Sounding Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry, and Art in Renaissance France 9781442628199

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry
2. Musical Rivalries
3. Musical Instruments, Governance, and Oratory
4. The Anatomy of the Lute
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

SOUNDING OBJECTS: MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, POETRY, AND ART IN RENAISSANCE FRANCE

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CARLA ZECHER

Sounding Objects Musical Instruments, Poetry, and Art in Renaissance France

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9014-0

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Zecher, Carla, 1959– Sounding objects : musical instruments, poetry and art in Renaissance France / Carla Zecher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-9014-1 1. Instrumental music – France – 16th century. literature. I. Title. ML270.2.Z425 2006

784.4’409031

2. Music and

C2006-905436-3

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). This book has received the Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention Award from the Newberry Library. The award supports the publication of outstanding works of scholarship that cover European civilization before 1700 in the areas of music, theatre, French or Italian literature, or cultural studies. It is made to commemorate the career of Howard Mayer Brown.

Contents

List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix

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1 Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 24 2 Musical Rivalries 57 3 Musical Instruments, Governance, and Oratory 94 4 The Anatomy of the Lute Epilogue

162

Notes 169 Bibliography 213 Index

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List of Figures

I.1 Pierre Woeiriot, Portrait of Georgette de Montenay 6 I.2 Étienne Delaune, Music 10 I.3 Girolamo de Virchi, Cittern from Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol 17 I.4 Girolamo de Virchi, Cittern from Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, detail 17 I.5 German Regal-bible, open 18 I.6 German Regal-bible, closed 18 I.7 Baptista Bressano, Pochette, front 19 I.8 Baptista Bressano, Pochette, back 19 I.9 Giovanni d’Andrea, Lira da braccio, front 21 I.10 Giovanni d’Andrea, Lira da braccio, back 21 1.1 Étienne Delaune, Physics 27 1.2 Italian Lyra-Cittern 28 1.3 Wendelin Tieffenbrucker, Harp-Cittern 28 1.4 Mercure Jollat, Woodcut for ‘Mutuum auxilium’ 31 1.5 Six-course lute woodcut 34 1.6 Four-course guitar woodcut 34 2.1 John Scottowe, Drawing of bagpiper 59 2.2 Master ‘ia,’ Woodcut for the myth of Apollo and Marsyas 61 2.3 Antonio Fantuzzi, Contest between Apollo and Marsyas 62 2.4 Antonio Fantuzzi, Apollo Overseeing the Flaying of Marsyas 67 2.5 Rosso Fiorentino (dit), Apollo Holding a Lyre 71 2.6 Giorgio Ghisi, Apollo and the Muses 79 2.7 Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio, Challenge of the Pierides 80 2.8 Anonymous, Woodcut for ‘Perversa judicia’ 86 2.9 Giorgio Ghisi, Apollo, Pan, and a Putto Blowing a Horn 91

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List of Figures

2.10 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8

Anonymous, Apollo and Marsyas 92 Pierre Eskrich, Woodcut for ‘Sur Amphion’ 98 Pierre Eskrich, Woodcut for ‘Sur la harpe d’Orpheus’ 99 Guiraud Agret, Woodcut for ‘Ainsi qu’un Luc’ 101 Mercure Jollat, Woodcut for ‘Foedera’ 103 Albrecht Dürer, ‘Portillon’ woodcut 104 Guiraud Agret, Woodcut for ‘C’est bien en vain’ 106 Pierre Eskrich, Woodcut for ‘La muse Dorique’ 107 Hans Holbein the Younger, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (The Ambassadors) 110 Hans Holbein the Younger, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (The Ambassadors), detail 111 Mercure Jollat, Woodcut for ‘La Musicque’ 114 Pierre Woeiriot, Engraving for ‘Cane’ 116 Pierre Eskrich, Woodcut for ‘Les Sirenes’ 119 Anonymous, Woodcut for ‘Quand l’oyseleur’ 122 Anonymous, Woodcut for ‘Adulator’ 123 Guiraud Agret, Woodcut for ‘Bien peut danser’ 126 Anonymous, Woodcut for ‘Amorum conversio ad studia’ 127 Anonymous, The Prodigal Son at the Whores’ 141 Master of the Female Half-Lengths, Saint Mary Magdalen (?) Playing the Lute or The Lute Player 142 Orazio Gentileschi, The Lute Player 144 Artemisia Gentileschi, Saint Cecilia 147 Dirck van Baburen, The Procuress 148 Agnolo Bronzino, Young Man with a Lute 155 Caravaggio, The Musicians 156 Gerrit van Honthorst, Supper Party 157

3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

The Invention of the Lay Reader in Text and Image

ix

Acknowledgments

Many colleagues provided generous assistance during the preparation of this book by reading and commenting on sections, sharing their notes from the archives, introducing me to works of art, suggesting sources, supplying linguistic expertise, or asking perspicacious questions that pointed me in more fruitful directions. I am grateful to all of them: Sara Austin, Jeanice Brooks, Roberto Campo, Heather Dubrow, Ross Duffin, Richard Freedman, Paul Gehl, Michael Giordano, Virginia Krause, Patrick Macey, Stephen Murphy, Jeff Persels, Marian Rothstein, Harriet Stone, the late Marcel Tetel, Laurier Turgeon, Philippe Vendrix, and Cathy Yandell. I am especially indebted to George Hoffmann, who read an early draft of the entire manuscript. If I could add a historiated initial at each point in this book that bears traces of George’s keen thinking, the volume would be visually rich indeed. Numerous Newberry Library fellows and scholars-in-residence also offered counsel during the research and writing process, and my inability, due to space constraints, to name them all here should not be construed as signifying a lack of gratitude. Staff in the Département des Arts Graphiques at the Louvre, in the Département des Estampes at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and at the Institut de Recherche sur le Patrimoine Musical en France helped me to locate drawings and engravings. The two anonymous readers for the University of Toronto Press made helpful remarks on structure, and Jim Leahy and Lily Gershenson dealt most ably with the intricacies of copy-editing and proofreading. Coe College provided support for this project in the form of two Faculty Development Grants, a Perrine Faculty Fellowship, and a sixmonth sabbatical leave. The costs of photographs and permissions were

x Acknowledgments

underwritten by a Newberry Library Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention Award. This award ‘supports the publication of outstanding works of scholarship that cover European civilization before 1700 in the areas of music, theater, French or Italian literature, or cultural studies. It is made to commemorate the career of Howard Mayer Brown.’ Chapter 1 substantially emends and expands an essay first published as ‘Ronsard’s Guitar: A Sixteenth-Century Heir to the Horatian Lyre,’ in the International Journal of the Classical Tradition 4, no. 4 (spring 1998): 532–54. A preliminary version of chapter 3 appeared as ‘Musical Instruments and Public Life in Mid Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Books,’ in Poetry and Music in the French Renaissance: Proceedings of the Sixth Cambridge French Renaissance Colloquium, 5–7 July 1999, ed. Jeanice Brooks, Philip Ford, and Gillian Jondorf (Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 2001), 111–39. Chapter 4 is an elaboration of ‘The Gendering of the Lute in Sixteenth-Century French Love Poetry,’ Renaissance Quarterly 53, no. 3 (autumn 2000): 792–820. I dedicate this book to the memory of my grandparents, Elsa and George, and Raymond and Katherine.

SOUNDING OBJECTS: MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, POETRY, AND ART IN RENAISSANCE FRANCE

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Introduction

Une lyrette je façonne, Qui de gaité tou-jours resonne. Jean Vauquelin de La Fresnaye, Foresteries

In French Renaissance poetry musical instruments operate self-reflexively, as metaphors for writing. The musician’s bow functions like the poet’s quill, and instruments are apt stand-ins for poetic styles and genres: the lute for amatory verse, the flute for pastoral, the trumpet for epic. As readers untutored in the daily sights and sounds of sixteenthcentury music making, we easily forget that the efficacy of musical instruments as poetic images in this period derived from their physical characteristics, their acoustic properties, and the uses that players made of them, as well as from literary custom. Poets’ allusions to these material objects express the mechanics of musical production and the exigencies of social convention along with the imagination. Contrary to what one might assume, recalling the material and social roots of musical imagery does not divest it of its innovative and belletristic elements. Rather, the process of historical recontextualization allows us to uncover ways in which poets not only depicted the world of musical practice but also appropriated it on behalf of their own art, using musical instruments figuratively to establish their literary identities, whether individual or collective. French poets engaged with musical instruments as indicators of social status and tools of their trade.1 In his ‘Blason de l’estude’ (1539) the bookseller Gilles Corrozet mentions the lute and clavichord as common accessories of the sixteenth-century gentleman’s study.2 These instru-

4

Sounding Objects

ments are well suited to the musical needs of amateurs, for one can produce acceptable tones on them without a highly skilled touch.3 According to the court poet Pierre de Ronsard, a lute, ‘faithful companion of verses,’ had appeared alongside piles of open books on the table of one of his fellow students at the Collège de Coqueret in the late 1540s.4 The Poitiers writer Catherine Des Roches, renowned for the humanist salon she hosted with her mother, likewise juxtaposes an ‘ivory lute’ with open books in her ‘Chanson de la Musique’ (1578).5 Although an ivory lute must be fictive, the instrument’s link with literary pursuits clearly is not. The 1577 postmortem inventory for the household of Rémy Belleau, one of Ronsard’s associates, lists a lute and cittern among the furnishings of his study, both without cases, which suggests that Belleau did not carry them about like a minstrel but used them to sound out his verses when writing – a practice recommended by Ronsard in his treatise on the art of poetry.6 Belleau did not write any major poems about musical instruments, but in verses that celebrate the oyster, a famously speechless creature, he pairs huitre with cistre. Perhaps the sight of the cittern on his writing table inspired this jest.7 Whereas in the sixteenth century a poet was most likely to own and play plucked-string instruments, by the early seventeenth century bowed strings had also gained currency. The Huguenot poet Agrippa d’Aubigné, at the time of his death in 1630, owned a consort of bowed strings for domestic music making: ‘Une grande viole basse avec son archet, puis trois autres violes et un violon; de quoi donner des concerts de musique de chambre et accompagner des chansons.’8 Musical instruments provided a way for women poets to claim a writerly standing comparable to gentlemen’s. The engraved portrait of Georgette de Montenay, which is bound into some copies of her Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes, depicts Montenay at her table, quill in hand, with a lute and open music book to her left, and an inkwell and second music book to her right (figure I.1). The engraver, the French goldsmith Pierre Woeiriot, has placed the lute in an improbable facedown position so as to display the instrument’s distinctive bowl and allow us to see that on the underside of its pegbox is marked the date of first printing of the book, 1567.9 This composition is unusual in emphasizing Montenay’s identity as a craftswoman, showing her from the waist up, surrounded by the accoutrements of her writing. The more typical author portrait of the day, derivative of the medallion tradition, presents an isolated head or bust. More specifically, the atypical style of the Montenay portrait helps to differentiate her devotional emblem book

Introduction

5

from the amatory poetry collection of the Lyonnese poet Louise Labé, of whom Woeiriot also engraved a portrait.10 Whereas in the Labé portrait (which is a bust) the poet looks boldly out at the viewer, Montenay gazes pensively off to the side. What is more, the huitain printed below the Montenay portrait may be read as a Christian response to the several sonnets in Labé’s Euvres (1555) that feature the lute – invariably in connection with expressions of female desire. The Montenay verses conflate musical and poetic composition as activities that both entail use of the hand, for the purpose of glorifying God: Tout d’un acord instrumens, livres, doigtz Je chanteray de mon Dieu l’excelence.11

The phrase that the poet has already inscribed on the sheet of paper in front of her, ‘Ô plume en la main non vaine,’ reappears as the fifth verse of the huitain, while the motto that forms the last verse, ‘Gage d’or tot ne te meine,’ is an anagram of her name (‘Georgette de Montenai’).12 Montenay belonged to the entourage of Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, to whom she dedicated her book, and as part of her courtly education probably did learn to play the lute. Nevertheless, the inclusion of the lute in her portrait serves more to confirm her status as a studious writer than as a musician, for Montenay takes little interest in music otherwise. A few trumpets appear in her one hundred emblems, but no lutes. It is striking that French Renaissance poets so often compare their own art to musical instruments (or the playing of them), considering that the crafts of writing music and singing it afford more obvious parallels. In his pioneering study of the idea of music in Ronsard’s poetry, Brian Jeffery remarks that of the many aspects of musical culture this poet could have stressed, it was musical instruments that took pride of place for him: ‘[Ronsard] makes no direct references to singing his own poetry ... none to speaking it; only some few to writing it with a pen; but an almost infinite number to playing his poetry on an instrument.’13 The verses accompanying the Montenay portrait elucidate this paradox through their focus on the activity of the hand and fingers. Speaking and singing create sound but do not require use of the hand. One writes music with the hand, but written scores do not of themselves speak. To play a musical instrument, however, involves the work of the hand and produces sound. That musical instruments could represent lyric production more ably even than the speaking or singing voice corroborates

6

Sounding Objects

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I.1 Pierre Woeiriot (French, 1532–99), Engraved portrait of Georgette de Montenay, 1567. In Georgette de Montenay, Livre d’armoiries ... (Frankfurt, 1619), p. 9. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Introduction

7

Bruce Smith’s observation that ‘to understand voicing and listening in early modern culture we have to keep our sight much more focused than we are accustomed to on the material realities of metal, wood, air, and the members of the human body.’14 Musical instruments are containers for sound, and as such they offer poets a figurative means of making language corporeal, of embodying the poetic voice. When likened to a musical instrument, a poem becomes a thing. It acquires surfaces and takes on volume. Its physical characteristics may then be detailed: its size and shape, the materials of which it is made, how it is decorated, and how the player holds it and draws sound from it. Musical instruments possess a voice, albeit one that is mechanically produced rather than human. In the realm of poetic production the distinction between orality and print is comparable to that between the human voice and the voice of an instrument, since the fixing of language in print involves the mediating action of an entity distinct from language’s site of origin in the human body. The move from voice to print, in Smith’s words, ‘is a move, by stages, outside the speaker’s body, toward another body, toward an object that does not need the speaker to make sense.’15 The action of making music with instruments initiates a similar trajectory toward independence, except that in order to ‘speak,’ these objects must maintain physical contact with originating human bodies, effectively serving as appendages of them – whereas print severs that relationship, requiring only a receiving body and rendering the presence of the originating one unnecessary. Yet as Smith observes, in the Renaissance, even print, as an artificial body, never quite gained the independence it has for us today: ‘In hindsight, it is easy for us to talk about the “triumph” of printing in early modern Europe. What we are apt to miss is the resistance of voice to the new medium.’16 When writing about musical instruments, sixteenth-century poets could keep both ends of the voice-to-print continuum in view, locating instruments – and thereby their own art – now closer to voice, now print, according to the shifting measures of interdependence, dialogue, and resistance that characterized poets’ interaction with these objects. As material objects particularly suited to anthropomorphization, musical instruments have lives of their own. Poets devise biographical and autobiographical narratives for them, tracing their paths as they come into being, circulate among individuals, and undergo transformations. When permitted to speak, even a very modest instrument such as the lute featured in a sizain by the singer-lutenist Mellin de Saint-Gelais, may express human-like aspirations to glory:

8

Sounding Objects Pour un luth bien petit je suis, Mais si le coeur vaincre je puis De la maistresse de mon maistre, Aussi grand je penseray estre Entre tant de lutz que nous sommes Qu’un Allexandre entre les hommes.17

The music making (or versifying) of Saint-Gelais’s lute serves personal amatory purposes, but instruments may also function as ‘public commodities,’ that is, as history objects, implicated in broad founding narratives.18 Ronsard’s instrument collection, dedicated to the advancement of French as a venerable literary language, includes one lyre supposedly procured in ancient Greece and another acquired as a gift from a prominent patron. Alternatively, musical instruments may be ‘biographical objects’: domestic possessions that are personally meaningful. As such, instruments liaise in more intimate ways for the poets under whose care they fall, serving as foils for self-definition, anchors for selfhistoricization, and even as surrogate selves.19 In verses by the poet-cleric Pontus de Tyard, a male subject passes a lute to his lady and asks the instrument to ascertain, as it rests against her bosom, whether she is thinking of him. Above all, it was the democratization of instrumental practices in the Renaissance, especially those dependent on literacy, that empowered musical instruments to serve as biographical objects for French poets. In the late fifteenth century, under the influence of humanist ideas about music’s centrality to the project of perfecting one’s character and manners, music making with instruments (formerly the province of professionals) became a means of artistic self-expression – an element of personal culture – for the upper classes. As Reinhard Strohm describes it, ‘although time-honored authorities of music theory (Boethius included) were accepted, for the young nobleman or noblewoman it was best to have as much theory as necessary and as much practice as possible.’20 We find an early implementation of this new philosophy of music education documented in records from the Este court, where the marquis Niccolò III hired a lutenist in the 1430s to teach his son Leonello lute playing.21 Another Este, the famed Isabella, who was marchesa of Mantua from 1490 to 1539, could read music and sing and is known to have studied keyboard instruments, plucked-string instruments, and bowed-string instruments.22 Pictorial evidence from this period, in different media, corroborates this increasing amateur engage-

Introduction

9

ment with instruments. A depiction of a lady playing a lira da braccio appears in the centre of an earthenware plate from Faenza, dated circa 1480.23 After the turn of the century, we begin to find the domestic use of musical instruments represented in Flemish paintings such as the series of portraits of three women musicians by the Master of the Female Half-Lengths (or his workshop), from the 1520s, in which a singer, lutenist, and flutist perform a song from a music book open on the table before them.24 A major shift in musical style that took place in Europe around 1500 further encouraged the de-professionalization of instrumental performance. Although it originated in vocal music, this shift – which consisted of an increasing equalization of voice parts in polyphonic repertories – quickly produced changes in instrument making and instrumental practice too.25 Mid-fifteenth-century vocal music was relatively stratified, with each part playing a specific role in the musical texture (and these parts could of course be doubled or assumed by instruments). The top voice, the superius, was melodic. The second, the countertenor, provided support, filling in the harmony with skips. The tenor, the lowest part, functioned in counterpoint to the superius. Therefore it is often possible to remove the middle voice part from this music and the outer two voices still make sense on their own, as a duo. In the late fifteenth century, however, the voices became similar in melodic importance, resulting in a more homogeneous texture and making it harder to extract one voice without leaving an audible gap. By 1500 much polyphonic music had become imitative or homophonic, and true bass parts were beginning to appear.26 This encouraged the addition of more bass strings to the lute and also the development of consorts of instruments, so that the whole range of sound in a particular piece could be handled by one instrumental family, such as a consort of flutes or consort of viols.27 We see a consort of four Muses playing viols represented in the lower left foreground of Étienne Delaune’s allegorical drawing on music, from the third quarter of the sixteenth century (figure I.2).28 A fifth Muse accompanies them on the spinet. Behind this group, the remaining four Muses form a mixed consort of harp, transverse flute, lute, and cornetto.29 Poets do not write of participation in consorts (although, as the d’Aubigné inventory indicates, this does not necessarily mean they never played in them), for they wished to present themselves symbolically as soloists: those who stand out from the ranks of allegorical figures or common minstrels and who can take musical liberties that a player in a

10 Sounding Objects

Image Not Available

I.2 Étienne Delaune (French, c. 1519–83), Music, third quarter of 16th century. Drawing, 19.5 28.3 cm (pen and ink and brown wash). Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des dessins, RF 743. Photo Credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, New York.

Introduction

11

consort cannot.30 Nonetheless, a soloist could perform the same polyphonic repertory as an ensemble, either by means of self-accompaniment (singing one part and playing the others on an instrument) or by playing an entire vocal work as a solo instrumental piece.31 These new solo performance practices required special scores. In the sixteenth century, vocal music was printed in mensural notation (that is, employing a staff) and most often in part-books, intended for groups of singers. The four-voice chansonniers issued by the royal printer Pierre Attaingnant in Paris in the 1530s and 1540s are typically printed with pairs of voices on facing pages of each of two part-books, a design that lends itself to use at a household table, with superius and tenor facing altus and bassus.32 In Delaune’s drawing on music, four male singers, representing the four ages of man, gather around a table on the right, although in this instance, each singer has his own part-book, rather than sharing one. A solo organist or lutenist, however, especially an amateur, could not easily play a piece from part-books.33 The solution was tablatures: chartlike notations that adapted or ‘intabulated’ polyphonic repertories for keyboards and plucked-string instruments.34 Printed collections of intabulations especially targeted the new market of amateur players, many of whom may have been able to read tablature but not mensural notation, since mastery of the former does not require study of clefs, accidentals, and musica ficta (unwritten accidentals).35 As Kate van Orden observes, ‘lute tablature made learning to read music relatively easy, for it showed the fingerings directly on a graphic representation of the instrument’s neck, whereas students of other instruments such as the viol had to “translate” staff notation into fingerings on their own.’36 If we turn again to Delaune’s drawing, we see that the Muses do not play from books (presumably their musical inspiration derives from innate sources rather than external ones) but that scores and musical notation are certainly part of the composition’s furnishings. Two open scores lie on the ground under the spinet, and a third appears together with an assortment of wind instruments in the right foreground. Musical notation features decoratively in the space between the base of the spinet and the elaborate legs of the table on which the instrument sits. Additionally, in the cartouche centred at the top of the composition a female figure, quill in hand, writes on a large sheet of music (which is even more prominent than the lyre that rests at her elbow), while the putto located at the top left of the image’s frame holds up musical notes like a flag. If we were to assess the overall importance of music making with

12 Sounding Objects

instruments in Renaissance France (or Europe at large) solely on the basis of the amount of instrumental music that was available in written form, it would be tempting to conclude in the first place that instrumental practice was insignificant, and in the second that no one played anything but keyboards and plucked strings. With the exception of a few organ manuscripts, no specific source of instrumental music survives from before 1500 (instrumental music from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is mostly monophonic dances, notated like vocal music, and not specific to any instrument). Even for the sixteenth century, manuscript sources of instrumental music are scarce. Moreover, in comparison with the production of vocal music, the printed anthologies of pieces for instruments constitute a very limited output. Between 1500 and 1600 only one volume of instrumental music was printed for every twenty volumes of vocal music, and nearly all of this repertory is for the lute, cittern, and guitar. Attaingnant inaugurated the printing of lute music in France with two collections of pieces in 1529–30, and of keyboard music in 1531, when he issued five books for organ, spinet, or clavichord.37 After this initial run of keyboard books, no more were printed in France until the seventeenth century, although the later sixteenth-century printers (Jacques Moderne, Nicolas Du Chemin, and the team of Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard) continued to issue books for plucked strings.38 We gain a more accurate understanding of the scope of instrumental practice in the sixteenth century if we take into account three additional points of information. First, it is important to remember that at this time music literacy was more common among amateurs than minstrels. Music masters typically relied on the ear instead of scores, teaching the tunes and improvisation techniques of the day to their apprentices by rote, so that many instrumental repertories were never written down.39 Minstrels’ circumvention of music literacy in order to preserve trade secrets especially helps to explain why so little dance music survives from this period.40 Second, with regard to the books of instrumental music that do exist, there is evidence that more copies of these were printed and sold than of vocal books, which indicates that although the instrumental repertory was smaller, it was reaching a wider public than just the court, which was the primary consumer of printed vocal music.41 In other words, the instrumental repertory was more democratized. Third, literate players of instruments actually had the entire vocal repertory at their disposal, at least insofar as they possessed the academic training that enabled them to intabulate a vocal piece for the lute or guitar, or to

Introduction

13

follow a line of mensural notation. It appears that no genre was off limits in this regard. The sixteenth-century printed books of music for lute include examples of every vocal genre known at the time.42 Moreover, a line of mensural notation could easily be played on a flute or cornetto, which are not represented at all in the written repertory for instruments. Printers clearly saw the marketing advantage to be gained from abandoning scholarly distinctions between vocal and instrumental repertories. As Howard Brown remarks, ‘many sixteenth-century books of music are described on their title pages as “apt for voices or viols” (or some other similar sentiment).’43 One transnational example of this practice is a volume of pieces first issued in Venice in 1540, Musica nova accommodata per cantar et sonar sopra organi; et altri strumenti ..., which Moderne reprinted (with additions) in Lyons a few years later, listing more precisely in his title the instruments that might be employed: Musicque de joye. Appropriée tant à la voix humaine, que pour apprendre a sonner espinetes, violons, et fleustes.44 Due to the escalation of amateur instrumental practice, the craft of instrument making flourished in Renaissance Europe. Surviving instruments sometimes bear a maker’s stamp, a sign of the improving status and recognition accorded to skilled instrument makers. Typically they used their initials, name, or a trademark, burning it into the wood or inscribing it on a label glued inside the soundbox, visible through the rosette.45 The luthier Gaspard Duiffoproucart (Tieffenbrucker), active in Lyons, was important enough to have his portrait engraved by Woeiriot in 1562.46 Customers could purchase completed instruments at the makers’ shops and at street markets and city fairs, or they could place individual orders, sometimes with the details of the transaction spelled out in notarial contracts. Inventories for the shops of master instrument makers cite the types and numbers of instruments and the materials for construction that were stocked, as well as the commercial value of such instruments as lutes, violins, and viols.47 Whereas the master makers marketed their own wares, rudimentary unsigned instruments such as fipple flutes and reed pipes were sold by mercers. The postmortem inventory drawn up in 1581 for the shop of the Parisian mercer Boniface Marquis lists among the merchandise for sale fifes and whistles, reed pipes, flutes for tuning, and shepherd’s flutes, along with other small household items such as spoons, rosaries, candle holders, and chess pieces.48 For the moderately well-to-do, instruments were affordable. François Lesure and Jean-Michel Vaccaro have calculated that in the 1550s the

14 Sounding Objects

price of a wooden sideboard approximately 1.5 meters long, forty sous tournois, was comparable to the price of two citterns or lutes, or a set of five cornetti of different lengths. Twenty sous tournois – a little less than the twenty-five needed to acquire a copy of Robert Estienne’s 1549 French-Latin dictionary – would pay for a violin with a case, or a lute and case, or a clavichord, or a meter-long oak chest.49 Competition surely helped to keep prices down. Frank Dobbins has identified at least seventeen luthiers active in Lyons in the second half of the sixteenth century.50 The city’s twenty-one professional players of stringed instruments could not alone have sustained the activity of these makers. The statistics point to a burgeoning amateur market and doubtless to a wider market than Lyons itself.51 Amateurs learned to play instruments from instruction books (either in manuscript or printed form) and from private teachers. Richard Freedman remarks that by the 1550s, the legacy of Attaingnant’s publications of vocal music had provoked sufficient demand to justify the printing of music primers in France, through which ‘novice musicians could gain a basic understanding of the notation of rhythm, the tone systems of Renaissance polyphony, the rudiments of solfege, and even beginning composition.’52 Instrumental guides were a logical companion to these more general treatises, imparting techniques for playing plucked-string instruments and teaching how to read tablature.53 In dedicating one of his lute methods to the Countess of Retz, the lutenistprinter Le Roy stresses the book’s utility for amateur self-instruction: ‘Now have I brought to light and publick knowledge this Musicall methode for the Lute to be the more easily lerned by everi one by himself, without any teacher.’54 Well-to-do families also employed musicians to teach them to play instruments. In 1573 Pierre Marchant, an organist and student at the University of Paris, filed a complaint, which was recorded by a Paris notary, concerning his remuneration for lessons on the spinet given to the wife and children of a quidam (unnamed individual) during a period of six years. Marchant’s deposition elaborates the details of a quarrel that had developed over money he claimed to be owed and some personal belongings – clothing, musical instruments, and other possessions – which he wanted to retrieve from the quidam’s house, but which the family insisted he had not left there.55 This document confirms the growing importance of music making with instruments as a pastime engaged in by women and children. It attests to the presence of a music master in a private household and suggests he may even have lodged

Introduction

15

there, perhaps to help finance his studies at the university. Marchant apparently owned more than one musical instrument, and the quidam probably owned a spinet for the use of his wife and children. Notarial records also confirm the ownership of lutes by members of the middle and upper classes, which indicates that the images of public officials holding lutes found in sixteenth-century emblem books may be considered to reflect social reality while still fulfilling metaphoric functions.56 Musical instruments – along with arms, the other primary vehicle of aristocratic accomplishment – became a focus of collecting in this period.57 Some collectors sought out instruments exclusively of one category or type. The learned doctor Rasse des Neux, the son of one of François I’s surgeons, owned fifteen stringed instruments in about 1587: seven guitars, one cittern, one viol, and six lutes.58 But a collection might also house a range of exotic specimens. The inventories of possessions drawn up for the two houses owned by the Countess of Retz, following her death in 1603, list unique mechanical instruments and others decorated with precious metals.59 Several decades later, Pierre Trichet, a lawyer in Bordeaux, set about accumulating an especially varied collection of instruments, many of which he dismantled in order to better examine them. He published a detailed inventory of his collection in 1631. It consisted of twenty-four instruments, including a small ivory flute, a two-rank portative organ, and a trumpet made of alpine wood still covered in bark.60 Trichet also composed a descriptive treatise in the 1630s, his Traité des instruments de musique, in which he provides practical information about the construction and uses of different instruments and describes some technological marvels. He had read that a machine existed in Madrid that could play the lute, and he had heard of a statue attached to a hydraulic organ, whose eyes rolled and whose hands moved on the keyboard, which had been exhibited in Bordeaux in 1525. He writes as well of a lutenist who attached three lutes together so as to play them all at once, of lutenists capable of playing the instrument behind their backs, and of a spinet player with no arms who could work the keys with his toes.61 Although examples of mechanical ingenuity and physical dexterity particularly impressed Trichet, the beautiful, the ornate, and even the grotesque were also appreciated in Renaissance instrument making (at which the Germans and Italians excelled). Giorgio Vasari relates in his biography of Leonardo da Vinci that the artist owned a lira da braccio in the shape of a horse’s skull, an instrument da Vinci had constructed himself, largely of silver. In assessing the allegorical implications of

16 Sounding Objects

Vasari’s account, Emanuel Winternitz cites the importance of the fantastic as a fundamental element in the arts of this period, notably the practice of using human and animal skulls and bones as subjects of aesthetic appreciation. With regard to organology, he evokes the inventive freedom and individuality of Italian master instrument makers, who often were painters, sculptors, and musicians too. There are pictorial representations of the lira da braccio in which the instrument is played with its head down, and in this position its shape resembles a horse’s skull. The combination of silver and wood in instruments was not infrequent at this time, so that the pegs and pegbox (or at least its front) of Leonardo’s instrument could have been fashioned of silver.62 In a sense, however, whether or not this instrument existed is moot. It no more strains credulity than some that have survived. The sixteenth-century instruments extant today are not the ones that served for minstrelsy or for sounding out verses at the writing table. Indeed, it is likely that the instruments with the best sound quality were used until broken or worn out. If they survived, they were altered as time passed. Those that remain intact tend to be ornate objects destined more for display than for music making. Painted, sculpted, carved, or otherwise decorated, these instruments rendered sound ‘visible.’63 A cittern made by Girolamo de Virchis of Brescia, for Duke Ferdinand of Tyrol, bears lavish jewel-incrusted decorations, including at the top of the pegbox a dragon’s head from whose mouth emerges the bust of Lucretia stabbing herself with a dagger (figures I.3 and I.4).64 Sometimes makers disguised musical instruments to look like other objects, such as the German regal whose keyboard and two small bellows fold up into the form of a bible (figures I.5 and I.6).65 Another such instrument, from Augsburg, is a combination spinet and regal made in the form of game boards for checkers and chess.66 Fake instruments were also constructed for theatrical use: symbolic objects intended simply to be held by allegorical personages while the sound was generated by real instruments hidden behind the scene. A character in an aquatic procession might have carried an instrument such as the surviving Italian pochette carved to look like a fish, while someone offstage played a full-sized violin (figures I.7 and I.8).67 Or the pochette, which was playable, may even have participated in the music making. Sometimes instruments were decorated so as to resemble the human body. The lira da braccio lent itself particularly well to anthropomorphization, for a unique feature of the lira (as compared with the violin) is the indentation at the lower end of the case where the tail piece is

Introduction

17

Image Not Available

I.3 Cittern from Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, Girolamo de Virchi, Brescia, 1574. SAM Inv. No. 56, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien oder KHM, Vienna. I.4 Cittern from Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, detail, Girolamo de Virchi, Brescia, 1574. SAM Inv. No. 56, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien oder KHM, Vienna.

18 Sounding Objects

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I.5 Regal-bible, open, Anonymous, German, 16th century. E.305 (15057), Collection Musée de la Musique / cliché Albert Giordan. © Cité de la Musique.

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I.6 Regal-bible, closed, Anonymous, German, 16th century. E.305 (15058), Collection Musée de la Musique / cliché Albert Giordan. © Cité de la Musique.

Introduction

19

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I.7 Pochette, front, Baptista Bressano (Brescia?), late 16th or early 17th century. Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna. I.8 Pochette, back, Baptista Bressano (Brescia?), late 16th or early 17th century. Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna.

20 Sounding Objects

attached.68 The front of a grotesque lira by Giovanni d’Andrea from 1511 (the earliest of the few lire that survive) is carved to replicate a male torso (figure I.9). To complete this rough portrait, a male face appears on the front of the pegbox. The back of the instrument shows in even stronger relief the form of a female torso (figure I.10).69 The breasts and nipples are clearly indicated, and a female face is carved on the back of the pegbox. Finally, strangely, a large mustachioed male face overlaps the middle region of the female form. A small ivory plaque inserted into the back of the instrument quotes an ancient Greek saying, ‘Men have song as the physician of pain.’70 If we were to see this instrument in a painting of the period, we might suppose it to be a product of the artist’s imagination.71 In light of just these few examples, the fabulously decorated instruments featured in some of Ronsard’s poems gain plausibility as material objects while remaining literary inventions. It is difficult to comprehend how one could squeeze as many mythological scenes onto a lyre as those described in the laureate’s ode to the magistrate, Jean de Belot. But certainly the idea of decorating the lyre in the first place could have been encouraged by the sight of contemporary instruments. Just as musical instruments were common accessories in middle- and upper-class households, so too we find them scattered throughout sixteenth-century French poetry. Indeed, mentions of musical instruments became so much de rigueur in this literature, one hesitates to make too much of them. It seems that all poets of the time fancied themselves to be flute-playing shepherds or descendants of Orpheus. Yet if we set aside the many routine or strictly ornamental instances of musical imagery, there remains a corpus of poems in which musical instruments or instrumental practices shape the text in significant ways. Verses of this sort merit attention, partly for what they tell us about Renaissance music making, but even more for what they tell us about poetry making, and about the importance of musical culture to literary culture in this period. Musical instruments feature especially in the production of the three major poetic groups that flourished in mid-sixteenth-century France: the Pléiade (a coterie of poets connected with the royal court), the first generation of French emblematic writers (educators and humanists active in urban centres), and the École Lyonnaise (the loosely knit literary community of Lyons). Because poets did not themselves gather their musical instrument poems into formal collections, in this book I

Introduction

21

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I.9 Lira da braccio, front, Giovanni d’Andrea, Verona, 1511. SAM Inv. No. 89, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien oder KHM, Vienna. I.10 Lira da braccio, back, Giovanni d’Andrea, Verona, 1511. SAM Inv. No. 89, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien oder KHM, Vienna.

22 Sounding Objects

have done this for them, playing a role like that of a museum curator, selecting textual artifacts, clustering them in exhibit cases (subsections), and then placing the cases in galleries (chapters). The ‘galleries’ implement such classifying principles as authorship, genre, and locus of production, while the ‘cases’ adopt topical categories suggested by the artifacts themselves. Ancillary materials – works of pictorial art – are also incorporated into the displays to provide context. The book’s itinerary begins with a single writer, Ronsard, whose output set the stylistic standard against which other poets’ work came to be measured. In his early poetry, Ronsard utilized representations of plucked-string instruments (the lute, lyre, and guitar) as well as the trumpet to convey his aspirations for his own career and for French letters. Chapter 2 expands this field of inquiry to consider other poets with whom Ronsard directly engaged in his verses: first his Pléiade associate Joachim Du Bellay and then the Huguenots, who became his political adversaries during the Wars of Religion. Focusing on poetic imagery drawn from legendary contests of musical skill (Apollo and Marsyas, Apollo and Pan, the Muses and the Pierides), this chapter shows how the dichotomy between stringed instruments and wind instruments staged in these competitions provided a symbolic forum for enacting rivalries between poets and evaluating their literary styles. For related pictorial items, I turn to the Fontainebleau School, whose painted production – largely frescoes – was broadly disseminated in the second half of the sixteenth century via reproductive prints. This visual corpus illuminates and complicates the poets’ writing, often raising its stakes.72 Whereas chapters 1 and 2 are concerned with the poetry and art of patronage, centred at the royal court, chapter 3 looks to the juridical and educational milieux from which emerged the first European emblem books. In the cities of Paris, Lyons, and Toulouse, humanists, book illustrators, and printers collaborated in the creation of this new pedagogical literature, some of which was doubtless consumed at court, but much of which was particularly addressed to the middle classes. Music emblems often borrow imagery from classical literature but update it so as to provide ethical commentary pertinent to the concerns of emerging French civic culture. In some instances, emblematic writers worked from pre-existing images; in others, an illustrator provided images for verses that had already been composed. Chapter 4 narrows the scope of the ‘exhibition’ again, with a turn from the public arena into semi-private salon spaces, where we find

Introduction

23

musical instruments – especially the lute – circulating among small groups of individuals, travelling the pathways that articulate amatory relations. At the same time, however, the book’s scope broadens here to include women poets as well as men, and non-French pictorial sources. Although court poets wrote lute-poems as well, these texts were particularly a product of Lyonnese culture – in which, as it happens, we do not find a parallel school of art. A comparable visual genre would be portraiture, but in this regard sixteenth-century France offers few examples, apart from the paintings of royalty produced by Jean and François Clouet. Indeed, painting, on the whole, forms a ‘missing centre’ in the French Renaissance, neglected in favour of the plastic arts.73 To find pictorial works, therefore, whose imagery complements that of the French lute-poems, we must look to the production of Italian and Flemish masters of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The earliest of these works must have been familiar to French poets. We know that François I bought nine Flemish paintings from a dealer in Antwerp in 1529.74 The chronicler Pierre de Bourdeille de Brantôme, writing at the end of the century, tells us that Flemish pictures of women holding German flutes were brought to France to be set up before the fireplaces in inns and taverns.75 The early seventeenth-century production, while not known to the poets studied here, attests to the ubiquity of certain aspects of lute imagery in early modern European culture. I conclude with an epilogue that extends the book’s itinerary chronologically, by bringing the history of sixteenth-century musical instruments up to the present day, briefly tracing their journey from early modern cabinets of curiosities and other domestic spaces to large public museums. Whereas in the sixteenth century poetic texts looked to musical instruments for the materiality that eludes speech alone, today these artifacts – musical remains – rely on ‘texts,’ that is, museological narratives and acoustic technologies to bring them to life again. Thinking about the interpretive strategies implemented in museums provides a means of evaluating the characteristics and content of the Renaissance poetic instrumentarium.

24 Sounding Objects

1 Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry

Blame not my lute for he must sound Of this or that as liketh me. Sir Thomas Wyatt

The soundscape of sixteenth-century French poetry is largely an indoor one that resonates with the gentle strumming of the lute, lyre, and guitar. These plucked-string instruments (especially the lute and lyre) receive more substantive attention from poets than any others, including the trumpet and flute. We find entire poems addressed to the lute, lyre, and guitar, but not to winds of any kind, nor even to bowed strings such as the violin and viol. Given this emphasis on plucked strings, we might be surprised that the harp is not favoured either. But in Renaissance France this instrument never regained the status it enjoyed in the Middle Ages and continued to hold in sixteenth-century Spain, where it was the province of master virtuosi.1 French poets most often refer to the harp when invoking biblical imagery (David and the psalms), rather than in connection with musical practice or as a symbol for their own writing. As for the newest plucked-string instrument, the spinet, it was of only passing literary interest because it had no history. Notwithstanding poets’ predilection for plucked strings, in sixteenthcentury verse sometimes what matters most is not the precise identity of the instrument under consideration but simply the fact that it is a string rather than a wind. In a poem from the 1580s titled ‘Le Luth,’ the Parisian lawyer Claude Du Verdier explains that luth may serve as a catchall term for

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 25 Monté de chordes, soitquelconque autre instrument Monté de chordes, soit qu’a l’archet on le sonne, Soit qu’avecques les doigts on y pinse, ou fredonne.2

Like luth (or lut or luc), the word lyre (or lire) could also be generic, for it denoted at once the ancient lyre and a modern bowed string. When Pierre de Ronsard praises the singing of the three Ferrabosco brothers (Italian musicians employed by the Cardinal de Lorraine), comparing them with their three lyres to three Apollos, he is referring to both Apollo’s lyre and to the lira da braccio, the Italian instrument at which these musicians excelled (with its name shortened in French, to avoid the inelegance of ‘lire à bras’).3 The titles of some poems composed by Ronsard for Valois court festivities also reflect this ancient/modern doubling: ‘Stances à chanter sur la Lyre’ (1565), ‘Chant triomphal pour jouer sur la Lyre’ (1569), and ‘Stances prontement faites pour jouer sur la Lyre, un joueur repondant à l’autre’ (1569).4 The ancient lyre was certainly a desirable instrument to associate symbolically with music making at the French court. But these titles are instructions too, conveying the poet’s intention that the verses be sung to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument – most likely the lira da braccio, but also possibly an instrument of the viol family. In Valois court records the musician Jehan Forcade is identified in one document as a joueur de lire, in others as a joueur de violle.5 ‘Lyre’ also appears in a list of instruments and musical genres in Louise Labé’s prose Débat de Folie et d’Amour (Euvres, 1555): Tous les jours [les hommes] inventent nouveaus et divers instrumens de Luts, Lyres, Citres, Doucines, Violons, Espinettes, Flutes, Cornets: chantent tous le [sic] jours diverses chansons: et viendront à inventer madrigalles, sonnets, pavanes, passemeses, gaillardes.6

Here, lyre probably indicates the ancient lyre or the lira da braccio. But since Labé’s list ostensibly enumerates ‘new’ instruments and genres, and viole does not appear in it, it is also conceivable that in this instance lyre denotes the viol.7 Constrained by the exigencies of meter and rhyme, but assisted by the flexibility of the nomenclature, poets sometimes change the identity of an instrument within a poem, even at the risk of producing an anachronistic conflation of the classical and the contemporary. In his ‘Epitafe

26 Sounding Objects

d’Albert, joüeur de Luc du Roi’ (1554), Ronsard commemorates the recently deceased court lutenist Albert de Rippe for his skill at both the luc and the lyre, depending on whether the scansion requires one or two more syllables, and the harpe too, because it rhymes with écharpe.8 Likewise, in Ronsard’s ‘Chant pastoral sur les nopces de Monseigneur Charles duc de Lorraine, et Madame Claude fille II du Roy’ (1559), the mythological personage Amphion plays a Renaissance guiterre, to match pierre.9 Artists, too, sometimes juxtaposed the ancient with the modern in the interest of expressing comprehensiveness. In Étienne Delaune’s series of engravings on ‘Minerva, Wisdom, and the Principal Sciences’ (1567), the allegorical figure representing Physics plays a lyre, while a viol and lute rest at her feet (figure 1.1). Delaune exercises Mannerist licence in rendering the proportions of the three instruments, for the lute’s size is exaggerated in relation to the lyre and viol, perhaps reflecting its greater importance in Renaissance culture. Even instrument makers allowed themselves to indulge in flights of fancy that mixed the old and new. Included in the musical instrument collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna are two ingenious hybrids from this period: a lyra-cittern with a lyre-shaped body and a long, early modern fingerboard, and a harp-cittern with more than forty strings, some on the fingerboard, some off (figures 1.2 and 1.3).10 Yet while stringed instruments could be interchangeable and combinable, there were nonetheless circumstances in which poets elected to differentiate between them. Those writers who aspired to courtiership knew, from the guidelines furnished by exemplary interlocutors in Baldessare Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano (1528), that the ideal courtier should be able to play instruments and sing well at sight from notated music with a good sense of style.11 Skill at improvised singing or declamation, over an instrumental accompaniment, was also desirable: ‘cantare alla viola per recitare.’12 Castiglione may have intended viola to designate the viol, an instrument he himself liked to play, or he may have been using the term generically, like Du Verdier’s luth. When it comes to self-accompanied singing, bowed-string instruments are not as practical as the plucked strings, so that when aristocratic amateurs accompanied themselves, they were most likely to take up a lute, guitar, or cittern. If a separate instrumentalist was involved, a lira da braccio or viol would also have served quite well. Ronsard addressed three of his early odes to plucked-string instruments: ‘À son Luc,’ ‘À sa Lire,’ and ‘À sa Guiterre’ (Quatre premiers livres des Odes, 1550). With these odes, as well as two sequels, the ‘Elegie à

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 27

Image Not Available

1.1 Étienne Delaune (French, c. 1519–83), Physics, 1567. Engraving, 5.5 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

3.8

28 Sounding Objects

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1.2 Lyra-Cittern, Italian, 16th or 17th century. SAM Inv. No. 61, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien oder KHM, Vienna. 1.3 Harp-Cittern, Wendelin Tieffenbrucker, Padua, second half of 16th century. SAM Inv. No. 62, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien oder KHM, Vienna.

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 29

Cassandre’ (Bocage, 1554) and ‘À sa Lyre’ (Meslanges, 1554), this aspiring courtier sought to redefine what it meant to be a French poet by metaphorically associating his writing with these elite objects – with their cultural significance, their physical characteristics, and the quality of their sound. Ronsard intended the Odes collection, as a whole, to demonstrate to king and court the range of his verbal powers and to apprise them of his ambition to endow France with a renovated vernacular poetry. Within this promotional context, the stringed-instrument odes fulfilled a particular metapoetic function, which was to characterize the properties of Ronsard’s different poetic voices and ascribe aesthetic values to them. The musical instruments featured in these three odes, therefore, are not interchangeable; their identities matter. Unlike the many odes that Ronsard addressed to friends and patrons, the stringed-instrument odes are unique in that their addressees double as vehicles for the creation and performance of the poems themselves. When the poetic subject praises his guitar in verse, thanking it for its service, he is presumably at the same time using the instrument to accompany the singing of those verses, so that ultimately the addressee and the text (at least in its sonic manifestation) are one and the same. Using musical instrument imagery in this way allowed Ronsard to preserve poetry’s traditional link with song, while simultaneously claiming for his endeavours the tangibility and durability that elude the voice alone. As the speaker observes in ‘À son Luc,’ a musical instrument may reasonably be expected to outlive its player: mon luc tu t’attens Vivre çà bas en tout tens, Non de moi qui doi mourir.13

Hence, while the lute, lyre, and guitar, as objects, assist in the production of linguistic sound, as images they stand rather for poetry when it is fixed in print and for the promise of immortality offered by this technology’s reproductive capabilities. The Hierarchy of Strings To better understand why Ronsard chose the lute, lyre, and guitar for his odes, rather than such instruments as the violin and viol, it is helpful to look at what Renaissance treatises have to say about musical instruments. The author of an anonymous treatise printed in Poitiers in 1557, which

30 Sounding Objects

explains how to properly fret lutes and guitars (La maniere d’entoucher les Lucs et Guiternes), outlines a hierarchy of stringed instruments in which the hurdy-gurdy ranks lowest, the rebec and viol take the middle position, and the lute and guitar appear at the top: ‘Ainsi demeure la Viele pour les aveugles: le Rebec et Viole pour les menestriers: le Luc et Guiterne, pour les Musiciens, et mesmement le Luc, pour sa plus grande perfection.’14 This classification reflects the social standing of the types of players that the anonymous author (perhaps the poet-mathematician Jacques Peletier du Mans) identifies with these instruments, as well as the comparative rusticity of the instruments themselves.15 The woodcut designed by Mercure Jollat in the early 1530s for Andrea Alciato’s emblem on ‘Mutuum auxilium’ confirms the association of the hurdy-gurdy with blindmen. It depicts a blindman carrying a lame man, and the blindman has a hurdy-gurdy hanging at his side (figure 1.4).16 For his part, the German theorist Michael Praetorius (De organographia, 1618– 19) links the hurdy-gurdy to ‘peasants and traipsing old women.’17 Although Praetorius wrote in the early seventeenth century, he relied heavily on earlier sources, so that much of his commentary about musical instruments is descriptive of sixteenth-century attitudes and practices. The hurdy-gurdy (vielle à roue) is played by turning a crank, which draws a resined wheel across the strings. Different tones are produced by depressing keys which stop the strings at different points – all in all, a very mechanical way of producing musical sound and not one which poets like Ronsard cared to adopt as a metaphor for their own art, any more than they wished to affiliate themselves with this instrument’s class of players. Higher on the social ladder were the rebecs and violes: more refined instruments, played with bows. Although the rebec (a type of medieval fiddle) would soon be outmoded, replaced by the up-and-coming violin, in the mid-sixteenth century it could still be heard at the French court. François II employed a rebec player in his royal Chamber as late as 1560, probably for dance music.18 In contrast to the rebec’s declining popularity, the instrument mentioned by the ‘Poitiers’ author in tandem with it, the viol, was increasing in currency.19 This family of bowed-stringed instruments, played da gamba, became gentrified in the sixteenth century. In his 1556 treatise, Épitome musical, the Protestant musician Philibert Jambe de Fer makes a comparison between the viol and violin that indicates that amateur players had begun to adopt the viol, while the violin was still associated with minstrelsy:

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 31

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1.4 Mercure Jollat (French, fl. 1530–45), Woodcut. In Andrea Alciato, Les emblemes de Maistre Andre Alciat ... (Paris, 1540), p. 54. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

32 Sounding Objects Nous appellons violes c’elles desquelles les gentilz hommes, marchantz, et autres gens de vertuz passent leur temps ... L’autre sorte s’appelle violon et c’est celuy duquel lon use en dancerie communement ... Il se trouve peu de personnes qui en use, si non ceux qui en vivent, par leur labeur.20

Court records support this distinction, for they reveal that viol players joined the musicians of the king’s Chamber beginning in the reign of Henri II, whereas the royal violin players remained a roving band, with their wages paid now from one account, now another, until the reign of Charles IX, when they were attached to the personnel of the royal Stable.21 Jambe de Fer appears to be at odds with the Poitiers author. He assigns the viol to amateurs, whereas the anonymous writer links it to minstrelsy. But in light of the looseness of terms for bowed-string instruments that we have already noted, it is possible that by rebec et viole, the Poitiers author meant ‘rebec and violin.’22 It is also the case, however, that this author is primarily concerned with differentiating between bowed and plucked strings, whereas Jambe de Fer, more specifically, distinguishes between two types of bowed strings. Of the two writers, the anonymous one (perhaps himself a poet) better represents the attitude of midsixteenth-century poets, whose lack of attention to bowed strings suggests they still thought of this category of instrument as inappropriate for courtly amateurs. Ronsard names the violin (violon) just twice in his works, and the viol (viole) only once. In comparison, he mentions the lute by name 113 times, and the lyre 170 times (most often in contexts that clearly point to the ancient lyre).23 The statistics are similar for Joachim Du Bellay, who names the lute thirty-two times, the lyre sixtynine times, and the violin and viol not at all.24 The printer Maurice de La Porte, in his 1571 dictionary of Pléiade poetic language, explains that violon is ‘the name of a musical instrument,’ which suggests that the violin had so little captured the literary imagination, there simply wasn’t any more to say.25 The plucked strings, which the Poitiers author locates at the summit of his hierarchy, belonged to the category of ‘perfect’ instruments: those that can play chords and polyphony as well as a single melodic line (that is, the lute, guitar, cittern, harp, keyboards, and, to a lesser extent, the viol).26 Of these, the lute enjoyed a particular prestige. The theorist Marin Mersenne (Harmonie universelle, 1636) declared the lute to be, in France, ‘dans une telle perfection que l’on mesprise la plus grande partie des autres instrumens à chorde.’ He ranked it even above the

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 33

spinet, also a very popular domestic instrument, stating that ‘la commodité du Luth, sa bonne grace, et sa douceur luy ont donné l’avantage.’27 Praetorius identifies the lute as the ur-string: The lute is the first foundation, from which people move on later to the other stringed instruments – pandora, theorba, mandora, cittern, harp, as well as violin and viol. It is an easy matter to play any of these, and play them well, if an honest effort has been made to acquire some facility on the lute.28

The guitar does not appear in Praetorius’s list, perhaps omitted because of its similarity to the lute. There is no record of the employment of guitar players per se in the Valois households, because the court lutenists played both instruments. In the form most commonly represented in the pictorial arts and described in treatises, the Renaissance lute had eleven strings in six courses: five double courses plus the single chanterelle, the highest string (figure 1.5).29 The guitar of the period had seven strings in four courses: three double courses plus a chanterelle (figure 1.6).30 Both instruments had movable frets; hence their centrality to the Poitiers treatise, which aims to assist players in redressing inaccurate fretting. The author states that by teaching how to position the frets using mathematical measurements rather than trusting to the ear, he hopes to spare lutenists, whether expert or novice, the embarrassment of playing out of tune.31 Since the frets (made of gut, like the strings) were tied onto these instruments and therefore could be adjusted, the treatise would have been useful to performers as well as luthiers. Indeed, if the frets on a lute are correctly placed (and the strings properly tuned), this allows an amateur player considerable latitude with left-hand finger placement, without disturbing the harmonies.32 As well as being ‘perfect’ instruments, the lute and guitar benefited from the cachet of their supposed links to antiquity. Although the ancestor of the lute was the Arabian al ‘ûd, introduced into Europe in the Middle Ages, Renaissance writers believed the lute to be descended from the classical lyre.33 According to the genealogy devised by Du Verdier, the lute began as a three-stringed instrument in antiquity and then evolved through time into the thirteen-stringed instrument of the 1580s through the ministrations of legendary figures such as Mercury, Hyginus, and Terpander, each of whom added a string.34 Likewise, Renaissance theorists sought to discover classical roots for the guitar. Because it was a four-course instrument, the musician-printer Simon

34 Sounding Objects

Image Not Available

1.5 Six-course lute. Woodcut. In Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle ... (Paris, 1636), vol. 3, p. 89. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago. 1.6 Four-course guitar. Woodcut. In Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle ... (Paris, 1636), vol. 3, p. 95. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 35

Gorlier tried to relate the guitar to the Greek term ‘tetrachord,’ though in fact the instrument’s tuning bore no relation to the tetrachord’s fournote structure.35 The author of the Poitiers treatise indicates that he once tried to trace the guitar to ancient Greece and Italy but admits he had no success.36 Pierre Trichet reports that attempts were made to relate the guitar etymologically to the Latin Cithara and Hebrew Githtih, but he dismisses the beliefs about the classical origins of both the lute and guitar as false.37 In referring to players of lutes and guitars as Musiciens, the Poitiers author points to the growing virtuosity and literacy of players of the perfect instruments, for previously this appellation had applied only to musicians who composed polyphonic songs and sacred works and were proficient at reading and writing music. In the early sixteenth century a small number of lutenists and keyboard players began to distinguish themselves from the ordinary run of minstrels by securing salaried appointments with royal and noble families.38 As a domestic officer, a valued lutenist or organist had the luxury of engaging in full-time musical employment and perhaps even becoming a landholder, whereas it was common for a master in the corporation of minstrels to practise a second (often his principal) trade: tourneur de bois, tailleur d’habits, or maître épinglier.39 Lutenists were the first musicians to attain the rank of valet de chambre in François I’s household, which placed them on a par with such specialized professions as poet, goldsmith, tailor, and watchmaker.40 The lutenist Jean Paulle was named valet de chambre in 1520, and five years later the title was applied more widely to all of the royal lutenists and organists (at which time singers in the king’s employ received a general promotion as well).41 In financial terms, the designation valet de chambre meant higher wages and – more importantly – supplementary remuneration such as housing, meals, and gifts of horses. Lutenists could now mingle intimately and routinely with the king and his courtiers. François I employed two lutenist-valets in his Chamber: Hubert Spalter, who was Swiss, and Alberto da Rippa (‘Albert de Rippe’), a Mantuan. Henri II retained his father’s two virtuoso lutenists and added three more master players. This does not mean that all five lutenists were present at court at the same time, since they served in quarterly alternation. Still, no other instrument was as well represented in Henri’s Chamber. As for Spalter and Rippe, François I granted both of them letters of naturalization, thereby ensuring the inheritance of their descendants, which would otherwise have reverted to the crown. Spalter had entered

36 Sounding Objects

François I’s household as a young boy in 1516, just after the king’s accession to the throne, and then he rose through the ranks.42 Rippe, the more celebrated of the two, arrived at court in 1529 as a mature musician already dignified with an international reputation, and he rapidly accumulated benefices on a scale usually reserved for court composers.43 According to Ronsard, in his epitaph for Rippe, the lutenist’s skill was such that after his death his lute still sounded in his tomb, against his dry bones: apres sa mort son Luc mesmes enclôs Dedans sa tombe, encor sonne contre ses ôs.44

In at least one sense, this was literally true. After his death, Rippe’s pupil Guillaume de Morlaye issued eleven volumes of the virtuoso’s pieces, ‘recording’ his art for posterity.45 These two facets of musical life in mid-sixteenth-century France – the symbolic value assigned to the plucked strings and the emergence of virtuoso players at court – conspired to encourage Ronsard to portray himself as a player of the lute, lyre, and guitar in his odes. The fact that there is no historical evidence that this poet possessed any particular musical talent or skill is of little import. On the contrary, Ronsard’s lack of participation in public musical performance (apart from providing verses for composers to set) presented an advantage to his literary career and his goal of revolutionizing French poetry. This poet could use his considerable academic knowledge of the art to ‘play the musician’ in his poems, without actually being one, thereby differentiating himself from his primary rival at court, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, who was an accomplished singer-lutenist and a proponent of the native poetic tradition that Ronsard sought to supplant with an imported one.46 The Vernacular Lute As a descendant of the ancient lyre, as the premier instrument for selfaccompanied singing, and an instrument closely tied to print culture, the lute assumed a key symbolic role in the literary revolution launched by Ronsard and Du Bellay in the late 1540s, at the time when the Pléiade group was still calling itself ‘the Brigade.’ In fact, Ronsard chose to address one of his very first vernacular odes to the lute. This poem’s circumstances of production are poignant, for Ronsard drafted it in the early 1540s while convalescing from an illness that rendered him par-

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 37

tially deaf for the remainder of his life, so that his co-opting of the lute as a metaphor for writing also doubled as a farewell to an art with which he could no longer engage in quite the same way.47 When ‘À son Luc’ saw print in 1550, it was in a collection that aimed to implement the injunction issued by Du Bellay in his Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549) for French poets to tune their lutes to the sound of the ancient lyre – that is, to compose vernacular odes modelled after those of Pindar and Horace: ‘Chante moy ces odes incongnues encor’ de la Muse Francoyse, d’un luc, bien accordé au son de la lyre Greque et Romaine.’48 Du Bellay’s Deffence stood as a literary analogue to the 1539 royal ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, which had elevated French to a new importance in the realm by imposing its use, instead of Latin, in legal documents. If the vernacular was adequate to the needs of Gallic justice, it could certainly aspire to a heightened literary status too. In calling for the creation of odes ‘still unknown to the French Muse,’ Du Bellay was challenging the Parisian lawyer Thomas Sébillet, who had named SaintGelais the best contemporary writer of odes (by which Sébillet meant love poems) in his Art poétique françois (1548).49 In Du Bellay’s opinion, Saint-Gelais’s odes did not merit the name. Composed with a view to accompaniment on the lute or guitar, circulated (when at all) in manuscript rather than print, Saint-Gelais’s verse forms drew their inspiration from oral traditions.50 Du Bellay now wished to assign the name of ‘French ode’ exclusively to neoclassical forms. Contradictory though it may seem, the strategy adopted by Du Bellay and Ronsard for investing the national poetry with a classical lustre required the abandonment of Latin verse in favour of the imitation of it in the vernacular. While the resources were to be imported from antiquity, the final product had to be French. Hence, in the opening verses of Ronsard’s ‘À son Luc,’ the speaker admits to having previously tried his hand at writing Latin love poems but states that he is renouncing those earlier projects so as to devote himself instead to composition in his native tongue.51 He now authorizes his lute, originally associated with the pastoral haunts of his youth, to make its way to court and place its voice in the king’s service: Si autrefois sous l’ombre de Gâtine Avons joué quelque chanson Latine D’Amarille enamouré, Sus, maintenant Luc doré, Sus l’honneur mien, dont la vois delectable

38 Sounding Objects Sçait rejouir les Princes à leur table, Change ton stile, et me sois Sonnant un chant en François.52

Later, in the 1560 printing of this ode, Ronsard would conflate the lute even more explicitly with his vernacular voice, by emending the last two verses of this stanza to read Change ton stile, et me sois Maintenant un Lut François.

so that not just the poet’s ‘song’ is French, but the instrument itself.53 Finally, in the edition of 1567, he calls upon the lute to change not its ‘style,’ but rather its ‘form.’ Thus Ronsard’s revisions to the ode increasingly draw attention to the lute as a material object representative of a vernacular poetic voice. As well as effecting a conversion from Latin to French, the lute’s journey from country to court entails an elevation in genre, from the pastoral love song to the encomiastic ode. This rise in literary status, from a rustic form to a noble one, offsets what might otherwise be considered a descent (to the vernacular), demonstrating that this does not induce a decline in quality. To make this point, Ronsard recasts the terms for French lyric genres adopted by Sébillet, who used cantique to refer to vernacular translations of Hebrew or Latin psalms; chant lyrique or ode to refer to amatory songs intended to be accompanied on the lute or another instrument; and chanson for songs that were much like odes, but shorter and more popularizing.54 In the first stanza of ‘À son Luc,’ Ronsard uses chanson for Latin amatory poems and chant for Pindaric and Horatian odes in French, thereby eschewing any reference to indigenous forms. These linguistic scruples pertained, as it happens, more to theory than to practice, even within the Odes collection itself, for as Gilbert Gadoffre has remarked, a dozen or so of Ronsard’s odes are virtually indistinguishable formally and thematically from the chansons of his rival Saint-Gelais and his most illustrious predecessor Clément Marot. In fact, Ronsard would soon rehabilitate the term chanson: fully a third of the poems in his Nouvelle continuation des amours (1556) bear that title.55 By then some of Ronsard’s sonnets had been set to music, in which form they sounded just like chansons nouvelles or chansons parisiennes.56 While all of this may seem merely a question of semantics, the aesthetic and professional stakes were high. ‘À son Luc’ envisions for

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 39

France an ideal poet-lutenist who, as ‘minister’ or ‘interpreter’ of the gods, writes divinely inspired poetry.57 This player does not defile the strings of his lute with ‘chansons salles et ordes’ (the salacious elements of the native tradition) or taint his art with base servility, producing verse on command at the whims of princes and merchants.58 These lofty principles Ronsard would soon betray, as the realities of gentlemanly poverty began to impose themselves.59 By the time the ode to the lute saw print, Ronsard was openly lobbying for a royal commission or court appointment. In this respect, ‘À son Luc’ takes the national poetic campaign launched in Du Bellay’s Deffence and turns it into a personal quest for recognition – a bid to become Gallic Apollo.60 Apollo’s function at the banquet of the gods, as Ronsard recalls in another of his odes, was to unfurrow their brows (‘derider le front des Dieux’) with his beautiful music making.61 As an aspiring ‘olympian’ poet, Ronsard sought to cultivate the audience of humanist intellectuals and noblemen who gathered at the Valois table. Gadoffre has underscored the extent to which, during the reign of François I, the ‘table du Roi’ became a theatre in its own right, within the larger theatres of the court and the world. François I reportedly opened his table to many, provided they could hold their own in the clever debates over which he liked to preside. Henri II formalized his father’s custom, organizing competitive colloquia in which luminaries would debate a chosen topic, such as a diverting moral point or the merits of a particular book, painting, or statue. Ronsard’s Odes would become the centrepiece of one of these verbal jousts in 1553, when he was invited to defend his collection against the criticisms of Saint-Gelais, who resented Ronsard’s unabashed self-aggrandizement and Du Bellay’s censure of Saint-Gelais’s own more improvisatory art. In this instance the king attenuated the rivalry between the contestants by judging Saint-Gelais the master of elegance and facility, Ronsard superior in strength and erudition.62 When Ronsard brought his lute to the king’s table in 1550, it had already served to produce a chant en François: the ‘Hymne de France’ which he had composed to celebrate Henri II’s foray against the English at Boulogne the year before. To firmly anchor this hymn in the classical tradition, the poet invokes his lute in its opening verses in just the way that Pindar calls upon the lyre in his first Pythian, as being the golden legacy of Apollo and the Muses: Sus luc doré, des Muses le partaige, Et d’Apollon le commun heritaige,

40 Sounding Objects De qui la voix, d’accord melodieux, Chante le loz des hommes et des dieux. Sus l’honneur mien, il est temps que tu voises Donner plaisir aux oreilles Françoises, Rompant l’obscur du paresseux sejour, Pour te montrer aux rayons du beau jour.63

But whereas Pindar’s triumphal odes commemorated athletic victories, Ronsard’s vernacular imitations of them were intended to honour the victors in the types of contests or endeavours – military, diplomatic, social, and cultural – that were important to noble identity in his own time. As Isidore Silver has noted, ‘for poet-humanists as deeply committed as Ronsard and his colleagues were to the classical, especially Hellenic, reorientation of French literature, and who encountered the bitter opposition of the Court poets, it was most natural to conceive of the struggle in which they were engaged as a contest fully comparable, on the cultural rather than the athletic level, to those of the Great Games.’64 At stake was nothing less than the opportunity to remake French letters in the image of antiquity. The ‘Hymne de France,’ lionizing Henri for his exploits in battle, stood as a prospectus for the Franciade, the vernacular epic Ronsard hoped to persuade the king to commission from him. By imposing himself as a French Pindar, Ronsard aimed to prove his competence to become a French Homer or Virgil. In this respect, as a self-proclaimed borrower, Ronsard showed himself all the more a disciple of Apollo. Classical myth, as Elisabeth Henry points out, never presents Apollo as the creator of the lyre. Most often he is reported to have received it from Mercury, who fashioned it from a tortoise shell. ‘Discovery,’ writes Henry, ‘was not Apollo’s strength: his relation to the material world aims always at domination.’65 Likewise, literary invention, for Ronsard, entailed the adaptation, the mastery of pre-existing forms, rather than the creation of entirely new ones. The Renaissance Lyre Shortly after the midpoint of the ‘Hymne de France,’ the speaker begins to refer to his lute as a lyre. This may have been partly a matter of expediency, since Ronsard needed a word to rhyme with ‘desire.’66 Yet the poet continues thereafter to treat the instrument as a true lyre, announcing that he has brought it himself from ancient Thebes to

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 41

contemporary France, where he has been the first to play it: la lyre, Que j’apportai de Thebes jusqu’en France, Et la sonnai premier des mon enfance, Osant desja la tenter de mes doiz, Et accorder mes chansons à sa voix.67

We find the same assertion of precedence in ‘À sa Lire,’ the second of Ronsard’s stringed-instrument odes, where he declares, Heureuse lire honneur de mon enfance, Je te sonnai devant tous en la France.68

Although Ronsard had composed the ode to the lute earlier, readers of his 1550 Odes would have come upon the ode to the lyre first, at the end of book one, whereas the ode to the lute was relegated to an appendix to the volume titled Bocage, because it was unsuitable for musical setting. Readers also encountered, at the beginning and the end of the volume, a Greek anagram adopted by Ronsard as a signature or device: ‘Sos ho Terpandros.’ In classical literature, Terpander was an inventor of the lyre.69 One assumes Ronsard would want to use the lyre to represent the classical genres he and Du Bellay were seeking to recreate in the vernacular. Instead, we discover that the lyre stands for the production of the previous generation of French poets, a corpus which Ronsard critiques by declaring the instrument to have been passed to him in poor condition, with broken strings and a rotting frame. He therefore was obliged to undertake a journey to Thebes and Apulia (the native lands of Pindar and Horace) to acquire the materials to repair it: quant premierement Je te trouvai, tu sonnois durement, Tu n’avois point de cordes qui valussent, Ne qui répondre aus lois de mon doi pussent. Moisi du tens ton fust ne sonnoit point, Mais j’eu pitié de te voir mal empoint, Toi qui jadis des grans Rois les viandes Faisois trouver plus douces et friandes: Pour te monter de cordes, et d’un fust,

42 Sounding Objects Voire d’un son qui naturel te fust, Je pillai Thebe’, et saccagai la Pouille, T’enrichissant de leur belle dépouille.70

Du Bellay advocates precisely this sort of literary plundering at the end of the Deffence, where, via the metaphor of the ‘march on Rome,’ he conceives of imitation of the ancient poets as a symbolic looting of their cities: ‘La donq’, Francoys, marchez couraigeusement vers cete superbe cité Romaine: et des serves depouilles d’elle (comme vous avez fait plus d’une fois) ornez voz temples et autelz.’71 For Du Bellay, as Timothy Hampton reminds us, the vitality of the French language lies in its capacity to appropriate other cultures. Linguistic practice is a kind of economy in which the imitation of models from abroad produces the greatest profit. To mimic earlier French poets would be a weak investment for it would incorporate nothing new into French literary culture.72 Imitation, of the variety championed by Ronsard and Du Bellay, may be compared to the museological process of restoration, as contrasted with conservation. The latter is less invasive; it aims to arrest decay while retaining as much of an object’s original physical material as possible. Conservators do not seek to make a musical instrument playable if this necessitates altering it in any irreversible way. Rather, they hold their interventions to a minimum, aiming to preserve the instrument as an object of wonder and for study rather than for the production of musical sound. Restoration, on the other hand, is closely allied to construction. Where conservation values an object for the simple reason that it has survived, restoration seeks to return it to working condition. Restoration therefore potentially entails the loss of much of the original object, via the introduction of new components, ultimately creating what might be considered another object altogether. The actions described by Ronsard in ‘À sa Lire,’ those of replacing the lyre’s strings and yolk, aim at renewing the instrument’s usefulness as a producer of sound. The poet stresses, however, that he has not introduced wholly new materials into the lyre. Instead, he has travelled abroad to seek ones which, like the instrument itself, possess a patina: the gloss of age. In this way he argues for the instrument’s continued authenticity, despite his meddling. To restore to the lyre – to French verse – all of its strings was to expand the tonal range of French lyricism.73 At this time, Marot’s French translations of biblical psalms (Psaumes, 1541) were widely considered to be the first French odes (pace Sébillet). In the preface to his own Odes, Ronsard

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 43

positions himself as Marot’s pagan counterpart, explaining that he undertook his imitation of the Greek and Latin poets at the same time Marot was rendering the psalms into French.74 Yet despite this insistence on contemporaneity, in reality Ronsard was indebted to Marot, whose ‘scriptural revival,’ in Ehsan Ahmed’s words, ‘[preconditioned] the enlightened response of classical paganism revived [by Ronsard].’75 Marot had judged Roman Horace incapable of rivalling Hebrew David, likening the former to a lark overshadowed by an eagle.76 But Ronsard, in his ode to the lyre, reminds readers that the eagle is an attribute of pagan Jupiter. Again echoing Pindar’s first Pythian, in which the eagle sleeps on Jupiter’s sceptre, the subject of ‘À sa Lire’ praises his refurbished lyre for its ability to lull the great bird to sleep: Le feu armé de Jupiter s’eteint Sous ta chanson, si ta chanson l’atteint: Et au caquet de tes cordes bien jointes Son aigle dort sur sa foudre à trois pointes Abaissant l’aile, adonc tu vas charmant Ses yeus agus, et lui en les fermant Son dos herisse, et ses plumes repousse Flaté du son de ta parole douce.77

Thus Ronsard claims remarkable power for his Pindaric odes as having the capacity to overshadow even Marot’s psalms. The speaker of the ode to the lyre, however, proves in the end as much a descendant of Roman Horace (Marot’s lark) as of Greek Pindar. In the next-to-last stanza of the ode, he suddenly refers to the instrument as a lute. Again, this serves a practical purpose, reducing the number of syllables in the verse.78 But from this point on, the instrument remains a lute, named twice more, in the last verse of the penultimate stanza and in the very last verse of the poem. Whereas the opening verses of the ode draw their inspiration from Pindar’s first Pythian, the closing ones are Horatian. Because of his lute, the poet tells us, he is read (leu, from lire), and because he is read, he is recognized as the French laureate (harpeur): Par toi je plai, et par toi je suis leu, C’est toi qui fais que Ronsard soit éleu Harpeur François, et quant on le rencontre Qu’avec le doi par la rue on le montre:

44 Sounding Objects Si je plai donc, si je sçai contanter, Si mon renom la France veut chanter, Si de mon front les étoilles je passe, Certes mon Luc cela vient de ta grace.79

Brash assertions of this sort, which occur throughout the Odes, were precisely what aroused the ire of Saint-Gelais. To a singer-lutenist accustomed to courting royal favour in person rather than in print, Ronsard’s claims must have appeared unconscionably braggart, especially given that the Odes were Ronsard’s first substantial entry into the print market and that the king as yet had granted him no commission or appointment. Ronsard himself admitted the risk he was incurring, in co-opting the status of French Pindar or Horace, in asserting power even over Jupiter’s eagle. The Icarian fall predicted by Horace himself for imitators of Pindar loomed as a possibility. But Ronsard happily reported, in an ode addressed to Du Bellay, that so far he had managed to avoid ‘causing the sea to bear the name of Ronsard.’80 The Horatian Guitar Imitating Horace’s amatory voice, as well as Pindar’s encomiastic one, offered Ronsard one means of tempering the weightiness of the Odes collection and diffusing its arrogance.81 While the Horatian amatory voice is largely absent from the odes to the lute and lyre, it completely infuses the third of Ronsard’s stringed-instrument odes, which is addressed to the guitar. ‘À sa Guiterre’ stands out as the most unexpected of the three, for Ronsard, in his complete works, devotes much less attention to the guitar than to the lute and lyre, naming it only eight times. Moreover, while many other poets also wrote about the lute, only one wrote poems about the guitar, and that was Saint-Gelais, who himself played the instrument.82 The dearth of guitar poems must be attributed to the extraordinary literary prestige of the lute, rather than unfamiliarity with the guitar on the part of French poets, for the guitar was quite popular at the court of Henri II. The flourishing of this instrument was aided by the fact that after his accession to the throne Henri granted many printing privileges, breaking the monopoly on Parisian music printing held by Pierre Attaingnant under François I, with the result that between 1550 and 1555 ten anthologies of pieces for the guitar were printed – a remarkable output for such a short span of time.83 The vogue for the guitar must

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 45

have been encouraged by the visit of Ferrante Sanseverino, the Prince of Salerno, to Fontainebleau in 1544. Sanseverino was half Spanish and a captivating singer-player. His initial success at court prompted the Florentine ambassador to report, ‘The Prince of Salerno is still here; every evening many ladies of the court make him sing some Neapolitan songs: they have a number of guitars on hand and each lady has her own.’84 It seems the court ladies were intrigued with the latest songs from Naples, and since few of these were yet available in print, they were learning them from Salerno by rote.85 Indeed, it appears there was even a courtly practice whereby gentlemen autographed the ladies’ guitars. A quatrain by Saint-Gelais, ‘Sur la guiterre de Madame de Grantmont, estant Mad[amoisel]le de Traves, y trouvant force escriture de plusieurs gentilshomes,’ describes an instrument graced with personal inscriptions: Traves, si tous vos serviteurs Veullent laisser, soliciteurs, Leurs escrits sur vostre guiterre, Guiterre soit toute la terre.86

The idea expressed here, that the surface of a guitar might be compared to a geographical region (or the whole world), plays a key role in a second, lengthier guitar poem by Saint-Gelais. The second poem provides a useful point of comparison with Ronsard’s ode to the guitar, encapsulating the differences between these two poets’ approaches to their art. Saint-Gelais’s ‘Sur une Guiterne espaignole rompue et puis faicte r’habiller par Monseigneur d’Orleans, estant mallade’ (1540–5) draws an analogy between the illness of François I’s third son, Charles, and a crack that had materialized in the wood of a Spanish guitar in the prince’s possession. In an unusual rhetorical move, Saint-Gelais yields the floor to the guitar, granting it the first-person subject position. In this way the poem becomes quite literally the voice of the guitar, singing to its master. The guitar explains that if it sounds a little muted, this is because when it was presented to the prince it was so saddened by his illness, its soundboard split. Charles, feeling himself on the mend, has commanded that repairs be made, so that the guitar too may be restored to good health. At the end of the poem, the happy prospect of the recovery of both prince and guitar allows for the expression of a political conceit that alludes to the instrument’s Spanish provenance. Here the guitar

46 Sounding Objects

shifts from its autobiographical voice to a prophetic one, addressing the prince directly and asserting its hope that it might soon be replaced by a sceptre, and that the land from whence it came might fall under this youth’s dominion: Que pleut à Dieu qu’en lieu de moy Vous tinssiez un Sceptre de Roy. J’entendz que par vous fust tenue La Terre dont je suis venue.87

In this pointe, where a simple guitar stands for what was then the most powerful kingdom in Europe, Saint-Gelais interweaves cultural and political facets of the life of Charles d’Orléans. Charles was particularly interested in music; by 1542 he employed three singers, an organist, a flutist, and a lutenist.88 But this prince would die suddenly in 1545, at the age of twenty-three, from a brief and mysterious illness (poison was suspected). At the time of his death, François I was engaged in negotiating a treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor, the core of which was a proposed marriage between this favoured son and the Emperor’s niece. The treaty would have made young Charles duke of Milan, conferring on him a small piece of the Hapsburg empire. SaintGelais’s poem may refer to an undocumented illness suffered by the prince during the military campaign of 1542, from which he recovered. Or perhaps the poet drafted it a few years later, at the time of the prince’s final illness. Whatever the occasion, the important point is that there was one. Saint-Gelais’s verses are clearly an insider’s art. They speak to a restricted audience (spectators, not a readership), which would have been privy to the poem’s political undercurrents. Like Saint-Gelais’s poem, Ronsard’s ode to the guitar focuses on the instrument as a material object but makes of it a very different sort of object, requiring another kind of knowledge on the part of the reader to make sense of it. Ronsard’s poem apparently deals with a lighter subject than Saint-Gelais’s: love, rather than politics. Yet its style is more erudite. Whereas ‘Sur une Guiterne espaignole’ is an example of occasional verse, closely tied to present circumstance at court (and therefore serving as a testimony to the poet’s own privileged position there), ‘À sa Guiterre,’ with its highly generic topic, is more broadly concerned with its (and the poet’s) place in literary history. It argues for the classicization of France’s amatory poetic voice, for the incorporation of this aspect of the Horatian art into French letters too.

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 47

With his ode to the guitar, Ronsard aimed to reach a wide audience (anyone who could read his book), yet challenged that audience to decipher the text’s obscurity through learning rather than political savvy. Whereas Saint-Gelais’s poem focuses entirely on the guitar’s Spanishness, at no point in the ode to the guitar does Ronsard refer to the instrument as Spanish, for he wishes to dedicate it to French poetic use. The ode to the guitar begins by extolling the instrument’s efficacy as a solace for melancholy poet-lovers. With the aid of his guitar, the poet ‘en-chants’ his desires, putting them into song: Ma Guiterre je te chante, Par qui seule je deçoi, Je deçoi, je ron, j’enchante, Les amours que je reçoi.89

Thus Ronsard assigned to his guitar the amatory voice he would employ so effectively in his next major publication, the Amours sonnet cycle of 1552. Perhaps La Porte was thinking of this ode when he later characterized the guitar as ‘a diminutive of the lute’ in his dictionary of poetic language.90 The ode to the guitar certainly anticipates the composition of a Petrarchist canzoniere (although Italian verse is not mentioned), for the poet concludes, near the end of the ode, that only by praising his beloved’s attributes may he hope to win the favours that will ease his suffering: Mieus vaut donc de ma maitresse Chanter les beautés, affin Qu’à la douleur qui m’oppresse Veille mettre heureuse fin.91

Ronsard had apparently rejected love poetry in his ode to the lute, but the ode to the guitar demonstrates that this rejection was not all-inclusive. Specifically, the ode to the lute sets aside Latin love lyrics in favour of composition in the vernacular. Then, regarding the vernacular, it criticizes the bawdy output of the previous generation of French poets. The ode to the guitar argues, in turn, that the voice of French love poetry should be Horatian. The guitar represents an addition not just to Ronsard’s instrumentarium but to his entire literary cabinet of curiosities, his collection of what Margaret McGowan has termed ‘iconic images’: small objects such

48 Sounding Objects

as a flower basket, shield, cloak, element of armor, glass goblet, or musical instrument, whose surfaces the poet overlaid with decorative features.92 The instrument described in the ode to the guitar is lavishly ornamented, its body ‘painted in a thousand places’ with the interwoven names of the poet and his beloved, and with three scenes from classical myth.93 In the first, Apollo bathes his golden skin in the waters of the Loir, the river of Ronsard’s native Vendômois.94 The river’s identity would not be apparent to a viewer of the scene; it must be communicated verbally – a testimony to literary, over pictorial skill. In the second scene, Orpheus appears in his role of civilizing musician, drawing the rocks and trees of Thrace to him with his beautiful lament over the loss of his bride Eurydice – symbolic of the poet’s ability to master nature with his art.95 The third scene on the guitar depicts the abduction of the charming Trojan prince Ganymede by Jupiter’s eagle – a surprising choice of subject in that, unlike Apollo and Orpheus, Ganymede is not commonly used to represent poets.96 Roberto Campo, who reads the three scenes on the guitar as a commentary on the art of painting, notes that the Ganymede scene ‘seems to be included precisely because it does interrupt the iconographic program on the guitar,’ and that ‘the special emphasis it receives [more verses than each of the other scenes] is designed specifically to stress the propensity for disorder and incomprehensibility of narrative painting and, conversely, the power of poetry to reorder that confusion into a meaningful whole.’ The poet himself will provide the ‘lexical coincidences and thematic connections’ needed to correlate the three scenes.97 The idea of juxtaposing Orpheus and Ganymede also seems less anachronistic if we recall that in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it is Orpheus who (having renounced women after the loss of Eurydice) recounts the tale of Jupiter’s passion for Ganymede, as the singer teaches the men of Thrace to love young boys. It is also the case that Ganymede functioned as an image of humanity taken up among the gods, and Ronsard would often boast of his own ability, as a poet, to perform such an elevation. Indeed, after his abduction Ganymede served as cupbearer to the gods, and in that role he may be likened to Apollo, also in attendance at their table.98 Of most significance, however, is Ganymede’s identity as the object of Jupiter’s homoerotic passion, which makes this Trojan prince an ideal figure to grace a musical instrument that the poet characterizes (at precisely the midpoint of the ode) as being appropriate for pensive ladies and lascivious youths:

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 49 Tu es des dames pensives L’instrument approprié, Et aus jeunesses lascives Consacré et dedié.99

These two types of guitar players call to mind the two repertories that Praetorius associates with this instrument, which are (in reverse order) racy villanelle and lovely art songs: In Italy, the Ziarlatini [quacks] and Salt’ in banco [mountebanks] use [guitars] for simple strummed accompaniments to their villanelle and other vulgar, clownish songs ... However, to use the guitar as an accompaniment for the beautiful art-song of a good professional singer is a different thing altogether.100

Although Praetorius mentions only professionals in connection with art songs, these would also have been appropriate for performance by amateur ladies. And the inspiration for an art song may of course be a tragic love, like those expressed in the Apollo and Orpheus scenes on Ronsard’s guitar. It is the Ganymede scene, though, that unlocks the principal theme of the ode to the guitar, which is a rejection of epic in favour of amatory verse. This poet prefers graceful Ganymede of Troy over the boy’s kinsman, proud Hector: Quand sur toi je chanteroie D’Hector les combas divers, Et ce qui fut fait à Troie Par les Grecs en dix ivers, Cela ne peut satisfaire A l’amour qui tant me mord: Que peut Hector pour moi faire, Que peut Ajax qui est mort?101

To justify the choice of Ganymede over Hector, ‘amours’ over ‘Bellone,’ the speaker points out that even Horace declined to adapt accounts of military exploits to the strains of his lyre so as to sing instead, at the bidding of his Muse, of the beauties of the lady Licymnia.102 One wonders if Ronsard himself perceived the irony of this repudiation of valiant Hector as a subject for poetic praise, in favour of the young Ganymede, in the context of a volume which he hoped would persuade the king to

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support the composition of a great vernacular epic. The topic of the Franciade, after all, was to be the legend of Francus, Hector’s son, founder of the Frankish kingdom and of the French monarchy. But these sorts of inconsistencies and about-faces were endemic to the literary project of this poet, who asserted the superiority of the corpus that was the bequest of classical antiquity, yet set up the Renaissance vernacular as its rival. The Epic Trumpet Having established plucked-string instruments as touchstones for his Pindaric and Horatian voices, when Ronsard next came to speak of the Franciade project, he referred to it as his ‘trumpet.’ This of course was the instrument most closely associated with the epic mode in classical literature and with military culture in Ronsard’s own day. The repertory of early modern trumpets was primarily fanfares and bugle calls, for these instruments did not have valves and therefore were less suited to playing melodies than today’s trumpets. These were ceremonial instruments, more associated with service – proclamations and announcements – than entertainment, though they sometimes played dance tunes as well, at festivals and balls. In the Valois musical establishments, trumpet players were employed in the king’s Stable (sometimes doubling also as huissiers de salle in the royal chambers). Their music making epitomized royal authority and power. Ronsard first took up the trumpet in the ‘Elegie à Cassandre,’ a poem included in his Bocage publication (printed late in 1554), in which he informs the addressee of his first Amours (1552) that despite his unfaltering passion for her, he must now leave her service in order to follow the king. In early 1554 Ronsard was at last the beneficiary of the kind of royal attention he had been seeking. On 4 January, Henri II granted the poet a privilege for the printing of all of his works, past and to come. Two days later, Lancelot de Carle, bishop of Riez and a protector of Ronsard, read Ronsard’s outline for the Franciade aloud to the king, who encouraged the poet to pursue this project. On the same occasion, Pierre Lescot, the architect employed by Henri and his father to renovate the Louvre palace, also praised Ronsard to the king. It was a propitious moment for the poet to bid farewell to Cassandre and turn his attention to the proposed national epic, a literary conversion he describes as necessitating the exchange of his lute for a trumpet:

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 51 Mon oeil, mon coeur, ma Cassandre, ma vie, Hé! qu’à bon droit tu dois porter d’envie A ce grand Roi, qui ne veut plus soufrir Qu’à mes chansons ton nom se vienne ofrir. C’est lui qui veut qu’en trompette j’échange Mon Luc, afin d’entonner sa louange, Non de lui seul, mais de tous ses aïeus Qui sont issus de la race des Dieus.103

But what are we to make of this rejection of the lute as a vehicle for epic verse, in light of Ronsard’s dedication of the instrument to that very purpose in the ode to the lute and the hymn to France? The inconsistency between those earlier poems and the elegy to Cassandre illustrates what François Cornilliat has called the ‘constitutive disequilibrium’ of Ronsard’s poetic voice: the fact that this poet’s ‘lyre’ – his stringedinstrument persona – could not, at first, simply in and of itself, fully justify its presence on the French (if not to say international) literary stage.104 Perhaps this slight discomfort with the role of lutenist or lyre player stemmed in part from the poet’s awareness of the measure of epicureanism that often attended solo performance on plucked-string instruments. Certainly, at a minimum, the sprezzatura recommended in Castiglione’s Il cortegiano for all courtly endeavours stood in contradiction to the ethic of learning and labour deemed essential to the crafting of epic poetry, the most illustrious of genres. For his Meslanges collection (also printed in late 1554), Ronsard composed a prefatory poem, ‘À sa Lyre,’ which recasts one of the Anacreontic lyrics (these had just become available in Henri Estienne’s edition). The poem describes a disobedient lyre (or lute) that plays only of love, although the poet would prefer to write epic verse:105 Naguiere chanter je voulois Comme Francus au bord Gaulois Avecq’ sa troupe vint descendre: Mais mon luc, pinçé de mon doi, Ne vouloit en depit de moi Que chanter Amour, et Cassandre.106

Ronsard would revisit this theme in the opening verses of his ‘Prière à la fortune’ (1555), where he observes that if he does not use his lyre to sing

52 Sounding Objects

the renown of the Cardinal de Chastillon, the instrument will not cooperate, while if he does, the lyre will play as if of itself.107 In the original Anacreontic poem, the subject reveals that he changed each of the instrument’s strings in the hope of taking control of it – but to no avail. Ronsard, in his vernacular version, expands this activity into a complete rebuilding of the instrument: Et pour ce faire, il n’y eut fust, Archet, ne corde, qui ne fust Echangée en d’autres nouvelles: Mais apres qu’il fut remonté, Plus haut que davant a chanté, Comme il souloit, les damoyselles.108

In later printings Ronsard twice revised these verses, each time introducing increasingly technical vocabulary (table, chevilles, chanterelles). Yet despite this virtuosic display of craftsmanship, the instrument still insists on playing the same amatory songs. Was the restoration a failure? Or was it rather so successful that the lyre has become incapable of dissembling, able to express only what the poet is truly feeling (his love for Cassandre)? How might the instrument be motivated to master an epic language? Whereas the Anacreontic lyric has three stanzas, ‘À sa Lyre’ has four, for in Ronsard’s version the ancient tale of struggle between poetic subject and musical object serves to preface a specific request Ronsard wished to make of Henri II. But rather than approaching the king directly with his petition, in the added stanza Ronsard addresses Henri’s ancestor, Francus, calling upon him to intercede with the king on the poet’s behalf. The stubborn lyre, it seems, could be tamed by the king himself, through the granting of patronage. Even though the title, ‘À sa Lyre,’ suggests an ode, this poem is actually an elegy, a farewell to Francus, whose tale will not be told if Henri does not provide the necessary material support: Or adieu doncq’, pauvre Francus, Ta gloire, sous tes murs veinqus, Se cachera toujours pressée, Si à ton neveu, nostre Roi, Tu ne dis qu’en l’honneur de toi Il face ma Lyre crossée.109

Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 53

The boldness of the poet’s request is only minimally attenuated by making the fictional Francus responsible for its delivery. The reference to a crosiered or mitred lyre leaves no doubt that Ronsard was seeking advance payment for his epic services through the granting of an ecclesiastical appointment, with its attendant revenues. Yet even as he was engaged in explicating his pecuniary requirements to the king, Ronsard made clear that commencing the epic project would not necessitate a complete abandonment of love poetry. As he notes in the ‘Elegie à Cassandre,’ Henri II also knew what it was to suffer from love and surely would not object if the laureate set aside his trumpet from time to time, to again pluck the strings of his lute: Et sa grandeur ne sera courroucée Qu’à mon retour des horribles combas Hors de son croc mon Luc j’aveigne à bas, Le pincetant, et qu’en lieu des alarmes Je chante Amour, tes beautés, et mes larmes.110

In proposing to take up the lute after ‘battle,’ Ronsard was comparing himself to Achilles, a mythological hero whose formation and actions epitomized what the French nobility of this period perceived to be the ideal fusion of letters and arms. In his childhood, Achilles learned the art of self-accompanied singing from the centaur Chiron. Later, as a soldier, he played his lyre in the evenings, upon his return from combat.111 The ‘Elegie à Cassandre’ establishes a similar duality for the French laureate: a ‘warrior’ status, whereby the poet-trumpeter serves in the public arena as a chronicler of the king’s deeds, and a ‘lettered’ status, where his plucked-string art serves to refresh the monarch (and himself) in private and to drive away cares. Although the Franciade was the most sustained focus of Ronsard’s ambitions through the first two decades of his career, he never completed it. Of fourteen projected books, the poet presented only four to the king – and not to Henri II but Charles IX (in 1572). Among the possible reasons for Ronsard’s failure to finish the epic, scholars cite the fact that the poem’s hero, Francus, was a legendary rather than a mythological figure in whose existence no one (including Ronsard) believed. This did not provide a strong foundation on which to construct the historical legitimacy of the French monarchy.112 The Franciade suffers as well from a lack of references, a paucity of historical material that obliges the poet to make much of little (or even nothing at all).113 Moreover, the

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eventual choice of decasyllabic verse (imposed by Charles IX) for this work was unfortunate, for rather than recalling the medieval French epics, as was intended, this meter merely evoked more recent popular literature and therefore seemed unworthy of the enterprise.114 In the final analysis, Ronsard proved less skilled as a trumpeter than as a lutenist, more a musician of the Chamber than the Stable. Paradoxically, Ronsard’s use of musical instrument imagery to represent different poetic voices was facilitated by the fact that in the mid-sixteenth century the professions of poet and musician were becoming more distinct. With the passing of Saint-Gelais in 1558, gone were the days when a poet necessarily carried in his ears a particular solo song format as he drafted his verses. Instead, poets first produced texts and then musicians set them, often for multiple voices. In some respects this had a liberating effect on Ronsard, who could develop the metaphorical possibilities of musicianship more fully, precisely because he was not expected to sing his own verses. At the same time, because of advances in music printing, the composers who set his texts were able to explore the musical possibilities latent in his poetic language. Richard Freedman observes that while Pierre Attaingnant was not the first to print polyphonic music from movable type, this printer did inaugurate the practice of printing musical notation and verbal texts in a single impression process. As a result, whereas earlier music printers were not always very careful about the alignment of musical notes and text syllables, Attaingnant’s typographers became quite adept at alignment. The ability to better control musical texts through print seems to have encouraged French composers of the time to ‘craft musical lines in relation to the sound, structure, and meaning of poetic texts.’115 Ronsard himself offers no commentary on the nature or quality of composers’ settings of his verses. In the preface to the Odes, he states that an ode is imperfect if neither measured nor ‘propre à la lire,’ and that ‘laquelle lire seule doit et peut animer les vers, et leur donner le juste poix de leur gravité.’116 Yet there would be no vogue at court for singing Ronsard’s French odes, as there would be for singing Horatian odes in Latin.117 Whether Ronsard was disappointed that composers did not embrace the genre as he practised it (largely because of its complexity), he does not say.118 His sonnets fared better, though not at first. Ronsard (or his printer, presumably with the poet’s assent) appended a musical supplement to the 1552 Amours. It contained nine settings of Ronsard’s verses, all for

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four voices, by four different composers, several of whom brought considerable name recognition to the project. The poems represented are six sonnets, one amourette, one ode, and one hymne triumphal. Four of the sonnet settings are offered as models that may be used to sing many of the other sonnets in the cycle. Scholars have remarked on the awkward effects produced by replacing one sonnet with another, since the composers had clearly written the music for specific texts. But Howard Brown has argued that these pieces follow an earlier Italian tradition and were chiefly intended to serve for formal, elaborately declaimed renditions of the poems by solo singers, rather than as artfully worked musical compositions. If this is the case, then the musical supplement to the Amours is really more about text than music. It demonstrates the poet’s (or printer’s) interest in the declamation of texts rather than the musical interpretation of them.119 It appears, however, that this outdated Italianate approach was not particularly successful, for the supplement was deleted in the revised edition of the Amours in 1553, in favour of commentaries on the sonnets by the distinguished professor MarcAntoine de Muret, which were designed to help readers navigate the considerable erudition displayed in these verses. Thereafter, Ronsard’s involvement with actual music making waned rather quickly. In his Abbregé de l’art poëtique françois (1565) he wrote that ‘la Poësie sans les instrumens, ou sans la grace d’une seule ou plusieurs voix, n’est nullement aggreable, non plus que les instrumens sans estre animez de la melodie d’une plaisante voix.’120 Be that as it may, he had all but ceased writing poetry specifically for musical setting a decade earlier, and he stayed this course for the rest of his career (except for the handful of verses he produced for court festivities, which may have entailed some incidental collaboration with composers).121 But even as Ronsard himself abandoned the project of writing for musical setting, composers began to pay more attention to his verses. Whereas the musical supplement to the 1552 Amours capitalized on the name recognition of several major composers to help sell the book, Ronsard subsequently became the first French poet whose name appeared regularly on the title pages of printed song collections (that is, entire books of settings of his poems) alongside the name of the composer, for in some instances the poet’s name now had the greater market value.122 As for Ronsard’s associate, Joachim Du Bellay, his involvement with music making appears to have been even more modest. Du Bellay is known to have collaborated with musicians only once in his career, and few of his verses were selected for musical setting.123

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From the example of Marot’s psalm translations, Ronsard and Du Bellay knew that by removing their art from the private sphere of the king’s Chamber (or table) and entrusting it to printers and composers, it could reach a wider audience. Solo consumption, study, and widespread copying of these poets’ works now became possible, assuming they could obtain the necessary privileges to publish. This meant that they needed to make themselves known at court – hence the type of auto-referential writing we find in Ronsard’s stringed-instrument odes, where these material objects serve as indices of poetic power and prestige, and as expressions of his commitment to particular literary ideals.124 Yet in the early years of their venture, these poets were seeking to legitimate what was in fact a very marginal position in mid-sixteenth-century French culture.125 Their hubris, in denigrating their own vernacular tradition, could not help but provoke an outcry from other poets. As their classicizing agenda began to make significant incursions into the realm of French letters, it would increasingly serve as a focal point for debate, eliciting outrage, admiration, and envy.

2 Musical Rivalries

Let him be a flute-player who could not play the lyre. Erasmus, Adages

When Panurge, in François Rabelais’s Tiers livre (1546), expresses his preference for the ‘rustic bagpipe’ in comparison with ‘lutes, rebecs, and courtly violins,’ he displays his folly.1 For as Sebastian Brant had already warned in The Ship of Fools (1494), If bagpipes you enjoy and prize And harps and lutes you would despise, You ride a fool’s sled, are unwise.2

More than any other musical instrument of the time the bagpipe was susceptible to crude implications, fodder for licentious and scatological humour.3 On one hand, the instrument’s shape calls to mind male genitalia. In an anonymous pastoral poem, ‘Une bergere un jour au chams estoit’ (known via a musical setting from the 1540s), the ubiquitous shepherd Robin invites his ladylove Margot to join him in playing on the reed of his bagpipe: Margot voyci mon anche, Jouons nous deux de ceste cornemuse.4

Robin’s invitation conveys the double sense of sounding the instrument and taking one’s pleasure with it (jouer, jouir). On the other hand, the bagpipe is also (literally) a bag of wind, and it therefore lends itself to

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ribald correlations with bodily functions, as on the final page of a fanciful calligraphic alphabet manuscript by John Scottowe (1592), where two birds (pipers themselves) perch on a bagpiper’s instrument and defecate while he plays (figure 2.1).5 Although not all wind instruments were as potentially unsavoury as the bagpipe, nonetheless, as Bruce Smith sums it up, ‘blown instruments were proverbial in Platonic lore for their gutsiness, their mindlessness, their distance from logos.’6 The prejudice against wind instruments dated from Greek antiquity (late Roman writers viewed them more favourably) and was reiterated in Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano, where the diplomat Federico Fregoso recommends the playing of keyboards and bowed strings by courtiers but admonishes against the playing of winds, recalling that in antiquity Minerva and Alcibiades both rejected winds ‘because it seems there is something repulsive about them.’7 Classical myth reports that Minerva invented the aulos (reed pipe) and played it proudly at the banquet of the gods.8 But Juno and Venus laughed at her, for the instrument puffed out her cheeks unbecomingly. Minerva discovered the cause of their laughter when she caught sight of her reflection in a pond. She then cursed the aulos and cast it aside, vowing that whoever picked it up would be punished severely. The curse later fell upon the Phrygian satyr Marsyas, who found the instrument, challenged Apollo to a musical contest, and was defeated. Apollo inflicted a brutal punishment on Marsyas: the satyr was flayed and his skin suspended in the temple in the town of Celaenae as a warning to mortals not to put themselves up against the gods. Like Minerva, Alcibiades objected to the way that piping distorts the face; he complained that when a man blows into a wind instrument his own friends have trouble recognizing him. But Alcibiades’ refusal to learn to play the aulos (which, according to Plutarch, caused instruction in the playing of winds to be excluded from Athenian education) stemmed not only from an anxiety about decorum. More important was the fact that winds, by occupying and obstructing the mouth, deprive a man of voice and words, upsetting the balance between singing and playing.9 Implicated as well in the mistrust of the aulos were oppositions between different tuning systems and rival schools of music making. The classical lyre’s fixed tuning was suitable for preserving the traditional Greek melodic types (harmoniai), while the aulos, because it had as many as fifteen borings, which could be closed by sliding metal rings, could migrate from one harmonia to another within a single musical composi-

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Image Not Available

2.1 John Scottowe (English, c. 1545–1607), Drawing of bagpiper. In Scottowe, ‘Alphabet of ornamental capitals used as initials in specimen pages of calligraphy,’ 1592 (final page). Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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tion, thereby destroying the customary distinctions between genres.10 Stringed instruments may of course be tuned in many ways, but there is no way to retune them while actually playing. With its flexible tuning, the aulos was a wandering instrument, capable of leading listeners into error (errance). Whereas the Greeks identified the lyre with the native school of musicianship, they viewed the aulos as an instrument of foreign origin (most writers believed it had come from Phrygia), and although a few prominent auletes led brilliant careers, overall their profession was not highly respected. According to Annie Bélis, ‘a number of proverbs and sayings depict auletes as unscrupulous, grasping, self-interested, vain and mindless.’11 The aulos came to be associated especially with the radical innovator Timotheus of Miletus, the most famous representative of the revolutionary school that ushered in the second great era of Greek music making, whom defenders of the old school reproached for sacrificing simplicity to virtuosity, dignity to vulgarity.12 This quarrel between the Greek ancients and moderns features in the pseudo-Plutarchan dialogue treatise De musica, in which one of the interlocutors explains that the earlier composers of Greek music had used a lofty style, remaining within a given harmonia and rhythm, while the later school ‘introduced a coarser idiom, full of novelties, abandoning the restriction to a few notes and the grandeur of the noble manner.’ Another speaker laments Greek music’s ‘recent decadence,’ stating that where it was ‘once inspired and severe, it is now effeminate and theatrical.’13 In this sense the aulete was like the poet and painter. Plato excluded all three from his ideal State, because they are imitators: agents of public deception.14 In revisiting this ancient string-versus-wind rivalry, Renaissance writers and artists often updated the classical lyre to a lira da braccio or lute, and the aulos to a bagpipe, recorder, or syrinx (panpipes). In a woodcut illustration designed for the first printing of Giovanni Bonsignori’s Ovidio metamorphoseos vulgare (1497), the anonymous Master ‘ia’ took note of the vocabulary of Bonsignori’s vernacular paraphrase of the myth that recounts the contest between Marsyas and Apollo and replaced the aulos with a zaramella (figure 2.2).15 In the left foreground of the image Minerva plays the bagpipe and spies her reflection in a pool. In the centre Marsyas wields the instrument in his competition with Apollo. In the right foreground the bagpipe lies on the ground, while Apollo punishes the satyr by flaying him. Another artist added two more scenes to the Master’s illustration to ensure that it would include all of the events narrated in Bonsignori’s text. So in the left background Minerva performs at the banquet of the gods (where Juno and Venus

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Image Not Available

2.2 Master ‘ia,’ Woodcut for the myth of Apollo and Marsyas. In Giovanni Bonsignori, Ovidio metamorphoseos vulgare (Venice, 1497), fol. 49v. Reproduced from Edith Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas in the Art of the Italian Renaissance (Newark, 1996), fig. 48. Photo: Library of Congress.

mocked her), and in the right background we see Marsyas’s skin hanging in the temple at Celaenae after the execution. In the banquet scene this second artist did not bother to trace the more complicated outline of a bagpipe but instead gave the goddess a simple reed pipe or recorder. In any event the symbolism is phallic, whether manifested by the shape of the bagpipe itself, or by the unfortunate appearance presented by Minerva, blowing into her pipe with inflated cheeks – which produces a similar shape.16 In an oval drawing of the Apollo and Marsyas contest by Parmigianino from the late 1520s, the musician-god stands on the left, performing on the lira da braccio, while the satyr reclines against a tree on the right, his panpipes tucked under his arm.17 Fifteen years later, when Antonio Fantuzzi produced a rectangular etched version of this composition (in reverse format) in a workshop of the Fontainebleau School, he introduced two more instruments, a lyre for Apollo and a tambourine for Marsyas (figure 2.3).18 In this scene everything about the musician-god proclaims his nobility and consummate courtiership: his regal stance, his

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Image Not Available

2.3 Antonio Fantuzzi (Italian, fl. 1537–50), Contest between Apollo and Marsyas (after Parmigianino), c. 1545. Etching, 16.7 14.7 cm. Albertina, Vienna.

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flowing garment, and his choice of the lira da braccio as a tool for musical expression, the instrument favoured by Italian courtiers to accompany their recitations of lyric poetry (here its bow is placed in parallel with the god’s archery bow).19 The satyr, for his part, exudes crude sensuality. His bearded face, long animal-like ears, goats’ legs, sexually aroused member, and languorous, dissolute attitude all suggest the dominance of the lower faculties. Because of the animal legs, we might be tempted to identify this figure as Pan, the goat-god, who also engaged in a contest with Apollo. But this print is part of a series on the Marsyas myth, and in Renaissance art, satyrs often acquire goats’ legs, even though the classical tradition represents them with the legs of a man. In Fantuzzi’s etching the satyr’s fingers graze the edge of a tambourine (not present in Parmigianino’s drawing), an instrument used for dance music and associated in the French popular tradition, like the bagpipe, with the bawdy pastoral games of Robin and Margot. In the anonymous pastoral poem cited above, Margot replies to Robin’s entreaty that she join him in ‘playing on the reed of his bagpipe’ with an invitation for him, in turn, to beat on her pretty tambourine. Its skin, she assures him, is strong enough: J’ai t’abourin joly dont tousjours j’use, Frappez desus la peau est assez forte.20

In a similar poem, ‘À ce matin’ (also set to music in the 1540s), Margot reveals that her tambourine’s skin is ‘newly opened’ (‘de nouveau ouverte’).21 Fantuzzi’s addition of a tambourine to Parmigianino’s composition thus invites two complementary readings. The skin stretched tight on the tambourine’s frame (the skin of a goat?) may be viewed as an ominous foreshadowing of the satyr’s impending fate. But as the Robin and Margot tales reveal, it also symbolizes lust (as do goats’ legs).22 If the sight of Minerva playing her pipe carries phallic implications, when the instrument is taken up by hirsute Marsyas, with his erect member, the imagery becomes homoerotic as well. A riddle-poem (printed in 1597) by Marc Papillon de Lasphrise, a soldier, poet, and courtier under Henri III, demonstrates awareness of the sexual implications of flute playing by bearded men: Quand le long instrument entre en mon trou barbu, En langottant je souffle, et le remuant dru

64 Sounding Objects Je lasche quelque flux avec rumeur si doulce Que l’on s’en resjouyst encores que j’en tousse.23

As Guy Poirier points out, readers must hesitate and squirm, ill at ease, if called upon to solve this ‘Enigme’ themselves.24 Fortunately, the poet provides an explanation, to reassure us that the answer to the riddle is really quite innocuous: C’est un homme qui met une fluste dans sa bouche barbue tout autour, et faut que pour en bien joüer il remue soudainement les doigts, et ne se peut faire ainsi qu’en soufflant et langottant il ne lasche de la salive: quiconque entend le doulx bruit et doulx son, se resjouyst: mais de la peine qu’a le joüeur il en tousse ordinairement.25

The Lasphrise riddle evokes in graphic detail the bodily parts and fluids most implicated in the playing of wind instruments: mouth, breath, tongue, saliva. We recall that in the Parmigianino-Fantuzzi contest scene, the musician-god plays his lyre, while the satyr’s panpipes remain at his side. Piping was so enticing, so tied to sexual as well as musical performance, these artists opted not to bring its enactment directly to their viewers. Instead, they allow the mere sight of the instruments themselves, Marsyas’s pipes and tambourine, to hint at carnal pleasures while bringing to our ears the noble sounds of the victorious lyre. Homoerotic imagery also characterizes the Fantuzzi flaying scene, where the satyr’s body is suspended along the trunk of a tree, with his ‘flute’ still aroused. Later, in Baroque painting, we typically find the hanging Marsyas depicted with his arms outstretched, to resemble the crucified Christ. Sixteenth-century artists, however, usually portray him in a long, vertical, slightly twisted position, with his arms stretched either above or below his head (depending on whether he is suspended head up or down). He appears in this pose, hanging upright, awaiting his fate, on a knife handle designed by Cherubino Alberti (1583). As depicted on the knife, the executioner does not himself hold a knife. Rather, he grips the satyr’s sexual member.26 The Lyre Turned Inside Out The shift that takes place in the Marsyas myth from what is heard (the musical contest) to what is seen (the flaying and the satyr’s ensuing metamorphosis into a river) invites reflection on the ancient adage that

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one must not trust too much to appearances. The punishment that Apollo inflicts on Marsyas replaces aural pretence with visual exposure or revelation, paving the way for either condemnation (the satyr’s skin hanging in the temple) or redemption: according to Ovid, as the satyr was flayed, his blood flowing down gave way to a stream of mournful tears shed by the watching satyrs, nymphs, and shepherds, and those tears became the clear waters of the Marsyas river.27 Where painting and engraving must recreate the sounds of the musical competition through the sense of sight alone, poetry may address at once the ear and the eye – the latter through the technique of ekphrasis. A masterful ekphrastic treatment of the Marsyas myth appears in the ode that Ronsard addressed to the Bordelais magistrate Jean Dutreuilh de Belot in 1569. Belot’s arrival in Paris to assume an appointment at Charles IX’s court provided the impetus to renew and publicize Ronsard’s personal acquaintance with the magistrate. Belot had hosted Ronsard during the poet’s visit to Bordeaux four years earlier. Their second meeting provided an opportunity for the composition of verses which thank Belot for the gift of a lyre. In ‘À Monsieur de Belot,’ images depicting the flaying of Marsyas appear on two painted objects of a seemingly very different nature and worth: a common apothecary vessel and the magnificent lyre that is (ostensibly) the text’s raison d’être. These representations of the satyr’s execution are described in two separate passages that function as inversions of each other and serve to conflate the uses and values of these disparate objects, the one dedicated to everyday use, the other destined for display in Apollo’s temple. The first ekphrasis appears in the ode’s prologue, which identifies the poet as a follower of Bacchus, noting that although the poet recently endured a long fallow season, he wisely persevered in his cultivation of the vine during that time. Now his labour is rewarded with Belot’s gift, a sign of restored creative force. In this prologue Ronsard reworks the famed metaphor of the Socratic silene, from the final pages of Plato’s Symposium, where Alcibiades compares Socrates to sileni: the clumsylooking little statues, often modelled with pipes or flutes in their mouths, that concealed figures of the gods. According to Alcibiades, the philosopher’s outer casing, like the figurines, appears uninformed and ignorant. But if one ‘opens him up,’ one finds beautiful images inside. Alcibiades also likens Socrates to Marsyas, citing the satyr’s impudence and his ability to bewitch people with his piping, as the philosopher does with his eloquence.28 Erasmus elaborates on this passage in The Praise of Folly (1511):

66 Sounding Objects All human affairs, like the Sileni of Alcibiades, have two aspects, each quite different from the other ... What at first sight is beautiful may really be ugly; the apparently wealthy may be poorest of all; the disgraceful, glorious; the learned, ignorant; the robust, feeble; the noble, base; the joyous, sad; the favorable, adverse; what is friendly, an enemy; and what is wholesome, poisonous. In brief, you find all things suddenly reversed, when you open up the Silenus.29

Rabelais, in turn, updated this topos in his prologue to Gargantua (1534– 5), where he replaces the classical figurines with the homely little Renaissance apothecary vessels, painted on the outside with comic and grotesque figures (harpies, satyrs, and assorted fantastical animals), that served as containers for healing substances.30 This opposition of ill-favoured external to restorative internal recurs in the Renaissance allegory for the Marsyas myth that interprets the flaying of the satyr as signifying the stripping away of his errors. In the woodcut rendering of this scene by the Master ‘ia,’ the unfortunate satyr sits on a stump as an executioner flays him (figure 2.2). But in the Parmigianino-Fantuzzi version the satyr is suspended head-down along a tree trunk, lashed hand and foot, while Apollo administers the flaying himself (figure 2.4). Edith Wyss suggests that this later pictorial convention, which Giulio Romano and Titian also followed, may have derived from the idea of the inversion of values implied in the metaphor of the Socratic silene. Perhaps, as Wyss proposes, in hanging Marsyas by his feet as his skin was peeled from him, the Italian artists were substituting the concept of upside down for that of inside out.31 In the prologue to ‘À Monsieur de Belot,’ Ronsard turns his patron ‘inside out’ by likening Belot’s countenance to apothecary vessels on which are painted three unhappy mythological figures. Juno is shown hanging from the sky, as a punishment for treachery, per the description in Homer’s Iliad.32 Minerva appears as in the Ovidio vulgare woodcut, catching sight of her reflection in a pond and discovering that piping distorts her features in a vulgar way. Marsyas is represented in his agonized moment, with his flesh laid bare, just after the flaying.33 But where the content of the vessels ought presumably to correspond in nature and quality to the painted decorations on the outside, the images prove deceptive, for the vessels contain not ill-tasting potions but marvellous medicinal substances (amber, chive, musk, manna, rhubarb, and aloe). As was Socrates, the poet explains, so is Belot: harsh of brow, with a melancholy eye, revealing nothing pleasant on the exterior, yet a man

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Image Not Available

2.4 Antonio Fantuzzi (Italian, fl. 1537–50), Apollo Overseeing the Flaying of 14.1 cm. Bibliothèque Marsyas (after Parmigianino), c. 1545. Etching, 17.2 nationale de France.

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honoured in the public arena, whose wise speech drips from his lips like sweet honey, bringing forth into the light rare and precious things that do not appear at the eyes’ first glance.34 In this way the French laureate, disciple of Bacchus, lauding his patron, Jean de Belot, becomes the brilliant, drunken Alcibiades, praising Socrates, stripping him of his illfavoured external appearance in order to reveal his inner beauty. Or, alternatively, he becomes Gallic Apollo, stripping Marsyas of his skin so that he may be transformed into a great flowing river. For Gallic Apollo, the marvellous substance stored in the apothecary vessels, the ‘potion’ that restores the poet to health and inspires him to write the ode, proves itself to be a ‘container’: the lyre that he receives from Belot. Made of precious materials, gold and ivory, the lyre is embellished with a sequence of mythological scenes, many of them taken from musical myths. The appearance of Marsyas in one of these scenes makes him the only figure found among the decorations on the three apothecary jars to recur on the lyre. But in contrast to the image on the jar, which emphasized the satyr’s agonized body, the one on the lyre features his face, which, awash in tears, gives way to a flowing fountain, just as Belot’s homely visage, in the ode’s prologue, melted into a flow of honeyed words: Vous le verriez lentement consommer Mourant par art, et d’une face humaine N’estre plus rien qu’une large fonteine.35

At this point in the ode, as Terence Cave has pointed out, the two painted objects, the apothecary jar and the lyre, become for all intents and purposes mirror images of each other, with the representations of Marsyas functioning like two sides of a coin. The scene presented on the apothecary vessel as something to be stripped away, in order to retrieve the healing substance preserved within, reappears on the lyre ‘invested with a value of plenitude.’36 In the Adages (1508–32) Erasmus noted, with respect to the classical sileni, that the ‘humorous surprise’ they perpetrated served to ‘[make] the carver’s skill all the more admirable.’37 Likewise, when Belot’s lyre is ‘played’ by the poet, the musical scenes on it begin to sound, demonstrating his verbal skill, imbuing the instrument with the aesthetic plenitude that had eluded the other stringed instruments in Ronsard’s collection, those pictured in his early odes. This new lyre’s self-sufficiency also derives from its provenance. Gallic

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Apollo no longer needs to raid ancient Thebes and Apulia to obtain the tools of his craft, for he now receives them as benefices from representatives of the French political elite. Just as the unfortunate Marsyas of the apothecary vessel is rehabilitated on the surface of the lyre, so too the poet himself is redeemed in the course of the poem, brought from a period of sterility to one of fecundity by virtue of Belot’s generosity. In return, the poet graciously makes Belot’s name known to all of France, by presenting the lyre – his poem – to Apollo: Telle est ta Lyre à Phebus apenduë, Qui bien dorée et de nerfs bien tendue Pend à son temple: afin que nos François Eussent, Belot, le jouët de leurs doigs, Joingnant d’accord souz un pouce qui tremble, L’hymne à ce Dieu, et le tien tout ensemble.38

Whereas ancient Apollo suspended Marsyas’s skin in the temple at Celaenae as a caution to those who might dare to challenge him, this poet displays Belot’s lyre in Apollo’s temple as a symbol of the availability of poetic power. Henceforth the lyre will nourish French letters, just as the river Marsyas once nourished ancient Phrygia. On the surface, it seems that the generous exchange between this poet and his patron could not be more different than the musical confrontation between the Olympian god and the satyr. But here again, appearances deceive. Ronsard’s reciprocation of Belot’s gift of the lyre with his own gift of a poem belies the traditional view of the patron–poet relationship as one in which the patron pays as the poet praises.39 Rather, the system of exchange enacted in this ode is pervaded by obligation. In this system, as Stephen Murphy writes, ‘the purpose of bestowal is not an eventual desired profit, nor simple altruism, but the obtainment and exhibition of power. The exchange establishes friendship, but also rivalry that can come close to war.’40 It is likely that the change in the poem’s title, from ‘À Monsieur de Belot’ in the printing of 1569 to ‘La Lyre’ (with the patron’s name in a subtitle) in 1584, was prompted by the counsellor’s death in the interim. However, this later moment, when the ode comes to bear the name not of the giver but of the gift itself, serves as a reminder that the magnificent lyre hanging in Apollo’s temple is entirely of the poet’s invention, audible (visible, even) only in verse. As such the instrument testifies in the first place to the poet’s skill and only secondarily to the memory of Belot.

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Of the many visual representations of the Marsyas myth with which Ronsard may have been familiar, one by Rosso Fiorentino stands out as especially pertinent to the literary claims he makes in ‘À Monsieur de Belot’: a painted rendering of Apollo, executed at the royal château at Fontainebleau in the late 1530s. Although the fresco itself has not survived (it originally appeared in the Salle Haute, on the top floor of the Pavillon des Poêles), Rosso’s preparatory drawing (circa 1538) is extant. It depicts a seated Apollo, with a quiver at his feet, holding a lyre in one hand and what appears to be Marsyas’s skin in the other (figure 2.5).41 The god turns his head, to look at the skin. In the Salle Haute, this Apollo would have assumed his place in a sequence of seated gods and goddesses, in a decor that also featured the emblems and ciphers of François I, thereby identifying the king’s merits and deeds with those of the Olympian deities. In its original setting, this composition served to admonish courtiers and foreign dignitaries against challenging the French king. Likewise, Ronsard’s ode warns lesser mortals not to toy with Gallic Apollo, keeper of Belot’s lyre and the satyr’s skin. Vernacular Piping If the contest between Marsyas and Apollo could serve to explore interactions between poets and patrons, it was even better suited to depicting rivalries between poets and contrasts in their literary styles. In sixteenthcentury French verse, the generic musical paragone staged in this myth acquired specific indigenous resonances. What was the literary value of the French language in contrast to Greek, Latin, or Italian? Should poetry be an oral art, crafted primarily with a view to musical setting, or a printed one, aimed at the literate classes? Could the national literature accommodate both Catholic and Protestant voices? Predictably, the poets who used this myth to wage their literary wars liked to cast themselves in the role of Apollo and assign to their adversaries the role of the vanquished satyr. But the Marsyas myth was so over-determined as a representation of artistic disputes pitting ancients against moderns, it created difficulties for poets who wished to maintain the superiority of strings but sought at the same time to portray themselves as innovators. If Apollo’s lyre was the model for the new French poetry, intended to be fixed in print, then Marsyas’s flute represented the old orality it sought to challenge – which would make Marsyas an ancient and Apollo a modern. Yet as Bruce Smith reminds us, literacy and orality, ‘far from being fixed entities, are systems of communication that exist in compli-

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Image Not Available

2.5 Rosso Fiorentino (dit) (Italian, 1494–1541), Apollo Holding a Lyre, c. 1538. Drawing, 29.4 18.4 cm (pen and grayish ink and wash; lightly squared in black chalk). Paris, Musée du Louvre, D.A.G. Inv. 8632. Photo Credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, New York.

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cated, changing, culturally specific relationships to each other.’ These systems cannot exist in isolation, for one of the two ‘must function as the dominant factor, as the standard by which the other is judged to be different.’42 Without Marsyas’s challenge, Apollo would have had no way to demonstrate his superiority. And so, in the literary debates that emerged in France in the 1550s and ’60s, in the wake of the poetic revolution launched by Du Bellay and Ronsard, the aesthetic values commonly assigned to strings and winds became destabilized. We find in the poetry and art of this period that wind instruments, on occasion, acquire merit. In the Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, Du Bellay borrows the example of the contest of musical skill between Apollo and Marsyas from his Italian model, Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo delle lingue (1542), as a means of defining the values of different classical and modern languages. But whereas in Speroni’s dialogue one of the interlocutors uses this myth to fortify the position of the defenders of Latin (Apollo) against those who favour Italian (Marsyas), Du Bellay inverts the argument. Setting Latin temporarily aside, he enlists the myth to support his contention that the French language may be considered superior to Italian. In Du Bellay’s reading of the myth, Minerva, blowing into her pipe, calls to mind speakers of Italian. Those who speak French are more fortunate, for their language does not distort the face: Mais aussi avons nous cest avantaige de ne tordre point la bouche en cent mile sortes, comme les singes, voyre comme beaucoup mal se souvenans de Minerve, qui jouant quelquefois de la fluste, et voyant en un myroir la deformité de ses levres, la jeta bien loing, malheureuse rencontre au presumptueux Marsye, qui depuis en feut ecorché.43

This account of the myth pits two vernaculars against each other but still assigns to one (French) the exemplary status of strings. When Du Bellay reverts to the overarching topic of his treatise, however, which is the problem of how to define the relationship of French to the ancient languages, he has no choice but to liken French to a wind instrument. Greek and Latin cannot be winds, for the classical poets were players of the lyre. Moreover, the Deffence argues that the ancients are the best models for the moderns. So as Du Bellay relates it, in the hands of Phrygian Marsyas, who takes up Minerva’s reed pipe after she has discarded it, her invention becomes the French language, standing forth to challenge Greek and Latin. This imagery might seem self-

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defeating in the context of a treatise that aims to promote the vernacular – Marsyas, after all, lost the competition. Du Bellay sidesteps this obstacle though, by projecting the competition scenario into the future and questioning whether music played on winds need necessarily always be of lesser quality than music played on strings. Whereas the Ovidian moralizing tradition denounces Marsyas’s arrogance in setting himself up as a rival to Apollo, Du Bellay treats the satyr more kindly, portraying him as a disciple of the musician-god and assigning a positive value to his music making. The poet bases his reconsideration of the artistic merit of Marsyas’s piping on the premise that opens the Deffence, to wit that all languages derive from the same source and that we therefore cannot rightly praise one and blame another. One’s mother tongue, whatever it may be, is something one learns naturally, without undue effort. In ancient times Greek and Latin were themselves mother tongues, hence, ‘vernaculars.’ If the classical languages could serve as both spoken and literary languages, so may French. The fact that French lacks their metrical characteristics is a drawback, to be sure, but deficiencies of this sort may be compensated in other ways.44 To attain a literary status like that enjoyed by Greek and Latin, French need only undertake to emulate them. Du Bellay concedes that this might appear an arrogant claim, but he points out that since the classical languages have never been seriously challenged, there is no proof they may not be rivalled. In short, the competition has yet to begin. For Du Bellay, however, as for Marsyas, piping proves a dangerous pastime. As happens often in the Deffence, he pushes his Marsyas analogy too far and soon trips himself up. Unlike Speroni’s treatise, Du Bellay’s is not in dialogue form. So he briefly imagines an anonymous skeptical interlocutor, who questions the author’s attempt to recognize French as a worthy successor to Greek and Latin: ‘Quoy donques (dira quelqu’un) veux tu à l’exemple de ce Marsye, qui osa comparer sa fluste rustique à la douce lyre d’Apolon, egaler ta Langue à la Grecque et Latine?’45 To this supposed objection the author replies that such strategies have already proven successful in other domains, including (once) in the art of governance: Je confesse que les aucteurs d’icelles nous ont surmontez en scavoir et facunde: és queles choses leur a eté bien facile de vaincre ceux qui ne repugnoint point. Mais que par longue et diligente immitation de ceux qui ont occupé les premiers ce que Nature n’ha pourtant denié aux autres, nous

74 Sounding Objects ne puissions leur succeder aussi bien en cela que nous avons deja fait en la plus grand’ part de leurs ars mecaniques, et quelquefois en leur monarchie, je ne le diray pas.46

The historical example with which Du Bellay attempts to bolster his argument, his recollection that France once rivalled the ancients in the grandeur of its monarchy, simultaneously undermines it. While the example aims to demonstrate France’s capacity to replicate the imperial achievements of ancient Rome, at the time of the drafting of the Deffence it could not help but call attention to the French realm’s considerably retracted borders. Charlemagne’s vast empire was long gone, and the Hapsburg empire to which François I had aspired in 1519 was still under the firm control of Charles V when Du Bellay composed his manifesto thirty years later. In Du Bellay’s lifetime the French monarchy stood up better under scrutiny if not compared with its past glory. Likewise, as the Lyonnese writer Barthélemy Aneau would argue in his rebuttal to Du Bellay’s Deffence, the Quintil Horatian (1551), the French language fared better if not measured against Greek and Latin. ‘Il n’est point defense sans accusation precedente,’ wrote Aneau, ‘Qui accuse ou qui a accusée la langue Françoise?’47 The truth was that Du Bellay himself had attacked French (not so much the language itself as its literature), by criticizing the uses the previous generation of French poets had made of it, poets whose verses he characterized as ‘skin and colour’ when the national literature was in need of ‘flesh, bones, nerves, and blood.’48 Although Du Bellay does not mention the satyr here, one cannot help but think of the flayed Marsyas. The old poetry was like the satyr’s empty skin, left hanging in the temple. But his vital organs still remained, to be transformed into new tools of poetic expression. Mercenary Minstrels In a chapter of the Deffence titled ‘Quelz genres de poëmes doit elire le poëte Francoys,’ Du Bellay evokes wind instruments in a positive sense as symbols of the charming Latin and neo-Latin pastoral genres that should be cultivated in the vernacular along with loftier genres such as the ode: ‘Chante moy d’une musette bien resonnante et d’une fluste bien jointe ces plaisantes ecclogues rustiques, à l’exemple de Thëocrit et de Virgile: marines à l’exemple de Sennazar, gentilhomme Nëapolitain.’49 In referring to the type of bagpipe called the musette rather than the type known as the cornemuse, Du Bellay avoided the more disrepu-

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table connotations of piping, for the musette was an aristocratic instrument worked by a bellows instead of being blown with the mouth. Whereas no player of the cornemuse is identified in Valois court records, a musette player named Gilbert Vigier served in the Chamber of François II.50 Despite the respectability of the musette, Du Bellay’s allusion to winds elicited a tirade from Aneau in the Quintil, in which the Lyonnese humanist accused the Pléiade theoretician of debasing French poetry by equating it with minstrelsy: ‘Quel langage est ce, chanter d’une musette et d’une fluste? Tu nous as proposé le langage François: puis tu fais des menestriers, tabourineurs et violeurs ... N’abaissez point la poësie à la menestrerie, violerie et flageolerie.’51 Aneau’s disparagement of minstrels harks back to social distinctions that had developed in the Middle Ages, when itinerant musicians (jongleurs) were stigmatized for being of the world rather than of the church. Although by the mid-sixteenth century the status of instrumentalists had improved, the old prejudices lingered on. Within the hierarchy of incorporated professions, minstrels ranked below apothecaries, drapers, jewellers, even barbers and butchers. In Pontus de Tyard’s Solitaire second (1555) we find pejorative references to ‘mercenary’ minstrels and ‘vagabond’ singers.52 More pointedly, Étienne Tabourot puns on ‘menestrier’ in his Bigarrures (1588), characterizing the roving minstrel as one who ‘rides other men’s wives’ (‘quasi, meine estrier des espousees’).53 Barthélemy Aneau’s language, though, directed not so much at minstrels themselves as at the Pléiade poets, is plainly sinister, for in the Middle Ages and Renaissance ‘violeur’ denoted either a player of the viol (joueur de viole) or a rapist (celui qui viole), the term ‘violiste’ not yet being in common use. Pléiade literary doctrine, in Aneau’s view, was a fundamental violation of French poetry. Even Pléiade references to the lyre, an instrument surely above reproach, did not escape Aneau’s critique in the Quintil, for such terminology exudes elitism: ‘Comme ton Ronsard trop et tresarrogamment se glorifie avoir amené la lyre Greque et Latine en France, pource qu’il nous fait bien esbahyr de ces gros et estranges motz, strophe et antistrophe.’54 To counterbalance this sort of learned posturing, Aneau reverses his position and invokes minstrelsy as an exemplary profession which the Pléiade poets are incapable of exercising properly. The lyre, he points out, is obsolete. How can Du Bellay’s friend Ronsard identify French poetry with an instrument that no one in France knows how to make or play? The common village fiddler, unassuming figure that he is,

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may be considered superior to these braggart poets in that he can at least be credited with knowing his instrument well and possessing the necessary skill to play it: Car qui demanderoit au plus savant de vous quel instrument est et fut lyra, et la maniere d’en sonner ou jouër, et la forme d’icelle, nombre de cordes et accordz, et la maniere de chanter les vers dessus, ou sur la fluste, je croy que le plus habille se trouveroit moindre en cela que un petit rebequet et flusteur de vilage.55

Poets are one thing, insists Aneau, and musicians another, and this was true even in antiquity, for Pindar’s verses were not set to music until long after he had composed them.56 Underlying the quarrel between Du Bellay and Aneau was the question of whether French poets should continue to fashion short, witty poems primarily with an eye to musical setting, according to the formes fixes tradition (collaborating intensively with composers as Marot had with Claudin de Sermisy), or whether they should concentrate on developing learned neoclassical forms in print. In fact, by rejecting the older genres (rondeaux, ballades, virelais, and so on – what Du Bellay calls ‘chansons vulgaires’ in the Deffence), the Pléiade innovators were not calling for the complete abandonment of the custom of singing verses. Of the ten new genres they recommended, two were still lyric, the sonnet and the ode.57 Yet the preponderance of non-lyric genres in their list indicates that their primary goal was extramusical: that of replacing the older domestic genres with new ones drawn from outside sources and deemed more appropriate to stand as a national style. As examples of chansons vulgaires Du Bellay cites three poems (two by Saint-Gelais and one by the Lyonnese poet Pernette Du Guillet) that were circulating widely as songs when the Deffence appeared in print. All three were complaintes, and it seems probable that, just as the Pléiade poets initially rejected the chanson in favour of the classical ode, so too they sought to replace the complainte with the classical elegy.58 From Du Bellay’s point of view the complainte’s flaw was doubtless its origin in an oral culture of song-singing and its dissemination in cheap print (when revived in later decades, this would be considered an effeminate genre). Ultimately, in defending the ‘little village fiddler,’ Aneau was arguing for the preservation of a craft that remained closely linked with the popular press and with the sorts of musical skill acquired by rote rather than book learning.

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Musical Sources In response to Aneau’s criticism of the Deffence Du Bellay composed an ode, ‘Contre les envieux poëtes’ (Aultres oeuvres poetiques, 1550), dedicated to Ronsard, in which he revisited the Marsyas myth. Unlike the Deffence though, where Du Bellay approved the satyr as a representative of the French language, in this ode he assigns to his adversaries the role of Marsyas and identifies the satyr’s error as envy rather than hubris, thereby stressing Marsyas’s poor judgment and eradicating all possibility of praising him for his daring. The Marsyas stanza, placed shortly after the midpoint of the ode, is inspired by Ovid’s account of the myth in the Metamorphoses. The speaker here assumes an eyewitness role, noting first the sound of the competing musical instruments and then the horrifying sight of the satyr’s body, stripped of its skin: J’oy le combat ancien Du Cornet contre la Lire Du Prince musicien ... Je voy ses entrailles vives, Ses nerfz, ses venes craintives Découvertes tressaillir.59

It is as if the satyr’s suffering body now pulsates with the music that has defeated him, his sinews and veins having been transformed into the taut strings of Apollo’s lyre.60 His own instrument, the flute, has been downgraded to an even more rudimentary ‘horn.’ To this point, Du Bellay paraphrases Ovid. But when it comes to describing the creation of the Marsyas river, Du Bellay strays from his intertext, challenging Ovid’s rehabilitation of the satyr by emphasizing the punishment meted out by Apollo: [Le Prince musicien] a d’un juste martire Puni le vaincu Satyre, Las! qui en vain se repent, Voyant sa peau qui luy pent.61

Here the poet attributes to Marsyas an agonized repentance and omits entirely the sympathetic, grieving onlookers, whose flowing tears supposedly formed the river’s source. Indeed, in this version the river forms from the satyr’s own tears:

78 Sounding Objects Je voy deux herbeuses rives De l’eau de ses yeux saillir.62

As a result of these revisions to Ovid’s text, Du Bellay’s Marsyas appears less of a victim and more unequivocally at fault. This presentation of the myth dovetails with the Ovidian vernacular tradition, which links the creation of the Marsyas river to the practice of imprudent speech. Giovanni del Virgilio, in his Italian prose rendering of the myth (from the 1320s), allegorized Apollo as a defender of truth and interpreted Marsyas’s transformation into a river as an illustration of the transience of foolish words. Following Del Virgilio’s example, Bonsignori’s moralization (1377) stated that as the river flows over the ground, the mistake of people like Marsyas is revealed, and also the knowledge or wisdom of Apollo, which rightly governs the world.63 Similarly, Du Bellay’s ode aims to reveal the weakness of his detractors, those envious poets whose rash words flow out over the ground like Marsyas’s penitent tears. Even more pointedly, in the next stanza of the ode the waters of the Marsyas river metamorphose into those of the river Styx, so that the voices of the poet’s adversaries become associated with death and passage into the underworld. In contrast, Du Bellay and Ronsard are portrayed as drawing their inspiration from the springs and streams of Parnassus, home of Apollo and the Muses, described in the following stanza. Once again this may not have been Du Bellay’s intent, but his river imagery points to an ambiguity in the Pléiade program for renovating French poetry. According to the Virgilian topos of the source, all rivers of the world share a confluent origin.64 For Du Bellay this suggests that the stream representing French letters is comparable to the one representing Greek and Roman letters – they draw their inspiration from the same source. Yet where should we locate the Pléiade poets and their French identity in this view of literary production as revival? What value could be assigned to individual creativity in the context of a cultural crusade that aimed to establish an older, foreign tradition as an incontrovertible ideal and yet, at the same time, sought to surpass that tradition with a new native one? If even a small measure of French historicity were desirable for French letters, then by what criteria could one judge the merits of rival forms of vernacular poetry? How could one predict which ‘stream’ would eventually lead to the underworld and which to Parnassus? Analogous scenes found in the contemporary pictorial arts underscore the contradictions of the Pléiade stance. A fresco that still graces the walls of the Salle de Bal at Fontainebleau represents Apollo and the

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2.6 Giorgio Ghisi (Italian, 1520–82), Apollo and the Muses (after Luca Penni), c. 1557. Engraving, 30.7 38.7 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Muses on Parnassus. Probably the work of Nicolò dell’Abate, this composition (painted between 1552 and 1556) inspired an engraving by Antoine Garnier.65 Giorgio Ghisi engraved another Parnassus, by Luca Penni, at about the same time. Prominent in both versions is the Parnassan stream, located in the centre foreground.66 With regard to the depiction of musical instruments, the Penni-Ghisi rendering is the most elaborate and detailed (figure 2.6). Apollo plays the lira da braccio, while the Muses accompany him on bowed and plucked strings, percussion instruments, and a small organ. No mouth-blown winds are present, to avoid evoking the memory of Minerva’s curse. The ostentatious musical instruments, ornate garments, and fancy headpieces all point to high culture, to these female figures as exemplars of nobility and civility. Like Apollo, however, the Muses were once called upon to demonstrate their musical skill. An engraving by Gian Jacopo Caraglio, ‘The

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2.7 Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio (Italian, 1500/5–65), Challenge of the Pierides (after Rosso Fiorentino), late 1524. Engraving, 24.5 39 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Challenge of the Pierides’ (1524), depicts the myth according to which the Pierides, the nine daughters of Macedonian king Pierus, challenged the Muses to a singing contest (figure 2.7). Caraglio’s source was a drawing produced by Rosso in Rome in the mid-1520s, and art historians believe a painted version of this composition may have hung at Fontainebleau a few decades later.67 In Ovid’s account of this myth the texts of the songs performed determine the outcome of the competition. First, one of the Pierides sings of the battle between the giants and the gods, attributing undeserved honour to the giants and belittling the deeds of the gods. Then Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, representing her sisters, sings the praise of Ceres, goddess of fertility. This performance ensures victory for the Muses, who avenge themselves by changing the Pierides into chattering magpies, constrained henceforth to lamenting their fate raucously from the branches of trees.68 In the Caraglio engraving the two groups of contestants are provided with musical instruments that suggest the contrasting moral quality of their music making: a lyre, double cornetto, viol, Roman trumpet, and

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fiddle (vièle à archet) for the Muses (on the left); a tambourine, goat’s horn, and bagpipe for the Pierides (on the right).69 In contrast with Ghisi’s Parnassus, the Muses here appear naked, while the Pierides don the ornate garb and hairstyles. Where in the ‘Parnassus’ the Muses’ finery is valorized, in the ‘Challenge’ that same finery suggests artifice. Presumably the left side of the Caraglio image represents the ‘ancients’ and the right side the ‘moderns.’ Yet the markers of the distinction are unstable, open to opposing interpretations depending on the nature of the artistic source to which they allude. What is substance in one context becomes mere show in another. And which side more accurately represents the Pléiade? Noble Satire By the mid-1550s the quarrel between the French ancients and moderns had run its course, the Pléiade poets having begun to find ways to blend elements of the French native tradition with the borrowed classical and Italian idioms they so admired. This brought them the satisfaction of seeing their verses more widely praised. Therefore, when Du Bellay revisited the wind/string paragone in his ‘Hymne de la Surdité’ (Divers jeux rustiques, 1558), it was in order to characterize stylistic differences between his own poetry and that of Ronsard: to express a contrast between two moderns. By this time Ronsard was generally recognized as the leading poet of the court and Du Bellay as a distinguished associate and competitor. They regularly addressed each other in their verses, and their contemporaries often compared their styles. Du Bellay’s choice of subject for the ‘Hymne de la Surdité’ derived from unfortunate personal circumstances. Ronsard had suffered from partial deafness since his adolescence. Du Bellay’s more recent acquisition of this affliction – which the poem contrives to portray as a blessing in disguise – afforded a new basis for comparison of the two poets. In the hymn’s opening stanza Du Bellay evokes the stylistic differences between his own poetry and Ronsard’s by citing three examples of contests from classical myth: the singing contest between the Muses and the Pierides, the weaving contest between Minerva and Arachne (after which Minerva changed Arachne into a spider), and the contest of Apollo and Marsyas. A fourth example shifts the basis of comparison from the classical to the contemporary world, by contrasting an Italian prince unfavourably with the French king:

82 Sounding Objects Je ne suis pas, Ronsard, si pauvre de raison, De vouloir faire à toy de moy comparaison, A toy, qui ne seroit un moindre sacrilege Qu’aux Muses comparer des Pies le college, A Minerve Aracné, Marsye au Delien, Ou à nostre grand Prince un prince Italien.70

Although these verses nominally establish that Du Bellay had no thought of seeking to rival his more illustrious colleague, in fact, by the very act of composing this ‘hymn on deafness,’ he was challenging Ronsard at a genre in which the latter had innovated with the printing of his two collections of hymns in 1555 and 1556. Du Bellay’s hymn stood as a ‘vernacular’ counterpart to such texts as Ronsard’s ‘Hymne de l’Éternité,’ ‘Hymne de la Justice,’ and ‘Hymne de l’Or,’ for Du Bellay used Italian satirical poetry for inspiration whereas Ronsard had patterned his hymns after classical models. The opening verses of the ‘Hymne de la Surdité’ posit Ronsard’s classicizing style as being more estimable than Du Bellay’s Italianizing one. But at the same time, by adopting the noble genre revived by Ronsard, and then opening his own hymn with a series of mythological examples, Du Bellay displays a comparable erudition, thereby minimizing the distinction between their styles. The reference to Italian and French princes further clouds the matter. While apparently reinforcing the aesthetic rankings established by the mythological examples (the Muses, Minerva, and Apollo all feature as better artists than the Pierides, Arachne, and Marsyas), the contemporary political example also calls them into question. Du Bellay himself was an ‘Italian prince’ – he composed the ‘Hymne de la Surdité’ during his voyage to Italy. Ronsard, who never travelled to Italy, was a ‘French king.’ Du Bellay’s verses disparage Italian princes. Yet these princes had served as models for French royalty since at least the beginning of the reign of François I, the king who aspired to rule the duchy of Milan, who had himself been painted by Jean Clouet in Italianate princely garb, and who commissioned a French translation of Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano, a book that recommends that aristocratic artistic expression should conceal its skill behind a veneer of grace, effortlessness, even nonchalance. Du Bellay’s allusion to Italian princes may therefore be read as a valorization of his own penchant for ‘facilité’ (ironically, the quality earlier attributed to Saint-Gelais’s style), in contrast to Ronsard’s ‘gravité’ – a way of saying, ‘What I do looks easy, but it’s not.’71 By imitating Ronsard’s hymns Du

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Bellay was playing Marsyas to the laureate’s Apollo. His poem therefore stakes out a literary terrain he had already posited in the Deffence to be potentially as fertile as that cultivated by Ronsard. The ‘Hymne de la Surdité’ demonstrates that the French language may be enriched and illustrated by satire as well as solemnity and, once again, that Marsyas may be considered a suitable challenger. The personal circumstances underlying the topic of Du Bellay’s hymn foreground the problem of the Pléiade poets’ relation to actual music making. Ronsard’s hymns were by and large wholly inappropriate for musical setting, at least in the vocal genres practised at the time. Du Bellay’s own hymn, despite its pretensions to facilité, was no better suited to be sung. Surely Du Bellay and Ronsard themselves, two deaf poets, perceived the irony of describing their literary skill in terms of a musical competition when it is doubtful that either did much singing or playing (indeed, Ronsard would admit in one of his autobiographical poems that he had a poor singing voice).72 In any event, when another round of literary quarrels arose in the early 1560s, in conjunction with the outbreak of religious war in France, Ronsard’s physical affliction (Du Bellay was now deceased) would not escape the notice of the new generation of detractors waiting in the wings. Religious Discord The literary confrontation of the 1560s (perhaps the ‘fallow’ period alluded to in ‘À Monsieur de Belot’) began with a series of Protestant political pamphlets attacking Ronsard. Among other matters they cited his premature aging and deafness as evidence of a dissolute life. The allusion to deafness was particularly unfair, for it suggested Ronsard had chosen the wrong profession when in fact, it was his deafness that pushed him toward a clerical or scholarly career (if not precisely toward poetry), by preventing him from pursuing the military career for which he had been destined as an impoverished younger son of a nobleman.73 Ronsard responded with his magistral ‘Responce aux injures et calomnies, de je ne sçay quels Predicans, et Ministres de Geneve,’ written and printed in 1563, in which he points out that his deafness was the result of ‘an accident given by God.’ He lists poets from antiquity who suffered from blindness, and reminds readers that Du Bellay had been deaf too.74 In his ‘Hymne de la Surdité’ Du Bellay had stated that an advantage of deafness is that it allows one to avoid hearing all sorts of unpleasant sounds. In the ‘Responce aux injures et calomnies’ Ronsard

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reprises this joke, remarking that his own deafness spares him from having to listen to the preaching of the Huguenot Théodore de Bèze (whom he had in fact witnessed sermonizing in 1562).75 While it had suited Du Bellay in his hymn on deafness to emphasize Ronsard’s skill at composing verses in the noble style, Ronsard’s imitation of ancient authors in fact extended to unruly Dionysian as well as stately Apollonian genres, and this was what exposed him to Genevan criticism. Shortly after the printing of Ronsard’s first Amours in 1552, he had composed a poem that imitated the Greek genre of the dithyramb: a tempestuous, choric hymn, honouring Dionysus or Bacchus. Another member of the Pléiade group, Étienne Jodelle, had recently presented his new vernacular tragedy, Cléopâtre captive, at court. To celebrate the occasion a group of poets made an excursion to Arcueil, in the countryside near Paris, for a ‘Greek festival’ at which they wittily presented Jodelle with a goat wearing a garland of praise. Ronsard immortalized the ceremony in verses titled ‘Dithyrambes à la pompe du bouc de Jodelle,’ which he included in a small book of erotic verse printed in 1553, the Livret de Folastries. Although issued anonymously and soon censured, the Folastries collection was nonetheless quickly and irrevocably associated with Ronsard in literary circles (most of the five hundred copies that had been printed were burned, but not before a few had been distributed). The Huguenot memory proved particularly durable in this regard. Ronsard never reprinted the ‘Dithyrambes,’ but the Genevan pamphlets of the early 1560s revived the earlier scandal by accusing him of paganism – of having ‘sacrificed a goat to Bacchus.’ In his ‘Responce aux injures et calomnies,’ Ronsard counters the charge of paganism with a mocking proposal to seek an ass in the mountains of Auvergne, crown it with hay and thistles, skin it, and endow a Genevan preacher with its ears, à la king Midas: Les oreilles, ainsi que les avoit Midas, Ce lourdaut Phrygien, qui grossier ne sceut pas Estimer de Phebus les chansons et la Lyre, Quand il blasma le bon et honora le pire.76

In substituting a Genevan ass for the Jodelian goat, Ronsard turns his adversaries into reincarnations of Midas, the Phrygian king who appears in the myth of Pan, where his particular foolishness is to indulge a predilection for the wrong sort of music.77 The myth of Pan is remarkably like the Marsyas myth, to the extent that

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Renaissance artists and writers, and modern scholars alike, have sometimes confused (or deliberately conflated) them.78 As Ovid relates, Pan, a minor pastoral deity, inventor of the syrinx, was so proud of his skill on the flute, he had the temerity to disparage Apollo’s music making in comparison with his own. Apollo challenged him to a competition, for which the venerable mountain god Tmolus served as judge. Tmolus ruled in Apollo’s favour, but Phrygian king Midas, who chanced to hear Pan playing his pipes, was so charmed by his music, he called the decision unjust. To punish Midas, Apollo endowed him with a pair of ass’s ears. Hence, in comparison with the Marsyas myth, the punishment inflicted on the guilty party in the myth of Pan is more mocking than brutal.79 The Ovidian moralizing tradition introduced a religious dimension into this myth. According to the fifteenth-century Ovide moralisé en prose, in rejecting Tmolus’s ruling Midas covered himself with the mantle of hypocrisy, foolishly abandoning the contemplative life for an ‘abyss of vanity and perpetual damnation.’80 In his 1552 emblem book, Imagination poetique, Barthélemy Aneau assigned the motto of ‘Pervertiz jugemens’ to his Apollo and Pan emblem. The emblem’s woodcut (originally prepared for an illustrated edition of the Metamorphoses) shows the two gods engaged in playing for Midas, who, already wearing his ass’s ears, points to Pan, signalling his preference for the goat-god’s music (figure 2.8). Pan plays a bagpipe – a particularly appropriate replacement for the syrinx in this context, as an instrument often made from a goatskin – while Apollo holds what appears to be a guitar or lute. In the accompanying epigram Aneau identifies Apollo as a good orator who speaks ‘prudent eloquence’ and labels Midas a foolish listener who prefers ‘vain cries’ and ‘lies or fables’ to the ‘simple truth’ spoken by the Delian god.81 But this relatively predictable moral lesson takes a surprising turn in the epigram’s final verses, where Aneau appends a comparison of Midas with Lucius, the human protagonist of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, who spent an adventuresome year in an ass’s hide. This analogy does not derive from Ovid or even the Ovide moralisé, but appears to be of Aneau’s own invention. He attributes to the hero of The Golden Ass the name of the tale’s author, pointing out that many men are like ‘inverted Apuleiuses,’ with their human faces hiding the beast within. Better that they should wear their foolishness visibly, like Midas, for all to recognize and shun: Or pleust à Dieu que tous Asnes masquez D’oreilles d’Asne ainsi fussent marquez!82

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2.8 Anonymous (French, mid-16th century), Woodcut. In Barthélemy Aneau, Picta poesis (Lyons, 1552), p. 91. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

When Ronsard proposes in his ‘Responce aux injures et calomnies’ to obtain a set of ass’s ears for his Genevan critic, the laureate of course casts himself in the role of Apollo, taking it upon himself to ‘mark’ his critic with visible evidence of his folly. However, Ronsard diverges from the myth by suddenly reversing the metamorphosis and taking the ears back: Mais non laisse le là, je suis content assés De cognoistre ses vers des miens rapetassés.83

In the early 1560s, secure in his position as the leading poet of France, Ronsard’s best line of defence was to direct attention away from his own earlier lapse into Dionysianism and toward the blunder evidenced by the pamphleteers who, by recalling the censured Folastries collection, displayed their conversance with it – with a risqué production that Ronsard

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himself had never publicly acknowledged (though he had not denied it either). By critiquing Ronsard as a man who ‘sacrifices goats to Bacchus,’ they had shown themselves completely indebted to his literary material. Ironically, in this instance the ‘wrong sort of music,’ indulged in by foolish listeners, turns out to be an element of Ronsard’s own earlier poetic output. Ronsard deleted the verses about sacrificing a Genevan ass from the ‘Responce’ before printing the poem in the last two editions of his complete works, in 1584 and 1587. By the 1580s this quarrel was water well under the bridge, and the mocking tone of this stanza clashed with the sincerity of much of the rest of the poem, particularly the autobiographical sections where Ronsard exposes the inaccuracy of the Protestant accusations and depicts the sobriety of his manner of living. Additionally, as the civil wars dragged on Ronsard was obliged to distance himself from the more secular type of courtiership he had espoused early in his career and to associate himself with a rapidly reforming Catholicism.84 So he retained some verses in the ‘Responce’ that spoke of the usefulness of pursuing pleasant leisure activities such as walking in the garden, engaging in sports, and even sharing jokes and laughter, but beginning already with the 1578 printing, he eliminated those that spoke of the more licentious pastimes that were de rigueur for a courtier but improper for the tonsured cleric he had become: J’ayme à faire l’amour, j’ayme à parler aux femmes, A mettre par escrit mes amoureuses flames, J’ayme le bal, la dance, et les masques aussi, La musicque et le luth, ennemis du souci.85

These activities, condoned (even extolled) in Castiglione’s Il cortegiano, were being increasingly derided in anti-court literature, so that Ronsard, conscious of his status as poet laureate to a Catholic king, was obliged to distance himself from them. Scholars have noted that the ‘Responce aux injures et calomnies’ is the closest thing to a literary manifesto to be found in the works of this poet, who was not much inclined to theorizing. It affirms, at various points, the autonomy of poetic discourse, the poet’s right to follow his themes where he wills, and his freedom from the constraints imposed on orators and historians.86 This was the type of lyric engagement for which Ronsard wished to be remembered, not the youthful follies retrieved by his detractors. Although on most counts Ronsard emerged the victor from this con-

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test, still, it was a Huguenot poet, André de Rivaudeau, who had the last word on the subject. Rivaudeau published a collection of poetry in Poitiers in 1567 that included a verse epistle addressed to Ronsard’s colleague Rémy Belleau in which he expressed admiration for the Pléiade group and especially for Ronsard: [le] merveilleux Ronsard, Le Prince, sans envie, et premier de son art.87

In the ‘Epistre à Rémy Belleau’ Rivaudeau likens to foolish king Midas those among his contemporaries who prefer the Marotic style (the ‘lyre of Quercy’) to Ronsard’s (the ‘lyre of Vendômois’). One wonders at Rivaudeau’s choice of comparison, given that by this time Marot was largely viewed as a Protestant poet, due to the formal adoption of his psalms by the Genevan reform. Here concerns about national poetic style supersede questions of religious affiliation, at least momentarily. Rivaudeau has no compunctions about mixing his myths. In his poetic world, Ronsard is Apollo, those who attempt to imitate Ronsard are Marsyas, and those who denigrate him are king Midas: Car qui pense imiter la lyre incomparable, Belleau, de mon Ronsard à Marsye est semblable, Lequel fut dechiré par des jalouzes mains, En despitant un Dieu plus grand que les humains. Toutesfois un fascheux m’ose à la Vendosmoise Bien souvent egaler la lyre Quercinoise. Celuy-là, mon Belleau, a pareil jugement Qu’un Mide Phrygien, qui prefera le chant Du Dieu cornemuseur aux gratieuses rimes Du plus docte Apollon ...88

This encomium to Ronsard is startling, in light of a preface that Rivaudeau had composed previously for a collection of religious poems by Albert Babinot, La Christiade (1559), in which Rivaudeau defends Babinot’s works against what he calls the ‘monstrous absurdities’ of the Pléiade’s ‘lewd fables.’89 In the ‘Epistre à Rémy Belleau’ Rivaudeau appears to retract his earlier position, but in fact does not. Rather, he gives it more nuance. The later verses of the ‘Epistre’ make clear that Rivaudeau criticized the Pléiade poets in the Christiade preface, not because he did not

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admire their skill but because he wanted to see it put to another use. Near the conclusion of his letter to Belleau, Rivaudeau adopts a selfdeprecating manner reminiscent of the opening stanza of Du Bellay’s ‘Hymne de la Surdité.’ He distinguishes himself from the Genevans by declining to challenge Ronsard’s authority, confessing that he himself has little talent and insisting that he has neither a ‘soul too ram-like’ nor such an ‘ass-like mind’ as to deny the greater artistic merit of the laureate’s work. Soon, though, Rivaudeau shows his hand. When it comes to matters of content, rather than mere style, he modifies his admiring stance and observes that he is well pleased, personally, never to write anything in imitation of Ronsard: J’ay bien peu, mon Belleau, de naturel et d’art; Neantmoins je cognoy la vertu de Ronsard, Et n’ay point, Dieu mercy, une ame trop belieré, Ni un cerveau asnier, le recognoissant pere De nostre poësie: et je suis bien content N’escrire jamais rien pour l’imiter pourtant.90

Thus Rivaudeau ultimately eschews the roles of both Midas and Marsyas, refusing to be either a foolish listener or an imprudent challenger. In a sense, by asserting the value of an alternative kind of ‘music’ for France, Rivaudeau implicitly identifies himself with the pastoral god Pan, who is noticeably absent from the cast of characters featured in the ‘Epistre.’ Perhaps Rivaudeau wished to reserve the role of Pan for himself, for unlike Marsyas, Pan emerged from his contest with Apollo unscathed. Pan’s audacity went unpunished, as Apollo’s wrath fell on king Midas instead. In sum, Rivaudeau’s ‘Epistre’ stages a confrontation between the sacred and the profane in which the symbolic terms of the opposition are reversed. Where one might expect Apollo to represent the sacred and his challengers the profane, Rivaudeau reminds readers that Ronsard, Gallic Apollo, is the master of the profane and therefore that his superiority is entirely of a stylistic order. The great French national epic will in fact be a Protestant one, and it still remains to be written: ‘Avec la faveur de la Divinité,’ states Rivaudeau, ‘[j’espère] donner une grand’ oeuvre à la postérité.’91 The ancient myths of musical contests warn that mortals who dare to take up wind instruments and challenge the gods must be prepared to

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accept the consequences of their audacity. In Pléiade poetry these actions find their justification in specific cultural circumstances, such as the need to promote the vernacular as a literary language or to broaden the scope of French letters to accommodate imported styles, even satiric ones. By demonstrating this ideological flexibility, these poets were following the example of Plato and Aristotle, who, even while banning the aulos from their ideal States, nonetheless made provisions for the performance of Dionysian music as a necessary complement to Apollonian music. Fontainebleau art depicts the uneasy co-existence of both kinds of music making within the realm, often in compositions that separate contests of musical skill from depictions of the metamorphoses that ensue. Presented in isolation, the contest scenes tend to express a measure of reconciliation between the two parties. A fresco by Francesco Primaticcio that once formed part of the decoration of the Galerie d’Ulysse at Fontainebleau provides a good case in point.92 Though the original fresco is no longer extant, the design has survived in an engraved version by Giorgio Ghisi from the 1560s which depicts Apollo with his lyre and Pan with his syrinx, while overhead a putto with a horn announces the contest (figure 2.9).93 Whereas in the ParmigianinoFantuzzi version of the Apollo and Marsyas contest only Apollo actually played his instrument (figure 2.3), here both musics sound at once. And while the foregrounding of Apollo, with his raised, dominating knee, appears to give him the upper hand, the placement of the lyre between his legs suggests that musical prurience is not the exclusive provenance of his wind-playing challenger. Similarly, in an ornament print thought to be designed by Léonard Thiry, the two contestants face off at the top of a long vertical panel, Apollo with his lyre on the left and Marsyas with his syrinx on the right (figure 2.10).94 The musicians preside over a descending cascade of musical instruments. Strings, winds, percussion instruments – everything but keyboards – tumble down in a lavish, cornucopian display of mechanical ingenuity and implied sound. Like the Primaticcio-Ghisi composition, Thiry’s is at once partisan and vacillating. Apollo dominates Marsyas, from his higher position. He holds the lyre well above his legs rather than between them, but only because his knees are erotically intertwined with those of his challenger. The satyr has his finger in his mouth, in a gesture of wonder and astonishment at Apollo’s skill. Here, though, the satyr has human legs, which somewhat diminishes the contrast between the contestants. As for the gathering of musical instru-

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2.9 Giorgio Ghisi (Italian, 1520–82), Apollo, Pan, and a Putto Blowing a Horn 17.1 cm. Bibliothèque (after Francesco Primaticcio), 1560s. Engraving, 29.7 nationale de France.

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2.10 Anonymous (French, mid-16th century), published by Jan de Wael, Flemish, 1558–1633. Apollo and Marsyas, from the series of Mythological Scenes with Festoons of Flowers and various musical instruments (after Léonard Thiry), mid-16th century. 6.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Anne Engraving, 25.2 and Carl Stern Gift, 1958 [58.627.4(6)]. Photograph, all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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ments, while two stringed instruments, crossed, hold the top position, there are at least as many winds in the entire collection as strings, and a bagpipe figures prominently in the centre, on Apollo’s side. This print, therefore, is emblematic of the difficulties entailed in maintaining musical ideology in the face of acoustic reality. It suggests that in any musical confrontation there is a capacity for dialogue. One instrument inevitably responds to another. The contestants are interlocutors, as well as adversaries. An element of the popular may often be detected in the courtly, and in the final analysis winds, despite their moral inferiority, are no less compelling aurally than strings.

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3 Musical Instruments, Governance, and Oratory

Quelle peine croyez vous qu’a ù Orphee pour destourner les hommes barbares de leur acoutumee cruauté? pour les faire assembler en compagnies politiques? pour leur mettre en horreur le piller et robber l’autrui? Louise Labé, Débat de Folie et d’Amour

We think of Renaissance emblems – with their titles, mottoes, epigrams, pictures, and commentaries – primarily as graphic entities, to be read and viewed.1 When the topic of an emblem is music making, however, it acquires an auditory dimension as well: imagined or remembered sound. We find a sampling of music emblems in books produced during the first phase of French emblematic production, between 1530 and 1570, especially the cluster printed in Lyons circa 1550.2 Many of the early music emblems meditate on the art of governance. In particular, they dispense advice related to the uses and abuses of eloquence among those who wield power, demonstrating how various speaking and listening practices may yield effective leadership or how they may lead to corruption and ruin. Music emblems embrace the canonic notion that right governance is founded on prudence, the virtue which, because it doubles as a cardinal virtue and an intellectual one, serves to link all of the other virtues together.3 As a form of practical wisdom, prudence employs memory, intelligence, and foresight to accomplish good works.4 In seats of power (the royal court, the urban magistracy) prudence intervenes in the production of oratory – in the composition, execution, and reception of discourse.5 Prudence is therefore closely allied with the sense of hearing. Although sight claims primacy as the sense that leads to invention and

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discovery, hearing derives value from its association with memory and learning.6 In a twelfth-century allegorical epic by Alain de Lille, the senses are represented by five horses that pull a chariot carrying Prudence to heaven, to make a request of God. Sight is the first and swiftest horse, and Hearing the second one. Reason serves as charioteer. The carriage mounts through the planetary spheres but proves unable to reach heaven. Prudence asks Theology for guidance. Theology unharnesses Hearing and gives him to Prudence to ride. They leave the chariot, with Reason and the four other horses, behind.7 When it comes to actually reaching the journey’s end, invention and discovery, it seems, are trumped by memory and learning. Music emblems offer secular variations on this allegory, presenting examples of the exercising of prudence (or imprudence) in the use of oratory in governance. Because of their auditory aspect, these emblems compel readers to listen as well as to look – to rely on their own memories or imaginings of non-linguistic musical sound in order to grasp the emblems’ teachings about the workings of speech in the courtly and civic arenas. What is more, music emblems actually model the lessons they seek to convey, for they are products of rhetorical skill. To properly represent prudence, emblematic writers must themselves exercise it. Emblems as Oratory Emblematic writing is among the least autobiographical of sixteenthcentury poetic genres. The authors of emblems – humanists and pedagogues – borrow from and respond to each other’s work, but, unlike court poets, they do not address each other directly or talk about themselves and their careers in their verses.8 Nonetheless, their production is self-referential in the sense that, by composing emblems that dispensed moral wisdom to the ruling elites (or the schoolboys in training to become those elites), emblematic writers assumed, vis-à-vis their readers, what we might call ‘amphionic’ and ‘orphean’ roles. In dedicating themselves to promoting the public good, these poets took on the societal function once fulfilled by the ancient bards, as Horace describes it in the Ars poetica: While men still roamed the woods, Orpheus, the holy prophet of the gods, made them shrink from bloodshed and brutal living; hence the fable that he tamed tigers and ravening lions; hence too the fable that Amphion,

96 Sounding Objects builder of Thebes’s citadel, moved stones by the sound of his lyre, and led them whither he would by his supplicating spell. In days of yore, this was wisdom, to draw a line between public and private rights, between things sacred and things common, to check vagrant union, to give rules for wedded life, to build towns, and grave laws on tables of wood.9

Emblematic verse, with its didactic, regulatory aims, espouses this Horatian view of the profession of the poet and in so doing becomes a form of governance in itself. In Le pegme (1555), Pierre Coustau pairs emblems on Amphion and Orpheus to offer a model of capable administration that mirrors the process of emblematic composition. As the Horatian passage indicates, tradition holds that Amphion built the walls of Thebes stone by stone, with the sound of the magical lyre given him by Mercury, after which he ruled the city with his twin brother. The woodcut for Coustau’s Amphion emblem (attributed to Pierre Eskrich) shows this king engaged in playing the harp before the walls of the city he commands (figure 3.1).10 The emblem’s motto asserts that small entities become larger and more powerful by joining together (‘Par concorde choses petites croissent’), while the epigram identifies peace, love, and harmony as the ‘stones’ needed to construct the polity and make it impregnable to outside attack: Qui creut jamais que le sage Amphion, Thebes batit au son de l’armonie: Ployans soubz luy, comme au vent le sion, Cueurs impiteux et plains de felonie? Tant que paix tient la republique unie, Et qu’amour ferme et sacrée concorde Les citoyens entretient et manie, Craindre ne faut que l’ennemy l’aborde.11

Manier, the verb that here characterizes the action of handling or managing citizens, often appears in sixteenth-century literature in reference to lute playing. Coustau thus equates the subjects of the republic with the strings of the lute in what amounts to an updating of Cicero’s statement that ‘a State [is] made harmonious by agreement among dissimilar elements, brought about by a fair and reasonable blending together of the upper, middle, and lower classes, just as if they were musical tones.’12 The same might be said of Coustau’s emblem. In Barthélemy Aneau’s

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words, emblems are ‘ouvraiges bigarrez de petites pieces de marcqueterie’: entities constructed from disparate textual, pictorial, and typographic elements, like a colourful mosaic or a piece of inlaid furniture.13 This definition suggests that if the emblem is successful, its readers will retain an impression of harmony, despite the genre’s intrinsic heterogeneity. The diverse elements of an emblem work together to train the memory – to fashion a persuasive lesson that will linger in the reader’s mind. Once raised, how may Amphion’s city best be protected? In his prose commentary for the emblem, Coustau meditates on empire, citing the historical record as evidence that internal discord is a polity’s greatest enemy. The Ottomans, he reasons, would never have undertaken war against the Christians if they had not been apprised of the domestic fissures that already weakened the Christian kingdom, and the loss of Charlemagne’s empire may be attributed to the quarrels of its princes. A city, he posits, needs no other fortifications to guard its integrity than the hearts of men who consent to be led by a wise man.14 Coustau offers a model for this prudent leader in his Orpheus emblem, next in the collection, where he compares the legendary singer to an orator who uses eloquence to convoke and control bestial men: De son gentil et fort melodieux D’un instrument, Orpheus feit mouvoir Rocs et patitz de leur places et lieux. C’est eloquence ayant force et pouvoir D’embler les cueurs de tous part [sic] son sçavoir C’est l’orateur qui au fort d’eloquence, Premierement souz méme demourance Gens bestiaulx, et par ferocité Les assembla: et qui à bienveillance Les revoqua de leur ferocité.15

In the emblem’s illustration we see that Orpheus, pied-piper-like, has attracted a following of listeners who are drawn by the sound of his harp as he wanders the hills of Thrace, mourning the loss of his bride Eurydice (figure 3.2). Unusually, Eskrich depicts Orpheus walking (most artists portray him seated) and includes people in the singer’s audience as well as animals.16 This image is therefore powerfully emblematic of the figure of the public orator – or poet – as civilizer.17 Coustau begins his commentary on Orpheus by citing examples of

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3.1 Pierre Eskrich (French, c. 1530–after 1590), Woodcut. In Pierre Coustau, Le pegme ... (Lyons, 1560), p. 385. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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3.2 Pierre Eskrich (French, c. 1530–after 1590), Woodcut. In Pierre Coustau, Le pegme ... (Lyons, 1560), p. 389. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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famous orators from antiquity, marvelling at how they governed through their eloquence.18 Then he turns to a recurrent theme of the Pegme (indeed, of many early French emblem books), that of corruption in the magistracy, observing that rhetoric can be such an effective tool, some in France attain office exclusively through their manipulation of this art, clothing themselves in robes of oration and chasing from the schools and libraries the former masters and doctors of law.19 In Coustau’s opinion, it is an infantile thing (‘chose proche d’enfance’) to amuse oneself merely with the order and disposition of words, and thereby attain juridic rank, without also acquiring the requisite knowledge (‘passer la science sans luy donner son enrichissement’).20 Those who truly wish to master the law will not deem books to be too far removed from its art and precepts, and those who wish to learn diction, Latin, and the flowers of rhetoric will not disdain to seek them in the classics (‘Ciceron et autres qui sont nommés entre les plus eloquens’).21 Thus Coustau concludes his commentary with an apology for reading, as a means of acquiring oratorical skill grounded in learning rather than superficial ornament. Surely he intended these reading practices to include emblem books, which construct visual ‘frameworks’ (pegmes) for the wisdom of the ancient authorities.22 Whereas the false doctors of law merely drape themselves in the sounds of oratory, the body of the true orphean leader is a musical instrument in itself. The woodcut for an emblem in Guillaume de La Perrière’s La morosophie (1553) depicts a monarch standing on an elevated platform, raising his hand to calm a group of armed men who are fighting in the street (figure 3.3). Placed in the foreground of the image (which is probably the work of the Toulousain artist Guiraud Agret), the king appears tall, dominating the scene.23 A little dog seated at his side lifts its paw in a classic gesture of fidelity. The spectators watching from the upper-storey windows of the buildings that overlook the square draw our attention to another personage in the background, a male lutenist: an allegory for the king. In contrast to Niccolò Machiavelli’s dictum that a prince does better to make himself feared than loved, this emblem’s quatrain recommends the use of gentle rather than menacing speech to maintain civic order: Ainsi qu’un Luc amollist plus le coeur Par sa douceur, qu’un son espouventable: Appaiser faut d’un peuple la fureur, Non par menace, ains par parolle affable.24

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3.3 Guiraud Agret (French, mid-16th century), Woodcut. In Guillaume de La Perrière, La morosophie ... (Lyons, 1553), emblem 21. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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The play of light and shadow in the woodcut underscores the epigram’s message. The king and minstrel appear in the lighted portion of the scene, while the quarrelling men are located in the shadows – a sign that the lute’s soft tones will prevail. La Perrière’s lutenist-king, an ‘instrumental’ ruler in both senses of the term, incarnates the passage in De Oratore where Cicero remarks: Nature has assigned to every emotion a particular look and tone of voice and bearing of its own; and the whole of a person’s frame and every look on his face and utterance of his voice are like the strings of a harp, and sound according as they are struck by each successive emotion.25

The lute held by the minstrel is the vessel that brings forth the sound of the king’s voice: at once body physical and body politic. The Lute and the Ship of State Coustau and La Perrière certainly knew Andrea Alciato’s influential lute emblem, which equates the lute with statesmanship. In the first edition of Alciato’s collection printed in France (Emblematum libellus, 1534), the lute emblem is the second one, immediately following an emblem dedicated to the Duke of Milan. The image features a single lute, placed on a divan (figure 3.4). The setting is an empty antechamber with two windows in the far wall and an open doorway on the left, through which we glimpse the out-of-doors. The artist, Mercure Jollat, has pointed the neck of the lute directly toward the open doorway so that the instrument’s lines (neck, strings, bands of wood) run at an oblique (nonright) angle to the many lines of perspective that draw the viewer’s eye to the rear wall of the room. Perhaps Jollat was thinking of Albrecht Dürer’s ‘Portillon’ woodcut (1525) in which the lute serves as a tool to demonstrate the principles of central perspective (figure 3.5). Dürer’s actual lute is positioned at a perpendicular angle to the room in which it appears, but his projected lute, like Jollat’s real one, lies at an oblique angle.26 In Jollat’s composition, the lute teaches a sort of counter-perspective, suggesting that sight and sound do not operate in the same way. At first we look inward, toward the centre of the room, but then, as we focus more particularly on the lute, our eyes are drawn outward to the world, just visible through the open doorway.27 Jollat’s illustration presents the lute as an object of value but without relating it to governance. Rather, this is the task of the emblem’s textual

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3.4 Mercure Jollat (French, fl. 1530–45), Woodcut. In Andrea Alciato, Les emblemes de Maistre Andre Alciat ... (Paris, 1540), p. 14. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

components. The motto, ‘Foedera,’ refers to the league of Italian states formed by the treaty of Cambrai in 1529, negotiated in the aftermath of the Habsburg defeat of the French at Pavia in 1525. The opening quatrain of the epigram (cited here in Barthélemy Aneau’s fairly literal French translation of 1549) presents the lute to the Duke of Milan as a symbol of the new diplomatic venture on which he was preparing to embark: Ce Lucz formé comme nef piscantine Propre pour soy prend la Muse Latine Pren (Duc) ce don, qui te plaise en ce temps Que commencer alliance pretendz.28

These verses establish a correlation between the lute and the ship of state which would have resonated linguistically in the minds of French

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3.5 Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528), ‘Portillon’ woodcut. In Dürer, Underveysung der Messung ... (Nuremberg, 1525). Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

readers, for in the language of the period ‘leut’ or ‘lut’ denoted a type of small boat.29 It is difficult to tune the lute’s many strings, as the second quatrain of the epigram points out. Whereas Alciato’s original Latin states only that a man must be wise (‘docto homini’) to properly tune a lute, Aneau, in his translation, specifies prudence as being the particular type of wisdom required: Difficile est tant de chordes estendre Fors qu’au prudent. Si l’une ne veult tendre, Ou rompue est (ce qu’est facilement) Grace du son se perd totallement.30

Gioseffo Zarlino would later reprise these remarks about the difficulty of tuning lutes in his treatise Le istitutioni harmoniche (1558) in order to

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critique the tuning theories of Nicolò Vicentino.31 Emblematic writers, however, were more interested in drawing out the quatrain’s implications for governance. La Perrière glosses the verse ‘Difficile est tant de chordes estendre’ in an emblem that teaches that personal weakness obstructs political competence – that proper self-governance is a prerequisite to governing others. The woodcut depicts a bearded man in a fool’s cloak and hood standing under a tree on a hill and gazing down at a city in the valley below (figure 3.6). His bauble is propped upside down at his feet, and his hands are occupied in tuning his lute. The epigram reveals that this man’s folly prevents him from tuning the instrument correctly, a telling sign that he is not fit to hold public office:32 C’est bien en vain quand d’accorder poursuys Mon Luc, voyant que je suys phrenetique: Si sot et fol en ma mayson je suys, Seray je sage au fait du bien publicque?33

These verses are reminiscent of one of Erasmus’s adages: ‘Not all that hold the lyre can play it’ (Non omnes qui habent citharam sunt citharoedi). As Erasmus comments, ‘He is not a king who happens to possess wide dominions, but he who knows how to govern.’34 The city in the emblem’s illustration apparently falls under this administrator’s jurisdiction. The cross along the road identifies it as a Christian community; perhaps his appointment is ecclesiastical. Yet his madness impedes his ability to properly oversee the public good. Although in some emblem illustrations hilltop settings represent idealized vantage points, suggesting humanist aspirations, here the hilltop invites a satiric reading, pointing to the fool’s self-important posturing and the unmerited power he wields over the inhabitants of the valley below.35 In this respect, La Perrière’s emblem serves to illustrate the title of the collection in which it appears, La morosophie: a coinage that connotes ‘fool’s wisdom.’36 The ship of state is a ship of fools. But who is the morosophe? The emblem’s author or its reader? Another official incapable of ‘playing the lyre’ appears in an emblem by Coustau titled ‘La muse Dorique,’ which is also based on an Erasmian adage (Dorica Musa). The emblem’s woodcut depicts a gentleman in a plumed hat, holding a lute, seated at a table, with a meal laid before him (figure 3.7). The textual elements reveal the lutenist to be a judge, and his dinner, a plate of spicy beans. Erasmus notes that ‘in old days they

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3.6 Guiraud Agret (French, mid-16th century), Woodcut. In Guillaume de La Perrière, La morosophie ... (Lyons, 1553), emblem 36. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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3.7 Pierre Eskrich (French, c. 1530–after 1590), Woodcut. In Pierre Coustau, Le pegme ... (Lyons, 1560), p. 147. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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used beans to vote with, so that metaphorically those who made money out of their votes could be said to eat beans.’37 That this particular judge’s beans are spicy reflects the fact that in ancien-regime French, ‘épices’ was a metaphor for bribes. The full sack lying on the floor near the judge holds the coins for which he has bartered his votes. The emblem bears the motto ‘Contre les juges donivores,’ and in his commentary Coustau explains that donivores (a composite of don and omnivore) comes from Homer, who used it in reference to men who are gluttonous or avaricious of gifts.38 On the subject of the Dorian muse, Erasmus cites Aristophanes, who ‘says humorously of Cleon that he has never been able to master any form of music except the Dorian, alluding of course to those celebrated types of harmony, the Dorian, Lydian, Phrygian and Boeotian modes.’39 To make his joke, Aristophanes distorts the word dôristi (‘in the Dorian mode’), using dôrodokêsti instead, derived from dôrodokeisthai, the Greek term for ‘eating beans’ – for selling one’s vote.40 This play on words is implicit in Coustau’s epigram, which observes caustically, in the firstperson voice, that those who prefer only Dorian music and rude cuisine are not worthy to sit in judgment: Qui entre tant d’especes de musique Ne met a pris que la muse Dorique: Et n’ayme rien que féves espicées, Voire devant qu’elles soient escossées, Ne doit avoir selon mon jugement, Place ne voix en siege ou parlement.41

The traits attributed in antiquity to the Dorian people were ruggedness and a fierce manner. Their dialect was considered to be crude and unpolished, and their musical mode bellicose. In depicting the judge with a lute, the most refined and least martial of musical instruments, Coustau (or his illustrator) shows how, in the hands of corrupt officials, this exemplary instrument is demeaned. The Lute with a Broken String ‘You sing to a broken string’ (Ad fractum canis) is another of Erasmus’s adages, a way of saying ‘You labor in vain.’42 The third and final quatrain of Alciato’s lute emblem cautions that just as the breaking of a lute string

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causes the instrument’s harmony to fail, so, too, the withdrawal of one political partner effects the collapse of an entire coalition: Ainsi veult Paix l’Italie conjoindre, Si l’Amour est: rien n’est que doibves craindre. Si l’ung default (ce que l’on voit souvent) Celle harmonie est resolue en vent.43

A broken string does not necessarily result in discord. Rather, it produces a gap in the harmony, a sound that dissolves on the wind. And as the very next emblem in Alciato’s collection reminds us, one way – paradoxically – to avoid producing an undesirable diplomatic ‘silence’ is by remaining silent oneself. While a man keeps silent one cannot discern whether he is wise or ignorant; fools reveal themselves by their speech: Fol se taisant, ne differe du sage: De la follie est tesmoing le langage.44

When the Lyonnese printer Guillaume Roville reordered Alciato’s emblems according to subject headings for his 1548 Latin edition, he kept these two emblems together, the one on the lute and the one on silence, including them in the category of ‘Fides,’ the first group of emblems in a series on the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity.45 Fides, as it happens, also denotes a stringed instrument or the string of an instrument. It appears in the epigram for the lute emblem at the point where the poet warns of the danger of breaking a string: ‘si fuerit non benetant fides, / Ruptave (quod facile est).’46 The pun implied in the original Latin is sacrificed in Aneau’s 1549 French translation, where fides of necessity becomes chorde, but since Roville retains his Latin rubrics in the French edition, the implication still holds: to break a lute string is tantamount to breaking the faith or betraying a trust.47 A lute with a broken string appears in the double portrait of Jean de Dinteville, the French ambassador to London, and his compatriot Georges de Selve, bishop of Lavaur, painted by Hans Holbein in spring 1533 (figure 3.8). The Ambassadors is famed for the anamorphic death’s head depicted in the centre foreground.48 To identify this object, the viewer must step away to the side of the painting, which skews the perspective of the rest of the scene. The shadow cast on the floor by the skull introduces a further distortion, for it falls in a different direction

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3.8 Hans Holbein the Younger (German, 1497/8–1543), Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (The Ambassadors), 1533. Oil on oak, 207 209.5 cm. © National Gallery, London.

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3.9 Hans Holbein the Younger (German, 1497/8–1543), Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (The Ambassadors), 1533, detail. © National Gallery, London.

from the shadows of the two men and of the many objects gathered on the table between them.49 The ambassadors’ possessions include an array of astronomical and navigational instruments, a German book of arithmetic, a Lutheran hymn book, a case of flutes from which one is missing, and a lute with a broken string (figure 3.9).50 The artist has positioned the lute like the projected one in Dürer’s woodcut, directly over the death’s head and with its lines running parallel to it, so that a special relationship is created between these two objects. The fact that one string is broken may only be verified by moving fairly close to the painting, so that in order to view this symbol of discord, as in viewing the skull, one is obliged to disregard the rest of the scene.51 In multiple respects, therefore, this painting is visually out of tune. The sitters themselves may have helped to select the objects to be depicted, all of which evoke humanist erudition, the practices of diplomacy, and the complexity of the task of steering the ship of state. The

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idea of the broken lute string probably came from the ‘Foedera’ emblem. Although the first French edition of Alciato’s collection would not be printed until the following year, Holbein might have seen the one printed in Augsburg in 1531 or a manuscript version. Holbein was a native of Augsburg who spent much of his early career working in Basel, painting altarpieces and designing woodcuts; he settled permanently in England only in 1532. Alternatively, Dinteville or Selve may have brought the emblem – or the idea of it – to London, since Alciato had spent much time at the French court.52 The ambassadors, looking out toward the viewer, do not see the objects that surround them. What do they hear?53 If the broken lute string (or missing flute) in the image is an Alciatan gesture intended to evoke the fragility of diplomacy, to what alliances – what music – might the painting allude? For visitors to Dinteville’s London rooms, it must have called to mind his mandate to represent François I vis-à-vis Henry VIII, who was then careening toward his break with Rome. The French king dispatched Dinteville to London in January 1533 to report on events at the English court, so the ambassador was already en route at the time of Henry’s clandestine marriage to Anne Boleyn. Georges de Selve arrived on secret business in the spring, shortly before the public announcement of the marriage, and he left before Anne’s coronation festivities in May and June. Truly (in Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton’s words), this was a period of ‘fraught Anglo-French diplomatic activity.’54 The painting, however, also includes elements of wishful thinking regarding French imperial power. It is not so much that the painting itself is imperialistic; rather, as Jardine and Brotton argue, empire is ‘the problem around whose absence the entire composition is structured.’55 The terrestrial globe included among the objects on the ambassadors’ table replicates a surviving one, but with changes to the markings which reveal French reluctance to confirm the global authority of the Hapsburg and Portuguese empires.56 The table itself is draped with a magnificent Turkish carpet, perhaps an allusion to the empire of the Ottoman Sultan Süleyman I, with whom François I had close dealings in the late 1520s and early 1530s as he attempted to enlist the Sultan’s aid in his struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor. Bishop Selve played a key role in those negotiations during 1532 and 1533, transporting intelligence between Venice, Rome, France, and England. Therefore, like the markings on the globe, the presence of Selve himself in Holbein’s painting ‘registers the absence of Empire,’ just as the broken lute string and missing flute register, pictorially, an auditory lack.57 Herein lies the

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essential difference between the visual riddle presented by the anamorphic death’s head and the acoustic one proferred by the musical instruments. While spectators can find a specific point of view from which to decipher the painting’s visual enigma (the skull), the composition posits no perfect point of hearing.58 The solution to the problem of the broken lute string may not lie within the ambassadors’ purview. Indeed, another of Alciato’s emblems indicates that a gap in musical harmony cannot always be repaired by human skill. This emblem, ‘La Musicque, est en la cure des Dieux,’ recalls the legend according to which a cicada came to the rescue of the cithara player Eunomus after one of the strings of his instrument broke during a musical contest at the Pythian games. Hearing the gap in the harmony, the cicada joined in, supplying the missing tone with his own voice, so that Eunomus won the competition. In his heroic effort the insect sang himself to the death, and a monument, immortalizing the event, is said to have stood at Delphi. The Jollat woodcut for this emblem shows a massive table or monument on which lies a lyre, next to a key, the traditional symbol for tuning (figure 3.10). The cicada perches on the strings of the instrument.59 In Roville’s French edition, Aneau provides a commentary for this emblem that deems Eunomus’s victory to be a product of divine intervention rather than simple good fortune: ‘la Cigale ... donna victoire, non tant estimée fortunale, que fatale par la providence des Dieux, qui aiment, et hont cure de la Musicque.’60 Thus readers (and ambassadors too) are cautioned to remember that music – political stability – is ultimately given of the gods. Corruption Trumpeted The early corpus of lute emblems offers no negative representations of monarchs. Misuse of the lute is attributed only to lesser officials such as La Perrière’s fool and Coustau’s magistrate. In 1567, however, Georgette de Montenay turned this literary protocol (and others) on its head, with the printing of her Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes. The first emblem book by a woman writer, the first Protestant emblem book, and the first French emblem book to use copperplate engravings rather than woodcuts, this publication also diverges from the earlier French production in its attention to the trumpet rather than the lute.61 Five of the illustrations in Montenay’s collection depict musical instruments, and in four of these, the instrument is a trumpet (the fifth is a bell).62 Like many of the other emblems in the book, the music emblems largely draw on biblical

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3.10 Mercure Jollat (French, fl. 1530–45), Woodcut. In Andrea Alciato, Les emblemes de Maistre Andre Alciat ... (Paris, 1540), p. 234. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

imagery.63 One, however, is more political than religious, using the image of the trumpet to openly critique Valois governance. In the engraving for this emblem, an elderly, dissolute-looking king sits on a throne under a rough royal tent (figure 3.11). He sports a beard, a crown of laurel, and classicizing armour with epaulets fashioned to resemble lions’ heads. A man in rustic dress, with the head of a stag, brings him a trumpet, which the king orders the man to play. The emblem’s epigram reproaches the king for his heavy reliance on his advisers, punning on the words cerf (stag) and serf (servant), in a parody of the title adopted by the popes, Servus servorum Dei. This monarch is the cerf of his serfs, the servant (‘stag’) of his servants, merely the trumpeter of his council rather than its head:

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Le Prince vieil, ignare et non savant, Qui n’a de soy aucune experience, Sus voix d’autruy son people va jugeant, Sans que du faict ait nulle cognoissance. Tel Prince on peut nommer, sans qu’on l’offence, De son conseil non chef, ains trompeteur, Qui de la loy du vray Dieu se dispense, Pour estre veu de ses serfs serviteur.64

The hybrid figure of the man with the stag’s head stands at once for the king’s servants and for the ruler himself. Significantly, this figure’s bestiality is exhibited in his head, rather than the lower torso or feet, as with satyrs and fauns, for the emblem’s pointe integrates the two notions that the royal council lacks a head and that this monarch bases his decisions on hearsay rather than knowledge of the facts. The critique is levelled at the king’s manner of dispensing justice, an aspect of governance whose proper application requires prudence. In Renaissance allegories of the senses or of music, a stag sometimes represents the sense of hearing, for as Aristotle wrote, when the stag’s ears are pricked up one cannot approach it undetected.65 Sometimes the animal appears as part of a featured group, in the foreground of an image, at other times in the background, as in Étienne Delaune’s allegorical drawing on music, where a stag grazes in the meadow or garden behind the group of male singers (figure I.2). What is more, because of its keen hearing, the stag was an attribute of prudence. Pliny observes that this animal is always on its guard and that when it flees it takes the same direction as the wind, so as to leave no trace of scent.66 In a more negative sense, however, the stag’s timidity could also be construed as servility.67 Before Montenay, La Perrière had already twice used the stag as a symbol of cowardice in his emblems.68 In the images for La Perrière’s emblems though, the stags are entirely animal, whereas Montenay’s engraver, Pierre Woeiriot, depicts the stag as half-human. Woeiriot’s image calls to mind the contemporaneous pictorial corpus centred on the figure of Actaeon: the youthful hunter of classical myth who had the misfortune to stumble upon the goddess Diana one day as she was bathing with her nymphs in her grove. The affronted deity flung water on Actaeon and transformed him into a stag, later to be tracked down and killed by his own dogs. Although in the myth Actaeon’s metamorphosis is complete, mid-sixteenth-century artists such as Jean Mignon (who depicted the event in an etching after a composition by

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3.11 Pierre Woeiriot (French, 1532–99), Engraving. In Georgette de Montenay, Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes ... (Lyons, 1571), emblem 20. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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Luca Penni), Bernard Salomon, and Pierre Eskrich (both of whom created woodcuts for the Actaeon emblem in Alciato’s collection) leave him with a man’s body.69 Montenay’s stag emblem is a politicized recasting of Alciato’s Actaeon emblem, which bears the motto ‘On harbourers of murderers’ (In receptatores sicariorum) and allegorizes the hunter as the self-destructive Prodigal Son, devoured by his parasites.70 ‘Cane,’ the single-word Latin motto of Montenay’s emblem, evokes the verb caneo, to become whitehaired, and is also the imperative of cano (‘to play an instrument’).71 Tromper, the French equivalent of cano, denotes both ‘to play the trumpet’ and ‘to dupe’ someone. The emblem’s motto thus replicates the king’s voice as he speaks to his herald, commanding him to play, and at the same time alludes prophetically to the monarch’s impending demise at the hands of his own councillors. In the Actaeon myth, Diana mocks the hunter as she flings water into his face, announcing his impending loss of speech, stating that now he is free to tell that he has seen her unrobed – if he can tell.72 In just this way Montenay, spokeswoman for the Huguenots, taunts the French monarch with the symbol of the trumpet: the instrument most directly representative of royal authority and therefore most appropriate for satirizing Valois subjugation to France’s Catholic elites. Few of Montenay’s emblems may be linked to contemporaneous political events, for her topics tend to be generically Christian, but in drafting the ‘Cane’ emblem she certainly could have been thinking of Henri II’s deference to the Guises, and even perhaps of the pope himself, and his subservience to his cardinals.73 The ‘Cane’ emblem takes the musical instrument that commonly serves as a means of heralding royal presence and transforms it into the means by which the sovereign will be destroyed, just as Actaeon was torn apart by his dogs. Further, the play on words cerf and serf, which effects the substitutions of king for servant and hunter for prey, relies on the fact that the two words sound the same. Hence, despite the emblem’s striking pictorial features, it is the auditory aspect of language that drives its structure. In viewing this emblem, we hear – in Montenay’s verses – the trumpet’s call, even though neither of the figures in the illustration is actually playing it.74 Musical Temptations Although the ‘Cane’ emblem represents the king as a trumpeter, it may also be seen to belong to a category of music emblems that are more

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concerned with rulers as listeners than as musicians, for the old king’s fault lies in the fact that, rather than heeding the voice of the people, he fills his ears exclusively with the unscrupulous discourse of his advisers. Had Montenay chosen also to represent their voices with a musical instrument, she might well have opted for the flute, for music emblems about habits of listening often feature flutes. The prototypical cautionary tale about prudent listening is Homer’s relation of the encounter between Odysseus and the Sirens. In the Odyssey we read that the Sirens live in a meadow littered with the bones of the hapless sailors whom these women have lured to death on the rocks with their exquisite singing. To avoid this fate, Odysseus, homeward bound from the Trojan war, has himself bound to the mast of his ship so that he can hear the Sirens’ song without succumbing to it, while his companions, their ears stopped with wax, row safely on. Although the sailors cannot hear the Sirens’ song, Homer does divulge its content to his readers, revealing that the Sirens entice Odysseus first with flattery and then a promise of knowledge.75 This myth attracted much attention in Valois court culture. The Odyssey became the focus of the Galerie d’Ulysse at Fontainebleau, where Odysseus’s adventures (including the episode with the Sirens) were detailed in a series of frescoes by Primaticcio.76 Odysseus was also featured in the decorative program of the royal study at the château, where representations of the virtues appeared in tandem with ancient heroes who had demonstrated them: to the left of the chimney in that room, Odysseus was paired with Prudence.77 Alciato composed an emblem on the Sirens, and Eskrich, in his woodcut illustration for it, renders them as a trio that combines the female singing voice with a stringed instrument and a wind instrument (figure 3.12). The epigram opens with a riddle, likening the Sirens to birds without feathers, women without legs (mermaids), and fish without mouths who nonetheless sing. It concludes by equating them with harlots, whom wise men like Odysseus know to avoid: Qui pourroit croire estre sans plume oyseaux, Filles sans jambe, et poissons sans museaulx, Chantantz neantmoins de bouche à voix serenes? Cela possible enseignent les Sirenes. Femme est attraict, Poisson soubz forme humaine: Car Monstres maints Luxure avec soy maine, Regard, Parolle, et Blancheur l’homme lie

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3.12 Pierre Eskrich (French, c. 1530–after 1590), Woodcut. In Andrea Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat (Lyons, 1549), p. 142. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Parthenope, Ligie et Leucosie. Muse les plume, et les trompe Ulysses, Car gens savans aux putains n’hont acces.78

The printer Roville placed this emblem under his Latin rubric of ‘Amor,’ and Aneau’s commentary on it reiterates the medieval moralizing notion that the Sirens represent worldly pleasures, especially those of the flesh: ‘Contre lesquelles le vray remede est l’estude des arts, et sciences, et peregrination.’79 The Sirens, however, did not offer carnal love to Odysseus. Indeed, as Cicero points out, it is not the sweetness of their voices or the novelty and variety of their songs that attracts sailors to their rock, but the fact that they claim to know many things.80 And so a second interpretive tradition rejects the representation of the Sirens as harlots, identifying them instead as signifying forms of knowledge.81 At first glance, this would seem to render them a positive rather than negative force. But as Michel de Montaigne remarks in the ‘Apologie de Raimond Sebond,’ the temptation offered by the Sirens to Odysseus – the promise of the acquisition of knowledge – is the same one that the devil offered to Adam and Eve in Eden.82 The humanist Jean Dorat cautions, for his part, that knowledges are so full of attraction, they sometimes overly retain men who lack foresight. Odysseus’s sailors must stop up their ears so as not to be tempted to devote themselves unduly to the study of such sciences as rhetoric and poetry, which offer more sweetness than truth and virtue. Even in the life of the mind, moderation must be observed.83 Wise men like Odysseus escape the Sirens’ coils by pursuing their studies without delay and without stopping, because they aspire to regain their country, which is to say, true happiness.84 Montaigne also recalls, in ‘De la gloire,’ that the Sirens began their attempted seduction of Odysseus by flattering him: ‘Il n’est chose qui empoisonne tant les Princes que la flatterie, ny rien par où les meschans gaignent plus aiséement credit autour d’eux.’ Flattery is ‘le premier enchantement que les Sirenes employent à piper Ulisses.’85 Had the hero not been physically restrained, he might have sacrificed his leadership role and future glory to indulge a weakness for self-aggrandizement. In this instance, as well as in the Odysseus passage in the ‘Apologie,’ Montaigne uses the verb piper (a synonym for tromper) to characterize the actions of the Sirens.86 While none of the early French emblematic writers followed Alciato’s lead and composed emblems on the Sirens per se, they were very interested in ‘piping’ as a musical activity engaged in by one of their favourite targets of criticism: the court flatterer.

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The woodcut for an emblem in La Perrière’s Thëatre des bons engins (1540) depicts a bird catcher in courtly garb, wielding his tools of trade, a net and whistle. He has already trapped two birds, and more are flying toward him, soon to be seized (figure 3.13). The epigram identifies the bird catcher as an allegory for the courtier who disguises his voice and, chameleon-like, changes the look of his countenance at will, so as to lure the prince into his net: Quand l’oyseleur veut beaucoup d’oyseaulx prendre, Il faingt sa voix, avecq’ quelque instrument, Au son duquel vers luy se viennent rendre: Par ce moyen les prend facilement. Flateurs de court, font tout semblablement, Pour attirer les princes en leurs laqs: Car pour complaire, et leur donner soulas, Cent fois le jour changent de contenance: Mais quand le prince est contrainct dire: Helas, Il est trop tard d’en avoir cognoissance.87

In examining the distinction made in sixteenth-century moralization between praise (which may be appropriate) and flattery (which is not), Ullrich Langer emphasizes that whereas praise represents an enduring sentiment or disposition on the part of the speaker, the discourse of flattery is continually modified according to circumstances, sometimes even to the point of contradicting itself. Flattery derives its effectiveness not from the speaker’s firm disposition but rather from the addressee’s unhesitating acceptance of the flatterer’s statements. Not only is the discourse of flattery hyperbolic and false, it makes a fundamental promise to the prince which, if heeded, begets tyranny, for it tells him, ‘you are above the law.’88 In musical terms, this promise might be compared to the dangers which the Greeks associated with the playing of the aulos. Because this instrument’s supple tuning allowed for slippage between established musical genres, its critics deemed it tyrannical. Following its own pleasure, the aulos was unwilling to subject itself to the harmonic constraints that guided the music making of the lyre. Aneau revisited La Perrière’s lesson about flatterers in his Imagination poetique (1552) but, as is characteristic of this book, gave it a mythological setting. The emblem’s image shows Mercury lulling Argus, Juno’s guardsman, to sleep by playing his flute (figure 3.14).89 This flatterer’s music, we are told, is sweeter still than the bird catcher’s, and so alluring, even the most astute men are not immune to its charm:

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3.13 Anonymous (French, mid-16th century), Woodcut. In Guillaume de La Perrière, Le thëatre des bons engins ... (Paris, 1540), emblem 54. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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3.14 Anonymous (French, mid-16th century), Woodcut. In Barthélemy Aneau, Picta poesis ... (Lyons, 1552), p. 36. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Quand l’Oyseleur veult prendre l’oyselet: Bien doucement sonne son flaiollet: Mais le Flateur, qui les hommes deçoit: Chante plus doux, que flaiolet qui soit. Ainsi Mercure Ambassadeur des Dieux Feit endormir Argus, et ses cent yeulx. Au son tant doux de sa fluste, ou l’oyant. Car homme n’est tant sage, ou clair voyant: Qui ne puisse estre à la fin endormy, Par le flateur: qui se monstre estre amy.90

To fully comprehend the danger represented by Mercury, the messenger (here, ‘ambassador’) of the gods, we need to recall that in this instance Mercury had been sent by Jupiter and that, having overcome Argus’s

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watchful eyes, he then heeded Jupiter’s command and cut off the watchman’s head. Just as, in the twelfth-century epic of Alain de Lille, Hearing ultimately outpaced Sight on the journey to reach heaven, so the ambassador’s voice proves more powerful than the watchman’s vision. Flutes are ideal instruments to represent the wily discourses of flattery, precisely because flute playing precludes the use of the voice. Song texts – at least, moral ones – exert ethical control over music’s guile. Indeed, a worldly tune could even be rehabilitated by fixing it with a sacred text. A number of sixteenth-century Huguenot editors brought out editions of secular songs in which the texts had been rewritten to transform them into spiritual themes.91 Flute playing, in contrast, appeals directly to the senses, without the mediating guidance of rational or spiritual thought. In describing the soundscapes of early modern courts, Bruce Smith observes that there were two modes of speaking, private whispers and public performance. The built environments of palaces were sharply differentiated into grand open spaces and small enclosed ones, which facilitated alternations between loud and soft speech, declamation and rumour. Among musical instruments, trumpets were responsible for declamation, while flutes were the bearers of innuendo.92 Already, in the late Middle Ages, Eustache Deschamps recommended in a balade that if a man wanted to make his way at court, he should learn to play not the loud instruments (too vulgar), nor the harp (too soft), nor the hurdygurdy (only for blindmen), nor the trumpet (already much in use), but, rather, the flute: Neantmoins, pour plus proufiter, Avoir argent, robe, heritaige, Compains, apran a flajoler. Car princes oyent voluntiers Le flajol; qui en aprandra Advancez sera des premiers.93

Flajoler, a form of flageoler, denotes both to play the flute and to engage in flattery. In medieval French its synonyms were causer, babiller, plaisanter, tromper, and piper.94 Flutes and Female Bodies To resist the passions, Marcus Aurelius recommends reducing whatever entity arouses them to its component parts, arguing that we come to

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think little of charming song and dance if we analyse their melodies into their individual notes, for in this way they lose their mastery over us. Indeed, this practice of dissection eventually produces feelings of disdain, for many things appear less comely when viewed apart from their setting.95 Music emblems often enact this principle; their pictorial and textual elements help to demythologize the allure of their implied sound. Alciato’s epigram on the Sirens, for instance, focuses on the separate parts of their bodies, presenting a monstrous vision of fishtails, mouths, and feathers to reduce the power of their song over the reader. We find no female figures in the corpus of lute emblems, for governance (at least theoretically) was a man’s world. However, women do appear in some flute emblems, for feminine wiles were comparable to the discourses of flattery. Fortune, as Machiavelli famously remarks, is a woman, and in one of the emblems in the Morosophie, she acquires a flute. The woodcut portrays a courtier dancing in a garden to Fortune’s tune (figure 3.15). Her blindfold signifies that in her travels throughout the world, she both distributes and refuses favours indiscriminately. The globe under her foot stands for the world, which she dominates, and the bit of sail visible in the lower left corner evokes at once the adventures to which she beckons and their attendant risks and uncertainties.96 The quatrain warns readers of the deceptiveness of Fortune’s song, which acts like a poison on the ears: Bien peut danser, à qui Fortune sone, Mais que le chant dure longue sayson: Lors que son chant plus doucement resone, Garde toy bien de son mortel poyson.97

La Perrière’s emblem allows readers to ‘hear’ Fortune’s flute yet at the same time counsels them not to yield to it. The auditory appeal of her piping is captured, visually, in the display of her naked body, while the danger it represents is spelled out in the quatrain. The Pan and Syrinx emblem in Aneau’s Imagination poetique draws an even more explicit parallel between the female body and the flute. Like many others in the volume, this emblem’s image had already appeared in an illustrated edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (figure 3.16).98 As Ovid relates it, Pan was smitten with the Arcadian nymph Syrinx, but to escape his pursuit she fled to the bank of a river, where she changed herself into a reed.99 The deity, thinking he had caught the nymph, found himself holding only hollow reeds in his arms (depicted in the scene on the left).

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3.15 Guiraud Agret (French, mid-16th century), Woodcut. In Guillaume de La Perrière, La morosophie ... (Lyons, 1553), emblem 91. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

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3.16 Anonymous (French, mid-16th century), Woodcut. In Barthélemy Aneau, Picta poesis ... (Lyons, 1552), p. 19. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.

While he sighed in disappointment, he noticed how his breath caused the reeds to emit a low, lamenting sound. This inspired him to construct an instrument by joining reeds of different lengths together at the sides with wax (shown in the centre of the image). Pan called his raft-shaped invention the ‘syrinx,’ in memory of the nymph.100 Ovid embeds this myth in another one, whose events are divided between the Pan and Syrinx woodcut and the Mercury and Argus woodcut also reused by Aneau (figure 3.14). The framing myth tells how Jupiter ravished the lovely nymph Io and then, to forestall Juno’s wrath, changed her into a white heifer. Juno, not fooled, asked for the heifer as a gift and gave her to Argus for safe keeping. Argus watched over the suffering Io until the day that Jupiter, pitying her, called Mercury and commanded him to kill Argus. Mercury disguised himself as a shepherd and overcame the guardsman’s watchful eyes by playing on his flute and

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narrating how his son Pan had come to invent the syrinx. Then he beheaded Argus (figure 3.16, in the background on the right). Juno, infuriated at the loss of her guard (she appears in the centre background), sent a gadfly to torment Io (right foreground), who fled all over the world until Jupiter at last restored her to human form.101 In his unusually lengthy epigram (forty-six verses) for this multifaceted illustration, Aneau divests the characters of their mythological identities. First, Pan becomes a generic randy satyr, chasing after a pretty nymph, until the discovery of musical sound, produced by the rustling reeds of the marsh, distracts him from the pursuit of carnal pleasure: Il s’apperceut que des cannes issoit Par ses souspirs, un son qui gemissoit Tresdoucement. Parquoy au tresord lieu Et à l’amour il dist un grand Adieu.102

Next, in an even more radical revision of the Ovidian intertext, Aneau turns Syrinx and Io into a single nymph. In his reading of the image, the nymph of the marsh, seeing that the satyr no longer desires her, changes into a heifer and runs through the fields. By conflating the two nymphs, Aneau renders the background scenes in the woodcut image irrelevant. So he simply ignores them in the epigram, where, instead of commenting on those scenes, he adds a moralizing section that identifies the combined figures of the nymphs, the reed and the heifer, as a harlot: L’aronde creuse, et qui ploye à tout vent Est la putain: qui à chescun se vend: Et qui son coprs [sic] inconstant abandonne A qui en veult, moyennant qu’on luy donne.103

As long as men seek her, the ‘hollow reed’ hides from them, teasing them. But when she finds herself ignored, then she runs about, making a crude appearance like a cow persecuted by a fly. Leaving his Ovidian intertext even further behind, Aneau concludes his lesson with a paraphrase of a Theocritean couplet that offers the adage that love is ephemeral – though you may at first be pursued, you will soon be scorned.104 Whereas the two Ovidian myths arouse pity for Syrinx and Io, Aneau’s version aims to elicit contempt. The association of satyrs with lewdness is commonplace in Renaissance moralizing literature, but the transforma-

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tion of the two chaste nymphs into women of ill repute is Aneau’s invention, a gloss on the allegorization of the Pan and Syrinx myth found in the Ovide moralisé, where Syrinx signifies earthly delights that do not last but slip away.105 The emblem’s motto, ‘Conversion des amours a l’estude des lettres,’ reflects the classical tradition that interpreted the invention of the panpipes, typically numbered at seven, as an allegory of the triumph of the Liberal Arts over baser human instincts. Despite this highbrow tradition, in early modern France the syrinx was a street instrument, the voice of peddlers. But Aneau was interested exclusively in the instrument’s symbolic potential, not in its contemporary usage. In his emblem, as long as the syrinx is considered to be simply a gathering of hollow reeds, it is associated with the nymph’s body and linked to vice. Once taken in hand by Pan and employed for study, it unites with virtue instead and assists in the making of an educated man.106 The difference lies in what the reeds may hold. In another emblem, on the ‘Futilité, paillardise, et avarice des putains,’ Aneau compares the common whore to a broken vessel, unable to hold water and therefore insatiable, bleeding men to the death (‘Son homme tue, et jusqu’à mort le saigne’).107 In the Pan and Syrinx emblem, the ‘vessel’ is transformed into a musical instrument, so that its emptiness fills with sound, and rather than sucking the life’s blood from the youth, it nourishes his mind instead. The syrinx or flute is the musical equivalent of the sieve, often included in portraits of Queen Elizabeth I to represent virginity, for in Roman history, one of the vestal virgins, accused of fornication, is said to have carried water in a sieve to prove her purity. An epilogue to the myth of Pan and Syrinx, related by Pierre Trichet in his Traité des instruments de musique, demonstrates the use of a flute to detect the loss of virginity. After recounting Pan’s invention of the syrinx, Trichet (citing Achilles Tatius) goes on to describe how it came to be dedicated to the goddess Diana. When a girl was suspected of wantonness, the people led her to the opening of the goddess’s grotto, for the ‘judgment of the flute.’ After donning a long robe, she descended into the grotto and the doors closed. If she was still a maid, a very pleasant sound would waft forth (which, the ever-scientific Trichet explains, was either because there was some air trapped in the flute or because Pan himself was playing it). But if the girl had falsely claimed to be a virgin, sad and lamenting voices would be heard instead of the sweet tones of the flute, and so the people would depart. After three days had passed, when the guardian of the place opened the grotto, she would find the flute lying on the ground,

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and the accused would have vanished, her ‘hollow’ (unchaste) vessel replaced by the musical instrument.108 In emblematic writing, attention to musical instruments centres on their functionality rather than their value as objets d’art. It matters not whether the lute played by a duke or judge is overlaid with gold or lavishly painted with scenes from classical myth. Of more importance is whether all of its strings are present and tuned, and whether the player has the skill to draw harmonious sound from it. If the instrument in question is a flute, then what matters is whether the flutist is trustworthy and deserving of a prince’s – or young man’s – ear. As didactic literature, music emblems provide a way for readers to replicate the experience of Odysseus: to prudently encounter musical sound. In this respect, the reader of emblems becomes a traveller, and the emblem book, with its many graphic elements, functions like the ropes that lashed Odysseus to the mast of his ship: bonds that allow the hero to profit from listening to oratory without entirely succumbing to it. Armed with the lessons derived from music emblems, readers will then be prepared, as in the twelfth-century epic, to ‘unharness Hearing’ and ride on to heaven with him alone, leaving Sight to follow after.

4 The Anatomy of the Lute

Is it not strange that sheeps’ guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing

Lashed to the mast of his ship, could Odysseus see the Sirens as well as hear them? And was the sight of their music making as enticing as the sound of it? Clément Marot, in an epigram titled ‘D’Anne,’ characterizes female musical performance as an activity that brings visual, along with auditory, pleasure to the spectator: Lors que je voy en ordre la Brunette, Jeune, en bon poinct, de la ligne des Dieux, Et que sa voix, ses doigtz, et l’Espinette Meinent ung bruyct doulx, et melodieux, J’ay du plaisir et d’oreilles, et d’yeulx.1

Marot’s choice of spinet playing as a subject for poetic admiration is unusual, and in fact he grants the instrument itself only a brief mention.2 More commonly, French poets explore the blending of visual and acoustic musical allure in connection with lute playing, as in these verses by Ronsard’s secretary, Amadis Jamyn: Quand je la voy si gentille et si belle, Si doucement les langues manier Du luth aimable, et sa voix marier Au son mignard que dit la chanterelle: D’aise ravy tout le cueur me sautelle.3

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Langues is an unexpected choice of word for the lute’s strings (chordes is the usual term), selected perhaps because it reinforces the sense of union between the lute’s voice and the lady’s, its body and hers, as her mouth forms the words of her song and her fingers draw sound from the instrument. Male lutenists, as well as female, could seduce their audiences visually. The female subject of one of Louise Labé’s sonnets (Euvres, 1555) lists her beloved’s lute, viol, and bow along with his smile, brow, hair, arms, hands, and fingers, as if the musical accoutrements were also attractive physical attributes:4 O ris, ô front, cheveus, bras, mains et doits: O lut pleintif, viole, archet et vois: Tant de flambeaus pour ardre une femmelle!5

The prominent placement of the biological femmelle at the end of this tercet, rather than femme or dame, keeps the reader’s mind’s eye focused on the bodies of the lutenist and his listener as well as evoking the musical sound that presumably fills the space around and between them. Cradled in the arms and caressed with the fingers, the lute was an adornment. Instructions on demeanour included in the Burwell Lute Tutor, a seventeenth-century English manuscript, confirm the paramount importance to early modern sensibilities of the visual effect obtained in lute playing: One must then sit upright in playing to show no constraint or pains, to have a smiling countenance, that the company may not think you play unwillingly, and [to] show that you animate the lute as well as the lute does animate you. Yet you must not stir your body nor your head, nor show any extreme satisfaction in your playing. You must make no mouths, nor bite your lips, nor cast your hands in a flourishing manner that relishes of a fiddler. In one word, you must not less please the eyes than the ears.6

In an earlier tutor, by the jurist-physician-lutenist Jean-Baptiste Besard (De Modo in testudine libellus, 1603), the mandate to cultivate a graceful appearance even produced a recommendation that the right arm of a beginning lutenist should be bound during practice so that only the fingers could move.7 As well as complementing the human form, the lute replicated it, for

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this instrument has a ‘neck,’ ‘belly,’ and ‘ribs.’8 Luthiers used Vitruvian principles in designing their instruments, so that, in the words of the Burwell author, the lute was ‘as the human body is; like a little microcosm, that gathereth and comprehends in itself all that is, and all that is fine and rare in music.’9 Indeed, as several Renaissance writers remarked, one lute can make another one sound without the touch of the fingers at all, like two speaking bodies, via the phenomenon of the sympathetic vibration of strings.10 These anthropomorphic features of the lute contributed to the emergence of the Renaissance lute-poem, a lyric text in which the poetic subject personifies the lute as a muse, secretary, or confidant. The opening verses of a lute-poem typically address the instrument directly, thanking it for its companionship and service, as in this quatrain from a sonnet by Labé: Lut, compagnon de ma calamité, De mes soupirs témoin irreprochable, De mes ennuis controlleur veritable, Tu as souvent avec moy lamenté.11

Although we occasionally find similar expressions of appreciation addressed to other plucked-string instruments, most often the instrument is a lute. The context is usually amatory, and the poem will nearly always devote some attention to the iconography of the lute – to the anatomy of the instrument and the manner of its playing.12 Because it may be viewed either as a part of the lutenist’s body or as a human-like object with an independent existence, the lute may serve a panoply of metapoetic functions, especially those pertaining to sexuality and gender. The Lute as Emissary So many lute-poems have come down to us from the middle decades of the sixteenth century, it is impossible to establish a precise chronology for their dates of composition. Mellin de Saint-Gelais’s ‘Sur un luth’ may serve as a prototype for the genre, for it presents the principal themes upon which other poets composed variations. It opens with the requisite encomium to the lute, into which the subject incorporates a particular item of information, which is that he initially received the instrument as a gift from his beloved. This makes the lute an ideal confidant, for it stands in for the lady when she is absent:

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O luth, plus estimé present Que chose que j’aye à present, Luth, de l’honneste lieu venu Où mon coeur est pris et tenu, Luth, qui responds à mes pensées Si tost qu’elles sont commencées, Luth, que j’ay faict assez de nuictz Juge et tesmoin de mes ennuys, Ne pouvant voir aupres de moy Celle qui t’eust aupres de soy.13

The word ‘present’ in the first verse, which identifies the lute as a gift, may imply a special understanding between these two parties, since the longer term, ‘paroles de present,’ signifies a betrothal or marriage agreement. Whatever the precise nature of their relation, though, the fact that the lute came from the lady leads the speaker to wonder next how the instrument was able to emerge from her fiery touch unscathed and whether he might acquire a similar protection for himself by using the lute to accompany his songs: Je te supply, fay-moy entendre Comme, touchant à la main tendre, Ton bois s’est guarenty du feu Qui si bien esprendre m’a sceu Et s’il se pourroit bien esteindre Par souvent chanter et me plaindre.14

Subsequently, however, he changes his mind and asks the lute, instead of helping to extinguish the flame of his own passion, to assist him rather in igniting the lady’s: Que pleust à Dieu, Luth, que ta voix Peust aller où du coeur je vois, Tant que mon torment bien ouy En peut rapporter un ouy. Lors tu me ferois plus de grace Qu’onc n’en feit la Harpe de Trace Qui faisoit les montaignes suivre, Car tu ferois un mort revivre.15

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Orpheus once employed his ‘Thracian harp’ to secure the release of his bride Eurydice from the underworld. Here, in an inversion of that famous tale of musical virtuosity, the poet asks the lute to assist him in winning his lady so that he might be restored to life. He counters her gift of the lute with his own gift of a poem. But as with so many such gestures in Renaissance poetry, this exchange aims less at establishing a true reciprocity than extending the chain of indebtedness so as to extract additional favours. It is commonplace in lute-poems for the speaker to call on the instrument to lend its voice where his alone might fail. In Pontus de Tyard’s ‘Chant à son Luth’ (Erreurs amoureuses, 1551), through an impressive fifty-four verses the speaker asks his lute to praise, one after another, all of his beloved’s physical charms: her hair, brow, complexion, eyebrows, and so on. At last, in verses 55–8, he tips his hand: Si tu ne peux à la louenge atteindre, Que la beauté merite de ma Dame, Vueilles au moins si doucement te plaindre Qu’elle ait pitié (triste Luth) de ma flame.16

This poem constructs a verbal portrait of the lady that may or may not do justice to her attractions. But by using the lute as a vehicle for communicating that portrait, the poet contrives to make the poem’s manner of presentation at least as important as its content. While the text describes the lady, the lute expresses the speaker’s suffering, compensating for whatever defaults his verses might contain through its mastery of musical affect. Tyard saw his poem into print, but Saint-Gelais did not, which means that ‘Sur un luth’ existed mainly in performance: either a reading or a sung performance, most likely for a small courtly audience that might have included the lady of whom the poem speaks, the one who offered the lute as a gift to the singer. If she was present, did the lutenist boldly turn his gaze to her as he sang, or discreetly avert it? If the spectators knew the identity of the original owner of the lute, then the song served to draw attention to that individual, without naming her. If they did not, then it teased them to speculate as to who she might be. Either way, the song text widened the audience’s scope of attention to include not just the solo performer with his lute but also the target of his passion. Conversely, from the lutenist’s own perspective this widening might rather be characterized as a narrowing. As Daniel Fischlin points out,

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whatever the public dimensions of a given performance may be, a lutesong or -poem itself ‘reduces those dimensions to the interlocutor and the beloved, the very performative context of the song seeking to establish the intimacy that will lead to erotic “com[ing]” and “die[ing].”’17 Whereas in Saint-Gelais’s poem the speaker plays a lute given him by his beloved, in a pair of dizains from the Lyonnese poet Maurice Scève’s Délie canzoniere (1545), the poetic subject is in first possession of the instrument, only later passing it to his lady. These two dizains, numbers 344 and 345, appear in the set associated with a woodcut illustration that shows the lovely princess Europa being carried off by Jupiter, disguised as a bull – a myth of erotic desire and, in the end, fertility, since Europa would bear the god three sons. Dizain 344 describes three progressive phases of interaction between the performer and his lute. First he marvels at how the instrument is at one with him, its tones perfectly mirroring his passionate state: Leuth resonnant, et le doulx son des cordes, Et le concent de mon affection, Comment ensemble unyment tu accordes Ton harmonie avec ma passion!18

Next, however, he concedes the lute’s independence from him, lauding its ability to modify his emotions, acknowledging that this is possible precisely because its voice does not resemble his: Lors que je suis sans occupation Si vivement l’esprit tu m’exercites, Qu’ores à joye, ore à dueil tu m’incites Par tes accordz, non aux miens ressemblantz.19

At last, as did the speaker at the end of Saint-Gelais’s poem, this subject evokes the lute’s potential utility to his project of conquering Délie, the object of his desire, calling on the instrument to supplement his poetic voice, to both sustain and surpass it: Car plus, que moy, mes maulx tu luy recites, Correspondant à mes souspirs tremblantz.20

As a poet’s tool, comparable to a painter’s brush, the lute serves to express maulx: literally ‘woes’ but also, by sonorous implication, ‘words’

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(mots). Thus the lute bridges the gap between the poet’s anatomical voice and his written one, and the poem’s tu fills a double role, standing for the lute and for the song text it has helped to create. In dizain 345 the speaker passes the lute to Délie, only to realize that this allows the instrument to usurp the place in her arms that he covets for himself and hence to become a rival for her affection. Indeed, as Gérard Defaux remarks, the lute here enjoys all of the privileges of a husband, so that the envy and jealousy expressed by the desiring subject are directed as much at the lady’s husband as at the instrument.21 To continue the conflation of instrument and text achieved at the end of the previous dizain, no antecedent is given for the familiar tu this time: Entre ses bras, ô heureux, près du coeur Elle te serre en grand’ delicatesse: Et me repoulse auec toute rigueur Tirant de toy, sa joye, et sa liesse. De moy plainctz, pleurs, et mortelle tristesse Loing du plaisir, qu’en toy elle comprent. Mais en ses bras, alors qu’elle te prent, Tu ne sens point sa flamme dommageable, Qui jour, et nuict, sans la toucher, me rend Heureusement pour elle miserable.22

The speaker’s expression of wonder at the lute’s ability to withstand the flames of passion (perhaps borrowed from Saint-Gelais, or vice versa) endows the instrument and therefore the poem, too, with miraculous powers of regeneration. They become magical entities comparable to emblematic figures such as the salamander, François I’s device, capable of passing through fire and extinguishing it at the same time, or the legendary phoenix, rising eternally from its ashes. The lute text is immortal, even if the poet-lover is not. Tyard elaborates on the theme of the lute as a mediator between the poet and his beloved in a pair of sonnets from his Erreurs amoureuses. The quatrains for sonnets 23 and 24 follow convention in expressing the speaker’s gratitude to the lute for its good company and assistance. In the tercets, though, he enlists the instrument first as a messenger (sonnet 23), then a spy (sonnet 24), vis-à-vis his lady. If we place the four tercets together, they all but form a poem in themselves, recounting the poet’s act of handing the lute to the lady and then voicing the dismay he feels as he watches it take its place – his place – in her arms:

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Va, bienheureux: et si ces blanches mains Et si ces bras celestement humains Te daignent tant honorer de te prendre, Soient en tes sons si doucement deduiz Les coustumiers acords de mes ennuiz Que mon amour elle puisse comprendre. Tu fuz l’organe à mes plaints douloureux: Et maintenant que tu sers bienheureux D’honneste esbat à ces deux mains d’yvoire, Sers-moy d’espie: au moins sache s’il reste Dens l’estomac (ton riche apuy) celeste Quelque de moy souspirante memoire.23

By drawing the reader’s eye to the place where the lute rests, against the lady’s bosom, Tyard inscribes his sonnets in a long literary tradition in which poets seek access to a woman’s body through an object – or even, in the case of the bosom particularly, via an insect (a flea, mosquito, mite, or gnat).24 In La puce de Madame Des-Roches (1582), an anthology of poems about a flea said to have landed one day on the breast of the Poitiers writer Catherine Des Roches, some of the male poets address the flea directly.25 The insect becomes a vehicle for their erotic designs, assimilated with the lady by virtue of its gendering as feminine, allowing the poets to travel metaphorically with it as it explores her breast, armpit, and side. Like other everyday objects described in Renaissance blasons – pins, rings, necklaces, books, mirrors – the flea illustrates the ‘successful rival’ motif.26 To that list of objects we might add the lute, which, like the flea, enjoys the intimacy with womens’ bodies that amatory poets covet for themselves. The frustration felt by a male observer at the sight of a lady all wrapped up in (or around) her lute is expressed in a prefatory sonnet in Guillaume de La Tayssonnière’s Amoureuses ocupations (1555), in which the speaker all but transforms himself into a lute, as he calls the attention of the local young ladies away from their needlework and lute playing and toward his book (and his person) instead: Je vous suplye ouir l’amoureus son Sortant du creus de mon ame offencée.27

A blason by Olivier de Magny (Odes amoureuses, 1559) reprises this conceit, expressing the speaker’s longing to become a lute so that when his

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beloved elects to play, he can be sure the instrument will perform ‘his song’: Je vouldrois puis que Dieu voulust Que je devinsse vostre luth, Vostre cistre, ou vostre espinette: Afin quand vous vouldriez sonner, Que vous n’ouyssiez resonner Qu’allegez moy plaisant brunette.28

The bawdy chanson alluded to in the last verse, ‘Allegez moy,’ was set by many composers in the sixteenth century and is mentioned by Marot, Jean Molinet, and Ronsard as well as Magny.29 The Lute’s Honest Voluptuousness There is nothing in these male-authored poems to indicate that the ladies in question are other than respectable (if desirable), or that the lute is anything but (as Tyard puts it) an ‘honneste esbat’ for their ivory hands. However, the body-centred language of these poems serves as a reminder that when it came to women’s lute playing, the slope leading from desirability to disrepute was a slippery one. What does it mean to praise the lute’s ‘honnete volupté,’ as does Claude Du Verdier in ‘Le luth’? Numerous literary and pictorial sources from the early modern period show that while the lute could symbolize voluptas in the positive sense of the term (that is, music making as a pleasant pastime, as solace, or a source of physical health and emotional equilibrium), this instrument also frequently connoted the vita voluptuosa with its illicit gratification, excess, and dissipation.30 The lute’s rounded shape called to mind the pregnant belly of a woman, suggesting connections with fertility. We find this association already in the fifteenth century, in Francesco del Cossa’s allegory of April (circa 1465), where, in the portion of the composition that depicts the triumph of Venus, one of the ladies holds the lute against her womb with its rounded back facing out.31 Later, Hans Baldung Grien, in his painting Ages of Womankind (1540), would assign the lute to one of the three Graces, who represent the fertile part of women’s lives.32 From fertility and pregnancy, it is only a short step to women’s sexuality.33 In the sixteenth century both the Flemish and French languages offered linguistic connections between lute playing and female sexual

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service. The Flemish word for this instrument, luit, also denoted ‘vagina’ – a linguistic happenstance that sheds light on compositions such as the anonymous Flemish painting (an allegory of the senses) from 1540 that depicts the Prodigal son at the whores’ (figure 4.1).34 Any sixteenthcentury viewer, contemplating the pairing of flute and lute in this painting’s central scene, might have suspected, based on the shapes of the instruments, that the two female musicians are performing a crossgendered erotic musical duet.35 Flemish viewers could be sure of it. In French, the older spelling of the name for the lute, luc, generated a popular anagram that in some circumstances was simply vulgar, in others daringly erotic. Rabelais puns on luc and cul when one of his characters claims to have seen ‘gros cappitaines en plein camp de bataille ... se dodeliner, jouer du luc, sonner du cul.’36 The author of the Poitiers lute and guitar treatise, who may have been the poet Jacques Peletier du Mans, invokes the same wordplay but adds a sexual innuendo: ‘Nos peres nous ont aprins a dire luc non lut, tesmoin le petit mot de gueule des bons compagnons, qui disent, que madamoiselle sçait fort bien iouer du renversé.’37 ‘Renversé’ may be read either as ‘inverted,’ referring to the luc/cul anagram, or as ‘upended,’ referring to the young lady’s posterior.38 Did Ronsard think of this joke when, in an ode addressed to Peletier, he praised the musical and sexual skills of his ‘ideal mistress,’ using the spelling of luc? This lady has a lascivious hand, suited to both lute playing and lovemaking: LUC

La main lascive, ou qu’elle embrasse L’amy en son giron couché, Ou que son Luc en soit touché, Et une voix qui mesme son Luc passe.39

In a similar vein, but even more pointedly, Du Bellay’s aging courtesan lists lute playing among her former accomplishments, along with dancing and singing verses by Petrarch.40 The slippage between the lute as voluptas and as the vita voluptuosa is often rendered in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century paintings as the play between the aural and the visual.41 We find a representation of the visual lute as modest and the aural lute as lascivious in a series of five paintings from the 1520s, attributed to the Master of the Female HalfLengths (or his workshop), which represent Mary Magdalen in her persona of courtesan, prior to her conversion, by depicting her as a lutenist (figure 4.2). The artist may have selected the lute as the musical

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130 cm. Musée

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4.1 Anonymous (Flemish, 16th century), The Prodigal Son at the Whores’, c. 1540. Oil on wood, 89 Carnavalet, Paris. © Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris / Cliché LADET.

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4.2 Master of the Female Half-Lengths (Flemish, 1st half of 16th century), Saint Mary Magdalen (?) Playing the Lute or The Lute Player, 1520s. Oil on oak, 37.5 26.8 cm. Inv. 760, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany. Photo: Elke Walford; Photo Credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, New York.

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instrument for this series because of the Magdalen’s role in drama. In an early sixteenth-century French morality play, Martha sends for her absent sister. When Mary is finally located, she is engaged in tuning her lute.42 The music book placed in front of the Magdalen in all five versions of the portrait is open to an intabulation of a rustic song, ‘Si j’ayme mon amy,’ that dates from the end of the reign of Louis XII.43 The text of this song appeared in a collection of poems printed in Paris between 1515 and 1520, and would have been familiar to many French viewers of the painting: Si j’ayme mon amy Trop mieux que mon mary, Ce n’est pas de merveilles. Il n’est ouvrier que luy De ce mestier joly Que l’on fait sans chandelle.44

The naughty nature of the song makes clear that the Magdalen appears here in her as-yet-unrepentant state, despite her irreproachable pose and garb.45 The lute intabulation of ‘Si j’ayme,’ open on the table before the Magdalen, is a two-part version that lacks the superius. Daniel Heartz suggests the score was intended to serve as an accompaniment to the missing superius, which the Magdalen would sing herself. Even though she does not, in any of the five versions, appear actually to be singing, the painting places the words of the song directly in her mouth – or at least under her fingers.46 Similarly, in Bartolomeo Veneto’s 1520 portrait of a female lute player, the maiden’s posture and attire seem modest enough. Like the Magdalen, she is not visibly engaged in singing, only playing. Yet the part-book on the table, which faces the viewer, invites his participation in an amorous duet.47 Nearly a century later, Orazio Gentileschi would again capture this tension between lute playing as chaste diversion and as profligacy by focusing on posture, dress, and a musical score. In his painting of a female lute player from 1612–20, the young woman’s position belies any intent to beguile. She sits with her back to the viewer, head cocked as if in the process of trying out the instrument’s sound (figure 4.3). Yet the cord that laces her bodice is partly undone. Is this simply a moment of private recreation, or a prelude to an assignation? The music book open on the table in front of the young woman would be a clue to interpreting

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4.3 Orazio Gentileschi (Italian, 1563–1639), The Lute Player, c. 1612/20. Oil on canvas, 143.5 129 cm. Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1962.8.1 (1661) / PA. Image © 2005 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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her intentions as a musician (and more), but that part of the painting has been damaged and reworked to the extent that scholars have not been able to identify the repertory represented.48 Did Gentileschi wish to suggest a play of words on corda, the string of the lute (which is not visible, but which we imagine her to be plucking) and the lacing of the dress? We find a precedent for this sort of linguistic play in an epigram attributed to Marot, composed in honour of Labé and printed with other encomiastic verses at the end of the 1555 collection of her works. The poem draws a link between Labé’s renown as a lutenist and her nickname of ‘La Belle Cordière’: Ton lut hersoir encore se resentoit De ta main douce, et gozier gracieus, Et sous mes doits sans leur ayde chantoit: Quand un Demon, ou sur moy envieus, Ou de mon bien se feingnant soucieus, Me dit: c’est trop sus un lut pris plaisir. N’aperçois tu un furieus desir Cherchant autour de toy une cordelle, Pour de ton coeur la dame au lut saisir? Et ce disant, rompit ma chanterelle.49

Here the pun, rather than referring to the lace of a dress, turns on Labé’s identity as the daughter and wife of men engaged in the Lyonnese rope-making business. Although the wordplay on chorde and corda establishes an unexpected parallel between Marot’s poem and Gentileschi’s painting, there are of course significant differences between them. Whereas the poem in no way calls Labé’s reputation into question, attributing racy thoughts only to her male admirer (or rather, to the manipulative genie that possesses him), the portrait allows for the possibility that the lady herself harbours such thoughts too. Apart from allegorical group settings, such as angel concerts, or representations of the nine Muses or the seven Liberal Arts, it seems that nearly any pictorial rendering of a female lutenist was potentially subject to erotic interpretations. This does not mean, of course, that every portrait of a woman lutenist is necessarily of a courtesan. Still, the fascination exerted on viewers by many portraits of women lutenists lies at least partly in the types of ambiguities they express, and this is doubtless why Saint Cecilia, patron of music, seldom appears as a lutenist in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art, despite the instru-

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ment’s popularity.50 Indeed, the idea of a lutenist-Cecilia seems so unthinkable, Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting of a woman with a lute (circa 1620) was not definitively identified as Cecilia until 1988, when a cleaning revealed the presence of a pipe organ (the more common attribute of this saint) in the background (figure 4.4). Here Cecilia’s dress recalls the one worn by the lutenist painted by Artemisia’s father, but in this instance there is no lacing to be seen, for the saint’s body faces the viewer.51 Rather than tuning her lute, she plays it, turning her eyes upward to heaven as if the instrument’s harmonies come from the celestial rather than the terrestrial realm. Orazio’s lute player and Artemisia’s Cecilia form a trio with another painting in which Artemisia depicted herself with a lute. This self-portrait (circa 1615–17), presently in a private collection, affords yet another lute-playing posture: a three-quarters pose in which the lutenist casts a sidelong glance at the viewer.52 Art historians have noted the similarity of this pose to the one in Gerritt van Honthorst’s Smiling Girl, a Courtesan, Holding an Obscene Image (1625), positing that Artemisia was presenting herself in costume, deliberately playing a role.53 A description of her selfportrait appears in a 1638 Medici inventory. The hypothesis that she is play-acting in this composition is supported by another entry in the same inventory, regarding another self-portrait, which is described as portraying the artist in the costume of an Amazon.54 In her self-portrait as a lutenist, the artist wears a turban. The lute is suggestively nestled up underneath her full, widely exposed breasts, which is typical of courtesan paintings of the early seventeenth century, such as Dirck van Baburen’s ‘The Procuress’ (1622) (figure 4.5). Blue-garbed and voluptuous (like the procuress), Artemisia glances sideways (like van Honthorst’s smiling girl) at the viewer. But unlike her Dutch counterparts, Artemisia is unsmiling. And her dress, while similar to the one worn by the procuress, sits higher on her shoulder, making it impossible to characterize it as blatantly revealing. Thus the female painter mockingly cloaks herself in the mantle of the courtesan, teasing viewers with a combined spectacle of desirability and respectability. Performing Introspection Like Artemisia Gentileschi, female poets devise strategies to endow their lutes with different kinds of ‘voluptuousness.’ To sing to the lute, as Fischlin points out, is to stage a public display of introspection, to allow spectators to witness an expression of personal sentiment or emotion.

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4.4 Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593–1652/3), Saint Cecilia, c. 1620. Oil on 78.5 cm. Galleria Spada, Rome, Inv. 216. Archivio Fotografico canvas, 108 Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Romano.

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4.5 Dirck van Baburen (Dutch, 1590/95–1624), The Procuress, 1622. Oil on canvas, 101.6 107.6 cm. M. Theresa B. Hopkins Fund, 50.2721. Photograph © 2005 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Yet every such display of necessity entails a supplement, to which the public cannot be privy – a dimension of the performer’s experience that is inaccessible to his or her audience.55 One such supplement is the pleasure derived by the lutenist from the act of playing. In other words, spectators may sense that the player is enjoying the activity of holding and strumming the lute, but they can share in that pleasure only vicariously. What is more, the spectators must know that they are always to some extent superfluous. The lutenist always has the option of playing alone, or of imagining himself or herself to be alone (or in the presence of someone else). Lute-poems by female poets draw attention to this supplement, allowing their readers to glimpse (and perhaps identify with) the personal gratification that music making entails for the performer. The subjects of male-authored lute-poems worry about being displaced by lutes in their ladies’ affections. The lute-poems of female poets confirm that this fear is well founded and reveal that the ladies’ interest in their lutes could extend to activities that the male poets may not envision – or perhaps foresee quite clearly but prefer not to acknowledge. In sonnet 12 of her Euvres, Labé visits the topos of the rebellious lyre, staging a scene in which a lutenist engages in a struggle for preeminence with her lute, to which the text attributes considerable agency.56 After the usual invocation of the lute as confidant, the poem’s speaker observes that the instrument has been so accustomed to lament with her, in perfect accord with her melancholy, that when she attempts to sing a joyful song, the lute thwarts her impulse by flatting a pitch that should be natural, thereby creating a mournful effect.57 When she persists in her intent to bend the instrument’s voice to her will, it compels her to silence by putting itself out of tune. ‘Lut,’ she sighs, Tu as souvent avec moy lamenté: Et tant le pleur piteus t’a molesté, Que commençant quelque son delectable, Tu le rendois tout soudein lamentable, Feignant le ton que plein avoit chanté. Et si te veus efforcer au contraire, Tu te destens et si me contreins taire: Mais me voyant tendrement soupirer, Donnant faveur à ma tant triste pleinte: En mes ennuis me plaire suis contreinte, Et d’un dous mal douce fin esperer.58

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Recent editors of Labé’s works have interpreted the second quatrain of this sonnet as referring to transposition from a ‘major’ to a ‘minor’ mode, but this vocabulary designates musical structures that postdate the sixteenth century.59 Labé in fact employs precise Renaissance terminology in verse eight: the verb feigner, which denotes the introduction of an accidental into a musical line, to modify a particular pitch; and the noun plein, indicating an unaltered pitch. Thus, the second quatrain references a specific compositional practice, that of lowering a pitch that should be natural (in the given mode) so as to suggest weeping.60 From her allusion to strings that slacken (verse 10), we infer that in taking up the lute this female poet has usurped a phallic symbol, which has now lost its potency.61 She can only restore the phallus and thereby recover her voice by returning to the Petrarchan convention of weeping, one which she had first practised diligently but then hoped to abandon.62 When, in sonnet 14, the poet elects once again to take up the lute, she at first addresses her beloved, rather than the instrument itself: Tant que mes yeux pourront larmes espandre, A l’heur passé avec toy regretter: Et qu’aus sanglots et soupirs resister Pourra ma voix, et un peu faire entendre: Tant que ma main pourra les cordes tendre Du mignart Lut, pour tes graces chanter: Tant que l’esprit se voudra contenter De ne vouloir rien fors que toy comprendre: Je ne souhaitte encore point mourir.63

The second-person addressee, however, so central to these two quatrains, disappears after the first verse of the first tercet, as the player becomes completely absorbed with the instrument and with her own performance: Mais quand mes yeus je sentiray tarir, Ma voix cassee, et ma main impuissante, Et mon esprit en ce mortel sejour Ne pouvant plus montrer signe d’amante: Prirey la Mort noircir mon plus cler jour.64

Deborah Lesko Baker points out that in this sonnet the speaker’s recourse to the topos of weeping does not initiate the kind of fragmenta-

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tion of the poetic subject found in allusions to tears by Petrarch and Scève. Rather than focusing on the lute as an instrument of complaint, this female poet ‘registers its function as a celebration of the beloved.’65 Achieving and retaining the ability to perform, to ‘show a lover’s signs’ (even if they must be tears), enables the constitution and survival of a female poetic self. In Labé’s literary world conventional weeping is not necessarily an end in itself (as so much neo-Petrarchan poetry makes it), but simply the means by which an absent beloved can be ‘comprehended,’ ‘contained,’ ‘embraced,’ or ‘enclosed’ (comprendre, verse 8) by the act of poetic creation. Although we have no lute-poem from Labé’s Lyonnese contemporary Pernette Du Guillet, the latter does take up the instrument once in her Rymes (1545) in a music-making scene found in her second elegy. Here the speaker, casting herself as Diana and her poet-companion as Actaeon, fantasizes about luring him to a fountain, then using a lute to challenge his right to dominate her by his gaze. By portraying Diana with a lute (which does not figure among the traditional attributes of this goddess of chastity and the hunt), Du Guillet transforms her into a female Orpheus, a musician with remarkable powers of persuasion. Unlike the original Actaeon myth, in which the hunter comes entirely by chance upon the goddess bathing in her grove, the goddess here deliberately stages an enticing performance – involving nudity and musical sound – intended to draw her companion to her and provoke a reaction from him: Mais je vouldrais lors quant, et quant avoir Mon petit Luth accordé au debvoir, Duquel ayant congneu, et pris le son, J’entonnerois sur luy une chanson Pour un peu veoir quelz gestes il tiendroit.66

Should her performance incite him to try to touch her, she vows to fling the fountain’s waters into his face, as Diana did to Actaeon. Unlike Diana, however, this poet does not want to punish her spectator by transforming him into a stag. Rather she seeks to master him by her poetic gaze: Non toutefois pour le faire tuer, Et devorer à ses chiens, comme Cerf: Mais que de moy se sentist estre serf.67

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Without the presence of the watching nymphs or requisite courtly attendants (absent in Du Guillet’s rendering of the tale), this poet-Diana performs only for Actaeon, and no one else, and therefore she does not need to carry the myth through to its bloody conclusion. She envisions herself a powerful goddess, symbolically, rather than literally, inflicting the dismemberment and implied castration that were Actaeon’s fate.68 Her hand, as Robert Cottrell writes, ‘does more than scoop up water. It also holds a pen’ – or, more precisely, a lute, ‘signifier of song, voice, presence, of textual performance, of phallic exuberance and of power.’69 Musical Riddles Because of its human characteristics, the lute makes an excellent subject for anthropomorphic riddle-poems: verses that compare an anonymous material object or non-human creature to a person, leaving it to the reader to guess the object’s identity.70 Two French lute-poems take the form of riddle-poems, in which the poets (one male, one female) toy with the intersecting themes of music, anatomy, and anonymity. Both of these poems belong to the category of the erotic double-entendre riddle.71 In each, the poet seeks to trap readers into assuming that the answer to the riddle is a body part or parts – sometimes even a sexual organ – whereas the ‘real’ answer is apparently more innocuous. Each riddle therefore has both a prim and a risqué solution. This places the reader in a double bind. In opting for the prim solution, she or he reveals naiveté. But to invoke the other solution means admitting to a salacious imagination. Both lute-poems carry this double bind into the realm of musical performance, where they blur the boundaries between social and sexual activities, between music making as an innocent pastime and as an act of seduction, suggesting that these two functions of lute playing are not mutually exclusive and that the listener is always, in some sense, also a voyeur. The earlier poem is an ‘Enigme’ by the courtier Maclou de La Haye, printed in 1553.72 Its first fourteen verses (of thirty-two) effectively stand alone as a sonnet. The narrative stance is projective: the sonnet offers a detailed description of an unidentified object, narrated by the object itself. By appropriating anatomical vocabulary the object claims human qualities, but only in order to perform a ‘verbal striptease’ and shed them again, by stressing unhuman characteristics such as its immobility, inability to feel emotion, and small size.73 Ultimately the object becomes

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grotesque, a parody of humanness, a body turned inside out and backwards, incapable of speech unless activated by a human agent: Je suis un corps, j’entends sans mouvement, Sans bras, sans piedz, sans aulcun sentiment, Je ne suis point de certaine grandeur, Le tout au plus, c’est un pied en rondeur, Et en longueur deux grandz ou trois petitz, Je suis requis des nobles et gentilz, Grand ventre j’ay, et si voit on mes os, J’ay le col long, le bec contraire au dos, Mes costes sont sur mon ventre luisant, Et mes boyaux sur mon dos patissant, Qui ne me meut, de moy on n’entend rien.74

By this point, at the end of the first tercet, Renaissance readers surely could identify the object as a lute, a musical instrument whose anatomical parts indeed are not in the right places. Its rounded belly (the bowl) is turned to the back. Its bones (the staves) are visible from the outside. Its viscera (the gut strings) stretch across its front. Its mouth (the rosette) sits in the centre of its body. In the final tercet the lute’s bowl becomes its most important feature, for this is the part of the instrument that rests against the musician’s own belly when it is played: Qui m’ayme bien, mon ventre avec le sien Joint m’embrassant, et selon ce qu’il fait En son plaisir je le rends satisfait.75

Even though we are not quite halfway through the entire poem at this point, these verses are effectively its culmination.76 Here, already, the solver of the riddle is trapped in a double bind. Is this music making a coupling? Is the pleasure felt by the lutenist an aesthetic one – that of producing harmonious musical sound – or an erotic one, or both? The concluding verses of La Haye’s sonnet focus on the lute as a belly, rubbing against the player’s belly, evoking a sexual act involving the instrument’s phallic neck or pegbox – and bringing to mind the many sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century paintings in which a male lutenist and his instrument appear in suggestive poses. In Agnolo Bronzino’s sober rendering of a Young Man with a Lute (circa 1532–4), we

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find a lute paired with writing implements: an elaborate inkwell with a statuette, and a quill pen (figure 4.6). The youth holds the lute in his right hand in such a way that the instrument’s body is hidden outside the frame of the image. Only the pegbox is visible, positioned in a phallic manner, in close proximity to the statuette, which represents the bathing Susanna of the Old Testament at the moment of her discovery by the lecherous elders.77 Painted much later, near the end of the century, ‘The Musicians’ (circa 1595), of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, depicts a trio of languorous, androgynous music-making youths, in the company of Cupid, attired in loose-fitting, off-the-shoulder blouses (figure 4.7). The central figure tunes his lute, whose neck juts out toward the viewer. The music represented in the part-books is no longer legible, but in another painting by Caravaggio (‘The Lute Player,’ circa 1596–7), which depicts a solo lutenist of a similarly androgynous nature, it can be identified. Portions of four different madrigals are visible, all by the composer Jacques Arcadelt, all with texts that declare love and undying devotion.78 Finally, as in the Caravaggio compositions, the focal point of Gerrit van Honthorst’s Supper Party (1620) is also a lute, prominently positioned between a male lutenist and a female reveller, and bathed in light (figure 4.8). A second French riddle-poem about a lute, a ‘sequel’ to La Haye’s, subverts these male-oriented visual practices by spotlighting a female player whose own attention is focused exclusively on the neck of her lute. This poem is found in an unpublished courtly manuscript from early 1581, with a signature that shows a double V interlaced, as if a W. The manuscript, in a plain vellum binding marked ‘Poesies diverses,’ contains a varied collection of verses, including copies of well-known poems by such luminaries as Marot and Ronsard, and anonymous poems presumably authored by court amateurs. Many initials, devises, and drawings appear in the margins and at the beginning and end of poems. The VV signature occurs frequently and is doubtless the mark of a woman poet, for in one of her poems she thanks Ronsard for his appreciation of her verses and expresses her gratitude for his counsel, addressing him as ‘ô mon Apollon’ and referring to herself as ‘ta fille.’79 In contrast to La Haye’s poem, which meditates on the overall structure of the lute and its many anatomical parts, the VV ‘Enigme’ is a blason of the neck of the instrument, its most evidently masculine feature. Here a female first-person narrator describes the lute in the third person, fragmenting and fetishizing it, subjecting its male member to

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4.6 Agnolo Bronzino (Italian, 1503–72), Young Man with a Lute, c. 1532/34. Oil on panel, 98 82.5 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

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4.7 Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, 1571–1610), The Musicians, c. 1595. Oil on canvas, 92.1 118.4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1952 (52.81). Photograph, all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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142 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

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4.8 Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch, 1592–1656), Supper Party, 1620. Oil on canvas, 213

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the kinds of rhetorical manipulations that poets visited on female body parts in other blasons of this period: Pour le plus doulx esbat que je puisse choisir Souvent apres disner craignant qu’il ne m’ennuye Je prens le manche en main je le touche et manye Tant qu’il soit en estat de me donner plaisir Sur mon lict je me jecte et sans m’en dessaisir Je l’estrains de mes bras sur mon sain je l’appuye Et remuant bien fort d’aise toute ravie Entre mille douceurs j’accompliz mon desir S’il advient par malheur quelquefois qu’il se lasche De la main je le dresse et derechef je tasche A joyr du plaisir dun si doux maniment Ainsi mon bien ayme tant que le nerf luy tire Me contente et me plaist puis de moy doucement Lasse et non assouvye enfin je le retire. D’un Lut.80

In effect, the VV riddle-poem represents an expansion of the final tercet of La Haye’s sonnet, providing a lengthy description of the actions that may be performed upon the lute, all of which are summed up in the verb manier, placed at the end of verse three. While manier may denote simply to use, handle, manipulate (physically), or wield, the VV sonnet conjures up the more archaic, less innocuous senses of caresser and tâter.81 Here the male body becomes the female subject’s plaything: a manoeuvre facilitated by the lute’s masculine gendering in the French language. Throughout the riddle the lutenist uses the third-person masculine pronoun to refer to the anonymous object. Lacking an antecedent, the third-person pronouns may all be read either as ‘it’ or ‘he’ (especially after the first quatrain), making it impossible to distinguish the lute from the man, the phallic symbol from the bodily member itself. The VV sonnet belongs to the category of anonymous Renaissance poems studied by Marcy North that construct fantasies ‘in which women confess their desires from variously brash, embarrassed, naive, and experienced points of view.’ Erotic literature of this sort, as North describes it, ‘often facilitates an exchange of exposure and disguise. We see a naked body but not a recognizable face, hear an orgasmic exclamation but not the pronouncement of a full name, know the outline of a scandal and yet must guess at the participants. Anonymity becomes a convenient tool for

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teasing the reader with what can and cannot be known.’82 In the case of the VV poem, sixteenth-century readers certainly knew more than we do. Considerable scholarly ink has been spilled over the question of the identity of this female poet, but the most plausible candidate is Madeleine de l’Aubespine, the wife of Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy, secretary of state under Charles IX and Henri III.83 Certainly, within the court coterie that produced the manuscript in which the VV poem appears, the poet’s identity would have been known to many. Its first readers therefore faced a more personal, if not to say political, double bind than do readers today. On one hand, sixteenth-century readers were obliged to presume the prim solution so as not to impute lascivious thoughts to a distinguished lady. Indeed, this solution is inscribed below the poem on the manuscript page, so as to leave no doubt. On the other hand, since the identity of the poem’s author was ‘hidden’ in the initials VV, readers could still enjoy the text’s sexual innuendos. Today, we nearly always come to these riddle-poems (and in fact, to all lute-poems) as readers, which makes it easy to forget that sixteenthcentury courtiers probably first experienced these verses as listeners. The VV sonnet was surely intended for performance, for since the identity of the mysterious object is inscribed below the verses, the reader’s eye jumps quickly to it, and no guessing is needed. What games of identity and disguise, now lost to us, may have been encoded in these texts, destined to emerge when the verses were read aloud?84 Of the two riddle-poems on the lute, La Haye’s is the most readerly, for in the last two verses it addresses the reader using the second-person singular pronoun, in the familiar form: En cest endroit te lairay ruminer. Pour voir comment tu sçauras deviner.85

This form of address, however, does not preclude the possibility of a voiced performance. The poem is crafted so that the lute and its player remain ungendered, leaving the reader to envision their physical dialogue as he or she pleases. And unlike the VV sonnet, in La Haye’s imprint the identity of the object is never revealed. When the poem was read aloud, the speaker – the anonymous object – would have acquired a real human voice, and a gendered one too. Probably the first performer was La Haye himself. So in performance, the wordplay of the text would have acquired additional resonances: a male poet masquerading as a lute, which in turn was masquerading as a human being. Was the poem

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ever sung or recited to the accompaniment of a lute? At a minimum, in a courtly setting, the audience probably had an example of the object before their eyes, held by an attending musician or found among the furnishings of the room. The riddle-poem literally brought that object to life. In La Haye’s poem the speaker clearly intends to be heard by someone. In the VV sonnet, the speaker more likely intends to be overheard. The scenario enacted in this second poem is a common domestic one, at least at first. In this period lutes were often kept on beds, when not in cases, to protect them from the damp. This custom figures at the beginning of Tyard’s dialogue treatise on poetic inspiration, the Solitaire premier (1552). The text’s female interlocutor, Pasithée, is occupied in playing the lute when her male admirer, the Solitaire, comes to visit. As he describes it, when Pasithée steps forward to greet him, she places her lute on a bed near the chair where she had been sitting.86 Her gesture is at once innocent and suggestive. The lute needs protection; but we also learn in this way that the Solitaire has entered her private chamber. When the VV riddle-poem was read aloud, what role were the listeners being asked to play? Had they ‘entered’ the lady’s bedchamber? Were they invited guests or eavesdroppers? Visitors or servants? Who else perhaps slept in her room, outside her bed curtains? Even more important, in performance who assumed the role of the poem’s speaker? Did courtly culture allow for ladies to read aloud racy verses of this nature, or were they always performed by men? Were the spectators free not to respond, allowing the text’s mystery to dissolve in silence, or were they called upon to provide a verbal answer? Were riddles about musical instruments utterly transparent to sixteenth-century audiences or did they elicit discussion? Did the poems cause laughter, and if so, at what moments? Truly, riddle-poems themselves pose enigmas about sixteenthcentury culture and literary performance whose solutions may always elude us. Whether composed by male or female writers, whether they stage male or female voices, lute-poems demonstrate that the interaction of player and instrument, subject and object, in generating musical sound, is much more complex than it might appear to the casual observer. In some respects, the player’s sovereignty seems indisputable. It is also the case, however, that musical production is not exclusively a function of an individual’s mastery (or not) of the art of drawing harmonious sound from a material object. Musicians – and poetic subjects too – emerge in

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their full individuality only after exploring their relation to the lute, lyre, guitar, or spinet, establishing a friendship with it, and professing their dependency on it. The forms of address employed in lute-poems point to the many types of agency a musical instrument may exercise: judge, witness, companion, moderator, secretary.87 As objects imbued with human characteristics, instruments own, use, and transform those under whose care they fall.88 To possess a musical instrument is also to be possessed by one. In both musical and poetic practice, players and instruments have a hold on each other.

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Epilogue

The oldest musical instruments of European fabrication that have survived intact date from the sixteenth century. From the Middle Ages and early Renaissance there remain only very durable small instruments (whistles, bone flutes, rattles) and fragments of larger instruments.1 Wind instruments decline quickly, because wooden bores warp and metal becomes brittle.2 Stringed instruments mature with age, but they are also subject to alteration at human hands. The idea of preserving instruments in their original state was not a priority in early modern Europe, unless they were particularly exotic or ornate. Rather, it seemed advisable to rebuild instruments so that they could better play new music. For this reason the extant sixteenth-century lutes have all been modified, their structures updated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to accommodate later repertories and performance practices.3 But whether entirely in their original condition or not, these objects still stand as a material link between the musical world of the sixteenth century and our own. While some early instruments still reside in private collections, many are now housed in museums. In France, it was the revolution of 1789 that started these artifacts on their journey from cabinets of curiosities and other domestic spaces to the galleries of large public institutions, via the establishment of a national musical instrument collection at the Paris Conservatoire – a gathering of instruments confiscated from émigrés.4 The initial intent for this collection was practical: to safeguard beautiful instruments as models for future building. But in the midnineteenth century this purpose expanded to include ideological aims as well: the education of the public and the elaboration of a national cultural heritage. Under Napoleon III, the collection at the Conserva-

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toire was renamed the ‘Musée Instrumental’ and opened to the public, albeit in a space so restricted that only a small fraction of the holdings could be displayed. At first the older instruments in the museum remained curiosities, for instrument builders were preoccupied with refining new inventions such as the piano, clarinet, and saxophone. But in the mid-twentieth century the advent of the early music movement sparked renewed interest in the oldest examples of European instrument making. Suddenly it became relevant not only to save these objects from decay but also to enable them to sound again. In the 1990s the French national collection of musical instruments moved from the old Conservatoire on the rue de Madrid, in the heart of Paris, to the Musée de la Musique in the new Cité de la Musique, at La Villette, on the northeast margin of the city. This relocation from a more centralized urban space to a liminal complex of parks, performance venues, and museums, marked the collection’s entry into the world of ‘infotainment.’5 In the Musée de la Musique, which offers enough space to show a much larger portion of the holdings, the requisite conventional exhibits in glass cases are supplemented by a panoply of interpretive tools, including an innovative postmodern architectural setting, interactive video technology, and a sophisticated audio system. Visitors are supplied with infrared headsets that allow them to hear musical excerpts and brief spoken commentary as they circulate among the display cases. Video stations, activated by pressing links on their screens, provide further information about musical styles and genres (their recordings are also transmitted by the headsets). A tightly constructed museological program leads visitors through a history of the development of the orchestra in France. Along the way, they may find themselves witnesses to live musical production as they pass by one of the museum’s intimate performance spaces. In the not entirely complimentary words of Le Monde critic Alain Lompech, the overall effect of a visit to the Musée de la Musique is somewhat like stepping into an immense CD-ROM.6 Non-specialist visitors find the experience immensely captivating, but as Lompech points out, the museum relies heavily on hyperaesthetics, which tend to dwarf its artifacts. The museum’s technology seeks to compensate for the fact that the mandates of conservation prohibit human interaction with the instruments. Glass cases remove lutes, flutes, and cornetti from the harmful touch of hands and lips; dim lighting keeps their rich woods and metals safely in the shadows. Visitors are invited to ‘consume’ the artifacts visually and aurally, but from a cautious distance. As Michael Ames

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points out in his study of the anthropology of museums, museum going is a form of cannibalism made safe for polite society. In these institutions we stand in front of glass cases, gazing at things as if we could thereby absorb into ourselves some of the energy that once flowed through them.7 Although Ames writes primarily of anthropological exhibits, his insights pertain to musical instrument collections too. From classical myth we know that Mercury fashioned the first lyre from the shell and sinews of a dead tortoise. In Bruce Holsinger’s reading, this story serves to remind us that ‘the remains of the dead must survive in order for the living to make and enjoy music.’8 With respect to many early European instruments, this was literally true: lutes and viols were strung in gut and bagpipes fashioned of animal skins. What is more, New World lore supplied a direct link between musical instruments and human remains, for French travellers to South America and the Caribbean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries report with a mixture of fascination and horror that the Amerindians made flutes out of the arm and leg bones of prisoners they had eaten.9 To bring musical remains back to life, specialists in museology recommend the development of narratives that direct visitors’ attention to the uses and functions of these instruments. International guidelines have recently been established to assist museum educators and docents in interpreting musical instrument collections.10 As the guidelines point out, ‘the place of musical instruments within the cycle of human life, their significance within a culture, or to particular individuals is infinitely varied.’ A list of thirteen topics is provided, as a point of departure: • the cultural contexts in which instruments are played; • the people for whom they are made and/or played; • the place of instruments in the cycle of human life; in daily life, social life, political life, religious life; • the status conferred on individuals through the ownership or performance of different types of instruments; • the ways in which instruments are suited to the locations where they are played (e.g., indoors, out of doors, etc.); • the association of instruments with religious or other types of ritual when they are played or made; • the use of musical instruments as media for communication; • the use of musical instruments for imitating animals and birds; • the local names of the different components of musical instruments;

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• the symbolism of instruments; • musical instruments as objets d’art; • the relationship between musical instruments and other museum objects; • the history of the museum’s collections, and how instruments are cared for within the museum. A striking aspect of this list is the extent to which it iterates topics to be found in Renaissance poetry and art, collapsing the distance between then and now. Because this book focuses on the interpretation of musical instruments by (for the most part) published poets and prominent artists, the cultural contexts and physical spaces represented are those particular to the upper classes: royal and noble courts, educational and juridical milieux, and salons. The almost inevitably self-reflexive nature of poetic descriptions of music making with instruments tends to preclude shifts to other social registers, since poets wished to avoid associating themselves with itinerancy and work-for-hire. Characters from the lower classes (the village fiddler, the blindman with his hurdy-gurdy, the bird catcher with his whistle) are held up either as models of virtues to be emulated or as negative examples of behaviours to be mistrusted (in others) or avoided (in oneself). When a member of the privileged classes chooses to cross over and assume a musical role inappropriate to his station (a court poet taking up the satyr Marsyas’s flute, a Valois king wielding a trumpet from his own Stable), the repercussions, whether for good or ill, are far-reaching. Some of the topics suggested in the museum guidelines are foregrounded in specific poetic genres. Ronsard’s stringed-instrument poems are highly attentive to matters of prestige, to the status that may accrue to an individual through the ownership or playing of an elite instrument, all the more so if that instrument is also an objet d’art. In music emblems we find instruments associated with various civic and political rituals: oratory, diplomacy, and prudent methods of governance. Another recommended topic, the use of musical instruments as media for communication, is central to the discourses of love poetry, for the human-like characteristics of instruments make them ideal agents for expressions of amatory longing and erotic desire. The guidelines also point to telling gaps in the corpus of poetic narratives about musical instruments. We read in several poems about the acquisition of instruments, usually as gifts, but nothing about how

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they are subsequently cared for or housed. In Saint-Gelais’s poem about a broken Spanish guitar, we are told that the guitar is repaired but not precisely how this is done. The poet who comes closest to assuming the role of an instrument builder or conservator is Ronsard, who, in his ode to the lyre, lists various parts of the instrument that need to be rebuilt or replaced, demonstrating his knowledge of the builder’s vocabulary. But poets’ interest in using instruments as metaphors for their own writing generally causes them to eschew the mundane in favour of the fanciful. An ‘ivory’ lute is more exotic than a wooden one, and in poetry it may sound just as well. Moreover, in some contexts a broken instrument is of more interest to a poet than one in full working condition. The topos of the broken lute string appears in such disparate genres as emblems and love sonnets, and Hans Holbein even succeeds in making one visible in his portrait of French diplomats. Particularly surprising, at least from an anthropological perspective, is how little poets tell us about the use of instruments in religious ritual. Other aspects – daily, social, and political – of the cycle of human life are well represented. But we look in vain for information about what functions musical instruments served in devotional practices in the sixteenth century. Even the Protestant Georgette de Montenay’s trumpet emblem is satirical rather than devotional. One suspects that the use of musical instruments in religious life in this period was still largely so ancillary (the use of cornetti to double voices in a choir, for instance) that poets simply did not perceive this topic as a viable means of constructing a symbolic discourse about their own art. The relationship between musical instruments and other material objects remains to be explored with respect to Renaissance literary and artistic production. In what ways do instruments interact with other objects within a poem, or in a poetry collection, or in a painting or drawing? How are lute-poems comparable to or different from verses addressed to other objects such as a book, flower, or precious stone? Finally, another topic that merits investigation is that of sound more broadly construed. This book focuses on drawing out the lyre, as a material object, in Renaissance lyricism, and therefore it is concerned with harmonious musical sound. To date we have no major study of noise (bruit, fracas, rumeur, noise) in French Renaissance literature. The essential difference between the modern museum and the Renaissance instrumentarium resides in the reasons for which interpretation is considered desirable at all. The narrative topics proposed in the guidelines for interpreting musical instrument collections aim to help

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museum educators reconstitute these material objects as ‘speaking’ subjects. Sixteenth-century verse tells similar stories but in order that these objects may assist in the constitution of poetic subjects. In museums, stories ascribe meaning to musical instruments that have become artifacts. In Renaissance poetry, where the message and its medium of communication are so closely allied, narratives about musical instruments disclose the meanings that musical culture once held for literary culture.

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Notes

Introduction 1 On sixteenth-century instruments see Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1984); and Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 29 vols (2nd ed., London: Macmillan, 2001). For illustrated studies see Jeremy P.S. Montagu, The World of Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments (London: Newton Abbot, 1976); David Munrow, Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London: Oxford University Press, 1976); and Mary Remnant, Musical Instruments of the West (London: Batsford, 1978). French-language dictionaries, even the specialized ones for medieval and Renaissance vocabulary, are not reliable for musical instruments. 2 Gilles Corrozet, Les blasons domestiques contenantz la decoration d’une maison honneste, et du mesnage estant en icelle: invention joyeuse, et moderne (Paris: Corrozet, 1539), 34v. The lute is a fretted plucked-string instrument, while the clavichord is a small keyboard instrument in which hammers strike the strings. Both are strung in gut and produce a very soft sound. 3 Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 45. 4 Pierre de Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 20 vols, ed. Paul Laumonier, Isidore Silver, and Raymond Lebègue (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1914–75), 1:215, line 24 (‘À Jan de la Hurteloire’). 5 Madeleine and Catherine Des Roches, Les oeuvres, ed. Anne R. Larsen (Geneva: Droz, 1993), 296. 6 Regarding the Belleau inventory, see Madeleine Jurgens, Ronsard et ses amis: documents du Minutier central des notaires de Paris (Paris: Archives Nationales, 1985), 219 and 232. Ronsard offers advice to aspiring poets in his Abbregé de l’Art poëtique françois (1565); Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 14:28.

170 Notes to pages 4–8 7 The cittern is a wire-strung plucked instrument with a soft, banjo-like sound. Strummed chords on the cittern may be heard at the beginning of track 16 of the sound recording by the Ensemble Doulce Mémoire, Folie Douce: Renaissance Improvisations (Dorian DOR-90262, 1998). On the Belleau poem see François Rigolot, L’erreur de la Renaissance: perspectives littéraires (Paris: H. Champion, 2002), 138–9. 8 ‘A large bass viol with its bow, then three other viols and a violin, with which to give concerts of chamber music and accompany songs.’ Cited in Eugénie Droz, ‘L’inventaire après décès des biens d’Agrippa d’Aubigné,’ Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 11 (1949): 101. The viol is a bowedstring instrument held in the lap or between the legs and bowed underhand. 9 The publication history of Montenay’s book is reviewed in Alison Adams, Stephen Rawles, and Alison Saunders, A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 2 vols (Geneva: Droz, 1999–2002), 2:177–91. 10 Simone Perrier makes this observation in her introduction to Georgette de Montenay, Livre d’armoiries en signe de fraternité (1619; reprint, Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1989). The Labé portrait may be viewed on Art.com (http://www.art.com) under the name of the artist, Pierre Woeiriot de Bouzey. 11 ‘All of an accord, instruments, books, fingers, I will sing the excellence of my God.’ In all French citations, including titles, I have regularized the I/J and U/V distinctions, the long S, and abbreviations. Unless otherwise noted, all English translations are my own. 12 ‘O quill in the hand not vain’ (line 5) and ‘Let not the promise of gold seduce you’ (line 8). 13 Brian Jeffery, ‘The Idea of Music in Ronsard’s Poetry,’ in Ronsard the Poet, ed. Terence Cave (London: Methuen, 1973), 218; emphasis in original. 14 Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the OFactor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 106. On ways that the use of musical notation (specifically, music examples) in a variety of Renaissance print contexts blurs the boundary between orality and visuality, see Cristle Collins Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing with the Eyes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 15 Smith, Acoustic World, 125. 16 Ibid., 128. 17 ‘For a lute I am small indeed; but if I can conquer the heart of the mistress of my master, I will think myself as grand among so many lutes that we are, as an Alexander among men.’ Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques

Notes to pages 8–9

18 19 20

21 22 23

24

25

26 27

28

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françaises, 2 vols, ed. Donald Stone, Jr (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1993–5), 2:41 (‘Sur un petit luth’). Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Story of People’s Lives (New York: Routledge, 1998), 11. Ibid., 7. Reinhard Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 547. For a survey of types of instrumental music played in the Renaissance, see Howard Mayer Brown, Music in the Renaissance (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976), chap. 9. Strohm, Rise of European Music, 545–6. William F. Prizer, ‘Una “virtù molto conveniente a madonne”: Isabella d’Este as a Musician,’ Journal of Musicology 17, no. 1 (winter 1999): 10–49. This plate is in the collection of Renaissance decorative objects in the Musée du Louvre in Paris (Anc. coll. Campana; acq. 1863; OA 1906). The lira da braccio is a bowed-string instrument with two off-board strings and five on an unfretted fingerboard. Its distinctive leaf-shaped pegbox has frontal pegs. On this instrument, which fell out of use in the late sixteenth century, see Sterling Scott Jones, The Lira da Braccio (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). H. Colin Slim, ‘Paintings of Lady Concerts and the Transmission of “Jouissance vous donneray,”’ in Slim, Painting Music in the Sixteenth Century: Essays in Iconography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), VII. Along with the equalization of voice parts came a heightened emphasis on good text declamation; Edward E. Lowinsky, Music in the Culture of the Renaissance and Other Essays, 2 vols, ed. Bonnie J. Blackburn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 1:19–39. Timothy J. McGee, Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Performer’s Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 77. On developments in instrument making and playing techniques in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries see Howard Mayer Brown, ‘Instruments,’ in Performance Practice: Music before 1600, ed. Brown and Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1989), 169–78. On the series of drawings to which this one belongs, see Per Bjurström, ‘Etienne Delaune and the Academy of Poetry and Music,’ Master Drawings 34, no. 4 (winter 1996): 351–64. The cornetto is a hybrid wind instrument made of wood or ivory, with woodwind finger holes and a brass-style (cup) mouthpiece. Valued in the Renaissance for its vocal sound, the cornetto fell out of use in the seventeenth century. An example of the cornetto used in duet with the voice may be heard on the Ensemble Doulce Mémoire’s sound recording, Pierre

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31

32

33

34

35 36 37

38

Notes to pages 9–12

Attaingnant/imprimeur du Roy (1494–1552): chansons nouvelles et danceries (Astrée/Auvidis E8545, 1995), track 5. On the liberties a soloist can take with polyphony see the interview with Andrew Lawrence-King in Bernard D. Sherman, Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 160–1. On Renaissance practices of accompaniment with stringed instruments (both polyphonic and chordal styles) see Andrew Lawrence-King, ‘“Perfect” Instruments,’ in Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. Tess Knighton and David Fallows (1992; reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 354–64. There are many examples of the transformation of chansons into instrumental pieces on the Ensemble Doulce Mémoire’s recording, Pierre Attaingnant. On the influence of print on musical culture in France in the mid-sixteenth century see Richard Freedman, ‘Clément Janequin, Pierre Attaingnant, and the Changing Image of French Music, ca. 1540,’ in Charting Change in France around 1540, ed. Marian Rothstein (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2006), 63–96; and Kate van Orden, ed., Music and the Cultures of Print (New York: Garland, 2000). There is evidence that some professional musicians had to be able to read in separate parts; Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition, 1450–1600 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 48–56. On tablatures (specifically instrumental notations) see Lewis Jones, ‘Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Keyboard Music,’ in Knighton and Fallows, eds, Companion, 131–4; and Owens, Composers at Work, 45–8. van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms, 17. Ibid., 45. Daniel Heartz, ed., Preludes, Chansons and Dances for Lute Published by Pierre Attaingnant, Paris (1529–1530) (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Société de Musique d’Autrefois, 1964); Heartz, ed., Keyboard Dances from the Earlier Sixteenth Century (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1965); Albert Seay, ed., Transcriptions of Chansons for Keyboard (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1961). Hopkinson Smith has recorded selections from the Attaingnant lute publications on Pierre Attaingnant: préludes, chansons et danses pour luth (Astrée/naïve E8854, 2001). On the music production of French printers see Laurent Guillo, Les éditions musicales de la Renaissance lyonnaise (Paris: Klincksieck, 1991); Daniel Heartz, Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music: A Historical Study and Bibliographical Catalogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); François Lesure and Geneviève Thibault, Bibliographie des éditions d’Adrian Le Roy et Robert Ballard (1551–1598) (Paris: Société Française de Musicologie, 1955); Lesure

Notes to pages 12–14

39

40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47

48 49

50

51

173

and Thibault, Bibliographie des éditions musicales publiées par Nicolas du Chemin (1549–1576) (Paris: Société de Musique d’Autrefois, 1953); and Samuel F. Pogue, Jacques Moderne: Lyons Music Printer of the Sixteenth Century (Geneva: Droz, 1969). On the lack of music literacy among minstrels see the summary of François Lesure’s extensive research in Frank Dobbins, ‘L’amateur, le professionnel et l’art instrumental clandestin: le conflit des témoignages biographiques et bibliographiques,’ in Le concert des voix et des instruments à la Renaissance, ed. Jean-Michel Vaccaro (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1995), 545–77. The Ensemble Doulce Mémoire’s Folie Douce recording is entirely Renaissance instrumental improvisation. van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms, 20. Christelle Cazaux, La musique à la cour de François Ier (Paris: École Nationale des Chartes, 2002), 35. Howard Mayer Brown, ‘Introduction,’ in Brown and Sadie, eds, Performance Practice, 153. Ibid. See H. Colin Slim, ed., Musica nova accommodata per cantar et sonar sopra organi; et altri strumenti, composta per diversi eccellentissimi musici. In Venetia, MDXL (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); and Jacques Barbier, ed., Musicque de joye (Tours: Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, 1993). Philip T. Young, The Look of Music: Rare Musical Instruments, 1500–1900 (Vancouver: Vancouver Museums and Planetarium Association, 1980), 34. The portrait of Duiffoproucart is reproduced in Frank Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 128, plate 3. For transcriptions of selected Parisian notarial contracts, see François Lesure, Musique et musiciens français du XVIe siècle (Geneva: Minkoff, 1976), 71–104. Archives nationales de France, Minutier central des notaires de Paris, notaire Filesac; IX-162: 14 février 1581, IAD de Boniface Marquis, mercier. Lesure, Musique et musiciens, 68, and Jean-Michel Vaccaro, La musique de luth en France au XVIe siècle (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1981), 59. Larger instruments and princely ones were more expensive. For examples of the prices paid by François I for spinets, see Cazaux, Musique à la cour, 53–4. Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons, 302–3. At least fifty stringed instrument makers were active in Paris in the same period; Lesure, Musique et musiciens, 107. Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons, 129.

174

Notes to pages 14–16

52 Freedman, ‘Clément Janequin,’ 87. 53 For an overview of instrumental treatises from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Brown, ‘Instruments,’ 167–8. 54 Adrian Le Roy, Oeuvres d’Adrian Le Roy: les instructions pour le luth (1574), 2 vols, ed. Jean Jacquot, Pierre-Yves Sordes, and Jean-Michel Vaccaro (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977), 1:2–3. Of Le Roy’s corpus of methods for plucked-string instruments, only the instruction book for cittern (1565) has survived in its original form. The methods for guitar (1551) and mandora (1585) are lost, and the two lute methods (1567 and 1570) are known only in their English translations (1568 and 1574). See Ian Harwood, ‘On the Publication of Adrian Le Roy’s Lute Instructions,’ Lute Society Journal 18 (1976): 30–6. 55 For a transcription of this document, see Lesure, Musique et musiciens, 82–3. 56 On the ownership of lutes see Vaccaro, Musique de luth, 33. 57 On early modern collecting see Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1990); and Antoine Schnapper, Curieux du grand siècle: collections et collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1988). 58 Marie-Madeleine Fontaine, ‘Le concert des voix et des instruments chez Jodelle, Aneau et quelques autres,’ in Vaccaro, ed., Concert des voix, 465. 59 For the list of musical instruments in the inventory, see Jeanice Brooks, ‘La Comtesse de Retz et l’air de cour des années 1570,’ trans. Marc Desmet, in Vaccaro, ed., Concert des voix, 314–15. 60 Trichet’s inventory is reprinted in the introduction to Pierre Trichet, Traité des instruments de musique (vers 1640), ed. François Lesure (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Société de Musique d’Autrefois, 1957), 10. 61 Trichet, Traité des instruments, 150. 62 Emanuel Winternitz, Leonardo da Vinci as a Musician (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), xxiii–xxiv and chap. 5. 63 Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities, 30. 64 For colour photographs of this instrument, see Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments of the Western World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 58–9. 65 The regal is a portable reed organ. 66 The spinet-regal (1587) is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and may be viewed on the museum’s Internet site at http:// www.khm.at/homeE/homeE.html. 67 On this pochette (pocket-sized violin) see John Henry van der Meer, Strumenti musicali europei del Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1993), 120, no. 117 (and the black and white plates). On Italian painted representations of musical instruments created for the

Notes to pages 16–25

68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75

175

stage see Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art: Studies in Musical Iconology (rev. ed., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), chap. 16. S. Jones, Lira da Braccio, 2. For colour photographs, see Winternitz, Musical Instruments of the Western World, 63. Ibid., 62. S. Jones, Lira da Braccio, 2. On the Fontainebleau aesthetic, especially in the Galerie François I, see Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Henri Zerner, L’art de la Renaissance en France: l’invention du classicisme (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 8. Slim, ‘Paintings of Lady Concerts,’ 56. Pierre de Bourdeille de Brantôme, Les dames galantes, ed. Maurice Rat (Paris: Garnier, 1965), 195–6.

1. Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 1 The Harp Consort, directed by Andrew Lawrence-King, has recorded some of this repertory (pieces transcribed by Luis Venegas de Henestrosa) on El arte de fantasía: el libro de cifra nueva (1557) (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907316, 2004). Henestrosa’s intabulations include French chansons. 2 ‘Whatever other instrument mounted with strings, whether sounded with a bow or plucked or strummed with the fingers.’ In Antoine Du Verdier and François Grudé de La Croix du Maine, Les bibliothèques françaises de La Croix du Maine et Du Verdier, 6 vols (Paris: Saillant et Nyon, 1772–3), 3:385. Claude was Antoine’s son. In some contexts, the verb ‘fredonner’ may also indicate the Renaissance practice of improvising diminutions (‘fredons’). 3 Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 20 vols, ed. Paul Laumonier, Isidore Silver, and Raymond Lebègue (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1914–75), 9:53, lines 446–7 (‘Hymne de Charles Cardinal de Lorraine’). 4 Ibid., 13:226, 15:61, and 15:136. On Ronsard’s involvement with court spectacles see Kate van Orden, ‘La chanson vulgaire and Ronsard’s Poetry for Music,’ in Poetry and Music in the French Renaissance: Proceedings of the Sixth Cambridge French Renaissance Colloquium, 5–7 July 1999, ed. Jeanice Brooks, Philip Ford, and Gillian Jondorf (Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 2001), 88–91. 5 See the entry for Forcade in Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late SixteenthCentury France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), appendix 2.

176

Notes to pages 25–30

6 ‘Every day men invent new and diverse instruments: lutes, lyres, citterns, dulcians, violins, spinets, flutes, cornetti; they sing every day diverse chansons; and they come to invent madrigals, sonnets, pavans, passamezzi, galliards.’ Louise Labé, Oeuvres complètes, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), 76. 7 Later, in court records from the 1570s, lire came to be used most often for the lirone (the bass instrument of the da braccio family), rather than a viol; Jeanice Brooks, ‘“O quelle armonye”: Dialogue Singing in Late Renaissance France,’ Early Music History 22 (2003): 10n18. 8 Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 6:25, lines 1 and 9–10. 9 Ibid., 9:81, lines 115–16. 10 On the lyra-cittern and harp-cittern see Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments of the Western World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 72–3 and 68–9. For another example of a late Renaissance hybrid see John Henry van der Meer, Strumenti musicali europei del Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1993), 108, no. 106 (and the colour plate). 11 On Castiglione and music see James Haar, ‘The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione’s View of the Science and Art of Music,’ in Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, ed. Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 165–89; and on the incorporation of musical skill (or at least a knowledge of the art) into the sixteenth-century French ideal of noble virtue, see Brooks, Courtly Song, chap. 3. 12 Haar, ‘Courtier as Musician,’ 175. 13 ‘My lute, you may expect to live here below for all time, not as I, who must die.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 2:162, lines 118–20. 14 ‘Thus the hurdy-gurdy remains for blindmen, the rebec and viol for minstrels, and the lute and guitar for musicians, especially the lute, for its greater perfection.’ la maniere d’entoucher les lucs et guiternes, in Discours non plus melancoliques que divers, de choses mesmement qui appartiennent a notre France: et a la fin la maniere de bien et justement entoucher les lucs et guiternes (Poitiers: Enguilbert de Marnef, 1557), 95–6. The treatise is reprinted in Jean-Michel Vaccaro, La musique de luth en France au XVIe siècle (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1981), appendix 3. The attribution of the prose miscellany which it concludes is also uncertain. 15 Dobbins advances Peletier as the most likely candidate for authorship of the treatise; Frank Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 59. 16 The Jollat illustrations appear in the series of editions of Alciato’s emblems printed by Wechel in Paris beginning in 1534. Those reproduced here are taken from a copy of the French edition of 1540; Andrea Alciato, Les

Notes to pages 30–2 177

17

18 19 20

21

22

emblemes de Maistre Andre Alciat, mis en rime francoyse [par Jean Lefevre] et puis nagueres reimprime avec curieuse correction (Paris: Chrestien Wechel, 1540). Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, part 2: De organographia, parts 1 and 2, trans. David Z. Crookes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 56. On the hurdy-gurdy see also Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art: Studies in Musical Iconology (rev. ed., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), chap. 4. See the entry for Jehan Cavalier in Brooks, Courtly Song, appendix 2. The treatise may have originated in Lyons rather than Poitiers, but as a matter of expediency I will refer to its author as the ‘Poitiers’ author. ‘We call viols those [instruments] with which gentlemen, merchants, and other men of virtue pass their time ... The other type is called the violin, and this is the one that we commonly use in dance music ... Few people play it, except for those who live by it, through their labour.’ Philibert Jambe de Fer, Epitome musical des tons, sons et accordz, es voix humaines, fleustes d’Alleman, fleustes à neuf trous, violes, et violons, 62–3; reprinted as an appendix to François Lesure, ‘L’Épitome musical de Philibert Jambe de Fer (1556),’ Annales musicologiques: moyen-âge et Renaissance 6 (1958–63), 341–6. Examples of sixteenth-century pieces played on the viol and violin may be heard on the recording Le jardin de mélodies: 16th-Century French Dances and Songs by The King’s Noyse (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907194, 1997). Contrary to popular belief, these instruments were not related; they developed separately. For charts detailing the assignment of musicians to the royal Stable and Chamber, see (for François I) Henry Prunières, ‘La musique de la chambre et de l’écurie sous le règne de François Ier, 1516–1547,’ L’année musicale 1 (1911): 250–1, and Christelle Cazaux, La musique à la cour de François Ier (Paris: École Nationale des Chartes, 2002), tables 1–5; (for Henri II) Jeanice Brooks, ‘From Minstrel to Courtier: The Royal Musique de Chambre and Courtly Ideals in Sixteenth-Century France,’ in Musikalischer Alltag im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Nicole Schwindt (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), 48–9; and (for François II, Charles IX, and Henri III) Brooks, Courtly Song, appendix 2. On the status and composition of the band of Italian violinists see Laurent Guillo, ‘Un violon sous le bras et les pieds dans la poussière: les violons italiens du roi durant le voyage de Charles IX (1564–66),’ in La musique de tous les passetemps, ed. François Lesure and Henri Vanhulst (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998), 207–33. According to Cotgrave, a violle is ‘A (musicall) Violl, or Violin’ and a violon is ‘A Violin, or little Violl.’ Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611; facsimile, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1950).

178

Notes to pages 32–5

23 See the entries for these instruments in Alvin Emerson Creore, ed., A WordIndex to the Poetic Work of Ronsard, 2 vols (Leeds: Maney, 1972). 24 See the entries for these instruments in Keith Cameron, ed., Concordance des oeuvres poétiques de Joachim Du Bellay (Geneva: Droz, 1988). 25 Maurice de La Porte, Les épithètes (1571; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1973), 279. 26 Andrew Lawrence-King, ‘“Perfect” Instruments,’ in Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. Tess Knighton and David Fallows (1992; reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 354. 27 The lute ‘is in such perfection that we disdain the majority of the other stringed instruments ... The lute’s convenience, its good grace, and its sweetness have given it the advantage.’ Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique, 3 vols (1636; facsimile, Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1963), 3:97 and 101. 28 Praetorius, De organographia, 65. 29 The original source for this image, reproduced in volume three (the books on musical instruments) of Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle, was one of Le Roy’s lute methods, now lost. On the structural evolution of the European lute see Robert Lundberg, Historical Lute Construction (Tacoma, WA: Guild of American Luthiers, 2002). Vaccaro traces the instrument’s introduction into French society in Musique de luth, chap. 1. 30 Mersenne took this image from a guitar book printed by Pierre Phalèse in 1570. 31 Maniere d’entoucher les lucs et guiternes, 98. 32 Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 45. 33 Al ‘ûd denotes a plucked-string instrument with a body fashioned of wood rather than an animal skin. 34 Claude Du Verdier, ‘Le Luth,’ in Antoine Du Verdier and François Grudé de La Croix du Maine, Les bibliothèques françaises de La Croix du Maine et Du Verdier, 6 vols (Paris: Saillant et Nyon, 1772–3), 3:380–8. For additional musical genealogies from this period, see Guy Lefèvre de La Boderie, La Galliade, 1582, ed. François Roudaut (Paris: Klincksieck, 1994), ‘cercle’ 4. 35 James Tyler and Paul Sparks, The Guitar and Its Music from the Renaissance to the Classical Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 13. ‘Tetrachord’ designated the four-note system, comprised of one half- and two whole tones, that served as a basis for melodic construction in Greek music theory. 36 Maniere d’entoucher les lucs et guiternes, 96. 37 Pierre Trichet, Traité des instruments de musique (vers 1640), ed. François

Notes to pages 35–7 179

38

39 40 41 42 43

44 45

46

47 48

49

50

Lesure (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Société de Musique d’Autrefois, 1957), 146 and 155. On professional lutenists active in major French cities and at court in the sixteenth century see Vaccaro, Musique de luth, 39–50; and on minstrelsy more generally, Luc-Charles Dominique, Les ménétriers français sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Klincksieck, 1994). François Lesure, Musique et musiciens français du XVIe siècle (Geneva: Minkoff, 1976), 136–7. On the rank of valet de chambre see Brooks, Courtly Song, 77. Cazaux, Musique à la cour, 77. Ibid., 136–7. On Rippe’s biography see Jean-Michel Vaccaro’s introduction to Albert de Rippe, Oeuvres d’Albert de Rippe, 3 vols, ed. Vaccaro (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1972–5), 1:xi–xix. ‘After his death his lute, also enclosed in his tomb, still sounds against his bones.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 6:25, lines 11–12. On the implications of the timing of this commodification of Rippe’s art see Richard Freedman, ‘Clément Janequin, Pierre Attaingnant, and the Changing Image of French Music, ca. 1540,’ in Charting Change in France around 1540, ed. Marian Rothstein (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2006), 85. A Fantaisie by Rippe is included on the Ensemble Clément Janequin’s recording, Chansons sur des poèmes de Ronsard (Harmonia Mundi HMC 901491, 1994). Paul O’Dette also performs three of Rippe’s compositions on Dolcissima et amorosa: Early Italian Renaissance Lute Music (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907043, 1994). On Saint-Gelais’s involvement with music see Philippe Desan and Kate van Orden, ‘De la chanson à l’ode: musique et poésie sous le mécénat du cardinal Charles de Lorraine,’ in Le mécénat et l’influence des Guises, ed. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris: H. Champion, 1997), 479–82. On the dating of this ode see Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 2:155–6n2. ‘Sing for me these odes, still unknown to the French Muse, with a lute well tuned to the sound of the Greek and Roman lyre.’ Joachim Du Bellay, La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, ed. Henri Chamard (1948; reprint, Paris: Didier, 1970), 112–13. Thomas Sébillet, Art poétique françois, ed. François Goyet (1910; 3rd ed., Geneva: Droz, 1988), 148 and 152. Ehsan Ahmed examines the debate between Sébillet and Du Bellay in The Law and the Song: Hebraic, Christian, and Pagan Revivals in Sixteenth-Century France (Birmingham: Summa, 1997), chap. 1. On the sources for Saint-Gelais’s poetry see Donald Stone’s introduction to

180

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52

53

54 55

56

57 58 59

60 61

62 63

Notes to pages 37–40

Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques françaises, 2 vols, ed. Donald Stone, Jr (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1993–5), 1:ix–xxvii. Ronsard would later reiterate this tale of conversion from Latin to the vernacular (but without the image of the lute) in his elegy to Pierre Lescot (1560), where he states that he prefers to be first (or second or third) in his own language, rather than last ‘in Rome.’ Oeuvres complètes, 10:304, lines 95–100 (‘À Pierre l’Escot’). ‘If formerly in the shadow of the Gastinais wood we played some Latin song while enamoured of Amaryllis; come now, golden lute; come my honour, whose delightful voice knows how to please princes at their table, change your style, and sound for me a song in French.’ Ibid., 2:155–6, lines 1–8. ‘Change your style and be for me now a French lute.’ Later variants for Ronsard’s poems are provided in the annotations in the Laumonier edition of his works. Sébillet, Art poétique, 143–52. Gilbert Gadoffre, ‘Les musiciens de Ronsard devant son oeuvre,’ in Ronsard en son IVe centenaire: actes du Colloque international Pierre de Ronsard, 2 vols, ed. Yvonne Bellenger, Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager, and Michel Simonin (Geneva: Droz, 1988–9), 1:124–5. For two tables listing Ronsard’s Chansons, see van Orden, ‘La chanson vulgaire,’ 107–9. Edwin M. Duval, ‘“Quasi comme une nouvelle poësie”: Poetic Genres and Lyric Forms, 1549–52,’ in Poetry and Music in the French Renaissance, ed. Brooks et al., 59. Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 2:158, line 45, and 2:159, line 53. Ibid., 2:156–7, lines 9–20. On the financial difficulties faced by poets of Ronsard’s station see Philippe Desan, ‘The Tribulations of a Young Poet: Ronsard from 1547 to 1552,’ in Renaissance Rereadings: Intertext and Context, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Anne J. Cruz, and Wendy A. Furman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 184–202. Ahmed, Law and the Song, 99. Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 3:127, line 150 (‘Ode à Michel de l’Hospital’). Specifically, Apollo’s music making served to temper the antipathy between Pallas and Neptune; ibid., 15:29–30, lines 301–9 (‘À Monsieur de Belot’). Gilbert Gadoffre, La révolution culturelle dans la France des humanistes: Guillaume Budé et François Ier (Geneva: Droz, 1997), 195–6 and 245. ‘Come, golden lute, the Muses’ portion and Apollo’s common heritage, whose voice, with melodious concord, sings the praise of men and the gods; come, my honour, it is time that you aimed to give pleasure to French ears,

Notes to pages 40–3 181

64 65 66 67

68 69

70

71

72 73

74 75 76 77

78

breaking from the shadow of an idle abode to show yourself in the bright light of day.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:24, lines 1–8. Isidore Silver, Ronsard and the Grecian Lyre, 3 vols (Geneva: Droz, 1981–7), 2:71. Elisabeth Henry, Orpheus with His Lute: Poetry and the Renewal of Life (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 34. Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:31, lines 153–4. ‘The lyre that I brought from Thebes all the way to France, and sounded first, from my youth, daring already to try it with my fingers and harmonize my songs to its voice.’ Ibid., 1:31: lines 154–8. ‘Happy lyre, honor of my youth, I sounded you before all in France.’ Ibid., 1:163, lines 19–20. The anagram is explained in a contemporaneous commentary appended to the Odes. See ‘Breve exposition de quelques passages du premier livre des Odes de Pierre de Ronsard,’ in ibid., 2:203–4. ‘When I first found you, you sounded harshly; you had no strings of any value, none able to respond to the law of my fingers. Mouldy with time, your case no longer resonated. But I felt pity to see you so poorly turned out, you who formerly caused great kings to find their meats more sweet and savoury. To fit you with strings and a body, indeed, with a sound natural for you, I pillaged Thebes and sacked Apulia, enriching you with their beautiful spoils.’ Ibid., 1:163–4, lines 21–32. ‘So then, Frenchmen, march courageously to this superb Roman city, and with her servile booty (as you have done more than once), adorn your temples and altars.’ Du Bellay, Deffence et illustration, 195–6. Timothy Hampton, Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 156–7. Nathalie Dauvois, ‘Essai de définition d’une éthique du genre lyrique à travers les poèmes à la lyre,’ La Renaissance, l’humanisme et la réforme 57 (December 2003): 17. Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:44. Ahmed, Law and the Song, 7. Clément Marot, Oeuvres poétiques complètes, 2 vols, ed. Gérard Defaux (Paris: Bordas, 1990–3), 2:560–1, lines 129–34. ‘Jupiter’s armed fire is extinguished by your song, as your song reaches him, and at the noise of your well-strung strings his eagle sleeps on his threepronged lightning, folding his wing. Thus you charm his sharp eyes, and he, in closing them, bristles his back and folds back his feathers, flattered by the sound of your sweet words.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:163, lines 9–16. Ibid., 1:166, line 62.

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Notes to pages 44–8

79 ‘Because of you I please, and I am read; it is you who have caused Ronsard to be chosen French harper, so that people point him out when they meet him in the street. If I please, then, if I know how to delight, if France wishes to sing my renown, if I surpass the stars with my brow, certainly, my lute, this comes from your grace.’ Ibid., 1:166, lines 65–72. 80 See ibid., 1:118, lines 165–8, (‘À Jouachim du Bellai Angevin’). 81 Terence Cave, ‘La Muse publicitaire dans les Odes de 1550,’ in Ronsard en son IVe centenaire, ed. Bellenger et al., 1:14. 82 Baïf addressed a sonnet to the guitar, but nothing in the poem’s content would preclude simply replacing the guitar with a lute or lyre; Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Les amours de Francine, 2 vols, ed. Ernesta Caldarini (Geneva: Droz, 1966–7), 1:56, sonnet 46. 83 On the published repertory for the guitar see Tyler and Sparks, Guitar and Its Music, chap. 2. 84 Cited in Donna G. Cardamone, ‘The Prince of Salerno and the Dynamics of Oral Transmission in Songs of Political Exile,’ Acta musicologica 67 (1995): 83. 85 Ibid. On the role played by Salerno in the spread of Neapolitan culture to Roman salons and the French court see also Donna G. Cardamone, ‘The Salon as Marketplace in the 1550s: Patrons and Collectors of Lasso’s Secular Music,’ in Orlando di Lasso Studies, ed. Peter Bergquist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 64–90. 86 ‘Traves, if all of your servants wish to leave, supplicants, their writing on your guitar, may all the earth be a guitar.’ Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques, 2:38. 87 ‘May it please God that instead of me, you might hold a king’s sceptre. I mean that by you would be held the land from which I came.’ Ibid., 1:95, lines 17–20. 88 On the musical household of Charles d’Orléans see Cazaux, Musique à la cour, 334–5. 89 ‘My guitar I sing of you, by whom alone I assuage, I assuage, I break apart, I enchant, the love that I receive.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:229, lines 1–4. 90 La Porte, Épithètes, 120. 91 ‘Better then to sing the beauties of my mistress, that she might wish to bring to a happy end the sorrow that oppresses me.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:233, lines 73–6. 92 Margaret M. McGowan, Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 89. 93 Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:230, lines 15–16. 94 Ibid., 1:230, lines 21–8. 95 Ibid., 1:230–1, lines 29–32. The poet would soon revisit these Apollo and Orpheus scenes in sonnet 36 of the 1552 Amours.

Notes to pages 48–51

183

96 Ibid., 1:231, lines 33–44. In Virgil this abduction scene appears on an embroidered cloak, and Ronsard would later use the same ekphrasis in the Franciade, also on a cloak; Virgil, Aeneid 5.250–5, and Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 16:80–1, lines 1025–32. 97 Roberto Eugenio Campo, Ronsard’s Contentious Sisters: The Paragone between Poetry and Painting in the Works of Pierre de Ronsard (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 123. 98 On the association of Ganymede with Apollo in the works of Parmigianino and Giulio Romano see James M. Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), chap. 3. As it happens, in Valois royal service the positions of Chamber musician and cupbearer were roughly equivalent. Jehan Le Boulanger, a singer-lutenist, occupied a post in the household of Catherine de’ Medici in the 1580s as an échanson. Whether his contemporaries appreciated the latent pun is impossible to know. On Le Boulanger see Brooks, Courtly Song, 83. 99 ‘You are the appropriate instrument for pensive ladies, and consecrated and dedicated to lascivious youths.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:231, lines 45–8. 100 Praetorius, De organographia, 59. Villanelle were light, witty Neapolitan songs, typically sung to strummed guitar accompaniments. The Ensemble Clément Janequin has recorded examples by Orlando di Lasso on Roland de Lassus, chansons et moresche (Harmonia Mundi HMC 901391, 1992). 101 ‘Were I to sing upon you the diverse combats of Hector, and of what the Greeks did at Troy in ten winters, this could not satisfy the love that so bites me. What can Hector do for me, or Ajax, who is dead?’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:232–3, lines 65–72. 102 Horace, Odes 2.12. 103 ‘My eye, my heart, my Cassandre, my life; ho! How rightly you ought to envy this great king, who no longer wishes to allow your name to offer itself to my songs. It is he who desires me to exchange my lute for a trumpet, so as to sound his praise; not that of him alone, but of all his ancestors, who came from the race of the gods.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 6:57, lines 1–8. Later, in ‘Les Misères,’ the first book of his Tragiques, Agrippa d’Aubigné would describe his literary conversion from poet-lover, singing the praise of ‘Diane,’ to poet-soldier, spokesman for the Huguenot cause, in a similar manner: as a silencing of his lute by the sound of trumpets; Agrippa d’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 2 vols, ed. Jean-Raymond Fanlo (Paris: H. Champion, 1995), 1:59, lines 73–4. 104 François Cornilliat,“De l’ode à l’épopée: sur le projet épique dans le

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107 108

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111 112 113 114 115 116

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118 119 120

Notes to pages 51–5 discours poétique de Ronsard,’ in Ronsard en son IVe centenaire, ed. Bellenger et al., 2:8. The Anacreontea, 23. Other classical sources for the notion of the poet’s inability to give up writing amatory verse include Ovid, Amores 1.1, and Propertius, Elegies 2.1. ‘Formerly I wished to sing of how Francus came with his band to settle on Gallic shores; but my lute, plucked by my finger, only wished, in spite of me, to sing of Cupid and Cassandre.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 6:133, lines 1–6. Ibid., 8:103, lines 1–15. ‘And in order to do this, there was no body, no bow or string that was not exchanged with new ones. But after it had been rebuilt, it sang louder than before, as it wished, of young ladies.’ Ibid., 6:134, lines 13–18. ‘So farewell then, poor Francus; your glory will be hidden, forever repressed beneath your vanquished walls, if you do not ask your nephew, our king, to make in your honour my lyre to be crosiered.’ Ibid., 6:134, lines 19–24. ‘And his greatness will not be slighted if upon my return from terrible combats, I reach for my lute and take it from its hook, plucking it, and if instead of dangers I sing of love, your beauty, and my tears.’ Ibid., 6:60, lines 54–8. On symbolic uses of the figure of Achilles, especially during the Wars of Religion, see Brooks, Courtly Song, 133–50. Siegbert Himmelsbach, L’épopée ou la ‘case vide’: la réflexion poétologique sur l’épopée nationale en France (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1988), 214. Cornilliat, ‘De l’ode à l’épopée,’ 5. Himmelsbach, Épopée ou la ‘case vide,’ 223. Freedman, ‘Clément Janequin,’ 78. ‘Proper to the lyre’ and ‘This lyre alone must and can animate verses, and give them the just weight of their gravity.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 1:44 and 48. On settings of Horatian odes see Jeanice Brooks, ‘Italy, the Ancient World and the French Musical Inheritance in the Sixteenth Century: Arcadelt and Clereau in the Service of the Guises,’ Journal of the Royal Musical Association 121, no. 2 (1996): 162–9. van Orden, ‘Ronsard’s Poetry for Music,’ 85. Howard Mayer Brown, ‘Ut musica poesis: Music and Poetry in France in the Late Sixteenth Century,’ Early Music History 13 (1994): 9–14. ‘Poetry without instruments, or without the grace of one or several voices, is not agreeable, any more than instruments that are not animated with the melody of a pleasant voice.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 14:9.

Notes to pages 55–7 185 121 On Ronsard’s move away from writing for musical setting see Duval, ‘“Quasi comme une nouvelle poësie,”’ 74. 122 For a list of musical settings of Ronsard’s poetry published between 1550 and 1556 (excluding the musical supplement of 1552), see Brown, ‘Ut musica,’ appendix 2. Additional poems by Ronsard that were set to music during his lifetime may be identified by consulting the table of incipits in Geneviève Thibault and Louis Perceau, Bibliographie des poésies de P. de Ronsard mises en musique au XVIe siècle (Paris: E. Droz, 1941). Polyphonic settings of some of Ronsard’s verses may be heard on the Ensemble Clément Janequin’s recording Chansons sur des poèmes de Ronsard. 123 Desan and van Orden, ‘De la chanson à l’ode,’ 478–9. For a catalogue of the verses by Du Bellay set by contemporary composers, see Frank Dobbins, ‘Joachim du Bellay et la musique de son temps,’ in Du Bellay: Actes du Colloque International d’Angers du 26 au 29 mai 1989, ed. Georges Cesbron (Angers: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 1990), 591–8. 124 Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Story of People’s Lives (New York: Routledge, 1998), 187. 125 Ahmed, Law and the Song, 2. 2. Musical Rivalries 1 François Rabelais, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Mireille Huchon (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 494. Although Rabelais’s musical language includes many types of instruments, the bagpipe generates the most metaphors; Nan Cooke Carpenter, Rabelais and Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), 2–4. 2 Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools, trans. Edwin H. Zeydel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), 186. 3 Thea Vignau-Wilberg, O Musica du edle Kunst: Musik und Tanz im 16. Jahrhundert / Music for a While: Music and Dance in 16th-Century Prints, exhibition catalogue (Munich: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, 1999), 95–7. 4 ‘Margot, here is my reed, let us both play on/with this bagpipe.’ The musical setting of this poem, by Nicolas de Marle, is reprinted in Jane A. Bernstein, ed., The Sixteenth-Century Chanson, 30 vols (New York: Garland, 1987–95), 19:138–41. The song was very popular, printed by Attaingnant in 1545, by Du Chemin in 1549 (ascribed, probably incorrectly, to a composer named Maille), and again in 1571 by Le Roy and Ballard (the only de Marle song that they reprinted). The Ensemble Clément Janequin has recorded it on Fricassée parisienne: chansons de la Renaissance française (1985; reissued, Harmonia Mundi HMA 1951174, 2000).

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5 On this artist see Janet Backhouse, John Scottowe’s Alphabet Books (Scolar Press, 1974). 6 Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 93. Despite these symbolic reticences, Renaissance wind music is of course immensely captivating. Some of the French repertory may be heard on a recording by Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, titled Chansons et danceries: French Renaissance Wind Music (Deutsche Grammophon 447 107-2, 1996). 7 ‘Perchè pare che abbiano del schifo’; quoted in James Haar, ‘The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione’s View of the Science and Art of Music,’ in Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, ed. Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 182. On shifts in the hierarchy of musical instruments over time see Margaret J. Kartomi, On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), chap. 10. 8 In Greek, aulos usually denotes a wind instrument consisting of two cylindrical pipes and two (probably double) reeds. 9 Plutarch, Alcibiades 2.5–7. Erasmus refers to this tale in his commentary on the adage, ‘An Arabian piper’ (Arabius tibicen); Erasmus, Adages, I.vii.32. All quotes from Erasmus are taken from Desiderius Erasmus, Adages, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vols 31–5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). 10 James W. McKinnon and Robert Anderson, ‘Aulos,’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, 3 vols, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1984), 1:87. 11 Annie Bélis, ‘Aulos,’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 29 vols, ed. Stanley Sadie (2nd ed., London: Macmillan, 2001), 2:182. 12 On the innovations of Timotheus and his followers in the composition of Greek song forms see Solon Michaelides, The Music of Ancient Greece: An Encyclopaedia (London: Faber, 1978), 334–5; and Giovanni Comotti, Music in Greek and Roman Culture, trans. Rosaria V. Munson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 35–40. 13 Claude V. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 106–7. Carlo Valgulio’s Latin translation of this treatise became available in 1507. 14 Roberto Eugenio Campo, Ronsard’s Contentious Sisters: The Paragone between Poetry and Painting in the Works of Pierre de Ronsard (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 34 and 41–3. 15 On this image see Edith Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas in the Art of the Italian Renaissance: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Images (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996), chap. 7.

Notes to pages 61–4 187 16 The erotic implications of recorder playing are highlighted in a drawing by Ludovico Caracci in which a man helps a young woman to play a recorder. He stands behind her, his cheek against hers, his arms encircling her shoulders so as to hold the instrument in her mouth (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Galleria degli Uffizi, 787E, Florence, photo no. 98952). 17 The drawing is reproduced in Wyss, Myth of Apollo, 102, fig. 69. 18 Wyss reconstructs nearly the entire Parmigianino-Fantuzzi series on the Marsyas myth in Myth of Apollo, 100–8. There were eight drawings in the original Parmigianino set. Fantuzzi produced etchings of the last four, which show Marsyas finding the instrument that Minerva has cast aside, the contest between Marsyas and Apollo, a grieving witness to the satyr’s execution, and Apollo overseeing the flaying. Zerner included the last three etchings in his sampling of Fontainebleau prints but mislabelled the one depicting the grieving witness, calling it ‘Jason’; Henri Zerner, ed., École de Fontainebleau: Graveurs (France: Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1969), ‘A.F.’ 76a, 76b, and 77 (prints 2, 4, and 3, respectively, in Fantuzzi’s set). Wyss corrects Zerner’s error and concludes that Fantuzzi reproduced the last three of Parmigianino’s drawings, but overlooks the existence of the fourth Fantuzzi print (which is in a private collection), the one that shows Marsyas finding the syrinx. It was displayed at an exhibition in Nemours in 1985, together with the prints of the contest and the flaying; for a reproduction see Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier and Jean-Bernard Roy, Fontainebleau et l’estampe en France au XVIe siècle: iconographie et contradictions, exhibition catalogue (Nemours: Château-musée de Nemours, 1985), fig. 158. 19 Parmigianino probably intended the roughly sketched ‘round’ peg-box in his drawing to indicate the leaf-shaped box of the lira. Fantuzzi renders the instrument as a violin. 20 ‘I have a pretty tambourine that I always use; beat on it, the skin is strong enough.’ Bernstein, Sixteenth-Century Chanson, 19:140–1. 21 Attaingnant printed Delafont’s setting of ‘À ce matin’ in 1547. It may be heard on the Ensemble Clément Janequin’s recording, Fricassée parisienne. 22 Medieval literature links the goat’s voice with the breaking of a boy’s voice and the onset of puberty; Bruce W. Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 182. 23 ‘When the long instrument enters my bearded hole, in tonguing I breathe, and moving it vigorously, I release some liquid with such a sweet sound that all rejoice in it while I am still coughing.’ Marc Papillon de Lasphrise, Les premiers oeuvres poetiques du Capitaine Lasphrise (Paris: Jean Gesselin, 1597), 327. There are twenty-two ‘Enigmes’ in this first edition of Lasphrise’s works, but this is the only one on a musical instrument.

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24 Guy Poirier, L’homosexualité dans l’imaginaire de la Renaissance (Paris: H. Champion, 1996), 181. 25 ‘This is a man who places a flute in his mouth all bearded about, and so as to play well he must suddenly move his fingers, and cannot do otherwise in breathing and tonguing than to release some saliva; whoever hears the sweet noise and sweet sound, rejoices; but the discomfort that the player feels makes him cough, ordinarily.’ Papillon de Lasphrise, Premiers oeuvres, 327. 26 The drawing is reproduced in Patricia Falguières, Le maniérisme: une avantgarde au XVIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 36. 27 Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.382–400. On Ovid’s Marsyas tale as redemptive see Leonard Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 79. 28 Plato, Symposium 215.b–e. 29 Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, trans. Hoyt Hopewell Hudson (1941; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 36. 30 Rabelais, Oeuvres, 5. 31 Wyss, Myth of Apollo, 130–2 and 140. 32 Homer, Iliad 15.18–22. 33 See Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 20 vols, ed. Paul Laumonier, Isidore Silver, and Raymond Lebègue (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1914– 75), 15:24, lines 181–9. In the 1584 version of this poem Ronsard added an image of Bacchus, seated on a barrel, to replace verse 188 in which Minerva casts her instrument aside: a substitution that links the decorations on the apothecary vessels to the Bacchanalian theme of the ode’s prologue. 34 Ibid., 15:24–5, lines 190-202. 35 ‘You would see him slowly consumed, dying through art, and from a human face become no more than a great fountain.’ Ibid., 15:31, lines 332–4. 36 Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 263. 37 Erasmus, Adages, III.iii.1. 38 ‘Such is your lyre, suspended for Phoebus, which, well gilded and tightly strung, hangs in his temple, so that our Frenchmen might, Belot, play it with their fingers, harmonizing under a trembling thumb, the hymn to this God, and your hymn, together.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 15:37–8, lines 457–62. 39 Stephen Murphy, The Gift of Immortality: Myths of Power and Humanist Poetics (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1997), 24. 40 Ibid. 41 On this drawing see Eugene A. Carroll, Rosso Fiorentino: Drawings, Prints, and

Notes to pages 70–5 189

42 43

44 45

46

47

48 49

50 51

Decorative Arts, exhibition catalogue (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1987), 330–5; and Cécile Scailliérez, François Ier et ses artistes dans les collections du Louvre (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1992), 134. Smith, Acoustic World, 120 and 177. ‘But we also have the advantage of not contorting the mouth in a hundred thousand ways, like monkeys, as do many who little remember [the example of] Minerva who, playing the flute once, and seeing in a mirror the deformity of her lips, cast it away, to be met, unfortunately, by the presumptuous satyr Marsyas, who later was flayed for it.’ Joachim Du Bellay, La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, ed. Henri Chamard (1948; reprint, Paris: Didier, 1970), 55. Ibid., 12–13. ‘What then, (someone will say), do you wish, following the example of this Marsyas, who dared to compare his rustic flute to Apollo’s gentle lyre, to liken your language to Greek and Latin?’ Ibid., 55–6. ‘I concede that the authors [who wrote in these languages] have surpassed us in knowledge and eloquence; in such things it was easy for them to vanquish those who did not oppose them. But that, through long and diligent imitation of those who first achieved what Nature has nonetheless not denied to others, we could not succeed them just as well in this as we have already done in the majority of the manual arts, and once in the monarchy – this I will not say.’ Ibid., 56. ‘There is no defence without a prior accusation ... Who is accusing or has accused the French language?’ Chamard provides the text of Aneau’s Quintil in the liminary paratext and notes to his edition of Du Bellay’s Deffence; see p. xi for Aneau’s discussion of Du Bellay’s title. On the mid-century literary quarrel precipitated by the Deffence see Margaret W. Ferguson, Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), chap. 2. Du Bellay, Deffence et illustration, 100. ‘Sing for me with a well resonating bagpipe and a well joined flute these pleasant rustic eclogues, following the example of Theocritus and Virgil; seafaring [ones], following the example of Sannazaro, Neapolitan gentleman.’ Ibid., 122–4. Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 535. ‘What language is this, to sing of a bagpipe or a flute? You have proposed the French language to us; then you invent minstrels, drummers, and violplayers ... Don’t degrade poetry into minstrelsy, viol-playing, and fluting.’ Cited in Du Bellay, Deffence et illustration, 122–3n4. The term ‘flageol’ was

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55

56 57

58

59

60

61

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Notes to pages 75–8

used for a variety of whistle pipes (as opposed to fipple flutes like the recorder). It was an archaic, quaint term in the sixteenth century. Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire second, ed. Cathy M. Yandell (Geneva: Droz, 1980), 74. Étienne Tabourot, Les bigarrures du Seigneur des Accords (Premier livre), 2 vols, ed. Francis Goyet (1588; facsimile, Geneva: Droz, 1986), 1:124. ‘As your Ronsard so arrogantly vaunts himself for having brought the Greek and Latin lyre to France, because he has so astonished us with these big and strange [foreign] words, strophe and anti-strophe.’ Cited in Du Bellay, Deffence et illustration, 122n4. ‘For whoever would ask the most learned of you what instrument is and was the lyra, and how to sound or play it, and its shape, the number of strings and harmonies, and how to sing verses to it, or on the flute, I believe that the most skilled would prove lesser in this than a little village rebec- or fluteplayer.’ Ibid., 123n4. Ibid. Edwin M. Duval, ‘“Quasi comme une nouvelle poësie”: Poetic Genres and Lyric Forms, 1549–52,’ in Poetry and Music in the French Renaissance, ed. Brooks et al., 54. Kate van Orden, ‘Female Complaintes: Laments of Venus, Queens, and City Women in Late Sixteenth-Century France,’ Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 3 (autumn 2001): 812–16. ‘I hear the ancient contest of the horn against the lyre of the musician prince ... I see his live entrails, his sinews, his fearing veins shiver, exposed.’ Joachim Du Bellay, Oeuvres poétiques, 8 vols, ed. Henri Chamard and Yvonne Bellenger (1908–31; rev. ed., Paris: Nizet, 1982–5), 4:49–50, lines 145–7, 152–4. The analogy between Marsyas’s flayed body and the strings of the lyre is implied in images of the hanging Marsyas from Roman antiquity. On this and other forms of musical embodiment in Christian late antiquity see Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, chaps 1 and 2. We find an echo of this tradition in the Sepmaine of Du Bartas, where he writes of the human body, ‘Nostre langue est l’archet, nostre esprit le sonneur. / Nos dents, les nerfs batus, le creux de nos narines / Le creux de l’instrument.’ Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas, La sepmaine (texte de 1581), 2 vols, ed. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris: Nizet, 1981), 2:278, lines 592–4 (‘Sixième jour’). ‘The musician prince punished the vanquished satyr with a just torture. Alas! he repents in vain, seeing his skin hanging from him.’ Du Bellay, Oeuvres poétiques, 4:49–50, lines 148–51. ‘I see two grassy banks springing from the tears of his eyes.’ Ibid., 4:50: lines 155–6.

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63 On the fifteenth-century Italian paraphrases of the myth see Wyss, Myth of Apollo, 83–5. 64 On the topos of the source see David Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 65 On the fresco see Le dessin en France au XVIe siécle: dessins et miniatures des collections de l’École des Beaux-Arts, exhibition catalogue (Paris: École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1994), 88–91; and Primatice, Maître de Fontainebleau, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2004), 386–7. The Garnier engraving is reproduced in Jean-Jacques Lévêque, L’École de Fontainebleau (Neuchâtel: Éditions Ides et Calendes, 1984), 46. 66 Antonio Fantuzzi also did an etching of a Parnassus scene (1542–3), working from a composition by either Rosso Fiorentino or Francesco de’ Rossi Salviati. For the Fantuzzi version, see Lévêque, École de Fontainebleau, 157, or Zerner, École de Fontainebleau, ‘A.F.’ 20. 67 The painted version of the Rosso composition, now in the Louvre, is probably a copy either of the Caraglio engraving or of a lost original that was at Fontainebleau in the sixteenth century; Carroll, Rosso Fiorentino, 92–4. For a colour reproduction of the Louvre painting, see Lévêque, École de Fontainebleau, 135. 68 Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.294–678. 69 Rosso also placed a vièle à archet without strings in the lower left foreground of the Lost Youth fresco in the Galerie François I at Fontainebleau; Sylvie Béguin, Oreste Binenbaum, André Chastel, W. McAllister Johnson, Sylvia Pressouyre, and Henri Zerner, eds, La Galerie François Ier au château de Fontainebleau, special issue of the Revue de l’Art (Paris: Flammarion, 1972), 59, fig. 78. 70 ‘I am not, Ronsard, so lacking in reason as to wish to compare myself to you, which would not be less a sacrilege than to compare to the Muses the school of magpies; to Minerva, Arachne; Marsyas to the Delian god; or to our great prince, an Italian prince.’ Du Bellay, Oeuvres poétiques, 5:185, lines 1–6. 71 Facilité and gravité are Du Bellay’s own terms; ibid., 5:186, lines 19 and 21. 72 Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 11:147, lines 589–90 (‘Responce aux injures et calomnies’). 73 Ullrich Langer, Vertu du discours, discours de la vertu: littérature et philosophie morale au XVIe siècle en France (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 77. 74 Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 11:128, line 214 and 11:129–30, lines 243–50. 75 Ibid., 11:153–4, lines 719–30. 76 ‘Ears just as Midas had them, that oafish Phrygian who was so vulgar, he did not know enough to prize Apollo’s songs and lyre, when he disdained the good and honored the worst.’ Ibid., 11:143, lines 501–4.

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Notes to pages 84–8

77 In verses he added to the ‘Responce’ in the edition of 1584, Ronsard also compared his adversaries to Marsyas; ibid., 11:117n8. 78 On associations between representations of Marsyas and Pan in Fontainebleau art see Primatice, Maître de Fontainebleau, 181–5. The artist Melchio Meier (act. Tuscany circa 1572–82) actually combines the myths in a painting that shows Apollo taunting king Midas with Marsyas’s skin; Wendy Thompson, Poets, Lovers and Heroes in Italian Mythological Prints, exhibition catalogue (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), 20. More generally, on Pan and satyrs in French literature and art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Françoise Lavocat, La syrinx au bûcher: Pan et les satyres à la Renaissance et à l’âge baroque (Geneva: Droz, 2005). 79 Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.146–93. On occurrences of this myth first in classical, then English literature, see Patricia Merivale, Pan the Goat-God: His Myth in Modern Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). 80 Ovide moralisé en prose (texte du quinzième siècle), ed. C. de Boer (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1954), 271. 81 Barthélemy Aneau, Imagination poetique, traduicte en vers françois, des latins, et grecz, par l’auteur mesme d’iceux. Horace en l’art. La poesie est comme la pincture (Lyons: Macé Bonhomme, 1552), 120–1. 82 ‘Oh might it please God that all hidden Asses be thus marked with the ears of an ass!’ Ibid., 121. 83 ‘But don’t leave him like that; I am content enough to know that his verses are patched together from mine.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 11:143, lines 505–6. 84 Langer, Vertu du discours, 92–3. 85 ‘I like to make love, I like to talk to women, to put into writing my amorous flames; I like balls, dancing, and masques too, music and the lute, the enemies of care.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 11:145, lines 551–4. 86 Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager, and Michel Simonin, ‘Introduction,’ in Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 1:xxiii–xxiv. Ronsard’s only theoretical treatises were his Abbregé de l’Art poetique françois and a few prefaces. 87 ‘The marvellous Ronsard, the prince, without envy, and first in his art.’ André de Rivaudeau, Les oeuvres poétiques d’André de Rivaudeau, gentilhomme du Bas Poitou, ed. Charles Mourain de Sourdeval (1859; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine 1968), 223. This edition has no line numbering. 88 ‘For whoever thinks to imitate, Belleau, the incomparable lyre of my Ronsard, is like Marsyas, who was torn apart by jealous hands for challenging a god greater than humans. Nevertheless, an unpleasant one dares quite often to compare the lyre of Quercy to that of Vendômois. Such a one, my

Notes to pages 88–94

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Belleau, has a judgment like that of Phrygian Midas, who preferred the song of the piping god to the gracious rhymes of the more learned Apollo.’ Ibid., 223. See Keith Cameron, ‘Introduction,’ in André de Rivaudeau, Aman: tragédie sainte, ed. Cameron (Geneva: Droz, 1969), 15–17. ‘I have very little, my Belleau, natural skill and art; nevertheless I know the virtue of Ronsard, and I do not have, God be thanked, too ram-like a soul or too ass-like a mind, recognizing him as the father of our poetry; yet I am well content never to write anything in imitation of him.’ Rivaudeau, Oeuvres poétiques, 225. ‘With the Divinity’s favor, I hope to give a great work to posterity.’ Ibid., 226. On the Galerie d’Ulysse see Sylvie Béguin, Jean Guillaume, and Alain Roy, La galerie d’Ulysse à Fontainebleau (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985); and Claude Mignot, ‘Fontainebleau revisité: la galerie d’Ulysse,’ Revue de l’art 82 (1988): 9–18. Suzanne Boorsch presents these Ghisi prints in The Engravings of Giorgio Ghisi, exhibition catalogue (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), 128–35. This panel belongs to a set of six depicting scenes from the lives of the gods. Scholars long thought the engraver to have been René Boyvin (ca. 1525– ca. 1625) and the design by Rosso Fiorentino, but they are now unsure of the engraver’s identity and believe the composition to be by Léonard Thiry; Janet S. Byrne, Renaissance Ornament Prints and Drawings, exhibition catalogue (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1981), 84–5, figures 97 and 98.

3. Musical Instruments, Governance, and Oratory 1 For a definition of the emblem, see Peter M. Daly, ‘Emblem,’ in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 326–7. 2 On the emblem tradition in France see Laurence Grove and Daniel Russell, The French Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Sources (Geneva: Droz, 2000); Daniel Russell, Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995); and Alison Saunders, The SixteenthCentury French Emblem Book: A Decorative and Useful Genre (Geneva: Droz, 1988). On music in later English and Dutch emblems see Linda Phyllis Austern, ‘The Siren, the Muse, and the God of Love: Music and Gender in Seventeenth-Century English Emblem Books,’ Journal of Musicological Research 18 (1999): 95–138; and two studies by Paul P. Raasveld: ‘Musical

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11

Notes to pages 94–6

Notation in Emblems,’ Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 5, no. 1 (summer 1991): 31–49, and ‘The Visualization of Imagined Music and Metaphors of Sound in Dutch Books of Religious Emblems,’ Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 8, no. 2 (winter 1994): 321–35. Many French emblem books are now accessible online. See Gallica: la bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (http://gallica.bnf.fr/); the Glasgow Emblem Digitisation Project (http:// www.ces.arts.gla.ac.uk/html/AHRBProject.htm); and The Renaissance in Print: Sixteenth-Century French Books in the Douglas Gordon Collection (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/rmds/collections/gordon/). Ullrich Langer, Vertu du discours, discours de la vertu: littérature et philosophie morale au XVIe siècle en France (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 161. Ibid., 162–3. Ibid., 165. Austern, ‘The Siren, the Muse,’ 103. Alanus, de Insulis, ‘The Anticlaudian of Alain de Lille: Prologue, Argument and Nine Books,’ trans. William Hafner Cornog (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1934), 90–110. Of the three sixteenth-century emblematic writers who composed the most music emblems, Aneau was a humanist educator, while La Perrière and Coustau represent the juridical milieu. On their careers see Brigitte Biot, Barthélemy Aneau, régent de la Renaissance lyonnaise (Paris: H. Champion, 1996); Greta Dexter, ‘Guillaume de La Perrière,’ Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 17, no. 1 (1955): 56–73; Dexter, ‘La Morosophie de La Perrière,’ Les Lettres Romanes 30 (1976): 64–75; and Valérie Hayaert, ‘Pierre Coustau’s Le Pegme (1555): Emblematics and Legal Humanism,’ Emblematica 14 (2005): 55–99. Horace, Satires. Epistles. The Art of Poetry, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library 194 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 926), 483. On the two most prominent artists who designed woodcuts for early French emblem books, Bernard Salomon and Pierre Eskrich, and the interaction between them, see Peter Sharratt, Bernard Salomon: illustrateur lyonnais (Geneva: Droz, 2005), esp. 38–45. ‘Who ever [would have] believed that wise Amphion built Thebes with the sound of harmony, bending under him like a reed in the wind, unpitying hearts, filled with felony? As long as peace holds the republic united, and steadfast love and sacred concord maintain and moderate the citizens, there is no fear that the enemy will attack it.’ Pierre Coustau, Le pegme de Pierre Coustau, avec les narrations philosophiques, mis de latin en françoys par Lanteaume

Notes to pages 96–100

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de Romieu gentilhomme d’Arles, trans. Lanteaume de Romieu (Lyons: Macé Bonhomme, 1560), 385. Coustau’s book was first published in 1555, in both a Latin version, which included prose commentaries (Petri Costalii pegma, cum narrationibus philosophicis [Lyons: Macé Bonhomme, 1555]), and a French translation, from which the commentaries were omitted. These were added to the second French edition in 1560. On Coustau’s emblematic writing as a generic intermediary between Erasmus and Montaigne see Irene Bergal, ‘Pierre Coustau’s Pegme: From Emblem to Essay,’ in Lapidary Inscriptions: Renaissance Essays for Donald A. Stone, Jr, ed. Barbara C. Bowen and Jerry C. Nash (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1991), 113–22. Cicero, On the Republic. On the Laws, trans. Clinton W. Keyes, Loeb Classical Library 213 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 183. ‘Works patched together from little pieces of marquetry.’ Andrea Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, de nouveau translatez en françois vers pour vers jouxte les latins. Ordonnez en lieux communs, avec briefves expositions, et figures nouvelles appropriées aux derniers emblemes, trans. Barthélemy Aneau (Lyons: Guillaume Roville, 1549), 8. Coustau, Pegme, 387–8. ‘With the gentle and very melodious sound of an instrument, Orpheus caused rocks and hillocks to move from their places and sites. This is eloquence, having the strength and power to steal the hearts of all with its knowledge. This is the orator who, with the force of eloquence, first under the same abode assembled with ferocity bestial and fierce men, and with benevolence recalled them from their ferocity.’ Ibid., 389–90. Elena Laura Calogero, Ideas and Images of Music in English and Continental Emblem Books, 1550–1700 (Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, forthcoming), chap. 1. On the links in sixteenth-century French poetry between Orpheus and the origins of civilization, law, and political legitimacy, see (for the Pléiade) Françoise Joukovsky, Orphée et ses disciples dans la poésie française et néo-latine du XVIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1970); and (for Maurice Scève) James Helgeson, Harmonie divine et subjectivité poétique chez Maurice Scève (Geneva: Droz, 2001). See also Don Harrán, ‘Orpheus as Poet, Musician and Educator,’ in Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento, ed. Richard Charteris (Sydney: Frederick May Foundation for Italian Studies, 1990), 265–76. Coustau, Pegme, 390–1. Ibid., 391–2. ‘To dabble in knowledge without giving it its enrichment.’ Ibid., 392. ‘Cicero and others who are named among the most eloquent.’ Ibid. On a specifically self-promotional use of Coustau’s Amphion and Orpheus em-

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blems by the Englishman Thomas Palmer, in a manuscript from the 1560s, see Calogero, Ideas and Images of Music, chap. 1. The term ‘pegme’ was applied to theatrical pageants, triumphal arches and other edifices, and to the inscriptions on them. On its implication for emblems see Bergal, ‘Pierre Coustau’s Pegme,’ 113. While the woodcut images in the Morosophie are probably by Agret, the ornate frames (dated 1551) are signed with the initials sometimes of Jean Monnier, sometimes Jacques Perrin, two booksellers in Toulouse who collaborated with the Lyonnese printer Macé Bonhomme. ‘Just as a lute softens the heart more with its sweetness than [does] a frightful sound, so one must appease a people’s anger not with menaces but with gentle words.’ Guillaume de La Perrière, La morosophie de Guillaume de la Perriere Tolosain, contenant cent emblemes moraux, illustrez de cent tetrastiques latins, reduitz en autant de quatrains françoys (Lyons: Macé Bonhomme, 1553), emblem 21. Cicero, On the Orator: Book 3. On Fate. Stoic Paradoxes. On the Divisions of Oratory, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 349 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 173. Albrecht Dürer, Underweysung der Messung, mit dem Zirckel un[d] Richtscheyt, in Linien Ebnen unnd gantzen Corporen (Nuremberg, 1525). This imprint has no page numbering. In a later illustration for this emblem Bernard Salomon eliminated Jollat’s architectural setting and transformed the divan into a canopy bed, which fills the entire frame. Eskrich followed Salomon’s model, but added two books next to the lute; see Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, 30. On the question of what authorial control Alciato may have exerted over the illustrations in the editions of his collection that appeared during his lifetime, see John Manning, ‘A Bibliographical Approach to the Illustrations in Sixteenth-Century Editions of Alciato’s Emblemata,’ in Andrea Alciato and the Emblem Tradition: Essays in Honor of Virginia Woods Callahan, ed. Peter M. Daly (New York: AMS, 1989), 127–76. ‘This lute formed like a fishing boat, the Latin muse takes as her own; take (Duke) this gift, which pleases you at this time as you intend to begin an alliance.’ Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, 30. These boats were originally shaped like the lute, and although by the sixteenth century they had become more elongated, the appellation remained current; Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols (1891–1902; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1982), 4:766. ‘It is difficult to tune so many strings, except for the prudent. If one

Notes to pages 104–9

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34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

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[string] does not wish to remain taut, or is broken (which easily happens), the quality of the sound is completely lost.’ Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, 30–1. On Zarlino’s use of Alciato see Paul P. Raasveld, ‘Echoes of Andrea Alciato’s “Foedera” in the Musical Theory of His Contemporary Gioseffo Zarlino,’ Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 7, no. 2 (winter 1993): 387–95. In sonnet 183 of Du Bellay’s Regrets we find, among other comic portraits described, one of an ass tuning a lyre – perhaps recalling Erasmus, who writes, ‘If it were merely that your wise men approach public affairs precisely “as asses do a lyre,” it might be borne; but they are not more dexterous in performing any of life’s duties.’ Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 33. ‘It is indeed in vain that I seek to tune my lute, seeing that I am mad. If I am crazy and foolish in my [own] house, will I be wise in administering the public good?’ La Perrière, Morosophie, emblem 36. Erasmus, Adages, I.vii.7. On vantage points in emblem illustrations see Sandra Billington, ‘The Hilltop Setting in Early Emblem Books,’ in The Emblem in Renaissance and Baroque Europe: Tradition and Variety; Selected Papers of the Glasgow International Emblem Conference, 13–17 August, 1990, ed. Alison Adams and Anthony J. Harper (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 213–28. On the ‘foolosophers’ see Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 10–11. Erasmus, Adages, II.v.45. Coustau, Pegme, 148. Erasmus, Adages, II.v.45. Ibid. ‘Whoever among so many types of music only prizes the Dorian muse, and likes nothing but spicy beans, even before they have been peeled, should not have, according to my judgment, a place or voice in a council or parliament.’ Coustau, Pegme, 147. Coustau’s readers, even assuming they knew the implications of ‘épices,’ could not have fully unpacked this emblem’s lesson without recourse to Erasmus, for to make the connection between the Dorian muse and the taking of bribes requires familiarity with the play on the Greek words dôristi and dôrodokêsti. Another of Coustau’s music emblems, titled ‘Sur Aspendius joueur d’instrumens,’ also reworks an Erasmian adage, but in this instance the emblem does not require recourse to Erasmus’s commentary in order to comprehend its symbolism; see Coustau, Pegme, 205–6; and Erasmus, Adages, II.i.30. Erasmus, Adages, I.vi.38. ‘Thus peace wishes to join Italy together. If love is present, there is nothing

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49 50

51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59

Notes to pages 109–13

to fear. But if one [party] withdraws (which we often see), this harmony is dispersed on the wind.’ Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, 31. Ibid., 32. Scholars have traditionally credited Aneau with choosing the thematic categories for Roville’s edition, but it was more likely the printer himself; see Claudie Balavoine, ‘Le classement thématique des Emblèmes d’Alciat: recherche en paternité,’ in Adams and Harper, Emblem, 1–21. ‘If one string is not well tuned, or is broken (which easily happens).’ Peter M. Daly, Virginia W. Callahan, and Simon Cuttler, eds, Andreas Alciatus, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), emblem 10. For an example of an early seventeenth-century emblem in which Alciato’s lute becomes a politicized Irish harp, see John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500–1700 (1961; reprint, Hamden: Archon Books, 1993), 49–50. On the painting’s physical characteristics and themes see Susan Foister, Ashok Roy, and Martin Wyld, Holbein’s Ambassadors (London: National Gallery Publications, 1997). Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 19. On possible explanations for the inclusion of the Lutheran hymn book in a portrait of French Catholic statesmen see ibid., 17. François I’s tolerance for Lutheranism would not be seriously eroded until the Affair of the Placards in October 1534. Ibid., 19. Foister, Roy, and Wyld, Holbein’s Ambassadors, 42. Christopher Page uses this question to introduce a meditation on how the ambassadors might have reacted to Ottoman music (probably less favourably than to Ottoman visual production); Page, ‘Ancestral Voices,’ in Sound, ed. Patricia Kruth and Henry Stobart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 133–50. Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 50. Ibid., 57. Regarding the markings on the ambassadors’ globe, see ibid., 54–7. Ibid., 59. Patricia Kruth and Henry Stobart, ‘Introduction,’ in Kruth and Stobart, Sound, 4. In the Eskrich version of the woodcut, the instrument is a lute, and the cicada sits right over the soundhole; see Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, 226.

Notes to pages 113–17

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60 ‘The cicada gave the victory, not so much deemed [the result of] good fortune as appointed, through the providence of the gods, who love, and take care of music.’ Ibid., 227. Aneau’s commentaries were the first on Alciato’s emblems. 61 For an overview of Montenay’s collection, see Alison Adams, Webs of Allusion: French Protestant Emblem Books of the Sixteenth Century (Geneva: Droz, 2003), chap. 2 62 See Georgette de Montenay, Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes, composees par Damoiselle Georgette de Montenay (Lyons: Jean Marcorelle, 1571), emblems 20, 33, 43, 90, and 99. D’Aubigné demonstrates the same predilection for the trumpet in his Tragiques: thirteen uses of trompette(s), compared with only seven of luth(s), of which three occur in the same passage. Although he most often alludes to the generic trumpets and drums of battle, d’Aubigné also mentions the flute, harp, viol, and violin. Noticeably lacking is the lyre, which he perhaps shunned as a way of distinguishing his Huguenot brand of lyricism from that of the Catholic court poets. To locate d’Aubigné’s mentions of musical instruments, see Keith Cameron, ed., A Concordance to Agrippa d’Aubigné, Les tragiques (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1982). 63 In cultivated Huguenot circles pictorial images were acceptable provided they were not used in devotional contexts. Moreover, Montenay’s ‘Christian’ images are not religious in themselves; Simone Perrier, ‘Le corps de la sentence: les “Emblèmes Chrestiens” de Georgette de Montenay,’ Littérature 78 (May 1990): 55 and 59. 64 ‘The old prince, ignorant and not wise, who has no experience of his own, judges his people through the voices of others, without having any knowledge of the facts. Such a prince may be called, without libel, not the head of his council, but its trumpeter, who exempts himself from the law of the true God, to be seen as the servant of his servants.’ Montenay, Emblemes, emblem 20. 65 Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dans l’art profane: dictionnaire d’un langage perdu (1450–1600) (1958; reprint, Geneva: Droz, 1997), 92. 66 Ibid., 90. 67 Michael Bath, The Image of the Stag: Iconographic Themes in Western Art (BadenBaden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 1992), 283. 68 Guillaume de La Perrière, Le thëatre des bons engins, auquel sont contenuz cent emblemes moraulx. Composé par Guillaume de La Perriere Tolosain: et nouvellement par iceluy limé, revue, et corrigé (Paris: Denis Janot, 1540), emblem 39; and La Perrière, Morosophie, emblem 69. 69 The Mignon etching is reproduced in Jean-Jacques Lévêque, L’École de Fontainebleau (Neufchatel: Éditions Ides et Calendes, 1984), 203; and Henri

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75 76

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Notes to pages 117–20

Zerner, L’art de la Renaissance en France: l’invention du classicisme (Paris: Flammarion, 1996), 132 (fig. 140). For the Eskrich woodcut, see Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, 76. On this myth in Renaissance French culture see JeanRaymond Fanlo and Marie-Dominique Legrand, eds, Le mythe de Diane en France au XVIe siècle (Niort: Cahiers d’Aubigné, 2002). Daly, Callahan, and Cuttler, Andreas Alciatus, vol. 1, emblem 52. On sixteenth-century representations of the Prodigal see H. Colin Slim, ‘The Prodigal Son at the Whores’: Music, Art, and Drama,’ in Slim, Painting Music, III. Ironically, cano also happens to be the ablative of the noun canis (‘dog’). Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.192–3. In the Tragiques d’Aubigné applies the imagery of Montenay’s emblem to another of Henri’s sons, characterizing Charles IX as a French Sardanapalus who serves as trumpeter to a band of scoundrels and consorts with harlots in place of a council; d’Aubigné, Tragiques (‘Les Fers’), 1:513, lines 946–50. The English version of the epigram for this emblem in the 1619 edition of Montenay’s book reduces its complex visual imagery and wordplay to the simple statement that this monarch is a ‘brute, / Which hes a trompet, and cannot flutte’; Georgette de Montenay, Livre d’armoiries, en signe de fraternité (1619; reprint, Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1989), 112. The German translator, also unable to retain the pun on cerf and serf, ignores the crown of laurel worn by the monarch in the illustration and describes the ‘Oberkeit’ (governing authorities) rather as wearing a lion’s skin and donkey ears; Marion Moamai, ‘Dame d’Honneur and Biedermann: The German Translation of Georgette de Montenay’s Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes,’ Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 4, no. 1 (spring 1989): 54. Homer, Odyssey 12.184–91. Although the Galerie d’Ulysse has been destroyed, many of the compositions used in its decor survive in drawings, engravings, and copies by later artists. On Primaticcio’s rendering of Odysseus and the Sirens see Primatice, Maître de Fontainebleau, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2004), 327–30. Ibid., 260–1. ‘Who would believe there to exist birds without feathers, girls without legs, and fish without mouths, singing nonetheless from the mouth with siren voices? The Sirens teach that this is possible. Woman is attraction, a fish in human form, for lust brings with it many monsters; the gaze, the word, and whiteness bind man: Parthenope, Ligia, and Leucosia. The Muses pluck their feathers, and Ulysses tricks them, for wise men do not seek harlots.’ Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, 142–3. On this myth in Western literature and

Notes to pages 120–1

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82 83 84 85

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music see Linda Phyllis Austern and Inna Naroditskaya, eds, Music of the Sirens (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). ‘Against [such distractions] the best remedy available to men is study of the arts and sciences, and travel.’ Alciato, Emblemes d’Alciat, 261. Cited in Jean Dorat, Mythologicum ou interprétation allégorique de l’ Odyssée X– XII et de L’Hymne à Aphrodite, trans. Philip Ford (Geneva: Droz, 2000), 47. The Sirens sing to Odysseus of the Trojan war, and so Theodor Adorno observes that ‘[the Sirens’] allurement is that of losing oneself in the past’; cited in Barbara Engh, ‘Adorno and the Sirens: Tele-phono-graphic Bodies,’ in Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture, ed. Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 134. Engh also notes the parallel between the Sirens episode and an earlier one in which Odysseus is undone emotionally by listening to a harper sing about the Trojan war. Michel de Montaigne, Les essais, ed. Pierre Villey and V[erdun]-L[ouis] Saulnier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), 488. Dorat, Mythologicum, 49. Ibid., 51. ‘There is nothing that so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything by which the evil more easily gain credit with them. [Flattery is] the first enchantment that the Sirens use to lure Ulysses.’ Montaigne, Essais, 619. D’Aubigné uses the same verb in the book of his Tragiques that enumerates the vices rampant in the Paris Parliament: ‘la douce Faveur / De ses yeux affeitez chacun pippe et regarde.’ D’Aubigné, Tragiques (‘La Chambre dorée’), 1:290, lines 304–5. ‘When the bird catcher wishes to seize many birds, he disguises his voice with some instrument, whose sound causes them to come and give themselves up to him. By this means he easily takes them. Court flatterers act similarly to draw princes into their traps, for to please them and give them solace, they change their countenances a hundred times a day. But when the prince is obliged to say “Alas,” it is too late to realize his error.’ La Perrière, Thëatre des bons engins, emblem 54. Langer, Vertu du discours, 57. The images reproduced here are from a copy of the Latin version of Aneau’s book: Picta poesis, ut pictura poesis erit (Lyons: Macé Bonhomme, 1552). The French epigrams in the Imagination poetique are not direct translations of the Latin versions in the Picta poesis; most are paraphrases, lengthier than the originals. However, the illustrations are identical (except that one inflammatory emblem on the corruption of magistrates is deleted from the French edition).

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90 ‘When the bird catcher wishes to seize the bird, he sounds his flute very sweetly. But the flatterer, who deceives men, sings more sweetly than any flute. Thus Mercury, ambassador of the gods, lulled Argus to sleep, and his one hundred eyes, with the sweet sound of his flute, while listening. For there is no man wise or clear-sighted enough not to be eventually put to sleep by the flatterer, who portrays himself as a friend.’ Aneau, Imagination poetique, 51. 91 On ways that Huguenots used the medium of print to ‘correct’ secular songs (by adding new texts), see Richard Freedman, The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso and Their Protestant Listeners: Music, Piety, and Print in SixteenthCentury France (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2000). 92 Smith, Acoustic World, 87. 93 ‘Nevertheless, to profit more, to have money, clothing, an inheritance, my friend, learn to play the flute. For princes listen willingly to the flute. Whoever learns to play it will advance among the first.’ Eustache Deschamps, Oeuvres complètes, 11 vols, ed. Le Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire (Paris: Didot, 1878–1903), 6:128, lines 18–23. 94 Godefroy, Dictionnaire, 4:17. 95 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.2. 96 Tervarent, Attributs et symboles, 63 and 74–5. 97 ‘He may well dance for whom Fortune plays, provided that the song lasts a long season; when her song resounds more sweetly, beware of her mortal poison.’ La Perrière, Morosophie, emblem 91. 98 On the interaction between Aneau’s collection and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and especially Aneau’s reinterpretations of woodcuts originally prepared as illustrations for Ovid, see François Cornilliat, ‘Le commentaire a-t-il horreur du vide? L’attribution du sens chez Barthélemy Aneau,’ Poétique 77 (February 1989): 17–34; Cornilliat, ‘De l’usage des images muettes: Imagination poétique de Barthélémy Aneau,’ L’Esprit Créateur 27, no. 2 (summer 1988): 78–88; and Alison Saunders, ‘The Influence of Ovid on a SixteenthCentury Emblem Book: Barthélemy Aneau’s Imagination poetique,’ Nottingham French Studies 16 (May 1977): 1–18. 99 The drawing of this ‘chase scene’ by Jean Cousin le fils is reproduced in Le Dessin en France au XVIe siécle: dessins et miniatures des collections de l’École des Beaux-Arts, exhibition catalogue (Paris: École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1994), 165. 100 Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.689–712. Today the sound-producing organ of birds is called the syrinx. 101 Ibid., 1.568–746. 102 ‘He noticed that the reeds emitted, from his sighs, a sound that murmured

Notes to pages 128–32

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very softly. So that he said a great farewell to this lewd place and to love.’ Aneau, Imagination poetique, 27. ‘The hollow reed which bends in every wind, is the harlot, who sells herself to everyone, and who abandons her inconstant body to whoever wishes it, in return for payment.’ Ibid., 28. Ibid. Ovide moralisé en prose (texte du quinzième siècle), ed. C. de Boer (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1954), 74. On this aspect of the myth, in the context of a discussion of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘A Musical Instrument,’ see John Fletcher, ‘Poetry, Gender and Primal Fantasy,’ in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (London: Methuen, 1986), 127–9. ‘Kills her man, and bleeds him to death.’ Aneau, Imagination poetique, 117. Pierre Trichet, Traité des instruments de musique (vers 1640), ed. François Lesure (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Société de Musique d’Autrefois, 1957), 89.

4. The Anatomy of the Lute 1 ‘When I see the tidy brunette, young, shapely, of the lineage of the gods, and how her voice, her fingers, and the spinet make a sweet and melodious sound, I draw pleasure with both my ears and eyes.’ Clément Marot, Oeuvres poétiques complètes, 2 vols, ed. Gérard Defaux (Paris: Bordas, 1990–3), 2:267, lines 1–5. 2 I know of only one French Renaissance poem that discusses at length the spinet: a sixteen-line anonymous text found in a manuscript source dating from 1570–1, which compares the parts of the spinet to the body and clothing of Venus; Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. F-Pn 1663, f. 38r. On this manuscript see Pierre Champion, Ronsard et Villeroy: les secrétaires du roi et les poètes, d’après le manuscrit français 1663 de la Bibliothèque nationale (Paris: E. Champion, 1925). 3 ‘When I see her so gracious and lovely, plucking so gently the strings of the pleasant lute, and wedding her voice to the dainty sound spoken by the highest string, my whole heart leaps, thrilled with pleasure.’ Amadis Jamyn, Les oeuvres poétiques: livres II, III et IV (1575), ed. Samuel Carrington (Geneva: Droz, 1978), 72–3, sonnet 37, lines 1–5. 4 Line Catherine Pouchard, ‘Louise Labé in Dialogue with her Lute: Silence Constructs a Poetic Subject,’ History of European Ideas 20, nos. 4–6 (1995): 717. 5 ‘Oh smile, oh brow, hair, arms, hands, and fingers; oh plaintive lute, viol,

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bow, and voice: so many torches to enflame a woman!’ Louise Labé, Oeuvres complètes, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), 122, sonnet 2, lines 9–11. Thurston Dart, ‘Miss Mary Burwell’s Instruction Book for the Lute,’ Galpin Society Journal 11 (1958): 23. The Burwell Lute Tutor is believed to have been copied by a young Englishwoman circa 1670, presumably from a manuscript lent her by her lute master. Dart presents an abridged version in his article; the entire text may be consulted in a facsimile edition, The Burwell Lute Tutor (Leeds: Boethius Press, 1974). Julia Sutton, ‘The Lute Instructions of Jean-Baptiste Besard,’ Musical Quarterly 51, no. 2 (spring 1965): 358–9. On evidence about performance practices on the lute to be gleaned from poetry itself see Jonathan Le Cocq, ‘“Qu’on te prenne, beau luth, pour la lyre d’Orphée ...”: Lute-Song in French Renaissance Poetry,’ in Brooks et al., eds, Poetry and Music in the French Renaissance, 141–57. On the parts of the lute see the diagram and glossary in Robert Lundberg, Historical Lute Construction (Tacoma: Guild of American Luthiers, 2002), 258–60. A representation of the human body as a lute appears in a fourteenth-century illustrated manuscript of Dante’s Inferno. This drawing is reproduced in Bruce W. Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 215, figure 13. Dart, ‘Miss Mary Burwell’s Instruction,’ 60. On the symbolic geometry of the lute, especially in the rose, see Robin Headlam Wells, Elizabethan Mythologies: Studies in Poetry, Drama and Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chap. 5. Writers who comment on this phenomenon include Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Bembo, and Jacques Gohory. See Emanuel Winternitz, Leonardo da Vinci as a Musician (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 120; Pietro Bembo, Gli Asolani, trans. Rudolf B. Gottfried (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954), 140; and (for Gohory) Adrian Le Roy, Oeuvres d’Adrian Le Roy: les instructions pour le luth (1574), 2 vols, ed. Jean Jacquot, Pierre-Yves Sordes, and Jean-Michel Vaccaro (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977), 1:3. ‘Lute, companion in my misfortune, faultless witness to my sighs, true narrator of my troubles, you have often lamented with me.’ Labé, Oeuvres complètes, 127, sonnet 12, lines 1–4. The opening stanza of Ronsard’s ‘À sa Guiterre’ uses language like that of a lute-poem, as does the opening stanza of Jean-Antoine de Baïf’s ‘À la Lyre;’ Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Euvres en rime de Jean Antoine de Baïf, 5 vols, ed. Charles

Notes to pages 133–8

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Joseph Marty-Laveaux (1881–90; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1965), 2:448, lines 1–4. ‘O lute, more valued gift than anything I have at present; lute, having come from the worthy place where my heart is captured and held; lute which responds to my thoughts as soon as they are formed; lute which I have made so many nights judge and witness to my suffering, not being able to see near to me the one who had you so near to her.’ Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques françaises, 2 vols, ed. Donald Stone, Jr (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1993–5), 1:99–100. ‘I beg you, make me understand how, touching that tender hand, your wood escaped the fire that has succeeded so well in engulfing me, and if it could be extinguished with much singing and lamenting.’ Ibid., 1:100. ‘May it please God, lute, that your voice might go where I see with my heart, so that my torment, well heard, might bring back a “yes.” Then you would do me greater service than did formerly the Thracian harp, which made mountains move, for you would bring a dead man to life.’ Ibid. ‘If you cannot achieve the praise that the beauty of my lady merits, please at least make your lament so sweetly that she might take pity (sad lute) on my desire.’ Pontus de Tyard, Les erreurs amoureuses, ed. John A. McClelland (Geneva: Droz, 1967), 2:248, lines 55–8. Daniel Fischlin, In Small Proportions: A Poetics of the English Ayre, 1596–1622 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 267. ‘Resonant lute, both the sweet sound of strings and the perfect accord of my affection, how completely as one you tune your harmony to match my passion!’ Maurice Scève, Délie, 2 vols, ed. Gérard Defaux (Geneva: Droz, 2004), 1:157, lines 1–4. ‘When I am without occupation you incite my spirit so ardently that you move me now to joy, now to mourning, with your harmonies, so unlike mine.’ Ibid., lines 5–8. ‘For you declaim to [her] my woes better than I, corresponding to my trembling sighs.’ Ibid., lines 9–10. Ibid., 2:381. ‘In her arms, oh happy one, near to her heart, she clasps you with great delicacy, and rebuffs me with much vigour, drawing from you her joy and her happiness, from me laments, tears, and mortal sadness, far from the pleasure that she finds in you. But when she takes you in her arms you do not feel her harmful flame which, day and night, without touching her, makes me happily miserable for her.’ Ibid., 1:157–8. ‘Go, happy one; and if these white hands, and if these celestially human arms deign so to honour you as to take you up, may in your sounds be so

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Notes to pages 138–9

sweetly presented the customary harmonies of my sorrows, that she might comprehend my love. You were the organ for my dolorous laments, and now that you serve happily as a virtuous pleasure for those two ivory hands, act as my spy; at least find out if there remains in her celestial bosom (your rich resting place) some sighing memory of me.’ Tyard, Erreurs amoureuses, 227, sonnet 23, lines 9–14, and 228, sonnet 24, lines 9–14. An early model for this tradition is a poem by Ovid (Amores 2.15) in which the speaker gives his lady a little ring (anulus) and spins out a series of verses that pun on anulus (ring/anus) and digitus (finger/penis): ‘tam bene convenias, quam mecum convenit illi’ [may you fit her as well as she fits me]. On the medieval poet Leoninus’s use of this Ovidian conceit see Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, 142–51. On this anthology see Cathy M. Yandell, ‘Of Lice and Women: Rhetoric and Gender in La Puce de Madame Des Roches,’ Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20, no. 1 (spring 1990): 123–35; and on the blason tradition more broadly, Alison Saunders, The Sixteenth-Century Blason Poétique (Berne: Peter Lang, 1981). Yandell, ‘Of Lice and Women,’ 133. ‘I beg you to hear the amorous sound coming from the hollow of my offended soul.’ Guillaume de La Tayssonnière, Les amoureuses ocupations de Guillaume de la Tayssonniere d. de Chanein, a sçavoir strambotz, sonetz, chantz, et odes liriques (Lyons: Guillaume Roville, 1555), 2, lines 11–12. ‘I would like, if God be willing, to become your lute, your cittern, or your spinet, so that when you wished to play, you would only hear the resonating of “Relieve [satisfy] me, pleasant brunette.”’ Olivier de Magny, Les odes amoureuses de 1559, ed. Mark S. Whitney (Geneva: Droz, 1964), 72, lines 61–6. For a preliminary list of musical settings and mentions of ‘Allegez moy,’ see Howard Mayer Brown, Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–1550 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 185–6. Additional mentions in poetry are listed in Brian Jeffery, ‘The Literary Texts of Josquin’s Chansons,’ in Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference held at The Juilliard School at Lincoln Center in New York City, 21–5 June 1971, ed. Edward E. Lowinsky (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 409. Questions have been raised about the attribution of the famous six-voice setting to Josquin des Prez; Lawrence F. Bernstein, ‘Chansons for Five and Six Voices,’ in The Josquin Companion, ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 410–11. See Julia Craig-McFeely, ‘The Signifying Serpent: Seduction by Cultural Stereotype in Seventeenth-Century England,’ in Music, Sensation, and Sensuality, ed. Linda Phyllis Austern (New York: Routledge, 2002), 299–317.

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31 This painting is in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. In Renaissance allegorical treatments of the months of the year, music making is usually associated with April. 32 The Baldung painting is in the Prado in Madrid. In representations of the four ages or seven ages of man, music is linked to adolescence. 33 Craig-McFeely, ‘Signifying Serpent,’ 300. 34 Ibid., 300–1. 35 On this composition and variants of its central scene see H. Colin Slim, ‘The Prodigal Son at the Whores’: Music, Art, and Drama,’ in Slim, Painting Music in the Sixteenth Century: Essays in Iconography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), III, 13–21. 36 ‘Big captains in the battle camp ... sway to and fro, play the lute, sound from the rump.’ François Rabelais, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Mireille Huchon (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 257. 37 ‘Our fathers taught us to say “luc” and not “lut”; witness the little joke of good mates, who say that mademoiselle knows well how to play the upended.’ La maniere d’entoucher les lucs et guiternes, in Discours non plus melancoliques que divers, de choses mesmement qui appartiennent a notre France: et a la fin la maniere de bien et justement entoucher les lucs et guiternes (Poitiers: Enguilbert de Marnef, 1557), 97. 38 Tabourot also cites this joke in his Bigarrures (‘On y peut adjouster une joüeuse de Luc, qui joüoit aussi du Luc renversé’), and, according to Francis Goyet, it appears in the 1579 Journal of Pierre de l’Estoile; Étienne Tabourot, Les bigarrures du Seigneur des Accords (Premier livre), 2 vols, ed. Francis Goyet (1588; facsimile, Geneva: Droz, 1986), 1:116r and 2:89, note D. 39 ‘A lascivious hand, whether she/it embraces her lover, lying in her lap, or whether she/it plays her lute; and a voice that even surpasses her lute.’ Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, 20 vols, ed. Paul Laumonier, Isidore Silver, and Raymond Lebègue (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1914–75), 1:5–6, lines 32–5. 40 Joachim Du Bellay, Oeuvres poétiques, 8 vols, ed. Henri Chamard and Yvonne Bellenger (1908–31; rev. ed., Paris: Nizet, 1982–5), 5:168, lines 345–52. 41 Craig-McFeely, ‘Signifying Serpent,’ 310. 42 H. Colin Slim, ‘Mary Magdalene, Musician and Dancer,’ in Slim, Painting Music, V, 465. 43 On the musical iconography of the Magdalen series see Daniel Heartz, ‘Mary Magdalen, Lutenist,’ Journal of the Lute Society of America 5 (1972): 52–67. 44 ‘If I love my friend so much more than my husband, this is no marvel. There is no workman like him, at the pretty craft practiced without a candle.’ Cited in ibid., 59.

LUC

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Notes to pages 143–9

45 Slim further observes that in one of the five Magdalen paintings a second sheet of music notation appears, which gives two fragments from the opening of another racy song that was popular during the reign of François I, ‘Jouissance vous donneray’ (by Claudin de Sermisy, on a text by Marot); H. Colin Slim, ‘Paintings of Lady Concerts and the Transmission of “Jouissance vous donneray,”’ in Slim, Painting Music, VII, 56. 46 Heartz, ‘Mary Magdalen,’ 61–3. Slim proposes that the iconography of the song may signify the Magdalen’s dancing, rather than her singing, since a manuscript list of dances copied in 1517 includes one called ‘Se y’aime bien m’amie,’ which may be the song depicted in the paintings; Slim, ‘Mary Magdalene,’ 463. 47 The Veneto painting is in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston. See Keith A. Christiansen, A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player, exhibition catalogue (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), 42–3, and on page 43, fig. 31. 48 Keith A. Christiansen and Judith W. Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exhibition catalogue (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 113. 49 ‘Your lute yesterday evening still felt the effect of your sweet hand and gracious throat, and under my fingers sang without their aid, when a demon, either envious of me or feigning concern for my well-being, said to me: this is to take too much pleasure from a lute. Do you not feel a fierce desire to seek about you for a rope, to seize with your heart the lady of the lute? And so saying, he broke my chanterelle.’ In Labé, Oeuvres complètes, 160. 50 Albert P. de Mirimonde, Sainte-Cécile: métamorphoses d’un thème musical (Geneva: Minkoff, 1974), 7. 51 Christiansen and Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, 352. 52 Artemesia’s self-portrait is in the Curtis Galleries in Minneapolis. For a reproduction see ibid., 323. 53 For a reproduction of the van Honthorst image see ibid., figure 116. 54 Ibid., 324. 55 Fischlin, In Small Proportions, 268. 56 Pouchard, ‘Louise Labé,’ 717. 57 Although technically speaking the je of Labé’s two lute sonnets could be a man, other sonnets in her series make clear that the speaker is a woman. The same is true for the male-authored sonnets discussed in this chapter, which appear in collections where the gender of the speaker is definitively revealed at certain points. 58 ‘Lute ... you have often lamented with me, and the pitiful weeping has so afflicted you, that beginning some delightful song you suddenly made it mournful, by altering the pitch that had been sung as plain. And if I wish to

Notes to pages 149–51

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persuade you otherwise, you slacken your strings and thus constrain me to silence. But seeing myself tenderly sighing, looking favourably on my sad lament, I am compelled to take pleasure in my sorrow and hope for a sweet end to sweet suffering.’ Labé, Oeuvres complètes, 127–8, sonnet 12, lines 4–14. In this period ‘transposition’ indicated the movement of a whole tonal system up a fourth, through the introduction of a flat – that is, moving the first mode from its natural position on D up to G with a flat signature (a shift that does not alter the disposition of the mode). A classic example is found in the second phrase of Arcadelt’s madrigal ‘Il bianco e dolce cigno’ of 1539, where the composer flats the harmony on the word ‘piangendo.’ The resulting harmony is still major, not minor. See Jacob Arcadelt, Opera Omnia, 10 vols, ed. Albert Seay (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1965–71), 2:38, mm. 1–10. On this aspect of the sonnet’s imagery see Pouchard, ‘Louise Labé.’ In an alternative reading proposed by Craig-McFeely, the sonnet may be said to speak of the conflict between the inner person and the public image. The lute ‘refuses to play when asked to express false emotions.’ The implication is that words alone cannot be trusted, while the lute is ‘unable to take part in any artificiality.’ Craig-McFeely, ‘Signifying Serpent,’ 306. Later, the Norman poet Jean Vauquelin de La Fresnaye would identify this problem as residing in poetry’s own musical form – in the constraints of verse, which the poet strives to surmount or overcome; Jean Balsamo, ‘Le chant et son inscription dans les Diverses Poésies de Vauquelin de La Fresnaye,’ in Brooks et al., Poetry and Music, 227. ‘While my eyes can still shed tears to regret past happiness with you; and while my voice can resist sobbing and sighing, and still be heard a little; while my hand can still strain the strings of the gentle lute, to sing your charms; while my mind remains content to embrace nothing but you, I do not yet wish to die.’ Labé, Oeuvres complètes, 128–9, sonnet 14, lines 1–9. ‘But when I will feel my eyes dry up, my voice broken, and my hand powerless, and my spirit in this mortal abode no longer able to show a lover’s signs, then I pray death to darken my brightest day.’ Ibid., lines 10–14. Deborah Lesko Baker, The Subject of Desire: Petrarchan Poetics and the Female Voice in Louise Labé (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996), 148–9. ‘But I would like then, at the same time, having well tuned my little lute, having felt it and tested its sound, to sing a song on it, to see what gestures he would make.’ Pernette Du Guillet, Rymes, ed. Victor E. Graham (Geneva: Droz, 1968), 58–9, lines 17–21. ‘Not, however, to have him killed and eaten by his dogs, as a stag, but that he might feel himself my serf.’ Ibid., 59, lines 30–2.

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68 JoAnn DellaNeva, ‘Mutare/Mutatis: Pernette Du Guillet’s Actaeon Myth and the Silencing of the Poetic Voice,’ in Women in French Literature: A Collection of Essays, ed. Michel Guggenheim (Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri, 1988), 50. 69 Robert D. Cottrell, ‘Pernette du Guillet and the Logic of Aggressivity,’ in Writing the Renaissance: Essays on Sixteenth-Century French Literature in Honor of Floyd Gray, ed. Raymond C. La Charité (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1992), 109. 70 In the Anglo-Saxon tradition we find an eighth-century riddle-poem that describes a round lyre as if it were a female body: ‘She shapes for her listeners a haunting sound / Who sings through her sides. Her neck is round / And delicately shaped; on her shoulders draped, / Beautiful jewels. Her fate is strange.’ Craig Williamson, trans., A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon RiddleSongs (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 129 and 204–5. For the original Anglo-Saxon text and further notes, see Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 107 and 336–9. This riddle-poem is one instance of an extensive medieval tradition of comparing musical instruments to the human body. In Guillaume de Machaut’s ‘Dit de la harpe’ the poet compares his lady’s ‘gent corps’ to the twenty-five strings of the harp; Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, 323. 71 On this category of riddle-poems see Williamson, Feast of Creatures, 22. 72 Two riddle-poems are included in La Haye’s book of poetry, but neither is listed with the other poems on the title page of the book. Hence the riddlepoems themselves are ‘anonymous’ in their literary context, treated as a minor genre not worthy of mention. 73 Daniel Tiffany, ‘Lyric Substance: On Riddles, Materialism, and Poetic Obscurity,’ Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (autumn 2001): 79. 74 ‘I am a body, I mean without movement, without arms, without feet, or any emotion. I am not of substantial size, in all, at most, a foot in width, and in length two large or three small. I am sought after by nobles and the gentility; I have a big belly, and one also sees my bones. I have a long neck, my mouth opposite to my back, my sides are on my glistening belly, and my guts on my languishing back. Whoever does not move me, hears nothing from me.’ Maclou de La Haye, Les oeuvres (Paris: Estienne Groulleau, 1553), 13v–14r. 75 ‘Whoever loves me well, my belly with his/hers joins in embrace, and according to what he/she does, I satisfy him/her in his/her pleasure.’ Ibid., 14r. 76 The remaining verses merely add further points of information to aid the reader in guessing the object’s identity; we learn that if it sounds falsely this is not its fault, that it cries out when handled indelicately, that its value increases with age, and so on.

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77 The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, exhibition catalogue (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 151. 78 Ibid., 43. The second painting is in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. For the Italian texts of the madrigals, with English translations, see Christiansen, Caravaggio, 90–1. On Caravaggio’s possible sources for the madrigals see H. Colin Slim, ‘Musical Inscriptions in Paintings by Caravaggio and his Followers,’ in Slim, Painting Music, VIII, 243–4. 79 See Roger Sorg’s introduction to Madeleine de l’Aubespine, Les chansons de Callianthe, fille de Ronsard (Madeleine de l’Aubespine, dame de Villeroy), ed. Sorg (Paris: Léon Pichon, 1926), 7. 80 ‘For the sweetest enjoyment I could choose, often after dinner, fearing to be bored, I take the neck in hand, I touch and work it, so that it may be ready to give me pleasure. I throw myself on my bed and, without letting go, I clasp it/him in my arms, lean it/him against my breast and, moving forcefully, all joyfully with ease, among a thousand sweetnesses, I accomplish my desire. If it happens, unhappily, that it/he once slackens, I straighten it/him with my hand, and once more I contrive to enjoy the pleasure of such sweet handling. Thus my beloved, as long as the string draws it/him, contents and pleases me. Then from me, gently, slack and unappeased, at last I withdraw it/him. On a lute.’ Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. F-Pn 1718, f. 57r. In my transcription I have added some apostrophes. 81 Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols (1891–1902; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1982), 5:147–8. 82 Marcy L. North, The Anonymous Renaissance: Cultures of Discretion in TudorStuart England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 230. 83 The debate over the identity of this poet plays out in Frédéric Lachèvre’s introduction to Héliette de Vivonne, Poésies de Héliette de Vivonne, attribuées à tort à Madeleine de l’Aubespine sous le titre ‘Chansons de Callianthe,’ ed. Lachèvre (Paris: Librairie Historique Alph. Margraff, 1932); Roger Sorg’s introduction to Aubespine, Chansons de Callianthe; and Jacques Lavaud, Un poète de cour au temps des derniers Valois: Philippe Desportes (1546–1606) (Paris: E. Droz, 1936), appendix 1. 84 On lyric audiences see Heather Dubrow, The Challenge of Orpheus: Lyric in Early Modern England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming), chap. 2. 85 ‘At this point I will leave you to reflect, to see how you will guess.’ La Haye, Oeuvres, 14r. 86 Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire premier, ed. Silvio F. Baridon (Geneva: Droz, 1950), 5. 87 On ‘secretary’ as a synonym for ‘confidant’ see George Hoffmann, Montaigne’s Career (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 47.

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Notes to pages 160–4

88 Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and Peter Stallybrass, ‘Introduction,’ in Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, ed. Grazia, Quilligan, and Stallybrass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 5. Epilogue 1 Frederick Crane, Extant Medieval Instruments: A Provisional Catalogue by Types (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1972). 2 David Munrow, Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 5. 3 On ways in which Renaissance lutes have been reworked see Robert Lundberg, Historical Lute Construction (Tacoma, WA: Guild of American Luthiers, 2002). 4 For a comprehensive history and inventory of the French national collection of musical instruments, see Florence Gétreau, Aux origines du musée de la Musique: les collections instrumentales du Conservatoire de Paris, 1793–1993 (Paris: Klincksieck, 1996). 5 In what follows, I draw on my own prior studies of the Paris Musée de la Musique: ‘Le silence de la Renaissance au musée de la Musique,’ in La Renaissance, hier et aujourd’hui, ed. Guy Poirier (Quebec and Paris: Les Presses de l’Université Laval and L’Harmattan, 2002), 165–83; and ‘Musical Instruments, Glass Cases, and Headsets: Sound and Sensation in France’s Museum of Music,’ in Music, Sensation, and Sensuality, ed. Austern, 245–63. 6 Alain Lompech, ‘Les instruments prisonniers du Musée de la musique,’ Le Monde, 19–20 January 1997, 21. 7 Michael M. Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992), 3. 8 Bruce W. Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 346. 9 See Jean de Léry, Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil (1578); 2e édition, 1580, ed. Frank Lestringant (1994; Paris: Livre de poche, 1999), 344; and Jean-Pierre Moreau, ed., Un flibustier français dans la mer des Antilles (1990; Paris: Payot et Rivages, 2002), 225. 10 Margaret Birley, Heidrun Eichler, and Arnold Myers, with the CIMCIM Working Group for Education and Exhibitions (co-ordinator Jos Gansemans), ‘Voices for the Silenced: Guidelines for Interpreting Musical Instruments in Museum Collections,’ http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/ cimcim/iwte.html#Introduction.

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Index

Abate, Nicolò dell’: Apollo and the Muses, 79 ‘À ce matin,’ 63 Achilles, 53 Achilles Tatius, 129 Actaeon, 115–17, 151–2 Adorno, Theodor, 201n81 Agret, Guiraud, 100; ‘Ainsi qu’un Luc,’ fig. 3.3; ‘Bien peut danser,’ fig. 3.15; ‘C’est bien en vain,’ fig. 3.6 Ahmed, Ehsan, 43, 180n60, 185n125 Alain de Lille. See Alanus Alanus de Insulis, 95, 124 Alberti, Cherubino, 64 Alciato, Andrea, 108, 109, 113, 118, 120, 125, 196n27; Emblematum libellus, 102; ‘Foedera,’ 103–6, 112; ‘On harbourers of murderers,’ 117; ‘Mutuum auxilium,’ 30, fig. 1.4 Alcibiades, 58, 65–8 ‘Allegez-moy,’ 139, 206n29 al ‘ûd, 33, 178n33 Ames, Michael, 163–4 Amphion, 26, 95–7 Anacreontea, The, 184n105 Andrea, Giovanni d’, 20, figs. I.9–10 Aneau, Barthélemy, 103–4, 109, 120,

127, 128, 194n8; ‘Conversion des amours a l’estude des lettres,’ 129; ‘Futilité, paillardise, et avarice des putains,’ 129; Imagination poetique, 85, 96–7, 121, 125; ‘La Musicque,’ 113; Picta poesis, 201n89; ‘Quand l’Oyseleur veult prendre l’oyselet,’ 123; Quintil Horatian, 74–7 Anne Boleyn (queen of England), 112 Apollo (also Phebus), 25, 39–40, 48, 49, 70, 78–9, 84, 86, 182n95. See also Marsyas, contest with Apollo; Pan, contest with Apollo Apuleius: The Golden Ass, 85 Arachne, 81–2 Arcadelt, Jacques, 154; ‘Il bianco e dolce cigno,’ 209n60 Argus. See Mercury Aristophanes, 108 Aristotle, 90, 115 ass, tuning a lyre, 197n32 Attaingnant, Pierre, 11, 12, 14, 44, 54, 185n4, 187n21 Aubigné, Agrippa d’, 4, 9, 199n62; Les Tragiques: ‘La Chambre dorée,’ 201n86; — ‘Les Fers,’ 200n73; — ‘Les Misères,’ 183n103

232 Index aulos, 58, 60, 90, 121, 186n8. See also reed pipe Austern, Linda, 194n6

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: ‘A Musical Instrument,’ 203n106 Burwell Lute Tutor, The, 132, 133

Babinot, Albert: Christiade, 88 Bacchus, 65, 68, 84, 87, 188n33 bagpipe (also cornemuse, musette), 57– 8, 60–1, 63, 74–5, 81, 85, 88, 93 Baïf, Jean-Antoine de: Amours de Francine, sonnet XLVI, 182n82; ‘À la Lyre,’ 204–5n12 Baker, Deborah Lesko, 150 Balavoine, Claudie, 198n45 Baldung Grien, Hans: Ages of Womankind, 139 Ballard, Robert, 12 Barkan, Leonard, 188n27 Bélis, Annie, 60 bell, 113 Belleau, Rémy, 88–9; ‘L’Huitre,’ 4 Belot, Jean Dutreuilh de, 20, 65–70 Bembo, Pietro, 204n10 Besard, Jean-Baptiste: De Modo in testudine libellus, 132 Bèze, Théodore de, 84 Billington, Sandra, 197n35 Bjurström, Per, 171n28 blasons, 3, 138, 154, 158 Boethius, 8 Bonhomme, Macé, 196n23 Bonsignori, Giovanni: Ovidio metamorphoseos vulgare, 60, 66, 78 Boyvin, René, 193n94 Brant, Sebastian: Ship of Fools, The, 57 Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille de, 23 Bronzino, Agnolo: Young Man with a Lute, 153, fig. 4.6 Brooks, Jeanice, 179n40, 184n111 Brotton, Jerry, 112 Brown, Howard, 13, 55, 184n119

cabinets of curiosities, 23, 47, 162 Calliope, 80 Calogero, Elena, 195n16 Campo, Roberto, 48, 186n14 Caracci, Ludovico, 187n16 Caraglio, Giovanni Jacopo: Challenge of the Pierides, 79–81, fig. 2.7 Caravaggio: Lute Player, The, 154; Musicians, The, 154, fig. 4.7 Carle, Lancelot de (bishop of Riez), 50 Carroll, Eugene, 188–9n41 Castiglione, Baldessare: Il libro del cortegiano, 26, 51, 58, 82, 87 Catherine de’ Medici (queen of France), 183n98 Catholics, 70, 87, 117, 199n62 Cavalier, Jehan, 177n18 Cave, Terence, 68, 182n81 Ceres, 80 Charlemagne, 74 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor), 46, 74, 112 Charles IX (king of France), 53–4, 65, 159, 200n73; as patron of music, 32 Charles d’Orléans (prince of France), 45; as patron of music, 46 Chastillon, cardinal de. See Coligny cicada, 113, 198n59 Cicero (also Ciceron), 96, 100, 120; De Oratore, 102; On the Republic, 195n12 cittern (also citre, cistre), 4, 12, 15, 16, figs. I.3–4, 25, 26, 32, 33, 139, 170n7, 174n54; monetary value of, 14. See also harp-cittern, lyra-cittern clarinet, 163

Index 233 clavichord, 3, 12, 169n2; monetary value of, 14 Cleon, 108 Clermont, Claude-Catherine de (countess of Retz), 14 Clermont, Hélène de (Mademoiselle de Traves, Madame de Grantmont), 45 Clouet, François, 23 Clouet, Jean, 23, 82 Coligny, Odet de (cardinal of Châtillon), 52 cornetto, 9, 13, 25, 77, 163, 166, 171– 2n29; double, 80; monetary value of, 14 Cornilliat, François, 184n113 Corrozet, Gilles: ‘Blason de l’estude,’ 3 Cossa, Francesco del: April, 139 Cottrell, Robert, 152 Cousin, Jean (le fils), 202n99 Coustau, Pierre, 102, 113, 194n8; ‘La muse Dorique,’ 105–8; Pegme, 96, 100; Petri Costalii pegma, 194–5n11; ‘Sur Amphion,’ 96–7, fig. 3.1; ‘Sur Aspendius joueur d’instrumens,’ 197n41; ‘Sur la harpe d’Orpheus,’ 97, fig. 3.2 Craig-McFeely, Julia, 206n30, 207nn33–4, 41, 209n62 Cupid, 154 Dante: Inferno, 204n8 David, 24, 43 Defaux, Gérard, 137 Delafont, 187n21 Delaune, Étienne, 115; ‘Minerva, Wisdom, and the Principal Sciences,’ 26; Music, 9, fig. I.2, 11; Physics, 26, fig. 1.1 DellaNeva, JoAnn, 210n68

Desan, Philippe, 180n59 Deschamps, Eustache, 124 Des Roches, Catherine, 138; ‘Chanson de la Musique,’ 4 Diana, 115, 117, 151–2; and judgment of the flute, 129 dictionaries, French-language, 169n1 diminutions (fredons), 175n2 Dinteville, Jean de, 109, 112 Dionysus, 84 discord, religious, 83–9 Dobbins, Frank, 14, 176n15 Dorat, Jean, 120 doucine (dulcian), 25 drum, 199n62 Du Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste, 190n60 Du Bellay, Joachim, 22, 32, 36, 41, 44, 56, 140; Aultres oeuvres poetiques, 77; ‘Contre les envieux poëtes,’ 77–8; Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, 37, 39, 42, 72–7, 83; Divers jeux rustiques, 81; ‘Hymne de la Surdité,’ 81–3, 84, 89; involvement with music making, 55, 83; Regrets, sonnet CLXXXIII, 197n32 Dubrow, Heather, 211n84 Du Chemin, Nicolas, 12, 185n4 Du Guillet, Pernette, 76, 152; Rymes, 151 Duiffoproucart, Gaspard, 13 dulcian. See doucine Dürer, Albrecht: ‘Portillon’ woodcut, 102, fig. 3.5, 111; Underveysung der Messung, fig. 3.5 Duval, Edwin, 180n56, 185n121, 190n57 Du Verdier, Claude, 175n2; ‘Le Luth,’ 24, 26, 33, 139

234 Index Elizabeth I (queen of England), 129 emblem books, 4–5, 15, 22, 94–5; as pegmes, 100, 196n22; Protestant, 113 emblems: auditory dimension of, 94– 5, 117, 130, 193–4n2; definition of, 94, 97, 193n1; English and Dutch, 193–4n2; as form of governance, 96; and Huguenots, 199n63; as oratory, 95– 102 Engh, Barbara, 201n81 Ensemble Clément Janequin, 183n100, 185nn122, 4, 187n21 Ensemble Doulce Mémoire, 170n7, 171–2n29, 172n31, 173n39 Erasmus, Desiderius, 194–5n11; Adages, 68, 105, 108, 186n9; Praise of Folly, The, 65–6 Eskrich, Pierre, 96, 97, 117, 118, 194n10, 196n27, 198n59; ‘La muse Dorique,’ fig. 3.7; ‘Les Sirenes,’ fig. 3.12; ‘Sur Amphion,’ fig. 3.1; ‘Sur la harpe d’Orpheus,’ fig. 3.2 Este, Isabella d’ (marchesa of Mantua), 8 Este, Leonello d’, 8 Este, Niccolò III d’, 8 Estienne, Henri, 51 Estienne, Robert, 14 Estoile, Pierre de l’, 207n38 Eunomus, 113 Europa, 136 Eurydice, 48, 97, 135 facilité, contrasted with gravité, 81–3 Fantuzzi, Antonio, 61–6, 187nn18, 19, 191n66; Apollo Overseeing the Flaying of Marsyas, fig. 2.4; Contest between Apollo and Marsyas, fig. 2.3, 90

Ferdinand of Tyrol (duke), 16, figs. I.3–4 Ferrabosco brothers, 25 fiddle (also vièle à archet), 30, 75, 76, 81, 191n69. See also rebec fife, 13 Fischlin, Daniel, 135, 146, 208n55 flute (also flageol, flaiollet, fleuste, fluste), 24, 25, 63–4, 65, 77, 85, 111, 112, 118, 130, 140, 163, 164, 165, 199n62; bone, 162; and female body, 124–9; fipple, 13, 189–90n51; and flattery, 121–4; German, 23; ivory, 15; shepherd’s, 13, 20; as symbol of neoclassical verse, 74–6; as symbol of pastoral verse, 3; as symbol of vernacular verse, 70–4; for tuning, 13; transverse, 9 Fontainebleau School, 22, 61, 90; Galerie François I, 175n72; Galerie d’Ulysse, 118, 200n76; Salle de Bal, 78; Salle Haute, 70 Forcade, Jehan, 25 Fortune, 125 François I (king of France), 15, 23, 39, 45, 46, 70, 74, 82, 112, 137; as patron of music, 35–6, 44 François II (king of France), 30; as patron of music, 75 Francus, 50, 51, 52, 53 Freedman, Richard, 14, 54 Gadoffre, Gilbert, 38, 39 Ganymede, 48–9 Garnier, Antoine, 79 Gentileschi, Artemisia, 146; Saint Cecilia, fig. 4.4 Gentileschi, Orazio, 143, 145, 146; Lute Player, The, fig. 4.3 Ghisi, Giorgio: Apollo and the Muses,

Index 235 79, fig. 2.6, 81; Apollo, Pan, and a Putto Blowing a Horn, 90, fig. 2.9 goat, voice of, 187n22 Gohory, Jacques, 204n10 Gorlier, Simon, 33–5 Graces, the, 139 Grantmont (Madame de). See Clermont, Hélène de Grazia, Margreta de, et al., 212n88 Greenblatt, Stephen, 198nn49–51 Guise, the family, 117 guitar (also guiterre, guiterne), 15, 22– 36, 85, 140, 160, 166, 174n54; as diminutive of lute, 47; four-course, 33, fig. 1.6; as material object, 45, 46; repertory for, 12, 49; Spanish, 45, 47, 166; as symbol of French Horatian voice, 44–50 harp (also harpe), 9, 24, 26, 32, 33, 57, 96, 97, 102, 113, 124, 199n62; as body, 102, 210n70; Irish, 198n47; Thracian, 134–5 harp-cittern, 26, fig. 1.3 Harp Consort, The, 175n1 Heartz, Daniel, 143 Hector, 49–50 Henestrosa, Luis Venegas de, 175n1 Henri II (king of France), 39, 40, 52– 3, 117; as patron of music, 32, 35, 44 Henri III (king of France), 63, 159 Henry, Elisabeth, 40 Henry VIII (king of England), 112 Himmelsbach, Siegbert, 184nn112, 114 Holbein, Hans (the Younger), 112, 166; Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, 109, figs. 3.8–9 Holsinger, Bruce, 164

Holy Roman Emperor. See Charles V Homer, 40, 108; Iliad, 66; Odyssey, 118 Horace, 37, 41, 43, 44, 49, 54; Ars poetica, 95 horn, 77, 90; goat’s, 81 Hoskins, Janet, 171nn18–19, 185n124 Huguenots, 4, 22, 84, 88, 117, 124, 199n62, 202n91. See also Protestants hurdy-gurdy (vielle à roue), 30, 124, 165 Hyginus, 33 Io, 127, 128 Jambe de Fer, Philibert, 30, 32 Jamyn, Amadis, 131 Jardine, Lisa, 112 Jeanne d’Albret (queen of Navarre), 5 Jeffery, Brian, 5 Jodelle, Étienne, Cléopâtre captive, 84 Jollat, Mercure, 30, fig. 1.4, 102, 113, 176–7n16; ‘Foedera,’ fig. 3.4; ‘La Musicque,’ fig. 3.10 Jones, Sterling Scott, 175nn68, 71 Juno, 58, 60, 66, 121, 127, 128 Jupiter, 43, 44, 48, 123, 127, 128, 136 King’s Noyse, The, 177n20 Kruth, Patricia, and Henry Stobart, 198n53 Labé, Louise, 133, 145, 151; Débat de Folie et d’Amour, 25; Euvres, 5, 132: — sonnet XII, 149; — sonnet XIV, 150; portrait of, 5, 170n10 La Haye, Maclou de, ‘Enigme,’ 152–3, 154, 158, 159, 160 Langer, Ullrich, 121, 191n73, 192n84, 194nn3–5, 201n88 La Perrière, Guillaume de, 113, 115,

236 Index 194n8; ‘Ainsi qu’un Luc,’ 100–2; ‘Bien peut danser,’ 125; ‘C’est bien en vain,’ 105; Morosophie, 100, 105, 125; ‘Quand l’oyseleur veut beaucoup d’oyseaulx prendre,’ 121; Thëatre des bons engins, 121 La Porte, Maurice de, 32, 47 La puce de Madame Des-Roches, 138 Lasso, Orlando de, 183n100 La Tayssonnière, Guillaume de: Amoureuses ocupations, 138 L’Aubespine, Madeleine de, 159 Lawrence-King, Andrew, 172nn30–1 Le Boulanger, Jehan, 183n98 Lefèvre de La Boderie, Guy: La Galliade, 178n34 Leoninus, 206n24 Le Roy, Adrian, 12, 14, 178n29; and Ballard, 185n4 Léry, Jean de, Histoire d’un voyage, 212n9 Lesure, François, 13 Liberal Arts, the, 129, 145 lira da braccio, 9, 20, figs. I.9–10, 25, 26, 60–1, 63, 79, 171n23, 187n19; silver, 15–16 lirone, 176n7 Lompech, Alain, 163 Lorraine, Charles (cardinal of), 25 Louis XII (king of France), 143 Lowinsky, Edward, 171n25 Lucretia, 16 lute (also leut, leuth, luc, lut, luth), 3, 5, 7, 15, 22–9, 35, 50–60, 85, 87, 125, 130, 131–61, 162, 163, 164, 169n2, 199n62; as adornment, 132; anatomy of, 133; as body, 102, 132– 3, 204n8; with broken string, 108– 13, 166; as emissary, 133–9; evolution of, 9, 33; and folly, 105;

ivory, 4, 166; as material object, 38; methods for, 14, 29–30, 174n54; monetary value of, 14; performance practices on, 204n7; playing of, as introspective, 146–52; and political corruption, 113; prestige of, 32–3, 44; repertory for, 12, 13, 36; and republic, 96; as secretary, 133, 161; and ship of state, 102–8; six-course, 33, fig. 1.5; and social status, 15; as symbol of gentle speech, 100–2; as symbol of vernacular poetic voice, 36–40, 43–4; tablature for, 11, 12; and voluptuousness, 139–46; and writing practices, 3–5, 154 lute-poems, 23, 133, 135, 149, 151, 152, 159, 160, 161, 166. See also riddle-poems lyra-cittern, 26, fig. 1.2 lyre (also lire), 8, 11, 20–39, 54, 58, 60, 61, 72–80, 84, 88, 90, 96, 105, 121, 160, 166, 176n7, 199n62; crosiered, 53; invention of, 164; as material object, 41, 42; round, 210n70; as symbol of French Renaissance verse, 40–4; topos of the rebellious, 51–2, 149; as vessel, 64–70 Machaut, Guillaume de: ‘Dit de la harpe,’ 210n70 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 100, 125 Magny, Olivier de, 139; Odes amoureuses, 138 Maille, 185n4 mandora, 33, 174n54 Marchant, Pierre, 14–15 Marcus Aurelius, 124 Marle, Nicolas de, 185n4 Marot, Clément, 38, 76, 88, 139, 145, 154; ‘D’Anne,’ 131; ‘Jouissance vous

Index 237 donneray,’ 208n45; Psaumes, 42–3, 56 Marsyas, 165; contest with Apollo, 22, 58, 60–74, 77–93; the hanging, 190n60. See also Pan, contrasted with Marsyas Martha, 143 Mary Magdalen, 140, 143 Master ‘ia,’ 60, fig. 2.2, 66 Master of the Female Half-Lengths, 9; Saint Mary Magdalen (?) Playing the Lute or The Lute Player, 140 McGee, Timothy, 171n26 McGowan, Margaret, 47 McKinnon, James, and Robert Anderson, 186n10 Meier, Melchio, 192n78 Mercury, 33, 96, 164; as ambassador of the gods, 123; and Argus, 121, 127–8; as inventor of the lyre, 40 Mersenne, Marin, 32–3 Midas, 84–6, 88–9 Mignon, Jean, 115 Milan, Duke of. See Sforza Minerva, 58–63, 66, 72, 79, 81–2 minstrels (also minstrelsy), 16, 30, 32; itinerancy of, 4, 165; and literacy, 12; social status of, 9, 35; as symbols of poets, 74–6. See also music making, professional Mirimonde, Albert, 208n50 Moderne, Jacques, 12, 13 modes, the musical, 108 Molinet, Jean, 139 Monde, Le (Paris), 163 Monnier, Jean, 196n23 Montaigne, Michel de, 194–5n11; ‘Apologie de Raimond Sebond,’ 120; ‘De la gloire,’ 120 Montenay, Georgette de, 166, 199n63;

‘Cane,’ 114–17: — English and German translations of, 200n74; Emblemes, 4, 113; portrait of, 4–5, fig. I.1 Morlaye, Guillaume de, 36 Muret, Marc-Antoine de, 55 Murphy, Stephen, 69 muse: Dorian, 108; French, 37; Horace’s, 39; Latin, 103 Muses, the, 9, 11, 39, 78, 145; contest with Pierides, 22, 79–82 museums (also museology, museological), 22, 23, 42, 162, 166, 167; interpretive methods in, 164–5; Kunsthistorisches Museum, 26, 174n66; Musée Instrumental, 163; Musée de la Musique, 163 music: and ages of man, 207n32; and ages of womankind, 139; and education, 5, 8, 14, 53; and months of year, 207n31 musical instruments: anthropomorphization of, 7, 16, 20, 133, 152; as artifacts, 167; broken, 41– 2, 45, 166; collecting of, 15; conservation and restoration of, 42, 52, 163; consorts of, 9, 11; decorated, 15–20, 45, 48, 68, 130; and human and animal remains, 16, 164; hybrid, 26, figs. 1.2–3, 176n10; making of, 13–16, 33, 173n50; marketing of, 13; as material objects, 3, 7, 8, 20, 23, 29, 56, 166, 167; mechanical, 15, 30; monetary value of, 14, 173n49; museological narratives about, 164–6; as objets d’art, 130, 165; ‘perfect,’ 32; and social status, 3, 8, 15, 29–36, 165; for the stage, 16, 174–5n67; treatises on, 15, 29–35, 140

238 Index Musica nova, 13 Musicque de joye, 13 music making with instruments: amateur, 4, 8–9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 26, 30, 32, 33, 49; professional, 8, 14, 24, 75–6; women’s, 4–5, 8, 9, 14, 49, 125, 131–2, 138–46, 149–52, 154– 60. See also minstrels music printing, 11–13, 54–5, 170n14, 172n32, 202n91 Napoléon III, 162 Neptune, 180n61 Neufville, Nicolas de (seigneur de Villeroy), 159 North, Marcy, 158 O’Dette, Paul, 179n45 Odysseus, 118, 120, 130, 131, 201n81 organ, 79: anthologies for, 12; hydraulic, 15; portative, 15. See also regal Orpheus, 20, 49, 96, 135, 182n95; as civilizer, 48, 95, 97, 195n17 Ovid: Amores, 184n105, 206n24; Metamorphoses, 48, 65, 77–8, 80, 85, 125, 127: — woodcuts for, 202n98 Ovide moralisé, 129; Ovidian moralizing tradition, 73, 78, 85 Owens, Jessie, 172n33 Page, Christopher, 198n53 Pallas, 180n61 Palmer, Thomas, 195–6n21 Pan, 128; contest with Apollo, 22, 63, 85, 89, 90; contrasted with Marsyas, 84–5, 90; and Syrinx, 125, 127, 129 pandora, 33 panpipes, 60, 61, 64. See also Syrinx Papillon de Lasphrise, Marc, 63–4

Parmigianino, 61–6, 187nn18–19; Apollo Overseeing the Flaying of Marsyas, fig. 2.4; Contest between Apollo and Marsyas, fig. 2.3, 90 Paulle, Jean, 35 Peletier du Mans, Jacques, 30, 140 Penni, Luca, 117; Apollo and the Muses, fig. 2.6, 79 Perrier, Simone, 170n10 Perrin, Jean, 196n23 Petrarch, 140, 151 Phalèse, Pierre, 178n30 piano, 163 Pierides. See Muses, contest with Pierides Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, 186n6 Pindar, 37–44 Plato, 60, 90; Symposium, 65 Pliny, 115 Plutarch, Alcibiades, 58 pochette, 16, figs. I.7–8 ‘Poesies diverses,’ 154 Poirer, Guy, 64 Pomian, Krzysztof, 174n63 portraiture, 4–5, 9, 13, 20, 23, 135, 143, 145, 146, 166 Pouchard, Line, 203n4, 208n56, 209n61 Praetorius, Michael, 30, 33, 49 Primaticcio, Francesco: Apollo, Pan, and a Putto Blowing a Horn, 90, fig. 2.9 Prizer, William, 171n22 Prodigal Son, 117, 200n70 Prodigal Son at the Whores’, The, 140, fig. 4.1 Propertius, Elegies, 184n105 Protestants, 30, 70, 83, 87, 88, 89, 113. See also Huguenots prudence, 104; paired with Odysseus,

Index 239 118; and sense of hearing, 94–5, 115 pseudo-Plutarch, De musica, 60 Rabelais, François, 140; and bagpipe, 185n1; Gargantua, 66; Tiers livre, 57 Rasse des Neux, François, 15 rattle, 162 rebec, 30, 32, 57, 76 recorder, 60, 61, 189–90n51 reed pipe, 13, 58, 61, 72. See also aulos regal, 16, figs. I.5–6, 174n65 Retz, Countess of. See Clermont, Claude-Catherine de riddle-poems, 187n23; Anglo-Saxon, 210n70; and anonymity, 152, 210n72; anthropomorphic, 152; erotic double-entendre, 152; on music, 152–61 Rigolot, François, 170n7 Rippe, Albert de, 26, 35–6 Rivaudeau, André de, ‘Epistre à Rémy Belleau,’ 88–9 Romano, Guilio, 66 Ronsard, Pierre de, 5, 8, 22, 30, 32, 39, 56, 72, 75, 77, 78, 131, 139, 140, 154, 165, 166; Abbregé de l’art poëtique françois, 4, 55, 169n6, 192n86; ‘À Jouachim du Bellai Angevin,’ 182n80; ‘À Monsieur de Belot,’ 20, 65–70, 83, 180n61; Amours (1552), 47, 50, 54–5, 84: — sonnet XXXVI, 182n95; Amours (1553), 55; ‘À Pierre l’Escot,’ 180n51; ‘À sa Guiterre’ (also ode to the guitar), 26, 44–50, 204–5n12; ‘À sa Lire’ (also ode to the lyre), 26, 41–4; ‘À sa Lyre,’ 29, 51–3; ‘À son Luc’ (also ode to the lute), 26, 29, 36–9, 41, 44, 47, 51; Bocage (1550), 29, 41;

Bocage (1554), 50; ‘Chant pastoral sur les nopces de Monseigneur Charles duc de Lorraine,’ 26; ‘Chant triomphal pour jouer sur la Lyre,’ 25; ‘Dithyrambes à la pompe du bouc de Jodelle,’ 84; Du Bellay’s praise for, 81–3; ‘Elegie à Cassandre,’ 26–9, 50–1, 53; ‘Epitafe d’Albert, joüeur de Luc du Roi,’ 25–6, 36; Franciade, 40, 50, 53–4; ‘Hymne de Charles Cardinal de Lorraine,’ 175n3; ‘Hymne de l’Éternité,’ 82; ‘Hymne de France,’ 39–41, 51; ‘Hymne de la Justice,’ 82; ‘Hymne de l’Or,’ 82; involvement with music making, 25, 36, 54–5, 83, 175n4; ‘La Lyre,’ 69; Livret de Folastries, 84, 86; Meslanges, 29, 51; Nouvelle continuation des amours, 38; ‘Ode à Michel de l’Hospital,’ 180n61; ‘Prière à la fortune,’ 51; Protestant criticism of, 83–4, 86–7; Quatre premiers livres des Odes (also Odes), 26, 29, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 54; ‘Responce aux injures et calomnies,’ 83–7, 192n77; Rivaudeau’s praise for, 88–9; ‘Stances à chanter sur la Lyre,’ 25; ‘Stances prontement faites pour jouer sur la Lyre,’ 25 Rosso Fiorentino, 191n66, 193n94; Apollo Holding a Lyre, 70, fig. 2.5; Challenge of the Pierides, fig. 2.7, 80, 191n67 Roville, Guillaume, 109, 113, 120 Saint Cecilia, 145–6 Saint-Gelais, Mellin de, 36–9, 44, 54, 76, 82, 136, 137, 166; ‘Sur la guiterre de Madame de Grant-

240 Index mont,’ 45; ‘Sur une guiterne espaignole,’ 45–7; ‘Sur un luth,’ 133–5; ‘Sur un petit luth,’ 7–8 Salomon, Bernard, 117, 194n10, 196n27 Salviati, Francesco de’ Rossi, 191n66 Sannazaro. See Sennazar Sanseverino, Ferrante (prince of Salerno), 45 Saslow, James, 183n98 saxophone, 163 Scève, Maurice, 151; Délie: dizain CCCXLIV, 136–7; — dizain CCCXLV, 136, 137 Scottowe, John: ‘Alphabet of ornamental capitals,’ 58, fig. 2.1 Sébillet, Thomas: ‘Art poétique françois,’ 37–8, 42 Selve, Georges de (bishop of Lavaur), 109, 112 Sennazar, 74 Sermisy, Claudin de, 76; ‘Jouissance vous donneray,’ 208n45 Sforza, Francesco (duke of Milan), 102, 103 ‘Si j’ayme mon amy’ (‘Se y’aime bien m’amie’), 143, 208n46 Silver, Isidore, 40 Sirens, 118–20, 125, 131 Slim, Colin, 171n24 Smith, Bruce, 7, 58, 70, 124 Smith, Hopkinson, 172n37 Socrates, 65–8 source, Virgilian topos of the, 77–81 Spalter, Hubert, 35–6 Speroni, Sperone, Dialogo delle lingue, 72–3 spinet (also espinete, espinette), 9–16, 24–5, 33, 131, 139, 160, 203n2 stag, symbol of the, 114–15, 117, 151

stringed instruments, hierarchy of, 29–36 Strohm, Reinhard, 8 subject, poetic: anonymity of, 152, 154, 158–9; gendering of, 208n57 Süleyman I (sultan), 112 Susanna, 154 syrinx, 60, 85, 90, 127, 128; and birds, 202n100; and social status, 129. See also panpipes Syrinx (Arcadian nymph). See Pan, and Syrinx Tabourot, Étienne: Bigarrures, 75, 207n38 tambourine, 61, 63, 64, 81 temptations, figured as musical, 117– 24 Terpander, 33, 41 Thëocrit, 74 Theocritus. See Thëocrit theorba, 33 Thiry, Léonard, Apollo and Marsyas, 90, fig. 2.10, 193n94 Tieffenbrucker, Gaspard. See Duiffoproucart Tieffenbrucker, Wendelin: fig. 1.3 Tiffany, Daniel, 210n73 Timotheus of Miletus, 60 Titian, 66 Tmolus, 85 Traves. See Clermont, Hélène de Trichet, Pierre, 15, 35, 129 trumpet, 5, 22, 24, 124, 165, 166, 199n62; of Alpine wood, 15; Roman, 80; as symbol of epic verse, 3, 50–4; as symbol of political corruption, 113–17 Tyard, Pontus de, 8, 139; ‘Chant à son Luth,’ 135; Erreurs amoureuses, 135:

Index 241 — sonnet XXIII, 137–8; — sonnet XXIV, 137–8; Solitaire premier, 160; Solitaire second, 75 Un flibustier français, 212n9 ‘Une bergere un jour,’ 57 Vaccaro, Jean-Michel, 13 Valgulio, Carl, 186n13 van Baburen, The Procuress, 146, fig. 4.5 van Honthorst, Gerritt: Smiling Girl, A Courtesan, Holding an Obscene Image, 146; Supper Party, 154, fig. 4.8 van Orden, Kate, 11, 169n3, 172nn35– 6, 173n40, 178n32, 190n58 Vasari, Giorgio, 15–16 Vauquelin de La Fresnaye, Jean, 209n62 Veneto, Bartholomeo, 143 Venus, 58, 60, 203n2 Vicentino, Nicolò, 105 Vigier, Gilbert, 75 Vinci, Leonardo da, 15–16, 204n10 viol (also viole, violle), 9–15, 24, 25, 26,

80, 132, 164, 170n8, 176n7, 177nn20, 22, 199n62; and social status, 4, 29–33, 75–6 violin (also violon), 13, 16, 24–5, 57, 177nn20, 22, 187n19, 199n62; monetary value of, 14; and social status, 4, 29–33 Virchis, Girolamo de, 16, figs I.3–4 Virgil (also Virgile), 40, 74, 78, 183n96 Virgilio, Giovanni del, 78 Vivonne, Héliette de, 211n83 VV signature, ‘Enigme,’ 154–9 whistle, 13, 121, 162, 165 Winternitz, Emanuel, 16 Woeiriot, Pierre, 4–5, fig. I.1, 13; ‘Cane,’ 115, fig. 3.11 Wyss, Edith, 66, 187n18 Yandell, Cathy, 206nn25, 26 Zarlino, Gioseffo: Istitutioni harmoniche, 104–5 Zerner, Henri, 175n73