1 - Constructions of Musical Meaning

Summary

Part of the purpose of this study is to show how far some individuals could depart from the attitudes to music most usually associated with the age. Some idea of the scope of more conventional responses needs to be formed so that we can begin to assess how far our protagonists were at odds with them. In the years between 1650 and 1750, as no doubt at any time in identifiable history, music – conceived as a human, natural or divine category – commanded a spectrum of meanings. We are often told that music of earlier times was more strictly functional than its present-day counterpart, fulfilling a number of relatively clearly defined sacred and secular roles, from religious worship to dance accompaniment to sounding the hours. At the same time, we might also see it as having been more ephemeral, more ‘in the moment’, than music in our own culture, with its recordings, established repertoires and (for some kinds of music) closely studied published scores. In any case, the individual contexts to be explored in the present study, while by no means negating this broad picture, do tend to undermine its universality. My goal here is not to construct a systematic general survey of this area of cultural life (which would of course require a vast amount of space), but more succinctly to come to some understanding of the ways in which our individuals reflected judgments and values typical of their time, and the extent to which they departed from them.

Debate on Music's Value

Certainly, music's broader ontology was a matter of some debate in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Should its divine status and origins (the music of the angels, music in the mind of God) be stressed, or should greater emphasis be laid on its abuse by the devil in tempting fallen humanity? Was it a valid medium for rendering the souls of worshippers receptive to divine influence, or a dangerous (or, at least, superfluous) diversion from the proper attention owed to the divine word? Did music, indeed, really emanate from God, or was it to be understood, in the forms through which we experience it, as a merely human construct? Even today the question of what music ‘is’ remains a vexed one, as philosophers and critics continue to speculate about the nature of its existence beyond the physically perceived sound of any particular song or piece.