Volume 35, Issue 1

In this paper I discuss the relationship of music and language as it was conceived in Greek antiquity. More specifically, I focus on central passages from the corpora of Plato and Aristotle that are concerned with the theory of the arts. I claim that under the notion of μουσική (mousiké) both Aristotle and Plato understood language and music as two modalities of the same kind of artistic (or »aesthetic«) communication. Both modalities typically appear combined, as in the case of song or drama, serving as two different means to achieve a common goal: the accurate depiction of affections, as well as the appropriate elicitation of these in the perceiver. This implies that typically both modalities are interdependent and complementing each other. Further, subsuming both language and music under the notion of μουσική supports the idea of shared resources and foundations between the two modalities, which is a necessary prerequisite for any musical rhetoric. Although the notion of musical rhetoric in antiquity did not exist as such, the intimate relationship of music and language laid ground and served as an important point of reference for later scholars, who worked towards elaborated forms of a musical rhetoric.

Since the Middle Ages in Germany and likewise in other countries, metric and modal theory were seen from the viewpoint of grammar - allocated to simple speech, whereas the rhetoric of ornate speech was assigned to the affective (and »programmatic«) domain. The »musical punctuation« and »declamation« were elements of grammar and prosody, but the recognition of all symbolically lingual means - especially of the »rhetorical figures« - was more important for the interpreters (musicians): Only the figures bring close to us the »whole meaning«, as Johann Gottfried Walther for example said (1708). These figures were first systematically represented by Joachim Burmeister (1599 and 1601), and in the course of the century, in Germany over one hundred musical-rhetorical figures were named. Composers partly used these figures well into the 20th century. Other important rhetorical categories were the inventio, the discovery of musical thoughts at certain »places« (loci), and the dispositio, the arrangement of the musical pieces - often by following the example of a poem, a drama or a speech (preferably forensic).

In antiquity, music was regarded as an art closely related to rhetoric and, thus, considered to have specific psychological effects on the audience, intentionally aimed at by its composers. The following contribution focuses on the significance of rhetoric for the Italian theory of music during early modern times. Examples for the relationship between the disciplines of rhetoric and music at that time are selected and analysed.

The article provides a critical survey of the musicological literature on the relationship between rhetoric and music in early modern France. During the recent decades the topic aroused increasing interest in musical scholarship, especially regarding the repertory of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Yet, the pertaining studies largely adopt methodologies which have been developed within German musicology in regard to primarily German Baroque music. This approach which aims to discern formal structures analogous to the rhetorical dispositio and to discern musico-rhetorical figures faces several problems when applied to French music. In contrast, the relation between rhetoric and music, as far as it is made concrete in the contemporary theoretical discourse, relates to a complex of rhythmic phenomena (the so-called mouvement) and the basically declamatory nature of (vocal) music. Furthermore, several recent studies have began to uncover how rhetorical concepts and ideas informed aesthetic stances and notes related to music on a more general level and in an often implicit way.

The article deals with the influence of rhetoric on musical thinking and musical practice in England from the end to fifteenth century until the eighteenth century. The humanistic rediscovery of sciences and arts led to the revival of the artes liberales and to an insight in the relationship of ars oratoria and ars musica and the affinity between poetry and music. The close connexion is based on the similarity of effects,which are produced by the eloquence of speech and the affective power of vocal and instrumental sounds: They convey a message and move the heart. The relation of the sister arts was primarily considered not in theoretical musical sources but in writings dealing with poetry or rhetoric by George Puttenham, Henry Peacham the Elder, Francis Bacon, Charles Butler and others. However, the treatises by Christopher Simpson,Thomas Mace,Charles Avison and William Jones attestagrowing importance of rhetorical principles on the creation of music. Ayres and wordless pieces by Campion, Dowland, Purcell and Händel give evidence, that the composers applied rhetorical procedures and figures to intensify the expressive and persuasive qualities of their art.

This paper investigates the connection between the theory of musical rhetoric and Bach’s composing. The starting point is a text by Johann Abraham Birnbaum. He reports that Bach’s compositions and »Rednerkunst« (»rhetoric«) use identical »Theile« (»parts«). And he reports that Bach was not only very familiar with rhetoric but that he also employed it in his compositions. Because Birnbaum does not compare compositions with speech but rather with rhetoric, his statements have been interpreted in different ways. Arnold Schmitz connects the »Theile« (»parts«) to the four steps (officia oratoris) which an orator must follow when preparing and giving a speech. Elmar Budde, however, connects the »Theile« (»parts«) to the six parts of the dispositio (partes orationis). This paper concludes that for Bach only the six »Theile« (»parts«) of the dispositio are relevant. This conclusion is confirmed by an analysis of the Contrapunctus 2 from the Kunst der Fuge.

This paper deals with some connecting links between rhetoric and articulation that have scarcely been considered thus far. It will show that the earlier commonly- held view of articulation as involving only »joining« and »separating« notes is by no means sufficient to understand Baroque music in all of its great expressive variety. Based on Baroque music aesthetics - in which music was regarded as imitating nature and, as a result, imitating speech and human emotions - the important principle of analogous imitation using musical means will initially be explained. Since the different musical-rhetorical figures function in this system as individual compositional building blocks, it is evident that understanding them is also of vital importance to answering questions about different technical features of articulation.

Today, contemporary music is often considered as free from any kind of linguistic structures. Consequently, understanding new music with the help of rhetoric seems obsolete. Nevertheless composers conceive their pieces as expressive and communicative forms that allow sharing experiences and content, and, in some cases, even deliver messages. In particular, music created by novel technological means requires an analytical approach based on listening, and the ability to discover meaningful patterns. At different historical moments, the term rhetoric subsumed diverse dimensions of musical organisation. Thus a »rhetorical« approach covers multiple labels of understanding. In 20 th century’s music, in analogy to ancient theory, three basic fields of rhetorical imprint can be defined: 1. the level of details (intervals, motifs and gestures) corresponding to inventio; 2. the level of form (genres, narrative and dramatic structures, discourse) corresponding to dispositio; 3. the level of performance (articulation, expression, tone, character) corresponding with elocutio. From this perspective, rhetoric is not an accidental means of creation, but an immanent musical principle which allows taking into account music’s communicative potential. Taking the broad sense of the term »rhetoric« as starting point, this paper aims at demonstrating how 20 th century music is to be understood as a communicative form. By providing a selection of various examples, it does not present definite research results, but rather points out to desiderata of future analytical research.