Essays on the Origins of Western Music

by

David Whitwell

Essay IV: Curiosities in Music Etymology and Metaphor

In the course of our reading early literature we have found some etymological and metaphorical references which we believe might be of interest for their help in clarifying earlier definitions and values and for their help in understanding subsequent practice. What follows is a sampling of those that attracted our interest.

Accent For accent is a kind of singing; whence it is called accent from accino, accinis [I sing, thou singest], because every

syllable has its own proper sound either raised, lowered, or composite, and all syllables of one word are adapted or sung to one syllable on which rests the principal sound.

Opus Majus, “Causes of Error,” XVI, in The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (1220-1292), trans., Robert Burke (New York:

Russell & Russell, 1962), I, 259.

Artist Students of Liberal Arts in the 13th century universities were

called artistae, “art-ists.”Nan Cooke Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and Renaissance

Universities (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 48.

Bell Bell as a metaphor for a bad teacher:

What an harsh sound does [a cracked] bell make in every ear! The metal is good enough; it is the rift that makes it so unpleasingly jarring.

How too like is this bell to a scandalous and ill-lived teacher. His calling is honorable; his noise is heard far

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enough; but the flaw, which is noted in his life, mars his doctrine, and offends those ears which else would take pleasure in his teaching. It is possible that such a one even by that discordous noise, may ring in others into the triumphant church of heaven; but there is no remedy for himself but the fire....

“Occasional Meditations” in The Works of Joseph Hall, D.D. (1574-1656), ed., Philip Wynter (New York: AMS Press, 1969,

X, 146.

Cembalo Notes of a cembalo as a metaphor for money:

Do you call it a favor to make twenty-five florins tinkle out of your pocket like the notes of a cembalo?Ariosto, Lena.

Christ the lyre player See “lyre.”

Chromatic Marchetto of Padua, early 14th century, says altered tones are

called “chromatic,” from chroma, or “color” in Greek, and

have “the color of beauty, because it is on account of the

elegance and beauty of the dissonances that the whole

tone is divided....”Marchetto of Padua, Lucidarium, Jan W. Herlinger, trans.,

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), treatise 2, I, 8, vi.

Concert Concert as a metaphor for God’s purpose:

Lord, place me in Thy concert; give one strain To my poor reed!

“Employment” in The Poems of George Herbert (1593-1633), ed., Ernest Rhys (London: Walter Scott, 1885),

51.

Concord A concord is the mixture of two pitches, sounding sweetly to our ears by its natural virtue; I think that the word,

“concord,” is derived metaphorically from “con” and “cor,” for just as a sweet friendship is brought about from the coming together of two hearts that are in mutual agreement....

Tinctoris, The Art of Counterpoint, trans., Albert Seay (American Institute of Musicology, 1961), 17.

Conductor Fenelon uses the conductor as a metaphor for the head of

government [see Harmony as a metaphor for good government]

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Cords The strings of the instrument [in ancient times] were called cords because they easily move the heart [corda].Cassiodorus, letter to Boethius, 6th century AD

Correctness Plato, “Musicality is the name for correctness.” Plato, Alcibiades I, 108d.

Discord A mixture of two pitches naturally offending the ears. And it is called discord metaphorically from “dis” and “corde,”

for, just as the bitterness of enmity arises from the separation of two hearts from a mutual uniformity of sentiment.

Tinctoris, The Art of Counterpoint, trans., Albert Seay (American Institute of Musicology, 1961), 85.

Divine In ancient Greece the best performers of singing or playing the

lyre were called theioi, divine.Apostolos N. Athanassakis, The Homeric Hymns (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 474ff.

Drums Drums, “beat battle drums in time of peace” as a metaphor for

an inappropriate time.Molina’s, Tamar’s Revenge, II, line 692.

Enchantment Enchantment (incantatio) comes, say some, from a Chaldee

word, which the Greeks translate “productive song.”Voltaire, in his Philosophical Dictionary, “Universal Deluge,”

in The Works of Voltaire (New York: St. Hubert Guild, 1901), VIII, 222.

God the Musician See “Panpipes.”

Good Expressed in the ancient Egyptian language by the hieroglyphic

picture of a lute type instrument.W. Chappell, The History of Music (London: Chappell), 2.

Harmony Harmony as a metaphor for a well-ordered life:

Music is indeed the science of proper modulation; and if we observe the good way of life we are always associated with

this excellent science. When we sin, however, we no longer have music [we are not in ‘harmony’].

Cassiodorus (480-573 AD), “On Music,” in An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings, trans., Leslie Jones (New York,

Octagon Books, 1966).

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Harmony Harmony as a metaphor for speech:

For, although the distance be Great from wise to witless words, Still, from two far different chords Springs the sweetest harmony.

Calderon, Belshazzar’s Feast, scene i.

Harmony Harmony as a metaphor for good government:

The government of a kingdom demands a certain harmony, like Music, and just proportions, like that of architecture. If

you will allow me, I will again make use of the comparison of these arts, and make you conceive what ordinary understandingsthose men have who govern by the detail. He who in a consort ofmusic sings only some certain parts, although he sings themperfectly well, he is no more than a singer; he alone is the

master of music who governs the whole consort, and at once regulates all the parts of it.

Francois de Salignac de La Mothe-Fenelon (1651-1715), The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses, Book XXII,

(London: Garland Publishing, 1979, facsimile of the 1720 edition), , II, 235.

Harmony Harmony used as a metaphor for the sum of the features of the

face of a lady recently deceased.

The harmony of colors, features, grace, Resulting Aires (the magicke of a face) Of musical sweet tunes, all which combined To this dark Vault.

Thomas Carew (1594-1639), “Epitaph on the Lady S.,” in The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed., Rhodes Dunlap

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 55.

Heresy A Greek word, signifying “belief, or elected opinion.” Is it not greatly to the honor of human reason that men

should be hated, persecuted, massacred, or burned at the stake, on account of their chosen opinions?

Voltaire, in his Philosophical Dictionary, “Universal Deluge,” in The Works of Voltaire (New York: St. Hubert Guild, 1901),

X,36.

Inspire The word inspiration when it has divine prefixed to it, bears a particular and known signification. But otherwise, to

inspire is no more than to Breathe into; and a man without profaneness may truly say, that a trumpet, a fife, or a flute deliver a musical sound, by the help of Inspiration.

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William Congreve (1670-1729) in The Complete Works of William Congreve (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), III,

184.

Imagination Information comes to the mind through the senses, through images, from which comes the word, “imagination.” Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1470-1533), On the

Imaginatio n , Harry Caplan, trans. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1957), I, 25.

Lute Lute as a metaphor for the healthy body:

Stalewood. Faith, like a lute that has all the strings broke;nobody will meddle with her.

Rearage. Fie, there are doctors now in town will string her again, and make her sound as sweet as ever she

did.Thomas Middleton (1570-1627), Michaelmas Term, I, i.

Lyre Lyre as a metaphor for Christian harmony:

So let all nine of us, parents and affectionate children together, live with harmonious hearts like a single lyre; let

all of us form a lyre assembled from different strings to sing the same song.... Christ will delightedly pluck this ten-stringed

lyre. This harp in us will resound to Christ’s playing in full harmony, once our thoughts are made perfect, if only our peace is at one with God to the depths of our being, so that we are united in body, mind, and faith. The man who by pursuing upright laws personifies this lyre, and orders his life well in all measures, must live a life which harmonizes with the sacred law in all things, for every string will sound forth unbroken.

The Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola (354-431 AD), trans., P. G. Walsh (New York: Newman Press, 1975), Poem 21,326.

Melody “Melody” comes from the Greek, mel [honey], reflecting the

“sweetness” of music.Isidore of Seville (560-636 AD), Etymologiarum, III, xx,

trans., W. M. Linsay, quoted in Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History (New York: Norton, 1950).

Mirror Mirror as a metaphor for music:

“When one looks into the mirror and sees a perfect likeness, the two accord the way a note does with its rhythm.”Dante, Paradiso, XXVIII.

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Music The word for “music” in the Akkadian language (3,000 BC), nigutu or ningutu, also has the connotation of “joy” or

“merry- making.”Henry G. Farmer, “The Music of Ancient Egypt,” New

Oxford History of Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), I, 236.

Music All music in ancient Egypt went under the name hy, which meant “joy” or “gladness.”Henry G. Farmer, “The Music of Ancient Egypt,” New

Oxford History of Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), I, 262.

Music John, On Music, c. 1100 AD, begins his principal discussion

of music by admitting that he does not know where the name

“music” actually derives from. If the reader knows, he

does not begrudge him, for “as Paul says, the Holy Ghost

apportions to individuals as he sees fit.”John, On Music, 77.

Music Music as a metaphor for Nature:

Would’st thou not say, Nature is out of tune, The world is sick, and like to die in June?

Giambattista Guarini (1538-1612), The Faithful Shepherd [Il Pastor Fido], in Five Italian Renaissance Comedies (New York:

Penguin Books, 1978), I, 286.

Music Music as a metaphor for the heart:

No Timbrel, but heart thou play’st upon, Whose strings are stretch’d unto the highest key, The diapason love, love is the unison In love, my life and labors waste away.

Henry Constable (1562-1613), from “Diana” (1594), in Richard Sylvester, ed., The Anchor Anthology of Sixteenth-Century

Verse (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1974), 561ff.

Music Music as a metaphor for the soul in love:

Love decks the countenance, spiriteth the eye, And tunes the soul in sweetest harmony....

George Chapman (17th century), The Blind Beggar, scene iii.

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Music Music as a metaphor of personal feeling:

For now to sorrow must I tune my song, And set my Harp to notes of saddest woe....

“The Passion,” in Frank Patterson, ed., The Works of John Milton (New York: Columbia University Press,

1931-1938), I, 23.

Music Music as a metaphor for keeping emotions in balance:

“Upon the whole, it may be said properly to be the same with the affections or passions in an animal constitution as

with the strings of a musical instrument. If these, though in ever so just proportion one to another, are strained beyond a certain degree, it is more than the instrument will bear: the lute or lyre is abused, and its effect lost. On the other hand, if while some of the strings are duly strained, others are not wound up to their due proportion, then is the instrument still in disorder, and its part ill performed. The several species of creatures are like different sorts of instruments; and even in the same species of creatures (as in the same sort of instrument) one is not entirely like the other, nor will the same strings fit each. The same degree of strength which winds up one, and fits the several strings to a just harmony and consort, may in another burst both the strings and instrument itself. Thus men who have the liveliest sense, and are the easiest affected with pain or pleasure, have need of the strongest influence or force of other affections, such as tenderness, love, sociableness, compassion, in order to preserve a right balance within, and to maintain them in their duty, and in the just performance of their part, whilst others, who are of a cooler blood, or lower key, need not the same allay or counterpart, nor are made by Nature to feel those tender and endearing affections in so exquisite a degree.” Anthony Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713),

“Concerning Virtue or Merit” in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, II, iii.

Music Music as a metaphor of the state of personal pleasure; three

examples from Jacobean theater:

I finde it in the musicke of my heart.Thomas Dekker (b. 1570), The Roaring Girl, V, ii.

D’Amville, upon finding some gold,

Here sounds a music whose melodious touch Like angels’ voices ravishes the sense.

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Cyril Tourneur (d. 1626), The Atheist’s Tragedy, V, i.

Let mercy touch your heart-strings gracious Lord That it may sound like musike in the eare Of a man desperate....

Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore, Part II, V, ii.

Music Music as a metaphor for the pleasure in reading:

“...nor the slumbers of a conscience that hath no sting to keep it waking more delicate than the musicke which I

found in reading...”Thomas Dekker, “Warres” (1609).

Music Music as a metaphor for happy married life:

May their whole life a sweet song prove Set to two well composed parts, By musickes noblest master, Love, Played on the strings of both their hearts....

“Epithalamium,” in The Complete Poetry of Richard Crashaw, George Williams, ed. (New York: New York University Press,

1972), 489.

Music Music as a metaphor for speech; three examples from Jacobean

theater:

“Women’s tongues and hearts have different tunes.”Thomas Heywood (1575-1648), The Golden Age.

On an often repeated phrase,

“Sing your old song no more.”George Chapman (1559-1634), All Fools, V, ii.

On one who speaks well,

“Your descants do marvelous well fit this ground.”George Chapman, Bussy D’Ambois, I, ii.

Music Music as a metaphor for speech:

His mother-tongue was like the dull musick of a monochord, which by study he turns into the harmony of

several instruments.Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profance State [1642],

ed., Maximilian Walten (New York: AMS Press, 1966), II, 72ff.

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Music Music as a metaphor for time; two examples from Jacobean

theater: First, for “time to get organized,”

And tune our Instruments till the Consort come To make up the full noise....

Francis Beaujmont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625), The Little Thief, III.

For the wrong time to duel,

Hide ‘em, for shame! I had thought soldiers Had been musical, would not strike out of time, But to the consort of drum, trumps, and fife: ‘Tis madmen-like to dance without music, And most unpleasing shows to the beholders, A Lydian verse to a Doric note.

Thomas Middleton, A Fair Quarrel, I, i.

Music Music as a metaphor for the diplomat (here, papal):

He’s like an Instrument of sundry strings, Not one in tune, yet any note he sings.

Thomas Dekker, “A Papist in Armes” (1606).

Music Music as a metaphor for co-operation.

As strings of an Instrument, though we render several sounds, yet let both our sounds cadence in sweet concordant Musicke.Thomas Dekker, “The Dead Tearme” (1608).

Music Music as a metaphor for politics:

To be short, such strange mad musick doe they play upon their Sacke-buttes...Thomas Dekker, “The Seven Deadly Sinnes of Londo” (1606).

Music Music as a metaphor for exercise:

Ringing oftentimes has made a good musick on the bells, and puts mens bodies out of tune.Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profance State, II, 184.

Music Music as a metaphor for the lawyer:

He knows so much in Musique, that he affects only the most and cunningest discords; rarely a perfect concord,

especailly sung, except in fine.Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), The “Conceited Newes” of

Sir Thomas Overbury and His Friends, ed., James Savage (Gainesville: Scholars’ Facsimilies, 1968), 119.

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Music House Music House as a metaphor for a house of prostitution.Thomas Middleton, Your Five Gallants, II, i.

Musicality See “Correctness.”

Nature Nature as a metaphor for music.

Sit down; the gentle breeze That murmurs through the velvet leaves of these Old vines and bowers plays a happy host Of tunes in rhythm with this fountain, which Is like a zither made of silver and Of pearls, whose pebbles are the strings upon Which chords are played on golden frets.

Calderon, The Mayor of Zalamea, II, v.

Organ Descartes used the organ as a metaphor for demonstrating how

the body mechanism affects the perception of the emotions:

You can think of our machine’s heart and arteries, which push the animal spirits into the cavities of its brain, as being like the bellows of an organ, which push air into the wind-

chests; and you can think of external objects, which stimulate certain nerves and cause spirits contained in the cavities to pass into some of the pores, as being like the fingers of the organist, which press certain keys and cause the air to pass from the wind-chests into certain pipes. Now the harmony of an organ does not depend on the externally visible arrangement of the pipes or on the shape of the wind-chests or other parts. The functions we are concerned with here does not depend at all on the external shape of the visible parts which anatomists distinguish in the substance of the brain, or on the shape of the brain’s cavities, but solely on three factors: the spirits which come from the heart, the pores of the brain through which they pass, and the way in which the spirits are distributed in these pores.

Descartes, “Treatise on Man,” 166.

Organ Organ as a metaphor for one who stimulates others to action:

As in an Organ from one blast of wind To many a row of Pipes the sound-board breathes.

John Milton, “Paradise Lost,” I, 708.

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Organ The generic name of all musical instruments [vessels].Isidore of Seville (560-636 AD), Etymologiarum, III, xxi,

trans., W. M. Linsay, quoted in Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History (New York: Norton, 1950).

Organum “Organum is a generall name of all instrumenes of musyk.”Robert Grosseteste, De proprietatibus rerum, quoted in

Carpenter, Op. cit., 85, fn. 33.

Out of tune Out of tune music as a metaphor for emotional unbalance:

“my feeble key of untuned cares”Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, V, i, 315

“Do you speak in the sick tune?”

Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, II, iv, 35

O what a noble mind is here overthrown! The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword;

.... And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh....

Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, i, 155ff.

Panpipes Panpipes as a metaphor for God’s control:

“Think of the man who rubs his lips by blowing on woven reeds; he plays one tune from his one mouth, but there is

more than one note, and he marshals the different sounds with controlling skill. He governs the shrill-echoing

apertures with his breathing and his nimble fingers, closing and opening them, and thus a tuneful wind with haste of airy movement successively passes and returns along the hollow of the reed, so that the wind instrument becomes alive and issues forth a tune unbroken. This is how God works. He is the Musician who controls that universal-sounding harmony which he exercises through all the physical world.”

The Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola (354-431 AD), trans., P. G. Walsh (New York: Newman Press, 1975), Poem 27,72.

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Panpipes Panpipe of seven tubes as a metaphor for the Seven Last

Words of Christ on the Cross.Giambattista Marion (1569-1625), “La Musica,” the second of

his Dicerie sacre, See Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, trans., David Bryant (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1989), 53.

Pipe “We piped and you did not dance,” a metaphor for the religious

leader’s complaint that the people are not paying attention.Matthew 11:17.

Pitch The ancient Egyptians and Greeks had no names for individual notes,

or pitches. Only in the most recent period, Aristoxenus coined

the term tonos.

Polyphony “Weaving their voices in alternate song” as a metaphor for the

moving of tree branches.Luis de Gongora (1561-1627), “First Solitude,” lines 540, in

Gilbert Cunningham, The Solitudes of Gongora (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964).

Popular Music “Some people are like a popular song, taken up only for a time.”Francois de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), The Maxims of La

Rochefoucald, trans., Louis Kronenberger (New York: Random House, 1959), Nr. 211.

Singing Music as a metaphor for speech:

If I sing and you dance to another tune, it will not bother me, for my song has its own charm, even if it does not stir

feet to the dance....Letter to the poet, Licentius, in Letters of Saint Augustine, trans., Sister Wilfrid Parsons (New York: Fathers of the

Church, 1955), Nr. 26.

Singing Singing as a metaphor for speech: Quevedo, in his “The Dream of

Death,” used the expression “no one sings well on an empty stomach”

to mean a person should not speak if he has only something stupid to

contribute to the conversation.Francisco de Quevedo, Dreams and Discourses, trans., R. K.

Britton (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1989), 307.

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Strings Strings as a metaphor for women:

Fernando. Whoever said it would be convenient to buy ready-made letters and trimmed beards should

have added [ready-made] tuned instruments.

Julio. That would be impossible. The substance strings are made of, you see, causes them to slacken with

moisture and tauten with excessive heat. In other words, like some women, strings always need

tuning. Fernando. Which is why they are worked on so much --

to bring them up to the pitch of the tuner. Julio. Many break. Fernando. Look only for the genuine and discard the

false. That’s what musicians do. Julio. Which brings up something curiously ˆ propos. Fernando. Namely? Julio. That as they undo the skein, they flip it with one

finger, holding the end of the string between the teeth, and if the string casts two shadows, they

discard it as faulty and go on to the next. The same applies to trying out a woman; if she casts shadows in two directions, change her for another.

Lope de Vega, La Dorotea, I, iv.

Strings A string instrument as a metaphor for a well-adjusted body.

[Plato] was right to compare the human body to a resonant, living instrument. When it is well tuned, it makes

marvelous music; and when it is not, it is all confusion and dissonance. It is composed of many, very different strings, incredibly hard to adjust to one another, and its pegs are always slipping. Some have called the tongue hardest to tune.”

Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658) , A Pocket Mirror for Heroes, trans., Christopher Maurer (New York: Currency Doubleday,

1996), 86.

Strings Mersenne used strings, which never fail to sound when

played, as a metaphor for how man should immediately

respond to the will of God. He adds,

For since there is no movement that does not lead the way to the first Motive Power, it is reasonable that the

movements from which one receives so great contentment and whence one draws so great a harmony, lead us to that, of which

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Providence incessantly beats the measure of the harmony of the universe and governs the grand concert of everything, lest it be said in Eternity that the musicians were more stupid and irrational than the inanimate creatures....

Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), Harmonie universelle (1636), V, iii, 17 (Collary 8).

Strings Strings as a metaphor for four important characteristics of a

young woman:

Tranio. Tell me but this; what dost thou think of women? Rowland. Why, as I think of Fiddles, they delight me,

Till their strings break. Tranio. What strings? Rowland. Their Modesties,

Faiths, Vows, and Maidenheads, for they are like KitsThey have but four strings to ‘em.

Beaumont and Fletcher, The Womans Prize, III, i.

Student Ass as a metaphor for a student who listens, but does not hear:

Outstanding ability can acquire a liberal education even under a bad and idle teacher; but if the pupil, on the other

hand, is an ass listening to the lyre, even the best of teachers wastes both oil and toil.

Erasmus, “Adages,” in The Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), XXXIV, 16.

Symphonia Isidore uses “Symphonia” to mean harmony in the modern sense.Isidore of Seville (560-636 AD), Etymologiarum, III, xx,

trans., W. M. Linsay, quoted in Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History (New York: Norton, 1950).

Symphoneta “I call a phonacus the inventor of a simple melody in some mode, a symphoneta the one who adds the remaing voices.”Heinrich Glarean (1488-1563), letter to Johannes Aal, quoted in

Clement Miller, in “The Dodecachordon: Its Origins and Influence on Renaissance Musical Thought,” in Musica

Disciplina (1961), 160.

Symphonurgic The term used by Kircher for the rules of composing music in

the old church style [stile antico].Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), Musurgia Universalis (Rome,

1650), Book Five.

Symphony “Symphony is the same as consonance.”

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Tinctoris, This comment is found in the Brussels manuscript of his book, Dictionary of Musical Term.

Tone The origin of the word “tone” is intonandus, “to be sounded.”Guido of Arezzo, Micrologus (c. 1026-1028 AD) in Hucbald,

Guido, and John on Music, trans., Warren Babb (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 116.

Trumpet A contemporary of the second Crusade describes the trumpet-

types of the Saracens as trumpae, tubae, tibiae, which is the

earliest known mention of the cognate form of the

trumpet.Farmer, “Crusading Martial Music,” Music & Letters (1949),

244.

Trumpet Trumpet as a metaphor for Erasmus. Erasmus refers to himself

as being like “those who sound the trumpet on the battlefield

while remaining themselves outside the fray.”Erasmus, letter to duke George of Saxony [1520], in The

Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), VIII, 5.

Trumpet Trumpet as a metaphor for Luther. “Luther, like a great

trumpet for proclaiming the gospel truth....” Erasmus, letter to duke George of Saxony [1520], in The

Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 42.

Trumpet Trumpet as a metaphor for Homer:

So Homer was a sounding trumpet fineAmongst the Greeks into his learned days....“A Sonnet,” in New Poems of James I, ed., Allan

Westcott (New York: AMS Press, 1966), 29.

Trumpet Trumpet as a metaphor for the poet:

Which by the trumpet of my verse I made for to resound From pole to pole through every where of this immobile

round.“An Epithalamion,” in New Poems of James I, ed.,

Allan Westcott (New York: AMS Press, 1966), 47.

Trumpet Trumpet as a metaphor for the voice.

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A servant’s voice is a trumpet, It’s sound will carry far and shrill...

Moron, in CalderonÕs The Fake Astrologer, I, lines 793ff.

Trumpet The “shrill trumpet” used as a metaphor for the cry of the

beggar.“Upon the Beggar,” in A Book for Boys and Girls, in The Works

of John Bunyan (1628-1688), ed., George Offor (London: Blackie and Son, 1853), III, 758.

Trumpet Trumpet as a metaphor for wind:

“East, West, North, and South, the foure Trumpetters of the Worlde, that never blow themselves out of breath....”Thomas Dekker, ÒThe Seven Deadly Sinnes of LondonÓ (1606),

in Grosart, The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker (New York, Russell & Russell, 1963), II, 97.

Virtuoso Virtuoso comes from Virtu...Franz Liszt, letter to Franz Brendel, Weimar, April 30, 1853

Voice Marchetto of Padua, early 14th century, writes that the

etymology of the word “voice” [vox] comes from “vows”

[vota], “because it expresses vows of the heart.” He then

quotes Aristotle as saying, similarly of the spoken voice,

“Things spoken are symbols of the

passions of the soul.”

He concludes it is appropriate, therefore, that we speak of “notes”

of music, which derives from nota (“symbol”)Marchetto of Padua, Lucidarium, Jan W. Herlinger, trans.,

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), I, 10, iiiff.

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