ABSTRACTS

Music as Erotic Potion in a Renaissance Romance

Jeanice Brooks, University of Southampton

The novels recounting the adventures of the hero Amadis of Gaul and his descendents were the most avidly read chivalric romances of the sixteenth century, especially in France, where their success far outstripped that of the Spanish models on which the French redactions were based. Musical love scenes are frequent in the series, and exchanges of songs in performance or as written texts figure as a common plot device. This paper examines in detail one variant of this scene type, in which cross-dressed males masquerade as female musicians to pursue their courtship of otherwise unattainable women. In particular, I concentrate on the rewriting and expansion of one such episode in Book 13 of Amadis de Gaule by its French translator, Jacques Gohory, in 1554. The gender confusion of these episodes has drawn the attention of John O'Connor and Winfried Schleiner, who make brief mention of them in their discussions of sexual ambiguity in Amadis; but neither deal at all with the musical dimension of the scenes.

All of the lute song performances in this episode feature interpolated verse by Gohory, a noted humanist and alchemist, well known to historians of medicine and magic for his work in popularizing the doctrines of Paracelsus; he is generally credited with fusing elements of Paracelsian thought and experimental practice with the brand of courtly Neoplatonism that dominated French intellectual life at mid-century. Gohory's musical activities have been less often studied, but are nonetheless striking: he was a friend of the royal music printer and lutenist Adrian Le Roy, for whom Gohory wrote prefaces for a series of prints, including most importantly a lute instruction. Gohory was apparently a relatively skilled lutenist himself and his descriptions of performances in book 11 are technically detailed. And music was accorded a central role in his Lycium philosophal, the botanical garden-cum-academy he founded on the outskirts of Paris in the decade before his death.

Gohory's background and interests render his treatment of the lute song episodes in book 11 doubly fascinating, for here he unites his various obsessions, including music and the therapeutic use of plants, to illuminate Renaissance views on sexuality and occult knowledge. Music suffuses the narrative throughout this episode, serving as the delimiter of the erotic space in which the polymorphous bonding of the characters can take place. Music's effect is that of a philtre or potion: and in the castle that serves as backdrop for the scene, musical instruments are kept in the same enchanted tower with herbal remedies to make the analogy clear. The lute song performances induce trembling and fainting, among other physical manifestations, in their targets; but their principal use is as a mind medicine comparable in therapeutic properties to the corporal medicines derived from plants, and particularly beneficial in the treatment of states of erotic melancholy. Gohory's models for his lute song poetry were chansons of the type published by Attaingnant and Le Roy & Ballard and generated by the royal court; in some cases specific pieces clearly provided him with patterns. But his treatment of the lute song episodes in Amadis endows these widespread courtly practices of music making with occult meanings to construct an erotics of song notable for its richness and complexity.

'Precious' Eroticism and Hidden Morality: Salon Culture and French Airs (1640-1660)

In this paper, I establish links between eroticism and texts by reference to contemporaneous pornography and to lascivious emblems that illustrate metaphors about love, and show that musical settings represented the physical manifestations of love sickness as described in medical treatises. I suggest that the practice of women singing as men was simultaneously a purgation of the 'immoral' to underscore the 'moral' (the same method used in religious education) and a pretext for allowing women, through another's voice, to express illicit feelings without damage to reputation. Indeed, ironic interactions and ambiguity were integral to a salon aesthetic. This study lays the foundation for future research on eroticism in French music that looks beneath conventions and explains, in part, how music, operas or airs, could be at once popular, educational, and controversial.

'Recte Sentire': Listening, Sensuality, and Transcendence in Early Modern Italy

Spiritual theorists of the Catholic Reformation developed a devotional model often characterized as recte sentire, a 'true way of feeling/thinking' that could guide the righteous Christian toward correct understanding and embodiment of the One True Faith. Then as now, 'sentire' also translates as 'to hear'; and while the Roman church establishment was not primarily concerned with codifying the aural aspect of spiritual experience, much evidence points to a significant awareness of the rhetorical potential of music to work both in favor and against the purposes of religious edification. Certainly, an increasing interest in guiding the 'proper' evaluation of visual artworks--particularly those that could be understood as sensual or erotic--was part of the project of the Roman curia in the early seicento. The burden of understanding potentially ambiguous messages as spiritual/transcendent rather than earthly/sensual was placed upon the discerning individual, whose 'correct' taste would be informed by spiritual, as well as proto-aesthetic, connoisseurship.

More explicit discussion of this issue exists for the visual arts and devotional materials than for specifically musical criteria. Nonetheless, I will argue that enough connections obtain between ways of discussing musical devotion and prayerful attention to spiritual texts or 'proto-aesthetic' interpretation of religious images to indicate important shifts in perspective toward listening as ideally transcendent, rather than dangerously sensual. This idea will then serve as a starting point for some reflections on how different references to the 'gendered' nature of music-making or listening from around this period can further inform what I see as a shift in the conceptualization of listening as cultural practice in early modern Italy.

'Non è si denso velo': Hidden and Forbidden Practice in Wert's Ottavo libro de madrigali a cinque voci

In 1586, Giaches de Wert dedicated his eighth book of five-voice madrigals to Margherita Gonzaga d'Este, Duchess of Ferrara. The works it contains appear almost exclusively to have been written specifically with the Ferrarese concerto di donne--the quasi-professional ensemble of female singers assembled by Alfonso II d?Este and employed by Margherita herself--in mind. At the very least, the preponderance of pieces for three equal soprano voices (with two lower voices sharing the role of harmonic support), a highly unusual scoring, and the free and frequent use of virtuosic embellishments are strong indications of the book's unique genesis. However, a closer examination of the madrigals suggest further ways in which the specialized performance practices of the Ferrarese concerto may have had a direct influence on Wert's compositional strategies.

The textual content of these three-soprano pieces combines the mythological imagery of Venus and Cupid with images of Margherita herself, a sensual combination that exceeds in its implications the late-sixteenth-century norms for visual representations of noblewomen. Its gentle eroticism is both contained and accentuated by the contrapuntal fabric, for the pieces share a startling characteristic that exploits the nature of the ensemble for which they were composed. At key points in the textual and musical structure, but usually only once or twice in the course of an individual madrigal, Wert manipulates the part-writing between the three equal voices to create an aural experience that is not duplicated on the page--the voices sound as if they are singing in parallel fifths, although in reality they swap positions in the chord voicings so that the rules of counterpoint are not strictly 'broken.' This aural deception is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of a compositional preoccupation that runs through the book--the suggestion of 'forbidden' practices (thwarted cadences, unresolved dissonances) only heard and not seen.

In her examination of the erotic in Renaissance visual arts, the art historian Bette Talvacchia claims that an essential skill of the eroticist is not simply to be able to suggest the illicit through the use of metaphor, but to overlay the double-entendre with a further layer of virtuosity, so that the virtuosity itself becomes one of the meanings of the work. The appreciation of such skill corresponds with critical thought current at Ferrara in 1586, as expressed by its resident professor of philosophy, Francesco Patrizi, in his treatise on the artistic merits of 'marvels.' However, a contemporary reading of the same phenomenon might best be couched in terms of a Bahktinian 'heteroglossia,' its multivocality literally embodied in the three equal voices, but also expressed in the organic interplay between language, musical sound, idea and meaning.

'Fa mi la mi sol la': 'do it only to me': thus is the Guidonian hexachord subverted, taking on an erotic subtext. The notion that music could be lascivious goes back to Plato. In musical terms, the blame lies on the chromatic and enharmonic modes, with their semitones and quarter-tones, characterized as molle, soft or effeminate; indeed women were early associated with the chromatic genus. For Guido B flat is lascivious, added by some moderns though not sanctioned by Gregory. By the fourteenth century, when B flat had been completely accepted, the proliferation of sharps and flats was regarded as lascivious.

Masculine and feminine characteristics were applied to note names by Elias Salomonis (1274). In his graphic mnemonic, E is very masculine and rigid, but F has the nature of the feminine sex and should be sung modestly and softly. This was a pedagogical lesson on the nature of the semitone that was remembered for centuries. That B mi was hard and B fa soft was a matter of common knowledge, and not confined to theorists. By the fifteenth century we begin to see it used metaphorically in a vernacular context, in plays, poetry, and songs, along with other musical terminology. As like as not, the metaphor concerns sex.

The second part of the paper, building upon the findings of Donna Cardamone, Laurie Stras, and Melanie Marshall, and upon the literary and linguistic researches of Jean Toscan, Valter Boggione, and Giovanni Casalegno, will demonstrate the erotically punning use in sixteenth-century Italy of musical terminology, in particular the sexual associations of 'square' and 'soft' B and of solmization syllables. This will be demonstrated from texts set by Perissone Cambio (Madonne, l'arte nostra è di cantare; Ve voglio dire donne l'arte nostra), Rufino Bartolucci d'Assisi (La mi fa solfare), Alvise Castellino (La mi fa balare), and others, in which the solmization syllables, generally but not always on the corresponding notes, are associated with other sexual innuendos and may also form or suggest phrases of erotic content or implication on their own account. Other terms related to singing and music will also be examined, in particular those in the frequently set text Vorrei che tu cantassi una canzona; the nature of the sexual activities will also be considered. Supporting evidence will be cited from literary sources, with especial attention paid to Aretino and to Angelo Beolco, known as Ruzzante. The paper will conclude with a demonstration of the overt and covert sexual allusions in a giustiniano set by Andrea Gabrieli, Chi 'nde darà la bose al sofizar.

Alvise Castellino called 'the Venetian furrier' dedicated his Primo libro delle villotte (Venice: Gardano, 1541) to Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. The dedication demonstrates Castellino's preoccupation with hierarchy: he contrasts his own base status to the exalted rank of the Duke, and declares his pieces are not 'run off in the way of Josquin', but are an imitation of rustic flowers and fruits. These in turn are contrasted

with foods of a royal banquet. Indeed, Castellino's villotte might have been sung at courtly banquets: the songs share subject material with the comedies of Ruzante (Angelo Beolco), who is known to have delighted Ferrarese banquet guests in 1529. Castellino's texts present a male view of heterosexual relationships in which all women--daughters, wives, widows and courtesans--are sexually available, although some only for the right price.

Male power--exerted or thwarted, appropriated or resisted--is a central theme of the book, from the opening text which simultaneously celebrates and criticises Ercole, through to the many songs that concern sexual relations. A country girl's rape by a city man 'In un bel pra fiorito' apparently reinforces traditional power relations between the city and the countryside it dominates: however, the attack is not consequence-free (in this context, perhaps alluding to Ferrarese determination to resist the attempts of outside forces to meddle in their affairs). Female power is presented as a destabilising force in 'La mi fa balare'. Drawing on the contemporaneous erotic lexicon and on humoral theory, this song can be understood as an expression of male anxiety over heterosexual intercourse: the first person speaker loses all his power to a sexually dominant woman.

Castellino's association of his villotte with the base and rustic is consistent with Pietro Bembo's division of Italian vernacular poetry into high, middle and low styles. The villotte, with their depictions of sexual activity improper to noblemen (according to the Ferrarese writer Giraldi Cinzio), are firmly in the lower end of the spectrum. 'Low' and 'high' are co-dependent--there cannot be one without the other. Indeed, these binarisms are co-constructed, as the discussion of masquerade in Castiglione's Il libro del cortegiano demonstrates. A young man appearing as an elderly man might wear a costume that enhances his lithe physique. Castellino's villotte might have functioned as a disguise by means of which nobility revealed their true identity.

Castellino's consistent emphasis on low status and rusticity suggests this may have been a useful selling-point rather than a source of shame. That Castellino obtained a printing privilege further suggests the collection held some intrinsic value. If Ercole II enjoyed the songs at his court and sponsored the publication, he had a hand in this construction of the low and rustic. By sponsoring Castellino's imitation of rustic flowers and fruits, Ercole constructed his own identity as masculine ruler. More importantly, the Duke's patronage served to sanction and contain the threats to masculine authority in the songs. By demonstrating he was impervious to such threats, he displayed the extent of his own masculine power.

In Imagines II, Philostratus the Elder presents an intriguing vision of music and sexuality in Arcadia. The goat-god Pan, he tells us, dances 'badly to the music of the nymphs.' He refuses to learn their dances, and instead leaps about in an erratic manner; finally, he becomes aroused, and with his 'garment extended' pursues the nymphs to no avail. The result is a series of erotic and sometimes violent games in which neither Pan nor the nymphs are ever satisfied. Philostratus's comments are particularly suggestive regarding the contrasting sound worlds that the ancients associated with Arcadia. While the nymphs may have moved gracefully to one kind of music, Arcadia was permeated by the special sounds associated with Pan and his pipes: music that was said to fertilize flocks and fields, enchant wild beasts, and inspire both dance and desire.

'Lo Ere I Burn': Musical Figurations and Fantasies of Male Desire in Early Modern England

This study arises from the conviction that the time has come to revisit Lasso's Neapolitan dialect songs in the light of abundant scholarship on gender, sexuality, and erotica in the Renaissance. My readings of Lasso's canzoni villanesche and villanelle (published by A-R Editions in 1991) addressed only obvious erotic double entendres and metaphors, documented by information in dictionaries of Neapolitan dialect and books on proverbs. Recently, however, I discovered that many canzoni utilized an equivocal vocabulary cultivated in the golden age of Roman academies by Aretino, Berni, and Molza and also by Florentine poets whose influence was felt as far south as Naples. This copious lexicon was thoroughly exposed in Jean Toscan's Carnival du langage (1981), an exhaustive study of thousands of poems, which includes a valuable glossary of double entendres just beginning to be utilized by musicologists.

With Toscan's glossary in hand, the salacious subtexts of canzoni that stimulated Lasso's musical imagination can now be unmasked, revealing his attraction to poems that alluded playfully to licit as well as illicit (sodomitical) sexual practices. The prime targets of these verbal jests were courtesans, familiar figures in the landscapes of Naples and Rome where Lasso worked during his youthful apprenticeship in Italy (1549-1554). At this time he collected Neapolitan dialect songs for three voices and arranged them for four voices, deftly parodying with comical musical gestures, the emotional distress or frustration brought on by relations with women trained in the arts of deception.

My first concern will be to re-read a representative set of song texts and to annotate their equivocal expressions with references to Toscan's glossary. Emphasis will be placed on courtesans as objects of parodic reproach, sometimes playfully and sometimes with abusive intent. Then I will interpret the meaning of these songs in the context of contemporary literary sources in order to examine the conjunction of social and textual issues within a broader articulation of gender concerns. Among these sources are Pietro Aretino's scurrilous Dialogues on the training up of a courtesan and Sperone Speroni's Dialogo d'amore, which ennumerates the courtesan's treacherous schemes and assaults her character with virulent misogynist images. The song texts under consideration are essentially serenades addressed to courtesans by male narrators, and they vacillate between praise and abuse or desire and anxiety, provoking a carnivalesque laughter directed at anyone cheated in the pursuit of sexual fulfillment. Lasso's ability to imitate qualities of the narrative voice with sensitivity to rhythmic locution and pacing will be demonstrated by musical examples rich in humorous gestures.

It has been difficult for scholars to determine if Lasso created his arrangements of erotic dialect songs in Naples or Rome. But I will argue that Rome is the more likely place of origin, because the pleasure-seeking pope Julius II promoted a complaisant atmosphere in which Lasso's songs would have functioned effectively in clerical salons as carnivalesque forms of entertainment that enacted rituals of reversal and provided comical outlets for desires and anxieties normally suppressed.

Orphic literature paints Eros as one of the three oldest and most omnipotent of all gods, who governs contrasts and has the power to reconcile them. One of the most prominent examples of this interpretation of the god of love is Socrates's conception of the Phaedran charioteer, whose team of horses embody the idea of conflicting desire. Applying this basic Neoplatonic theory to Renaissance poetry, drama and music, I shall analyze the erotic potential in such genres as singing contests, madrigal dialogues and combattimenti. Recognition of conflict and competition as erotic stimuli results in a radical new reading of these genres and their cultural meanings.