Thinking in Song

THINKING IN SONG Prosody, Text-Setting and Music Theory in Eighteenth-Century Germany A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Martin Kuester January 2012 © 2012 Martin Kuester THINKING IN SONG Prosody, Text-Setting and Music Theory in Eighteenth-Century Germany Martin Kuester, Ph.D. Cornell University 2012 Eighteenth-century music theorists habitually used terms that were apparently im- ported from grammar, rhetoric and poetics. While historians of music theory have commonly described these words as reflecting metaphorical attempts to understand music by analogy with language, this study emphasizes their technical value, especially with respect to vocal music, which includes both domains. In the case of Johann Mat- theson, Johann Adolph Scheibe, Joseph Riepel and Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, the literal meaning of this common vocabulary can be recovered by viewing their general composition rules�� in the previously une�amined�� conte��t of their theories for compos- ing te�t and music of vocal works. Chapter One questions the applicability of a ‘metaphor of music as a language’ to eighteenth-century musical thought and proposes a new framework, centered on what Scheibe and others considered ��the origin of both music and language, prosody. Chapter Two e�amines Mattheson’s famous minuet analysis and concludes that a prosodic sub-discipline of music theory provided a vocabulary that applied, in ten- dency, to words and notes of vocal music, simultaneously. Chapter Three traces the interaction of prosodic parameters in the longer history of ‘musical feet,’ pointing out eighteenth-century theorists’ successful efforts to adapt or re-adapt their terminol- ogy to the practice of modern vocal composition. Chapter Four e�plains Marpurg’s 1759 theory of meter as a by-product of his efforts to codify vocal composition, which involved a mutual assimilation of musical measures and poetic feet. Chapter Five asks how te�ts were thought to respond to musical techniques of phrase enlargement, pro- posing a correlation of inessential (appended or parenthetical) music with repeated or missing te�t. Chapter Si� investigates how strophic settings of odes by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock from the 1770s and 1780s ��pushed the notion of a common prosody into a technical and intellectual crisis��. An appendi� adds a collection and translation of source passages referring to cognates and synonyms of the central terms ‘rhythm’ and ‘meter.’ BIOGrapHIcaL SKetcH Born 1975 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Martin Küster has studied German language and literature at Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität (Frankfurt), organ, conducting and music theory at Musikhochschule Lübeck (from 1997 to 2003), as well as musicology at Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany, 2004–2005) and at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY, United States, 2005–2011). ACKNOWLedGmeNts I could not have written this dissertation without the support of my parents, who have made my education possible and continued to do so even as the precise meaning and purpose of my studies became less and less obvious. If there are meaning and purpose, this is due to the encouragement, advice and criticism of my academic advisers, primarily James Webster, who has tirelessly read my drafts without letting a single foot- note or music e�ample escape the attention of his red pen; and both Annette Richards and David Yearsley for further inspiration, instruction and support. I am also indebted to Neal Zaslaw for making the defense possible under unique circumstances. Things would have been difficult, moreover, without my friends and fellow students Ellen Lockhart, Damien Mahiet and Mark Ferraguto, how have shared drafts and thoughts with me in an association, known as the ‘diss-graceful,’ which I have sorely missed over recent months. Many more people could be mentioned, such as Aloyse Michaely at Musikhochschule Lübeck, who has made me a music theorist, or the conductor Jörn Boysen, whose performances have opened my ears long before my brain was ready to follow. I would also like to e�press my deepest gratitude to those libraries, particularly the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, that have gradually digitized and uploaded virtually ev- ery source I needed; had they begun just two years earlier, I would have spent even less time, in basements, with microfilms, -fiches and -cards, innovations which future readers will hardly recognize. v. Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. Metaphor and Natural Song 12 2. Singing Analysis: Mattheson’s Minuet 43 3. A Vocal History of Feet 58 4. Marpurg’s Measure of Song 97 5. The Essence of Arias 122 6. Klopstock’s Odes, or Song vs Song 140 Appendi�: Source Passages about Rhythm and Meter 190 Bibliography 205 Glossary 214 Table of Feet 217 vi. Introduction In general terms, the subject of this study comprises mid-eighteenth-century efforts by German music theorists to codify the composition of vocal music; the specific question is how these theories relate to eighteenth-century music theory in general. Since the composition of vocal music (Singcomposition) was commonly preceded by the composition of a poem, the subject of te�t-setting is closely interwoven with that of musical poetry (musikalische Poesie), i.e. te�t considered to be settable in the first place; both matters were theorized by musicians and will be included in this study. My focus rests primarily on the mechanics of this process rather than its aesthetics, i.e., not on what the te�t says and how the music relates to its meaning, but on how it is pronounced and how music makes this pronunciation possible; the key issue, in a word, is the theory of prosodic word-tone relations in vocal music. The more particular problem, the role of Singcomposition in eighteenth-century music theory, asserts itself when we consider how theorists committed themselves to subjects such as melody, rhythm, meter and phrase construction, subjects which differed from the traditional staples of music theory, harmony and counterpoint, by inviting a methodology based on the studies of language and poetry rather than math- ematics; a trace of this derivation can still be found in technical terms such as ‘rhythm,’ ‘meter,’ ‘comma’ and ‘period.’ Is it sufficient to ascribe the presence of these words to a ‘metaphor of music as a language,’ as the phrase goes? Or was Carl Dahlhaus, al- though he asserted this metaphorical character, temporarily right when he introduced 1. and dismissed the idea that these borrowings bore a relation to vocal music? He did not detail the nature of this relation, but the hypothesis seems plausible, worthy of further investigation. I propose that the terms, like the music-theoretical disciplines in which they were used, pertained to prosody rather than to language in general, and that in this prosodic theory, vocal music played the role of a testing ground as to whether terms were merely metaphorical – based on perceived analogy – or whether they denoted phenomena that tended to be congruent in the vocal work (a period in the te�t, for e�ample, coinciding with a musical period). My detailed engagement with Dahlhaus, the metaphorical thesis and the structural role of song in eighteenth-century thought can be found in Chapter One. I focus on a tradition of German theorists whose shared interests included prosody and vocal music and a common approach to theorizing: Johann Mattheson (1681–1764), Johann Adolph Scheibe (1708–1778), Joseph Riepel (1709–1782), Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718–1795) and Heinrich Christoph Koch (1749–1816). E�cept the latter, these theorists all contributed significantly to the theories of musical poetry and te�t setting; Scheibe and Marpurg were also instrumental in reviving the German song genre. Moreover, besides frequently citing and praising each other’s work, they Carl Dahlhaus, “Der rhetorische Formbegriff Heinrich Christoph Kochs und die Theorie der Sonatenform,” in Gesammelte Schiften, vol. 3 (Laaber: Laaber, 200), 63. 2 Cf. Scheibe's laudatory references and poems to Mattheson; Marpurg's enthusiastic review of Riepel's Anfangsgründe in Historisch-Kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, vol. 1, �3�0�3��3; his remar ��that Riepel has, “among all musicians, first investigated and elaborated [phrase rhythm] from the basis and with insight,” Kritische Briefe über die Tonkunst, vol. 2, 98; Riepel returned the favor, writing that “after all, this deservedly famous author is the only one who has broen the ice and taen it upon himself to remove this remaining insufficiency of German poetry … with an amount of insight and caution of which I would never be capable,” Harmonisches Syllbenmaß, vol. 1 (Regensburg, 1776), 1; Koch, echoing Marpurg, wrote that “Riepel was the first theorist (and remains the only one I know) who has treated the subject [of size and ending of phrases] extensively,” Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Böhme, 787), 11. 2. shared a common self-perception: by breaking ground for music journalism and by presenting their theories as practical instructions in melodic composition, they ��introduced an e�oteric style of music theory in e�plicit distinction from the seventeenth- century tradition of mathematical harmony and

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