Homer the Lironist: P.F Mola, Art and Music in the Baroque
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A U S T R A L I A N V I O L A D A G A M B A S O C I E T Y Homer The Lironist: P.F Mola, Art and Music In The Baroque Figure 1 shows Pier Francesco Mola’s the lirone is closer in terms of general construction Homer dictating (1663 – 6), in which the poet and playing technique to the viola da gamba.4 of antiquity is shown dictating to an amanuensis It differs from the viola da gamba most while accompanying himself on the lirone.1 In significantly in the shape of its pegbox, which this paper, I intend first to draw on a range of in the case of the lirone is most often in the documentary evidence to outline the ‘real’ shape of a leaf with frontal, rather than the history of the lirone. Secondly, I want to consider viola da gamba’s lateral, pegs. Seven contemporary some of the ways in which the painting can be instruments survive, the best, and largely read on a symbolic level. In particular, I want to unmodified, of which was destroyed in the draw attention to ways in which musical theorists Second World War and is known only in of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries photographs.5 !is unusually shaped instrument, constructed a wilfully inaccurate archæology of or one very like it, was evidently the model on stringed instruments in the Baroque in order which Mola based his depiction.6 Of the three to further a polemic on the alleged antiquity contemporary treatises to show the lirone, and superiority of those instruments, and I only Prætorius’s shows an instrument with a hope ultimately to show why Mola placed the leaf-shaped pegbox and lateral pegs (fig. 4). lirone, invented at the start of the sixteenth Mersenne and Kircher show an instrument century, into the hands of a poet dead almost that, although similar in terms of general two and a half millennia. construction, features a scrolled pegbox (figs. 5 !e native repertoire of the lirone is and 6); this shape is not attested in any surviving confined to the two intabulated examples instrument. shown in figs. 2 and 3. !ese examples reveal a Although shape is an unreliable indicator surprising number of things about the technique of the identity of a lirone,7 three further seven- of the instrument, but they barely attest to the teenth-century paintings show the Prætorius- widespread use we know ‘il più armonioso type instrument: Young woman holding a lira da instromento’2 enjoyed for about two hundred gamba, attributed to Ferdinand Bol (1653, years. Further, while they show that the lirone Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum),8 an was primarily used to play chords, they do not anonymous, Apollo with lirone (date, location illuminate the range of settings in which it was and dimensions unknown),9 and Jan Roos’s played or the way in which its society understood Apollo charming the animals (1614 – 16, Genoa: it. In this first section, I will draw on musical Palais).10 In the absence of a standardised treatises, documentary evidence from musical design amongst the seven surviving instruments, scores, contemporary novelle, diaries and festival the form shown in all of these paintings can be records to build an image of the lirone’s position taken as the canonical form of the instrument. in its own society.3 Mola’s painting has a special status in this !e lirone is a bowed and fretted chordophone, group, as it is the only one to show the bowing having between nine and twenty strings strung technique and left-hand position, the latter in over a very flat bridge, and two bourdon strings sufficient detail that the chord being played off the fingerboard. Although technically the can be identified tentatively.11 Lironi are also lower-voice counterpart of the lira da braccio, depicted in a number of other sources where AV d G S J O U R N A L V O L . 6 , 2 0 0 7 1 A U S T R A L I A N V I O L A D A G A M B A S O C I E T Y they are drawn roughly and without regard to are contained in the records of the Scuola di the specifics of instrumental construction. San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice,19 and the Figure 7 shows an example, Armonia from Scuola Grande di San Rocco hired as many of Ripa’s Iconologia. six lironists until 1631, attesting to the widespread !e lirone appears to have been invented use of the instrument in sacred music.20 !e by Atalante Miglioritti, a lira da braccio student lirone accompanied the singing of the Miserere of Leonardo da Vinci.12 Miglioritti appears to during the services of the Florentine Compagnia allude to his invention in a letter to Francesco dell’Arcangelo Raffaello in 1583 and 1584, on Gonzaga in October 1505: the latter occasion played by Caccini, who sang while playing the lirone.21 It also seems to have I introduce a new, unheard of and unknown style of playing, with a new and unknown type of lira. I shall add strings so that there are been significant in the earliest oratorios. twelve, some attached to the tailpiece and some on the fingerboard, in Maugars refers to having heard the instrumental perfect and consummate harmony.13 music of the oratorios of the Roman Oratorio Although the first recorded use of a lirone del Santissimo Crocifisso played by an ensemble dates from 1559, it is clear that the instrument of ‘an organ, a great clavessin, a lirone, two or quickly established itself in sacred and secular three violins and two or three archlutes’. 22 music, particularly in Florence and Rome.14 Accounts of the solo singer accompanying !e Venetian traveller Marcantonio Michiel his or her own singing loom large among the records its use banquets at the court of Pope descriptions of the lirone’s use and, indeed, Leo X, including during a banquet for St John contemporary treatises frequently note how the Baptist’s day, 1520, when Leo’s court was the lirone is ‘excellent with the voice’.22 In this treated to a work played by eight singers, eight way, Mola’s painting can thus be seen as a faithful lironists (probably the same people), seven record not only of the specifics of instrument flutes and a trombone.15 !e lirone was used construction and playing technique, but also of during the 1589 celebrations for the marriage the performance practice of the instrument. In of Ferdinando de’Medici and Christine of this second part of this paper, I will show how, Lorraine, when it was played during the while remaining faithful to the tradition of intermedii for La pellegrina by two of the most depicting Homer, Mola’s painting offers a celebrated players of the day, Guilio Caccini falsified archæology of the lirone that contributes and Alessandro Striggio.16 It also appears to to a general polemic on the superiority of have featured in domestic settings. Andre bowed string instruments. Maugars, in his Reponse faite a une curieux, Depictions of Homer in Italy during the refers to a trio of women who played and sang seventeenth century are, in the words of ‘more than thirty different airs’ in a group Manuela Kahn-Rossi, ‘piuttosto raro’.24 I know comprising a lirone, a theorbo and a harp. the theme to have been explored just ten times Straparola’s collection of novelle, Le piacevoli in Italy during the course of seventeenth notti (1553), similarly describes the performance century, most of them from the hand of Mola of a madrigal by five women who sang and himself:25 played simultaneously.18 1. Pier Francesco Mola (Rome: Galleria !e earliest direct references to the lirone Nazionale di arte antica, 1663 – 6, oil 2 AV d G S J O U R N A L V O L . 6 , 2 0 0 7 A U S T R A L I A N V I O L A D A G A M B A S O C I E T Y on canvas, 94.5 x 132 cm, inv. 192): !is white reproduction, appears to bear the painting, giving perhaps the most detailed same relationship to the Pushkin Museum depiction of a lirone, shows a half-length painting detailed in (4) as the Dresden Homer, crowned with laurel, eyes closed painting (2) does to the Galleria Corsini and with his face turned towards the (1) painting. !e subject of the Pushkin heavens, singing while playing the lirone. Museum painting is faithfully replicated !e poet’s verses are taken down by an here. A half-length Homer sits on the left amanuensis located at the left of the picture. of the painting, crowned with laurels, and The text written by the scribe cannot be with an open book before him. A very distinguished. The scene takes place in a young amanuensis sits on the right of sketchily drawn landscape. the painting, evidently taking Homer’s 2. Pier Francesco Mola (Dresden: Gemälde- words down. As in the Pushkin Museum gallerie, 1663 – 6, oil on canvas, 95 x 131 painting, the poet’s eyes and mouth are cm, inv. 715; see fig. 1): A copy of the open. A vaguely sketched dark background picture described above, differing insigni- can be seen behind the figures. !e only ficantly from it, although described by significant difference with the Pushkin Gianni Papi as being of less high quality.26 Museum painting is the posture of the left 3.