ALLEGORY: A DEFINING ELEMENT OF BAROQUE MUSIC

by Peter Montalbano—Oct 29, 1982

 

           What is allegory? Even within the world of scholarship, where the term is used endlessly, there are different definitions. In general it is understood as a type of metaphor by which a subject is represented indirectly through implied linkage with another, explicit subject that suggests its attributes in some way. The abstract subject "justice" may, for example, be allegorically represented as a woman, blindfolded, holding scales; a rose may function in a poem as an allegory of love. It is to this concept that scholars have added riders and footnotes.
           Manfred Bukofzer, in his essay, "Allegory in Baroque Music [1] ," clarifies his own concept of allegory in an interesting way: for him allegory is a relation between sign and meaning which expresses "coherence" between them. "Rose" and "love" are obviously separate things, but their coherence is brought about by poetic juxtaposition. The rose then becomes an allegorical sign, pointing the mind toward the abstract concept of love through its suggestive qualities: beauty, sweetness, transitory bloom, etc. This is not the same relation, as, for instance, that between a stop sign on a street and the concept of stopping: that connection is quickly recognized not because red hexagons have any intrinsic or inherent qualities suggesting stopping, but because our culture has made this relation a conventional one. "Convention," then, justifies that relation. The "coherent" relationship, on the other hand, relies on inherent qualities in the sign. The rose, which can be an allegory of love, is not love, and love does not reside in it, but it has inherent qualities we associate with love.

           When, to pull another example, we speak of "the White House," we can mean the President, the present administration, or a whole history of administrations for which the term "White House" stands and which are conventionally named with the use of that term. Because what it signifies has no inherent resemblance to what it is, "White House" functions merely as a symbol rather than as an allegory. An allegorical figure, on the other hand, may stand alone with an artistic integrity separate from, but necessarily suggestive of, the abstract value it represents. This is the spirit in which the term "allegory" will be used in this paper, and we will see that the distinctions made above are important for a discussion of the application of the allegorical concept to music.

 

            By the time of the baroque period in music the European imagination was well used to allegory in the arts. For centuries the Christian church had encouraged the use of allegory as a method for incorporating pagan traditions into its doctrines. [2] In England, Henry Felton expressed the. attitude of his age and earlier times (incidentally employing an allegorical figure to do this), writing that allegory is

 

not so much any Ornament of Style, as an artful Way of recommending Truth to the World in a borrowed Shape, and a Dress more agreeable to the Fancy, than naked Truth herself be. [3]

 

By the seventeenth century the works of Chaucer and Spenser as well as a host of morality plays filled with allegory had set the stage in England for Shakespeare, Milton, and the metaphysical poets, to whom such conceit was no stranger. Italy had produced the works of master allegorists Tasso and Guarini, whose works were to inspire a variety of musical compositions and exert a profound influence on French theater and literature, [4] so that Durant-Tapie could tell us that by the middle of the century "les allegories jouissaient alors de la plus grande vogue." [5] Ballet and liturgical dramas frequently had allegorical settings. Thomas Morley, one of the greatest English madrigal composers, in by various authors 1601 published "The Triumphes of Oriana," a collection of madrigals whose texts eulogize Queen Elizabeth by means of allegory. In European drama of the time, tragedies were often punctuated by the introduction of allegorical subjects between acts in musical interludes or "Intermezzi." Such was the artistic climate in which the music of the baroque period developed.

In the mid-sixteenth century the Catholic church, through the directives of the Council of Trent, exerted a powerful influence on the development of the arts:

 

The human activities and feelings of the life of Christ and of those who surrounded Him were to be treated in detail, awakening our human sensibility and, at the same time, they were not to be divided from the great paradoxes involved, of heaven in earth and god in man. The sensuous beauty in the face of things was to be apprehended and then turned to sudden symbolic meaning which obliterated its sensuality, at the core of the whole symbolism was the allegorical interpretation of Canticles, figuring heavenly love with symbols of earthly. [6]

 

These were the general guidelines given by the church concerning the purpose and methods of the arts. Closely related was the Council’s call for a new treatment of music, namely that musical composition should henceforth be more supportive of textual meaning. Activities in the secular musical world dovetailed nicely with this: the Camerata of Florence, which sought a rebirth of ancient musical ideals, had independently reached the conclusion that textual meaning should dominate and be aided by musical form. Both the sacred and the secular worlds began to require of music that it become more than a thing of beauty, pleasing to the ear: now it had to carry meaning, as well. And the composers soon began to stream through the new opening which had been made for them.

One of the earliest and most fundamental contributions of these composers of new music was the institution of a new genre: opera. There is no question that allegorical expression played a prominent role in the birth of opera. Setting aside for a moment the development of the new "stile rappresentativo," whose very name suggests figurative expression, we will briefly examine some of the settings, themes, and dramatic devices of baroque operas for their use of allegory.

Many of the earliest operas were of a pastoral-mythological nature and thus lent themselves easily to allegory. In Peri and Caccini’s Euridice as well as Monteverdi’s Orfeo there are strong allegorical elements. Each, for instance, opens with a prologue by an allegorical figure: in Euridice it is Tragedy; in Orfeo, La Musica. Orfeo himself, who is central to both works, must also be seen as representing the spirit of music, although perhaps more symbolically. In an encounter reminiscent of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Monteverdi’s Orfeo has an encounter with Hope, who seeks to comfort him. The earliest opera that has survived intact, Cavalieri’s La Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo, is unabashedly and thoroughly allegorical, intended for moral edification, and in it abound such characters as Pleasure, Intellect, Time, World, etc. as well as personifications of the soul and body. This opera, in fact, spawned a sub-genre known as "allegorical opera," which was especially popular in Rome. [7] Monteverdi’s Il Ballo dell’ingrate, while more subtle in its figurative treatment, nevertheless is a moral fable with indicated meaning other than the literal. The tendency toward allegory went so far as to produce a type of aria known as "simile aria." Here the text relates the singer’s situation or thoughts to some natural phenomenon or activity in the world at large. Examples include Handel’s aria "Va tacito e nascosto" in Giulio Cesare and J. S. Bach’s cantata, "Was mir behagt." Interestingly enough, this type of aria dies out after the baroque period.

          The use of allegory in the stories of opera continues throughout the baroque period. A notable example is Siegmund Staden’s Das Geistliche Waldgewicht Seelewig (1644), a Christian morality drama in which the nymph Seelewig represents the eternal soul, and is saved from her downfall by the intervention of shepherds and shepherdesses, who represent the forces of good. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689) exploits Virgil’s own use of pastoral-mythological material, most notably in the use of the hunt as an allegorical expression of sexual passion. In the eighteenth century Jean-Philippe Rameau, besides his powerful use of musical effects to represent emotional states, uses the stories of his operas as figurative vehicles for expression of the "back to nature" side of French Enlightenment philosophy. [8]

The mention of Rameau brings us back to a consideration of the development of the "stile rappresentativo." This development is important because it signaled a new use of music as a type of figurative, even allegorical expression, which became one of the most notable characteristics of the baroque period. How is it possible for music, which of itself can have no literal meaning, to express a concept allegorically? Bukofzer gives the following illustration:

 

We find in the music of the sixteenth century on almost every occasion when the text reads "descendit de coelis" a descending melody, and when the text reads "ascendit in coelum" a rising melody, what we have before us is a musical allegory. The descent, which is directly expressed in the word "descendit" and which therefore requires no further figurative transformation, is embodied in the descent of the melody. [9]

 

This musical device undeniably helps express the abstract notion of motion upwards or downwards, and in line with our definition of allegory as "coherent," the musical line itself is, while connected with the words, independent of them in the sense that it can stand alone, entirely separate from their meaning, while retaining its own aesthetic integrity. Bukofzer further demonstrates this sort of independence with examples from Bach where distinctly different textual concepts are supported by one and the same musical device. A descending line is used in one place to support the verb "versinken"; in another place it aids an entirely different concept, the noun "Finsternis." [10] In separate places, the interval of a diminished ninth is used to support such disparate ideas as wandering, anger, horror, and desire. [11]

 

 As to the ability of music to express meaning, the words of the baroque

composer Johann Mattheson give an indication of an attitude which was widespread in his day:

 

If someone might mention that indeed these things cannot be well represented in music; then one can assure and convince him that he would be deceiving himself not a little. The famous Job. Jac. Froberger, court organist for Ferdinand III, knew how to represent quite well, on the clavier alone, entire stories depicting contemporaneous and participating persons, as well as their emotions. I possess, among others, an allemande with all the trimmings wherein the crossing of Count von Thurn and the peril he endured on the Rhine is rather clearly laid before the eyes and ears in 26-note cascades. Froberger was there himself. [12]

 

Mattheson and his contemporaries, including Werchneister, Printz, Marburg, Scheibe, and Quantz, [13] were early theorists of what was later given the name of "Affektenlehre," or "doctrine of the affections," which maintained that music could and should be used "affectively," to depict human emotions and states of mind. This doctrine naturally had significance for the development of allegorical usage of music. Allegorical applications of the "Affektenlehre" began with the "textpainting" of late renaissance music and continued throughout the baroque. It extended through a wide range of emotions and meanings, and used a variety of musical supports. As Harman writes, "baroque composers were primarily concerned with rendering and translating into music the temper, disposition or frame of mind, passions, and mental reactions characteristic of man. [14] Monteverdi’s development of the "stile concitato" provides a good illustration of this, as does the "recitative stromentato" used by Monteverdi, Schutz, Scarlatti, and many others. Besides the use of such devices as ascending and descending melodic lines, wide leaps, dissonant intervals, tremolo, rapidly repeated notes, pizzicato, and chromaticism, instruments themselves were used "affectively": the timpani was used to express heroism, the flute modesty; the horn could express pomposity, trumpets and drums martial courage, trombones melancholy, violins love, etc. Rameau gives us some of the best examples of "affective" composition for orchestra:

 

In what Rameau called "recitatif accompagne pathetique" the orchestra becomes sensational, portraying a violent emotion, such as suicidal grief ("Grands Dieux," Hippolyte,1,4), etc. by all the devices used in the Italian recitative accompagnato but in a more vivid manner. [15]

 

The work of J. S. Bach in many ways represents the culmination of baroque musical evolution. One of these ways is his use of music for allegorical expression. Bukofzer credits Albert Schweitzer [16] and André Pirro [17] for compiling a "vocabulary of musical phrases" used by Bach for reinforcing textual meaning. It is Bukofzer himself, however, who in a critical tour de force brings together examples afforded by these two men to demonstrate Bach’s mastery of the allegorical mode. He does this by demonstrating how Bach combines many elements of what might be called "Figurenlehre" (the technical musical application of Affektenlehre") to simultaneously bring five allegories to bear on the meaning of the cantata "And Thou Shalt Love the Lord thy God." [18] After such mastery, what more could be done? Perhaps the use of musical devices for allegorical expression had gone as far as it could, and perhaps it was due to be supplanted by new concepts of musical meaning. Bukofzer suggests that indeed it had, and was.

 

Baroque music is not, like modern music, a language of feeling, which expresses its objects directly, but a sort of indirect iconology of sound. For this reason it lacks all psychology in the modern sense. The rigidity of baroque music . . , has long been remarked upon. But this is not a weakness of such music; on the contrary, it is its very strength. The humanization of music by means of a dynamic emotional conception of its nature appears only during the first half of the eighteenth century, when baroque ceremonial--the pigeon-holing of the stereotyped emotions—gave way before the so-called natural feelings. To the rising middle-class age the formality of baroque music appeared unnatural, even inhuman. The two styles are based on two different conceptions of music. [19]

 

So: to regard baroque music as unnecessarily rigid and therefore emotionally uninteresting is to misunderstand it: however foreign the allegorical mode may be to the modern understanding, it has a profound and inescapable integrity of its own. Where later music, such as that of Beethoven, might itself be termed "sad," or "joyous," in baroque music sadness, joy, and other emotional states were expressed by musical concepts which were coherent, not congruent, with the emotions themselves. These concepts were of themselves as independent of these states as the rose is independent of love. And thus it is that the concept of allegory is such a strongly defining element of baroque music, and that at the time when allegory gives way to other forms of expression, we say that the baroque period has ended.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Bukofzer, Manfred, "Allegory in Baroque Music," Journal of the Warburg Institute, iii (1939-40)

 

Buckley, F., "Priest-Composers of the Baroque: a Sacred-secular Conflict, "Music Quarterly 54, 169-84 n.2

 

Chapin, Chester Fischer, Personification in Eighteenth Century English Poetry, King’s Crown Press, New York, 1945.

 

Collaer, P., "Lyrisme Baroque et Tradition Populaire," Studia Musicologica 7:25-40, 1965

 

Felton, Henry, A Dissertation on Reading the Classics, London, 1713

 

Grout, Donald Jay, A History of Western Music, 3rd ed. New York, 1980

 

Grove, Sir George, A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, New York, Macmillan, 1980

 

Harman, Alee, and Milner, Anthony, Late Renaissance and Baroque Music, London, Barrie Books, 1959

 

Herbst, Andreas, Musica Poetica, 1643.

 

Kuhnau, Johann, Vorrede zur Dentmaier Deutscher Tonkunst, Vol. IV (seventeenth century) This preface by Kuhnau is, as Bukofzer points out, important for the discussion of baroque programme-music. Partly due to limitations of space and time, and partly due to oversight, I have not included in this paper a discussion of the allegorical implications of programme music; such a discussion, would however be of value.

 

Mami, Archimede, Allegory In the French Heroic Poets of the Seventeenth Century, New York, Haskell House, 1971.

 

Mattheson, Johann, Der Vollkommene Capellmeister: a revised translation with critical commentary by Ernest R. Harris, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1981.

 

Milner, Anthony, The Musical Esthetic of the Baroque, Oxford, I960.

 

Pirro, André,  ésthetique de J. S. Bach, 1907.

 

Schering, Arnold, "Bach und das Symbol," Bach-Jahrbuch, 1925 and 28

 

Schering, Arnold, "Die Lehre von den musikalischen Figuren," Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch, 1908.

 

Schweitzer, Albert, J. S. Bach, le Musicien-Poete, 1905

 

von Westerman, Gerhart, Opera Guide, New York, F. P. Outton, 1965. Wagner, Richard, "Oper und Drama," Gesammelte Schriften, vol. IV

 

White, Helen, et al., Seventeenth-Century Verse and Prose, New York, Macmillan,  1962, vol. I, preface.