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Chapter 17
communicative activity, closely related to aspects of the linguistic trivium. The
idea of making or creating, implied by the term musica poetica, lies in the
Aristotelian notion of poetics, which was valid for Baroque writers. 7 It involved
the art of making a composition (as the origin of the word is traced back to the
Greek meaning `to create'), and included treatises that served as elucidations of
counterpoint and thorough-bass, and approaches to the method of composition. 8
Musica theoretica, on the other hand, referred to theoretical speculation following
a tradition established in the medieval world, which attempted to explain music in
numbers and considered musical harmony a reflection of the harmony of the
Creation. Finally, musica practica was related to the performance of music and
required "[... ] considerable skill, insight and awareness of the rhetorically-
influenced practice of composition. "29
Through the emergent principle of musica poetica, the ideal musician, or
rather the `music-poet' (musicus poeticus), was to compose his music in order to
express the text and portray the related affections. As previously discussed,
Martin Luther stressed music's fundamental purpose as being oriented towards
the textual expression and the proclamation of the principal truths of the Gospel.
The first signs of this close text-music relationship can be traced back to the
generation of Josquin, when theorists declared a new style of music known as
musica nuova (nuova maniera or musica reservata) 30 The primary goal of music
was to emphasize the significance of the text and to reflect its syntax and
structure. The composer, the musicus poeticus or melopoeticus, was to imitate the
task of the orator in his setting of the words to music, as N. Vicentino explained in
his L' antica musica ridotta alla moderns prattica (Rome, 1555), where he stated:
27 Timothy Edward Albrecht, 'Musical Rhetoric in Selected Organ Works of Johann Sebastian
Bach' (unpublished D. M. A. thesis, University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music, 1978), p.
26.
28 George Buelow, 'Symposium on Seventeenth-Century Music Theory: Germany', Journal of
Music Theory, 16 (1972), 36-49 (pp. 39-41). See also Manfred F. Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque
Era from Monteverdi to Bach (London: J. M. Dent, 1947), pp. 370-93.
29 Butt, Music Education and the Art of Performance, p. xiv.
30 Claude V. Palisca, 'Ut Oratoria Musica: The Rhetorical Basis of Musical Mannerism', in The
Meaning of Mannerism, ed. by Franklin W. Robinson and Stephen G. Nichols, Jr (Hanover, NH:
University Press of New England, 1972), pp. 37-65 (p. 38).