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8/20/2019 Tópicos en Donizetti
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RODNEY STENNING EDGECOMBE
Topoi and melodic morphology in the operas
of Donizetti
F
OR AS LONG
S
the re has been literature in the world, there have also
been gen res, the institutions by which writers separate and formalise
the many expressive purposes they have in hand. And for as long as
there have been genres, there have been topoi. These components, half
structural and half-thematic, m ediate the materials that the different genres
have evolved to embody. Sometimes topoi are all but co-extensive with the
forms that house them, as when, say, the Anacreontic ode fuses its identity
with the
carpe diem
topos it vect ors (as, incidentally, it does in Or sin i s
ballata from Lucreiia Borgia (1833)). But, more often than n ot, genres gro w
out of an aggreg ation of topo i, each relating to a specific aspect of the larger
design. For example, epics often centre on ideas of contest, contest takes
the form of battles, battles have cerem onious prelu des, and from this chain
of requisites is born the topos of the
arma capiendum
in which the epic
her o vests himself for battle. Th at co nstitutes only a small part of an epic s
compass, of c ourse , but the pattern repeats itself with regard to all the other
elements in the form. It also repeats itself from epic to epic, so that topoi
help, in a sense, to lead the reader to a proper reading of the text in hand.
So central has the
arma capiendum
prove d in shaping an epic design that it
figures in the
Iliad
th e Aeneid th e
Thebaid
and even in such mock-heroic
take-offs as Pope s
Rape of the
lock.
In a vestigial form
—
as a declaration of warlike purpose
—
th e
arma
capiendum also survives into the primo ottocento, whether it be Tebald o s È
serbata e questo acciaro in / apuleti e i Montecchi (1830) or M anrico s D i
quella pira in Iltrovatore (1853). Inde ed, we ha ve a version of its antithetical
mod e, the ab armis discendum at the very end of th e century, wh en O tello cries
Abbasso le spa de in Verdi s opera (1887). Th ereb y han gs a tale, for I would
argue that some kinds of music depend no less extensively on topoi than some
kinds of literature. Given their constitutive function in relation to genre,
and the fact that musical genres have, at certain periods, developed rigidly
prescriptive oudines, that prescriptiveness will embody itself in approved
musico-dramatic procedures - topoi - and composition will to some extent
depend on their reshuffling and re-inflection, the artists originality measured
in small incremental steps rather in bold, revolutionary strides. One such
period is the primo ottocento, and topoi abound in the
melodramme opere
semiserie an d opere
buffe
it spawned in such huge n um bers.
THE MUSICAL TIMES
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68
Topoi
and
melodic morphology
in the
operas
of Doni\etti
1. Julian Budden:
Th e
operas
of
Verdi 3 vols (London,
1973—81),
vol.1,
p.2i.
2. Margaret Alexiou:
Th e
rttual lament
in Greek tradition
(Cambridge, 1974), p.99.
3.
ibid., p.99.
Plot and versification were, at this time, as predictable as the titles that
vectored them (first name; preposition; place name) so predictable, in
fact, that one wonders why Semiramide (1823) never graced the boards as
Semiramide di
abilonia
or Norma (1831)
diS
Norm a di Ga llia. I t goes without
saying, therefore, that topoi were integrally woven into these operas, topoi
that were in the first instance textual (deriving from the conventions of
the libretto), but also to a large extent musical, since text and setting were
interinvolved. As in the case of the Anacreontic ode, where defining topos
and genre are almost commutable, we have arias that are co-extensive with
their topoi, as witness the ballata from Lucreiia cited above, or the confessio
amantis which subtends the countless love duets of the period. On other
occasions, topoi comprise sub-units that have conjoined into larger ones,
whole situations rather than responses ad hoc. (I shall call these smaller
constituents topia o r little top oi , a wo rd I have coined on the lines of
bib lion , the diminutive of biblo s - bo ok .) In musicological term s, a
topos will encompass bo th the text and the m usic, since the lyric con ventions
of the primo ottocento developed in tandem with dramatic ones, themselves
a tissue of pre-established formulae. A lyric topos will therefore start as a
formulaic dramatic situation, forged from verbal formulae, for, as Julian
Budden has pointed out,
librettists were busy men and tended even more than composers to revert to their own
flxed procedures and turns of phrase. The language of Camm arano and his kind was
both stilted and mo noton ous. Bells are never bells but sacred bro nze s ; midnight is
always the hour of the dead . In a brilliant essay Luigi Dallapicola has compared these
circumlocutions to Homeric epithets, evidence of the essentially epic quality of the
Italian nineteenth-century opera .
But once a lyric topos has been identified by its dramaturgical p urpo se, w e
must tu rn to its musical constituents and see what sort of melod ic, harm onic
and rhythmical symbioses are thus brought into being. This might at first
blush seem a hopelessly mechanical kind of enterprise, but it s importan t to
put it into perspective. Th e verbal recycling that Dallapicola adm ired in the
libretti of the primo ottocento is not peculiar to Homeric epic, but extends
even into such emotive and heartfelt utterances as the threnody.
Writing about the history of Greek lament, Margaret Alexiou has ob-
served that, thanks to its techn ique, the same ideas, formulaic structures
and phrases are re-used and adapted to suit the occasion, so that in the
event of sudden calamity, the popular poet has to hand a ready-made stock
of material .^ She also remarks that these historical laments grew up by
a gradua l process of accretion and refinem ent , which, if we comp ress
the time scheme, could very well describe the sort of processes that drove
operatic composition in the primo ottocento, processes that, as in Greek
lament, d idn t necessarily entail a loss of exp ressive pow er. Lam ents and
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epics can move one deeply in spite of such verbal fixtures as the ros y-
fingered da wn and win e-dark sea , partly because their fixture creates a
satisfying rhyth m of expectancy, and partly because of their inheren t bea uty
and idoneity. T he same could be said of the many lyrical topoi of the prim o
ottocento, whose tried appropriateness often prevents them from seeming
perfunctory, however often we encounter them. Here familiarity breeds
respect and affection rather than the proverbial contempt.
W
HILE the libretti were laced, like epic and threnod y, with standard
locutions and standard situations, and while the music that c lothed
them was sometime s infected by the form ularity of these
formulae in turn , that music non e the less served to ennoble and differentiate
the verbal clichés, creating an integral musico-dramatic package - a lyric
topos - as it did so. Gra nted , we have no Ho meric epithets to delight us
in the primo ottocento - only imm easurably poorer , Cam maranesque ones
but those preformulated situations and phrases of Cammarano and his
cohorts evoked formular strategies from the composers who worked with
them, and tog th r they took o n a charge and trenchanc y that can som etimes
bear comparison with the purely verbal craft of epic and lament. Instead
of impugning this music for its reliance on recipe, then, it might be more
profitable to systematise some of the ingredients, and notice the freshness
and nov elty with w hich a resourceful co mpo ser such as Do nizetti can inflect
them.
Not, of course, that Donizetti is unique in this regard. The climate
of the lyric stage at this time - a climate of conform ity so rigorou sly
enforced by the tenets of Rossinismo that even an original musical mind
like Meye rbeer s was forced into slavish imitation - ensured that any o ne
topos from the hand of Rossi or Cammarano (or even Romani) would have
exacted comparab le melodic responses from all the composers of the primo
ottocento. But while it would be impossible, in an article of this scope, to
explore this phenomenon across the board, we can throw som light on the
topic by restricting attention to Do nizetti alo ne, if only because his prolific
outp ut involved a degree of form ulaic thinkin g, and thus caused him to rely
on lyric topoi (whether conscious or not) throughout his career. And even
here, after na rrow ing o ur scope, comp rehensiveness w ill still be impo ssible,
and we shall be able to glance at only some of his many topoi, and at the
smaller units from w hich he fashioned them . A who le book cou ld be written
on the topic.
In devising a tentative classification of these topical elements, I have
had to coin new terms and phrases, if only because, as Julian Budden has
pointed out, the taxonomy of popular operatic forms has lagged behind
other bran ches of music that hav en t suffered the same kind of stigma, at
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70 Topoi and melodic morphology in the operas of Doni\etti
4.
Budden:
Operas,
vol . i ,
pp.12-13.
5. Gustave Kobbé:
T he
complete opera book
the
stories
o f
the
operas, together
with
leading airs
a nd
motives
in musical
notation (London,
1922), p.6o8.
6. William Ashbrook:
Doni ^etti a nd his operas
(Cambridge, 1982), p.257.
7. ibid., p.257.
least in academic circles: 'N ob od y has defined the forms of Italian op era in
that way, though they are no less complex. Hence the present-day student
of the period will often find himself obliged to invent his own technical
terms for the purposes of classification.' ' '
But before I proceed to a m ore fine-grained analysis of th e elements from
which top oi derive , let me first distinguish what I am attem pting h ere from
other modes of melodic analysis that have been applied to the period. I am
not, for example, so much concerned with abstract musical patterns as with
the expressive purpo ses they are m ade to serve. Tha t is the essence of a lyric
topos. Thus when Gustav Kobbé finds the key to the primo ottocento in the
dotted note, he enters the arena of melodic morphology, but in terms far
broader than those of my investigation. He distinguishes 'Italian melody,
old style' from the melodic habits of verismo, observing that the former
derives 'much of its character from the dotted note, with the necessarily
marked acceleration of the next note , as, for example, in 'Ah non g iunge '
La sonnamhula
(1831)), and fu rthe rm ore asserting th at it 'is from its
prom inence in the melodic phrase, the impe tus imparted by it, and the sharp
reiterated rhythmic beat which it usually calls for, that Italian melody of
the last century, up to about 1870, derives much of its energy, swing, and
passion'. ' There is general truth in this, even if a good deal of that 'energy,
swing, and passion' can be traced to other melodic habits than dotting, and
even if the dissolution of articular or membral melody into veristic arioso
parlante involved not so much the loss of this rhythmic motif (the opening
measures of La bohème (̂ 1897) are no thin g if no t dotte d and ener getic) as
the loss of those constituent 'members' (and of the smaller components
articuli — within them ).
Much closer to my sort of enterprise is the way in which William
Ashbrook simultaneously establishes a melodic and dramatic tournure by
looking at the way Donizetti assembles melodic cells. He points out, for
example, that ' the second period [of the Seymour/Bolena duet in Anna
Bolena (1B30)] conveys passionate intensity by re peating three times a sh ort
motivic idea, its urgency increased by the raised fourth (C sharp) and by
its syncopated rise to a more expansive phrase'.*^ One could add to that the
fact that the raised fourth, because it 'tries' repeatedly but unsuccessfully
to entrench the dominant through a leading-note chord (but with no effect
on the G major ostinato), also images a fluttering incapacity on Giovanna's
part, and furthermore observe that the nagging iteration of that semitonal
rise to D helps embody her wheedling nature. It goes without saying that
these devices take their meaning from the topos into which they have been
conscripted, and that while Ashbrook might claim that the duet in question
testifies to an effort at escaping 'from formal convention toward dramatic
truth',^ the dramatic truth of the primo ottocento is more often than not
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vectored by almost inescapable forms and conventions. The
Bolena
duet
lodges, after all, in a larger topical matrix, one that, with a wry smile at my
own mock-classical pedantry - all standard literary topoi have Latin tags - 1
shall christen the contentio rivalium.
Exam ples of this topos can found in Rosm onda d Inghilterra (1834), which
includes an encounter of the hero ine and the queen, both in love with Enrico,
and Ugo come diParigi (1832), which im parts an additional complication to
the topos given the fact that Bianca and Adelia, both drawn to Ugo, are
sisters, and that the tension here stibsists in Adelia's zniema/distress over the
situation. I have named this clash of com petitors - generally for the love of
another, but occasionally, as in Maria Stuarda (1835) or the confrontation
of Enrico and Edgardo toward the end of Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), for
pow er - after a medieval genre in which two com petitors (say, a nightingale
and an ow l) pit themselves against each other. It s a situation tha t will inclu de
some or all of the following sub-phases - confession, indign ation, e ntreaty
or deprecation, and resolution (either reconciliatory or threatening). These
sub-phases are the ' topia' I mentioned above, constitutive units capable of
standing alone, but often incorporated into larger topical contexts. In the
case of the contentio rivalium, such topia have been shuffled about to reflect
the different kinds of tension implicit in each of them.
For example, different conventions seem to obtain when the contenders
are male. Here the revelatory exchange tends to be more obviously con-
frontational, and even its resolution takes a militaristic turn, as when Enrico
and Edgardo first threaten each over a glowering motivic march, and then
resolve those threats with the prom ise of v iolence sung in conjunct vocal lines
- a ma rchier march altogether Because Leon ora in Ro smonda d Inghilterra
is a mannish bully, Donize tti also rings changes on the contentio topos there.
By having her
arraign
her rival, he draws anoth er topion (the
accusatio
into
th e mbit of the
contentio.
In the process, he has to make adjustments not
only to the co ntribu tory topia but also to elements that are smaller still, and
it is here that topical analysis reveals its interface w ith m elodic mo rpholo gy.
To project the deliberative and insistent natu re of accusation, Donize tti will
sometimes fall back on a motif perhaps, or an ostinato, or an
interv llic
pattern that he finds particularly germane to the task in hand.
For example,
inLucreiia
Borgia, the friends of G enn aro arraign the heroin e
in a comm on m etre melody accompanied by groups of three quavers. This
has the effect of creating portentous pauses in the accompaniment, while,
at the same time, the three notes also take on the semblance of a gavel-like
rapp ing. Th en again, because Donize tti seems to be carving a 6 /8 Gestalt
out of a four-crotchet block, the pattern serves to poise the metre, as if in
judicial uncertainty of its re l rhythmic allegiance. No surprise, then, that
Leonora should use an identical ostinato for
her accusatio,
a few mo nths
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72 opoi and melodic morphology in the operas of Doniietti
after O rsini and com pany ha d, in similar fashion, charged Lucrezia with her
crimes. An d yet the roots of this me lom orph em e (which is what I shall
call these lyric ato ms of the topos) go back much further than D onize tti s
middle phase. As early as the second revision of Zoraida di Granata (1822,
rev. 1824), he had sensed an aptness for judicial solemnity in this sub-
parcelling of a metre, even if in Abe nam et s aria-finale - the point where he
pronounces his will for Zoraida - there are spaced groups oi four quavers.
Th ere also are four-quaver bund les in Adelia ( i 840 when Arnoldo demands
justice for his daughter from the Duke. From which we can deduce that
melomorphemes themselves occur as cognate forms and allotropes.
Different kinds of topical adjustment (at the level of melomorphemes)
can be witnessed in the further variants of the contentio rivalium. In the case
of the cxy^io-contentio from Ugo come diParigi and also the vastly different,
combative encounter between Maria and Elisabetta in Maria Stuarda one
finds different but com parable solutions to a com mon problem - that of
musically evoking an effort of will (whether for confession or entreaty),
the palpable screwing of courage to the sticking point. In the case of Ugo
the singer repeatedly has her line nudged forward by a dotted mo tif arising
from a point low down in the orchestra
—
a sort of summons to secrets
(reluctantly yielded) from the nether depths. In Maria on the other hand,
the singer has to gather her strength and com pose herself for an unw elcome
act of abasement. Like Bianca, she is reluctant to speak, but instead of using
a recurrent motif to prod the singer into responding, Donizetti repeats a
single motif u ntil it fuses and lifts off into m elodic flight - a sort of gi dd y-
u p
gesture that guarantees momen tum. Th is anaph oraic energ y , gene-
rated by the repetition of the phrase, has the effect of catapulting itself
forward by an accumulation of power: reculer pour mieux sauter (One other
striking instance can be adduced from the Maria di Rohan overture (1843)
wh ich, given its Viennese provena nce, mig ht yWi have owed som ething
to the Beetho ven Bb Pia no Sona ta op.22, the first subject of w hos e first
movement has a similar sense of revving for take-off.)
Even from this brief glance at a single topos, we can see that it is broad
and flexible enough to accommodate a variety of different inflections and
modifications, and that these depend very largely on what melomorphemes
the composer chooses for his task. The situation might be comparable, but
the protagonists are not, and the prod din g m otif that registers Bianca s
reluctance to declare an illicit love, and the self-spurring melo dy that helps
Maria conquer her revulsion for the figlia impura di Bolena have as many
differences as they have points of contact. The Stuart queen draws on the
topion of the causam agendum where innocence pleads with tyranny as so
often it does in the primo ottocento, while Bianca invokes the altogether
different topion of confessio am antis — the lover s outp ourin g to a confidante
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8. Sir Charles Sherrington,
quoted in Richard Dawkins:
limbing mount improbable
(Harmondsworth,
p.294.
that survives into middle -perio d Verdi ( Tu tte le feste in Rigoletto (1851)
and Tac ea la notte in
Iltrovatore
(1853). Such weaving and counterw eaving
of independent elements give proof of the complexity of topical analysis,
recalling as it does in its m ore primitive wa y the neural danc e of the brain : a
dissolving pattern , always a meaningful pattern , but never an abiding on e; a
shifting harm ony of subpatterns .^
I
T WILL E APPARENT from this preliminary survey of a single topos and
its varian t form s, that it com prises a hiera rchy of levels, levels that m ove
down from the matrical topos to its component topia to the melodic and
rhythm ic compon ents that go into their making - the melom orphem es.
But before w e go into greater detail about those , let s adduce two further
significant topoi - from among many others - in the operas of Donizetti.
O ne that I ll call the irruptio aman tis alieni is widely used for its dramatic
potential, for here a lover braves a hostile environment to make contact with
his beloved, or, in some cases, to arraign her (at which point the
accusatio
topion comes into play). Examples can be found in Lucia di Lammermoor,
Parisina
(1833) and
Imelda de Lamberta^i
(1830). In these instances the re
is nearly always a ruminative ensemble followed by a headlong stretta,
which takes form as a quickstep or a galop. Then again, countless libretti
of the period confront us with the image/situation of the waiting lover
from Rossini s
Semiramide
( Bell rag gio ) to Ve rdi s Violetta ( Ah, forse
lui ) , thou gh in the latter instance Verdi and Piave have already m odified the
topos by making the abstraction ( amore ) , rather than the agent ( am ante ),
the subject of expe ctation. Aga in, in my peda ntic way, I shall give it a Latin
tag, the expectatio amantis.
In the first act of Lucia, Lucia is awaiting a visit from Edgardo while,
at a corresponding point of
Linda di Chamounix
(1842), the heroine waits
for Carlo. Since for both women reunion with the beloved is heaven on
earth, Cam ma rano and Rossi present him as a source of radiance - luce
a giorni miei on the one hand and luce di que st anim a . And , given
the similarity of these locutions, it is hardly surprising that they should
predispose Donizetti to think in terms of an intermittent dazzle of notes - a
dazzle that registers ideas both of rapture and
éclaircissement
The radiant
fioritura in each instance functions as a melomorpheme, the element that
supplies a com mon deno mina tor for the otherwise dissimilar arias O luce
di que st anim a and Qu an do rápita in estasi . Althoug h the first is a galop,
and the second a march with an Alberti bass, they both have a fibrillation
at the end of each m elodic me mb er - Luc ia s trills and Lind a s grup petti —
gesture s of em otional excitem ent (like a quiver in the voice ). Modifying this
excitement, however (after all, the women in question are also containing
their happiness while they anticipate it), are gestures (likewise shared) of
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74 opoi and melodic morphology in the operas of Donizetti
confidence and repose. This Donizetti achieves through a different kind of
musical resource, a sustained no te and shorter one which provid es resolution
of sorts - the prolonged leading-note resolving on to the submediant when
Lucia utters the word ard ore , and the flattened submediant octave leap
from a minim to a quaver when Linda invokes the idea of u nion ( un ita ).
In both there is tension: the thw arting of the F|} s pull to the to nic, and
the chromatic remoteness of the Ab, which is soon corre cted by a perfect
cadence. Donizetti heightens both this tension and its resolution by having
his melo dy linger upo n the alien or inessential note, and resolve it within
the context. I shall call this me lom orphe me the pieg a or fold, for Do nizetti
often invokes this to signify ideas of completion and certitude. Or rather
he uses it in cabalettas, the function of which is more often than not to
mark some sort of anagnorisis or, at least, the provisional resolution of a
crisis. Some cabalettas fail to do this textually but, ironically enough, still
carry melomorphemes of clarification. Imelda de Lamberta^i provides the
curious instance of a piega (here a dw elt-on ap pog giatura) in the service of
an altogether irresolute text ( Ma il Ciel non ode ).
S
o MUCH, then, for some of the many topoi to which D onizetti recurs
again and again. We need now to take a closer look at the elements
out of w hich he fashions his topia and topoi. M elom orph em es , as I
have pointed out, are musical devices - motivic elem ents, or characteristic
intervals, or particular rhyth mic inflections - that have been co nscripted to
me an as well as b e . A prolonged appoggiatura has its own dy namic of
resolution but, harnessed to a text about resolution, it acquires an extra-
mu sical, or (rath er) a para -mu sical , significance, very different from the
exigencies of a prog ramm e
.
The piega ,
a
melomorphem e often projecting
closure, might take form as an appogg iatura in man y instances, but it is not
identical with that or any other musical device. A melody whose members
are dem arcated with a fifth-tonic or fourth-tonic interval - diagram matising
cadential contou rs as they do — would serve just as aptly for the enunciation
of purpose in a standard cabaletta. A lyric topos such as the expectatio
amantis will accordingly often, but not always, combine tensile and frilly
melomorphemes - the piega and some sort of fioritura to embody the
image/situation of love expectant.
Melom orphem es can also have a distinctive rhy thm ic character as well as
characteristic intervals or types of ornament. These I shall call clausulae,
a term familiar to students of classical prose. Because this often resolves
into formal metrical units, a whole science has sprung up to assist in their
description: the science of colome try, which identifies the foot-com binations
from which those units - clau sula e - derive. For exam ple, RGM Nisbet
has remarked that C icero s rhy thm is most prono unc ed in the clausulae.
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9. M. Tullius Cicero:
InL.
alpurmum Pisonem
oratio
ed. RGM Nisbet (Oxford,
1961), p.xvii.
10.
Thomas N . Habinek:
Th e colometry of Latin prose
(Berkeley, 1985), p. ii .
i.e. in the phrases which occu r at the ends of cola (the major divisions of a
sentence). Thes e clausulae tend to conform to a limited numb er of metrical
patterns. '^ An othe r classicist, Th om as Hab inek, notes, furtherm ore, tha t ' the
ancient rhetoricians were content to use the same word, kolon or membrum
to refer to either the rhythm ical or rhetorical un its ' , ' which shows how
indivisibly rh ythm ic and sem antic features interface in the clausulae.
Given the fact that music is nonverbal rhetoric, one could easily show
how melodic membra that carry specific texts often break down into
mappable compon ents or motifs . Whe n these take on a formulary contour,
we have the beginnings of 'clausular' system, though (given the manifold
relations that pitch factors into the scheme) the options are not as easily
mapped as their literary equivalents. That is why I would sooner invoke
the term 'melomorpheme ' to characterise vertical relationships across the
stave (e.g. appoggiature) as well as the lateral rhythmical pattern of the
bar, which, if they were registered in monotones,
would
sometimes bear
comparison w ith clausulae. And, of course, there is yet another comp onent
to bear in mind, viz., harmony. Diatonic harmony, after all, is extremely
formular in the way it establishes tonal identity through primary triads,
and will furthermore permit only two ways of ending a melody (from the
dom inant to the tonic or plagally, or — the favoured strategy of Rossini — th e
cast-iron staircase of I V / V / I ) , and only two kinds of cadential markers
midstream (imperfect and interrupted). In that respect, the primo ottocento
has harmo nic 'clausulae
even less negotiable than those of classical prose.
Indeed a musical theorist of the i6th century, Jean le Munerat, stressed the
primacy of musical above verbal language precisely because the curtailment
of choices issued in a m ore logical appara tus of sound s.
Since there is little room for manoeuvre in the case of cadences, which
are,
in function at least, the closest thing music has to clausulae, there is
little point in taking them into account in a study of melodic morphology.
The most complex Beethoven sonata and the most routine cavatina of the
primo ottocento will both end on the tonic, however exquisitely prolonged
its deferment. Much more interesting, because they have many more per-
mutations, are the kinds of representation implicit in the combination
of rhythm and pitch. Only four or five decades before Donizetti began
writing, associationist philosophers had investigated the way in which
expressive values attach themselves in an analogous (rather than mimetic)
way to abstract aesthetic notions like line and movement. Such semi-iconic
suggestiveness is the life-blood of melomorphemes
—
a suggestiveness not
to be confused with programme music's equivalent of mimesis. Archibald
Alison, in his Essay on the nature and principles of taste (1790), insisted that
analogies could be drawn between
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76 opoi
and
melodic morphology
in the
operas
o
11 .
Quoted in Walter Jackson
B a t e : From classic to romantic:
premises o f taste in eighteenth-
century England {^i^á^(ji ,
r p t .
New York, 1961), p.152.
12. ib id . ,pp . i46-47 .
the Sensation of gradual Ascent, and the Em otion of Ambition,—between the Sensation of
gradual Descent, and the Emotion of Decay, — between the lively Sensation of Sunshine,
and the cheerful Emotion of Joy, - between the painful Sensation of Darkness, and the
dispiriting Em otion of Sorrow. In the same manner, there are analogies between Silence
and Tranquillity, — between the lustre of M orning, and the gaiety of H ope, - between
softness of Colou ring, and gentleness of Character, - between slenderness of Fo rm, and
delicacy of Mind."
Th is sort of co rrespon dence by analogue (as opposed to a me rely im itative
impulse) is predicated on our internal capacity to establish connections
between distinct but comparable states of mind and body, something to
which Lord Kames, a contempora ry of Alison, had also drawn attention:
We have, said Lord Kames, an inherent rather than an empathie 'sense of order and
arrangement': 'Thinking upon a body in motion, we follow its natural course. The mind
falls w ith a heavy body, descends with a river, and ascends with flame and smok e.' T hu s
with the serpentine or winding line: slow motion in gentle curves has associations of
'Volition and Ease ; in following the curvin g of the line with the eye, and hence, A rchibald
Alison seems to have implied, by a kind of joining in with its motion, w e attribute these
same associations to the line itself and we designate it beautiful."
Combining these associationist principles with Roman colometry and
with linguistic morphology, we can devise a way of systematising the
smaller elements - elements existing at a lower level of abstraction than the
topia mentioned above — that go to make up such broad lyric topoi as the
contentio rivalium or the expectatio amantis. We saw, in the latter, how the
little bursts of decoration at the end of each melodic member conveyed the
happiness momentarily escaping the control of decorum. However, there
are many other emotions that have to be reined in, but which can escape
in valvular 'releases' at the end of phrases. Verdi could give these a hard-
driven contour (as in 'Di quella pira') to create effects of irresistible energy,
while on other occasions
—
Germont 's cabaletta in
La traviata
(1852), for
example — those terminal fioriture will take on a softer turn (passing notes
as opposed to Manrico's forceful, monomaniac auxiliaries).
That is the tail end of a convention that began in a comparatively mind-
less way when Rossini wrote decorations into his melodies that he knew,
had he failed to map them, would have been superimposed by the singer.
In the hands of Donizetti, however, the flutters and flurries at the end of
each melodic member become expressive devices. One thinks, for example,
of Enrico's 'Cruda funesta smania' in act i oi Lucia di Lammermoor where
note-bunches hang on such crucial words as 'petto ' and 'sospetto ' (both
at terminal nodes of the melody) to suggest that uncontrolled emotion is
breaking into an otherwise measured tune. No less striking is Elisabetta's
aria in
Maria Stuarda
'Ah quando all 'ara ' , where languorous triplets
punctuate each period in an image of thoughtful amplification. Indeed, it
would be possible to construct a typology of the fioriture (largely defined
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by Rossini) that Donizetti took over and modified more and more as he
evolved as a composer . When emotion is suffocated and volcanic, as in
the case
of
Cru da, funesta smania ,
the
decorative element takes form
as
some expansion or o ther of the gruppetto. We could call it the scoppio ,
since
it
seems always
to
burs t
out of the
containing line. Elisabetta s p hrase
ends,
on the
other han d, given the ir reflective, capsular quality, wou ld invite
some such name as i ndugio . The generic s copp io and indugio could
also be subdivided in turn. When, in Com è bello, Lucrezia gives rotary
play to all the notes of a minor third at Gioie sog na , following the pattern
with a falling sixth, and its repeat with a r ising appoggiatura (a p iega , in
other words) , the figure recalls the serial movement of a fringe in the wind,
and could thus
be
termed
the
indugio fronzolato .
In the
same opera,
the
scoppio colonises a whole aria, and, no longer a gruppetto manqué, issues
in
the
indignation
of the
he roine s f inal t irade,
as
runs both straight
and
c ambia te .
When melomorphemes are exclusively concerned with rhythm ic p attern,
they becom e musical clausulae. Le t s take
one
very obvious example
by way
of il lustration. Thro ug ho ut the operas of D onize tti, from Zoraida di ranata
at
the one
extreme
to
Maria di Rohan
at the
other ,
we
find
a
characteristic
clausula with m any different local inflections, but with
general purpose that
we could call decisive interjection . A typical example would be the mom ent
in Lucia di Lammermoor when Lucia tells Enrico that she has plighted her
troth to another ( Ad altri giurai mia fè ). Us ing the language of colometry,
we could describe this gesture as a pyrrhic-molossus (which is to say, light
syllable, light syllable / / stressed syllable, stressed, stressed), though it as
often takes form
as an
anapaest-spondee
(the
spondee com prising
one
stress
fewer than the molossus) . As a clausula it
is
by no means unique to Donizetti ,
its history extending back
as far as the
i8th century
at
least, wh ere
we
find
a prototype of sorts in the third movem ent of Vivaldi s Su mm er Con certo
{The four seasons .
There it clearly figures as a thunder motif, anticipating
to some extent the implication of astonishment (from L atin to na re , to
thu nd er ) that often seems to be intimated by its use in the pr imo ottocento.
This clausula had fur thermore become native and endued to the bolero, a
vigorous
and
emphatic dance,
and, in
Do nizetti s h ands,
can
often
be
read
as
a
segment
of
bolero rhythm without
its
down b eat, though sometimes,
in
the example irom Lucia ab ove, this beat does occur at the f irst statem ent. No
surprise, therefore, that
it
should figure
at
heated moments
of the
drama,
when passions are roused, or insights about to crystallise. Perhaps, for this
reason, we ought to christen it the figura di t uono .
In addition to tracking the dispositions of stress, colometry has also {de
facto
been concerned with the definition of the syntactic elem ents to which
the stress patt ern attaches itself. The terminology is rather vague and subject
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78 Topoi and melodic morphology in the operas of Donizetti
to debate, but there can be no dou bting th at classical rhetoric acknow ledged
the existence of self-sufficient, free-standing syntactic elements that were at
the same time too cursory to have a clausular rhythm and fluency. Habinek
points out that when Cicero
describes the passage below s an example of speaking
incisim,
he means, in modern terms,
that while the expressions are independent sentences, they are too short to be described
as clauses:
Do mu s tibi deerat.̂ At habebas. Pecunia superabat. At egeb as.
O ne can find an analogue for this in the melodic structure of Do nizetti s
ope ras. Often he will achieve an effect of succinctness by havin g his charac-
ter utter incisim melodic fragments over a sustained tune in the orche stra,
wh ich, far from being the big guitar - the scornful description most usually
applied to his orchestral habits - wind ow s the character s inner being (the
emotional flux contained there) that only occasionally surfaces at those
moments when the voice reinforces the tune.
UT I BELIEVE it is possible (on occasion) to find even closer inte-
grations of clausula and text than the loose associations mentioned
above. Leo nore s Ich habe M ut from Fidelio (1805), for ex am ple, is
rhythm ically close to Be not afraid from M endelssohn s Elijah (1846) and
Th us saith the Lord, I am the Lo rd in the same comp oser s
St Paul
(1836)
Two of these three examples are linked by their assertions of courage, but
that is only the surface im plication of the clausula. W hat u nites all of them
is the act of assertion or the idea of assertiveness that the trochee-iamb
(stress, light syllable // light syllable, stress) has foursquare, chiastic shape
- seemingly imp regnab le and dauntless. Th e English soldiers in Don izetti s
L assedio di Calais (1836) assert their c oura ge after A urelio s escape wi th
precisely the same clausula ( Fug gi, cod ard o ) and so do the retaine rs in
an apocryphal chorus from Maria de Rudeni (1838) - Fu vista in ar m e . It
also figures, more as defiant gestu re of resilience, in the Lo di al gra n D io
chorus m Marino aliero (1835).
We have already noted the fact that Do nizetti s favoured pyr rhic -
molossus pattern owed some of its force to the bolero rhythm by which it
was nurtured, if not actually brought to birth. With this in mind it might be
wo rth pausin g to consider a typolo gy of ostinato figures, since these played
a part in the evolution of melodic formulae. We could call the standard
arpeggiated version the fruscio d acqu a , a soothing mur m ur associated
with mom ents of reassurance and consolidation, as for example in To rna m i
a dir in Don Pasquale (1843), wh ere thre e falling q uav ers fit effortlessly into
the prolonged beat of the compound metre in a way that recalls the rising
13.
Habinek Colometry -ç.2-j.
triplets inserted into the simple duple of Beeth oven s M oo nlig ht Sonata.
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Donizetti also created tension by driving the rhythm through each beat of
a bar - the 'ostinato spin to' - a relentlessness evident at such mo me nts as
Lucrezia's wa rnin g that the Du ke is her fourth husband At the opposite
end of the scale is the broken kind of ostinato borrowed from Rossini's
astonishment ensembles (pre-eminently 'Fredda e immobile ' in II b rbiere
di Siviglia (1816)). The voice parts tend in these instances to be largely a
cappella and the orchestra interjects minimalist strokes after each phrase,
for all the world like an aural ellipsis sign.
Mo ving from bass to treble stave, we should also be aware that D onize tti
seems to have formulated several melodic options - too broad to fall unde r
the definition of clausulae, but distinctive nevertheless, to accord with the
stock options his libretti frequently placed before him. For example, there
is a recognisably 'dialogic' structure comprising two contrasted melodies.
Som etimes this is adversarial as when , in Rosmonda
d Inghilterra.,
Donizetti
follows a crusty first mem ber (C lifford) with a sinuous antipho n of entreaty
(Enrico ). The act I duet between Enrico and G iovanna in
Anna Bolena
is no
less oppositional, its percussive, rapp ing m otifs building u p a stepped marc h
that represents Enrico's peremptory character, which Giovanna answers in
her more sinuous, wheedling way. Equally classifiable is the explorative
melody associated with moments of uncertainty. It will tend to show a
winding, upward momentum such as we find in the duet between Enrico
and Lucia, 'Ti rimprovera tacendo' . Then there are the propulsive tunes,
not infrequently associated with a kind of melodic epiieu.xis or geminatio
the rhetorical terms for repeated words or phrases. In many cabalettas, the
me lody com prises two repeated mem bers (a Gestalt, as it we re, for dwelling
on a topic), and then a descending skein of fioriture (stylized laugh of
triumph at its clarification). The cabaletta to Anna Bolena's first act aria
offers a case in point, and a variant version can be seen in Percy's cabaletta
in the same opera, wh ere the epizeuxis (of a descending co ntou r) is followed
by an ascending colon, signifying his expectation of love to com e. For other
effects of propulsion, we could note how often a triplet gusset will follow
iterative, long-no te sentences in order to concertina in some resistant energy.
The stretta ('Vieni, vieni') in act i of Parisina illustrates th is.
Finally, we must bear in mind the importanc e of dan ce forms to the idiom
of the primo ottocento, and the way in which certain kinds of movement
create 'associationist' vehicles of feeling. In Verdi this alignment of dance
and m ood is evident in his early and m iddle periods , but the habit goes back
to the prim o ottocen to and beyond that to the Baroqu e period, as witness the
sarabande
s
use for mo me nts of grieving meditation - 'Lascia ch'io piang a'
in Handel 's Rinaldo (1711) - or the gav otte 's for light-hearted rejoicing -
'Freely I to Heav'n resign' in the same compo ser s Jephtha (1751). Donizetti
is especially fond of the Ländler for tender, inward moments - the even
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8o Topoi an d melodic morphology in the operas o f Donizetti
distribution of its three stresses distinguishing it from the accented vigour
of such waltzes as that employed for the vaudeville-finale of Don Pasquale.
Maria Stuarda's 'O nube che Heve' provides a typical instance of the
Donizettian Ländler, its tentativeness further enhanced by its melodic sid-
ling from the dom inant. Parisina's 'Ah tu sai, ' and its matc hing m om ent
in the economy of that opera, Ugo's 'Io l 'amai, ' likewise show how the
com poser conscripts this dance for effects of gentle innoce nce. In this he was
clearly influenced b y its pasto ral charac ter, as Verdi realised wh en , follow ing
Do nizetti 's lead, he used it for 'Ai nostri mo nti' in // trov tore and 'Parigi, o
cara' inZ a traviata. The 'topical' function of the Donizettian march, waltz,
barcarole, galop and polka would likewise reward investigation.
Defending the value of genre cr it icism, Graham Hough has drawn
attention to the way in which broad taxonomical issues eventually resolve
into smaller issues of form , and how description and nome nclatu re co mbine
to form a topographical map of any one genre:
In abstraction the theory of kinds is no more than a system of classification. It is given
content and positive value by filling each of its pigeon-holes with adequate description
and adequate theory. And much has been, by collaboration, largely unplanned, of
generations of scholars and critics. Some portions of this Linnean scheme have been very
adequately filled out [...]. Other areas remain relatively empty. It is possible to feel that
the morphology of lyric poetry is still very incomplete; we have lacked until recently an
adequate theory of comedy; and prose fiction as a whole was simply left out of the old
classification.'""
Generic nomenclature necessari ly involves
a
n a m i n g
o f
kinds :
for
example ,
th e
ode , and ,
beyond that ,
the
sub-kinds
-
dirge, elegy, threnody
and
epinicion. But taxonomy o ught a lso to include a ' naming of par t s ' to swap
the telescope
for the
microscope,
and
search further into
the
const i tut ion
of these identifiable structures, classifying
the
topoi that comprise them,
the topia from which
they
der ive ,
and the
melomorphemes that const i tute
thei r 'molecular ' bedrock. H aving
fo r
many decades lacked
the
intellectual
respectability
o f
classical opera
and
W agneri an
Tonkunst, the
p r imo o t t o -
cento
has ,
until recently, suffered
a
Cinderella fate akin
to
that
of the
' p rose
fiction' which,
as
Hough po in ts
ou t ,
neo-classical genre theory failed even
to take into acco unt .
I
hop e this article
has
sketched
o u t one
possible
w ay o f
Itcn tici^m {London, i^6 ,\ reclaiming these operas from the scorn o f 'good taste ' , and of showing h o w
p.84.
complex
and
detailed their formulaic structures
can
often prov e
to be .
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C o p y r i g h t o f M u s i c a l T i m e s i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f M u s i c a l T i m e s P u b l i c a t i o n s L t d . a n d i t s
c o n t e n t m a y n o t b e c o p i e d o r e m a i l e d t o m u l t i p l e s i t e s o r p o s t e d t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e
c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r ' s e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . H o w e v e r , u s e r s m a y p r i n t , d o w n l o a d , o r e m a i l
a r t i c l e s f o r i n d i v i d u a l u s e .