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about Word-Music relations
Some New Books and Articles to Complement
the Bibliography in my Harmonic Orator
I plan to add entries to this bibliography, which includes primarily works
that were not available before The Harmonic Orator went to press.
For some of these works, I occasionally add rather lengthy comments that
relate the author's observations to points I make in my book. NOTE: I am
not listing these entries alphabetically! Instead, I will put the
new entries at the head of the list.
Toft, Robert, Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart, the art of eloquent singing
in England, 1597-1622 (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1993)
I did not include this in my book, because I had determined to use exclusively
French sources. That said, the picture of English vocal rhetoric painted
by Toft has many similarities to French musical rhetoric. I now feel free
to heartily recommend this book, on one condition: Look for similarities,
but caution is advisable, especially in applying Toft's musical examples
to analogous French musical rhythms or melodies. (I have no trouble with
his citing Le Faucheur, for that particular treatise was translated into
English circa 1680 and can therefore be presumed to have had some meaning
for the English.)
Harris-Warrick, Rebecca, "The Phrase Structures of Lully's Dance Music,"
in John Hajdu Heyer, ed., Lully Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2000), pp. 32-56.
This article focuses on shifts in the length of musical lines/poetic lines
in Lully's dance music, which cause the phrasing to move from symmetry to
asymmetry. Her presentation of the most basic phrasing of French dances
is very useful, because it provides examples of the phrasing that served
as the point of departure for more witty rhetorical passages. She concludes
with some thoughts about the relationship of symmetry and asymmetry to the
ambiance of the piece and the emotions being expressed. Her observations
lead link directly to some of the rhetoric I describe in The Harmonic
Orator.
Rosow, Lois, "The Articulation of Lully's Dramatic Dialogue," in John
Hajdu Heyer, ed., Lully Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
2000), pp. 72-99.
Rosow's analysis of the recitative in a scene from Lully's Armide
provides details about overarching French poetic structure and how that poetry
was set to music. She focuses on the grouping of lines, the rhyme schemes
they create, the chords at cadences, and the move from one energy to
another.
I do not always agree with the affect she attributes
to certain lines. For example, she describes C minor as "sensuous" (p. 78).
That mode is not exactly sensuous: it is associated with darkness and sadness
(see p. 328 of my Harmonic Orator) — and in the text that Rosow
provides on pp. 74-77 the lyrics set to C minor refer to "solitude," "black"
(see Rosow's comments about that word, noir, on p. 81), "enlighten" (i.e.,
an Antithesis), "losing daylight" (in the sense of losing one's life). Nor
do I agree (p. 79) that Renaud's exclamation Armide, vous m'allez
quitter! "comes across as a question." Rather, it is an open-ended
Exclamation, that is, it ends on a raised note that begs Armide to say that
she will stay. I also have trouble with the analysis of the "hemiola" (p.
93), in which la is supposedly given an accent. In fact, the example on p.
96 shows that the supposed hemiola on vous la cherchiez actually comes in
the first half of an Alexandrine line, rather at a cadential point, where
it would create a clausula of some sort. Indeed, Rosow shows this "hemiola"
as spanning a rhyme, something I was unaware that our 20th-century invention
known as the hemiola was capable of doing. Lastly, I have trouble throughout
with statements about "the formulaic singsong," "the melodic singsong associated
with recitative," or "the arpeggiated formulaic singsong" (pp. 74, 84, 88).
My experiences with Thesée (and later with Royer's Le Pouvoir
de l'Amour at Oberlin) proved conclusively that no French opera of the
baroque period will come to life unless the singers discard the notion that
these expressive and continually fluctuating poetic rhythms are somehow
"singsong." And since each line of recitative uses a cliché melody
appropriate to the contents of the line, I find it difficult to link these
fluctuating speech melodies to something as repetitive as "singsong." But
I have to confess I have never understood what people mean by "singsong"
because I have never perceived it as existing in French speech, nor in French
poetic recitation, nor in French song and recitative.
Chaouche, Sabine, L'Art du comédien: Déclamation et jeu
scénique en France à l'Age classiqiue (1629-1680)
(Paris: Champion, 2001)
Detailed comments about this book will have to wait until September 2002.
Chaouche, Sabine, Sept traités sur le jeu du comédien
et autres textes, de l'action oratoire à l'art dramatique
(1657-1750) (Paris: Champion, 2001).
Chaouche retraces the history of acting as captured in seven treatises: Michel
Le Faucheur's Traité de l'action de l'orateur (1657); René
Bary's Méthode pour bien prononcer un discours et pour bien
animer (1679); Grimarest's Traité du Récitatif (1707),
Jean Poisson's Réflexions sur l'art de parler en public (1717),
Luigi Riccoboni's Pensées sur la déclamation (1738);
Sainte-Albine's Le Comédien (1747), and Antoine Riccoboni's
L'Art du théâtre (1750).
Aubignac, Abbé d', La Pratique du théâtre,
ed. Hélène Baby (Paris: Champion, 2001).
This important source is now readily available thanks to this modern edition.
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