Share: Facebook

References

^[*] Holly Roberts (hollyr@uoregon.edu) earned her PhD from the University of Oregon, where she is currently an instructor of musicology and the executive director of the UO “Musicking Conference.” Her dissertation, “Ecstatic Devotion: Musical Rapture and Erotic Death in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Iconography, Operas, and Oratorios,” engages the intersection of music with concepts of divine love, ecstasy, and death in literature, iconography, and music from the late Medieval through the Baroque eras. Her recent publications include “Divine Love, Death, and Penance in Giovanni Bononcini’s La Conversione di Maddalena,” in I Bononcini da Modena all’Europa (1666–1747), ed. Marc Vanscheeuwijck; and “The Musical Rapture of Saint Francis of Assisi: Hagiographic Adaptations and Iconographic Influences,” in Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography (2020). Roberts is also an active performer on Baroque and modern violin.

^[1] Colleen Reardon, Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 107, quoting Federigo Borromeo, De ecstaticis mulieribus et illusis (1616). Full transcription available in Robert Kendrick, Celestial Sirens: Nuns and their Music in Early Modern Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), appendix A no. 26, 444–45: “Una estatica di santa vita la quale poi è morta con fama di gran santità, tal uolta era costretta dalle preghiere delle sue compagne, le quali tutte erano eleuati spiriti, e celesti a dare ad esse alcun segnale, et alcun esempio, comme fosse l’harmonia del Paradiso: Ella sicome humilissima, e che non istimaua di hauer gratia maggiore delle Compagne, fatta in prima alcuna resistentia, di buona uoglia poi compiaceua loro, e con lieto animo. E cosi nella presentia di esse sole, prendeua nelle mani un liuto, poiche ne i primi suoi anni haueua imparato à sonare, e toccando alcune corde di esso insuonaua [recte intuonaua] un canto cosi delicato, mà insieme cosi lontana dall’aria, e dalla forma di quelli che sono consueti à sentirsi in terra, che affermato hanno persone dignissime di fede, che qua giù maniere somiglianti di canto, et andamenti simili di consonanze, non si sentiuano. Hora questa donna non procedeua innanzi un piccolo spatio di tempo cantando, e suonando ch’ella restaua rapita, e all’hora cessaua il canto, ma seguitaua à suonare, punto non errando nelle vere consonanze. Passato poi alcun altro puoco spatio di tempo, ella tornaua in se, e si arrossiua, che in presenza delle compagne hauesse perduto i sentimenti, e doleauasi alquanto del braccio e della mano destra, con cui moueua le corde.” My thanks to Marc Vanscheeuwijck, Paolo da Col, and Robert Kendrick for their insight and assistence in updating the original transcription to include “intuonaua.”

^[2] See Holly Roberts, “The Musical Rapture of Saint Francis of Assisi: Hagiographic Adaptations and Iconographic Influences,” Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography 45, no. 1/2 (2020): 73–86.

^[3] The earliest known Italian vernacular rendition of Elizabeth’s Revelations survives in the fifteenth-century manuscript I-Fn MS II.II.390 (Magl. XXXV, 175). For more concerning the copying and dissemination of Elizabeth’s Revelations, see Sarah McNamer, The Two Middle English Translations of the Revelations of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996). Regarding authorship of the Revelations, see Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, trans. Éva Pálmai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) and David Falvay, “Elisabetta d’Ungheria: il culto di una santa europea in Italia negli ultimi secoli del Medioevo,” Nuova Corvina: Rivista di Italianistica 14 (2003): 113–27.

^[4] Guido Reni, Santa Cecilia (1606), Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum of Art. See also Reni, Saint Francis Consoled by a Musical Angel (1605), Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale, and Carlo Saraceni, Saint Cecilia and the Angel (ca. 1610), Rome, Palazzo Barberini, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica.

^[5] The relationship between the words “ecstasy” and “rapture” is complex and varies depending on author and period. In Medieval theology, ecstasy is often described as being the highest elevation of the “soul”—a term that is itself multifaceted and may be used to indicate the individual’s mind or the individual’s entire state of being. At times “rapture” is used to signify these same experiences, but it may also denote a state of spiritual unity with God or Christ that is more profound, and possibly a unity that is arrived at in a more violent and painful manner. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy, the two terms receive separate entries in the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca. In the first edition (1612), “ecstasy” is described as a state of being in which the soul is elevated in contemplation. It is bewildered, or stupefied; it is so inebriated by the taste of the heavens that it does not sense the outside world. In this same edition, “rapture” signifies a seizing of the body and the heart from the earth. In the third edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1691) the terms still receive distinct entries, but their definitions become less disparate. Here, “ecstasy” includes the definition, “being rapt in ecstasy” (“Andare in Estasi: Essere rapito in estasi”). For the editors’ purposes here the terms “rapture” and “ecstasy” appear as synonyms; both are used to describe the moment in which God or Christ unites with the soul in spiritual union, at the height of transcendence. In this state the individual loses perception of the surrounding world and is enveloped in divine love. This event may occur spontaneously, or while the individual is in contemplation.

^[6] Regarding the communal and performative aspects of ecstatic episodes, see Clare Copeland, “Participating in the Divine: Visions and Ecstasies in a Florentine Convent,” in Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period, ed. Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Mary A Suydam, “Visionaries in the Public Eye: Beguine Literature as Performance,” in The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Southern Low Countries, ed. Ellen E. Kittell and Mary A. Suydam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

^[7] See for example Giovanni Paolo Colonna, La morte di S. Antonio di Padova (1676); Alessandro Scarlatti, Il martirio di Santa Teodosia (1685 and 1693); and Giovanni Bononcini, La conversione di Maddalena (1701, 1708, and 1723). These are only three of the countless late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century oratorios that prioritize saints’ triumphs over temptation and enjoyment of divine love. Regarding the shift in oratorios’ thematic content, and the emphasis upon saints’ emotions and their mystic relationships with divinity, see Adelmo Damerini, “L’oratorio musicale nel seicento dopo Carissimi,” Rivista musicale italiana 55 no. 2 (1953): 149–63.

^[8] Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni marks Colombani’s death as 6 January 1711 and notes his age as approximately forty years. See Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni, Notitia de’ Contrapuntisti e Compositori di Musica [MS ca. 1735], ed. Cesarino Ruini (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1988), 343.

^[9] Thomas Connolly, Mourning into Joy: Music, Raphael, and Saint Cecilia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

^[10] Concerning the possibility of listeners’ erotic interpretations of devotional music, see also Andrew Dell’Antonio, Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 66–94. In the performance settings alluded to above, the perceived eroticism may be better understood as secular eroticism, occasioned by the voyeuristic nature of seeing and hearing saints’ ecstatic coupling with God performed beyond the oratory or chapel.

^[11] Giancarlo Rostirolla, “Un compositore di oratori ‘celeberrimo’, ma ‘vario di cervello’: Quirino Colombani da Correggio, appunti per una biografia,” in Percorsi dell’oratorio romano da ‘historia sacra’ a melodramma spirituale: atti della Giornata di Studi (Viterbo, 11 settembre 1999), ed. Saverio Franchi (Rome: Istituto di Bibliografia Musicale, 2002), 199–243. Foundational to the study of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century oratorio in Rome are Arnaldo Morelli, “Il ‘Teatro spirituale’ e altre raccolte di testi per oratorio romani del Seicento,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 21 (1986): 61–143; Morelli, Il tempio armonico: musica nell’oratorio dei Filippini in Roma (1575–1705) (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1991); Morelli, “La Circolazione dell’oratorio italiano nel Seicento,” Studi musicali 26, no. 1 (1997): 105–86; Saverio Franchi, Drammaturgia romana (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1988).

^[12] Teresa Chirico, “Serenate alla corte romana del cardinale Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740) nell’epoca di Arcangelo Corelli: storia e proteizzazione di un genere,” in Serenata and Festa teatrale in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Iskrena Yordanova and Francesco Cotticelli (Vienna: Hollitzer, 2018), 177.

^[13] Chirico, “Serenate alla corte romana del cardinale Pietro Ottoboni,” 177. Surviving manuscript copies of Colombani’s oratorio are located in Paris (F-Pn X.963 and F-Pn VM1-1487) and London (GB-Lbl Add. 34264). My analysis of Il martirio di Santa Cecilia refers to an unpublished transcription of the two French copies, created for the 2019 University of Oregon Musicking Conference; I am grateful to Emily Korzeniewski for her work in creating the modern transcription of the score. I have relied on Benedetti’s libretto as it was printed for the 1705 performance: Nicolò Benedetti, L’ape industriosa in S. Cecilia Vergine, e Martire, per la conversione de’ santi Valeriano, e Tiburtio. Oratorio a quattro voci Parole di Gio: Nicolò Benedetti. Musica di Quirino Colombani, Recitato la sera della festa di detta Santa, Nell’ Oratorio di S. Filippo Neri in Perugia (Perugia: Stampa Vescovale, per gli Eredi del Ciani, e Sebastiano Amanti, in Via Pinella, 1705), digitized at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3230120.

^[14] Notable are the final aria of part one, “Di tue piaghe il sacro fiore,” in which Cecilia is accompanied by two violoncelli in duet, and Valeriano’s final, heart wrenching aria, “Consolati non piangere,” a duet between solo violoncello and contralto.

^[15] An audio recording of a live performance of this oratorio by the University of Oregon Oratorio Ensemble, conducted by Marc Vanscheeuwijck, at the 2019 University of Oregon Musicking Conference, recorded 17 May 2019, is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYaknFnr0Mw&t=76s.

^[16] Giacobo di Voragine [Jacobus de Voragine], Legendario delle vite de’ santi, trans. Niccolò Manerbio (Venice: Domenico & Giovanni Battista Guerra, 1586), 748, English translation mine: “& mentre che sonavano gli organi, cantava nel cuore suo al Signore solo, dicendo: Signore fa il cuore, & il corpo mio immacolato, accioche io non resti confusa” (and while the organs [or instruments] sounded, she sang in her heart to the Lord alone, saying: Lord, make my heart and my body immaculate, so that I am not left defeated).

^[18] For the changing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century trends in iconography depicting Cecilia, see John A. Rice, Saint Cecilia in the Renaissance: The Emergence of a Musical Icon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022); Nico Staiti, Le metamorfosi di santa Cecilia: l’immagine e la musica (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2002); and Franca Trinchieri Camiz, “Santa Cecilia: ‘Cantatrice in Terra … Suonatrice al Mondo’ nel primo Seicento romano,” in Le immagini della musica: atti del seminario di iconografia musicale metodi e pratica di catalogazione di materiali aventi rilevanza per la storia delle arti e della musica, ed. Francesca Zannoni (Rome: Fratelli Palombi Editori, 1996).

^[19] See Giacobo di Voragine, Legendario delle vite, 750–52. Cecilia’s rhetorical prowess is exemplified in the Legendario in her frequent use of literary devices while in discourse with those she seeks to convert and while defending Christianity. Techniques such as antimetabole or permutation are present in her conversation with Tiburtio (“Fu maledetto il benedetto, accioche l’huomo maledetto conseguisse la benedittione. Egli sostenne di essere stratiato, perche l’huomo fusse liberato da gli stratii del Demonio”), while adianoeta is present in her defense of Christianity against the accusations of the prefect, Almachio (Almachio: “O infelice, non sai tu che m’ è stata data la potestà di dare la morte, & la vita?” Cecilia: “… à coloro che vivono, tu puoi dar la morte, ma à quegli, che sono morti, tu non puoi dar la vita.”). Here the audience is to understand that Cecilia responds to Almachio’s threat literally—he can sentence the living to physical death—while also recognizing that her allusion to life after death is twofold in interpretation: it is indicative of Christ’s resurrection, and of the spiritual life that is experienced after a mystic “death” or rapture.

^[21] See Giacobo di Voragine, Legendario delle vite, 749. The phrase “l’ape industriosa” also firmly ties Cecilia to bee symbolism in Christian art and literature. As a bee she is hard working, diligent, and pious. Her labors yield honey (see n. 33), establishing her as a servant of Christ’s ministry. The bee’s production of honey, a frequent symbol of Christ, also connects Cecilia with the Virgin Mary. This is fitting, as a significant portion of the oratorio is devoted to Cecilia’s protection of her chastity. See George Ferguson, Signs & Symbols in Christian Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 12 and 42.

^[22] Benedetti, 5. All translations of Benedetti’s libretto are mine in collaboration with Marc Vanscheeuwijck, with editing by F. Regina Psaki.

^[24] Benedetti’s rendition of Valeriano’s conversion adheres closely to the version recounted in the Legenda aurea. See Giacobo di Voragine, Legendario delle vite, 748–52.

^[25] Benedetti, 6. “Cecilia: Spera sì, che dà quell’Onde / Più del Sol lucida, e bella / L’Alma tua risorgerà. / Fida Ancella al suo Fattore / Tutta fede, e tutt’ amore / Il suo bel mirar potrà. Valeriano: Già pronto al tuo voler si move il piede. / E del desio su l’ale / Impatiente lo spirto al piè precede.” (Cecilia: Hope indeed that from those waves your soul will be reborn more shining and beautiful than the sun. The faithful servant, all faith and love to her creator, will be able to admire his beautiful soul. Valeriano: Already prepared, my feet move to your will, and my eager spirit moves faster than my steps on the wings of desire.)

^[26] Benedetti, 8. “Valeriano: O come vaga / Cecilia: O come grato, / a2: Cara(o) più sembri / A gl’occhi miei, / Valeriano: Che a Dio rinato / Cecilia: Eterno acquisto / a2: Già di tè fei.” (Oh how beautiful, oh how welcome, you seem more dear to my eyes, because I made of you an eternal acquisition reborn unto God.)

^[29] Colombani’s choice of texture—alternating melodic segments, followed by joined voices in parallel thirds—is not uncommon in love duets of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, where the compositional technique may denote erotic love, spiritual love, or a love that is both spiritual and erotic. The use of this technique within the Italian oratorio can be seen, for example, in Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il martirio di Sant’Orsola (ca. 1695–1700). In Scarlatti’s duet, “Dio Clemente,” sung between Florida, Orsola’s virgin companion, and Ereo, Orsola’s intended spouse, the characters do not sing of their love for each other, but of their shared love for God and their desires to languish in the sweet pain and torment of ecstatic martyrdom (see Alessandro Scarlatti, Il martirio di Sant’Orsola, US-NHub Ms. 24). While the essence of their love is pure, their expression of it conforms to the language of sacred love poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which erotic expressions serve to denote an intense longing for transcendent, or even ecstatic, encounters with God and Christ. See Willis Barnstone, “Mystico-Erotic Love in ‘O Living Flame of Love’,” Revista hispánica moderna 37, no. 4 (1972/1973): 253–61, and John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love Versions A and B, trans. Jane Ackerman (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1995).

^[30] Benedetti, 8–9. “Tiburtio: O concenti graditi, / Sì sì lieti godete; / Nè mai il tempo edace / Al vostro bel gioir turbi la pace. / Ed il seno fecondo / Di così illustre Sposa / Novi Cesari fia, e a Roma, e al Mondo. // I gradimenti tuoi / Del tuo spirto gentil son puri affetti. / Ma qual di Gigli, e Rose / Fragranza non più intesa / Quivi d’intorno spira? / Da maraviglie ascose / La fantasia sorpresa / L’invisibile aprende, ò pur delira.” (Tiburtio: Oh welcome harmonies, happily enjoy; nor ever let devouring time disturb the peace of your rejoicing. May the fertile womb of a Bride so illustrious bring forth new Caesars, for Rome and for the world. // Your pleasures are pure affects of your noble spirit. But what new fragrance of lilies and roses breathes all around? The imagination, surprised by hidden marvels, either discerns the invisible, or else it is delirious.)

^[31] Benedetti, 9. In Benedetti, “Bella Fede”; in F-Pn X.963, “della Fede”; in F-Pn VM1-1487, “Della fede.” “Valeriano: Della Fede il chiaro lampo / Se il tuo ciglio avamperà / Mio Giesù ch’è fior del Campo / Anco a te si scoprirà.” (Valeriano: If the bright light of faith enlightens your eyes, my Jesus, who is a flower of the field, will reveal himself to you as well.)

^[33] Ficino cites the perfume of God as one of the main enticements for the soul, even though the soul does not know to what it is drawn: “For this reason lovers do not know what they desire or seek, for they do not know God Himself, whose secret flavor infuses a certain very sweet perfume of Himself into His works. By which perfume we are certainly excited every day. The odor we certainly smell; the flavor we undoubtedly do not know. Since, therefore, attracted by the manifest perfume, we desire the hidden flavor, we rightly do not know what we are desiring and suffering.” See speech 2 chapter 4 in Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, ed. and trans. Sears Jayne (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1985), 52. The aroma may alternatively have been interpreted as an additional reference to Cecilia’s work as “l’ape industriosa.” In this case, the aroma is the nectar that draws Cecilia and her companions toward the true love of Christ. This interpretation is supported by the text of Cecilia’s final aria of part one: “Di tue piaghe il Sacro Fiore / Ape fida ognor libai. / Tua mercè entro quel Core / Della fede il mel stillai.” (From the sacred flower of your wounds I, faithful bee, always drank. By your mercy within that heart I distilled the honey of faith.) See Benedetti, 10.

^[35] “Ne” is included in both manuscripts, but not in the printed libretto.

^[36] In my analyses of Colombani’s Santa Cecilia I use the nomenclature of functional harmony, for even though such language was not yet codified among theorists and composers, Colombani’s musical style throughout the oratorio is clearly tonal and aligns with the “normalized harmonic style” present in Rome at the turn of the century. See John Walter Hill, “Sonata and Concerto in Late Seventeenth-Century Italy,” in Baroque Music: Music in Western Europe 1580–1750 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2005), 322–56.

^[43] Roel Van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972), 146.

^[47] Teresa di Giesù, “Mansioni quinte,” in Cammino di perfezione e’l castello interiore, trans. Cosimo Gaci (Florence: Stamperia de’ Giunti, 1605), 50–51: “Si sente cosi desiderosa di lodare il Signore, che vorrebbe disfarsi, e morire per lui mille volte.”

^[48] This subject has been addressed by Laura Macy, who notes the connection between the medical categorization of ejaculation as a “death”—a time when the spirit separated from the body and the individual experienced temporary loss of life—and the use of the word “death” in Italian madrigals. See Laura Macy, “Speaking of Sex: Metaphor and Performance in the Italian Madrigal,” The Journal of Musicology 14, no. 1 (1996): 1–34. See also Susan McClary, Modal Subjectivities: Self-Fashioning in the Italian Madrigal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). This same concept is applicable to the “deaths” described by mystics like Saint Teresa. Rapturous death is an experience in which the sacred and the secular become inseparable. Though the experience is the epitome of contemplative, religious devotion, it is also highly erotic. The soul leaves the body (as it does during orgasm) and unites with God as bride and bridegroom, and in doing so endures a death that is painful and pleasurable beyond description.

^[49] Miguel de Molinos, The Spiritual Guide, ed. and trans. Robert P. Baird, with Introduction by Robert P. Baird and Bernard McGinn (New York: Paulist Press, 2010).

^[51] Molinos’s philosophy regarding spiritual martyrdom is not refuted in Innocent XI’s Encyclical Coelestis pastor.

^[53] Benedetti, 15: “Così al mio Dio, ch’ esangue / Sul Calvario si rese / L’Acque tributo, or che non lice il Sangue. / Ah Tiburtio, ah mio Sposo / Voi a penar, voi a morir per Dio, / Ed io in vil riposo / Ancor viva rimango, / Ah ch’ a ragion io mi querelo, io piango.” (So, to my God—who gave Himself up lifeless on Calvary—I offer water, since blood is not permitted. Oh, Tiburtio, oh my husband! For you to suffer, for you to die for God, while I in base repose still live! Ah, rightly I accuse myself, rightly I weep.)

^[54] In Benedetti, “ardore”; in F-Pn X.963, “amore”; in F-Pn VM1-1487, “Amore.”

^[55] Commonly used descriptors of ecstasy and rapture are “morte,” “struggere,” “sciogliere,” “bramare,” “tremare,” “dolore,” “pena,” “ferita,” “tormento,” “calore,” “bruciare,” “scintilla,” “fuoco,” “fiammare” and “infiammare,” “deliziare,” “deliziosa,” and “dolce.” Descriptive words frequently appear in dichotomous couplings. This duality is evident in Saint Teresa’s use of descriptive words that denote pain or torment and those that indicate desire or longing—in the sixth interior room at least 103 times and 99 times, respectively. Teresa equates these experiences with love, a word that appears 42 times in the sixth room alone. “Morte” appears 23 times in room six, and 58 times throughout interior rooms four through seven—the rooms in which Teresa describes ecstasy or rapture. Teresa di Giesù, “Mansioni seste,” in Cammino di perfezione e ’l castello interiore, 62–118.

^[56] Thomas Hyde, The Poetic Theology of Love: Cupid in Renaissance Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986).

^[57] Though Colombani’s melody is the same in both arias and is situated within an analogous harmonic framework, the continuo varies. The overall effect, therefore, is in fact one of musical quote rather than exact reproduction. Colombani, Il martirio di Santa Cecilia, transcr. Emily Korzeniewski, 47 and 108.

^[58] Colombani, Il martirio di Santa Cecilia, transcr. Korzeniewski, 109–10. The rapturous death in the “B” section of Piango sì occurs in the key of F-sharp minor, a key that in performance creates uncomfortable dissonances for the performer and listener. Colombani’s choice to set the “B” section in this key may speak to an intention on his part to aurally represent the pain of Cecilia’s ecstatic transformation.

^[59] The musical relationship between the ecstatic Cecilia and the violin line calls to mind the countless references to a stringed instrument as the impetus for saintly rapture found in Medieval, Renaissance, and early modern texts, ranging from Tommaso da Celano’s and Bonaventura’s renditions of the life of Saint Francis, the anonymous i Fioretti di San Francesco, and the previously mentioned Revelations attributed to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and Federigo Borromeo’s description of Caterina Vannini. Later iconographic representations of an ecstatic Saint Francis by painters of the Carracci school and their followers depict the story in i Fioretti of Francis drawn into ecstasy by an angel’s performance upon a bowed string instrument. This iconographic tradition has most recently been discussed in Roberts, “The Musical Rapture of Saint Francis of Assisi”; Fabien Guilloux, “Saint-Franҫois d’Assise et l’ange musicien: un topos iconographique et musical chrétien,” Imago musicae 25, no. 1 (2012): 29–75; and Andrew Dell’Antonio, Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy. Concerning the relationship between late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century depictions of Francis’s and Cecilia’s musical ecstasies, I agree with Dell’Antonio that there is still much to be explored (see Dell’Antonio, 167n47), particularly in regard to Guido Reni’s use of the violin as a symbol of Cecilia’s musical ecstasy (rather than Raffaello’s more traditional organ).

^[61] Throughout the oratorio, the intended meaning of the word “martire” is made clear by Colombani’s setting. In “Consolati, non piangere,” musical emphasis is placed on the first syllable, indicating that Cecilia is indeed a martyr of Love. When “martire” is used to convey suffering or torture, Colombani sets the word accordingly with emphasis upon the second syllable.

^[62] Barbara Russano Hanning, “From Saint to Muse: Representations of Saint Cecilia in Florence,” Music in Art: Iconography as a Source for Music History 29, no. 1/2 (Spring–Fall 2004): 98.

^[63] See, for example, Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso di Messer Lodovico Ariosto con gli Argomenti in ottava Rima di M. Lodovico Dolce, et con le Allegorie à ciascun canto di Tomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione Aretino (Venice: Giovanni Battista Brigna, 1656), canto 5.82. “Rinaldo vi compar sopra eminente, E ben rassembra il fior d’ogni gagliardo.”

^[64] The scene Cicognini describes—in which performed ecstasy has the effect of transfixing the audience, or drawing them into a transcendent state—is markedly similar to Baldassarre Castiglione’s account of Pietro Bembo’s quasi-ecstatic oration in Il libro del cortegiano. Baldassarre Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano del conte Baldesar Castiglione (Venice: Casa de’ figliuoli di Aldo, 1547), fol. 193r–v: “Havendo il Bembo insin qui parlato con tanta vehementia, che quasi pareva astratto, & fuor di sé, stavasi cheto, & immobile, tenendo gli occhi verso il cielo, come stupido, quando la S. Emilia, la quale insieme con gli altri era stata sempre attentissima ascoltando il ragionamento, lo prese per la falda della robba, & scuotendolo un poco, disse: ‘Guardate M. Pietro, che con questi pensieri à voi anchor non si separi l’anima dal corpo.’ … Allhora la S. Duchessa, e tutti gli altri cominciarono di novo à far instantia al Bembo che seguitasse il ragionamento: & ad ognun parea quasi sentirsi nell’animo una certa scintilla di quell’amor divino, che lo stimulasse: e tutti desideravano d’udir più oltre …”

^[65] Frequently cited among scholars is Thomas Coryat’s description of the music at the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice (6 August 1608): “This feast consisted principally of Musicke, which was both vocall and instrumentall, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so super excellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all those strangers that never heard the like. But how others were affected with it I know not; for mine owne part I can say this, that I was for the time even rapt up with St. Paul into the third heaven. Sometimes there sung sixteene or twenty men together, having their master or moderator so keepe them in order, and when they sung, the instrumentall musitians played also. Sometimes sixteene played together upon their instruments, ten Sagbuts, foure Cornets, and two Violdegambaes of an extraordinary greatnesse; sometimes tenne, six Sagbuts and foure cornets; sometimes two, a Cornet and a treble viol.… Of the singers there were three or foure so excellent that I thinke few or none in Christendome do excell them, especially one, who had such a peerelesse and (as I may in a manner say) such a supernaturall voice for the sweetnesse that I thinke there was never a better singer in all the world, insomuch that he did not onely give the most pleasant contentment that could be imagined, to all the hearers, but also did as it were astonish and amaze them.” As cited in Tim Carter, “Listening to Music in Early Modern Italy: Some Problems for the Urban Musicologist,” in Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe, ed. Tess Knighton and Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 42.

^[66] See for example Dell’Antonio, Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy; and Christine Getz, Mary, Music, and Meditation: Sacred Conversations in Post-Tridentine Milan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).

^[67] For examples of celestial rapture in addition to those of Saint Teresa and Caterina Vannini, see, among others, the writings of Saint John of the Cross and the documented ecstasies of Saint Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi.

^[68] See Richard of Saint Victor, The Twelve Patriarchs; The Mystical Ark; Book Three of the Trinity, trans. Grover A. Zinn with Preface by Jean Châtillon (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 336. This issue is addressed directly by Richard of Saint Victor, who—after outlining the differences between meditation and contemplation—says the following of rapture: “Let no person presume that so much exultation or raising up of the heart is due to his own strength; nor should he attribute this to his own merits. Surely it is evident that this is not from human merit but from a divine gift.” From Medieval theologians like Richard of Saint Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux to the ecstasy of Saint Francis, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, and Beguine women religious to rapture as it is described by Dante Alighieri (Paradiso, canto XIV), it is evident that rapture was not an event for which individuals could condition themselves or that they could induce. This becomes increasingly clear when considering discourses of rapture alongside texts aimed at vision cultivation, such as the Meditations on the Life of Christ attributed to Saint Bonaventura.