Abstract
In this chapter, I argue that musical instruments themselves could enable, embody, and model diplomatic practice. My starting point is a curious comment from a 1740 publication, in which the sound of the bass viol is described as “resembling an Ambassador’s tone of voice, which is not loud, and is even a little nasal.” Tracing the history of the viol—the instrument of elite sociability in the long eighteenth century—also means tracing the history of diplomacy as it became a regular system of communication between (modernizing) states. I focus on three points of interaction. First, I demonstrate that learning the viol aided in developing the comportment necessary to an ambassador. Second, viols themselves were constructed of materials procured through diplomatic work—of negotiating long-distance trade, of maintaining or obtaining status as a colonial power. Lastly, considering that sound was an essential component of the symbolic language of diplomacy, the quiet tone of the viol could provide a model for negotiators. Above all, it is the sound of intimacy: of intimacy with the sovereign, of the intimate conversations that more frequently concluded negotiations than any staged congress could. As Le Blanc’s comment indicates, ambassadors—and diplomacy itself—had a tone.
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Notes
- 1.
“…tirant sur le Ton d’une voix d’Ambassadeur, qui n’est pas haut, & méme nazarde un peu.” Hubert Le Blanc, Defense de la Basse de Viole, Contre les Entreprises du Violon Et les Prétentions du Violoncel. Par Monsieur Hubert le Blanc, Docteur en Droit (Amsterdam: Mortier, 1740), pp. 80–81. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
- 2.
Timothy Hampton, Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 3.
- 3.
The pre-Rousseauian history of “universal music” has not yet been systematically explored. For recent developments in that direction, see Philippe Vendrix, Aux Origines d’une Discipline Historique: La Musique et son Histoire en France aux XVII e et XVIII e siècles (Geneva: Droz, 1993); Ellen R. Welch, “Constructing Universality in Early Modern French Treatises on Music and Dance,” in Music and Diplomacy from the Early Modern Era to the Present, ed. Rebekah Ahrendt, Mark Ferraguto, and Damien Mahiet, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 103–123.
- 4.
These circles may be qualified as an old conception of diplomacy. For the distinction between old and new diplomacies, see Damien Mahiet’s Chap. 6 in this volume.
- 5.
Ali Jihad Racy, “A Dialectical Perspective on Musical Instruments: The East-Mediterranean Mijwiz,” Ethnomusicology 38(1) (1994): 38.
- 6.
Maria Sonevytsky, “The Accordion and Ethnic Whiteness: Toward a New Critical Organology,” The World of Music 50(3) (2008): 112.
- 7.
Eliot Bates, “The Social Life of Musical Instruments,” Ethnomusicology 56 (2012): 364.
- 8.
Ian Woodward, “Material Culture and Narrative: Fusing Myth, Materiality, and Meaning,” in Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life: Ethnographic Approaches, ed. Phillip Vannini (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 60.
- 9.
- 10.
Ian Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 86–87.
- 11.
For an overview of Castiglione’s thought, see Damien Mahiet, Mark Ferraguto, and Rebekah Ahrendt, “Introduction,” in Ahrendt, Ferraguto, and Mahiet (eds.), Music and Diplomacy, pp. 4–6.
- 12.
“Bella musica,—rispose messer Federico,—parmi il cantar bene a libro sicuramente e con bella maniera; ma ancor molto piu il cantare alla viola … Ma sopra tutto parmi gratissimo il cantare alla viola per recitare; il che tanto di venustà ed efficacia aggiunge alle parole, che è gran maraviglia…. E non meno diletta la musica delle quattro viole da arco, la quale è soavissima ed artificiosa.” Quoted in James Haar, “The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione’s View of the Science and Art of Music,” in Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, ed. Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), Appendix, example 3. My translation; “artificial” is here a term of praise.
- 13.
William F. Prizer, “Una ‘Virtù Molto Conveniente A Madonne’: Isabella d’Este as a Musician,” The Journal of Musicology 17(1) (1999): 10–49.
- 14.
“Nous appellons violes c’elles desquelles les gentilz hommes, marchantz, & autres gens de vertuz passent leur temps… Ie ne vous ay mis en figure ledict violon par ce que le pouuez considerer sus la viole, ioint qu’il se trouue peu de personnes qui en vse, si non ceux qui en viuent, par leur labeur.” Philibert Jambe de Fer, Epitome Musical des tons, sons et accordz… (Lyon: Michel du Bois, 1556), pp. 62–63.
- 15.
Laurent Guillo, “Les Salmi cinquanta de Philibert Jambe de fer (Genève, 1560) et les origines du psautier réformé italien,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme français 156(3) (2010): 382.
- 16.
Ian Woodfield, “Posture in viol playing,” Early Music 6(1) (1978): 36–40. For histories of the viol beyond Europe, see esp. Yukimi Kambe, “Viols in Japan in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America 37 (2000): 31–67; David R. M. Irving, Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
- 17.
Racy, “Dialectical Perspective,” p. 51.
- 18.
Tim Crawford, “Constantijn Huygens and the ‘Engelsche Viool’,” Chelys 18 (1989): 41–60.
- 19.
A classic illustration may be found in Christopher Simpson, The Division-Violist: or An Introduction to the Playing upon a Ground… (London: William Godbid, 1659), p. 3.
- 20.
Georges Vigarello, “The Upward Training of the Body from the Age of Chivalry to Courtly Civility,” in Michel Fehrer, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi (eds.) Fragments for a History of the Human Body, pp. 149–199.
- 21.
Herman Roodenburg, “Over scheefhalzen en zwellende heupen. Enige argumenten voor een historische antropologie van de zeventiende-eeuwse schilderkunst,” De zeventiende eeuw 9 (1993): 152.
- 22.
“Je vous ay escrit devant mon départ d’Angleterre … qu’un des premiers de la musique de Leurs Majestez … avoit prins en charge et recommendation singulière la recherché des instruments d’eslite que désiriez avoir, lequel a recontré depuis … un accord de six violes vieilles, mais des plus excellentes que l’on puisse trouver.” Letter nr. 1929, August 24, 1638, transcribed in Rudolf Rasch, ed. Driehonderd brieven over muziek van, aan en rond Constantijn Huygens, 2 vols. (Hilversum: Verloren, 2007), I, pp. 296–298.
- 23.
Letter nr. 2035, January 19/29, 1638/9, transcribed in Rasch, ed. Driehonderd brieven over muziek van, aan en rond Constantijn Huygens, I, pp. 299–301.
- 24.
Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 45–57.
- 25.
Leppert, The Sight of Sound, p. 45.
- 26.
- 27.
The bibliography on this topic is vast; for one perspective, see Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–c.1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).
- 28.
John C. Rule, “The Maurepas Papers: Portrait of a Minister,” French Historical Studies 4(1) (1965): 103–107; and “Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain et Maurepas: Reflections on His Life and His Papers,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 6(4) (1965): 365–377.
- 29.
“il faut que le bois soit de la Chine, & qu’il ne soit pas trop lourd, parce qu’il rendroit la main trop pesante, ny trop leger, parce qu’il ne tireroit pas assez d’harmonie; mais d’une pesanteur proportionée à la main,” Le Sieur Danoville, L’Art de toucher le dessus et basse de Violle (Paris: Ballard, 1687), p. 11.
- 30.
“il me semble que l’on met en usage plusieurs sortes d’autres bois pour faire des Archets, qui ne sont pas moins bons que le bois de la Chine,” Jean Rousseau, Traité de la Viole… (Paris: Ballard, 1687), p. 39.
- 31.
“car si cela estoit, & que l’on n’eût plus de commerce avec les Chinois, il faudroit donc abandoner la Viole,” Rousseau, Traité de la Viole, p. 39.
- 32.
For a recent insight, see Jennifer L. Anderson, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
- 33.
François de Callières, De la manière de négocier avec les Souverains (Amsterdam: Pour la Compagnie, 1716), p. 19.
- 34.
Antoine Pecquet, Discours sur l’Art de Negocier (Paris: Nyon, 1737), pp. 18 and 21–22.
- 35.
“par sa douceur elle attendrit le son des cordes de fer, unissant par son son continu le son divisé des autres Instruments,” Danoville, Art de toucher, p. 14.
- 36.
On the political dimension of concert, see Frédéric Ramel, “Perpetual Peace and the Idea of ‘Concert’ in Eighteenth-Century Thought,” in Ahrendt, Ferraguto, and Mahiet (eds.), Music and Diplomacy.
- 37.
“Ceux qui ont ouy d’excellens ioüeurs & de bons concerts de Viols, sçauent qu’Il n’y a rien de plus rauissant après les bonnes voix que les coups mourants de l’archet, qui accompagnent les tremblemens qui se font sur le manche, mais parce qu’il n’est pas moins difficile d’en descrire la grace que celle d’vn parfait Orateur, il faut les ouyr pour les comprendre,” Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1636), II, p. 195.
- 38.
“en quoi il faut que la raison et le iugement tiennent le gouurernail, aussi bien qu’en tout le reste des actions humaines,” Pierre Trichet, Traité des instruments (ms, c. 1640), facsimile reproduction in Méthodes & Traités I, Série I, France 1600–1800: Viole de Gambe (Courlay: Fuzeau, 1997), p. 85.
- 39.
Le Blanc, Defense, p. 107.
- 40.
Le Blanc, Defense, p. 84.
- 41.
“c’est un fort honneste garcon, et tres agreeable, chantant bien, et jouant en perfection de la basse de violle. Il est d’ailleurs tres intelligent dans les affaires. Il estoit secretaire des Plenipotentiares hollandois au traitte de Ryswick, c’est ce qui ma donné occasion de le connoitre. Vous me ferés plaisir M. de lui temoigner que ie vous l’ay recommandé,” Archives nationales, Paris, KK 1398, ff. 114v-115r, letter of May 29, 1699.
- 42.
O. Schutte, Repertorium der Nederlandse vertegenwoordigers, residerende in het buitenland, 1584–1810 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), pp. 139–140.
- 43.
See also Chap. 6, by Damien Mahiet, in this volume.
- 44.
See Fatma Müge Goçek, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) and Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters. White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
- 45.
My understanding of international relations has been significantly shaped by reading diplomatic papers and correspondence from the 1680s to the 1710s in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Great Britain.
- 46.
Mai’a K. Davis Cross, The European Diplomatic Corps: Diplomats and International Cooperation from Westphalia to Maastricht (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
- 47.
“il aimoit autant être anéanti que de ne pas se faire introduire chez le plus grand Monarque de la Chrétienté,” Le Blanc, Defense, pp. 31–32.
- 48.
William Roosen, “Early Modern Diplomatic Ceremonial: A Systems Approach,” The Journal of Modern History 52(3) (1980): 452–476.
- 49.
Women were invaluable to the diplomatic enterprise, though not officially appointed ambassadors until the twentieth century. See Anne-Madeleine Goulet, “The Princesse des Ursins, Loyal Subject of the King of France and Foreign Princess in Rome,” trans. Rebekah Ahrendt, in Ahrendt, Ferraguto, and Mahiet (eds.), Music and Diplomacy, pp. 191–207.
- 50.
“la douce epreuve de s’être senti délicieusement passer pardessus l’Archet Royal,” Le Blanc, Defense, p. 59.
- 51.
Le Blanc, Defense, p. 63.
- 52.
“que cet alta voce très à rechercher dans une Horloge pour avertir, devenoit très messéant [sic] dans un Instrument, dont joue un galant homme pour se desennuier, & non divertir les autres; que le Son de la Basse de Viole, tirant sur le Ton d’une voix d’Ambassadeur, qui n’est pas haut, & méme nazarde un peu, étoit bien plus convenable; que les Monarques, & [81] Princes de France avoient sainement jugé ainsi en faveur de la Viole, lui ayant donné place dans leur Cabinet, dans leur Chambre, proche de leur auguste Personne, pendant qu’ils avoient laissé jusqu’ici le Violon au vestibule, ou relegué à l’escalier, Théatre des Amours des Chats…” Le Blanc, pp. 80–81.
- 53.
A point made by Hampton, Fictions of Embassy, p. 9.
- 54.
Racy, “Dialectical Perspective”, p. 53.
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Ahrendt, R. (2018). The Diplomatic Viol. In: Ramel, F., Prévost-Thomas, C. (eds) International Relations, Music and Diplomacy . The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63163-9_5
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