Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg: Carte du pays de Tendre

The music you are listening to is "Se In Questo Scolorito" by Giulio Romolo Caccini. Caccini's music is second to Peri's music (modeled by Claudio Monteverdi) as "Seconda prattica". This music was considered to be the beginning of modern opera, as now poetry could be set to music with a new, Humanist theory of rhetoric tacens, and not the old, inflexible, strictly hierarchical Scholastic view of reality.

"The most clearly phrased and rhythmic of the airs that Lully and his successors incorporated into their operas are the so-called airs de mouvement set to dance rhythms. For several reasons, these dance airs constitute a major source for the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century musical rhetoric. Like all airs, their lyrics imitate what were perceived to be natural speech patterns. Like all airs, the information they convey is organized in the manner of an oratorical period. Like all airs, they state a commonplace. Like all airs, they employ a variety of rhetorical devices designed to move, please and persuade listeners. But unlike other airs, the sung dance wears a musical corset of sorts: its phrasing can never stray very far from the stresses imposed by the dance and its steps." ^{1, 2}

"Scattered throughout French musical handbooks of the Baroque period are intriguing allusions to performance nuances that are woven into the notation of a composition. A prince is instructed to look at the upward or downward motion of the bass in order to determine finality or the inconclusiveness of a musical cadence. The readers of an instrumental method are warned that amateurs who cannot recognize the visual clues to Expression in a sheet of music and therefore need lyrics to guide them, would be wise to give up playing an instrument. Amateurs and professionals alike are described as so ignorant of the workings of both traditional counterpoint and the emerging tonal harmony that they look at the final note of a piece to determine the mode. They are also described as keeping an eye out for accidentals that point to harsh versus soft passions, glancing at the numbers of the figured bass in order to determine the cool majesty or the burning passions expressed in a musical phrase, and looking at the time signature in order to identify the general ambiance. Singers are advised that the dot after a note is a good place to grab a quick breath. In sum, these sources suggest that a sheet of music contains visual clues that permit the piece to be read like a text written in words. Or like a road map."

"Close scrutiny shows that the latter analogy is not inappropriate. The flats or sharps of the key signature point to the harsh or tender emotional road that the harmonic orator will take in the direction of Tenderness—the ultimate destination of virtually every French air of the Baroque period. Along the road are posted a variety of signs, among them the accidental sharps that warn the orator that he is entering a painful and harsh region, and the accidental flats that indicate a gentle and amiable countryside. The orator's footsteps are also indicated: sometimes he advances confidently to equal quarter notes, sometimes he dashes ahead in a rush of quick notes, and sometimes his inner feelings boil up and he advances unequally, perhaps to a dotted rhythm, perhaps to a mixture of slow and fast notes. This musical map also shows the contours of the landscape at a glance. Upon the five lines and four spaces of the musical staff are strewn the high notes that place the orator on a podium, expose to the public spotlights, and the low ones that permit him to meditate in a shady valley. The harmonic cadences that usually conclude each pair of poetic lines, and the repeat signs that mark the end of a reprise (a section to be repeated), are like so many signs pointing to wayside inns where the harmonic traveler can rest for a moment."

"Is this cartographic approach based on a little more than twentieth-century whimsy? Scarcely. Conversation in courtly and literary salons across the kingdom turned upon the latest novel or poem. Few salon-goers were unfamiliar with the famous Carte du pays de Tendre, the 'map to Tenderness Land,' in Mlle de Scudéry's Clélie of 1656. This engraving portrays the gamut of passions about which Scudéry's friend, Marin Cureau de la Chambre, had begun writing a decade earlier."

"The map shows the different routes leading from the town called Nouvelle amitié, 'New Friendship,' to one of the three cities called Tendre, 'Tender.' Like the harmonic orator whose emotional route is determined by the key signature of a piece, the potential lover may find himself taking a boat down Inclination River. If he is not swept away into Dangerous Sea, or shipwrecked on the shores of Unknown Lands, he will promptly reach his goal, Tender-on-Inclination. On the other hand, he may be forced to make a long overland journey, in the direction of Tender-on-Gratitude or Tender-on-Esteem. For each of these expeditions, the stopping-places along the way are indicated—some of them agreeable, like the accidental flats in a piece of music (for example, one town is called Love Letters, and another, Little Attentions), but some as painful or as haughty as accidental sharps (Nastiness, Forgetfulness). He can estimate the speed of his journey, for the scale of the map is indicated in 'friendship leagues' that might be likened to musical measures. This Carte du pays de Tendre is but the most famous of the many allegorical maps produced by salon culture during the second half of the seventeenth century."

"The upperclass man or woman who attended these salons, and who purchased the instructional handbooks published by the most skilled composer-performers in the kingdom, usually played the lute, the viol or the harpsichord quite competently. Indeed, most of them had studied singing and dancing since childhood. Yet, often lacking all but the most superficial knowledge of counterpoint or the emerging tonal harmony, they could neither analyze the musical structure of a piece nor draw conclusions about the composer's style and why he preferred one succession of chords rather than another. These amateurs therefore had to rely on the visual clues that could be gleaned from the music itself. Doing so was easier than twentieth-century musicians might imagine." ³

"Ultimately, parison belongs to the larger category of repitition, and repitition to the more general category of rhythm - a structural effect with musical, visual, and even tactile manifestations. Thus the figure of balance itself in a variety of disciplines and sub-disciplines, notably Elizabethan prose and verse, the geometries of landscape gardening, the sartorial designs favored by Elizabethan aristocrats, religious and secular music by the likes of Gibbons and Byrd, and other media as well. I shall limit my investigation to a single major context from visual culture: English architecture in the sixteenth century, ..."

Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg Music Rhetoric: Carte du pays de Tendre

Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Music Rhetoric: Carte du pays de Tendre