Music of the Gods: Solo Song and effetti meravigliosi in the Interludes for La pellegrina Nina Treadwell Introduction During April and May of 1589, some three thousand foreigners made their way to the city of Florence to take part in the wedding celebrations for Ferdinando I de' Medici and the French princess Christine of Lorraine. Because of the magnitude of the events that took place and the wealth of surviving information, historians of art, theater, and music have written much about these festivities. The set of interludes that were performed in the Uffizi theater between the acts of Girolamo Bargagli's comedy La pellegrin ai-the high point of the wedding celebrations-have been given special attention. With a seventy-two page official booklet by academician Bastiano de' Rossi2 and numerous other surviving sources, the Pellegrin a interludes have generated a considerable literature dedicated to explicating intertextual connections relating to the classical allusions that inspired their conception (for more recent additions, see Ketterer 1999; Marignetti 1996). Yet, as many scholars have at least pointed out-beginning with the work of Aby Warburg-much of the erudite imagery that was presented went completely over the audience's heads (1932:280-81). Similarly, there is evidence to suggest that many audience members did not comprehend the vocal music's sung texts on a word-by-word basis, but that the music was nevertheless meaningful to them. This study addresses the performative efficacy of the Pellegrina inter­ ludes' solo songs because the songs garnered considerable attention during their performance in the Uffizi theater. The sense of wonder or meraviglia that the solo songs evoked for spectators was articulated in numerous accounts, in both eyewitness descriptions (usually diary entries by foreign visitors) and in unofficial printed accounts.3 Indeed, in these accounts the solo songs were typically singled out for special attention, which is striking in light of the relative brevity of many of the descriptions. Conversely, in the detailed Descrizione issued by the Medici court, Rossi rarely addresses audience response in relation to the music's affective quality (solo song or otherwise), and when he does, he projects an anticipated response, because his booklet (unavailable for the premiere performance) was written before the performances took place.4 Current Musicology, No. 83 (Spring 2007) © 2007 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 33 34 Current Musicology Most interpreters of the Pellegrina intermedi have disregarded the vari- 0us unofficial narratives, probably because they do not agree in precise detail with Rossi's account. Thus, unofficial sources have been neglected as a means of providing insight into the aesthetically and viscerally charged sensation of hearing (and seeing) the solo songs performed in the Uffizi theater. In conjunction with Rossi's narrative, as well as with the Medici-sanctioned musical publication (Malvezzi 1591), unofficial sources help to demonstrate that the spectator-auditor's perception of musical meraviglia was an essential component of the experiential dimension of the songs. Indeed, various wondrous effects produced by the solo songs-mystery, awe, confusion, and surprise (to name just a few)-impressed spectators with a princely mystique of ineffable authority. While details often differ among various sources, the experiences notated in unofficial accounts concur, in general terms, with theories of political control and kingship, and with Neoplatonic notions of musical magic-ideas that are explored in Part II of this study. In Part I, I demonstrate the various ways in which solo song was utilized for meraviglia-inspiring effect in the interludes. First, however, it is necessary to set the stage by examining the broader fascination with effetti meravigliosi or wondrous effects in the context of two opposing literary paradigms. Part I. The Experience of Wonder and the /I Mystery of State" The aesthetic of wonder that was central to the Pellegrina intermedi was read­ ily articulated in contemporaneous literary and artistic cultures as well as in the natural sciences and philosophy. In Renaissance poetics, wonder was the rhetorical figure that triggered surprise and epistemological confusion (Platt 1992:387). To oversimplify what was hardly a monolithic concept: wonder invoked a sense of the incomprehensible that in turn generated curiosity or desire for knowledge. Drawing on the work of Marvin T. Herrick (1947), Peter Platt has shown that Renaissance writers such as Francesco Robortello, Antonio Minturno, and Jacopo Mazzoni adopted a broadly Aristotelian conception of wonder whereby confusion (or incomprehensibility) was subject to rational scrutiny and thereby ultimately dissipated. In his Della difesa della comedia di Dante, for example, Mazzoni outlined thirty-four ways in which meraviglia could be transformed into verisimilitude (Hathaway 1968:77). Yet, from the vantage point of the spectator-auditor who witnessed the Pellegrina interludes, little enlightenment or edification of the Aristotelian sort appears to have taken place; in other words, understanding, reasoning, and knowledge among audience members remained partial. Descriptions Nina Treadwell by foreign visitors leave no doubt that, at times, the perceiver was at a loss to describe through rational explanation that which was observed and/or heard.5 Invoking what would become a familiar trope, the German diarist Barthold von Gadenstedt, who attended the premiere performance of the intermedi on May 2, wrote: "The splendor and great art of these intermedi cannot adequately be described, and those who have not seen this super­ human performed work cannot imagine how it could be possible" (Kiimmel 1970:19).6 More specifically, Gadenstedt referred to the fourth intermedio in which a sorceress in her chariot traversed the heavens followed by a large cloud full of musicians: "These two pieces were very skillfully done, so that no one could recognize how it would ever be possible that something like this could be staged, or [howl something like this could have taken place so publicly in the open air" (KiimmelI970:14).7 As I will show, the remarks by Gadenstedt are typical of responses found in unofficial accounts of the performances. In practice, therefore, it appears that the Aristotelian notion of wonder, with its emphasis on consequent demystification, was not at all pervasive (Platt 1997:2). Yet with one exception, in theoretical literature there were few challenges to the Aristotelian model of wonder. One of the most vehe­ ment challenges to Aristotle's system came from the (then) Ferrara-based Neoplatonist Francesco Patrizi, whose work coincides with the years leading up to the preparations and performances of the Pellegrin a intermedi. Patrizi rejected Aristotle's concept of mimesis as the central principle of aesthetic judgment, replacing it with his own conception of meraviglia, to which he believed all poetry should aspire.8 He completed his book on wonder, La deca ammirabile, in 1587, a work that had been preceded in 1586 by La deca disputata, his most sustained attacked on the notion of Aristotelian imitation. Both volumes were part of his mammoth treatise on poetics, Della poetica (1969). Many of Patrizi's ideas were likely well known to those involved in creating the Pellegrina intermedi, particularly to the poet G. B. Strozzi and Giovanni de' Bardi who created the interludes' invenzioni (plots). The friend­ ship between Patrizi and Bardi extended back at least to the early 1580s.9 The two men were united in their effort to defend Lodovico Ariosto's epic poem Orlando furioso against the attacks of Camillo Pellegrino. 1O Bardi invited Patrizi to write Parere in difesa dell'Ariosto, which he subsequently dedicated to Bardi (Weinberg 1961, 2:1139). Bardi himself delivered a lecture on February 24, 1583, before the Florentine Accademia degli Alterati defending Orlando furioso from the criticisms of Pellegrino that centered on Ariosto's abandonment of Aristotelian unity in favor of varieta (variety) (Weinberg 2:1116; Patrizi 1975:87n3). Bardi visited Patrizi on his trip to Ferrara and 35 36 Current Musicology Mantua during 1584 and on June 12 of that year reported the chapter titles and parts therein of Patrizi's Della poetiea to the Accademia degli Alterati, which were then heatedly debated by the Aristotelian contingent, led by Lorenzo Giacomini (Hanning 1980:18; Palisca 1994:418). Further, there are notable passages in Rossi's Descrizione of the Pellegrina interludes and Bardi's Diseorso that appear to be derived from Patrizi's workY In his book Art and Power, Roy Strong groups Patrizi with other Utopian visionaries who understood the state as one element of a magical cosmology, and suggests that the intellectual framework constructed by such occult philosophers provided "a thought-context into which late Renaissance fes­ tivals would seem to naturally fit, both in the sense of the ideas they purvey and in their cultivation of mystical monarchy" (Strong 1984:73). Although Strong does not go on to develop a connection between Patrizi and aspects of Medicean state- or stagecraft, it is evident that Patrizi's ideas provide a specific thought -context for the aesthetic and political aims of the Pellegrin a intermedi. I have already noted that Patrizi and his works were well known to Bardi, who had a significant role in defining the conceptual framework for the intermedi. Further, in Patrizi's conception of wonder, the reluctance to privilege the intellect resonated with a broader humanist worldview that tempered deference to classical authority with insights gleaned from practical experience. This "new cultural relativism;' as Gary Tomlinson has described it (1987:8), is particularly relevant to an understanding of the projection and experience of wonder that took place within the performance context of the Uffizi theater. Patrizi envisioned wonder as a special faculty of the mind that medi­ ated between thought and feeling, that did not demand and, indeed, actively resisted ultimate resolution through rational explanation (Patrizi 1969,2:361-62). A passage from Patrizi's La deea ammirabile mirrors the spectator's experience as frequently imagined by Rossi in his Descrizione and as described in unofficial accounts: Therefore something new and sudden and unexpected that appears in front of us, makes a movement in our soul, almost contradictory in itself of believing and not believing. Of believing because one sees that the thing exists; and of not believing because it is unexpected, and new, and not before by us either known, or thought, or believed to be possible. (Patrizi 1969,2:365)12 Multimedia spectacle was the art form par excellence for producing unex­ pected or surprising effects, of course. Here Patrizi introduces the seemingly contradictory notion of "believing and not believing;' that is, the wondrous state that thrived on an absence of complete epistemological certainty. Nina Treadwell Longinus was a chief influence on Patrizi's views on wonder. As Platt has noted, both Longinus and Patrizi "advocated a poetical form of fragmentary, scattered bursts that, on account of their wonder-full and incredible nature, had the power to take the audience 'out of themselves'" (Platt 1992:393). Similarly, the modus operandi of the intermedi-with emphasis on variety over unity-corresponded, on a larger scale, to the "fragmentary, scattered bursts" of Patrizian -Longinian (rather than Aristotelian) poetics. The Pellegrin a intermedi seem designed to discombobulate, to transport the audience "out of themselves." As such, they depended for their efficacy on a degree of mystification that paralleled the emergent trend toward mystical monarchy. Comments by Giuliano Giraldi regarding the apparent inconceivability of these Florentine spectacles over which Duke Ferdinando presided, confirm this intent: The superb decorations [apparato], the sumptuous show, the artful in­ vention of priceless machines, the wondrous spectacles, which not only surpassed the expectations of all men everywhere, but also the imagination of the most expert and wisest men; not only were they [the spectacles 1 impossible to envision in our minds before they were performed, but once performed, and seen again, they could not be grasped by our minds. (Giraldi 1609:23)13 Gadenstedt concluded his description of the Pellegrin a intermedi by lament­ ing his unsatisfied curiosity in regard to (one presumes) the interlude's visual technologies: "We would appreciate the opportunity to see how this [the spectacle 1 could have been produced, but it was strictly forbidden to grant anybody permission to see this" (Kiimmel1970: 19 ).14 As spectator-diarist, rather than Medici representative (c.f. Giraldi), Gadenstedt's final remarks provide one explanation of why the Pellegrina interludes "could not be [com­ pletely 1 grasped" by those who witnessed them. Gadenstedt's comments also remind us of what is now commonplace in studies of musico-theatrical court entertainment: the assumption that rituals of production and consumption were integrally tied to the political interests of those whose sponsorship produced them. As such, the wonder that was evoked in the Uffizi theater in 1589 served the interests of nascent absolutism, and was one part of a more general campaign by the newly installed Duke Ferdinando to posit himself as god-like, and the performance he offered as a "mystery of state." 15 Despite the encyclopedic scope of Rossi's official account of the production, I argue that the performances themselves remained purposefully elusive; the very nature of the genre guaranteed that they could not be fully apprehended by attendees, as Giraldi affirmed. As a result, the production-which included music as a politically charged component-mapped out a division between the all-knowing, god-like duke (who seemingly enabled the production of 37 38 Current Musicology wonder) and the various audience members who participated in the quest for understanding that, according to the rules of the "theatrical game," could only be realized to a limited degree. 16 For the Florentine courtier, the ineffable elements of the court intermedi were reflected in the courtier's daily enactment of sprezzatura, that elusive essence of courtliness that defied any exacting verbal description. As Mario Biagioli points out, "Both the opacity of sprezzatura and the 'mystery' of the source of the prince's power were aimed at shielding his power from being discursively probed" (1993:52). For all its efficacy, then, the prince's absolute power-whether exercised through the art of musical theater or undergirded by an elaborate spy network-must perforce remain "a mystery of state." Little wonder, then, that Gadenstedt was denied access to the mechanisms through which the intermedi worked their wonders. Solo Song and the Marvelous I turn now to the solo songs that were singled out by eyewitnesses and other unofficial commentators. The strategic positioning of several of the songs-three functioned as opening numbers for interludes one, four, and five-give them special structural importance. I? The solo songs also provide a key point of entry for understanding the historiographical issues involved in writing about the process-oriented experience oflistening to (and seeing) music performed in a theatrical context on the eve of the "birth of opera." While the inclusion of a number of solo songs in the Pellegrin a interludes has ensured an almost obligatory reference to them in cursory histories of opera, the songs have not fared particularly well under more focused musicological scrutiny. One of the central issues concerns the prevalent use of passagework or diminution in the songs; Tim Carter identified this problem when he wrote that the virtuosic passagework in Jacopo Peri's "Dunque fra torbide onde" (from interlude five) "would hardly have found approval in the Camerata" (1989:117-18). The fact that in many respects the solo songs do not meet the aesthetic ideals of Giovanni de' Bardi's Camerata, nor of the birth-of-opera narrative, seems to have influenced recent critical assessment. Several of the songs have been assessed in terms that imply they possess a lack of fluidity. Carter refers to the awkwardness and lack of suavity in "Dunque fra torbide onde" (1989: 118-21) and Warren Kirkendale criticizes Emilio de' Cavalieri's "Godi, turba mortal" sung by the castrato Onofrio Gualfreducci in intermedio six because of its "frigid [ity]" (2001:166), apparently finding the piece devoid of feeling. Evidently, these songs do not always provide the modern-day listener with a satisfying forward-moving trajectory by comparison, one assumes, with early opera Nina Treadwell or chamber monody. In other words, the songs have defied a desire by the listener to perceive a succession of necessary and related moments in a musical whole. Ironically, assessments such as those of Kirkendale and Carter touch on one element that may have made these pieces especially successful in their original theatrical performance context. In Peri's song, for example, disjunctions between phrases and seemingly unwieldy, but wide-ranging, passagework within phrases may have contributed to a wondrous effect, one that emphasized fractured musical moments and an impression of musical stasis as opposed to gathering momentum. Kirkendale's assessment of the Pellegrin a solo songs is worth citing at length because he draws together the issues of "excessive" passagework and text audibility: The elaborate, inexpressive embellishment of vocal solos, as taught in the diminution manuals of the sixteenth century, was a practice favored more by singers than by composers. Its extreme application might have some justification as an exercise in vocal pedagogy, but in musical compositions such as those of 1589 the results are questionable, becoming almost cari­ catures in their excessive artificiality. The unrelieved long melismas, often on insignificant words and thus not motivated by meaning, render the text unintelligible (anticipating Bellini or Donizetti). (Kirkendale 2001:166) Kirkendale raises a number of issues here, but I will focus on the question of text intelligibility, or lack thereof. Indeed, it is true that many spectators were at a loss to fully understand the words of the sung music. This matter seems to have been of some concern to those who created the intermedi. Some three years earlier, Rossi had addressed the issue in his Descrizione for Bardi's play L'amico fido (for which Bardi had composed music for the sixth intermedio). Rossi stated that Bardi immediately turned to the musical part, in which he principally wished that the pomp and the finesse of his poem should resplend, so that he wanted that harmony to come out, most copiously, most full, most varied, most sweet, and most artful, above every other [harmony], and at the same time (which is something that is thought to be almost impossible) that it [the music] would be most clear and the words easy to understand, and the connoisseurs will also be able to judge this for themselves through the publication. (Rossi 1585:2r.)18 Curiously, the concern with textual clarity emphasized in Rossi's 1585 Descrizione is entirely absent from the equivalent passage in 1589. In the account above it is not entirely clear why Rossi suggested that it was "thought to be almost impossible" for "the words [to be 1 easy to understand:' Perhaps he was implying that pragmatic concerns regarding the performance would 39 40 Current Musicology pose obstacles in this respect: the difficulty of producing music in the large and cavernous Uffizi theater (as opposed to more intimate settings, such as the rooms of Bardi's palazzo) and the frequent use of instruments to double voices and/or provide elaborate continuo accompaniment would be obvious factors, aside from the extensive employment of passaggi (passagework) in solo songs. Because of this concern for textual clarity, Rossi specified that the music in notated form would be sufficient proof of composers' intent that the words be easily understood, and in doing so tried to pre-empt any complaints on this point. Indeed, a brief report regarding the Pellegrina intermedi sent by Michele Priuli to Cardinal Montalto in Rome (dated May 6) voiced this very complaint: there were "very beautiful and weighty concerti, and so many musicians and instruments that one did not even understand the words of the music" (cited in Kirkendale 2001: 17 4n59) .19 It is also clear from the numerous misidentifications of characters and contexts in a number of unofficial accounts that in many instances the audience not only missed visual cues but also confused textual ones, even as the gods sometimes identified themselves during the course of their solo song or were identified by other characters. Evidently, many in the audience could not either hear the sung words or understand them. Despite the unintelligible words, the solo songs were nevertheless effect­ ive in performance and this fact poses a direct challenge to one of the key precepts on which musicologists' understanding of this pivotal historical moment has been based: the conception that the efficacy oflate Renaissance Italian music lay in the expression (and assumed intelligibility) of a verbal text. What is problematic is that this perspective was propounded in the official music-theoretical writings of musicians such as Bardi and Cavalieri who, as a result of their connection to the Florentine court, were intimately involved with the Pellegrina production (Cavalieri 1600; Caccini 1601; for Bardi see Palisca 1989:90-131). Thus, key documents that have continued to inform our understanding of the musical aesthetic of this "transitional" period have been used, unconsciously or not, as the critical lens through which to assess the solo songs, when the testament of unofficial accounts, the practical realities of the performance conditions, and close readings of Rossi's Descrizioni suggest that the music's efficacy did not rely, in fact, on comprehension of the songs' texts. Regarding the latter, Rossi-as mouth­ piece for Bardi-indirectly indicates as much by way of his reference (cited above) to the "almost impossible" task of making the words clear and "easy to understand."20 Text clarity is not dismissed, however, but deflected to the printed (not performative) medium, which could be assessed by connois­ seurs outside of the performance context. My interest here, however, is to identify those devices associated with meraviglia that ensured an efficacious Nina Treadwell Figure 1: Cristofano Malvezzi, "10 che l'onde raffreno" (from intermedio five). Intermedii et concerti, canto partbook, 27. (Bildarchiv der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek Vienna, S.A.78.B.48, by permission.) , "t .--~-----...... ~'---~---... ---------- ----'--- ~----- ------~----------------------.------~~------:~:::::: ==:::===., -____ = ... :::::::=== "0',,-' ............ _--------.. ---......... ------------- D , 41 42 Current Musicology outcome during the 1589 performances. Specifically, I will discuss the use of florid passagework (the appropriate symbolic language for the gods), the use of echo effects, the projection of musical stasis (i.e., the control of time), surprise effects, "invisible" music, and music's capacity to delineate space as a means of projecting a sense of the incomprehensible. I begin with one of the most problematic solo songs because the music, as it survives in notation (figure 1), is only a skeleton of what was apparently sung in performance. "Io che I' onde raffreno" opened the fifth intermedio in which Anfitrite, the Queen of the Sea, emerged from her watery kingdom to salute Duke Ferdinando and his bride (Malvezzi 1591, nono:ll): 10 che l' onde raffreno A mio talento, e son del mar Regina, A cui s'attera, e'inchina Ad inchinarmi, 0 Regi Sposi vegno, Fin dal profondo del mio vasto regno. Ogni nume, ch'al mar alberga in seno I, who still the waves According to my will, and am Queen of the Sea, Before whom bows down in reverence Every divinity who dwells in the bosom of the sea: To bow down to you, 0 royal pair, 1 come From the depths of my vast realm. Although the song only survives in Cristofano Malvezzi's syllabic five-part version in the official musical publication, the composer himself tells us that Vittoria Archilei, the Florentine court's prima donna, sang the piece as a solo "maravigliosamente" (1591, nono:ll), likely implying that she embellished the canto part with at least some passagework. Although we cannot be certain of the exact nature and extent of the passagework that Archilei might have incorporated into her performance, one commentator, Simone Cavallino, gives us some idea of the general mood that the singer conveyed. Like several other writers, Cavallino mistakes Anfitrite for a siren, but pays particular attention to the perceived effect that the song exerted on audience members: In the blink of an eye [the scene] became a tempestuous sea [with] hard rocks and waves that appeared so natural, that everyone was amazed by looking at them, because they made that foam that one is accustomed to [see] with the real sea. In the middle of the above-mentioned waves appeared a very beautiful siren-with nine of her prisoners-with such a sweet singing that it would not have been anything to wonder about if it had put to sleep and softened every hard heart; then after singing for a good amount of time, she disappeared. (Cavallino 1589:5)21 Nina Treadwell Cavallino's use of the verb stupefare indicates that before the singer even appeared, the audience was astonished by the visual scene or was "past all sense:' to use John Florio's translation (1611:542). In essence, the audi­ ence was, in the Patrizian sense, in a wondrous state of "believing and not believing:' believing because the scene existed, but not believing because of the scene's sudden appearance and its striking resemblance to reality. (While Cavallino stresses verisimilitude, it is the unbelievable, seemingly impossible nature of the feat that evokes meraviglia.) In the singing that followed, Cavallino paid particular attention to the perceived effect that the solo song exerted on audience members. For Cavallino, the siren's song had the power to move the audience by softening their hearts, and lulling them to sleep as the legendary sirens had done to the sailors of antiquity. Indeed, in Cavallino's mind the song had already exerted its intended effect, because the singer was accompanied by "nine of her prisoners:' whose hearts she had already "captured." Female singers were frequently likened to sirens during this period, but there was often confusion surrounding the nature of their power-did it lead men from earthly desire to ultimate destruction, or to a higher spiritual plane? That Cavallino and others mistook Anfitrite for a siren testifies to the prevalence of the siren's figure in the popular imagina­ tion, but it also indicates the power that the siren's (Archilei's) song was perceived to exert over listeners. Yet Cavallino's account does not suggest that listeners were overwhelmed by the kind of flashy passagework that characterized other solos in the inter­ medi, in which the complexity of the passaggi generally increased as the song progressed; rather, Archilei's singing seems to have had a more subtle, yet no less powerful effect. Writing in a figurative, not literal sense, Cavallino tries to convey the intensity of the experience of the performance by alluding to a dream -like state. If we follow Cavallino's impressions (which are, indeed, the most detailed that we have), the sleep-inducing quality of the song must have called for a completely different approach that relied only partly on the singer's ability to articulate intricate passagework, but mostly depended on the singer's ingegno-an imaginative capacity to invent or fashion the new. In fact, Archilei was renowned for her ingegno, an ability that was mentioned by several of her contemporaries, including her Pellegrin a colleague, Jacopo Peri. In Peri's words, Archilei was the singer who has always made my music worthy of her singing, but adorns it not only with those gruppi and those long windings of the voice, [both 1 simple and double, that her vivezza dell'ingegno [liveliness of invention 1 can devise at any time-more to obey the usage of our time than because she regards the beauty and force of our singing to rely upon them-but also of those pleasantries and beauties that one is not able to write, and if written, can not be learnt from the written [examples l. (Peri 1601 : iii-iv) 22 43 44 Current Musicology It is striking that Peri used the term ingegno to describe Archilei's imaginative acumen. Ingegno was understood as a masculine attribute that suggested imagination, inventiveness, and initiative (Florio 1611:253); in literary circles it was regarded as a poetic faculty par excellence and was also highly prized in the visual arts. Peri's reference to the singer's "vivezza dell'ingegno" is mentioned in the context of her capacity to invent various kinds of orna­ mentation at will, but what is even more interesting for our purposes is the continuation of Peri's description as he notes the current vogue for passaggi. To be sure, as a Florentine court musician, Archilei's livelihood depended on her ability to execute such passagework with brilliance and precision, as she did in the very opening of the set of intermedi. Yet Peri suggested that Archilei herself did not believe that "the beauty and power" of singing solely relied upon them. Indeed, the "pleasantries and beauties" that Peri went on to mention would not necessarily have referred to ornamentation, as has sometimes been assumed.23 It is more likely that he meant other expressive devices for which singers from these circles were renowned and which, as Peri pointed out, could "not be learnt from the written [examples J." Comments by Vincenzo Giustiniani describing the singing of the ladies from the closely related courts of Mantua and Ferrara will serve to outline some of the expressive effects to which Peri may have been refer­ ring. Giustiniani mentions the use of well-placed passaggi, but continues by outlining more subtle effects: Moreover, by moderating or increasing the voice, loud or soft, making it light or heavy, according to the sections [of a particular song], now draw­ ing it out, now dividing it with the accompaniment of a sweet interrupted sigh, now stretching passages out, well followed, detached, now gruppi, now leaps, now long trilli, now brief [trilli] , and now with sweet passaggi sung softly ... and with many other particular artifices and observations that will be of note to people more experienced than myself. (Solerti 1903:lO8)24 Omitted from the excerpt above are references to appropriate physical demeanor, particularly with regard to the body (trunk), hands, and parts of the face. It is difficult to know to what extent Vittoria might have employed these more subtle physical gestures in her performance of "10 che l' onde raffreno" in the large Uffizi theater; initially, she had to negotiate the rising movement of her machine with lute in hand (Rossi 1589:56; Anon. 1589a). The mother-of-pearl shell on which she was perched was intentionally tossed about by the waves (Rossi 1589:55; Pavoni 1589:20) but presumably the waves subsided as she sang her opening line "10 che l' onde raffreno." It seems clear, however, that the subtleties of Archilei's expressive arsenal must have accounted, in part, for the song's efficacy in performance. Indeed, the Nina Treadwell song did not require a pronounced teleology in order to evoke a sense of wonder in the auditor. The fourth intermedio, like the fifth, began with a solo song, but in intermedio four the singer was intended to represent a sorceress whose song attempted to invoke the fire demons. The sorceress in her chariot unexpect­ edly intruded upon the scene from the previous act of the comedy, a gesture observed by a number of spectators (Monga 1994:114; Anon. 1589a). The nature of her unexpected appearance was no doubt prompted by the popular conception of the sorceress ( or witch) as a figure of disruption and disorder, but what also garnered attention was the fact that spectators were unable to figure out exactly how the chariot flew through the air to the center of the stage, while remaining close to the Heavens. One anonymous Italian com­ mentator notes: "Without changing the sets, a sorceress's chariot appears in the air, pulled by two dragons, a wondrous thing because one was not able to see by what means it moved" (Anon. 1589a; see also Katritzky 2001:233, 237; Monga 1994:114; Kummel 1970:14).25 Likewise, Rossi's Descrizione stresses the visual components of the scene-with particular emphasis on the sorceress's disheveled appearance-but does not go to any lengths to describe the affective quality of the music that she sang. It is striking, however, that Cavallino's comparatively brief account again emphasizes the musical dimension. He states: "The fourth intermedio gave no less amazement to the eye than wonder to the ear" (1589:5),26 suggesting that the visual and aural components of the scene were on equal footing in their capacity to evoke the wondrous. Regarding the sorceress's song in particular, Cavallino notes: "There was a woman who sang alone, and in such a manner that all ears were attentive [in order] to listen to her" (1589:5)Y The song to which Cavallino referred was composed by Giulio Caccini and sung by his first wife, Lucia Caccini: 10 che dal ciel cader farei la luna A voi, ch'in alto sete, E tutt'il ciel vedet'e voi com­ mando Ditene quando il sommo eterno giove Dal ciel in terra ogni sua gratia piove. I, who could make the moon fall from the heavens, To you who are on high And see all of heaven, I command you: Tell us when the almighty, eternal Jove Will pour down his every grace from the heavens to the earth.28 As the utterance of a sorceress, both the singer's delivery and the music her husband notated seems to have been designed to suggest the sorceress's 45 46 Current Musicology Example 1: Giulio Caccini, "10 che dal ciel cader farei la luna" (from intermedio four). Transcribed from both Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX.66 and Brussells, Conservatoire Royal de Musique, ms. 704. o o che dal ciel ca 5 der fa- rei la lu na a voi al - to se te tull'il ciel 10 ve - de - t'e voi co - man do Di te - ne Nina Treadwell (Example 1 continued) 15 quan do il sam m'e - ter - no Gio - ve dal ciel in ter 20 ra ogni sua gra - tia pia ve. 47 48 Current Musicology spellbinding powers. Producing the latter may have been a difficult task for a composer such as Giulio Caccini, whose own reluctance to employ a consistently florid vocal style-a sure-fire technique for evoking the marvel­ ous-is well known. In many ways, Caccini's compositional strategy is typical of his style, with passaggi almost invariably falling on the penultimate syllable of a phrase (see example 1). This formula was one he put into practice and advocated in print, railing against those singers whose words could not be understood because of excessive embellishment (Caccini 1970:43-47). The impression of invocation would have been produced by the declamatory fashion in which Lucia Caccini, as sorceress, first summoned the demons, hence the speech-like setting and repetition (with slight embellishment) on the words "10" (I) and "a voi" (to you) (see example I, mm. 1-2 and mm. 5-6). The text repetitions here emphasize the sorceress's attempt to contact her demonic cohorts; to the less savvy auditor-spectator, the emphasis on "1" and "you" in the text would have at least conveyed the intensity of the singer's relationship with certain unknown, but potentially powerful, deities. In general, the setting conforms with Giulio Caccini's views on correct text setting. However, the use of passagework is extensive, and does not always appear to be prompted by the meaning of individual words. For the listener, the wondrous experience was likely evinced through the mounting complex­ ity of the passagework in the first half of the poem, with each successive phrase outdoing the last, culminating on "commando" (mm. 10-13). This strategy included the use of passaggi on syllables of words that did not call for any special treatment: see, for example, the passaggi on "sete" (mm. 7-8) and later in the song, on "quando" (mm. 15-16). The dramatic timing of Lucia's silences between phrases would have likely created a sense of expectation in the listener and along with a commanding delivery might explain Cavallino's emphasis on the audience's attentive ears. On two occasions-at m. 14 and m. 18-the continuo is silent in conjunction with the voice. These dramatic pauses would have given the sorceress's assumed listeners a moment to absorb both her spellbinding virtuosity and the implications of her demands. In this sense, too, Lucia's song could make a powerful impression, without the auditor necessarily attaining word-for-word comprehension. Finally, it is the suggestion of Jove's power to pour down his grace that prompts her concluding flourish, with the dotted-rhythm figure "painting" the word "piove" (mm. 20-22).29 In key moments in the song the intricacy of the passagework likely became the central object of the auditor's attention to the exclusion of all else. There is an aesthetic parallel here between Caccini's song as it may have been experienced in performance and Rossi's explanation of the visual aes­ thetic that dominated the intermedi at the meta-level. Various comments by Nina Treadwell Rossi in his Descrizione (supported by the testimony in unofficial accounts) suggest that part of the experience of meraviglia involved the trumping of one wonder by the next-to the extent that it was possible to forget almost immediately what one had witnessed only moments before (Rossi 1589: 19). Similarly, lighting could be designed so that it became difficult for the eye to rest on certain visual components of the scene (Rossi 1589:23). The point appears to have been to keep the perceiver "off balance" and in a state of instability so that each intermedio and the performance as a whole were always just beyond the spectator's grasp. Caccini's solo song demonstrates how each phrase of passagework could outdo the last (by potentially nullify­ ing the impression of the previous one), either through increased complexity over the course of the song or through a striking stylistic shift. Indeed, it was those singers versed in Neapolitan-style embellish­ ment-a style of passagework particularly associated with southern Italian musicians-that were actively sought after by the Medici. It is thus no accident that several of the soloists chosen to perform in the 1589 intermedi, including Archilei and Gualfreducci, had Roman connections.30 The solos that include embellished versions in the official print are characterized by the kind of extensive passaggi that assumed the singer had dispositione di voce, a vocal disposition that made the singing of elaborate passagework possible (Greenlee 1987). According to the Roman singer Giovanni Luca Conforti, disposition was possessed by few singers (1593:l-lv); it was a means of articulating embellishments with the throat that, when success­ fully rendered, could result in clear, precise, and rapid articulation. Good disposition allowed the execution of seemingly impossible embellishment, often involving leaps and repeated notes in unrelenting scalar passages sung at lightning speed. In and of itself the experience of hearing a singer endowed with this ability seems to have been cause for certain wonderment. Bardi admitted as much upon hearing an extraordinary bass singer in Rome, despite criticizing the practice in his Discorso (Palisca 1989: 122 ).31 Transfixed by the rapid glottal articulations employed to execute intricate passaggi, at times the auditor may have lost a firm grasp of the relationship between the momentary experience and the structure of the musical whole. In poetic terms, the aesthetic corresponds to the "fragmentary, scattered bursts" of Patrizian -Longinian poetics. A thoroughgoing example that emphasized the wondrousness of momentary experience in quite a different way was the song assigned to the legendary Greek poet-musician Arion in intermedio five. Along with florid passagework, a double echo was introduced that became the governing principle structuring the piece. Arion's song was composed and sung by the virtuoso Jacopo Peri, who also accompanied himself on the chitarrone. 49 50 Current Musicology Although the poet is unknown, the poem appears in Malvezzi's print (1591 nono:12): Dunque fra torbide on de Gli ultimi miei sospir mandero fore, Ecco gentil con tuoi suavi accenti: Raddoppia i miei tormenti; Hai, lacrime, ahi dolore, Hai morte troppo acerb a e troppo dura. Ma deh chi n' assicura: o di Terra 0 di Cielo S'a torto io mi querelo: E s'a ragion mi doglio; Movetevi a pieta del mio cordoglio. Thus among the murky waves I will breathe my final sighs. Gentle echo, with your sweet accents Reiterate my torments Alas tears! Alas pain! Alas, death, too bitter and too hard! But who can assure me, On earth or in the heavens, If I am wrong to complain? And if my foreboding is justified Have pity on me in my plight. The power of Arion's plaintive, yet meraviglia-inspiring song ultimately saved the poet -musician from his mutinous crew. After Arion jumped over­ board to escape them, a dolphin carried him safely to shore, attracted by his sweet singing. Echoes responded to Arion at most of the line-end cadences, and were also summoned within poetic lines to emphasize dramatic excla­ mations on the word "hai" (alas) in the first stanza (see example 2, mm. 14-19) and "pieta" (pity) in the final line of the second stanza (see example 3, mm. 37-39). The wondrousness seems to have been produced, in part, by a projection of musical stasis or immobility as each line or short phrase was iterated twice before the singer could proceed. In this way, the echoes effectively delayed the perception of the passing of time; and like virtuosity, the device was self-referential, calling attention back to sound itself. The song did not provide the listener with a succession of related moments, but rather produced self-contained "snapshots" of wonder with attendant ripple effects produced by the double echoes. Unexpected chordal shifts also served to produce a sense of disjunction between phrases. See, for example, the third-related chord shift in example 2 (mm. 23-24), which emphasized Arion's disbelief-with the word "rna" (but)-after contemplating a death that would be "too bitter and too hard." In addition, Peri's song drew on the so-called bastarda style in which the soloist not only performed florid passagework in his natural voice range-Peri was a tenor-but expanded the range of available pitches, both above and below, to incorporate elements of the bass and alto parts that are found in the surviving four-part score. Drawing on the alto voice was particularly appropriate toward the end of the song when Arion's sense of foreboding reaches a peak. In example Nina Treadwell 3 (mm. 33-35) the gradually ascending eighth notes on the text, ''And if my foreboding is justified," culminating on the high E (at m. 35) reflected Arion's fearfulness and dread by moving into the singer's lighter alto voice range to elaborate passaggi. The singer's ability to traverse various parts of the ambitus exemplified the kind of Herculean feat that was expected of the virtuoso in this context, but may have contributed to recent scholarly criticism that describes Peri's song as awkward and lacking suavity. The range explored by the singer is roughly two octaves, yet accomplished bass singers at this time were known to sing bastarda style with a range of up to three octaves. Indeed, as Richard Wistreich has demonstrated (2002), the bass singer Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, while criticized by connoisseurs for subverting the musical architecture of a piece, could astonish his audience by applying passagework across the entire range of a four-voice madrigal, making porous the boundaries between discrete parts of the musical texture. Similarly, in the 1589 performances, the addition of extensive and wide-ranging passagework in Peri's solo song likely drew the listener toward an experience of momentary effects, one that actively worked against a perceived sense of the song's larger design. I now turn to the opening number of the first intermedio to provide a more extended analysis demonstrating how perceptions of time and space were manipulated through the confluence of aural and visual media to produce a sense of wonder in the audience. The first intermedio began with an extended solo song sung by Vittoria Archilei, who was deployed on a cloud that emerged, very slowly, from the flyloft of the theater. Archilei personified Harmony of the Spheres (or more specifically, Dorian Harmony), but we know that few in the audience recognized the singer as such, either by her visual appearance or by the self-identifying pronouncement during the course of her song "DaIle pili alte sfere": Dane pili alte sfere Di celesti Sirene arnica scorta, 1'Armonia son, ch'a voi vengo, 0 mortali: Poscia che fino al Ciel battendo l'ali l' alta fama n' apporta, Che mai SI nobil coppia il Sol non vide, Qual voi nuova Minerva, e forte Alcide. 32 From the highest spheres, As friendly escort to the celestial Sirens, I, Harmony, come [down 1 to you, 0 mortals: Because, beating its wings, Exulted Fame has brought up to Heaven [the news 1 That never has the sun seen such a noble couple, As you, new Minerva and strong Hercules.32 51 52 Current Musicology Example 2: Jacopo Peri, "Dunque fra torbide onde;' mm. 14-24 (from intermedio five). Transcribed from Intermedii et concerti (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1591). " 15 [SESTO] - - ~ hai hai " [SETIIMO] - - ~ ti hai hai r-:r"I"1 [TENORE] - \ ahi ahi la - cri - me ahi " t.J " '" [NONO ] ~ W 1" -e- : : .. .. [ahi] do - 10 - re hai a Nina Treadwell (Example 2 continued) 1\ 20 - ,; I 1\ - - ,; .... hai .....-="1 - " rnor - te trop - p'a - cer - ba e 1\ @! u u u ~- v beT 1\ ,; I ~n : : 1\ ~ ,; du - .. - deh ra rna f'I ......."..,... ~ ~- du ra rna 1\ ~ ~ trop-;o du - - ... ra rna deh 1\ @! - :cJ: v - .-i~4 - 1\ u 53 54 Current Musicology Example 3: Jacopo Peri, "Dunque fra torbide onde;' mm. 33-43 (from intermedio five). Transcribed from Intermedii et concerti (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1591). 1\ 35 [SESTO] ,; .. o;;;:z::j .. do 1\ [SETTIMO] ,; 1\ - [TENORE] ~ •••• L...I..I..I .......... """'= ." E sift ra - gion mi do glio 1\ ~ 1\ [NONO] ~ e- n n 1\ - ,; .,. glio til 1\ - ,; do - -., .. glio til 1\ ~ - ,; " .,. mo - ve - te-v'a pie - til 1\ i ~ 1\ 0 ~, ~ (1) tie- ! (L (L ~fr lklIl n (l)Orig.~C Nina Treadwell (Example 3 continued) " 40 ,; " f " '- f