Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Music

Advisor

Emily Wilbourne

Committee Members

Emiliano Ricciardi

Clare Carroll

Giuseppe Gerbino

Scott Burnham

Subject Categories

Comparative Literature | European History | Italian Linguistics | Italian Literature | Musicology | Music Theory | Philosophy of Language | Renaissance Studies

Keywords

madrigal, Petrarch, text setting, embodiment, reading, Renaissance

Abstract

This dissertation examines how composers of sixteenth-century Italian madrigals highlighted poetic line rhythm, repeated vowel sounds (or assonance), and word repetition in figures of speech—all elements of the verse that have been previously overlooked by scholars, who have traditionally focused on musical depictions of the text’s semantics. The analysis in chapters 2, 3, and 4 shows that composers used a consistent set of techniques from the madrigals of Arcadelt to those of Monteverdi, and musical examples draw from large collection of madrigals on Petrarch sonnets. The analytical methodology is built on the premise that Cinquecento encounters with poetry can be described as embodied reading, and that the highlighting of these linguistic features in music was a product of such reading.

Rather than critical or “disembodied” reading, which is interpretive and focuses on disparate words and other features without the surrounding context, embodied reading means reading a text (perhaps even hearing it read aloud) in time, with its phonetics and syntax unfolding in sequences that create sonic and syntactic relationships. It describes the sensuous (and therefore, embodied) experiences with syllables, words, and phrases, which in poetry include accent, line structure, vowel and consonant arrangement, and figures of repetition. Rather than focusing on certain words in isolation—such as those that express emotion or suggest imagery—embodied reading prioritizes the ordering or arrangement of words in a verse.

Chapter 1 provides historical context for reading in the Cinquecento, including the large number of editions of Petrarch’s Canzoniere (often called Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta or RVF for short) that were printed from 1500 to 1550, the importance of vernacular poetry, and the debates of the so-called questione della lingua. This chapter describes what theorists and readers wrote about poetic language, particularly its giacitura or ordine (arrangement or order) of words and sounds. Passages on poetry and language from Pietro Bembo, Giraldi Cinthio, and Antonio Minturno (among others) are excerpted and analyzed, while paying particular attention for how these authors described the sensuous experiences of vocalizing, hearing, and feeling verse—especially verse by Petrarch. This chapter presents such historical commentary as evidence of embodied reading experiences in the Cinquecento, and it describes how readers considered the rhythmic structure of lines, assonance, and word repetitions in Petrarch’s sonnets, thus providing a linguistic foundation for the musical analysis in the remainder of the dissertation.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 analyze musical techniques in the madrigal that express and emphasize accent and line rhythm, repeated vowel sounds, and word repetition. Each chapter begins by describing its methodology, its connections with related scholarship, and its basis on Cinquecento reading and poetics as discussed in chapter 1. Music theoretical writings on text setting and melodic techniques are discussed, such as those by Gioseffo Zarlino, Nicola Vicentino, and Joachim Burmeister. Finally, examples from the madrigal repertoire are analyzed, showing that composers from the 1530s to the 1630s relied on a consistent musical vocabulary to highlight the textual effects described in the introduction and chapter 1. Settings of the same text are frequently placed side-by-side to illustrate their similarities, rather than their stylistic differences as in most other setting comparisons. Chapter 2 discusses accent, the poetic line as structural unit, and musical treatment of enjambment; chapter 3 shows how repeated vowels are highlighted using melodic sequences and other techniques; and chapter 4 illustrates how composers linked figures of word repetition with similar melodic shapes. This dissertation’s methodology for musical analysis is rather unique in that it studies the text settings primarily in individual parts, rather than through interplay and cadences between the voice parts. Partbooks can function as autonomous musical expressions of the text that contain sufficient musical emphasis of the verse’s arrangement of sounds and word repetitions, even though they are also heard in polyphony.

The conclusion to this dissertation combines the analysis techniques used in chapters 2 through 4 and applies them to five settings of the Petrarch sonnet, “Tutto ’l dì piango.” Using the rhythmic declamation and emphasis of assonance and rhetorical figures found in the musical settings, figures are created that display what this demonstrates about the reading experience: where readers felt accents, pauses, and tension in enjambments; where they heard a recurrence of a pair of vowels in adjacent words; and how rhetorical figures linked words and phrases. In other words, analysis of the musical settings shows the reactions to an embodied reading of the verse. Finally, the conclusion provides suggestions for incorporating the dissertation’s work into the informed performance practice of madrigals, and for reconsidering how listeners and singers experience subjectivity in the singing of a madrigal, both historically and in the present.

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