play-script of Oedipus, including the song-text (divided amongst several singers), available free online.

Purcell’s Music was composed for Act III, set in a dark Grove.

 

 

Following an argument and sword-duel between Creon and Adrastus, Haemon sets the scene:

Nor Tree, nor Plant

Grows here, but what is fed with Magick Juice,

All full of humane Souls; that cleave their barks

To dance at Midnight by the Moons pale beams:

At least two hundred years these reverened Shades

Have known no blood, but of black Sheep and Oxen,

Shed by the Priests own hand to Proserpine.

 

The blind prophet Tiresias enters with a group of aged Priests, all clothed in black habits. In rites “full of horrour” Tiresias invokes the ghost of Lajus (Oedipus’ father) to declare who it was who murdered him. A trench is dug near Lajus’ grave and a black, barren heifer is sacrificed. Blood and milk are boiled together.

And now a sudden darkness covers all,

True genuine Night: Night added to the Groves;

The Fogs are blown full in the face of Heav’n.”

Tiresias calls for “such sounds as Hell ne’re heard / Since Orpheus brib’d the Shades” and the Priests’ first song evokes tormenting demons:

 

Taskers of the dead,

You that boiling Cauldrons blow,

You that scum the molten Lead.

You that pinch with Red-hot Tongs;

You that drive the trembling hosts

Of poor, poor Ghosts,

With your Sharpen’d Prongs;

Music for a While itself is addressed to the rising ghosts, who are then ordered to “Come away… obey, while we play”. Sure enough, in a flash of lightning, ‘Ghosts are seen passing betwixt the trees‘.

The Priests and Tiresias call on Lajus to “hear and obey”, and ‘The Ghost of Lajus rises arm’d in his Chariot, as he was slain. And behind his Chariot sit the three who were murdered with him.’ Lajus refers to his “pains” in hell  (recalling the line from the song, ‘wondering how your pains were eas’d”), and accuses Oedipus of parricide.

 

 

The Ghost descends, as Oedipus enters asking “tell me why My hair stands bristling up, why my flesh trembles.”

 

To beguile, or not to beguile

 

 

 

In this play and in this scene, there are many parallels to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c1600). Dryden’s introduction make it clear that public taste insisted upon a Ghost and a Murder, and Oedipus was a great success.

In The Player’s Passion (1985) published by the same University of Michigan whose library makes Dryden’s play available online, Joseph Roach describes Shakespeare’s ‘most celebrated scene played by the greatest actor of his time, perhaps of all time’:

The name of Perkins, hair-dresser and wig-maker, enters into the history of the eighteenth-century stage on the strength of a technical contribution to David Garrick’s Hamlet… When other spectators marvelled that Hamlet’s hair actually seemed to stand on end as the ghost appeared, they testified to a fact. The ingenious Perkins had engineered a mechanical wig to simulate the precise physiognomy of mortal dread. On the line “Look, my lord, it comes”, the hairs of this remarkable appliance rose up obligingly at the actor’s command.

 

 

In Purcell’s semi-operas and incidental music for plays, incantation scenes are often the excuse for songs, and ‘priests’ with few or no spoken lines are brought on stage to do the singing. The first scene of King Arthur is a good example: “Woden, first to thee a milk-white steed in battle won, we have sacrificed“. And like the Ghost of Lajus, the Cold Genius similarly comes  “from below“, is made to “rise, unwillingly and slow’ in chromatic harmonies, and then allowed to “freeze again to death“.

 

The power of music to ‘beguile’ cares and ‘soothe the savage breast’ is part of the historical Science of the Four Humours. Music is Sanguine: the live-giving flow of warm blood, open-handed and generously offering love, courage and hope. Music frees us from the cold, dry grip of Melancholy cares and pains.

At least, for a while…

 

Listen here.

 

 

 

 

Prattica di Retorica in Musica – Dispositio

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This is the second post inspired by an April Fools’ Day joke, for which I faked up the title page of an imaginary Baroque treatise on The Practice of Rhetoric in Music, starting several trains of thought: Why does such a book not exist? What might it have contained? What would we hope to learn from it? What is lacking in modern-day writing on Musical Rhetoric? And why shouldn’t I try writing it for myself?

 

 

The first post in this series,  Prattica di Retorica in Musica – Inventio, introduces the project by means of the Five Canons of Rhetoric and imagines the first pages of our Unicorn-Book, which might include an Address to the Reader and a Dedicatory Poem.

The next pages would probably consist of the Table of Contents, i.e. an ordered list of chapter-headings. For a book-printer, this table would only be assembled once the main body-text was complete. But for a rhetorical writer, these chapter-headings are advance planning of the structural organisation of the material: they present that second Canon of Rhetoric, the Dispositio (Arrangement).

 

 

Arranging the Dispositio

 

In an endlessly recursive process, the structuring of any writing on Rhetoric is itself a work of Rhetoric. My material for this project is the Practice of Rhetoric in Music, and the organisation of this material is inspired by the Modes of Rhetoric, in the style of a list of book-chapters, which I have considered – consciously and subconsciously – over the last month. Turning ideas over in your mind is linked to the processes of memory, which (as modern science tells us) is not merely the recall of fixed data, but a creative process of apprehending, reviewing, connecting and reassembling complex understandings. And now I deliver this structure to you…

In this blog-post, the Dispositio is now my material, which I have organised into two sections (this discursive article, and – below – the presentation of the list itself), in two contrasting styles (modern-day semi-formal prose and 17th-century formal list), carefully considered, and delivered in this blog-post.

The style – a list of chapters – has also become material to be discussed here, and functions as an organising device that delivers new thoughts.

The processes of memory and thought likewise are now material to be written about, functioning to organise themselves by thinking about thoughts, to refine style, and (by remembering memories) to deliver results.

Those results are the material that will be organised, stylised, considered and delivered as the output of the entire project.

And – just in case you didn’t notice – that 5-paragraph description of the nested processes of writing rhetorically about Rhetoric was itself rhetorically made: its material was the rhetoric of Rhetoric, its organisation was iteratively rhetorical, the style was as rhetorically clear as I could make it, it seemed to spring from my mind as if I were remembering something I already knew, and I delivered it in a happily spontaneous flow.

So now you have a rhetorical account of a rhetorically made description of the rhetorical process of writing about Rhetoric. And we could continue this all night, unless you counter with a refutatio or I reach a peroratio!

 

Digressio – an allegorical digression

 

One of the period delights of Rhetoric was the enjoyment of rhetorical discourse for its own sake, like an athlete enjoying the working of their own muscles during training, or a spectator watching that athlete. If the spectator is also an athlete, there is an opportunity to learn, or to sharpen ones analytical insight. Which muscle moved there, and what effect did it have? We can compare the trained and untrained body, we can notice the physical results and competetive benefits of particular training exercises for specific applications. If we are fans or practitioners of Rhetoric, we can observe its work whenever we encounter words.

 

Thesis – back to the underlying concepts

 

I will probably re-organise this Dispositio as I go along. But it is currently linked to these thoughts:

The ‘original book’ does not exist, perhaps because Rhetoric was so deeply internalised for musicians of this period that they applied it, without needing further instruction, to any means of expression. In another sense, every period treatise on music discusses the Practice of Rhetoric because music itself is a rhetorical art: to practise music is to practise rhetoric. My task is then not to invent new principles, but to identify (from amongst well-researched historical practices) instances where rhetoric is at work in music.

As musicians, we hope for clear practical advice, for tools that can be applied in the rehearsal room and in performance. As performers, we hope for ideas that will be effective with our audiences.

This is perhaps what is lacking in the modern literature on musical rhetoric. After reading some scholarly tome, we may think “how interesting, how beautiful!”, but we may not have a clear strategy of how to apply its ideas in our next rehearsal. At best, we might hope that it has given us some inspiration that will emerge in our musicking, by some mysterious process. I do believe in inspiration and mysterious processes, but in the rehearsal room (or as an individual’s pre-performance mantra), we usually need concise, precisely encapsulated suggestions, rather than yards of woffle and dollops of hope.

What period sources there are, and also much modern writing on musical rhetoric, tend to concentrate on Figures and Tropes. And whilst knowing stuff is fun, and knowing what anaphora is helps one notice when anaphora is at work, that doesn’t necessarily let you know what to do with anaphora, no matter how many times you see or hear anaphora in an aphorism, no, no! And even if you know that the use of adnominations and homophones is not strictly anaphora, this doesn’t necessarily help your audience. So although it is not wrong to define Rhetoric in terms of Figures and Tropes (and indeed, this definition becomes increasingly relevant during our period), it is not the most direct path towards practical application in music.

Since Rhetoric is directed outwards – to persuade the listener; to delight, teach and move the passions of the audience – and since we, as performers, want to put it into practice, the book we need must tell us how to apply Rhetoric to good effect. So my dispositio focuses on fundamentals of good Oratory in musicking, ideas that performers can apply in order to produce results that audiences will appreciate.

 

Hypothesis – focus on particular ideas

 

Words: Readers would expect the introduction to discuss what Rhetoric is. But we also need to consider what Music is – and what Science, Art and Practice are too – because our modern assumptions differ from period understandings.

Ethos: Rhetoric is delivered by one person to others: we must consider who does what.

Logos: The most important section of the book should link the performance of music to Good Delivery in Oratory. The more our musicking deals with words, the more eloquent its oratory will be.

Pathos: The most profound result we hope for is to move the passions of our listeners. This Part tells you how to do it.

Kairos: How does the moment of opportunity for Rhetoric present itself? Shifting the focus from historical practices to the ephemeral instant of performance, Plato’s eternal now, this Part attempts to reconcile period understandings of Rhetoric and Humours with 21st-century neuro-science. What is the structure of magic in music?

 

Peroratio

 

The vital heart of Rhetoric, which sends the life-giving Sanguinity of passion to the singer’s voice and the instrumentalist’s hands, is structure. How dry that might seem, how Melancholy! But this sturdy, earthborne structure supports a mighty tower, rising proudly as if with Choleric ambition to reach the highest heavens of eloquent beauty.

The achievement of our art must be to conceal the scaffolding and reveal the architecture. But the process of building begins with a well-wrought foundation. Dispositio precedes elocutio.

 

 

 

DISPOSITIO

 

The Introductory Part: on Words

 

What is Rhetoric?

What is Grammar?
What is Logic?
Eloquentia Perfecta

What is Music?

What is Practice?

What is Art?
What is Science?

What is the Practice of Rhetoric in Music?

What is the Art of Rhetoric in Music?
What is the Science of Rhetoric in Music?

 

The First Part: on Ethos

 

The Practice in Music of the Five Canons of Rhetoric

The Practice in Music of the Three Aims of Rhetoric

The Practice in Music of the Topics of Rhetoric

The Practice in Music of the Four Modes of Rhetoric

 

The Second Part: on Logos

 

The Practice in Music of the Decorum of Rhetoric

Of Oratory
Of Syllables
Of Consonants
Of Vowels
Of Joining & Separating
Of Meaning
Of Intention
Of Genres
Of Place
Of Time

 

The Third Part: on Pathos

 

The Practice in Music of the Four Humours of Rhetoric

The Practice in Music of the Gestures of Rhetoric

The Practice in Music of the Figures of Rhetoric

The Fourth Part: on Kairos

Of the Mind

Of  New Language of Persuasion

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prattica di Retorica in Musica – Inventio

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What started out as a bit of fun for April Fools’ Day – faking up the frontispiece of an imaginary 17th-century treatise on the Practice of Rhetoric in Music – got me thinking more seriously. This is just the kind of book I would love to study – many other Early Music scholars and performers too, I’m sure. So why doesn’t it exist? And, what would it say, if we were to find it after all? 

 

 

What’s the Use?

Those are deep questions to consider carefully, but after three weeks the title of my imaginary treatise – stolen from Zacconi (1596) read more here – which I chose quickly, on impulse from the Subconcious, has revealed to my Conscious mind the gap in HIP sources and practice. We have an overwhelming abundance of primary sources to tell us what Rhetoric is, and some fine modern-day writing that describes how Rhetoric was written into renaissance and Baroque Music. The vital question is how we can apply the Art of Musical Rhetoric in Practice – in individual study, ensemble rehearsals and public performance. We have studied the Science of Music, we are learning the Art of Rhetoric, but we want to acquire practical skill in its Use. More on the period concepts of Science, Art and Use here. 

To bridge this gap, since the late renaissance or early baroque Prattica di Retorica in Musica seems not to exist, I decided to write it myself. Remembering medieval trobadors and trouvères,  ‘such as found out musical tunes and recited verses in writing’; and inspired by the rhetorical canon of Inventio, by which one seeks to discover the best arguments for the case at hand; my aim is not to invent but to search for a true resemblance of this unicorn-book. 

Clearly, there is some serious work of Dispositio (organisation of the material) to be done. Perhaps the most effective format – Elocutio – could be to adopt the position of a blog-poster, discussing the Prattica chapter by chapter, supported by ‘citations of the original’. My hope is to instill Memoria, as if recalling an elusive memory; for my Retorica should deliver nothing new, but should rather be a declaration – a oratorical Pronuntiatio – of truths that we already hold to be self-evident. And all this should lead to Actio: putting rhetoric into practice in Musica. 

So perhaps you can imagine what follows as a modern editor’s commentary on a recently discovered historical source…

 

 

Foreword 

 

It was Monteverdi scholar Tim Carter (don’t miss his inspiring yet thoroughly practical survey of Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre ) who first guided me towards an unorthodox and creative way of investigating historical performance practice: beyond the analysis of surviving works, have a go at creating (re-constructing would be too strong a word) what is missing. The idea is to confront the same questions and challenges that creative musicians encountered back then, starting from a tabula rasa and testing, questioning, reviewing everything you create, to complement the standard approach of gazing at the beauty of an extant masterpiece.

It’s like lifting the bonnet of the car and tinkering with the engine – you will learn from your mistakes, and you’ll certainly learn more than by merely reading the workshop manual. After all, mathematics students have to solve problems themselves, as well as studying worked examples by famous mathematicians of the past. And Rhetoric itself begins with three Canons of creativity, and continues with the reflective process of Memorisation, before culminating in the final Canon of Delivery.

 



In 2017, with expert guidance and thought-provoking challenges from Tim, I re-made Monteverdi’s lost masterpiece Arianna based on the surviving libretto, a musical fragment – the famous Lamento – letters and other music from the time of the first performance in 1608.  The resulting work, Arianna a la recherche was performed at the OPERA OMNIA International Baroque Opera Studio, re-establishing Rinuccini’s Tragedia as the fourth opera in the Monteverdi trilogy. Why re-make Monteverdi’s Arianna? here

 

 


And now, for this project on the Practice of Rhetoric in Music, I’m once again investigating by creating. Of course, Creative Research is no longer a new concept, and it has already been applied to Early Music, but usually by creating something new out of old material. My aim is different – I want to supply new material that will fill a gap in what has come down to us, like a restorer patching a threadbare section of an old tapestry, weaving strands of carefully researched threads into a plausible picture that fits well with the old stuff.  Or like a luthier, who constructs a ‘historical instrument’ that is simultaneously a carefully researched ‘replica’ of a period original, and a creative work of art in its own right. 

In the workshop of Rhetoric, my power-tool is energia – the communicative spirit that energises the mind in performance. To drive forward the research process, I imagine how such a historical treatise might have been read aloud by a fine orator, and how we today might apply its period pedagogy to training and rehearsal for future concerts, recordings and opera productions.

 

Teaching Rhetoric in a Knight-academy. The listener in the foreground left (as seen by the viewer: this is the privileged position forward-right on stage) leans his head on his left hand in the classic gesture of Melancholy: not sadness here, but deep thought, careful concentration on precise detail.

 

Exordium


Before I can look for answers to the big questions of Musical Rhetoric in Historical Practice, I first have to find out what those questions are. See Deep Thought. In the search for better questions, I’ve started by pondering why we, today’s Early Musicians, want this book. And why was it not written back then?  These deceptively simple questions are fundamental to the project, and need careful consideration.

 

John Bulwer scratches his head in Deep Thought (1644). Another historical gesture of intense cogitation is to chew on your finger (not the thumb, that means something different!).

 

For now, I decided just to have some more fun, by cooking-up an ‘original Preface’. Don’t panic, I have no intention of switching permanently to Ye Olde Worlde style. But I am thinking seriously about how a 17th-century writer would frame his address To the Reader, and taking the opportunity to practise a bit of Rhetoric myself. 

So how would you feel, if you discovered an exciting, hitherto unknown, historical source in the original? You might savour the promises offered by the Frontispiece, and get a first taste of food for thought from the formal Dedication and Preface, before settling down to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the detailed chapters of the principal text.  In that spirit, I invite you to consider this ‘modern editor’s introduction’ and the ‘original Preface’ below as hors d’oeuvres. Bon appetit! 

Adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy!  This cheerful chap might be good Signior Love. Certainly, he embodies the Sanguine Humour: warm red colours in his ruddy cheek and in the curtain behind him, abundant red-brown hair and bright eyes, a generous gesture, a confident smile, a jaunty feather in his cap, outward-directed energy, red wine and perhaps offering the hope of dance-music soon.

 

To the Reader

Transcriber’s note: We are fortunate that a period translation survives, apparently made from a holograph now lost. Sadly, the original date is indecipherable. Nevertheless, the handwritten annotations in faded red ink appear to be contemporary with the document itself.


 

PRATTICA DI RETORICA IN MUSICA

To the musicall Reader

Exordium

In the beginning was the WORD, & the Word was spoken in the ORATORY of the Holy Prophets, & the same was sung in the MUSIC of King David, whose Harp could soothe the wrath of Saul; and in the image of the Word was man created: wherefore my Heart is inditing of good Matter, whence I do make the Things of which I speak & sing;  the  Instrument of my Tongue being like unto the Pen of a ready Writer: for, as my Mind  was taught by the Orators of Ancient Greece & Rome, as my Ears delight in Dante, Shakespeare & other Poets of our times, and as the affections of my Soul are moved by the Music of Heaven, by the Harmony of Human Hearts, & by the Sound of earthly Instruments and Voices; so am I persuaded that such a Book as this was never seen, though greatly needed: and Necessity is the Mother of INVENTION.

Partitio

Thus may my Words, though few and unworthy, light the true Way, & illumine certain sure Principles, by which you may make practicall Use of the ancient Art of Rhetoric, even in the very  Science of Music: fitting the Pronouncing & the Action of your Delivery to the Matter of the Invention, as well as to the Arrangement of the Verses, & the Eloquence of the Music; and through the Mystery of Memory, from time to time both recalling & re-creating what hath been already made: according to the Aims & Canons of Rhetoric, the Virtues & Graces of Writing, the Devices & Figures of Speech, & the Art of Gesture: and such will be this Book’s ARRANGEMENT.

Confirmatio

The ancient Poet sang of Arms and of a Man, & this my Book will speak of Instruments as well as of Voices; for Rhetoric may be expressed with the sound of the Trumpet, with the Psaltery & Harp, with the Timbrel and Dance, with stringed Instruments and Organs, and upon loud Cymbals & high Cymbals, as well as by everything that hath Breath: for Love of the Word maketh sounding Brass to become the tongues of Men & Angels; and giveth even a tinkling Cymbal ELOQUENCE.

Confutatio

And let none say that Rhetoric & Rhythm are not Brethren, nor that they cannot dwell together in Unity; for the Master cannot teach, who comes not betimes to School; the very  Whirlwind of Passion cannot move, if the Actor misseth his Entrance; the Dancers cannot delight, who reel to & fro, and stagger like a drunken man: for the Eloquent Orator is like unto a Knight on Horseback, whose one Hand must hold the Reins of Rhythm, that the Steps and Pace be in good Measure; whilst the other Hand doth strike with the Sword of Rhetorick, that toucheth even unto the Heart: and this in Music requireth great Skill, & diligent Study, whether the Song be pricked on Paper, or printed in the MEMORY.

Peroratio

The End of all this my RHETORICK being Practicall, let the attentive Reader also take Pains to practise the Examples that follow, pronouncing them in Action; that, by sowing the Seeds of Rhetorick in the fertile Ground of Music, ye may know the Fruit of good DELIVERY,

And live happily!

Dedicatory Poem

As in many such treatises, the following page contains a poem in support of the author’s work. The content of this sonnet strongly supports the indicated connection to Richard Barnfield, whose most famous work was attributed to Shakespeare in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), though it had previously appeared in Barnfield’s Poems in Divers Humours (1598). 

A SONNET

on

THE PRACTICE

OF RHETORIC IN MUSIC

By a Friend of Mr Richard Barnfield

 

If MUSIC & sweet POETRY agree,
As they must needs, the Sister & the Brother.
Then let this Book create twixt me and Thee
Accord, pronouncing one alike the other.

Dowland to us is dear, whose heavenly Touch
Upon the Lute doth ravish human Sense;
Shakespeare strikes Hearts, for Plays of Words are such,
As playing Instruments need no defence.

We practise the high Art of charming Sound
That Phoebus’ Lute, the Queen of Musick, makes,
Yet Listeners in deep Delight are chiefly drowned
Whenas our Musick moveth Passions for their sake.

Guard Harmony & Verse, mark the Words well,
That RHYTHM & RHETORIC as one may dwell.

 

 

                                       

 

 

 

Baroque Opera then and now: 1600 & 1607, 1970-2020

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How did Baroque ‘opera’ develop in the first decade of the 1600s?

And how have our modern-day performances of early music-drama advanced in a half-century of Historically Informed Performances?

This post is based on an interview for Radio Orpheus (Moscow)  in which the presenter, Russian poet, novelist and dramaturg, Alexey Parin asked me to compare and contrast two of the earliest surviving baroque operas: Cavalieri’s Anima & Corpo (1600) and Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607). Both operas can be seen in regular repertoire at Moscow State Theatre ‘Natalya Sats’, in award-winning productions by Georgy Isaakyan, and in collaboration with OPERA OMNIA, the Academy for Early Opera & Dance.. My thanks to Alexey for his profound enthusiasm for opera, for his translation of the libretto of Anima & Corpo, and for his provocative questions in this interview.

 

With his long experience of opera in Russia, Alexey Parin finds the audience’s experience of the two works very different from one another.  Both productions succeed admirably, but why are they musically so different?

 

I think the first thing that strikes us, looking at the scores and listening to the music, is the similarity between the two works. Both composers are starting from the text, as if they were setting a spoken play to music.

But Monteverdi’s subject gives him the possibility for a lot more music, arising ‘realistically’ out of the drama. Since the protaganist is Orpheus, the great musician, the famous singer, of course we want to hear him sing and make music. And so he sings a magnificent Aria in Hell, accompanied by all the latest instruments of the early 17th-century Italian baroque. These are actually the same instruments that we hear in Cavalieri – violins, cornetti and the double-harp – but what’s now very different, is that with the excuse of Orpheus, Monteverdi writes virtuosi solos for these instruments. So although we have similar instruments, the sound of Monteverdi’s music begins to change.

Also in the earlier scenes, we are in pastoral Arcadia, and the shepherds of Arcadia all sing. They invite the Muses to descend from Parnassus to play instruments. So once again, Monteverdi has the chance to bring in a lot more ensemble music, proceeding ‘realistically’ from the mythological story.

Comparing the libretti

Another difference between the two works comes also from the text. With Orfeo, we are following one protagonist, we could almost say that the other characters are two-dimensional, only Orfeo is truly ‘there’. So while earlier operas exist on the same story, called Euridice, this drama is really the story of Orpheus. Eurydice has only two lines in the whole opera, but nevertheless what she says is extremely important, and perhaps her lines are the clue for understanding the whole opera. More about Eurydice here.

At the beginning when Orpheus sings beautifully of all his love for Euridice, her reply is that she cannot speak, and we should just ask Love, in order to know her feelings. And so we realise that Orpheus is perhaps speaking too much.

And this suspicion is reinfored with Eurydice’s second speech at the crucial moment in the drama, when Orpheus fatally turns to look at her. She says that the sight of him is too sweet, but also too bitter, and for the sake of too much love, he is going to lose her. And so in this very short speech, the word troppo, too much, comes three times. The poet is making it very clear for us here: this is the message. Orpheus was ‘too much’: too happy, too sad, too much love, too excessive in every way.

And so the message of the opera is then to look for the golden mean, for the perfect balance. But nevertheless, I think that Striggio as librettist and Monteverdi as composer both know that the audience enjoy the excesses. More about the message of Orfeo here.

And this brings us right back to Cavalieri again, because in his Preface, Emilio de’ Cavalieri says that the emotions in this kind of music come from rapid contrasts of opposites. More about Cavalieri’s Preface here.

Comparing the scores

It’s important to realise that a score in the early 17th-century had a very different purpose. It was not there for musicians like me to create a performance four hundred years later. More than anything, it was a souvenir for the public who had been to the performance and wanted to study the work further.

This reminds us how new this style of music-drama was. Cavalieri’s religious music-drama was so different from what had gone before, that he wanted to give his audience a chance to look at it again.

Nowadays, if we go to an opera we like, we might listen to the CD afterwards, as a nice memory of the real theatrical experience. So in Cavalieri’s score there is a lot of detail to help the reader remember the whole experience. He prints the music and the libretto and cross-references one to the other with numbers, number 1 in the music corresponds to number 1 in the libretto.

But, from the performers point of view, other information is missing. Many musical details are not specified in the score, and must be decided by the performers. In particular, the score provides no information about the orchestration of the instrumental parts, which instruments should play where.

In contrast, Monteverdi working at the Ducal court, wants to show off not only the opera, but also the court orchestra. So in his score, which is also a kind of souvenir-edition, he includes not only details of the drama but also a lot of information about the instruments. Especially at very strong dramatic moments…

This focus on moments of high drama shows us the purpose of publication. It’s not a score for musicians to work from. It’s to help audience members remember the show they saw. And so the score makes a kind of ‘close-up shot’ of the orchestra when it comes to the most dramatic moments. This gives us today, as musicians working with this historical material, vital information.

From the score, we know that in the original production of Orfeo, the instrumentalists appeared in different positions around the stage. We know that sometimes the instruments were part of the stage action. In a new piece of research, part of my investigation reveals that in one particular scene, when the Muses appear and the character La Ninfa says “you Muses have come with your instruments, so we’ll sing and you play, and everyone’s happy”, the score describes precisely which instruments play, and there are 10 of them – Apollo and the 9 Muses. So here the instruments are not just the accompaniment, they are part of the stage picture, and essential to the poetic concept.

 

Combining the information

But these differing levels of information in the two scores make today’s artistic process different for historically informed performers. Often Monteverdi writes details about the instrumentation that we don’t know from Cavalieri. For example, at the beginning of Act III, Monteverdi is extremely clear: the scene changes to Hell, the violins, the theorbos, the harp and the beautiful organs stop playing, and instead we have the cornetti, trombones and the regal. And so we can understand the two worlds, Hell and Arcadia, in Monteverdi’s opera. And this gives us a suggestion for the two worlds of Cavalieri’s opera, again Hell, and (now) Heaven. So from the point of view of a researcher and music director working with the score, it’s good to combine the information from both scores, to help us understand the cultural context of the period.

We don’t know if the Maenad ending was ever composed or not, but for sure it’s now lost. There’s a hint of  how the lost music might have been, in the Moresca that survives as the finale of the happy ending with Apollo. This Moresca starts in the score without time signature – there is no 3/2. This is very strange, and perhaps it’s because this Moresca was the continuation of something else, and that something else, whatever it was,is now lost. A Moresca, which is a danced battle, would also be an appropriate finale after the Bacchic ending with the Maenads. On the other hand, we should remember that often they would put a dance at the end that had no relation to the rest of the drama. After one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the actors – including characters who had died – would all stand up and dance a jig. Cavalieri says that you can put whatever dance at the end of a show, but then what he actually writes is the perfect dance finale, actually, yes, very connected to the show. More about dancing in Orfeo and Anima & Corpo here.

Personally, I’m fascinated by this question of the end of Orfeo. In another production, in Helsinki, we showed both endings (with my reconstruction of the Maenad scene from the 1607 libretto), and I’m intrigued by the idea of letting the audience vote: should the final triumph be for Apollo, or for Bacchus?

Here in Moscow, in this production, in Georgy Isaakyan’s particular style, it seems to me that he doesn’t tell the audience what happens, he encourages them to ask themselves: does Orpheus live or die?

7 years of Early Opera, half a century of Historically Informed Performance

As we work on Orfeo at OPERA OMNIA, we now have the advantage of 7 years of work together in Theatre Sats on the baroque style of Cavalieri. More about how to study early operatic roles here. No doubt 17th-century musicians also developed their ideas in the 7 years between Anima & Corpo and Orfeo. And I think it’s also fair to say that Monteverdi is musically more difficult than Cavalieri. In our production of Orfeo, we have the opportunity to sing in the Italian language, which makes some things easier for the music, but challenges the actors to make that direct contact with the audience that we have when we sing Anima & Corpo in Russian. More about OPERA OMNIA here,

Perhaps the most unusual thing about the musical approach for the Orfeo production is that we have effectively two musical directors, in the same way that Monteverdi effectively had  two orchestras: the orchestra of the violins and wind instruments who play written parts; and the orchestra of the continuo who improvise their parts. And just as Georgy Isaakyan’s staging is an encounter between Monteverdi’s 17th-century story, and Russia of the 1970s and 1980s; so there is a similar contrast within the musical realisation. Amongst the continuo and soloists, we share the latest ideas of Monteverdi’s baroque style; whilst in the orchestra and chorus the audience are presented with the Russian way to play baroque from the 1970s.

 

 

This juxtaposition of fundamentally differing approaches to early opera within one production has led to me reflect on how Historically Performed Performance of Monteverdi has changed in my own lifetime. In the table below, I attempt to identify some key topics and trail-blazing pioneers associated with significant re-discoveries. Any serious early opera production should at least consider these topics. Nevertheless, even decades later, some findings are still considered too “radical”, whilst others are routinely ignored, even by ‘historically informed’ ensembles.

 

How HIP is your Monteverdi?

 

  • Chitarrone  1960s Robert Spencer

 

  • Cornetto  1970s Bruce Dickey
  • Vocal ornamentation    1970s Nigel Rogers
  • Quarter-comma meantone   1970s Mark Lindley
  • Negri/Caroso dance  1970s Julia Sutton
  • Renaissance recorders  1970s Bob Marvin, Martin Skowroneck

 

  • No conductor  1980s Roger Norrrington
  • Recit without bowed bass  1980s Graham Dixon
  • Baroque harp  1980s Frances Kelly, ALK
  • Led from continuo  1980s Ensemble Tragicomedia
  • Renaissance violin band  1980s David Douglass, Peter Holman
  • Count recit in minims  1980s Ensemble Tragicomedia
  • Metre in Music  1980s George Houle
  • Baroque Gesture  1980s Dene Barnett
  • Il Corago  1980s Fabbris & Pompilio
  • Chiavette  1980s Andrew Parrot
  • Vibrato  1980s Greta Moens-Haenen

 

  • Proportions  1990s Roger Bowers
  • Pitch  1990s  Bruce Haynes

 

  • Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre  2002 Tim Carter
  • 1615 print free online  2009 IMSLP

 

  • Tactus throughout  2010 ALK
  • Historical swordsmanship  2012 Guy Windsor
  • 1609 print free online  2013 IMSLP
  • Beating time & measuring music  2014 Roger Mathew Grant
  • Arianna a la recherche  2017 ALK

 

  • Violini alla francese  ?
  • 5 trumpets  ?

Of course, this list reflects my own personal experiences and fortunate encounters with individual experts. So I look forward to your comments, corrections and additions. And most importantly, I look forward to new research findings in the 2020s, which will provide new impetus for re-thinking, re-imagining and re-working Monteverdi’s theatrical music.

 

Understand, enjoy and be moved! Listening to the Rhetoric of Orfeo

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This article is based on a pre-performance talk for the production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the Vaasa Baroque Festival and in Helsinki, October 2019.

Many audience members seeing performances of Orfeo in 2019 will encounter a more-or-less familiar situation: a baroque opera with Historically Informed Performance of the music, shown in a thoughtful and sympathetic modern production. Nevertheless, a staged production of Monteverdi’s 1607 music-drama is a special event. This beautiful and moving work is justly famous as one of the very first operas, admired by Early Music fans for its varied ensembles and rich instrumental writing. But it is not often staged: Opera Houses tend to favour more the austere scoring and stark psychodrama of Poppea (1643).

What’s different now?

In this particular production, some features that are different from mainstream opera reflect the situation at the first performance in Mantua. The venue is a hall (originally a room within the Ducal Palace) not a purpose-built theatre. The performing space is small, there is no stage machinery. The cast is just 9 singers, some of them doubling roles, and all of them combining to form various vocal ensembles – there is no separate chorus.

Other features of this project reflect the latest research findings in Historical Performance Practice. The instruments are distributed in contrasting ensembles (strings, flutes, continuo, cornetti & sackbuts) across various positions behind and to the sides of the stage. Cello and violone play with the string ensemble, not with the continuo. The default scoring for continuo is organ & theorbo. Singers and continuo alike avoid ornamentation in this stilo rappresentativo – theatrical style.

There is no conductor, not even someone waving their hands whilst using a harpsichord as a very expensive music-stand!  The anonymous writer of a c1630 manuscript for a Baroque Opera Director, Il Corago, rules out even the Tactus-beating that would be usual in madrigals and religious music. Nevertheless, as Frescobaldi describes in 1615, the whole performance is ‘facilitated by Tactus‘, a slow, steady pulse around one beat per second, which changes slightly according to the emotional affetto from one movement to another.

What was different in 1607?

But if the concept of Baroque Opera is familiar to us, then we might question how today’s situation differs from the experience of the audience in 1607. Certainly, they would not have viewed Orfeo as the beginning of a ‘History of Opera’. They could not know the future, but they were well informed about the recent past and excited at the on-going development of new genres of music-drama.

These were not yet called opera. Orfeo is favola in musica, a story in music. That music was only rarely called recitativo: the usual word (as for Orfeo) was rappresentata, a show, a theatre-piece. In the following year, 1608, librettist Ottavio Rinuccini made the bold move to claim for Monteverdi’s lost masterpiece Arianna the grand status of Tragedia (Tragedy) rappresentata in musica.

There was not yet any specific training for opera-singers. The 1607 cast were court and chapel musicians, all male, who brought to the stage their rhetorical skills of presenting poetry, of narrating stories, of expressive gestures and court decorum – how to stand, where to position oneself, how to behave in the presence of a Prince, or (in this case) in the presence of the demi-god Orpheus, or of Pluto, King of the Underworld. This all changed the following year, when professional actresss Virginia Ramponi-Andreini, known as La Florinda, brought her stage-skills to Arianna, performing the famous Lament to great acclaim.

But even though there was no word for it, by 1607 opera was already a ‘thing’. Peri describes in the Preface to Euridice (1600) how to turn theatrical speech into music; Cavalieri gives detailed instructions for opera-composers and performers in the Preface to Anima & Corpo (1600), the earliest surviving such work. In 1601, Caccini proclaims the priorities of the nuove musiche – new music – as Text and Rhythm.

Research into ancient Greek drama and experiments with new genres were supported by renaissance Academies, including the Mantuan  Accademia degli Invaghiti (music-lovers) who promoted Orfeo. The aristocratic and artistic membership of the Academy would have regarded the work as Striggio’s verse-drama set to music by Monteverdi. And much of what we might today analyse as Musical Forms comes from the poetical of the libretto. But Monteverdi sometimes chooses to disregard Striggio’s blue-print, tending to prefer expressive Monody even where the design of the verses suggests Aria.

As Tim Carter writes in his survey of Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre (2002), Academy members’ chief delight was in a show of Rhetoric.  Rhetoric is the use of persuasive speech to explain, to entertain and to stir up the emotions. This focus on words might surprise us, as a way of listening to Monteverdi’s music, but if we think of Shakespeare’s plays (e.g. Anthony and Cleopatra, also in 1607), then we can understand such delight in the powerful use of heightened language.

So in the Prologue to Orfeo, as La Musica tells the story of Orfeo, the sound of instruments tickles your ears, and the supernatural power of Music moves your soul. At the gates of Hell, Orpheus’ song delights Charon’s heart, but does not arouse any emotion of pity in this tough male. Several decades before Descartes, period Medical Science did not consider a mind/body dualism, but more complex models with mind, spirit, soul, heart and lower-body emotions all interacting.

Academicians admired ancient Greek drama for its capacity to move the audience’s passions ‘to tears or laughter’. And Monteverdi’s reputation as ‘the divine Claudio’ was precisely for his ability to compose music that profoundly affected listeners, even if such contemporaries as Artusi complained about technical breaches of the rules of counterpoint.

As music, Monteverdi’s Orfeo was rappresentata – staged, a show. As literature, Striggio’s Favola d’Orfeo was rappresentata in musica. And according to the new concept of Personation – the ‘realistic’ embodiment of a character on stage, for example in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c1600) – Orpheus himself is ‘represented’ in this drama. We listen to the words, we hear the music, we watch the action, and we are moved also by seeing Orpheus’ reactions.

But the decorum of Greek drama would not allow death to be enacted, and in Classical Theatre the most dramatic events were presented as Narration. This tradition of stage Messengers suited baroque singers’ skills in presenting Rhetorical speech in music: telling a story, delighting in detail, moving the listeners’ passions.

We tend to hear baroque opera as Recitative and Aria, in which Recitative is the ‘boring bit between the nice tunes’. This is problematic, since Monteverdi writes only a few ‘nice tunes’. His audience was – of course – unaware of Mozart, Handel and Vivaldi’s operatic recitative, or the story-telling Evangelist in Bach’s Passions. The words Recitative and Aria were used. but around 1600 they had different meanings. New scholarship on this subject is crucial for a better understanding, not only of how to perform, but also of how the 1607 audience would have heard Orfeo.

Recitare means ‘to act’. According to Doni’s (1640) Annotazioni it is incorrect to apply this word to dramatic Monody.  Il Corago explains that there are three ways to act – recitare: with music, with plain speech, and in silent mime. So musica recitativa simply means ‘music for acting’, everything that is delivered by a soloist. including Aria. Aria in this period is any repeated structure in music, rhythm or words. So in period terms, Shakespeare’s ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!’ [Richard III (c1593)] is an Aria within the Recitative of the whole speech.

In the 20th century, it was assumed that expressive recitative required romantic rubato. But Monteverdi’s rhetorical purpose is not to express the performer’s emotions, but to move the audience’s passions. He does this with subtly composed and carefully notated contrasts of pitch, harmony, rhythm and speed of declamation, controlled by the steady pulse of the Tactus beat.

 

How to listen?

Concentrate on the words.

Let the poetic imagery create Visions in your imagination, as if the events were happening before your very eyes.

Let the power of your own imaginative Visions be supported and enhanced by what you see on stage and what you hear in the music.

What does it mean?

In Monteverdi’s dramatic Monody – music for acting – contrasts in pitch represent the impassioned speech of a great actor. Speaking on a monotone is code for ‘Let me tell you a story’ – if there is no music, concentrate on the words.

Contrasts of syllabic speed indicate heightened passion. Crescendo on a single note carries the emotion to the listener. Speaking on the Tactus beat suggests stability, whilst being off the beat or syncopated shows agitation.

The continuo bass is structured to convey emotions: a sustained pedal-point signifies seriousness; slow movement of the bass accompanies a serious or sad subject; fast movement creates the lightness of happiness and dancing. Dissonances of many different types show varied emotions.

Typically, there are many changes of emotions, often with rapid contrasts between opposites.

Ensemble music, vocal or instrumental, on stage represents diegetic, ‘real life’ music. The string ensemble symbolises the mythical Lyre, associated with boh Orpheus and Apollo. Strings, flute and harp are played by the nine Muses. A pair of flutes suggest pastoral pan-pipes. The snarling Regal is the organ from Hell. Cornetti and sackbuts evoke the horror of Hell or the power of sacred music.

In a humanist opera, we might well ask, to Whom is music sacred? To Apollo? Apollo and Orpheus were understood as allegorising God and Christ. Or to Bacchus? Whilst the 1609 and 1615 prints of Monteverdi’s music have a happy ending in which Apollo rescues Orpheus from despair, Striggio’s 1607 libretto ends with a glorious triumph for the opposing team, Bacchus and his hard-drinking, hot-loving Maenads. Andrew Lawrence-King has reconstructed music for the original ending, and you will have to wait till the end of the show to find out who triumphs in the end.

So, in the best traditions of Rhetoric, I hope that this Explanation helps the music move your Emotions, and that you Enjoy the show!

Read more at the ORFEO Page by Il Corago

I won’t say too much… the role of Euridice in Monteverdi’s Orfeo

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This article is posted in connection with the production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo for Vaasa Baroque Festival in October 2019.

See also The Orfeo Page by Il Corago for further articles and a documentary film.

Whilst Rinuccini’s verse-drama, set by Peri and Caccini in 1600, has the title L’Euridice, Striggio’s 1607 libretto for Monteverdi presents the same mythological ‘fable in music as a theatrical show’ – favola in musica rappresentata – as L’Orfeo, and the focus is almost exclusively on the protagonist. Following the trend towards Personation – increasingly ‘realistic’ embodiment of theatrical roles – seen also in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and other dramas circa 1600, Striggio seeks to move the audience’s passions by encouraging them to watch how each event affects the central character, Orpheus himself.

As Rhetoric,  baroque music-drama persuades by Logos (word), Pathos (emotions) and Ethos (character). Details of poetic imagery in the text use the power of Energeia not only to express, but to induce listeners to share in ever-changing emotions, from the very beginning of the first Act: In questo lieto e fortunato giorno (happy and lucky)… sospirato e pianto (sighing and crying)… lieto e fortunato (happy and lucky again). As the first Pastore delivers those words and sends out waves of Energia (the communicative spirit of passion), he also mentions and gestures towards nostro semideo (our demigod)… Orfeo, directing the spectator’s attention to the protagonist. The audience then sees the present happiness and good fortune as well as the past melancholy and tears, all mirrored in the face and gestures of the principal actor, reflecting and amplifying the emotional Energia. This amplification is all the more effective, because that actor embodies a character renowned for his divine ability to convey emotions in music. Logos, Pathos and Ethos thus unite to convert poetic Enargeia into emotional Energia, with music as the catalyst.

Also, Orpheus is the presiding figure at the pastoral court of Arcadia. Renaissance courtiers were accustomed to watching their Prince, to gauge his reactions to any event. As the audience at a performance, they would divide their attention between the performers and their Lord: their appreciation of the show depended on his approval. So the split-screen effect on stage (simultaneously showing the action, and Orpheus’ reaction to it) takes advantage of the audience’s real-life experience to super-charge the emotional impact.

This is most obvious in the long Messenger scene, where Eurydice’s death (too terrible to be enacted, and too impractical to show on stage effectively) is narrated in every detail, with almost cinematic changes of pace from the girls fussing around her dying body with cold water and powerful charms to the heroine’s languid eyes and last deep sigh. (There are similar contrasts of pace, with slow-motion effects and rich poetic detail, for the death of Clorinda in Monteverdi’s Combattimento.)

As we hear detailed narration, we envisage the scene. And the 1607 audience also saw Orpheus’ reactions: at the bitter news, the unhappy man is like a mute stone, who for too much grief cannot grieve. A l’amara novella rassembla l’infelice un muto sasso, che per troppo dolor non puo dolersi.

Nevertheless, it does seem surprising that Eurydice herself has only two speeches in the entire music-drama. In the original production, the part was played by a male soprano (perhaps the little priest who had so much difficulty memorising words), but this in itself would not have been an obstacle to extending the role. Shakespeare’s plays, even the great love stories of Romeo and Juliet or Anthony and Cleopatra were originally performed by all-male casts, and the Mantuan audience would have been accustomed to this convention.

The result of the concentration of Eurydice’s entire role into just a dozen lines (six in Act I and another six in Act IV) is to invite us to weigh carefully every word she utters, and to listen attentively to Monteverdi’s realisation of her emotions in the most expressive genre of dramatic monody. More about Monteverdi’s monody here.

I won’t say…

Io non diro qual sia
Nel tuo gioir Orfeo la gioa mia,
Che non ho meco il core,
Ma teco stassi in compagnia d’Amore.
Chiedilo dunque a lui, s’intender brami
Quanto lieta gioisca, e quanto t’ami.

I won’t say what might be
In your joy, Orpheus, my own joy,
For I don’t have my heart with me,
But it is with you, in the company of Love.
Ask this therefore of my heart, if you desire to understand
How happily I rejoice, and how much I love you.

Whereas Orpheus’s love song Rosa del ciel is a rhetorical and musical tour de force, opening with the solemn dignity of an invocation of Apollo over a sustained bass on Gamut (the foundation of all music), Eurydice begins plainly. Her first words show the feminine modesty expected at the time, and Monteverdi’s music obediently takes up the D harmonies from the end of Orpheus’ song. And in spite of the structured poetry in rhyming couplets, she does not sing, but speaks (in the convention of expressive Monody).

But what expression Monteverdi introduces! The harmonic shift to the hard hexachord in the continuo-bass C#6 – E major – A minor foreshadows the harmonies of the Messaggiera’s despairing wail Ahi, caso acerbo!, of Orpheus’ tragic wrong turn in Hell ma qual eclissi, ohime, v’oscura? and of his last request to Apollo Ma non vedro piu mai  de l’amata Euridice i dolci rai? (But won’t I ever see again beloved Eurydice’s sweet eyes?)

Euridice does not say much, but with her words “I will not say..”, Monteverdi says all that could be said.

Now the harmonies turn to the natural hexachord, C major, with Orpheus’ joy and hers too. But a strange melodic leap and high dissonance highlight the poetic imagery “I have no heart” – this conventional trope will gain uncanny power in Act III when Orpheus argues that since his heart (Eurydice) is no longer with him, without a heart he cannot be alive, so he must qualify for passage on Caronte’s ferry to the underworld.

In a speech artfully crafted to appear naive, the rhetorical term dunque stands out as an unexpected connector …therefore… Perhaps Striggio is marking connections to other appearances of this word: in the first Pastore’s opening speech (where it underlines a rhetorical repeat of the first lines); in the second Pastore’s reminder that joy comes from heaven; in the Shepherds’ praise of Orpheus and his Lyre in Act II; and in Apollo’s formal invitation to heaven at the end of the whole drama.

In Eurydice’s first speech, by the time we reach the word Amore, we have returned to the soft hexachord and to the harmonies of Orpheus’ song. And her last words are the simplest possible declaration, “I love you”, all on one note. This is a musical code: the absence of melody tells the audience to pay attention to the words. And if we listen carefully, two words are repeated in this short speech, emphasising the emotional tone: love and joy.

But nevertheless there was a hard hexachord hint of trouble ahead when Orpheus’ desire is coloured by B natural, whilst Eurydice’s love has soft hexachord Bb. Bramare (to desire) evokes the Choleric humour associated also with anger, violence and Bacchic excess; whereas amare (to love) is associated with the generosity, joy and hope of the Sanguine humour. With delicate choice of similar but contrasting words and notes, Striggio and Monteverdi drop a subtle hint that Eurydice’s feelings are appropriately warm, but Orpheus’ passions are already too hot.

Too much!

Ahi, vista troppo dolce e tropp’ amara!
Cosi per troppo amor, dunque mi perdi?
Ed io, misera, perdo
Il poter piu godere e di luce
E di vita, e perdo insieme
Te, d’ogni ben piu caro, o mio consorte!

Ah, sight too sweet and too bitter!
Thus through too much love, therefore you lose me?
And I, wretched girl, lose
The power anymore to enjoy light
And life, and I also lose
You, of every good thing the most dear, Oh my husband!

Only one word from Eurydice’s first speech is heard when she speaks again: that word is Amor – love. But two new words dominate this short but emotionally searing lament: troppo – too much, and perdere – to lose, and they are connected by another rhetorical dunque. The message could not be clearer: it is Orpheus’ excessive emotions that have resulted in total loss.

This verdict will be underlined by the commenting chorus at the end of the Act: Degno d’eterna gloria fia sol colui ch’avra di se vittoria. (Worthy of eternal glory is only he who will have victory over himself.)

And at the end of the story, Apollo hammers home the lesson, arriving when Orpheus is ‘in greatest need, driven to a desperate end with extreme grief by anger and love’. Al maggior uopo arrivi, ch’a disperato fine con estremo dolore m’havean condotto gia sdegno ed Amore.

Apollo’s message is stern and clear:

Troppo, troppo gioisti
Di tua lieta ventura,
Hor troppo piangi
Tua sorte acerba e dura.

Too much, too much you rejoiced
In your happy luck,
Now you cry too much
For your bitter and harsh fate.

But with the following dunque (the last one), drawn out and high in the voice, Apollo connects his severe judgement to an invitation to eternal life in heaven, and Orpheus is saved to admire Eurydice’s beautiful face in the sun and the stars.

Euridice’s Act IV music is also loaded with information and emotion. The expressive exclamatione in the soft hexachord, “Oh!”, with a tender dissonance against Eb (compare Grandi’s O quam tu pulchra es here) twists unexpectedly to hard hexachord and the fatal harmony of E major on dolce, an ominously troubled sweetness. Amara returns to soft hexachord Eb again, but with the bitterest dissonance this hexachord allows.

The crucial verse is heralded by the use of narrative style – speaking on a monotone F# warns the audience to pay attention to the words, without being distracted by pretty tunes. And with the genius for expressing emotions that the ‘divine Claudio’ was famous for, this story-telling F# collides heartbreakingly with Orpheus’ love-music of G minor, on the word Amor itself. Monteverdi even manages to convey Eurydice’s disbelief by turning Striggio’s statement into a question, with an upwardly inflected cadence. This musical gesture corresponds to the actor’s upturned hand, indicating a question.

The dissonance on misera (wretched) stabs harsh G# into soft hexachord F, leading inevitably to fatal E major and the Messaggiera’s C# 6. The word caro is given soft hexachord Bb, and another tender exclamatione expresses unhappy Eurydice’s last sigh, before the Infernal Spirit thunders (in E major, of course) Return to the shadow of death! Torna a l’ombra di morte, infelice Euridice!

17th-century poets and poetry-fans would collect beautiful verses in isolation, to admire them, and to insert them into a longer poem when opportunity arose. In the centre of this speech, at the crucial moment in the whole drama, here surely is one such line from Striggio, shining sadly like a dark gemstone in Monteverdi’s artfully bitter-sweet setting:

Cosi per troppo amor dunque mi perdi!

 

The Minister’s Conditions in Monteverdi’s Orfeo

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This article is posted in connection with the production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo for Vaasa Baroque Festival in October 2019.

Read more about Monteverdi’s ‘story in music’ and watch a documentary film here: The Orfeo page by Il Corago

 

 

When Pluto, King of the Underworld, declares that Orpheus can recover his beloved Eurydice, two of his infernal Ministers comment. In the musical score, the first speech is marked to be sung a tone higher, perhaps reflecting changes in the distribution of vocal roles during the rehearsal period for the 1607 first production.

O de gli habitator de l’ombre eterne
Possente Re, legge ne fia tuo cenno
Che ricercar altre cagioni interne
Di tuo voler nostri pensier non denno.

O, the inhabitants’ of the eternal shadows
Powerful King, the law will be made from your gesture
For to search out other deeper reasons
For your wishes our thoughts are not worthy.

Striggio’s verses recall Giovanbatisto Strozzi’s lyrics for the Hell scene in the 1589 Florentine Intermedi, set by Giovanni de Bardi Miseri habitator del ciec’ averno (Wretched inhabitants of blind Avernus). The architecture and social structures of Striggio’s Hell would be instantly recognisable to the 1607 audience: within a landscape familiar from Dante’s Inferno, Pluto presides over an infernal court, just as Orpheus presided over the pastoral shepherds in Arcadia. And amidst the Minister’s courtly flattery we are reminded of the importance of the cenno – Gesture – as signifying a binding decision in a court of law, as a manner of royal proclamation to attending courtiers, and as communication to the audience from performers on the baroque stage. See Bonifacio’s 1616 L’Arte de’ Cenni (The Art of Gesture) here.

 

 

Monteverdi’s setting uses the coding of dramatic Monody to send listeners two important signals. Long notes in the continuo bass-line, in the Tactus values of semibreves and minims show that this is a serious subject, as explained by Peri in the Preface to his 1600 setting of Euridice. More about the coding of ‘recitative’ here. And the first words are recited on a monotone, categorised in Doni’s 1640 Annotazioni, additional notes to his Compendium of the Genres and Styles of Music (1635) as the Narrative style. This signals that infernal Spirit has a story to tell, that the audience is being addressed directly with significant information about the plot of this ‘fable in music’.

More on Rhetoric, Rhythm and Passions in Monteverdi’s favola in musica here. together with links to the 1607 Libretto, and original scores from 1609 and 1615. 

Striggio presents these two speeches of the two infernal Ministers as a single Chorus (in the Greek sense of commentary on the action of the principal characters), a Choro di Spiriti Infernali in 8 continuous 11-syllable lines of rhyming couplets, contrasting with the blank verse of Plutone and Proserpina’s speeches. And the significant information comes in the second half of this Chorus, allocated by Monteverdi to a second, lower-voiced singer. Striggio’s poetical structures would  usually have cued the composer to write ensemble or song-like music, but Monteverdi declines that invitation, choosing the more serious texture of Monody. Monteverdi’s choice – not to cloak the words in attractive melody but rather to deliver them in stark declamation – is another signal to the audience that this moment is highly significant, not just pretty music!

Trarrà da queste orribili caverne
Sua sposa Orfeo, s’adoprerà suo senno,
Si che no’l vinca giovenil desio,
Ne i gravi imperi tuoi sparga d’oblio.

He will lead out from these horrible caves
His wife, [he] Orfeo, if he uses his wisdom,
If he is not overcome by juvenile desire,
Nor forgets your grave commands.

The conventional rhetorical phrase for ‘forget’ is to ‘scatter into oblivion’. In the libretto, the commands are tuoi = yours, i.e. Pluto’s commands given. But in the scores they are suoi – his, i.e. Orfeo’s commands received. And for ‘wisdom’ the scores have ingegno – ingenuity: here the libretto seems the better choice, suggesting mature wisdom as opposed to juvenile impetuosity. The word senno also appears elsewhere in the drama, and here it makes the better rhyme.

 

 

Monteverdi directs the continuo to play their solemn D minor for an extra beat before the singer breathes, another marker of heightened significance. Plutone similarly has two extra beats, and we see notations in other operas for the continuo to repeat opening chords as many times as necessary, if a character is making a grand entrance: Penelope in the first scene of Monteverdi’s Ulisse, Tempo in the first scene of Cavalieri’s Anima & Corpo. More about Anima & Corpo here.

The pitch contours of the opening line step upwards in thirds, imitating the opening line of the first Spirto. This kind of repeating structure is what was called aria in this repertoire, not necessarily a melody, but any kind of repeated structure in words, rhythm or music. This movement in thirds is characteristic of the earliest Spanish recitado, where it represents the speech of divine characters/ Almost certainly Monteverdi intends a similar characterisation here, for the powerful ministers of hell.

The vital message that all these markers point towards is the threefold condition, under which Orpheus’ mission to Hell might succeed. The singer-hero must employ wisdom, not be overcome by passion, and he must remember the command not to turn and look at Eurydice. Of course, the 17th-century audience knows the story already, and so – as very often in early opera – they are ahead of the characters on stage, enjoying an almost god-like capacity to see the future.

This frequent use of dramatic irony is just one more aspect of the period attitude that privileges the audience as high-status courtiers, noble guests for whom the whole spectacle is provided. As La Musica sings in the Prologue, the audience are praised as ‘noble heroes, noble blood of kings’ – more about the Philosophy of La Musica here.

Since the audience are already with, if not even ahead of, the plot. all this emphasis on the Minister’s Conditions highlights what will become the message of the whole drama, the moral of the tale, summarised in the chorus at the end of this Act (after Orpheus’ disastrous turn):

Orfeo vinse l’Inferno e vinto poi
Fu da gl’affetti suoi

Orpheus conquered Hell, and then was conquered
by his own passions.

and reiterated by Apollo in one of the two surviving endings to the show:

Non e consiglio di generoso petto
Servir al proprio afftetto.

It is not wise for a generous heart
To be a slave to its own passions.

Thus in a music-drama that celebrates the power of music to move the passions, the audience is nevertheless guided towards moderation in their emotional response. Or at least, this is the message, if the Apollo ending (from the musical scores) is performed. The alternative Bacchic ending in the libretto concludes the show with a glorious paean to the ‘divine fury’ of inspiration and inebriation, ‘the spice of all human pleasure and the comfort of every troubled heart’.

 

Cheers!

Baroque Opera & Rhetoric: audience reaction to Landi’s ‘Il Sant’ Alessio’

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This article is posted in connection with the first production in Russia of Landi’s opera, performed by the advanced students and young professionals of the International Baroque Opera Studio, and presented by OPERA OMNIA with historically informed music and staging directed by Andrew Lawrence-King and Tanja Skok, August 29th-September 8th 2019.

 

 

In 2013, the Internatioanl Baroque Opera Studio OPERA OMNIA also presented the first staged performance in modern times of Landi’s (1619) La Morte d’Orfeo, at the St Petersburg Philharmonic, directed by Andrew Lawrence-King and Xavier Diaz-Latorre,  and choreography by ensemble Vento del Tempo.

 

Anton Varentsov as the river Hebro mourns the Death of Orpheus, in a scene from Landi’s ‘La Morte d’Orfeo’ (1619)

 

Il Sant’ Alessio shows Landi’s genius for rich vocal ensembles, dramatic contrasts and lively humour, already evident 12 years earlier in La Morte d’Orfeo. This  representation of a saintly man, living incognito under his father’s stairs, whilst all the family lament for his absence is celebrated nowadays as the first opera with a historical figure as protagonist, rather than Orpheus, Euridice, Dafne or other mythological characters. Beautiful engravings published along with the score show spectacular images of the original production.

 

Prologo to Il Sant’ Alessio: The personification of Rome as a Queen on a victory-throne of trophies.

 

In addition to sinfonias and ritornelli for the unusual combination of three violins, Landi’s score calls for a rich continuo section, giving lutes, theorboes and harps the more active line, whilst keyboard instruments provide a fundamental bass. See Agazzari’s (1607) comments on continuo-playing…

 

 

Delighting the seventeenth-century Roman audience, Landi and his librettist, Rospigliosi present a dazzling sequence of drama and scenographic contrasts, including all the most popular topoi of contemporary music-drama:  Classical Antiquity and urban sophistication, fashionable Pastoralism and exotic Africa, Heaven and Hell;  laments, comedy, letter-reading, disguisings, messengers, Angels and Demons, and even two Commedia dell’Arte zanni, clowns in the role of servants who disrupt their master’s household.

 

Landi “La Morte d’Orfeo” (1619) First staged production in modern times,  International Baroque Opera Studio (2013)

 

The success of Monteverdi’s (1608) Arianna was greatly influenced by the performance of Commedia actress Virginia Ramponi-Andreini ‘La Florinda’ in the title-role, her dramatic skills in lament-scenes complementing the musical skills of the court singers in ensemble music and arias. More about Arianna…

 

 

More than two decades later, Landi integrates dramatic and musical expressivity, acting and aria into various laments for St Alessio, and  brings in the physical energy of the Commedia’s notorious clowns as hilarious contrast: one of them leads an expedition to the countryside to play games, the other even tries to wrestle the Demon.

 

Il Sant Alessio: The Infernal Choir summons the Demon

 

As in many early music-dramas, the pleasure for the audience is often in knowing more than characters on stage do. So even as father, mother and wife lament for St Alessio’s absence, the audience know that he is right there, in disguise. And when an old Hermit tries to divert the Saint from his religious path, the audience recognises the Demon in disguise. Even the humour gains much from anticipation: from the beginning of the scene, we can guess that the encounter between a clown and the disguised Demon will lead to trouble. More subtly, we can enjoy hidden meanings, as when the Demon offers the warmest room in the house, if you would like to visit him at home!

 

Marco Scavazza as the Devil in Orgambide’s ‘Oratorio del nacimiento’

 

Nicole Jordan as the Angel in Ordambide’s Oratorio del Nacimiento

 

Promoted by the Pope’s nephew, Francesco Barberini, nicknamed cardinal padrone, Landi’s music-drama presents a clear religious message. The stairway to heaven is steep and difficult, but Religion is a true guide and Angels welcome the victorious soul with music and dancing in a glorious happy ending.

 

Il Sant’ Alessio: La Religione, the personification of Religion

 

Steffano Landi wrote Il Sant’ Alessio in 1631 on a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi and it was first performed the following February (1632, in the modern calendar). The opera seems to have been revived in 1634, for which occasion the score was printed. It is designated Dramma Musicale … fatto rappresentare: ‘Music-Drama… presented by the most Eminent and Reverend Signor Cardinal Barberini for the most Serene Prince Alessandro Carlo of Poland’.

 

 

The word opera occurs several times in the preliminary pages and in the sung text: the meaning is probably general, ‘work’, but nevertheless it remains undeniable that this term is beginning to be used in connection with music-drama. The term dramma musicale contrasts with the literary genres designated to earlier music-dramas: Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo is a Tragicomedia [I co-directed the first performance in modern times as well as the ensemble that arose from that event]; Monteverdi’s (1608) Arianna is a Tragedia; Orfeo one year earlier is famously favola per musica (story in music). But the term rappresentata – presented – indicates continuity from the very first ‘baroque opera’, Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo (1600) .More about Anima & Corpo…

 

 

Emilio de Cavalieri’s ‘Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo’ (1600) is indeed the ‘first opera’. Jacopo Peri, whose ‘Euridice’ was performed later the same year, acknowledges Cavalieri’s role as originator of the style. (Earlier music-dramas by these two composers, notably Peri’s ‘Dafne’, have not survived.)

This word rappresentare and its derivatives – rather than recitativo – characterises the various genres of theatrical music in the early seicento.

It’s Recitative, but not as we know it….

 

Un Ritratto dell’ opera

 

Nutrice, Sposa, Madre, Eufemiano & Adrasto

 

A letter printed in the 1634 publication provides an insight into how Landi’s audience received the performance:

Una lettera all’hora  scritta da huomo litteratissimo, la cui penna fece senza colori un Ritratto dell’opera; e se bene con attestatione troppo cortese forse lo figure alquanto piu bello del naturale, non e pero, che ne perdesse la somiglianza.

“A letter written at that time by a most literary gentleman, whose pen makes without colour a Report of the opera; and although with too courteous remarks, perhaps his description is somewhat more beautiful than the reality, it does not, however, fail to resemble it.”

This letter is itself ‘most literary’ and rhetorical, evaluating the opera’s success in terms of the Canons of Rhetoric:

 

  • Inventio – the story
  • Dispositio – the organisation of the material
  • Elocutio – the appropriate style for each part
  • Memoria – not only memorisation, but deep study
  • Pronuntatio & Actio – performance, vocal delivery dramatic action

As leading scholar Tim Carter has commented in connection with Monteverdi’s musical theatre, period audiences enjoyed opera not only for music, drama, dancing and spectacle in general, but appreciated in particular the presentation of Rhetoric: narrating the story, delighting with subtle word-play, and moving the listener’s passions.

 

 

THE REPORT

“The opera seemed to me perfect in every part: the structure and the Composition, which Aristotle calls favola (story), well united, not episodic, concise and not wandering: the arrangement (costume) so well fitting, that there was nothing there, that lacked what it was to be made with; the style (sentenza) proportionate to the arrangement, witty, serious, surprising, as needed and conforming to appropriateness. The elocution effective, not affected, not coarse; but either grand, or moderate or intimate, as required by the subject, or by the person who was speaking. The action and the performance of the actors flexible, suitable and corresponding to the meaning of the words, so that also the gestures and movements seemed as harmonious and consonant as the voices.

ALK comments:

Indeed, Rospigliosi and Landi are to praised for their organisation of the story into the more up-to-date three-Act structure (Orfeo, Arianna & La Morte d’Orfeo are all in five Acts), into a glittering sequence of contrasting scenes, and with witty contrasts and clever use of dramatic irony.

Sentenza – the use of rhetorical devices and grandly constructed sentences is closely related to the elocutio also praised by the writer: this would be the poetic choice of particular words, according to the register (elevated or everyday style) and the ever-changing emotions.

 

As the Demon (disguised as a Hermit) leaves St Alessio, the Angel flies in to comfort the Saint.

 

“But about the Scenic equipment, which Aristotle truly takes account of as the last part, but nevertheless is so important, which – as he says – very often carries off the prize, what shall I say? The first introduction of new Rome, the Angel flying through the clouds, the appearance of Religion in mid-air – this was ingenious and technical creativity, that competed with nature itself  (opera furono d’ingegno e di machina, ma gareggianti con la natura). The Scenery most artful; the appearances of Heaven and Hell marvellous; the changes of the flats (lati) and of the Perspective ever more beautiful: but the last scene of the [protagonist’s] disappearance with the illuminated cupola of the portico with the appearance of the garden in the far distance, incomparable.

ALK: The visual highlights mentioned in the letter correspond closely to the engraved scenes printed in the score. These in turn correspond with the descriptions of each scene in the libretto and score. It might even be possible to read from the scene listings the position of each actor, scene by scene, as Dene Barnett did from later French theatrical sources.

 

Madre Sposa & Nutrice lament for St Alessio

 

 

 

“The costumes sumptuous, showy, beautiful, varied, historic, appropriate and fitting well the people who wore them, the entrances onto the stage (nel palco) and the exits to backstage/wings (dentro alla Scena), measured and well timed (misurati, ed a tempo): the balli ingenious and lively; everything and every part well integrated one with another, and with the body technically able and well managed (col suo corpo ben disposte e ben governate. This might be read as referring not to the physical body, but to the corps de ballet for each particular dance: ‘with each dance-troupe well choreographed and well organised’).

ALK: The actors’ performance is viewed through their physical actions: movements, the quality of their entrances and exits, rhetorical gestures. The writer silently adopts the underlying assumptions of this period, that character and emotions are revealed by movement and gesture, and that such movements and gestures also awake corresponding emotions for onlookers. More about “How to Act” in 17th-century theatre…

 

I Sant Alessio – a country-dance comprised of various games

 

“Seeing this [performance] confirmed the judgement of an Article (Discorso) of mine that I already made, in which I approve of Tragedy that takes as its Subject a Personage of eminent goodness and sanctity, even if it seems contrary to what Aristotle decreed. The article is dedicated to the Most Eminent Signor Cardinal, on whose authority I have been happy to have it printed several times. Seeing this so devout and spiritual [performance] so well received in the Theatre, I’m inclined to make it [the article] public; the only thing holding me back is that for a while (un passo) I’m working to rediscover the Author of the Tragedia di Christo Patiente (Tragedy of Suffering Christ, i.e. a dramatized Passion), commonly ascribed to The Nazianzeno.  When I’m out of this mess, I’ll bring it  immediately his Eminence, and Your Lordship will be pleased to have it received.”

 

Il Sant Alessio: the final scene with Angel musicians and dancing Virtues.