Rhetorical Concepts and Mozart: Elements of Classical Oratory in His Drammi Per Musica

Rhetorical Concepts and Mozart: elements of Classical Oratory in his drammi per musica A thesis submitted to the University of Newcastle in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy Heath A. W. Landers, BMus (Hons) School of Creative Arts The University of Newcastle May 2015 The thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to the final version of my thesis being made available worldwide when deposited in the University’s Digital Repository, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Candidate signature: Date: 06/05/2015 In Memory of My Father, Wayne Clive Landers (1944-2013) Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat ei. Acknowledgments Foremost, my sincerest thanks go to Associate Professor Rosalind Halton of the University Of Newcastle Conservatorium Of Music for her support and encouragement of my postgraduate studies over the past four years. I especially thank her for her support of my research, for her advice, for answering my numerous questions and resolving problems that I encountered along the way. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor Conjoint Professor Michael Ewans of the University of Newcastle for his input into the development of this thesis and his abundant knowledge of the subject matter. My most sincere and grateful thanks go to Matthew Hopcroft for his tireless work in preparing the musical examples and finalising the layout of this dissertation. His assistance, unwavering belief in this research project and, most importantly, his friendship are never forgotten or taken for granted. I would also like to express my appreciation and thanks to Sally Walker, lecturer in flute at the University Of Newcastle Conservatorium Of Music, Susan Rankin and Hope Rohr for kindly assisting me with the translation of many of the quotes in this thesis. Many thanks also to Andrew Hermon, Peter Willis, Gemma Brownlow, Emma Haining and Amelia Rowland for their friendship and for sharing this journey with me. Last, but certainly not least, my heartfelt thanks go to my parents, my mother Margaret and my late father Wayne for their continued encouragement and support of my musical endeavours and studies, and for being so gracious about the time I had to spend away from our family business. For that I will always be truly grateful. HEATH LANDERS May 2015 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I The theory and practice of dramma per musica and rhetoric in the eighteenth century.. 22 Chapter II Figures of rhetoric ............................................................................................ 48 Chapter III Dispositio: the rhetorical structure of operatic forms ............................................ 104 Chapter IV Expression of the affections through modes, tempo and harmonic inflection: a case study of these concepts in Il rè pastore ....................................................................... 164 Chapter V Tones of voice and melodic line ........................................................................ 203 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 286 Bibliography .............................................................................................. 290 Abstract An understanding of the art of rhetoric was considered an essential part of a liberal arts education up until the Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century – not only for the well-to-do, but also for professional musicians and those employed in other art forms. While little documentation is now extant to provide us with information about the rhetorical training that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) received, we can surmise that much of Mozart’s knowledge in this area was transmitted through his father, Leopold (1719-1787), who had studied philosophy at the Benedictine University in Salzburg. This thesis will investigate whether it can be shown that Mozart continued the rhetorical tradition in music to portray the emotions expressed in the genre of dramma per musica. All but the last of Mozart’s works of this genre date prior to his residence in Vienna (from 1781) and show the influence of some of the most celebrated operatic composers of the day, such as Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782), Josef Mysliveček (1737-1781) and Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774), as well as that of the influential ‘Mannheim school’ on his orchestral writing. This dissertation will examine ways in which rhetorical figures, musical form, tonality, harmonic texture, tones of voice and melodic lines may be understood as part of a rhetorical scheme used by Mozart and his contemporaries to convey emotions, or the ‘passions’, as they were commonly referred to during the eighteenth century. Rhetorical techniques and devices formed a tradition dating from the first performances of opera in the early seventeenth century; it will be argued that they continued to be the guiding principle for communicating expressiveness in Mozart’s drammi per musica, alongside their innovations in orchestral texture and in form. While Mozart’s operatic compositions have been subject to many types of analysis, the analytical methodology of this dissertation will be based on a study of compositional precepts of the period. It aims to show how Mozart, as a composer of the late eighteenth century, applied these concepts to his vocal compositions to illuminate through music the emotions, ideas and images expressed in the text. Introduction Music and rhetoric Rhetoric – the art of eloquent speech or writing - was taught as part of a liberal arts curriculum until the Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century. With the classical texts forming the basis of knowledge, a rhetorical performance was designed to move (movere) the emotions and persuade (persuadere) the intellect of an audience in such a way that it could be understood and appreciated without effort. Aristotle (384-322BC) defines rhetoric as the ‘counterpart of dialectic’ in his Art of Rhetoric (1.1, Aristotle, trans. Lawson- Tancred, 1991: 66). From antiquity rhetorical techniques were embedded into the process of musical composition and were continually adapted to new musical styles (Tarling, 2005: ii). The persuasive affects shared by rhetoric and music were well known through myth and literature from ancient times. Orpheus, perhaps the best-known mythical musician and the subject of many operatic compositions, tamed animals and moved rocks by his persuasive playing of the lyre and, according to Greek historian Herodotus (c425-425BC), Arion, having given what he thought was to be the last performance of his life, was saved from drowning by music-loving dolphins impressed by his cythara playing (Histories, Book 1: 23-24). In Jewish and Christian contexts, David’s playing of the harp was said to be the only way the violent rages of Saul, King of Israel could be soothed (1 Samuel 16:23, King James Version). The ancient writings on rhetoric by Aristotle, Cicero (106-43BC) and Quintilian (c35-c100) influenced many treatises on this subject during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. René Descartes’ (1596-1650) most famous philosophical work, Les passions de l’âme (1650) prompted the publication of similar works on the importance of portraying human emotion in all the arts, such as Réflexions critiques sur la poésie, la peinture et la musique (1719) by French diplomat, historian and theorist of the arts Abbé Jean-Baptiste Dubos (1670-1742). During the lifetime of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), rhetorical values were seen to penetrate the barriers of time and culture easily, while a rhetorical performance and the 1 aesthetic pleasure derived from it were regarded as having survived antiquity to become one of the classical world’s gifts to the modern world. Rhetoric remained too useful to ignore, as it provided a vocabulary for making communication explicable – in both verbal and artistic terms (Beghin and Goldberg, eds., 2007: 2). Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music theorists sought to explain various aspects of the musical experience with the assistance of rhetorical knowledge, at a time when the study of rhetoric formed a part of every educated person’s formal and informal learning (Beghin and Goldberg, eds., 2007: 2). Even though the eighteenth century proved to be a period of rapid and fundamental change in the western music tradition, influences from the past were not neglected and continued to retain their force. German music historian and theorist Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818) drew more directly than any of his predecessors had done on classical sources. The details of his discussion, which are firmly based in the classical tradition, can be seen in Forkel’s Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (1788-1801) (Beghin and Goldberg, eds., 2007: 3). It is without doubt that the majority of Wolfgang’s musical training was undertaken under the guidance of his father, Leopold Mozart (1719-1787). This training would have included an extensive education in rhetoric, a discipline in which Leopold was thoroughly versed, during his time at the University of Salzburg, where he enrolled in the Bachelor of Philosophy

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