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Chapter 1 27
described a fusion of two parts into one. Moreover, the term fuga to which
Charles Butler (1636) referred as reply (report or revert) was related, according to
Francis Bacon, to the rhetorical figure traductio or polyptoton. 122 Peacham the
Elder described traductio as "a form of speech which repeateth one word often
times in one sentence, making the oration more pleasant to the ear [... ]. This
exornation is compared to pleasant repetitions and divisions in music. "123
Polyptoton (the alternative term to traductio) involved, according to Quintilian,
"the repetition of a stem word with a variation of cases [... ]. "124 The application
of this term to fuga suggests probably a fugal subject with slight alterations in
many cases, such as melodic changes (tonal answer), rhythmic changes (canzona),
and transpositions. 125 Although English authors did not refer to specific rhetorical
terminology in order to distinguish between tonal and real fugal answer, it was the
Germans who understood repercussio as tonal fugal answer, and polyptoton and
palilogia as real fugal answers. 126
The last figure (formality) was more related to the arrangement of the
oration, and specifically to the dispositio (musical dispositio), the second and
most important branch of the rhetorical structure. 127 Moreover, although Charles
Butler (1636) referred to a composition's exordium and finis, he did not develop a
complete system of musical-rhetorical implications, as was done by J. Burmeister
and the whole generation of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century German
authors.
However, despite these references which undoubtedly attest to a significant
interaction between music and rhetoric in Italy, France and England, it was in
Germany that the appropriate theological and historical circumstances favoured
the establishment of musics poetica and a cohesive concept of musical-rhetorical
figures. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the publication of
many treatises by German theorists in their attempt to employ Greek and Latin
122 Butler, `Music and Rhetoric', p. 61. For a complete discussion of fugue and rhetorical terms,
see Gregory G. Butler, 'Fugue and Rhetoric', Journal of Music Theory, 21.1 (1977), 49-109.
123 Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, p. 49, cited in Sonnino, p. 179.
124 Sonnino, p. 24.
121 Butler, 'Music and Rhetoric', p. 62.
126 Bartel, p. 281.
127 Butler, 'Music and Rhetoric', pp. 63-64.