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Chapter 1
forte, piano, while between all of these in their several kinds there is a
medium note [... ] 67
During the Renaissance and through the revival of Quintilian's and Cicero's
texts which strengthened the bonds between music and oratory, music's power
over the human passions was acknowledged by all composers and became the
intended purpose of their music. Quintilian's division of elocutio (eloquence) into
recte loquendum (correct eloquence) and bene loquendum (elegant eloquence)
was adopted by A. P. Coclico (Compendium musices, 1552) and H. Finck
(Practica musica, 1556), who referred to recte cantandum (correct pronunciation
in text singing) and bene cantandum (embellished singing). 68 It was during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and particularly in the Baroque period, that
the portrayal of the affections became an aesthetic necessity of most composers.
At the turn of the seventeenth century, in 1601/2, G. Caccini in the preface to his
Le nuove musiche maintained that the aim of the singer should be to move the
affects of the soul. At the same time, Michael Praetorius in his Syntagma musicum
stressed that a singer should perform in such a way as to stir the affections in the
heart of the listener. Emphasis was placed on free ornamentation as a function of
rhetoric, which was explicitly linked with the arousal of the affects. M. Praetorius
considered that "as with the office of an orator, [performance] involves not only
the adorning of an oration with beautiful, charming, lively words and wonderful
figures, but also correct pronunciation and moving of the Affekt. "69
During the Baroque, the interpretation of the text and the portrayal of the
affections became the principal goal of music, and the composer's task now was
to arouse the affections and prompt a predictable response from the listener.
Rhetoric's growing significance led not only to the application of the rhetorical
steps inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoratio, and actio (or pronuntiatio) to
67 Cicero, in twenty-eight volumes, Loeb Classical Library, iv (1942): De oratore: Book III, De
fato, Paradoxa stoicorum, De partitione oratoria, trans. by H. Rackham (London: Heinemann;
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press); De oratore: Book III. lvii. 216,172-73.
61 Wilson, Buelow, and Hoyt, pp. 261 and 270.
69 Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum III: Termini Musici (Wolfenbüttel: Holwein, 1619);
Facsimile-Nachdruck herausgegeben von Wilibald Gurlitt; Internationale Gesellschaft für
Musikwissenschaft; Dokumenta Musicologica, Erste Reihe: Druckschriften-Faksimiles, 15
(Kassel/ Basel: Bärenreiter, 1958), p. 229, translated by Butt, Bach Interpretation, p. 17.
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