MusicalRhetoric-1

XXI Congresso da Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Música - Uberlândia - 2011

1

Musical-rhetoric in German Baroque: An Investigation of Imitatio

Gabriel Augusto Ferraz University of Florida – [email protected]

Abstract: The association of music and rhetotirc was a common practice in German Baroque. Most German Kantors attended Lateinschulen where they received training in both music and Latin (grammar and rhetoric). In the Baroque, the “order of the day” was to “move listeners’ passions,” and to help them in this task these Kantors started to create musical equivalents to figures of rhetoric, whose main goal had always been to “move people’s passions.” This paper investigates the musical-rhtetorical imitatio to demonstrate that this device was instrisic in the compositional practices of German Baroque composers.

Keywords: German Baroque music, music and rhetoric, musical borrowing, German Baroque theorists, musical emulation of Classical Rhetoric

Música-Retórica no Barroco Alemão: Uma investigação do Imitatio

Resumo: A associação de música e retórica foi comum no Barroco Alemão, pois a maioria dos Kantors frequentaram Lateinschulen, onde receberem instrução em música e Latim (gramática e retórica). No Barroco, a “ordem do dia” era “mover os sentimentos dos ouvintes,” e os Kantors criaram equivalentes musicais para figuras da retórica, a qual tinha como principal objetivo “mover os sentimentos das pessoas”. Nosso trabalho investiga o imitatio, um importante elemento da retórica musical, para demonstrar como a retórica se tornou intrínseca nas práticas compositcionals do Barroco Alemão. Palavras-Chave: Música no Barroco Alemão, música e retórica, empréstimo musical, teóricos do Barroco Alemão, emulação da Retórica Clássica em música

Introduction

In spite of scholars disputing whether or not the rhetoric term imitatio is valid as

applied to the Renaissance musical technique of emulation (far better know as “parody”),

primary source material demonstrates that the term was well in use in Germany during the

Baroque period. Through their humanistic training (a privilege of wealthy young men in the

Renaissance) Kantors studied the disciplines of the trivium (rhetoric, grammar, and logic) and

were able to devise a musical language in which elements of rhetoric, among which the

imitatio, gained musical equivalents. The rhetorical imitatio consisted of a method through

which writers (specially students) attempted to master Latin by borrowing inventiones

(ideas/excerpts) from authoritative writers such as Cicero, Aristotle, or Quintilian. These

students should develop their own text based upon the initial borrowed idea; however, despite

their expected originality, these new texts should create the same effect intended by their

models. In other words, the essence of the text should be the same, but the way it was

presented should not. Due to their training in both music and rhetoric, Kantors were able to

create musical equivalents to figures of rhetoric, among which the imitatio.


2

In the entry on rhetoric and music in the New Grove Dictionary Online, George

Buelow stated:

Not until the Baroque period did rhetoric and oratory furnish so many of the essential rational concepts that lie at the heart of most compositional theory and practice. Beginning in the 17th century, analogies between rhetoric and music permeated every level of musical thought, whether involving definitions of styles, forms, expression and compositional methods, or various questions of performing practice […] Since the preponderantly rhetorical orientation of Baroque music evolved out of the Renaissance preoccupation with the impact of musical styles on the meaning and intelligibility of words (as for example in the theoretical discussions of the Florentine Camerata), nearly all the elements of music that can be considered typically Baroque, whether the music be Italian, German, French or English, are tied, either directly or indirectly, to rhetorical concepts (BUELOW, Grove Music Online: no year, no page number).

Furthermore, when addressing the modern study of Baroque music in his selective

bibliography for musical-rhetoric Buelow warned: “To understand the theorists and to

understand baroque music, one must understand rhetorical terminology and the rhetorical

discipline of thought” (BUELOW, 1973: 3). Following Buelow’s path this paper will

investigate the writings and practices that support the consistent use of the musical-rhetorical

imitatio for the German Baroque, a task that scholars have not yet taken.

Rhetoric and Musical-Rhetoric

The importance of rhetoric to German composers is indebted much to Martin

Luther’s associate Phillip Melanchthon, who pioneered the reformation of Lutheran schools

and placed the trivium at the center of curriculum of the Leteinschulen and universities.

Virtually, all German composers would have attended a Leteinschule, having received

instructions from a Kantor, whose two functions, among many, were to teach music and Latin

(whose two divisions were grammar and rhetoric). Buelow remarked:

The decisive bond between music and rhetoric was forged in the decades after about 1525, and by 1560 the concepts and terminology of classical oratory had made strong inroads into the writings of music theorists on both sides of the Alps (Wilson, 1995). On the model of Melanchthon’s adoption of rhetorical doctrines for Protestant scriptural exegesis and instruction in the new Lateinschulen, German theorists wrote music tutors that increasingly aligned rhetorical principles with the craft of musical composition within the new category of musica poética (BUELOW, 1973: 3)


3

Indeed, diverse German musical treatises from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had

chapters dealing with musical-rhetoric. Although Baroque theorists drew ideas and

terminology from Cicero (De Oratore) and Quintilian (Institutio Oratoria), the association of

rhetorical concepts to musical procedures became so intricate that they started to create new

names to musical-rhetorical figures, which, however inspired in the rhetorical ones, conveyed

specific musical meanings. This process gave birth to the so-called musica poetica.

Since rhetoric was so important for German composers, the better understanding of

musical imitatio requires the awareness of where it fits within classical rhetoric. Classical

rhetoric is divided into five parts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and actio or

pronunciatio. The inventio consists in finding the appropriate idea for the speech. The

dispositio is the organization of the speech itself, subdivided into exordium (introduction),

narratio (a continuation of the exordium that helps to state the facts), divisio or propositio (the

main idea itself), confirmatio (confirmation of the main thesis), confutatio (refutation), and

peroratio (conclusion). The elocutio is related to the style of the text and matters of elocution.

The memoria consists of mnemonic techniques towards the speech, and the actio or

pronunciatio is the speech itself. German Baroque musicians applied all these rhetorical

devices in the preparation and delivery of the “musical speech,” except for memoria, since

there were no apparent efforts to develop techniques for memorization at that time. Besides

being an important device for finding an acceptable inventio (through the emulation of

established models and ideas) the imitatio was at the core of the rhetoric pedagogy, formed by

praeceptum, exemplum, et imitatio (learning the rules, learning the examples, and imitating

established models of authorities) and therefore a seminal element in Kantors’ education.

The first musician to write systematically about the musical-rhetorical imitatio

was Joachim Burmeister (1564-1629), who obtained his education at the Lateinschule of his

hometown Lüneburg, receiving instruction from Kantors Christoph Praetorius and Euricius

Dedekind, and the vice-rector Lucas Lossius, with whom he studied rhetoric. Eventually,

Burmeister pursued a master’s degree in Law from the University of Rostock and became the

Kantor at Rostock’s principal church. His humanistic formation and knowledge of both music

and rhetoric, along with his teaching activities, motivated him to elaborate instructional books

in musical-rhetoric. His three books, Hypomnematum musicae poeticae (1599), Musica

autoschediastike (1601), and Musica Poetica (1606) set the ground from which other musica

poetica writers drew. In the last chapter of his Musica Poetica, entitled De Imitatione,

Burmeister detailed the musical-rhetorical imitatio, defining it as “the striving and endeavor to

dexterously reflect upon, emulate, and construct our musical compositions through the


4

analysis of artful examples” (BURMEISTEIR Apud BARTEL, 1997: 327). More than being

part of universal rules, some musical-rhetorical ideas were passed down from composer to

composer, what generated conflicts in the use of some terminology among diverse theorists.

Nevertheless, Burmeister’s definition of imitatio was thoroughly corroborated in other

treatises from the Baroque.

Like Burmeister, Christoph Bernhard (1628-1692), another important musician of

the musica poetica tradition, also attended the Lateinschule of his hometown, Danzig, and

after having worked under Heinrich Schütz in Dresden and traveled to Italy, he went to

Hamburg, where he became Kantor at Johannischule. In the chapter Von der Imitation from

his Tractatus compositionis augmentatus (ca. 1660), Bernhard wrote: “For the imitation of the

most distinguished writers in the musical profession, as in all the other arts, is not only a

useful but necessary part of praxis, without which all precepts are useless” (BERNHARD

Apud BARTEL, 1997: 327), a definition that corroborates Burmeister’s. Bernhard’s Tractatus

was regarded in high importance during the Baroque, circulating and influencing diverse

writers, among which J.G. Walter and J. Mattheson.

In rhetoric, the imitatio was part of an important artifice that rhetoricians

developed to assist them in finding suitable inventiones for their texts: the loci topici (subject

areas), and composers picked up on this idea as well. These loci topici consisted of organized

categories of topics from which the rhetorician could take the idea for his inventio. Such

topics could deal with names, comparisons, causes and effects, contrasting ideas, and

imitation (imitatio), among others. In the second part of his Der Vollkommene Capellmeister

(1739), J. Mattheson described fifteen different musical loci whose parallels with rhetorical

loci are very clear. In Mattheson’s definition of locus exemplorum it is easy to see the

correspondence with the rhetorical imitatio. In Mattheson’s definition, the locus exemplorum

was

[…] presumably to be interpreted as imitation of other composers. One must, however, choose only the best examples and change them so that they will not just be copied or stolen. When all has been said, it must be admitted that this source is used most frequently. As long as it is done modestly, it need not be condemned. Borrowing is permissible; the loan, however, must be returned with interest; i.e. one must work out and dispose the borrowed material in such ways that it will gain a better and more beautiful appearance than it had in the composition from which it came (MATTHESON Apud LENNEBERG, 1958: 82).

The musical-rhteorical imitatio, just like the rhetorical one, required a method

through which it could be mastered. In his Prattica di Musica (1622), Ludovico Zacconi


5

(1555-1627) advised that the composer in training should copy exemplary musical excerpts in

their notebooks and use these excerpts as models for their own compositions, which was a

method drawn from the pedagogy rhetoric. For the training to be complete, the student had to

develop those exceptional inventiones and transform them into a composition of their own. In

his description of musical modeling, Zacconi stated:

What aspiring musicians should do, first of all, is acquire and study thoroughly all the good music they can get hold of; next they should score it, a tiresome but necessary task if the secrets of the music are to be thoroughly revealed. . . . The young composer should arrange his commonplace book so that under each scored passage there are empty staves; thus he can add thoughts of his own, or can vary those of the compositions before him by exchanging entries [cambio delle parti], lengthening or shortening rests [isminuitione ed accrescimento delle pause], adding another point of imitation [di cavarne un'altra parte dalle parti originali che li sia somigliante e conforme più che sia possibile] (ZACCONI Apud FROMSON, 1992: 238).

Despite Zacconi was Italian, he lived in Germany from 1584 to 1596, where he worked as a

singer under the direction of O. de Lasso in Munich in the court of Duke Wilhelm V of

Bavaria. Although Zacconi admitted not having had training in Latin (and rhetoric by

extension), he consulted diverse musicians to write his two volumes of Prattica di Musica,

among which Lasso himself. Remarkably, when Buermeister explained figures of musical-

rhetoric in his Musica Poetica, he provided a complete analysis of Lasso’s motet In me

transierunt, which indicates that Lasso was aware of musical-rhetorical techniques. Since

Zacconi worked under Lasso’s direction for at least five years and consulted him to write his

treatises, it is thus conceivable that his musical-rhetorical ideas were closely connected to

practices of German/Austrian composers his time.

Musical Applications of Imitatio

Although Zacconi directed his text to young composers who wanted to master

compositional techniques, these composers were not the only ones that borrowed pre-existing

material. Masters like Handel, Bach, and Telemann, among others, borrowed largely from

music of their contemporaries (and sometimes from their own). Despite the motivation for

borrowing could slightly vary from composer to composer, the major reasons for musical

borrowing for most of them were: 1) to use the borrowing for compositional practice, which

could eventually unfold into an actual piece of music; 2) to pay homage to the composer of

the model; 3) to compete with the composer of the model; 4) to explore the quality of the the


6

model’s musical inventio and its potential for elaboration; 5) and for ease in the elaboration of

a pre-composed inventio in case a new piece had to be composed in a short period of time.

Regarding the use of imitatio for compositional practice, differently from young

composers, an accomplished musician would not borrow material to master the basics of

musical composition such as counterpoint and voice leading, but to learn different genres, get

familiarized with the novelty in the model’s instrumentation, or explore different styles in

which their model was composed. Steven Zohn and Ian Payne provided an instance of such

motivations in their case study of Bach’s BWV 1056/2 - 156 /1 (the second movement of

Harpsichord Concerto in F minor and Sinfonia of the Cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuß im

Grabe) in which they demonstrated that Bach probably used the technique of imitatio in those

pieces to emulate the second movement of Telemann’s G Major Concerto for eithers solo

oboe or flute, and strings (TWV 51:G2). Zohn and Payne argued that concerti for wind

instruments were not very common to a German composer at that time, and perhaps that was a

possible reason for Bach’s interest in Telemann’s concerto (ZOHN e PAYNE, 1999: 546-

584).1

Composers also applied the technique of musical-rhetorical imitatio when they

wanted to pay homage to a composer they admired. For instance, still in regards to Bach’s

emulation described above, Zohn and Payne suggested that Bach borrowed from Telemann

because he nourished great admiration for his colleague. The authors revealed that in a letter

addressed to J.N. Forkel in 1775, C.P.E. Bach wrote that when his father was young “he saw a

good deal of Telemann, who also stood godfather to me. He esteemed him, particularly in his

instrumental things, very highly" (BACH Apud ZOHN e PAYNE, 1999: 6).

To make the homage clear, Baroque composers normally placed the borrowed

inventio (normaly a motive) at the beginning of the piece, which, if not identical to the

original, were very similar. This practice of imitatio mounts back to the Renaissance and was

described by Pietro Pontio (1532-1596) in his Ragionamento di Musica (1588) and Pietro

Cerone (1566-1625) in El Melopeo y Maestro (1613) (which according to Lewis Lockwood

drew many ideas from Pontio’s treatise).2 In Lockwood’s discussion of Cerone’s book, he

remarked that, regarding musical borrowing in Renaissance Masses, one of Cerone’s

prescriptions was: “the beginning of the five major subdivisions should correspond to the

beginning of the model, thought their contrapuntal treatment of this material should vary”

(CERONE Apud LOCKWOOD, 1985: 12). Baroque composers followed this practice and

made their models clear in the initial measures of their pieces, musically acknowledging the

model’s composer.


7

Imitatio was also related to the potential for eleaborating the borrowed material.

Most likely, composers would borrow inventiones from musicians that they admired, but if

composers envisioned potential for elaboration, they borrowed any musical material, even

from weak composers. Regarding such borrowings in Handel’s music, Ian Payne related:

Handel was no less rigorous and independent in his exploitation of fugal material by inferior composers. A good example of this is his borrowing from his old teacher, F.W. Zachow, whose fuga finalis from an early B-minor keyboard suite provided the subject for the last movement of the Concerto Grosso, op. 6 no. 12, in the same key. The older master is drily monothematic, accompanying the routine entries of subject and answer with three-part crotchet chords, the unrelenting saccadic rhythms becoming stiffer in effect as the movement unfolds. Not surprisingly, Handel studiously avoids any reference to Zachow's working, and provides not only a genuine contrapuntal treatment throughout, but also infinitely greater rhythmic variety (including galant triplets), subtle textural contrasts, and much more frequent changes of key (PAYNE, 2001, 5).

This excerpt shows that an inventio was considered good as long as it fit the compositional

structure the composer had in mind for its development. In the above case, the invention had

to be suitable for the elaboration of a fugue, and Handel returned the material “with interest,”

as implied in the imitatio.

One last reason for borrowing was connected to pragmatic purposes. When

composers had to write new music in a short period of time, they borrowed material from their

peers (and sometimes from their own music) to facilitate their work. Such pragmatic practices

involved two types of borrowing: 1) the borrowing of inventiones that showed potential and

ease for elaboration; and 2) the borrowing of entire sections of pieces, which does not relate to

the practice of imitatio, since there was no elaboration involved. In the second case, the

borrowed material was used verbatim and minor changes would happen only to for pragmatic

purposes as well. Among these adaptations, performed especially in operatic borrowings,

were the changing of an aria’s key to fit the tessitura of a new singer, and the elimination of

repeated sections of a piece to make it shorter.3

To conclude, this paper demonstrated that the musical-rhetorical imitatio was

largely described by theorists and extensively applied by German Baroque composers. At the

Lateinschulen, Kantors studied rhetoric and became well versed in the rhetorical imitatio,

which was at the core of rhetoric pedagogical methods. From this education, it must have been

a natural step for Kantors to elaborate musical equivalents to figures of rhetoric and for

German composers, who were eduated by Kantors, to apply these figures to their music

during the time span of at least one hundred and forty years. In fact, further investigation will


8

reveal that such was the importance of musical-rhetoric that it also became part of classical

composers’ compositional practices as well. But this investigation is a task for another time.

Bilbiographical References

BARTEL, Dietrich. Musica Poetica: Musical-rhetorical al Figures in German Baroque Music. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. BUELOW, George J. Rhetoric and music. N/D. Disponível em < http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/43166>. Accessed 5 April 2009. _____. Music, Rhetoric, and the Concept of the Affections: A Selective Bibliography. Notes, 2nd Ser. 30, no. 2, pages 250-259, December 1973. CROSS, Eric. Vivaldi’s Operatic Borrowings. Music & Letters, Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol 59, no. 4, pages 429-439, October 1978.

FROMSON, Michele. A Conjunction of Rhetoric and Music: Structural Modeling in the Italian Counter-Reformation Motet. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Oxford: Oxford University Press, volume 117, no. 2, pages 208-246,1992. LOCKWOOK, Lewis. On parody as term and concept in 16th-century music, In: ROSAND, Ellen (ed.) Renaissance music II. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1985. Pages 2-17.

MATTHESON, Johann; LENNEBERG, Hans. Johann Mattheson on Affect and Rhetoric in Music (I), Journal of Music Theory, Durham (USA): Duke University Press, volume 2, no. 1, pages 47-84, April 1958. PAYNE, Ian. Another Händel Borrowing from Telemann?. Capital Gains. The Musical Times, London: The Musical Times Publishcations Ltd., volume 142, no. 1874, pages 33-42, Spring, 2001. TOMLINSON, Gary. Oppositions in Late-Renaissance Thought: Three case studies. In: TOMLINSON, Gary. Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Pages 3-30. ZOHN, Steven; PAYNE, Ian. Bach, Telemann, and the Process of Transformative Imitation in BWV 1056/2 (156/1). The Journal of Musicology, Berkeley: University of California Press, vulume 17, no. 4, pages 546-84, Autumn 1999. 1 Zohn and Paynes’s article provides a good example of the nature of imitatio. The authors suggest that in BWV 1056/2 (156/1) Bach not only borrowed the beginning of Telemann's theme from G major concerto for solo oboe or flute and strings (TWV 51:G2), making minor alterations to it, but also adopted ideas from the movement's scoring, ripieno string accompaniment, harmony, phrase, cadential structure, and overall dimensions. 2 Lewis LOCKWOOD. On parody as term and concept in 16th-century music, In: ROSAND, Ellen (ed.) Renaissance music II. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1985, p. 2-17. 3 Refer to Eric Cross’s Vivaldi’s Operatic Borrowings. Music & Letters, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, vol 59 no. 4, pages 429-439, October 1978.

MusicalRhetoric-1

Documents

Transcript of MusicalRhetoric-1