Monday, January 30, 2006
(11:45 PM) | Dave Belcher:
Bach, the "Greatest Christian Theologian"?
Well, I fly out tomorrow morning for Nashville because I have two auditions in the area--the first on Wednesday and the second on Thursday (at separate schools). At both schools I have to play at least one piece from a lute suite by Bach (the Thursday audition actually requires two). So I've chosen the 3rd Lute Suite (transcribed from the 5th Cello Suite, as I've discussed previously...I'm too lazy for links right now); and as I studied the piece more closely, and Baroque composition in general, I came across this interesting note by guitarist Stanley Yates (who I actually have to audition for on Wednesday):"Modeled upon Greco-Roman principles of oratory and rhetoric, the Baroque compositional process consists of the expressive surface elaboration of an underlying structure. Comprising the invention of an idea (the inventio), the realization of its basic form and contrapuntal framework (the dispositio), the elaboration of this contrapuntal skeleton with rhetorical figuration (the decoratio), and the final presentation of the completed composition in performance (the pronunciato), the rhetorical musical process lies at the heart of an understanding of the Baroque style. The birth of the expressive rhetorical style, the seconda prattica, is rooted in monody--an expressive solo voice, simply accompanied. The influence of the prima prattica, the elaborate multi-voice polyphony of the Renaissance, did persist however, and a confluence of the two practices led to an entirely new style of vocal writing. The essence of this new style lies in the dual function of the melodic leap, which now not only acts as a rhetorical expressive gesture, but also allows for a single vocal part to be constructed so as to give the impression of the entrance of a 'second' voice in dialog with the 'first.' Adopted by Italian string players, the style led to an instrumental idiom--the sonate a due (the 'solo sonata'). This idiom found its highest expression some eighty years later in the unaccompanied string music of J.S. Bach; the single line now implying not only the dialog texture of the Italian sonate a due, but the supporting continuo part as well."
This is all very interesting...Aquinas says in the Summa that instruments should not be used within church worship, not even as accompaniment; his point was similar to Augustine's (which is all based on Aristotle's conception in Politics): certain forms of music move us and have their way with us, but lead us to "pleasure" (the sort of negative "passions"), not virtue. What's interesting is that Baroque music is rhetorical in nature--it is intended to "move" the "Affekt" of the listener...but whereas 19th century Romantic music was intended to do this "spontaneously," Baroque music aimed at a "rational" emotional response (and thus grows out of a rational intent...apply Aquinas' notion of the intellect to said process... you get my drift I think). In my mind, had Aquinas lived until the Baroque period--and had he been familiar with Baroque compositional and performance practices--then I think he would admit that this type of instrumental music could indeed be used for worship within the Church, since it is solely for the "edification" of the believer, and the praise of the Lord (the intention here is less to argue for the--utilitarian but still useless--use of instruments in orthodox worship settings than it is about the nature of Baroque music).
This post was a bunch of horse shit...I mainly wanted to (a) inform you of my venture to Nashville and my auditions (hoping for a little bit of prayer I suppose!); and (b) try out some thoughts that are forming a paper in my head...also, this post was pretty much verbatim from an email I sent my friend Josh. Sorry if you read it twice for no reason Josh.
Oh, and by the way...the title of the post...it's taken from David Bentley Hart's book The Beauty of the Infinite. For those of you who have read it, he is making an argument which completely excises the importane of rhetoric as it functions in Baroque music...if I could understand what the hell he was saying, I would probably say that this is due to his fundamental misunderstanding of "the aesthetic" in general. Peace.
