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American Musicological Society

"Imitar col canto chi parla": Monteverdi and the Creation of a Language for Musical TheaterAuthor(s): Mauro CalcagnoSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp.383-431Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831883

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"Imitar col canto chi parla":Monteverdi and the Creation ofa Language for Musical TheaterMAURO CALCAGNO

n his 1581 Dialogue on Ancient and ModernMusic,Vincenzo Galileirgescomposersto go to the theaterand listen to the characters n stage,particularlywhen onequietgentleman peakswithanother,n whatmanner e speaks..whenone of themspeakswithone of hisservants,r one of thesewithanother;... [when] heprince.. [converses] ithone of hissubjectsndvassals; henwith thepetitionerwho is entreating isfavor; ow theman nfuriatedr ex-citedspeaks;he married oman, hegirl, he merechild, he cleverharlot,helover peakingo hismistress s heseekso persuadeer o granthiswishes,hemanwholaments,he onewhocriesout,thetimidman,andthe manexultantwithoy.'

Accordingo Galilei, omposerswho settextsto music houldnot onlyimi-tate affects bstractly,utshouldalsotake nto account he concrete ontextin whichwords areuttered,as characters aturally o in communicatingwitheachotheron stage.2Musicians,nGalilei'siew, hould"[consider]eryPreliminary ersionsof thispaperwere presentedat the InternationalConference on EarlyOperaand Monody "In ArmoniaFavellare,"held at the Universityof Illinois,Urbana-Champaign,nOctober 2000, and at the Sixty-sixthAnnual Meeting of the AmericanMusicological Society,Toronto, November2000. I amverygrateful o EllenRosand for hercomments.1. The passage s translatedn OliverStrunk,SourceReadingsin MusicHistory,rev.ed., ed.Leo Treitler New York:W. W. Norton, 1998), 465-66. The originalItalianreads:"Quando [imusici] per lor diporto vanno alle Tragediee Comedie ... osservinodi gratia n qual manieraparla... l'uno con l'altroquieto gentilhuomo ... quando uno di essi parlacon un suo servo,overo l'uno con l'altrodi questi;considerinoquando ci6 accadeal Principediscorrendocon unsuo suddito e vassallo;quando al supplicantenel raccomandarsi; ome ci6 faccial'infuriato,oconcitato;come la donna maritata; ome la fanciulla; ome il sempliceputto; come l'astutamere-trice;come l'innamoratonel parlare on la sua amatamentrecercadisporlaallesue voglie; comequelli che si lamenta;come quelli che grida;come il timoroso; e come quelli che esulta d'alle-grezza"(VincenzoGalilei,Dialogo .. dellamusicaantica etdellamoderna Florence:Marescotti,1581], 89, section "Da chi possanoi moderniprattici mparare'imitazionedelle parole"["Fromwhom the modernpractitioners anlearnthe imitation of words"]).2. Galilei'ssuggestion is part of his critiqueof contemporarymadrigals.The watershedbe-tween his innovativeview of a broadly ntendedrealistic mitazionedelleparoleandthe approach,[JournaloftheAmericanMusicologicalociety002, vol.55, no. 3]C 2002 bytheAmericanMusicologicalociety.Allrights eserved. 003-0139/02/5503-0001$2.00


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384 Journal of the American Musicological Societydiligentlythe character f the personspeaking:his age, his sex,with whom he[is] speaking,and the effect he [seeks] to produce by this means."3Probablyinspiredbywatchingactors mprovise n comicallyrealisticcommedie ell'arte,Galilei in his vivid description of the varietyof speech on stage blurs thedistinctionbetweenordinaryand dramaticanguage.In L'Orfeo (1607) and, to a greaterextent, I1 ritornod'Ulissein patria(1640) and L'incoronazione i Poppea 1643), Claudio Monteverdi met therealisticgoals suggested by Galileiby musically mitatingfeaturesof ordinarylanguage,therebycreatinga languagesuited to theater.4 n filfilling the hu-manistic deal of "imitating n song a personspeaking" "imitarcol canto chiparla"),however,he did more thanjustdevelopthe musicalvocabularynher-ited from his sixteenth-centurypredecessors-a sophisticatedand powerfulexpressiveanguagecapableof imitatinghumanaffections,one for which themadrigalwas (and still is) so renowned.5True, Monteverdi'smusicalcharac-terizations f Arianna ndOrfeodeserved igh praise, ven n hisowntime,for theirpower to portrayaffectionsand move audiences.6But if the noveltyof the composer'sapproach o text/music relationshipshad consistedmerelyin perfectingthe humanistic raditionof imitatingthe affections,his contribu-tion in creatinga language for musicaltheaterwould not have been so re-markable.Especially n recitatives,Monteverdiconveyed other meaningsinadditionto affections,meaningsdependenton the new situation n which hismusic resonated-the stage. And these meaningswere embodied in texts-the librettos-that were no longer destined in primisto readers(as most ofthose set asmadrigalswere) but to audiences.typicalof madrigalists, asedexclusivelyon abstractlymitatingaffections s illustratedby GioseffoZarlino'sharshcriticismof the passage ustquoted: "O beldiscorso,rulyworthy of the greatmanhe [Galilei] magineshimselfto be! ... what he actuallywishesis to reducemusic greatly n dig-nity and reputation,when, to learnimitation,he bids us go to hear the zanies in tragediesandcomedies.... What has the musicianto do with those who recite tragediesand comedies?"(Zarlino,Sopplimentimusicali[Venice, 1588], as quoted in Strunk,SourceReadings,466 n. 7).3. Strunk,SourceReadings,466; Galilei,Dialogo,90.4. On Galileiand Monteverdi,especiallyregardingthe treatment of dissonance,see ClaudePalisca,"VincenzoGalilei'sCounterpointTreatise:A Code for the seconda ratica," n his Studiesin theHistoryofItalian Musicand MusicTheoryOxfordand New York:ClarendonPress,1994),32-33. The importanceof Galilei n establishinga new realistic tandard orthe musical mitationof speech is highlighted in Claudio Marazzini,II secondoCinquecento il Seicento Bologna: IIMulino, 1993), 129-31.5. The expression"imitarcol canto chi parla"appears n JacopoPern's refaceto his Le mu-siche .. sopra 'Euridice Florence:Marescotti,1600), iii (and in the Englishtranslationby TimCarter n Strunk,SourceReadings, 659). In a 1634 letter to GiovanniBattistaDoni, Pietro de'Bardirecalls hatPerihad "foundawayof imitatingfamiliar peech"("trovatomodo ... d'imitaril parlaramigliare")included n Strunk,SourceReadings,524).6. See the contemporaryreactionsreported in Paolo Fabbri,Monteverdi CambridgeandNew York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1994), 64 and 97-98. Marcoda Gagliano,for example,wrote in the prefaceof hisDafine 1608) thatMonteverdi'sArianna "moved the whole theatre otears" ibid.,98).


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MonteverdindaLanguageor MusicalTheater 385The novelty of Monteverdi's text-setting techniques emerges when weconsiderthe aspectof languageregardedbythe composeras that which musicshould imitate:oratione,a term referring o spokentexts.7Intended in such aliteralway (from orare,meaningto recite a ritual,to plead,to pray, o speak),oratione ndicates the peculiarliterarystatus of an operaticlibretto, a statusthat it shareswith a spokenplay.Neither the libretto nor the playis intendedto be read silentlyas if it were a long poem or a prose text; rather, hey aremeant to be performedon stage.8In thisrespectthe languageof playsand li-brettos, intended as performancetexts, shows a remarkablekinshipto ordi-narylanguageand can be associated(althoughnot equated)with the scriptsfor commediadell'arte,barescenariosdesignedto prompt spoken improvisa-

tion. A centuryafterthe birthof musicaldrama, hiscolloquialaspectwas stillone of the featuresmost heavilycriticizedby the intellectualswho wanted toreformopera,the letteratibelonging to the Arcadianacademy.One of them,GiovanniMariaCrescimbeni,not finding in Cicognini's Giasone(the 1649libretto for Cavalli) he refinedPetrarchanexicontypicalof Italianpoetic lan-guage, dismissed t as "full of vulgarwords,"deploringthat, in seventeenth-century librettos, "words increasingly restricted themselves within theboundariesof ordinaryanguage."97. The composer's most cited aesthetic statement-that music should be the servant oforatione-is reported by his brotherGiulioCesare n hispreface o the 1607 Scherzimusicali; eeStrunk,SourceReadings,540. Definitions of orationeasreferring o speecharefound in GioseffoZarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche .. (Venice:Francesco de i FranceschiSenese, 1573), 84: "laOratione:cio' ii Parlare,l quale esprimecostumi col mezzo della narrationedi alcunahistoria,ofavola" "Oration,that is, speaking,which expressesattitudesvia the narrationof some story,ortale"); GiovanniMariaArtusi, Discorso econdomusicale di Antonio Braccino da Todi[pseud.](Venice: G. Vincenti, 1608), 3: "l'Oratione, che e la perfezione e la bellezza del parlare"("Oration,which is the perfection and beauty of speaking");and finally, he VocabolarioegliAccademicidellaCrusca .. (Venice: acopo Turrini,1680), 562: "Oratione:perlo favellareem-plicemente"("Oration: implyspeaking"); ranslationsmine.A similar onceptinformsPeri'sthe-oretical statements about recitativeas being based on favella (speech) and parlare ordinario(ordinaryspeaking).See the prefaceof his Le musiche.. sopra 'Euridice, ii (in Strunk,SourceReadings,660).8. LibrettistBernardoMorando,introducingthe reader o his "fantastic nd musicaldrama"Le vicendedel tempo Parma:E. Viotti, 1652), refersto the performance tatus of his libretto bysaying:"[it seemsmore] to havespilledfrommy pen thanmatured from my imagination.Barelyborn,the verseswere kidnapped rommy handsbythe music:under the groansof the press,I hadto add, to leaveout, and to varymany things, to accommodatemyselfto the scenes, to the ma-chines, to the necessities. So that the opera was first, one may say, sung ratherthan written;printedrather hanfinished"("primauscitadallapennache maturatadall'ingegno.Nati appena

versi,mi sono stati dallamusicadi mano in mano rapiti:e sotto gli stessigemiti dellastampami econvenuto aggiungere,diminuire,e variarmolte cose, per accomodarmiallescene, allemacchine,alle occasioni.Si che l'opera6 stataprima,si pu6 dir, cantatache scritta;stampatache finita")(Morando,Levicendedeltempo Bari:Palomar,1997], 28; translationmine).9. "[Lalocuzione] ... si riempid'idiotismi. .. L'orationesi restrinse ntroil parlarproprioefamigliare"GiovanniMariaCrescimbeni,La bellezzadellavolgarpoesiaRome, 1700]; quoted inRenato di Benedetto, "Poetichee polemiche,"in Teorie tecniche,mmagini efantasmi, vol. 6 ofStoriadell'operataliana, ed. Lorenzo Bianconiand GiorgioPestelli(Turin:EDT, 1988), 20.


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386 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyBut that was, in a sense, the point. Seventeenth-century talianlibrettistswere aware hat theywere not writing highbrowpoetry.Some of those activein the Veniceof Monteverdiwere lawyersby professionandpoets only in theirsparetime. But theyknewhow to createhighlycommunicativeandsuccessfultheatrical exts which, by bridgingprose and poetry, could caterto differenttypes of audiences,from the more to the less cultivated. The extraordinarycommercial uccessof opera,asitwasspreading romVenicethroughoutallofItaly,also depended on this wide appealof its librettos,writtenmore for thecommon earthanforthe sophisticated ye.'0As both linguistsstudyingordinary anguageand literary cholars ocusingon oral traditionsexplain n contrasting he semanticstatusof writtenandspo-ken texts,verydifferentmeaningsemergewhen we declaim a text-when wetreat it as oratione, o use Monteverdi'sterm." Representingand communi-cating these meanings through music was the challenge faced by operaticcomposers.For the first time in the Western art tradition,musicianswrotemusic for singerswho were actingon a stagefor an extensiveand continuousstretch of time-Venetian operaswere of quasi-Wagnerianength-in plotsakin o thoseof spoken heater,hestageartwithwhichopera nitially adtocompete.12 The Venetianpublic of the 1630s and 1640s, in the habit of at-tending pastoralplays,comedies,and tragedies,must haveperceivedmusicas

a strikinglynew feature, ndeed no longer a simpleaddition or temporarydi-version,but a constitutiveelement of the performances.In this competitivephase,theatricalmusicwas forced to appropriate nd imitatesome of the lin-guisticcharacteristicsf spokenplaysbydevelopingechniqueshat ateron,10. For a comprehensivestudyof the genre, includingthe relationshipsbetween composersand librettists,see Ellen Rosand, Operain Sevenentnth-Centuryenice:TheCreationof a Genre(Berkeleyand LosAngeles:Universityof CaliforniaPress,1991). A thorough investigationof theItalian ibretto in the seventeenthcenturyis Paolo Fabbri,IIsecolo antante:Per una storia delli-brettod'operanelSeicentoBologna:IIMulino, 1990).11. A partial ist of studies dealingwith the distinctionsbetween oral and written texts in-cludes WalterJ. Ong, Oralityand Literacy:TheTechnologizingf the Word London and NewYork:Methuen, 1982); MichaelA. K. Halliday,Spoken nd WrittenLanguage(Oxfordand NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,1989); DeborahTannen,TalkingVoices: epetition,Dialogue,andImageryin ConversationalDiscourse(Cambridgeand New York:CambridgeUniversityPress,1989); PaulZumthor, OralPoetry:An Introduction, rans.KathrynMurphy-Judy Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress,1990); andAndreaBernardelli ndRobertoPellerey, lparlato e loscritto Milan:Bompiani, 1999).12. The importanceof the sharedelements between Renaissance taliantheater and earlyopera has been known to scholarssince the pioneering studies of Nino Pirrotta,especiallyhisMusic and Theatre rom Poliziano to Monteverdi,with Elena Povoledo, trans. Karen Eales(Cambridgeand New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1982). Some of the firstoperasingerswere also professionalactors, such as the protagonistin the firstperformanceof Monteverdi'sArianna (1608), VirginiaAndreiniRamponi.Her stage name, "laFlorinda,"was derivedfromthe title of a playwrittenby her husband,GiovanBattista,who was an actor,dramatist,andpoet,besidesbeing the son of two famouscommediadell'arteplayers.The firstoperatheaters n Venicewere previously used for commediedell'arte, as Lorenzo Bianconi observes in Music in theSeventeenthCentury,trans. David Bryant (Cambridge and New York:Cambridge UniversityPress,1987), 183.


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MonteverdindaLanguageor MusicalTheater 387when opera established itself as a genre, became less prominent but thatnonetheless remainedpresentto varyingdegrees.On the phonetic level, earlytheatricalmusic strove to replicatethe sound patternsof spoken languagemainlythroughthe new styleof recitative.'3On the syntacticevel,composersfollowed strategiesalreadydevelopedin quasi-monodic madrigalistic ettingsin which a large-scalemusicalrhetoricmirrored hatof the verbal ext throughrepetitions, tonal parallelisms,and careful handling of melodic contour.'4Finally,on the semantic evel-that with which we are most concernedhere-theatricalmusic aimed at representing hose meaningsof verbal anguagethatcanbe defined asdiscoursemeanings.Discoursemeaningsare studiedtodayin linguisticpragmatics,he fieldthatdeals with the concreteuse of languagerather han its abstract tructure,withlanguageas communicationand as transformedby context:in sum, with lan-guage as discourse.'5 n this respect,it is today considered the counterpartofancientrhetoric.Given drama'snaturalemphasis,as a stagedart, on context

13. But much more than this, as John Walter Hill explainsin his "Beyond Isomorphism:Towarda BetterTheory of Recitative" forthcomingin Journal of Seventeenth-Century usic8,no. 1 [2003], at ;this volume includes the proceedingsof the conferenceon early opera and monody held in October 2000 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary f the Italianmusic dramas of1600). Throughan analysis f passages romPeri'sEuridice,Hill showsthe potentialof consider-ing intonationalphonology in creating ools with which we caninterpret he meaningcommuni-cated by speech intonation, tools that allow us to interpretmusicalsettingsof text that are notmerelyisomorphicwith speech but that represent he key elementsof speechintonationby vari-ous means. I see Hill's researchascomplementary o mine, since,byusing contemporary inguis-tic theories,both aim atunderstanding he discoursemeaningsconveyedby textedmusic.14. See especiallyGiaches de Wert'sand Monteverdi'ssettingsof Tasso and Ariosto as dis-cussed in GaryTomlinson,Monteverdi nd theEnd oftheRenaissance Berkeleyand LosAngeles:Universityof CaliforniaPress,1987), chaps.2, 3, and 5.15. The standard extbook in pragmatics s Stephen C. Levinson'sPragmatics, n which thediscipline s divided into four main areas: peech-acts,deixis,presuppositions,and conversationalimplicatures Cambridgeand New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1983). Accordingto thedefinition given in Hadumod Bussmann'sRoutledgeDictionary of Language and Linguistics,pragmatics"dealswith the functionof linguisticutterancesand the propositions hat areexpressedby them, depending upon their use in specificsituations"(trans. Gregory Trauth and KerstinKazzazi[London and New York:Routledge, 1996], s.v. "pragmatics").Useful and comprehen-sive surveys of the field are Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Ostman, and Jan Blommaert, eds.,Handbookof Pragmatics:Manual (Amsterdamand Philadelphia:John Benjamins,1995); andJacobL. Mey,ed., ConciseEncyclopedia fPragmatics AmsterdamandLausanne:Elsevier,1998).In the Handbook,pragmatics s defined as "the cognitive, social, and culturalstudy of languageandcommunication" p. ix).

"Discourse," n EmileBenveniste'sdefinition, s "in its widest senseeveryutteranceassuminga speakerand a hearer,and,in the speaker, he intention of influencingthe other in some way....It is everyvarietyof oraldiscourseof everynature from trivialconversation o the most elaborateoration ... but it is also the mass of writing that reproducesoral discourse or that borrows itsmannerof expressionand its purposes:correspondence,memoirs,plays,didacticworks,in short,all genres in which someone addresseshimself as the speaker,and organizeswhat he says n thecategoryof person."See his Problems n GeneralLinguistics, rans.MaryElizabeth Meek (CoralGables,Fla.:Universityof MiamiPress,1971), 110, 208. See also the entrieson discourse n boththe HandbookofPragmaticsandthe ConciseEncyclopediafPragmatics.


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388 Journal of the American Musicological Societyandcommunication,t is no surprisehat n these astdecadeshedisciplinefpragmaticsasbecome naturallly ftheatertudies,lsoaffectinghatareaof thehumanitieshichhashistoricallyeen he mostdependentnlinguistics--semiotics.16 ragmatics,emiotics, nd theater tudieshave ruitfillynter-actedto produce everalnterpretations,specially f earlymodernplays.'7Theinteractionf theseareas f inquiry-asI show n thisessay-canbenefitopera tudiesbycontributingo a betterunderstandingfhow anopera om-poser uchasMonteverdimphasizesiscoursemeanings ymusicallymitat-ingspeechn allof itsmultifariousspects.'8

16. Already n 1966, Roland Barthespredictedthe evolution of linguistics rom semioticstopragmatics ndpointedout the link of the latterwith rhetoric:"Discourse .. must naturallyormthe object of a second linguistics.For a long time indeed, such a linguisticsof discourse bore agloriousname, that of Rhetoric.As aresult of a complexhistoricalmovement,however,in whichRhetoricwent over to belles-lettresnd the latterwas divorced from the studyof language, it hasrecently become necessary to take the problem afresh." See Barthes, "Introduction to theStructuralAnalysisof Narratives,"n his Image,Music,Text, rans.StephenHeath (New York:HillandWang, 1977), 82. For the relationshipsbetweensemioticsandpragmatics, ee alsoUmbertoEco, TheLimitsofInterpretationBloomington:IndianaUniversityPress,1990), 212. I use inter-changeably erminologyand methods from both pragmaticsand rhetoric,given the kinshipbe-tween the two disciplines,both of which are concernedwith the study of discourse,as Barthesobserved. For rhetoric and pragmatics,see Levinson, Pragmatics,376; FedericoAlbano Leoniand MariaRosariaPigliasco,eds., Retoricae scienzedel linguaggio:Atti del X Congressonter-nazionale di studi. Pisa, 31 maggio-2giugno 1976 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979); and the entries onrhetoricin both the Handbookof Pragmaticsand the ConciseEncyclopedia f Pragmatics.A so-phisticatedapplicationof both pragmaticsand rhetoricto drama s AlessandroSerpieri'sOn theLanguageofDrama, trans.AnnaMariaCarusi Pretoria:Universityof SouthAfrica,1989).17. "Pragmatics"s a word derived romthe Greekpragma,which in turnderives romprat-tein,"to do," a verb thatshares ts meaningwith the etymologyof "drama,"dran (also"to do").I would liketo thankDavid Cohen for hissuggestionsregarding hisandothermatters.Forprag-matic and semiotic approachesto theater, see PatricePavis, Dictionary of the Theatre:Terms,Concepts,and Analysis,trans. Christine Shantz (Toronto and Buffalo: Universityof TorontoPress, 1998), s.v. "pragmatics";KeirElam, TheSemioticsof Theatreand Drama (London andNew York:Methuen, 1980); AlessandroSerpieri t al., "Towarda Segmentationof the DramaticText," PoeticsToday2 (1981): 163-200; idem, Nel laboratoriodi Shakespeare: alle fonti aidrammi,4 vols. (Parma:Pratiche,1988), esp.vol. 1 (II quadro eorico);Anne Ubersfeld,ReadingTheatre, rans.FrankCollins (Toronto and Buffalo:Universityof Toronto Press, 1999); andVimalaHerman, Dramatic Discourse:Dialogue as Interaction n Plays(London and New York:Routledge, 1995). These studies all point to the relevanceof linguistictheories to the study ofdrama.Regarding he seventeenthcentury, hreeinfluentialinterpretationshatmake use of prag-matic theories,particularlyn the subfield of speech-acttheory, are StanleyFish, "How to DoThingswith AustinandSearle:Speech-ActTheory and LiteraryCriticism,"n his Is Therea Textin ThisClass?TheAuthorityof InterpretiveCommunities Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,1980), 197-245; ShoshanaFelman, TheLiterarySpeechAct: Don Juan withJ. L. Austin, orSeductionin TwoLanguages,trans. CatherinePorter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UniversityPress,1983); and EliasRivers,ThingsDone with Words: peechActs in HispanicDrama (Newark,Del.:Juande la Cuesta,1986).18. Two studiesthat approachoperafrom a pragmaticperspectiveareMarcoBeghelli,"Per-formativeMusicalActs:The VerdianAchievement," n MusicalSignification:Essaysn theSemioticTheory ndAnalysis fMusic,ed. EeroTarasti Berlin:Mouton de Gruyter,1995), 393-412; and


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Monteverdianda Language or MusicalTheater 389Consideringoperaticmusicsuchas that byMonteverdiasmerelyembody-ing affects and concepts-as if his operaswere staged madrigalsor cantatas-limits our interpretationof it, since affectsand concepts are only two of themeaningsthat the languageof dramatic exts (whetherspoken or sung) en-codes.'9 If a madrigaland a cantatacan be certainlyand fiuitfullythought ofas embodyingthe composer's "private eading"of a poetic text--silent read-ings made sonorous-the same cannot be said of opera, a public genre thatrepresentsdramaticspeech through music.20At the very moment in whichcharacterspeakor singon a stage,othermeaningsareconveyedaswell, thosemeaningsthat alsoemergein ordinaryanguageand aredefinedbylinguistsas

"utterance-meanings."21In ordinary anguage,as John Lyons writes,sentencesmay be consideredas, on the one hand, havinga propositionalcontent, or "sentence-meaning,"that is, a descriptivemeaning by which they can be said,on paper,to be trueor false. On the otherhand,the same sentencesmaybe examinedaccording otheiruse n specificcontexts of communication,gainingthe status of utterance

Philip Rupprecht,Britten'sMusicalLanguage(Cambridgeand New York:CambridgeUniversityPress,2001). For an applicationof pragmatic heories to the analysisof jazz, see IngridMonson,Saying Something:Jazz Improvisationand Interaction (Chicago and London: University ofChicagoPress,1996), chap.5.19. Analysesof Monteverdi'soperasusuallyfocus on how his settings subtlyreflectaffects,concepts, or allegoriespresent in the text (for example, Ellen Rosand, "Monteverdi'sMimeticArt: L'incoronazione i Poppea,"CambridgeOperaJournal 1 [1989]: 113-37; and EricChafe,Monteverdi'sTonalLanguage[New York:Schirmer,1992]). My approach s complementary othese. However,my assumption s that in operaticsettingscomposerssuch asMonteverdiprojectnot only the referentialmeaningsof their texts (such asaffects,concepts,and allegories),but also,and at the sametime, pragmatic or discourse)meanings.In this respectI agreewith Rupprecht,who advocates or operastudies an "emphasis .. on languageasact or performance which]willhelp define a new set of questions for the role of words in music" (italicsin original).His ap-proachto Britten'smusic "asthe site of a fused musicalutterance" s similar o mine in resistingthe "critical ractice hatwould restrictan account of music'sengagementwith languageonly tothe matter of 'expressing'or 'reflecting' a referentialmeaning originating in single words orphrases."See Rupprecht,Britten'sMusicalLanguage,3 and 30.20. The somewhat rigid distinction I hold here between the status of poetic and theatricaltexts-and thus between the meanings of texts addressed to readersand those addressed tolisteners-does not parallel hat between madrigaland opera,sincemadrigalisticettings,likeop-eraticones, areintended for listeners. n contrastto madrigalisticettings,however,operaticonesareaffectedby a differentperformancecontext and must convey a widerrangeof meaningsto alargerpublic. For a carefullynuanced view of the relationshipsbetween the musical anguageofthe late sixteenth-centurymadrigaland that of opera, see JamesHaar's chapter"The Rise ofBaroque Aesthetic," in his Essayson Italian Poetryand Music in the Renaissance,1350-1600(Berkeleyand Los Angeles: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1986), 125-47. I borrow from Haarthe idea of a distinctionbetweenRenaissancepolyphonyasprivate, ntimatereadingof a text andBaroquemonody as "public,dramatic peechmaking n music"(p. 147).21. Although there is no consensusamong linguistson such terminologicalmatters,in thefollowingsummary"utterance-meaning"orresponds o pragmaticanddiscoursemeaning.


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390 Journal of the American Musicological Societyandacquiringdditionalayers f meaning "utterance-meanings").22hesecontext-dependenteaningsrewhat oncernshere, inceheyemergencommunicativeituationsuchasstaged erformances,hich esemblehoseof ordinaryanguage.Forexample,he meaningof the sentence"I willgothere ater oday,"ntended s anutterance, ouldbe understooderydiffer-ently ccordingo, first,whetherhecontexts apromise,threat,r anapol-ogy,and,second,accordingo thewho, when,andwhereof theutterance.nthe firstnstance,meaning erivesrom heparticularpeech-acterformed ythespeakerpromise,hreat,pology).nthesecond, ther ontextualactorsencoded n the sentencecome into play.Words uchas "I,""today," nd"there" ave hefunction f situatinghespeaker'stterancenaspecificimeandplace.Theyaresemanticallyempty"words hatare otallydependent nthecontextof the utterance;heydo not characterizer qualifyomeoneorsomething,but "pointto" a person,an object,a time. SincelinguistKarlBiihlertudied hemextensivelyn the1930s,these"empty" ordshavebeennamed nvariousways, hemostcommon ermbeingdeictics,rom he Greekwordmeaning"toshow,""topoint o."23Linguistsinddeictics o be more common in spoken anguage han inwritten,withthenotable xception f thetypeof texts hatconcernus here-dramaticexts.Followinginguistsn thefieldof pragmatics,heater cholarsregardhehigh ncidence fdeicticsndramaticextsasbeingone ofthemainfactors istinguishinghelanguage f theater rom hatof narrativerpoetry.Theaterexts,unlikepoetryandprose but ikeordinaryanguage), producemeaningn relationo a pragmaticontext,"hat of the stageandthe actorsinhabitingt.24Theater, s KeirElamwrote,"consists irstandforemost n

22. See John Lyons, Linguistic Semantics:An Introduction(Cambridge and New York:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995), a textbook organized accordingto the tripartitedivisionof word-, sentence-, and utterance-meaning. See also John Saeed, Semantics (Oxford andCambridge:Blackwell,1997), 94; andAndreasH. Jucker'sentry "semanticsandpragmatics"nthe ConciseEncyclopedia f Pragmatics, n which a distinction is made between semanticsas "aterm used for the studyof meaningin natural anguage (word meaning,sentencemeaning)"andpragmaticsas "usedfor the studyof meaningin interaction,which includesspeakermeaningandconsiderationof the widercontext"(p. 830).23. KarlBiihler,Sprachtheorie:ie DarstellungsfunktionerSpracheJena:G. Fischer,1934),chap.2, "DasZeigfeldderSpracheund die Zeigwbrter,"79-148. I quote fromthe Englishtrans-lationby Donald FraserGoodwin, entitled Theory fLanguage:TheRepresentational unctionofLanguage (Amsterdamand Philadelphia:J. Benjamins, 1990). Other terms for "deictics"are"shifters" (Roman Jakobson), "indexicals" (Charles S. Pierce), and "embrayeurs"(EmileBenveniste). For a recent survey of deixis, see Alan Cruse, Meaning in Language: AnIntroduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press,2000), 305-27. Fordeictics n the Italian anguage,see LauraVanelli,"Ladeissi," n Tipidifrase,deissi,ormazionedelleparole,vol. 3 of Grandegrammatica taliana di consultazione,d. LorenzoRenzi et al. (Bologna:I1Mulino, 1995), 261-375.24. See Serpieri,"Toward a Segmentation," 162. The firstapplicationof deictic theory totheateroccurred n the context of the so-calledPragueschool of semiotics.See Jindfich Honzl,"The Hierarchy of Dramatic Devices," in Semioticsof Art: Prague SchoolContributions,ed.


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Monteverdi and a Language or MusicalTheater 391this,anI addressing youhereandnow."25t isbecauseheaters anart iedto actor/performersassubjects f enunciation),he stage (space),andtheaxis of the present time)thatdeicticsmakeup the quintessentialramaticlanguage.Theaddition f music-i.e., the otherart also tied to performers,spaces,andpresentness-todramaticexts canonlyreinforcehe contextualelements ommon o spokenandmusicalheater, articularlytthemomentin whichpersonal, patial, ndtemporaldeictics--such s "I,""here,"and"now"-resonate n stage n acompound f musicandwords.26My approacho Monteverdi'speratic ettingss similaro that of dramascholarsnthatI borrow rompragmaticheories o showhow thecomposeremphasizesn his librettos he contextual lementsembodied n language,particularlyn deictics.Pragmaticstudies he semantics f "performance"textsaddressedo listenersdiscourse, ragmatic,r utterancemeanings).flibrettos, ike theaterplays,are considered"performance"exts-that is,discourses-then hemeanings rominentnthese exts-discoursemeanings-need to be taken nto accountby operacomposers uchas Monteverdi.Writing t thedawnof opera's istory,Monteverdionfronted problemhatis inherentn thegenre,andone withwhich ater omposerslsohadto deal:devising ffectiveways o setthose ibrettopassagesorwhichmusicneeds oapproachhedeclamatoryevelofspeech,without allingntoparlando. hesequasi-parlando,ess yrical assagesormallyccurwithin ections frecitativeorrecitative-liketyle.To set themeffectively, composermustread he textas a "performance"ext,asa pieceof "writinghatreproducesraldiscourseandthatborrows rom tsmanner f expressionnd tspurposes,"o use lin-guistEmileBenveniste'sefinition f discourse. n investigatingow com-posers n different istorical eriods ind means o imitate peech,and howtheirmusicprojectsmeaning,musicalanalysismay gainfrom a pragmaticreading flibrettos.27

LadislavMatejkaand IrwinR. Titunik(Cambridge,Mass.:MIT Press,1976), 118-33. For deixisin Italian heater,see PietroTrifone,"L'italiano teatro," n Scritto parlato,vol. 2 of Storiadellalingua italiana, ed. LucaSerianniandPietroTrifone(Turin:Einaudi,1994), 84-86.25. Elam, TheSemiotics f Theatre, 39.26. In stressing,as I do, the similarities etween spokentheaterandopera,one must not for-get the differences,especiallyas far as opera'semphasison "presentness"s concerned.As CarlDahlhausputs it: "Theindividualoperaticscene tends [in contrast o what occurs n plays]to ap-pear to us as 'pure present,' as absolutepresent unrelatedto past and future." In this respect,operaapproaches he status of novels.See CarlDahlhaus,"Drammaturgia ell'opera taliana,"nStoriadell'operataliana, ed. BianconiandPestelli,6:82 and 118 (my translation).27. For a short example,see note 69 below.The quote by Benveniste s fromnote 15 above.The most comprehensive tudyof recitative n seventeenth-century talianoperais Beth Glixon's"Recitative in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera: Its Dramatic Function and MusicalLanguage"(Ph.D. diss.,RutgersUniversity,1985). For a surveyof the styleafter hiscentury,seeElvidio Surian'sentry "recitativo"n Dizionario enciclopediconiversaledella musica e dei mu-sicisti: I lessico, d. Alberto Basso (Turin:UTET, 1983-84), 4:60-63. In my essay, he focus on


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392 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietyIn his operas,however,Monteverdinot only elevates he imitationofspeech whathe calledoratione)o anunprecedented,ndperhapstillunsur-

passed,evelof sophistication,ut n so doing,he alsoachievesarge-scalera-matic esults,whichaffectour nterpretationfthe worksasawhole.Throughhissettings,hecomposer ighlights roadssues elatedo thehuman ondi-tion,suchasthe roleof subjectivitynd emporality,ssues aisednthelibret-tos and,as I showtoward he end of thisessay,also discussedn the widerintellectualontextof histime.EstablishingMusical-DramaticoordinatesThetextof theprologue f Orfeoeatures notable mphasisndeixis:Dal mio Permesso amatoa voi ne vegno,inclitieroi, sangue gentil di Regidi cui narraa Fama eccelsipregi,ne giunge al ver, perch'e tropp'alto ilsegno.Io la Musicason, ch'aidolci accentiso fartranquilloogni turbatocore,et hor di nobil ira,et hor d'amoreposso infiammar e piti gelatementi.Io su ceterad'or cantandosogliomortalorecchiolusingar alhora,e in guisatal de l'armoniasonorade le rote del Cielpiti l'almeinvoglio.Quincia dirvid'ORFEO desio mi spronad'ORFEO che trassealsuo cantar e fere,e servo fe l'Infernoa suepreghiere,gloria mmortal di Pindo e d'Elicona.

From my beloved PermessusI come toyou,illustriousheroes,noble scionsof kings,whose gloriousdeeds Famerelates,though falling short of the truth, sincethe targetis too high.I amMusic,who in sweet accentscan calmeach troubledheart,andnow with noble anger,now withlove,can kindlethe most frigidminds.I, with my lyre of gold and with mysinging,amusedto sometimescharmingmortalears,andin thisway nspire oulswithalongingfor the sonorous harmony of heaven'slyre.From here desirespursme to tell you ofOrpheus,Orpheuswho drewwild beaststo him byhis songsand who subjugated Hades by his en-treaties,the immortal glory of Pindus andHelicon.

deictics imitsthe discussionof Monteverdi'ssettingsto only one of the possiblediscoursemean-ings thathismusic reflects.Speech-act heoryis the otherobvious areaof research or-apragmatic-oriented approachto opera. See the studies by Beghelli and Rupprechtmentioned in note 18above, and my "StagingMusicalDiscourses n Seventeenth-CenturyVenice:FrancescoCavalli'sEliogabalo1667)" (Ph.D. diss.,YaleUniversity,2000), 235-86.


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MonteverdindaLanguageor MusicalTheater 393Hor mentre cantialterno,horlieti,hormestinonsimovaaugellinraquestepiante,ne s'oda nqueste iveondasonante,etogniAurettansuocamin 'arresti.28

Now while I alternatemy songs, nowhappy, owsad,let no smallbird tiramong hese rees,no noisywave be heardon theseriver-banks,and let each little breeze halt in itscourse.

Entering the stage alone, the characterLa Musica declaresher provenance("Dalmio Permessoamato")and addresses he publicin the presenttense("avoi ne vegno"). A motion is implied from the river to the stage, a passageevoked by the ritornellomusic, and a space is created in which the subject("mioPermesso") ocatesherself.In the second half of the firstverse,a chan-nel of communication s verballyestablished, hat between character ndpub-lic:addressing"you" (voi), LaMusicapausesto elaborateon herpraiseof thepublicfor the restof the quatrain historically,he "you"is the Gonzagafam-ily).An emphasison the audience s typicalof theaterprologues,in whichlan-guage stresses what linguist Roman Jakobsonfamouslycalled its "conativefunction,"that is, the orientation of the utterancetoward the addressee,asfound for examplein vocativeand imperative entences.29But this "you"di-rected to the addressees possibleonly on the condition that an "I"exists,theaddresserrepresented n this prologue by the possessive"my" (mio) at theverybeginningof the openingline.By opening the next two quatrainswith the firstpersonalpronoun ("Io laMusicason"; "lo su ceterad'or"), the librettist,AlessandroStriggio,adheresto a conventionadoptedin avarietyof prologuesof Renaissanceragediesandcomedies. Seven years earlier,the librettistOttavio Rinuccinifollowed thesame convention by opening his Euridice,set to music by Jacopo Peri andGiulioCaccini,with the words "lo, che d'altisospiri .. canto." The obviousself-referential ualityof the firstpersonalpronoun is enhanced,in the Orfeoprologue, by the fact that the characterLa Musicaintroducesherselfboth bynamingherselfand by singingher name. Her gestureis renderedeven morepowerful by being echoed at the dramaticclimax of the entire opera, inOrfeo's Possentepirto(act 3), exactlyat the symmetrical enter of the work:"Orfeoson io," the protagonist saysat the outset of the fourth of six tercets(thusagainin a centralposition).30Also in Possentespirto,as in the prologue'sfirstquatrain,Jakobson's"conativefunction"of language (the emphasison

28. AlessandroStriggio,La Favolad'Orfeo .. (Mantua:FrancescoOsanna,1607), prologue.29. See Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics," in Style inLanguage,ed. ThomasA. Sebeok (New York:Wiley,1960), 350-77.30. See Stile Wikshgland,"Monteverdi'sVoices: The Construction of Subjectivity," aperpresentedat the conference"BaroqueBridges:Music,Poetry,and the VisualArts in Seventeenth-CenturyItaly,"YaleUniversity,14-15 April2000.


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394 Journal f theAmericanMusicologicalocietythe addressee)predominates;although this time the address s directednottoward the publicbut towardCharon,it hasthe same intention:to persuade.

"I," "you,"and "my"are,as we haveseen, deicticexpressions,"pointingwords." But "I" has a unique function in language, since it representstheprimitivedeicticexpression, dentifyingthe speakeras subject.As Benvenistewrote, the firstpersonalpronoun "refers o the act of individualdiscourse nwhich it is pronounced,and by this it designatesthe speaker. t is a term thatcannot be identifiedexceptin ... an instanceof discourse hatonly hasa mo-mentaryreference.The realityto which it refers,"Benvenisteconcluded, "isthe realityof discourse."3'The foundation of human subjectivitys itself in-scribed n language,the identityof the subject being inextricablyied to his orher saying"I."Furthermore,humansubjectivitys intimatelyconnected withtime, with the "continuouspresent"of discourse,and thus it manifests tselfeven more prominentlywhen the firstpersonalpronoun is joinedwith a verbin the presenttense.32In this respect,the two sentences"lo la Musicason"(sung by La Musica)and "Orfeo son io" (sung by Orfeo) areextraordinarilydense fromthe semanticpointof view.They aresung bythe quintessential p-eraticcharacters La Musica and Orfeo) in order to establishon stage theirown subjectivity-as well as, I would add, that of the very genre they histori-cally naugurate.33

But in OrfeoLa Musicanot onlyrefers o, or pointsat,herselfand the pub-lic by adoptingwhat linguistscallthe personal ype of deixis("I," "you,"and"my").She strategically stablishes,one after the other, the very coordinatesof musicaldrama, he basicspatialandtemporalaxes thatallow her-her bodyand her voice-to exist, and to sing, as a characteron the stage. The fourthand fifth strophes of the prologue open with the words quinci and hora,meaning"from here"and "now," llustratingwo other typesof deixisin lan-guage: spatial deixis ("here")and temporaldeixis ("now"). Biihlerfirst ex-plained the importance of these three fundamentaltypes of deictics ("I,""here,"and "now,"personal,spatial,and temporal).In a graphrepresenting

31. EmileBenveniste,"Subjectivityn Language," n hisProblemsn GeneralLinguistics, 26.See also, on these issues, Paul Ricoeur, "Utterance and the Speaking Subject:A PragmaticApproach," n his Oneselfas Another, rans.KathleenBlamey (Chicago: Universityof ChicagoPress,1992), 40-55.32. On the issue of time andsubjectivity,ee LouisMarin,"Remarques ritiques ur '6nunci-ation: La question du presentdans le discours," n his De la representationParis:Gallimard ndSeuil, 1994), 137-48.33. It is significantthat in Orfeola Musica, and not Tragedy (as in Peri's and Caccini'sEuridice), s the characterwho establishes he three main dramatic oordinates,a fact suggestingthat the newly born genre of operahas finallyreachedmaturity."Io la Musica son" and "Orfeoson io" are two sentencesrelatedby a literalandsemanticchiasmus:ABC becomesB'CA in a per-mutationin which B andB' (laMusicaandOrfeo) aresemantically elated.For a similar hiasmusspanningacts 1 and 3 of Ritornod'Ulisse n Patria, see Table 1 below. It is also worth noticingthat in the Italianlanguage (contrary o English)personalpronounsarenot needed to makeup agrammaticallyorrectsentence;thustheirpresence s allthe more relevant.


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MonteverdindaLanguageorMusicalTheater 395the "deictic ield"of languageasa circle ntersectedbytwo perpendicularsseeFig. 1), he placedthe threemaindeictics at the verycenter,callingthem Ego-hic-nuncorigoof the field;from this center,he claimed,all the other deicticsradiate(e.g., you, s/he, it; there, that;then, etc.; see Fig. 2 below, on whichmore later).`The establishmentof the deictic fieldallowedBiihlerto contrasteffectivelydeicticswith the rest of humanlanguage,which he dividedaccordingto twodifferentfunctions: that of intuitivepointing and presenting--delimitingthe"deicticfield"-and that of the abstractand conceptualgraspingof the worldand its naming--identifyingthe "symbolic ield."Pointing (an act that we of-ten see on the theatrical tage) is the first and fundamentalgesturethat con-nects body and mind to the externalworld, an act that for Btihler (as forBenveniste) s embodied in humanvoice hroughdeixis. This is especially ruewith "I,"a pronounthathasa distinctiveKlangcharakter y virtueof its closerelationshipo the individualvoice qualityof the speaker.35Striggio'stext for the Orfeoprologue can be readaccordingto the distinc-tion between pointing and namingwords, between the deictic and symbolicfields of language.And Monteverdi'squasi-strophic ettingcapitalizeson thisdivision,createdby the fivestropheswith an almostcalculated ymmetry(seeEx. 1 for the setting of the second strophe). The ostinato bass assumestheunifyingfunction of delimitingthe five distinct "blocks,"each markedby asingle deictic at the start of the strophe (mio, io, io, quinci,and ora). Thesewords areclearly solatedand emphasizedby the long note placedon each ofthem, by the initialdeclamatorycharacterof the melody, and by the stablesupportingharmony n the firsthalf of eachstrophe's irst ine. Bystressing hewordsthatareat the centerof the deicticfield(to follow againBiihler's ermi-nology), the singerimitatesan actor who would similarly mphasizethem inher declamation.Once Monteverdifirmlyestablishes he maincoordinatesofthe deictic field, he then shiftsgearsand, by varyingthe melodic setting ofeach strophe,freelyexploresthe symbolicmeaningsof the individualwords(whereasthe basscontinuesto have an "anchoring,"deicticfunction).Thus,afterthe firsthalf-line, he focus of the musicalsettingis no longer the estab-lishment of the theatrical-musicalituation hroughthe pointingwords(carry-ing deicticmeaning),but the musicalrepresentation f the symbolicmeaning

34. "Myclaim,"Biihlerexplains,"isthat if thisarrangements to represent he deictic field ofhumanlanguage,three deictic words must be placedwhere the 0 [i.e., the origin] is, namelythedeicticwords 'here,' 'now,'and 'I'" (Theory fLanguage,117).35. BUihlerxplainswhat he calls the particularKlangcharakteror Individualcharakter) fthe firstpersonalpronoun by givingthe exampleof a personwho, at the door, answers he ques-tion "Who is there?"with the firstpersonalpronoun:"Bysaying'I,' he dependson my recogniz-ing him individuallyamong the cohort of my closer acquaintancesby the sound of his voice"(italics n original).On the contrary,"the character f a propername as a namingword is recog-nized by the factthat this linguisticsign can be pronouncedby anyspeakerwhatever, ts auditorymaterial s irrelevanto its namingfunction"(ibid., 129 and 130).


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396 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSociety

Figure 1 Graph representing the "deictic field" of language. From KarlBiihler, TheoryofLanguage: The Representational Function of Language, trans. Donald Fraser Goodwin(Amsterdamand Philadelphia:J. Benjamins,1990), 117. Reproduced by permissionof JohnBenjaminsPublisher,Philadelphia.

of the namingwords(namesandadjectives). n otherwords,what the musicalsetting now conveys through the melody (as opposed to the strophicbass)is no longer what words show but what they say-i.e., symbolic,not deictic,meaning. For example, in the second strophe, the quality of tranquillo("calm") is musicallycontrasted with that of ira ("anger") and of gelate("frigid"),while in the third strophe the armonia sonora("sonorous har-mony") of the third line is emphasized. Finally, he musicalrestsin the fifthstropheevoke the Arcadian ontext to which the words allude.In thisrespect,text and music relate to each other as they do, say,in a madrigal, n whichthe situation need not be specifiedand the symbolicmeaningsof the wordsdominate the musicalsetting.By highlighting first pointing and then naming words, Monteverdi'sstrophicsettingof the prologuematchesthe internaldispositionof eachof thefivesymmetricallyrranged tanzas.In thiscasethe aims of librettistandcom-posercoincide.36But that the composerwas particularlyensitive o the dou-ble semanticnatureof the text-even more than his librettist,one maysay-isshown, first, by the modifications of the libretto that Monteverdimakes in36. In thisrespect,Peri'sand Caccini'sprologuesto Euridice,which arestrophicthroughout(thatis, the musicis given only for the firstof the sevenstrophes),workdifferently.n Rinuccini'stext, the first wo strophesarenot, as in Striggio's, wo independentsyntacticunits,butareconse-quential: he subject"io"at the beginningof the firststrophehasto "wait"until the fourth line ofthe second stropheto be followed by its verb ("canto");the music,in the meantime,has alreadystarted ts firstrepeat.On the contrary, he syntaxesof Monteverdi'smusic and of Striggio'sfivestanzascoincide.


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Monteverdiand a Language or MusicalTheater 397Example1 Monteverdi,'Orfeo:avolanmusicaVenice: madino, 609),prologue: ettingof thesecond trophemm.15-21)15 LAMUSICA

o lamu-si-caon ch'ai ol-ci c-cen- ti So arran-quil-lo o-gniur-ba-too re

19

Et hor di no-bi-l'i-ra et hor d'a-mo-rePos - s'in-fiam-mar le pic ge-la - te men - ti.

i-=-'{, J ,, .1 .. ,

orderto stresspointingwords, and, second, by the wayin which he sets thesewords. As far as the firstaspectis concerned, in the prologue the composerchanges the text of line 11, "e in guisa tal de l'armonia sonora," into asmoother "e in questaguisaa l'armoniasonora,"replacing he word tal withthe more effective deictic questa.Also in act 1, the line that ends Ninfa'sspeech, "colv6strosu6n, nostr' rmonias'acc6rde,"becomes in Monteverdi'ssetting "siail v6stro c6nto al n6stro subn conc6rde":the change of accenthighlights the two deictics vostroand nostro,and in turn this modificationallows Monteverdi to build a sequential passage mirroringthe oppositionbetween "our"(nostro)and "your"(vostro).37 s faras musicalemphasisondeictics is concerned,this occursin Orfeoeitherthrough sequentialpassages(such as thatjustmentioned, in which firstand second personarecontrasted)or through melodic and rhythmicunderlining.38Word repetition--a devicerarelyused by composers n recitativebut one thatMonteverdi,as we shallsee,uses extensivelyn his lateoperasto emphasizedeictics-is limited in Orfeo oonly two passages, both crucial from the dramaticpoint of view: Orfeo'slament "Tu se' morta mia vita, ed io respiro"and his powerful invocation37. See my "Monteverdi's arolesceniche,"n which I discuss he composer'smodificationsofStriggio's text intended to highlight deictics (Journal of Seventeenth-CenturyMusic 8, no. 1[forthcoming,2003], ).38. See, for example,Euridice's irstspeech in act 1, at the words "che non ho meco il core,ma teco stassi";Speranza's"lasciateogni speranzavoi ch'entrate"n act 3; Caronte'semphasison"queste"and "mio" (his only words set on a low F2) in the same act;Proserpina's"io cosi sta-bilisco" n act 4; Euridice's"edio, misera" n her lastspeechin the same act ("io"is sung at thesamepitchas "ahi");andfinally he accentuation, einforcedbykey change,of the word "tu"(re-ferring o Euridice) n "matu animamia"and "tu bellafosti" n Orfeo'slament n act 5.


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398 Journal of the American Musicological Society"Rendetemi l mio ben."39 n both cases,word repetitionachievesthe resultnot only of underscoringan intensifiedemotional state by conveyingsymbolic/affectivemeaning, but also, at the same time, of emphasizingtheprotagonist'ssubjectivitybycommunicatingdeicticmeaning.As I havedone above, in the followingtextual-musical nalysesof Monte-verdi'sRitornoand Poppea, maintainthe opposition between symbolicanddeicticfields,namingand pointingwords, againfollowingBtihler's erminol-ogy.40Thesewordsconveythe two meaningsthat-when librettosareconsid-ered as linguisticdiscourses---opera omposersneed to take into account insetting their texts. In operaticmusic it is insufficientfor composersto high-lightmerely he first ypeof meaning, he symbolicone. Madrigalismsrmusicalexpressionsof affectsmust be complementedby anemphasison thosewords of the text that point to the dramatic ituation-who is singing,when,andwhere-occurring at the moment in which the sungwords areutteredonthe stage. In addition to those used in Orfeo, n his late operasMonteverdidevelopsnew musicaldevices,such as repetitionand style shift, to highlightdeictics-a strategy hatcontributeseven further o the totaldramatic ffect.41Re-centering the SelfThe three mainkinds of deictics-temporal, spatial,andpersonal-are expres-sions whose interpretationdepends on the circumstancesof the utterance:when it occurs,where the speakers at the time, andwho the speakerand hisor her intended audienceare.42 havementioned above the markedgestural

39. For an analysisof Monteverdi's reworking of the text in "Tu se' morta," see GaryTomlinson,"Madrigal,Monody, and Monteverdi's vianaturaleallaimmitatione,'" thisJournal34 (1981): 84-85. For Tomlinson, Monteverdi's reworking is a consequence of Striggio's"poetic nadequacy."40. Linguistand anthropologistMichaelSilverstein omments on this distinction(which hedefinesas one between semantic or referentialmeaning and pragmaticor indexicalmeaning) asfollows:"Once we realize hat distinctpragmaticmeaningsyielddistinctanalysesof utterances,wecan severour dependenceon referenceas the controllingfunctionalmode of speech,dictatingourtraditional egmentationsand recognitionsof categories.We can then concentrateon the mani-fold socialpragmaticshat arecommon to language."See his "Shifters,LinguisticCategories,andCulturalDescription," n Meaningin Anthropology,d. KeithBassoandHenry Selby(Albuquer-que:Universityof New Mexico Press,1976), 20, asquoted in Monson, SayingSomething, 87.41. Given the lack of surviving music for his other operas (except for the Lamentod'Arianna), the chronologicalgap betweenthe firstoperaand the lasttwo prevents racinga lin-eardevelopmentin Monteverdi'streatment of deixisfrom Orfeo(1607) to Ritornoand Poppea(1640 and 1643). But the contrast n the context of performancebetween the Mantuan avolaper musicaon the one hand and the Venetiandrammipermusicaon the other-i.e., between thecourt and the publicopera-may be reflected n the composer's ncreasedeffort,in his lateworks,to furtherhighlight "theatrical"words such as deictics. For the subjectof court versuspublicopera,see Bianconi,Music n theSeventeenthCentury,161-70.42. See CharlesJ.Fillmore,"DeicticCategories n the Semanticsof 'Come,' "FoundationsofLanguage2 (1966): 220; quoted inAlessandroDuranti,LinguisticAnthropologyCambridgeandNew York:CambridgeUniversityPress,1997), 209.


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MonteverdindaLanguageor MusicalTheater 399qualityof deictics as words that associatelanguagewith an act of pointing.This gesturalquality s particularly mphasizedby characters ctingon a the-aterstage.In opera,singersoften makeuse of pointing gestures n connectionwith deictics,complementingmotions expressingaffectsand emotions, andthus mirroring in effect,actingout) the twofold divisionof language nto de-ictic and symbolicfields.Figure2 is drawn froma studyof kinesics(the disci-pline investigatingbodily movement as communication) and illustratesanextensionof Bihler's graph n Figure 1 accordingto "proximal" nd "distal"deictic movements, that is, those toward and away from the body of thespeaker or actor/singer) situatedat the centerof the deicticfield.43In addition to providinga linkbetweenlanguage, body,andreality, he actof pointingcanoccur withinlanguagewhen a demonstrativepronounsuchas"this"and "that" is used to refer not to an externalobject or person but tosomething that the speaker has mentioned earlier ("discourse deixis" or"anaphora," sin "Havingsaidthat,I would add.. .").Also, some verbssuchas "to come," "to leave,"and "to return"have an inherentdeicticquality nthat they refer to a movement to or from a person, thus makingexplicittheproximalor distal movement implied in a personalor spatialdeictic (as in"Comehere!").Finally, venchangesin verbtenses canbe interpretedas a de-ictic shift in the axis of their "orientation,"or examplewhen in speakingweswitch from a narration n the past tense to a description n the present.(Seethe top of Figure2, wherepast,present,and futureverb tenses arerelatedtodeictics;an example s providedat the end of thissection.)The presence n alllanguagesand culturesof differentkinds of deicticshavemade them a fertilefield of research n manydisciplines,ncludinganthropology, iterary riticism,and,most important orour subject,theaterstudies.44The title itself of Monteverdi's 1640 opera II ritornod'Ulissein patriaevokesthe protagonist'sdeicticmovement towardhis psychologicalcenter-his homeland. For Ulysses, identity and location are, on a basic existentiallevel, importantandrelatedfeatures.Throughouthis journeythe hero strug-gles to keep his self intactdespitehis geographicaldisplacements.His returnhome to Ithaca signals the end of this struggle-the time in which, to use

43. Figure 2 appears n Elam, TheSemioticsof Theater,74, and is taken from Ray Bird-whistell's pioneering study Kinesics and Context: Essayson Body Motion Communication(Philadelphia:Universityof PennsylvaniaPress, 1970), 123. Elam comments on the importanceof deicticsfor the body languageof actors n light of Birdwhistell's ivisionof proximaland distalmovements:"Pronominal,or deictic,markers ndicategesturally he object of the simultaneousverbaldiscourse. The point of definition is the speaker-actor's ody, so that a proximityof thereferent o the subject s the crucial actor" p. 73).44. A partial list of contributions follows. For anthropology, see Duranti, LinguisticAnthropology,99-213; andSilverstein,"Shifters."For literature, ee the entry"literary ragmat-ics" by Roger D. Sell in ConciseEncyclopediafPragmatics,530-31; for Italianliterature,LinoPertile, "Qui in Inferno:Deittici e culturapopolare,"Italian Quarterly37 (2000): 57-67. Fortheater,see Pavis,Dictionaryof theTheatre, .v."deixis";Elam, TheSemiotics f Theater;Herman,Dramatic Discourse; erpieri,"Towarda Segmentation";and the otherworksmentioned in note24 above.


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400 Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSocietyPAST PRESENT FUTURE

his,her,he,she,it, they, hem

his,her,he,she, his,her,he, she,it, they,them it, they,themI, me, my,mine,our, we, us

DISTANT DISTANTthere,hat, there,hat,then, yesterday tomorrow

here, this,now, todayexpressionf expressionfpast ction futurection

.. his, her, he, she,it, they,themFigure2 Diagramf therelationshipsetweendeictics ndbodymovementsarrowsndicate"distal"nd"proximal" ovements). romKinesicsndContexty RayW.Birdwhistell.opy-right? 1970 Trustees f the University f Pennsylvania.eprintedwithpermission f thepublisher.

thelanguage fdeixis,"I"and"here"inallyoincidewith"now."Unlikeanyothertrip, n whichdeparturenddestination ointsareseparatend differ-ent, in Ulysses'ourney he two pointscoincidewitheachother:asWilliamStanford otices n contrastingheGreekherowithAeneas,"Ulysses'sareermoves nacircledescribedromIthacao Ithaca."45Biihler'sepresentationfthedeictic ieldas a circlentersected ytwoperpendicularxes Fig. 1) maythusalsosymbolizeUlysses' irmly nchoredelf.In Monteverdi'spera here-centeringf Ulysses' elf ntoitsproper motional ndphysicalpacessig-nified hroughanemphasisn thespatial eictics"here" nd"this," ccom-plished,as we shallsee, both throughtheiralmostobsessivecontiguous

45. See WilliamB. Stanford,TheUlysses heme:A Study n theAdaptabilityofa TraditionalHero, d ed.(Oxford: lackwell,963),136.


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MonteverdindaLanguageor MusicalTheater 401repetitionand through shifts of meter and style. Only in the last scene dopersonalandtemporaldeicticsgraduallybecomeprominent.46In act 1, scene 8, the shipwreckedUlysses,just awakenedon the shoresofIthaca,sees the young shepherdwho is later revealed o be Minerva.The firstthing the hero can thinkof is to lie to the young shepherd,since he must be"malpraticod'inganni" "unskilledn deceit,"asUlyssesassumes,speaking ohimself). He asksthe shepherdwhere he is, and the shepherd answersbypointingat the surroundingarea:"Itaca questa,n sen di questomare"("Thisis Ithaca, n the bosom of this sea").47Then (s)he invitesUlyssesto rejoiceatthe sound of the island'sname, a name stronglytied to the hero'sidentity(atthis point the music featuresa long melismahighlighting the word nome).Although Minervaknows who is speakingto her, she neverthelessaskshimwhere he comes fromandwhere he is going. Ulyssesstartshiselaboratenarra-tive with the words "lo Greco sono et hordi Creta io vengo" "I am a Greekand now fromCretehavecome"), usingthreedeictics(lo, hor,and vengo)andcontinuing his pattern of deception. After the shepherd is revealed to beMinerva,and Ulyssesreactswith joy and surprise, he goddess sendsthe heroawayto disguisehimselfas an old man. In the meantime,she sings(seeEx. 2):

lo vidipervendettavidividipervendetta]incenerirsiroja; ora horahora]mi restaUlissericondurn PatrianRegno.D'un'oltraggiataea[d'un'oltraggiataead'un'oltraggiataea]questoquestoquestoquesto]e lo sdegno[questoquestoquestoquestoe losdegno](I saw orvengeanceTroyburning;owitremainsormeUlysseso lead o hisHomeland,o hisKingdom.Of anoffended oddessthis s theanger.)

Particularlytrikings the warriorlikemplification f the lastline, in whichtherepetitionof the word questo "this")is set to musicalsequences(mm. 199-203).48Only the lastrepetitionis slightlydelayed--a restprecedesthe eighth46. As will be dear in my discussionof Ritorno and Poppea,n considering n a positivewaythe languageand qualityof the two librettos,I take a differentview from the one expressedbyGaryTomlinsonin passages uch as the following:"But even where metaphoricalmageryis notin questionthe rhetorical latnessof Busenello'sandBadoaro'sdramasremains-a prosaicdiscur-siveness hatmighthavebeen tolerable n spokendrama,givenits speechlike peedof delivery,butthatweighed heavily n a musicalsetting"(Monteverdi nd theEnd ofRenaissance, 26).47. For clarity, n the quotations from the text of Ritorno and Poppea,deictic words arehenceforth n italics.48. To facilitate he identificationof the musicalexampleswith the scorepublishedas volume12 of Tutte e operedi ClaudioMonteverdied. GianFrancescoMalipiero[Asolo:n.p., 1930]), Ibegin eachone with the measurenumbercorresponding o that of the Malipieroedition.I wouldliketo thankJen-YenChen forhis assistance n preparing he musicalexamples.


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402 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyExample 2 Monteverdi, II ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Vienna, Osterreichische National-bibliothek,18763), act 1, scene 8, mm. 184-205 [fols. 37r and 37v]184 MINERVA

Io vi - di per en-det-ta vi - di vi - diperven-det- ta In-ce-ne-rirsi

188

193

Pa-triainRe - gno. D'un' ol-trag-gia - ta de - a d'un' ol-trag-gia - ta

197

de - a d'un' ol-trag-gia-ta de - a Que-stoque-sto que-sto que-sto lo sde-gno

201

questo questo questo que-sto lo sde - gno Quin-ciim-pa - ra- te voi


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MonteverdindaLanguageor MusicalTheater 403appearanceof questo,whose setting reaches the highest note G5 (m. 202)-effectively mitatingthe way in which wrathcannot contain itself and finallyexplodes(asin "this, this,this ... thisI reallycannotstand!").Also, the musicgives questoa different function than the one we would assignto it in simplyreadingthe word in the libretto.49At averbal-discursiveevel,questoworksasareference o what Minerva ust said(that is, that she causedTroy'sdefeatandis now completingher revenge by bringing Ulysses home). At this level, thedemonstrativepronoun is a "discoursedeictic,"or anaphora, inceit refers othe co-text (the verbaltext thatprecedes t) andnot to the context (aphysicalobject/subject that is either on the stage or imagined).The music, however,through sequentialrepetitiontransformsquestorom a discourse nto a spatialdeictic (one existing in the realityoutside speech): the listenerunderstandsit as expressingMinerva'swrath in thatverymoment,by almostpointing at it(we mayactuallymagineMinervapointingatherselfwhile singing).Her rage(sdegno) s anticipatedn the previousbarsby an equalemphasison its cause,the factthat Minervahad been offended(oltraggiata,alsofeaturing equentialrepetition;see againEx. 2, mm. 194-99). The obsessiverepetitionof questontwo progressivelyascending sequences effectivelyacts out Minerva'swrath,bringingout the performativeaspectof the demonstrativepronoun. The re-sult is that the goddess almost stutters.Even more, one may saythat in thispassagethe music makes verballanguage itselfstutter,generatinga tensionthatgrowsfrom withinit. It is as if song worked,forMinerva,as analternative"foreignlanguage"within the normal "native anguage"of verbaldiscourse,pushing its limitsuntil it finallyreachesthe musicalrest, full of tension, thatprecedesthe lastrepetitionof questom. 202).50When Ulyssesreturns, ransformednto anold man,he sings(see Ex. 3):Eccomi[eccomi] saggia Dea [eccomi Here I am,wisegoddess,eccomieccomi],questi elicheguardi thesehairs hatyouseesonodi miavecchiaia are o myoldagetestimoni ugiardibugiardi]. lying estimony.

49. This fact confirms,in my view, a basicaxiom of linguisticspragmatics, hat is, that themeaning of a word or sentence is dependent on the context in which it is uttered (see Lyons,LinguisticSemantics, 65). Music functions as the context of the utterance,thereforeattributingmeaningto the text. Thismeaning ndeed "goes beyondwhat is actually aid: t alsoincludeswhatis implied"(p. 266).50. As the philosopherGillesDeleuze puts it: "It is when the language systemoverstrainst-self that it beginsto stutter,to murmur,or to mumble;then the entirelanguagereaches he limitthat sketches the outside and confrontssilence. When the language systemis so much strained,languagesuffersa pressurethat delivers t to silence."See his "He Stuttered," n GillesDeleuzeand theTheater fPhilosopby,d. ConstantinV. Boundasand Dorothea Olkowski(New YorkandLondon:Routledge, 1994), 28.


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404 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyExample 3 Monteverdi,II ritornod'Ulisse npatria, act 1, scene 8, mm. 224-33 [fol. 38r]224 ULISSE

Ec - co-mi ec - co-mi saggia De - a ec - co-mi ec - co-mi ec -

226,t _._I "IA" I- co-mi, Que - sti pe - li che guar-di So - no di

230

mia vec - chia - ia Te - sti - mo - ni bu-giar di bu-giar - di.

-pi " , I II

Ulysses'nsistencen hisownappearancehroughherepetitionf thedeicticeccomi"here am,"mm.224-26) onlyenhances, ndmakes hepublic ullyconscious f, hisdeception.Thewordeccomincludes wo deictics, cco ndmi;thus tsrepetitiontrongly mphasizeseicticmeaning,hat s, therefer-enceto thephysicalontext"pointedo" attheverymomentof theutteranceof the deicticword. In contrast, he repetitionof bugiardi "lying,"mm.232-33) highlights ymbolicmeaning,bugiardi einga descriptiveordcar-rying tsownmeaningndependentrom hesurroundinghysicalontext.51In Ritorno the action often revolvesaroundthe truthfulnessof the"evidence"-thedentity f Ulysses-evokeddirectlyhroughhedemonstra-tivepronoun"this."But in Ulysses'world as t isdepictedbyHomerandbythe Ritornoibrettist,GiovanniBadoaro),descriptionsndexplanationsreoftenfalse,wordshidedeception,andbelief s suspended.ThroughoutheOdysseyheprotagonistscharacterizedyhismetis,anastutentelligencehatemploysdeception.52nRitornohissituationsreflected ythefact hateventhe statusof the maindemonstrativeronoun "this")s problematic.n a

51. Followingthe music in Example3, MinervaanswersUlyssesby startingherlineswith thedeicticHor,atwhichpoint the keyshiftsto D minor.52. For this readingof the character f Ulyssesin the Odyssey,ee MarioLavagetto,La cica-tricedi Montaigne:Sullabugiain letteratura Turin:Einaudi,1992), 5-33.


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MonteverdindaLanguageor MusicalTheater 405context pervaded by deception,the act of pointing, which in normalcircum-stances would confirm the validityof a piece of evidence, is no longer suffi-cient: the demonstrativepronoun cannot prove anything.53Penelope facesthis situation whenever other characterspoint at Ulysses in an effort topersuadeherthathe is herhusband.In threeinstances(act2, scene 2; act 3, scene4; and act 3, scenes9-10), asimilardramaticsituationfeaturesthree characters or groups of characters)having the following differentcommunicativefunctions: an "addresser," r"pointer" x), tries to persuadean "addressee,"or "hearer" y), that the one"pointedto" (z, which is invariablyUlysses:"this") s indeedUlysses.Since,inRitorno,descriptionsandexplanations-i.e., wordsbelongingto the symboliclevel-do not suffice to persuadehearersof the evidence,addressersmust re-sort to the direct act of pointing,to a deictic,as the ultimaterhetoricaldevice.In act2, scene2, the addresser x) is the shepherdEumaeus,the addressee(y) Telemachus,and the indicatedcharacter(z), as always,Ulysses. At thispoint in the opera,the hero is still in disguiseand has assuredEumaeusthat"Ulysses" s in Ithaca.Eumaeusneeds to persuadeTelemachusof this, andhedoes so bypointingat the disguisedUlysses(who untilthatmoment has beensilent on stage). Indicating that he is a reliable reporter of good news,Eumaeussays o Telemachus see Ex. 4):Questoquesto] hetuquimiri Thismanwhomyouseehere,sopraglihomeri tanchi on hisweary houldersportar ranpesod'anni mal nvolto bearing greatweightofyears ndpoorlycladda benlaceripanniegli [egli] m'accerta in torngarments,e assuresme[m'accerta]ched'Ulisselritorno that hereturn fUlyssesfiadipocolontandaquesto iorno. isnotdistant n thisday.Eumaeus'saction of pointing to Ulysses is emphasizedby the repetitionofquesto.The deicticegli (m. 81) is insteadhighlightednot only throughrepeti-tion, but througha changeof meterandstyle,a shift fromduple-meterrecita-tive to triple-meterarioso. This shift-in addition to the change of key inmeasure 82--signals to the audience that, unintentionally,the meaning ofEumaeus's words extends beyond the literal one: although both he andTelemachusarenot yet awareof it, the old beggaris indeedUlysses.As exemplified n this passage,repetitionand shifts of meter and style arethe two most common ways through which Monteverdiplacesemphasison

53. Demonstrare n Latinmeans "to point out," "to show,"but also "to prove."For an illu-minatingview on the power of the demonstrativepronoun "this,"see Louis Marin'scommentson the gospel's sentence "Thisis my body,"in the chapter"The Body of the DivinityCapturedby Signs"of his Food or Thought, rans.Mette Hjort (Baltimoreand London: Johns HopkinsUniversityPress,1989), 3-25.


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406 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyExample 4 Monteverdi,II ritornod'Ulisse n patria, act2, scene 2, mm. 75-91 [fol. 55r]75 EUMETEA

Que - sto que - sto che tu qui mi - ri So-pragli ho-me - ri stan - chi Por-tar granpe - so

78

d'an-nimaln-ol-oDabenlace-rian-ni e - gli# #

82

e - gli m'ac - cer- ta m'ac - cer- ta Che d'U -lis seil ri - tor

87t7-nono Fia di po-colIon- tan da que-sto gior-no.'MS i

deictics.As in act 1, scene 8 ("eccomi ... testimonibugiardi .."; see above),the composeralsousesrepetitionto stresswords thataresymbolicallyoaded:m'accerta("[he] assuresme") in measures 82-84 highlights symbolic (i.e.,nondeictic) meaning in the same way that bugiardi ("lying")did in act 1,scene 8 (notice, however,that m'accertancludesthe deictic mi). Monteverdichooses to repeatwords such as m'accerta n act 2, scene 2, and bugiardiinact 1, scene8, becauseof theirdramatic ignificancen acontextdominatedbydeceptionand disbelief-their repetitionmanifesting he anxietyof charactersliving in an uncertainworld. Word repetition, one must notice, is virtuallynonexistent n earlyoperarecitative the worksof PeriandCaccinihavealmostnone). Monteverdi'sextensiveuse of repetitionthus deservesthe utmost at-


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MonteverdindaLanguageorMusicalTheater 407tention as one of the most effective ties that musicalsettingcanestablishwithordinary anguage.As linguistsinvolvedin the field of discourseanalysisob-serve,repetitions a distinctive haracteristicf everydayonversation,wayof focusingthe attention of the listeneron some specificwords.54In act 3, scene 4, Eumaeus,reiteratinghis invitationto Penelope to cheerup (rallegrati,repeatedsix times) and singing in duple-timerecitative, nsiststhat the man who killed the suitors was indeed her husband("egli [egli egli]eraUlisse" ["he was Ulysses"],the repetitionemphasizingthe personaldeic-tic). SincePenelopeinviteshim to believewhat hiseyessee-just apoor beggar-Eumaeus repeatsthat "Ulisse [Ulisse] iovidi si [si], Ulisse [Ulisse]e vivo equi [e qui qui qui]" ("I sawUlysses, yes, Ulyssesis aliveandhere";see Ex. 5).In responseto Penelope'sstubbornnessand contempt for his humble status,the shepherdEumaeuscan only oppose multiple repetitions,a sign of his at-tachment to ordinarylanguage and his lack of rhetoricaldevices (see mm.44-47). He finallybursts nto triple-timearioso n his last line (mm. 51-56):DicocheUlisse qui[qui], I tellyouUlyssesshere,iostessolvidie'lso,noncontenda I myselfaw t andknow t,il tuono con l mio i, your"no"cannot ontendwithmy"yes"Ulisse Ulisse] vivo[evivo]e qui[equi]. Ulyssessalive,andhere."Here," we remember, is the spatial deictic that, together with "I" and"now," stands at the center of Biihler's representationof the deictic field(Fig. 1). Eumaeus's nsistenceon this locativeadverb n this scene signalstheapproachof the denouement of the plot, preparing he listener for the finalepilogue in which Penelope'sprolonged disbelief n the evidencebrought toher (reiterated o Telemachus n the following scene) finallygivesway to therealizationof the truth. Penelope's skepticalview of the power of words tomatch realityand her continuous doubting of evidenceis indeed a strikinglymodernfeature.By emphasizingwordsthat,deictically r symbolically, enotethis skepticism,Monteverdi reinforcesthis modern aspect of the Homericpoem, translatingt, so to speak, nto the languageof musical heater.In the finalscenesof Ritorno(act 3, scenes9-10), Eumaeus,Telemachus,and Eurycleaareallengaged in theireffort to persuadePenelopethat the oldbeggar-now just in front of her-is indeed Ulysses.As in act2, scene 2, andact 3, scene 4, the dramaticsituationhere is also triangular,nvolvingthreeaddressers(pointers, x), one addressee (hearer,y), and a characterthat ispointed to (z)-the first corresponding to Eumaeus, Telemachus, and

54. As DeborahTannenwrites,"repetitionof deicticsanddiscoursemarkers such as Oh,Ah,but,and, etc.) playsa significantrole in establishing he shareduniverseof discoursecreatedbyconversationalnteraction"(TalkingVoices,6). A composer'semphasison words such as oh,ah,and e (see for instance Ex. 8 and n. 68 below) bespeaksof music'simitationof spokenlanguageandnot exclusivelyof that of affections.


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408 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyExample 5 Monteverdi, II ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, act 3, scene 4, mm. 36-56 [fols.110v-111r]36

EUMETErI I r

U-lis - se U-lis- se io vi - di si si U-lis - se U-

399 PENELOPE

-lis- se 6 vi -vo e qui e qui qui qui. Re- la - tor im- por-

42 EUMETEA, I . . ,I-tu - no Con-so- a - tor no- ci - vo. Di - co cheU-lis - se6 qui qui

46

io stes-soi vi-die'l so noncon-ten-dal tuo no con l mio si U -

51

-lis - se U - lis - se 6 vi- vo6 vi - voe qui e qui.m i1017)( oM o a

Euryclea, he second to Penelope,andthe thirdto Ulysses.55This situation sgraduallyelescopeduntilit becomes,in the lastscene of the opera,exclusively55. In act 3, scene 4, Ulyssesis not on stage, and thus Eumaeus can only referto him eitherwith a pronoun (egli)orwith hisname.The extent to which namingandpointingare relatedcon-cepts is an issue widelydiscussedby linguists,but one into which I do not intend to delve here.For Biihler'sview on propernames,see his Theory fLanguage, 109, 130, and 251-64. See alsonote 35 above.


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Monteverdiand a Language or MusicalTheater 409dialogic, the hearer(Penelope) now coincidingwith the pointer;thus x, y, zbecomes (x = y) -+ z. At the beginning of scene 9, Eumaeus's andTelemachus's mpatienceat Penelope's obstinacyturnsinto excitementwhenUlyssesarrives seep. 204 in Malipiero'sedition):Telemachus: Eccolohe senviene Herehe iscominge lasuaforma iene inhisproperormEumaeus: UlisseUlisseeglie UlyssesUlyssesheisTelemachus: Eccoloafr. He is here ndeed.Together "Eccolo che .. ." and "Eccolo aff'e" frame, in duple time, the re-peated namingof the hero, set in triple ime.WhenUlyssesstartsspeaking, hetension is high (the melody startson a high note, Es, and on a first-inversiondominantchord, while the bassleaps up to G3#from the G2 of the previousscene) and its release is gradual (the melody descends stepwise for threebars).The sentence "O delle miefatiche/ meta dolce e soave,/ porto caroamoroso / dove corro dove corro] al riposo"("Oh of my effortssweet andgentle destination,dearloving harborto which I rush to rest")is set to a se-quentialharmony(descendingfifths)thatcontinuallydelays tsresolution,un-til the destination and "harbor"are reached at the cadence on the words"corroalriposo,"marking he veryend of Ulysses'deicticjourney.Musically,Monteverdiachievesan effectiverepresentation f the instabilityandthe vicis-situdes that Ulysseshas experiencedand that he now seespassing quicklybe-fore his mind'seye, as in a flashback,until he finallyreaches the long-awaitedmoment, the "rest"signifiedby the cadence.At the beginningof the dialogue,Penelope'smusic (mm. 6-9) has a morestolid and resolutecharacterhan that of Ulysses (all of her harmoniesare inroot position): she does not even want to start the conversation("Fermati"["stop"],she says).When shereplies o hisdisappointedwords(he againstartson E5 and on a first-inversionhord;comparem. 1 with m. 10), Penelope'sanswerregains he sameC-majorchord she left at the end of herprevioussen-tence (comparem. 9 with m. 15): "I am not yourwife,"she says,"but Ulysses'wife." The lack of communicationbetweenthem is representedby the differ-ences in their music. Ulysses' response ("In honor de tuoi rai ... ," m. 22)borrowsmelodic and harmonicfeatures rom the settingof Penelope'sprevi-ous words of rejection,as if he were trying to convince her on a subliminallevel. But the queen remainsunconvinced(see Ex. 6): in her answer("Quelvalorche ti rese .. .") she singson stableroot-positionchordsuntil she thricerepeats (mm. 35-37) the demonstrativepronoun "this" ("questo[questoquesto] di tua bugia / il dolce frutto sia").The word questoworks as a dis-course deictic referringback to her pleasurein Ulysses' courage (valor) inkillingthe suitors:"Letthis be the sweet fruitof your lies,"she says,meaningthat this should be enough forhim to be satisfiedandleave.Her ironicwordsimplythat the hero wascertainlybold in killingthe suitorsbut only to win heras he would have done with any other woman. Perhapsas Penelopewanted,


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410 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyExample 6 Monteverdi,II ritornod'Ulisse n patria, act 3, scene 10, mm. 29-43 [fols. 125rand 125v]29 PENELOPE

Quelva-lor che ti re - se Ad U-lis - se si - mi - le Ca - re mi f'a le strag-gi de-gli a-

33

-man-timal-vag - gi. Que - sto que - sto que - sto di tua bu - gi-a IIdol-ce

39ULISSE

frut- to si - a. Quell' U-lis - se quell' U-lis - se son i - o

...,9I..- I

Ulysses' reply is indignant, featuring the clearest assertion of his identity(Quell'Ulisse [quell'Ulisse]son io,"mm. 41-43). But this furthereffort topersuade he queen alsofails,and she abruptlyends the conversation in onlyfour bars of music) by sayingthat he is not the firstto abuse Ulysses'name("non sei tu'l primoingegno .. ."). The dialogicsituationhas by now shiftedfocus from Penelope to Ulysses:Ulysses'proud assertion of his self ("I") isansweredby the "you"of Penelope.It is time forEuryclea o stepin.In the rest of the scene,whichgraduallyocuseson the two characters' inalduet, librettistand composerintroducean emphasison the deicticexpressionthat until this point has been neglected, "now": "Hordi parlaree tempo,"Eurycleasays,"e questo e questo] Ulisse" ("Now it is time to speak,this isUlysses"[mm. 51-52]; notice, besides the repetition,the changeof meter tohighlightthe locativeadverb).The appearance f the maintemporaldeictic-which, togetherwith "I"and "here,"formswhat Biihlerdefines as the centerof the deicticfield--indicatesthat the re-centeringof Ulysses'self is about tobe achieved,his "I" realignedwith the axes of the "here"and the "now."After her statement,Eurycleacontinues sayingthat she discoveredUlysses'true identityonly allora("atthat time,"a furtherdeicticexpression)when hewas bathingnude andcould not hide his scar.Penelope'sdoubt increases,but


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Monteverdiand a Language or MusicalTheater 411sheagain eactsby firmly ejecting lsothe evidencebroughtby Euryclea:ilmiopudico etto,"sheconcludes, sold'Ulisse sold'Ulisse] ricetto"mm.81-85; see Ex.7b). Shesingsthissentenceon the samecontrapuntaltruc-ture,andatthe samepitch,asher"Tusoldel tuotornar erdestil giorno"nact 1, scene1 (seeEx. 7a), a ritornello-sentenceeaturedn her lament hatopens heopera G-G, F#-A,G-BL, ollowedbyacadencen D minor).Evidently,s the musicclearlyuggestsbyreferring ack o the beginningof the drama,we are at a turningpointin the plot:in Penelope's ubcon-scious, he identificationf the absentUlysses the tu andtuoof act1, scene1)with therealUlysses the Ulisse f act3, scene9, nowin frontof her) s fi-nallyaccomplishedseeTable1 for a comparisonf the two sentences).Sol,meaning"only,"s thekeywordthat s featurednbothsentences ndthat sinboth cases epeated"tusol" nact1, scene1isinvertedn"sold'Ulisse"nact3, scene10).56Thedeicticorientationoward he absentUlysses,domi-nant n theritornello-sentencen act1, scene1 ("Tusol del tuotornar"),snowreversednact3, scene10 ("ilmio etto"),and hemeetingof the"you"(for the constantPenelope,the onlyyou) with the "I" is accomplishedthroughheparallelismn themusic.In Table1 therelationshipetween hesetwokeysentences f Ritornosconsideredsan nstance f large-scaleextual epetitiono beexaminedromthepointof viewof theterminologyf classicalhetoric.57helibrettist ro-videsMonteverdi ith twokeysentences lacedatsymmetricalointsof theplot,bothexpressing enelope's loomystate.Thecomposermakes he firstsentence structurallymportantitornello f theopeningamentandsets hesecondoneina similar utnot identicalway: tsshorterbreath nd tslackofrepetitionsbothof andwithin tself,except orthewords"sold'Ulisse")ig-nalthatwe arenow atthethreshold f themostcrucialuncturentheplot-the moment n whichUlyssespresentsPenelopewith the finalevidence hatwillat lastconvinceher.By establishinguchlarge-scaleonnections,musicactsas a "second hetoric," ndthus the traditionalerminology evisedby

56. See note 33 above for a similarcase in Orfeo.57. For the similarperspectiveson language held by rhetoric and pragmatics, ee note 16above. As is evidentfrom the examples rom Ritorno and Poppeapresented n this study,musicalrepetitionhasthe effectof creatinga different ext from thatpresented n the libretto.This "new"text-the one that the listenersactuallyperceive-is most usefullyexaminedfrom the perspectiveof the rhetorical iguresof elocutio.For example,contiguousrepetitionof words would belong tothe categoryof ornatus n verbis oniunctisand classifiedamong thefigurae elocutionis er adiec-tionemasgeminatio, or epanalepsis. ee Heinrich Lausberg,Handbookof LiteraryRhetoric:AFoundationfor LiteraryStudy, rans.MatthewBliss,AnnemiekJansen,andDavid Orton (Bostonand Leiden: Brill, 1998), 275. As WalterOng notices, the word rhetoricn the originalGreek(rhitorike,meaning public speakingor oratory)referredessentially o oral speaking,not to itswrittencodification n treatises,which was devisedonly to enhanceorality(Oralityand Literacy,9). For a view of repetitiongroundedin both rhetoricandlinguistics, ee Bice MortaraGaravelli,"Appuntisulla ripetizione," n her Ricognizioni:Retorica,grammatica, analisi di testi(Naples:Morano, 1995), 37-50.


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412 Journal of the American Musicological SocietyExample 7 Monteverdi,II ritornod'Ulisse npatria, comparisonof settingsof Penelope'swordsin (a) act 1, scene 1, mm. 61-67, and (b) act 3, scene 10, mm. 81-85. See Table1.

(a)

Tu sol del tuo tor - nar del tuo tor - nar tu

sol del tuo tornar per - de- stijilgior - no

(Youonlyofyourreturnosttheday)

(b)

che lmiopu - di - co let - to sold'U-lis - se sold'Ulis - se6ri- cet - toS -I l II -

(thatmychaste edonlyof Ulyssess theshelter)

rhetoriciansor verbaltexts can be de acto extended to it (see Table 1 note).Examined in this way,unit (2), intended as a compound of music and text,representsas a whole an allusion to unit (1).58 That the relationshipbetween58. From the dramaticpoint of view,thisallusion shighlyappropriate t thisturning point inthe action. The moment of its utterancecoincideswith thatin which, in Penelope'smind, Ulyssesis transformed rom only a name (Ulisse) o a realperson,a "you"(tu), now standingbefore her.Although theiractualmutualidentificationoccursa few moments later,music, through allusion,anticipatesdramaticaction.In classical hetoric,allusion s classifiedamong thefiguraesententiae(i.e., figuresof thought) as opposed to flgurae elocutionisi.e., figuresof speech such asgemina-tio; see previous note). Allusion is a figura per immutationem, also called significatio (seeLausberg,HandbookofLiteraryRhetoric, 08, under"emphasis").Significatiohas the sameeffectasgeminatio--that is, that of enhancingmeaning-but it operatesrhetorically t a differentcogni-tive level:geminatio works asa "popular," xotericway of emphasizingmeaning,whereassignifi-catio s a more "elitist," sotericdevice.


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Monteverdianda Language or MusicalTheater 413Table 1 Badoaro/Monteverdi,I ritornod'Ulissen patria,Comparisonf Two SentencesSungby PenelopeseeEx.7)

(1) Act 1, scene 1Tu sol I del tuo tornar Idel tuo tornar IItu sol I del tuo tornar Iperdestiil giornoYou only of your return of your return you only of your return lost the dayA B B A B C

(2) Act 3, scene 10che il mio pudico letto Isol d'Ulisse Isol d'Ulisse Ie ricettothat my chastebed only of Ulysses only of Ulysses is the shelterD A' A' ENote: According to the terminology of classicalrhetoric, each sentence presents examplesofgeminatio. The name of Ulysses in (2) refersback to the deictic "you" (tu) in (1), whereastheword "only" (sol) is identical in (1) and (2). Thus the relationshipbetween the words tu solin (1) and sol d'Ulisse n (2) is that of the chiasmus, a figure of speech termed antitheton,orcommutatio: A: tu sol

A': olX d'Ulisse

units (1) and (2) occursbecause f musicindicates hat,in thiscrucialmomentof Ritorno,Monteverdidemands of his publica particular ind of listening-one thatrecognizes large-scale onnections.59AfterPenelope has utteredher intense sentence-bridging, both textuallyand musically,with her past-Ulysses startshis finaland successfulpersuasiveeffort by highlightinghis knowledge of the truth: "del tuo casto pensiero,"he says, "io so [io so] il costume" ("I know the customs of your chastethoughts"). In the end, what saveshim is his memory (memoria,repeated nmm. 102-3, Malipiero'sedition), the figureof Diana sewn on theirbed cover.Penelope'sjoyfulrecognitionstartswith "Hor si ti riconosco"("Now, yes, Irecognize you"), a sentencethat deictically hifts the axis of the verbaltensesfrom the past to the present (Ulysses'precedingwords are "m'accompagn6mai semprememoria[memoria]cosi grata" "Iwasneverin the companyof amorepleasantmemory"]).

59. For HeinrichBesseler, he seventeenthcenturymarksa transition n music-listeningatti-tudes, fromthe passive isteningof the pastcenturies o a more activeand analytical ne, in whichthe listenermust establishconnectionsamong the short imitative ragmentsgeneratedby the textand exhibitingreciprocalrelationships Das musikalischeHoren der Neuzeit [Berlin:AkademieVerlag, 1959]). For a critique of Besseler's views in this book, see Robert Wegman, "'DasmusikalischeHdren' in the MiddleAges and Renaissance:Perspectives rom Pre-warGermany,"MusicalQuarterly82 (1998): 434-54, esp. 441-45.


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414 Journal f the AmericanMusicologicalocietyNow Penelope can sing an aria,afterhaving expresse

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