Abstract
In Aesop’s narrative world, metaphorical representations were apparently used to point out human flaws by attributing those to beasts, while anthropomorphic animals were actually able to disclose how bestial mankind is. In mediaeval bestiaries the same animal may carry multiple meanings, depending on what particular aspect of it is being highlighted and on its relationship with the other animals appearing in the same context. Even music forces to a continuous re-structuring of sounds in configurations which change depending on context, and which determine the conditions for a process of meaning-making based on both internal and external systems of relations. Thus, there seems to be a perfect analogy between the language of the bestiaries and that of music, and a commonality in how both bestiaries and music bestow on Nature its role as locus of truth. But how does musical rhetoric intervene in the effective construction of similarities, of metaphors and allegories that condense or articulate a narrative transformation through the organised conjunction of different animal figures? Throughout an analytic journey from mediaeval Italian musical bestiaries to erotic madrigals, from the intriguing fashion of musical “portraits” to the French late baroque representation of savages, this essay investigates the semiotic device of music as an ironic reversing mirror, which points out alterity and reveals the true bestial nature of mankind.
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Notes
Personal communication about the roots of human rights in the Aesopian corpus, analysed by Ricca [18].
“Sicut littera quo loco ponatur vide, ibi intellegis eius vim”, CIII, 3, 22.
See Greimas [4] about the way to constitution, description and articulation of a semantic category through interdefined structural relations. See Greimas [3] on the textual nature of images and on the relationship between plastic and figurative levels of signification. On the relationship between the referential and the constructive function of representation, and on procedures of authentication, see Montani [14].
The Saussurian notion of linguistic arbitrariness has been progressively re-elaborated by the work of E. Benveniste and L. Hjelmslev, which establishes the effectiveness of the motivation of a sign on the basis of external relations—that distinguish words within the same language delimiting their semantic boundaries—and the internal relationships that arise between figures that do not have a semantic component but form a unity provided with content. Regarding the possibility of transposing these concepts into the non-linguistic field, and on the motivation of the configurations in the context of musical textuality, see [6: 173–179].
For debrayage and embrayage, as apparatus of the enunciation [5: 69–71, 98–100].
Panciatichi [26] (Fl), fol 92’, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale.
The slippage between systems of pertinence relating to different forms of expression, which is correlated to simultaneous transformations on the content plane, depends on the typical syncretic structure of the poetic-musical text. For a definition of syncretic semiotics see the entry “Syncrétiques (sémiotiques)” compiled by J.M. Floch in [5: 319–320].
We were hunting with hounds aplenty and sparrows along the shores of the river Adda. Someone had been saying “dà, dà! (give me, give me)”. Another: “Go, swindler!”. “Come back, little boy”. Somebody else was grabbing the flying quails when the rain came along with a big storm. No hound ever ran through the fields as fast as all those people did to escape the rain.
They said each other: Give me that! Come on! Give me the cloack! Give me the hat! Meanwhile, I found shelter with my bird where a shepherdess stinged my heart. She was there, lonely. And I said to myself: here is the rain; here is Dido and Aeneas.
Codice 117, Biblioteca Comunale, Faenza.
They write ballades, madrigals and motets/ they all think they are a Floriano, a Filippotto or a Marchetto./ The earth is so crowded with maestros/ that there is no place for the disciples anymore. The references are to some of the most important artists and music theoreticians of the Ars Nova: Marchetto da Padova (1274–1319), Filippotto da Caserta (1350?–1435?), and a less identified Floran.
From Canzoni napolitane a tre voci di l'Arpa, Cesare Todino, Joan Domenico da Nola et di altri musici in questa professione di napoletane eccellentissimi, Venezia, G. Scotto, 1566.
I have been living like an eagle, looking always, night and day for the light of my beautiful sun, suavely adorned. And I nourished this afflicted soul and this heart, everywhere, as a salamander into the flames of my sweet fire. Now I live as the sad noctua, or rather as the mole rat, who is always underground, for Love and Fortune fight against me. And I am going to consume my life between tears, sighs, pains and torments, until I will die by singing, as the swan.
Beside his many fragmentary works, Leonardo’s Bestiary is written with unusual order and continuity. It is contained in the Code Ashburnham (H), and was probably completed between 1489 and 1492. It is kept in Paris at the Institut de France. In a project regarding animals in music in the Renaissance, the liutist Massimo Lonardi associated Leonardo's texts to a series of musical pieces showing possible references to the described beasts. See [10].
In order to explain the same dynamics related to lovers and cross-gaze, Richard de Fournival resorts to two animals: the wolf, who seizes the prey if he sees it first. But if the prey sees the predator in advance, she becomes harmless; the mother monkey holds his beloved son while she forces the other one to cling. But in case of danger she is forced to drop the favourite, while the refused one remains attached and can stay close and go on lovinge her, even if from a hidden position. See [2: 39].
Dal Sesto libro dei madrigali, XIII (1611). The daring little mosquito bites she who consumes my heart and keeps it in such harsh suffering. It flees and flies back to that beautiful bosom that makes my heart soar. Then, that bosom catches, squeezes and kills the mosquito, for its sad lot. I will bite you, yet, my sweet beloved. And if you seize me and grip me, ouch, I will fail, because of the sweet poison that I will find in that bosom.
The study of the parallelisms inaugurated by Roman Jakobson through the definition of the poetic function of language [8] was then applied in anthropological research by Claude Lévi-Strauss and his disciples. For a recent analysis of the function of parallelism relating to the effectiveness of shamanic song, see Severi [23], where he renders an ultimate analysis on Mu-Igala, the famous Cuna chant sung by the shaman to face difficult childbirth, on which Lévi Strauss elaborated the theory of symbolic effectiveness. As Severi shows in his book, parallelisms often deal with transfigurations.
The following pieces are: La Julliet, that can even be played duo, in order to nourish the erotic suggestions underlying the musical figures through their accomplishment by crossing hands; Le Carillon de Cithére, which still reminds the modern listener of the arcadic lovers’ tour painted by A. Watteau in 1718; and Le petit-rien, namely, the trifle that, in the end, we usually call love.
In the famous preface to Premiere Livre de Pièces de Clavecin, Foucaut, Paris 1713, Couperin wrote: «I have always had a subject in mind when composing this pieces—subjects suggested on different occasions. Thus the titles correspond to ideas I have had; I hope I may be excused from explaining them further. But since, among the titles, there are some which appear to indulge my own vanity, I should add that the pieces they describe are types of portraits which have sometimes been judged quite lifelike under my fingers, and that any flattery in the titles is intended for those memorable originals I wished to depict, rather than for the copies I made in these musical portraits».
French aristocrats starts to play the portraits game at the dawn of XVII century, after the publishing of Honoré d’Urfe’s L’Astrée, from 1607 on.
Regarding the relevance of perceptional marks in the musical discourse of late baroque harpsichord repertoire, see Jacoviello [7].
«Rameau in no way regarded the task of transcription merely as a chore; in almost every piece there is evidence of a creative response to the problems involved, and even where no such problems arise the composer is sometimes unable to resist 'improving' his material in the process of transcribing it» [19: 23]. About Rameau’s attitude in transcription and orchestration see Sadler [19, 20].
«Western Europeans would have come into contact with other musics mainly through political-military actions. The first borrowed sounds were Turkish primarily because of the stunning success of the Ottoman Empire over several centuries, a success reflected musically for centuries in that all foreign musics, if they were referred to at all in an idiom deviating from the norm, were indicated by Turkish sounds, particularly percussion: bass drum, tambourines, cymbals, triangle». [24: 57]. Even in Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, «the only group that has actual musical sounds to represent it is the Turks; all the other entreés make use of unusual techniques within contemporary idioms to represent difference» [24: 59].
«No matter how authentic the music of "Les sauvages" is, Rameau reused this music for the composition of Les Indes galantes. And the press heard the music of Les Indes galantes as authentic. One critic wrote following the premiere, "I find the music truly Indian, allowing that this nation is capable of producing good music, for this extraordinary music is not without beauty”» [24: 60]. Regarding the construction of Native Americans' prototype in French ballet between Seventeenth and Eighteenth century, see Meglin [13: 87–115].
«Abbot Terrasson described as follows Rameau's endeavour to give an objective certainty–exterior to oneself and subjected to mathematical law - to an intuitive knowledge in which audio would replace the Cartesian cogito: "Rameau's music illustrates a new beauty always rejected by some musicians. It is the Newtonianism in music which has to suffer the same contradictions."» [2].
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Jacoviello, S. Lovely Beasts, Bestial Lovers: Animals, Righteous Men and the Semiotics of Musical Mirrors. Int J Semiot Law 31, 621–635 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-018-9567-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-018-9567-8