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Chapter 1 35
As in the case of Burmeister, the musical-rhetorical figures' role of arousing
the affections is only periodically encountered in the treatises of Nucius and
Thuringus. Nucius's motets, particularly, demonstrate affective musical devices
employed to illustrate words and phrases and to heighten the emotional content of
the text. ' 58 Focusing more on the close interrelationships between text and music,
Nucius and Thuringus tried to establish a musical-rhetorical language similar to
the rhetorical concept of the figures. Musical figures were considered not only
"ad imitationem poetarum" (in imitation of the poets), but also elements that
would lend musical oration varietatem and elegantiam. 1 59
. However, while the main focus of musical-rhetorical figures was initially on
the representation of the text, the text gradually gave way to the portrayal of the
affections. It was in 1650 that Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), 160 the Jesuit
theologian and mathematician, diffused into German circles the figures' power to
evoke the affections through his treatise Musurgia universalis sive ars magna
consoni et dissoni (Rome, 1650), shifting the emphasis to the expressive concept
of musical-rhetorical figures. Kircher's Musurgia universalis represented a "[... ]
compendium of musical facts and speculation that is still essential to an
understanding of 17th-century music and music theory. i161 Additionally, he
considered music an essential part of the mathematical quadrivium and musical
harmony a reflection of God's harmony, 162 supporting medieval scholastic
thought that viewed the cosmos in mathematical ratios. In his encyclopedic work,
Kircher leaned heavily on Zarlino's contrapuntal doctrines, and sought to "[... ]
synthesize theoretical thought of the medieval and Renaissance worlds, German
and Italian music, and to impose a rationality on all musical procedures. "163
158 Buelow, 'Nucius, Johannes', pp. 228-29.
159 Bartel,
p. 103.
160 John Fletcher, 'Athanasius Kircher and his "Musurgia Universalis" (1650)', Musicology, 7
(1982), 73-83.
161 George J. Buelow, 'Kircher, Athanasius', in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, ed. by S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell, 2"d edn, 29 vols (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd,
2001), xiii, pp. 618-20 (p. 619).
162
Buelow, 'Kircher, Athanasius', p. 619.
163
Buelow, 'Symposium on Seventeenth-Century
Music Theory', p. 42.