Imago Musicae

Remembering Pythagoras, performing Orpheus: pre-modern Eurasian perspectives

Gabriela Currie — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The magical power of music, a topic already crystallized in Greek antiquity in the myth of Orpheus, was transmitted in the Arabo-Persian world through the tenth-century Rasa’il (Epistles) of the Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Brethren of Purity) and other writings. The basic tenets of this doctrine of musical ethos are that the various musical modes affect the human psyche, and thus that a musician’s skillful manipulation of carefully chosen modes and corresponding melodic constructs can affect a listener’s mood, character, and even state of consciousness. At the center of the present essay stands the archetype of such magical musicianship within the literary space of the Persianate world, as manifest in the literary and visual personas of two different protagonists who belong to two different, albeit related works: Plato, from the early thirteenth-century Iskandarnama of Nizamı Ganjavı, and Aristotle, from the early seventeenth-century Resale i-musiqi of Darvısh ‘Alı Changı. In manuscript miniatures accompanying Plato’s magical acts, each of the illustrating artists expands the story’s range of meanings and possible interpretations, through specific music-iconographical choices showcasing a diverse and at times incongruous collection of musical objects and symbols. At the same time, in Aristotle’s legend, text and visual representation engage in a different relation, one that places the reader, rather than the visual artist at the center. This essay proposes that both artists and readers took advantage both of deftly deployed terminological ambivalence and of evoked mental schemas embedded in the literary text, and thus privileged certain options by contextually re-framing (historically or otherwise) said terminology and its corresponding organological or symbolic meanings.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6148-remembering-pythagoras-performing-orpheus-9788855430869.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

Richard und die Rahmen – Zur Rolle von Figurenbüchern für die Konzeption des Prachtchorbuchs Mus.Hs. 2129 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek

Birgit Lodes — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The luxury choirbook Vienna, Austrian National Library, Mus.Hs. 2129, created for the Munich wedding celebrations of 1568 between the Bavarian Duke Wilhelm V and Renata of Lorraine, is a veritable Gesamtkunstwerk: it contains the epithalamium Gratia sola Dei by Nikolaus Stopius set to music by Orlando di Lasso, and decorated with hundreds of pen drawings by Richard of Genoa. The present article argues that the layout of this exceptional manuscript is determined first and foremost by the frames, and not by the musical notation contained within the frames. Framing devices of various kinds – whether in the inscriptional zones of the miniatures, as figurative borders of the principal miniatures, or as fixed U-shaped borders around the block of music and text – skilfully and effectively stage the various contents. Richard’s work draws on contemporary picture books (so-called Figurenbände) such as Neuwe biblische Figuren (Frankfurt 1565) by Johann Bocksberger and Jost Amman, and an illustrated edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Frankfurt 1563) – designed by Virgil Solis and narrated in verses by Johannes Posthius – from which he borrows textual additions, figurative illustrations, and decorative borders. He does so not merely in a traditional (iconographical, formal, and decorative) way, but also on a discursive level, in reliance on the pictura-poesis tradition: remarkably, as a marginal device, his frames even the passepartouts copied from the 1563 Ovid edition interact meaningfully with the central images. Finally, this essay suggests that both the models used and the monochrome manner of the execution suggest a connection to Archduke Ferdinand II of the Tyrol.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6149-richard-und-die-rahmen-9788855430869.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

Envisaging marriage: towards the artistic and intellectual microcosm of a Wittelsbach chapel singer in 1568

Björn R. Tammen — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper sheds new light on MS 2129 of the music collection of the Austrian National Library in Vienna and its border decorations. The lavishly decorated choirbook consisting of only fifteen folios of imposing size, was produced by Richard of Genoa, singer and scribe of the Wittelsbach music chapel in Munich, in the aftermath of the wedding of the Bavarian Duke William V and Renata of Lorraine (1568). The only musical piece it contains is the tripartite motet Gratia sola Dei which Orlando di Lasso had composed for that occasion. Important strands of the pictorial program can now be traced back to an authoritative text: the typological juxtaposition of the pagan deities and their Christian counterparts in the first set of medaillons, accompanied by verbal quotations, renders the Christiani matrimonii institutio by Erasmus of Rotterdam as a likely conceptual source. Further along, this humanist treatise on marriage offers the matrices for the Genesis-related depictions of the biblical patriarchs in part I, as well as a detailed rendering of the story of Tobias and Sarah in part II of Lasso’s epithalamium. As for the illustrations pertinent to part III – the ternary of worthy Jewish women (Esther, Susanna, and Judith), the memento mori, the virtues and vices, and the overarching concept of cursus mundi – MS ‘C’ of the music collection of the Bavarian State Library (1538), previously owned by Count Palatine Ottheinrich, proves to be exemplary, which might substantiate the idea of interpictoriality between both choirbooks.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6150-envisaging-marriage-towards-the-artistic-and-intellectual-microcosm-of-a-wittelsbach-chapel-singer-in-1568-9788855430869.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

“Musicorum coetus pro anima”

Elena Abbado — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In the ancient confraternity of San Niccolò del Ceppo, Florence¬one of the rare lay companies still in existence thereat¬is preserved an unusual vanitas. The macabre theme of death is represented by a skeleton smashing musical instruments. Both partbooks (with legible notation) and scrolls provide a rich set of paratexts, with the over-all motto according to Psalm 45 [46] (“He breaks the bow and shatters the spear”), and a clue to the painting’s original function (“A group of musicians assembled for the sake of salvation”). Erroneously considered up till now a seventeenth-century anonymous work, the stylistic impact of Jacopo Ligozzi, a master of the vanitas genre, is strong. Among the iconographic models, a drawing recently attributed to Ligozzi can be identified, further-more Federico Zuccari’s Giudizio universale for the dome of Florence Cathedral. Based on archival evidence, the original context of the vanitas painting as ‘apparatus’ within the collective rituals of a musicians’ confraternity can now be determined, furthermore its author (Michele Lepri) as well as the year of its creation (1721). Compliant with the new dating are also organological details, such as the characteristic features of the early eighteenth-century oboe.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6151-musicorum-coetus-pro-anima-9788855430869.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

Engelsmusik in der nazarenischen Malerei

Markéta Štědronská — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The relationship between music and painting in nineteenth-century Nazarene art has so far been considered peripheral, if not antithetical to the concept of the 'musicalization' of visual arts as treated in current scholarly literature. The present essay will provide a reevaluation of Nazarene music iconography as shaped by the group's reception of music, by discussing depictions of angelic music in works by painters such as Cornelius, Führich, Overbeck, Scheffer von Leonardshoff and Steinle, among others. The Nazarenes believed that music, like the other arts, served a moral and religious purpose, and that, as an embodiment of harmony, it was a reflection of their creed of a unity of art and life. In their depictions of heavenly music in particular, the focus on the act of musical performance and its perception directly relates to their preference for Renaissance and Baroque music. Without subjecting angelic music to a strict Caecilianist doctrine, the Nazarenes conceptualized and fashioned it as 'early music'. Steeped in a highly traditional Christian iconography, the Nazarenes negotiated issues arising from the specific musicalization of their paintings (e. g. the tension between sound and silence) as an intricate part of their artistic realisation of the core ideas of the group's aesthetic program.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6152-engelsmusik-in-der-nazarenischen-malerei-9788855430869.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim

Du vin et de la musique : les tavernes de Lisbonne et O Fado de Malhoa

Louis Correia de Sousa — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The centerpiece of the present essay is O Fado (1910) by José Malhoa (1855–1933), one of the most famous twentieth-century Portuguese paintings. We will examine the interrelationship the artist endevoured to underscore between the homonymous musico-poetical genre and one of its predominant performative environments, the traditional taverns of Lisbon. The wide array of pictorial elements suggestive of the intersection of wine and music, and the ambivalent distinction between addiction and seduction vividly evokes the scene of Lisbon’s bohemian environment. As a symbolic portrait of the city’s ‘life of vice,’ O Fado asserts itself not only as the visual embodiment of a musical genre, but also as a form of socio-political intervention. Its multivalent richness regarding fado iconography and the complex dynamics that distinguish its reception history arguably invested Malhoa’s masterpiece with a range of meanings that contributed to it becoming a veritable marker of Portuguese cultural identity.

https://www.lim.it/it/imago/6153-du-vin-et-de-la-musique-les-tavernes-de-lisbonne-et-o-fado-de-malhoa-9788855430869.html#/1-tipo_prodotto-pdf_lim