The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 9 (2003) No. 1

Monteverdi’s parole sceniche

Mauro Calcagno*

Abstract

Text/music relationships in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo are investigated from the perspective of deixis, the “pointing” function of language first studied in the 1930s by Karl Bühler and today an important area of linguistic pragmatics. A marker of ordinary language and of theater texts, deictics indicate person, time, and place. They are prominent in Striggio’s libretto and are musically highlighted by Monteverdi, starting with the opera Prologue. The composer goes so far as to modify the text in order to emphasize these expressions. In the lament “Tu se’ morta” the effect is of shifting the dramatic and psychological focus toward Orfeo’s subjectivity.

1.  Music and the Claims of oratione

2.  The “Pointing” Function in Language

3.  Deictics in the Prologue of L’Orfeo

4.  Monteverdi’s Alterations of the Libretto

5.  Conclusions

References

Texts

Illustrations

1. Music and the Claims of oratione

1.1 Giulio Cesare Monteverdi’s oft-quoted statement that his brother intended oratione to be “the mistress of the harmony” epitomizes the relationships between text and music in the style of seconda prattica. By using the term oratione (deriving from orare: to speak, to plead, to pray), Monteverdi refers to spoken rather than written texts. To cite a few examples of the uses of oratione: in his Istitutioni Harmoniche, Gioseffo Zarlino defines it as “speaking, which expresses attitudes via the narration of some story or tale” (il parlare, il quale esprime costumi col mezzo della narratione di alcuna historia, o favola). Giovanni Maria Artusi, in his Discorso secondo of 1608, defines oratione as “the perfection and beauty of speaking” (la perfezione e la bellezza del parlare). The entry oratione in the Vocabolario degli accademici della crusca (ed. 1680) gives: “simply speaking” (per lo favellare semplicemente). Finally, to approach the subject of our conference, a similar concept informs Jacopo Peri’s statements about recitative as being based on “speech” (favella) and on “ordinary speaking” (parlare ordinario).1

1.2 Like Monteverdi, Vincenzo Galilei also thought, humanistically, that music should imitate oratione. But he had in mind a particular kind of speech occurring under certain circumstances. In his Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna (1581) he suggested that composers regularly attend the theater in order to learn how an actor speaks and acts differently according to his character’s social status (prince, servant, prostitute, wife), age (young girl, child), actions, and feelings (he lists: the imploring, the furious, the lover, the lamenter, the shouter, the fearful, the cheerful). Zarlino, in his Sopplimenti musicali, reacted rather negatively to Galilei’s advice: “O bel discorso …,” he exclaimed, “what he actually wishes is to reduce music greatly in dignity and reputation, when to learn imitation, he bids us to go to hear the zanies in tragedies and comedies and to become out-and-out actors and buffoons. What has the musician to do with those buffoons reciting in vulgar commedie dell’arte?” 2

1.3 Indeed a lot, we may answer today, if we consider the earliest operas as embodying the principle, advocated by Galilei, that music should imitate speech as delivered by theater actors who, in turn, strive to imitate ordinary language. It is from this perspective that I will examine some passages from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. But rather than focusing on music’s imitation of the sound of speech—as John Walter Hill thoroughly does in another paper for this conference (which I consider complementary to mine)—I deal instead with a feature of spoken texts currently being studied by linguists in the field of pragmatics: deixis, a term deriving from the Greek word meaning “to show,” “to point to,” “to indicate.”

2.  The “Pointing” Function in Language

2.1 In his Sprachtheorie of 1934, linguist Karl Bühler devotes a large section to what he calls deiktische Sprachzeichen or Zeigwörter (“deictic signs,” or “words that show”)3 He distinguishes them from another class of words called Nennwörter (“words that name”). Deictics do not characterize or qualify an object or a person, but, as the etymology of the word says, they “point to” someone or something, their function being that of situating human discourse. Bühler recognize three main kinds of deictics:

1) Spatial deictics: demonstrative pronouns, such as “this” and “that;” adverbs of space, such as “here” and “there.”

2) Temporal deictics: adverbs such as “now” and “then.”

3) Personal deictics: pronouns such as “I” and “you,” possessives such as “my” and “yours.”

2.2 The distinction between deictic words and naming words corresponds, in Bühler’s theory, to a larger one by which he divides language into two “fields”: the “index field” (Zeigfeld), to which deictics belong, and the “symbol field” (Symbolfeld), which includes naming words. These two fields, for Bühler, point to two autonomous and separate functions of language with respect to reality: first, the function of “intuitive pointing and presenting,” the field of which is generated by the situation of the linguistic utterance; and, second, the “abstract and conceptual grasping of the world,” the field of which originates from the context of the utterance.4 Bühler summarizes his “two-field” theory of language as follows:

In linguistic messages there are two … fundamental processes which we can and must distinguish in order to understand what is going on: … there is first pointing: things and processes are indicated. That is demonstratio; I prefer the Greek word deixis. Second, there is also representing: … objects and states of affairs are given a formulation in language and are symbolized by words that designate them in the symbolic field of language.5

2.3 Pointing, for Bühler, is the first and most fundamental human gesture, which connects body and mind to the external world. This gesture is embodied by human voice through deictics, i.e., words linking a linguistic utterance to its situation and anchoring the speaker and the hearer to the spatial and temporal coordinates of the speech event. Bühler singles out the three most primitive deictics, “here,” “now,” and “I,” indicating space, time, and person. He places them at the center of the index field, which he represents graphically through a circle intersected by two perpendiculars (he calls this center the ego-hic-nunc-origo of the field). All the other deictics—such as “that,” “there”; “then”; “you,” “he,” “it,” etc.—radiate, so to speak, from that point of origin. Deictics can be used in language in three different ways (Modus des Zeigens): by indicating someone or something physically present at the moment of the utterance (demonstratio ad oculos); by referring to someone or something absent (Deixis am Phantasma); and finally by indicating other words or sentences previously used within speech itself (anaphora, as in “Having said this, I would add …”).

2.4 Since Bühler, the theory of deixis has been widely developed, not only in linguistic pragmatics but also in such diverse fields as theater semiotics and anthropology, becoming as fruitful a notion as that of the performative utterance, also originating in linguistics.6 Opera studies have so far neglected the study of deixis, as well as other aspects of language studied by pragmatics, such as speech acts. Yet, if we assume that, at the dawn of operatic history, the efforts of composers were directed at imitating speech (oratione), then we should also hold a view of language that goes beyond the one commonly taken for granted, in which the function of language is merely to express emotion and affect (a part of the all-too-binding heritage of Affektenlehre). Indeed, in their settings musicians such as Monteverdi were not only emphasizing words carrying affective and symbolic meanings, but also those words which—as deictics—highlight what linguists call utterance-meaning.7

3.  Deictics in the Prologue of L’Orfeo

3.1 The text of the Prologue of L’Orfeo shows remarkable regularity as far as the recurrence of deictics is concerned (see text 1, figure 1a [libretto, title page], and figure 1b [libretto, Prologo]).8 Striggio strategically places the three most primitive deictics (Io, qui[nci], and ora) at the beginning of strophes 2 to 5. But the first strophe also emphasizes the function of the “pointing words.” The deictics mio and voi, appearing in the first line, immediately define the stage situation as one determined by a character (La Musica) who first refers to herself (“my”) and then addresses the audience (“you”). In establishing a channel of communication with the public (historically, the Gonzaga family), the singer may choose to reinforce the meaning of these words through a gesture directed first toward herself and then toward the audience (deictic words, as we have noted above, are suited to being associated with body movements). Furthermore, as far as the first line is concerned, motion is verbally suggested by symmetrically pairing the opening “from” (Dal) with the deictic verb “come” (vegno), referring to the character’s physical motion from the river Permesso to the stage (a passage evoked, as John Whenham notices, by the ritornello music).9

3.2 By using deictics at the beginning of each strophe, La Musica effectively establishes the personal, spatial, and temporal coordinates of the opera. As a stage-art, opera is a genre that shares characteristics with spoken theater, as distinct from narrative and poetry. As drama scholar Keir Elam claims, theater is a form of communication characterized by the fact that, on stage, an “I” addresses a “you” “here” and “now.” 10 In the first strophe, as we have seen, La Musica addresses the public (i.e., an “I” addresses a “you”). In the following two strophes, she emphasizes her subjectivity by starting each of them with the word Io. In strophes four and five, instead, the main spatial and temporal coordinates are highlighted, Qui and Hora (“here” and “now”). The function of Hora is to prepare the beginning of the action about to start in Act I, which, as we shall see, again stresses the temporal element.

3.3 The emphasis on “I” is particularly relevant. La Musica in fact introduces herself not only by naming herself but by singing her name: Io la Musica son. Considering that in 1607 opera was a newborn genre in need of justifying its very existence, it is significant that it is she, Music (and not, say, Tragedy, as in Peri’s Euridice) who establishes all three dramatic coordinates through deixis. La Musica’s gesture is even more powerful in that it is echoed at the dramatic climax of the opera, in Orfeo’s “Possente Spirto,” exactly at the symmetrical center of the whole work: Orfeo son io, the protagonist sings at the outset of the fourth of six tercets (thus again in central position).11 Striggio thus draws a connection between the Prologue and the very center of the opera, associating La Musica with Orfeo and using the most basic expression in human language: Io sono. Implicit here is the idea that only on the stage does music acquire its real self, i.e., only when time and space explicitly define it—music being an intrinsically theatrical art.

3.4 The emphasis on the first personal deictic in the Prologue is a convention of Renaissance spoken theater, as can be seen in the first and second prologues of Ludovico Dolce, La Marianna (1565; text 2) and in the prologue of Pietro Aretino, L’Oratia (1546; text 3).12 The “I” opening was the most obvious choice also for the first opera librettist, Ottavio Rinuccini, as we see in the prologues to his Narciso (ca. 1608; text 4) and L’Arianna (1608; text 5).13 Finally, Rinuccini’s prologue for Euridice begins with the word Io (text 6).14 In writing the Orfeo Prologue for Monteverdi, Striggio follows Rinuccini’s strategy, but somewhat more rigidly. As we have seen, he provides the composer with five strophes, each beginning with a deictic expression, thus isolating five discursive “blocks,” similar in their communicative function.

3.5 Monteverdi’s strophic setting (see figure 2a, figure 2b, figure 2c, figure 2d, figure 2e, and figure 2f) parallels these blocks articulated around the deictic expressions, the repeated bass unifying and delimiting these units. The melodic long notes placed on each of the five deictics emphasize them. The stable harmony that supports the beginning of the melody of each strophe clearly isolates and emphasizes these keywords. Both harmony and melody work to dramatize the opening declamatory style, itself set into relief by its contrast with the subsequent melodiousness of the strophe. Once he firmly establishes the origin of the “index field” (to again follow Bühler’s terminology), Monteverdi actually shifts gears and freely explores the symbolic (descriptive) meaning of the words: in varying the melodic setting of each strophe, he investigates through musical means the “symbol field” of language, that is, he highlights the context, more than the situation to which language refers (see paragraph 2.2 above). After the first half-line of each strophe, the focus of Monteverdi’s musical setting is no longer the establishment of the theatrical-musical situation—i.e., the index field associated with deictic words—but the musical reference to the context embodied in the descriptive meaning of the words, i.e., the symbol field represented by naming words. Thus, for example, in the second strophe, the meaning of tranquillo (“quiet”) is musically opposed to that of ira (“wrath”) and of gelate (“frozen”), while in the third strophe the meaning of armonia sonora (“sonorous harmony,” in line 3) dominates the setting.15 Finally, the musical rests in the fifth strophe evoke the Arcadian context to which the words allude. In this respect, text and music relate to each other as they do, for example, in a madrigal, in which it is not necessary to specify the situation, and music highlights words bearing symbolic (descriptive) meaning rather than those with deictic meaning.

3.6 In the Prologue of Orfeo it is especially the strophic bass, rather than the melody, that has, musically speaking, a larger deictic function. It works as a compass that anchors the whole setting and frees the melody to explore images, affects, and emotions, paralleling in this respect the “orientating” function of the deictic words placed at the beginning of each strophe. It is hard to imagine a better match of text and music, of oratione and harmonia, both converging in their full semantic potential.

4.  Monteverdi’s Alterations of the Libretto

4.1 The musical setting of L’Orfeo may be examined from the two perspectives outlined in the previous sections, that is, by distinguishing the words pointing at the situation (belonging to the index field of language) from those referring to the context and embodying more descriptive meanings (symbol field). For example, Act I opens by strongly emphasizing temporality through the words In questo lieto e fortunato giorno, in which a deictic word (referring to the situation occurring, at that very moment, on the stage) is followed by words belonging to the symbolic domain (see text 7 and figure 3). Questo is a spatial deictic, but here it refers to giorno and thus assumes a temporal connotation (again, as in the Prologue, we may imagine the character on stage using a gesture to indicate the day shining around him). This emphasis on temporality continues in the second strophe via two other deictics: Oggi fatt’è pietosa / l’alma già sì sdegnosa / de la bella Euridice, a sentence paralleled by the following Oggi fatt’è felice / Orfeo nel sen di lei … . This parallel construction is reflected in Monteverdi’s setting (figure 4a and figure 4b).

4.2 We may remember at this point that the opening scene of Rinuccini’s L’Euridice also features deictics in prominent places. Howard Mayer Brown noticed that both Peri and Caccini “isolate the two e voi’s at the beginning of the third and fifth lines for emphasis. But,” Brown continues, “Peri manages to isolate them without letting the impetus stop completely.”16 Monteverdi, I would add, goes a step further than Peri and Caccini. In L’Orfeo, as we now shall see, he even modifies the libretto to add his own deictics. Furthermore, in his later operas he finds different ways to highlight them (and always for specific dramatic purposes), for example by repeating them or by changing meter at their appearance.17 In the final part of this paper I would like to examine three instances in which Monteverdi modifies Striggio’s libretto for L’Orfeo in order to emphasize deixis.

4.3 In Act I, immediately after the choir’s “Vieni Imeneo,” Ninfa’s lines appear in the libretto as in text 8 and figure 5. But in the score (figure 6) Monteverdi changes the libretto’s vostro Orfeo (line 5) to nostro Orfeo. This could be mistaken for a misprint, but the composer’s intention is highlighted by the second modification he makes to Striggio’s text. The last line of Ninfa’s stanza becomes in Monteverdi’s setting “Sia il vostro canto al nostro suon concorde” (be your singing in concord with our sound). The result of this change is that the opposition between vostro and nostro is much stronger in Monteverdi’s version. In Striggio’s line, the accents would fall on:

            col vòstro suòn nostr’àrmonìa s’accòrde;

whereas Monteverdi’s version changes them into:

            Sia’l vòstro cànto al nòstro suòn concòrde.

Thus the composer, by metrically accenting both deictics (vostro and nostro), is now able to build a musical parallelism between Sia’l vostro canto and al nostro suon. He could not have achieved the same result by setting Striggio’s original line. In this light, the change of vostro into nostro in line 5 makes sense as preparing the opposition emphasized in line 8 between those same two deictics: the Muses, Ninfa says, have their own cetre sonore (vostre cetre sonore in line 3, paralleled by vostro canto in line 8); however—Ninfa adds in line 5—Orfeo belongs to the pastoral world, to us: he is the nostro Orfeo (which is paralleled by the nostro suon concorde in line 8). Both the alteration of the libretto and the musical setting contribute to clarifying this situation.

4.4 Through the second modification of the libretto, Monteverdi emphasizes the “indicating” role of the deictic ecco (meaning “here is,” or “there is”). At the end of Act I, in the chorus, the composer adds the word Ecco immediately before the line Orfeo, di cui pur dianzi / furon cibo …, / oggi felice è tanto, and also omits several lines before the act’s close (see in figure 7 the text from the original libretto, on which I superimpose Monteverdi’s “corrections”; the score is in figure 8a, figure 8b, and figure 8c).18 The added word “Ecco” points at Orfeo, who is evidently now returning to the stage, right before he starts Act II with the words Ecco pur ch’a voi ritorno (in which not only Ecco, but also voi and ritorno are deictic expressions). Undoubtedly, Monteverdi’s modifications of the libretto are a stroke of genius from the theatrical point of view, since the result is that Orfeo’s re-entrance is more effectively prepared (actually, it is visually anticipated and may be emphasized through a gesture matching the word Ecco sung by the chorus). In this way, Monteverdi uses a deictic to accomplish a smoother transition between two acts.

4.5 The third and final modification of the libretto is the most radical one, and occurs in Act II, in Orfeo’s celebrated “Tu se’ morta.” (text 9; figure 9 [libretto] and figure10 [score]) Not only does the composer alter the libretto text but he further modifies it through extensive text repetition, as in no other place in the opera. The lines of Striggio’s text:

(Orfeo) Tu se' morta mia vita, ed io respiro?
tu se', tu se' pur ita
per mai più non tornare, ed io rimango

become in Monteverdi’s version:

Tu se' morta [se morta] mia vita ed io respiro
Tu se' da me partita [se da me partita]
Per mai più [mai più] non tornare ed io rimango

Striggio’s version includes three second-person deictics (tu) and three first-person dectics (mia and, twice, io). Monteverdi instead shifts the dramatic and psychological focus to Orfeo’s subjectivity by adding two instances of da me and eliminating one instance of tu.19 Furthermore, the repetition of se’ morta and mai più points to the fact that, for Orfeo, his identity is inextricably tied to a temporal dimension—one now tragically defined by Euridice’s death.

5. Conclusions

5.1 In this study I have made use of Bühler’s distinction between the symbolic and the indexical, between naming and pointing, and thus between the two meanings of verbal language that opera composers reflect in their settings, the descriptive and the deictic. In operatic music, unlike madrigals and cantatas, it is insufficient for the composer to highlight only the first type of meaning. Madrigalisms or expressions of the emotional content of single words or sentences must be complemented by an emphasis on those words of the text which point to the dramatic situation—who is singing, when, and where—occurring at the moment in which the sung words are uttered. In L’Orfeo, Monteverdi freely modifies the libretto in order to underline these words, transforming them into “parole sceniche” (to use Verdi’s expression), so that they too enhance the total dramatic effect.20

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