Caccini

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M I C H AE L MAR K H AM

Caccini’s Two Bodies: Problems of Text and!ace in Earl"#Baro$%e Monod"

Two !aces: Com!oserl"&Performerl"'

n recent years, the concept of a “context” for a musical work has usefully expanded

beyond the old sense of cultural, intellectual, and biographical background

(background to the score, of course) to include elements that might at one time have

been called “ethnomusicological”. These include the interactions, in the moment of

performance, between participants (composer, performers, audience) and the referential

resonance of the performance venue itself. t has been a profound shift, redefining the

ob!ect of musicological study as the interaction of bodies in space, a conception in which

the textual residue (the score, of course) and its intellectual background are only two

components.

"erhaps not surprisingly, this has been most forcefully pronounced in the clearly

collaborative sphere of musical theater and opera. The choice put forward nearly a decade

ago by #arolyn $bbate between “drastic” and “gnostic” conceptions of music no longer

seems so urgent nor so difficult, as the discipline has become more comfortable seeking and

finding meaning in the %huge phenomenal explosion& that exists %between the score as a

script, the musical work as a virtual construct, and us&.' ven agner has been allowed

once again to be the collaborative artist that it turns out he always was * a choreographer of

bodies in space, and a negotiator between those bodies, who now stand before us as

co+creators of musical meaning.

- Thank you to ichard istreich for his many helpful suggestions.' #$/012 $33$T, Music: Drastic or Gnostic?, %#ritical n4uiry&, 555, ('667), pp. 868+89: 8. ;ee for example

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Caccini.s $/o &odies: 'ro0lems o% $e1t and Space in +arly-&aroue Monody

$ glance at the history of most any field since Beinrich JlfflinKs -DDD *enaissance

und &aroc# shows how historical narratives were developed specifically to define an inde+

pendent and unified style following and in contrast to the so+called high enaissance. 8 The

principal means of establishing such a period break plays on similar tropes in all disciplines:

those of decline, crisis, transition, and finally re+codification. n the standard narrative as

related to music, the decline and crisis came in the form of composersK and theoristsK

re!ection of the contrapuntal foundations of enaissance polyphony in favor of the improvi+

satory soloistic textures of the monody, the stile moderno instrumental sonata, the keyboard

toccata, and the early opera * all of which have been viewed as prototypical versions of the

more settled forms that would dominate the later 3aro4ue. 9 ;uch shifts in musical style

have, in turn, been tied to a general sense of epistemological transition around -966, the“emergence” of solo song becoming an inherently progressive step in a more general

narrative of the emergence of modernity.A Thus, the appearance of the new notational style

of monody prints following Iiulio #acciniKs )e nuo(e musiche (-96-) marks an important

moment of cultural transformation that is mirrored by a moment of compositional crisis.

8 ;ee B2#B L0MM02, *enaissance and &aroue, transl. Hathrin ;imon, thaca, #ornell =niversity "ress, -E97.

Mor the state of the concept in the mid+twentieth century see 2N 00H, $he Concept o% &aroue in )iteraryScholarship, in Concepts o% Criticism, 2ew Baven, 1ale =niversity "ress, -E9', pp. 9E+-'A. ;ince ellek theconcept and defining its boundaries have continued to dominate humanistic studies, see C /B2 taly n the &aroue3 Selected *eadings, ed. 3rendan ?ooley, 2ew 1ork, Iarland, -EE8> and C$ B$2; =0#B I=

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eventually through acts of composition on paper. /n one level, of course, there is nothing

wrong with this. t is in line with a very real text fetishiGation prevalent within enaissance

talian academies, many of which included complex rules for the submission, ad!udication,

correction, resubmission, and presentation of “works” to be read, discussed, published, and

eventually enshrined within the academic record.-- $nd so this is not to say that the

#amerata and its thick paper trail of theoretical treatises should not remain core

documents in the history of late sixteenth+century musical thought. 2or should its

importance to the emergence of solo song from the unwritten tradition and into the written

be diminished. The acceptance of an oral tradition of soloistic performance by a class of

literary cultural caretakers who served as arbiters of taste * their deeming it worthy of

written debate and theoriGing at all * is a necessary step toward (or symptom of) itsbecoming primarily a literate tradition in the ensuing decades of the seventeenth century.

The ease of this process, however, is overestimated in the canonic tale of style

transition. ;olo song is pulled prematurely out of its performance arena and into the liter+

ate arena of the author+composer. The transformation seems self+evident given the involve+

ment of important historical agents from both spheres. /n the one hand is the participation

in the #amerata of a figure as key to late+enaissance court song as the

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of other, “truer” seconda pratica composers.-9 The comparison has proven unfortunate for

#accini and his few direct followers. The radical T

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ourselves that he had a lot more than counterpoint to learn before he was prepared to claim

himself the true inheritor of a century+old tradition of improvisatory court song (and, in

fact, that given this goal, counterpoint would have been among the least relevant skills he

might ac4uire).'8 $mong the things that he learned at 3ardiKs academy, we must also

number the courtly arts of con(ersazione, of presentation, and of bodily display. $s someone

who would eventually become a paid enactor of nobility, clearly it was important to #accini

to prove his courtly authenticity. That #accini made a study of l Cortegiano is obvious from

his fre4uent misprision of sprezzatura claiming it as a tool of professional rather than

amateur performance.'9 n this pursuit, as in his professional singing, it may well have been

an education of the body, control of posture, of the voice, and of rhetorical pro!ection of

nobility itself that #accini gained from these learned discussions, all of this adding up to anative understanding of his noble audience and the ritual spaces they inhabited as he

sought to enter into them. This aspect of the #amerata was a replication of the same sort of

performative practices that made up the oral culture of the court, a simulation of the

#astiglionian privy chamber. This practical, performative side of the #amerata would have

been most appealing to #accini whose “experiments” however they fit in with the

literary+theoretical speculations of 3ardi and Ialilei, had at the same time, to be pointed

ultimately toward the practices of the oral tradition and the court.

Two Times: Past&(%t%re

#onse4uently, #acciniKs songs appear to be somewhat two+faced. They are

future+oriented notationally and technologically, through their existence in print as

pioneering exemplars of the new notational style. #acciniKs own self+conscious and repeated

'7 %"osso dire dKhavere appreso piX da i loro dotti ragionari, che in piX di trentKanni non ho fatto nel contrap+punto&, see I=0/ #$##2, )e nuo(e musiche, facsimile edition, MirenGe, ;."..;., -ED, preface, p. 7. Mor themost part my translations differ only slightly from those found in "rofessor BitchcockKs modern edition

(see I=0/ #$##2, )e nuo(e musiche R-96'S, ed. B. iley Bitchcock, in *ecent *esearches in the Music o% the &aroue, 5, E,

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the perfection of his wifeKs singing is the best evidence that all the beauties of his art may be

learned from his writings:

That the tremolo and trill were executed according to the above rule with great excellenceby my late wife leave to the !udgment of those who in her time heard her sing, as also leave to the !udgment of those who are able to hear with what excellence they are done bymy present wife.-

The printed record of courtly monody contains numerous such frustrating procla+

mations, such as that of

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was deliberately kept alive throughout the sixteenth century as a powerful image of iden+

tity and separateness.

The reliance on improvisatory solo song in nightly sixteenth+century court enter+

tainments thus served as a mechanism by which such distinction could be maintained. n

?upontKs terms, the residual text “work” is un+readable. The idea has been further explored

by "aul Qumthor in discussing oral+traditional poetry:

There are two series of forms through which the work originates. /ne of these series ismade up of linguistic forms whose totality e4uals the text, and the other comprisessomewhat summarily, what have called the corporeality of the participants and theirsocial existence as members of a group and as individuals within that group RWS. Theorally produced text, more so than the written, resists, to the extent that it relies on aphysical voice, any perception that might sever it from its social function from its placewithin a real community, from an acknowledged tradition, and from the circumstances inwhich it is heard.76

$pplying this formulation to #acciniKs songs, they are non+transferable beyond the

boundary of the court chamber * bound not !ust to a general “intellectual context” of either

an academic or courtly audience, but to a specific traditionally resonant space.

ithin the field of oral+traditional studies, Cohn mmanent 7rt , cit. (see note -')> and$he Singer o% $ales *esumes the 'er%ormance, 3loomington, ndiana =niversity "ress, -EE8.

* 78 *

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courtier ). Thus we are faced with two separate challenges in confronting #accinian monody:

first, reimagining #acciniKs songs within their originating milieu, and second, theoriGing the

relationship between his “work” (as eitherFboth singerFcourtier) and his surviving texts.

#acciniKs scores claim to bridge this gap themselves, but they do not. nstead, by making the

claim (%all the delicacies&) they merely call attention to the very aspect of his scores that

insure their failure as o0Eects. They are mere glimpses, tantaliGing and incomplete, into a

performance tradition and a courtly ritual.

Two Bodies: )oble&Professional

#acciniK s language, as sloppy and imprecise as it may often seem, is calculated to

tread a fine line between these numerous and contradictory spaces by bridging the identity

claims of a professional with those of one attempting to survive among the nobility.

Throughout his preface to )e nuo(e musiche he makes claims for what he calls his no0ile

maniera di cantare that center it at once and contradictorily in the natural realm of inborn

grazia and the professional realm of learned artifice:

$nd so in the pro%ession o% the singer (in its excellence), those who do it well do not takeaccount only of particular details, but of the entirety.77

RWS "rovided that after studying theory and the said rules, one carries them into practiceby which one becomes more perfect in all the arts, 0ut particularly in the pro%ession, that o% the per%ect singer (both male or female).78

This art does not suffer mediocrity RWS the love of Rthe artS has moved me (seeing that it isby writing that we are enlightened to every science and every art) to leave this littleglimmer in the notes and discourses that follow, intended to demonstrate ho/ much isreuired to o% those /ho ma#e a pro%ession o% solo singing to the accompaniment of the chitar+rone. Rmphasis mineS79

t is a maniera that, while it is noble, is repeatedly placed not in the possession of the

courtier or noble amateur, but only of the professional. 1et !ust as often, as in the leadup to

the peroration of his preface, his no0ile maniera di cantare stems from natural (irt rather

than artifice:

77 % perchY nella professione del cantante (per lKeccellenGa sua) non servono solo le cose particolari, matutte insieme la fanno migliore&, I. #$##2, )e nuo(e musiche, preface, p. 9.

78 %RWS "ur che dopo lo studio della teorica, e regole dette, si ponga in atto 4uella pratica per la 4uale in tuttele arti si diviene piX perfetto, ma particolarmente nella professione, e del perfetto cantore, e della perfettacantatrice&, preface, p. 9.

79 %uestKarte non patisce la mediocritZ RWS il 4uale amore ha mosso me (vedendo io, che dalli scritti

habbiamo lume dKogni scienGa, e dKogni arte) Z lasciarne 4uesto poco di spiraglio nelle note appresso, ediscorsi intendendo io di mostrare 4uanto appartiene Z chi fa professione di cantar solo sopra lKarmonia di#hitarrone&, preface, p. 9.

* 7A *

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the noble, becomes capable of a Micinian sort of pro!ection of an ideal consciousness. ;uch is

what the solo singer offers on display, through the e1ercise of his or her profession. ;uch is

the heart of #acciniKs “work”, denied inevitably to the reader of his “scores”.

t is an ambitious claim of ownership on behalf of solo musical performers, of both

meritorious virtuosity and inborn (irt into one body, #acciniKs body, and the experienced

voice. $s such it is also a declaration of belonging to a space, a claim to the same bene+

diction of grazia bestowed upon the nobility themselves through their presence within those

private spaces and rites of institution of the court. $nd so in order to deal with #acciniKs

work (rather than his “works”) on his own terms (rather than

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the tension between the past and future of the talian court culture produced an anxious

re+emphasis or drive back toward oral traditional forms. n this case, the past is that of the

courtly impro((isatori, a past in which it was understood that the meaning of solo song did

not carry into any process of textualiGation. 87 hile at times, throughout the sixteenth

century, courtly solo song was transcribed for amateur print audiences, the results are

simplified and reflect little of the performance styles being referenced. ts nuances

remained unnotatable, or in ?upontKs terms “un+readable”.88

Thus, following the trail of #acciniKs professional identity claims leads us back to

MoleyKs %enabling referent of tradition&, namely the closed spaces of the court in which solo

performances acted as the resurrection of a past ideal. The trail of this thought intersects

with concepts of tradition, nostalgia, and identity that emerge when approaching thepast+oriented rituals and spaces inhabited by diasporic ethnic enclaves. There is at least a

heuristic value in treating the cultural practices of the talian nobility as analogous to those

of other “displaced” or segregated ethnic groups, if it allows access to "aul IilroyKs powerful

assertion about forms of ethnic performativity, which %produce the imaginary effect of an

internal racial core or essence RWS through the specific mechanisms of identification and

recognition that are produced in the intimate interaction of performer and crowd&.89

#acciniKs work as court singer was an especially strong example of an %intimateinteraction of performer and crowd& that allowed the nobility to reenact a traditional

authority, recapturing a nostalgiGed and mythic past through a reified, but non+literate, set

of practices. The resulting differentiation of spaces works as one of IilroyKs %mechanisms of

identity and recognition&, for the pro!ection of an essence or %internal racial core& imag+

ined to be carried in the blood. Mor Iilroy it is trans+$tlantic “blackness”, an ethnic identity

produced by an imaginary place: that is pro!ected through cultural practice. 8A hile for the

87

;ee 2. "/TT$, No(elty and *ene/al, cit.> C$ nta(olatura de li madrigali di erdelotto da cantare et sonare nel lautointa(olati per Messer 7driano, @eneGia, ;cotto, -89. Mor the prints of the -8A6s, see H@2

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one of constant theatrical display.

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and what allows the event, in

oral rituals bounded by the noble camera, to bestow the benefice of grazia upon those

present.

$nd so, even as his characters speak of writing, #astiglione cannot help but to write

of speaking. t is fre4uently devilKs advocate "allavicino who answers, reminding the reader

that the court is a venue first and foremost for performance:

#ertainly, this discussion about writing is well worth listening to> and yet it would be moreto our purpose if you would teach us the manner the #ourtier should observe in speaking,for think he has greater need of that, since he has to use speech more often thanwriting.9'

#accini would have been most comfortable in such a space. $s a professional

courtier, and paid enactor of nobility, he would have been well aware of these words. t is

on such a claim of the predominance of parlare over scrittura that #accini staked his profes+

sional identity and his perfomerly reputation before his move into print in -96-> and it isagainst it that his solo song prints should be understood. 3ecause of the preponderance and

stubbornness of its notational gaps, )e nuo(e musiche will remain among the most difficult of

these early collections to theoriGe or criti4ue through analysis, reading, even performance.

"recisely for this reason, however, it will also remain our clearest window onto the un+

written, unreadable past of the oral+performative world of the late sixteenth century and

will remain essential for writing the culture history of the early seventeenth.

9' (i, p. -.

Caccini

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