Guido Casoni on Love as Music

Guido Casoni on Love as Music, a Theme "For All Ages and Studies"Author(s): Don HarránSource: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 883-913Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261927 .

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Guido Casoni on Love as Alusic, A Theme r AIIAges and Studies'

by DON HARRAN

Onde sappiamo non esser etade, o studio, che sia separato dal canto.

In an essay on La magia d'amore, Guido Casoni (d. 1642) demonstrated how music, along with other arts and sciences, is generated by love. On the surface, the essay strikes one as a hodgepodge of fact andfantasy in which the credibility of the data is vitiated by their often whimsical interpretation. But there is more to music than historically or logically verifiable acts or events. Casonis' musical hermeneutics rejlects conceptual tendencies inherent in his own times, yet derivative ftom a long tradition ofcommentary on musical mirabilia. The present study is an attempt to contextualize these tendencies. Itfollows through the equation of love with music as a parable, of a plainly Neoplatonist stamp, for the relevance of music to allforms ofscholarly discourse.

usic is not just music. Rather it may be construed as a synecdoche for he whole complex of historical and sociocultural relationships be-

tween music and non-musical topics, in varying degrees of proximity to it, yet all relevant to its content from one or another vantage point.

But what does love have to do with music? And what, conversely, does a veiled apologetic for interdisciplinary research on music have to do with love?

The questions came to the fore when, several years ago, in searching through the card files of the Newberry Library, Chicago, I happened upon a treatise by Guido Casoni, from 1591, on "the magic of love."' The author

*Originally read, in an earlier version, at a congress of the International Musicological Society (London, 1997) on the theme "musicology and its sister disciplines: the study of music in relation to cognate fields of inquiry." Both then and now the intention was to exemplify the theme and argue for its implied methodology. Work on the study was facilitated, at various stages, by fellowships of the Newberry Library, Chicago (1993) and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. (I 998). 1 gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance of their staffs, as I do the helpful, perceptive comments of Professors Wendy Heller, Princeton University, and Gary Tomlinson, University of Pennsylvania. Acting as a leitmotif, the epi- taph, from Guido Casoni's Magia d'amore, translates: "Thus we know there are no ages or studies separable from song."

I Della magia d'amore, hereafter referred to as Della magia, comprises fifty-six folios, with music treated on fols. 3 lv-40r. All references to Della magia are to the first edition; and unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. For full title and reprints, see under nn. 2 and 8 below. Guido Casoni is not to be confused with the poet Girolamo Casone, whose verses Claudio Monteverdi and others set to music in madrigal books of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: for Girolamo's poetry, see his Rime (1 60 1), and for Monteverdi's settings thereof, namely, "Bevea Fillide mia" (Rime, fol. 9v) and "Quell'ombra esser vorrei" (Rime, fol. 140, see Monteverdi, Secondo libro O 590, 3 and 1 0). For five other settings of the

Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 883-913 [ 883 1



884 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

was unknown to me and, though I, like everyone else, am naturally curious about "the magic of love," neither he nor his treatise - to be perfectly frank - would have retained my attention had it not been for the continuation of the title, which read: "It will be shown how Love is a metaphysician, a natural physicist, an astrologer, a musician, a geometrist, an arithmetician, a grammarian, a dialectician, an orator, a poet, a historiographer," and so on for a total of thirty-nine designations comprising love as an agriculturist, a wool manufacturer, an architect, a glass maker, a necromancer, a chiro- mancer, and a prognosticator.'

It took little effort to grasp the basic principle, namely, "omnia vincit amor," which is nothing new. Still, it was clear that, as far as historical music theory is concerned, something was definitely new about the treatment, and it was worth checking out. The author reinforced my impressions of novelty by remarking that though there is no difficulty in perceiving the magic of Love, now with a capital L, and in tracing "his" magical operations in the writings of the ancients, the particular ways in which Love proceeds "have lain hidden, in large part, among the shades of difficulty," and he, Guido Casoni, was the first, or so he implies, "to draw them into the light."3

I

In conferring on Casoni, in 1619, the title of "knight of Saint Marles," the doge Antonio Priuli remarked on the "most erudite genius" of his works, whereby he earned "universal praise and admiration."4 His house in Venice, where he resided in the early 1590s, became a literary academy: it was

first poem and three others of the second, by as many composers, cf. Vogel, under integral listing of madrigals in vol. 3. On Guido Casoni's poetry, see below, under section 11.

"'nella quale si dimostra come Amore sia metafisico, fisico, astrologo, musico, geometra, aritmetico, grammatico, dialetico, rettore, poeta, historiografo, iurisconsulto, politico, ethico, economics, medico, capitano, nocchiero, agricoltore, lanifico, cacciatore, architetto, pittore, scultore, fabro, vitreario, mago naturale, negromante, geomante, hidromante, aere- mante, piromante, chiromante, fisionomo, augure, aurispice, ariolo, salitore e genetliaco." For translation of all thirty-nine designations, see table below, p. 887, headed "magic."

'Della magia, fol. 5v: "Ma sl come gli antichi facilmente videro l'opere di natura, che con infinita meraviglia loro gli erano appresentate innanzi gli occhi sensuali, se ben dipoi di- ficilmente con longo studio, e diligenti osservationi apersero gli occhi intellettuali alle cause producenti, penetrando con sommo gusto gli intimi secreti loro. Cosl facile stato il vedere Amor mago ne l'operationi sue; ma come egli sia mago celato in gran parte fra I'ombre defla dificult giacciuto, et hora sar da me tratto alla luce."

"'et sl come se ne son veduti et giornalmente vegonsi conspicui gl'effetti del suo eruditis- simo ingegno nelle opere che ha dato e manda a tutt'hora alle stampe, cosl havendone riportato sempre la lode, et estimation universals," etc. (after Mutini, 405).



LOVE AS MUSIC 885

hailed, by a contemporary, as "a new temple of Apollo and the Muses, to which he [Casoni] daily convened the finest talents then to be found in this marvelous city."5 Giovan Battista Marino befriended him in those years, later drawing an effusive "verbal" portrait of him in his Galleria.' A collection of Casoni's poetry, designated Ode, was published in 1602.' Beyond Della magia d'amore, which, after its first edition in 1591, enjoyed six later reprints,' Casoni composed another phantasmagorical treatise, Le battaglie pacifiche (I 62 1), where he describes the jousts of cavaliers intent on render- ing homage to the beautiful women in his home town Serravalle (near Treviso), and a comedy entitled "the game of fortune" (Ilgiuoco difortuna, 1623). A collected edition of his works appeared in 1623,9 though Casoni lived on for another twenty years, only to die in 1642. He has been treated in a full-length monograph by Emilio Zanette, published in 1933.10 There Della magia is discussed at length in chapter 1, though, strangely, not a word is said about music.

Della magia is a dialogue on love in the tradition of Plato's Symposium. It was set in Serravalle, following a banquet, in the beautiful gardens that ad- joined the house of Signor Sertorio Pancetta, a "gentleman adorned with [a knowledge ofl belles-lettres." 12 Sertorio acts as discipulus, or "student,"

'Loredano, 293-94: "la sua Casa divenne un novello tempio d'Apollo, e delle Muse, riducendo egli ogni giorno i piu' begli spiriti, che si trovassero allhora in questa maravigliosa Citt." Guido counted among the founding members of the later "Incogniti" academy, about which see Miato and, in connection with Monteverdi, Heller, also section III below.

'Information is provided in Marino's vita as prepared by Loredano for the collected edition of Marino's Opere, 3: fols. a[I]r-b4v. For the "portrait," see there, 2: fol. 192r ("O se, Guido, impetrar mai potess'io").

'It was a "bestseller": two earlier editions (1591?, 1601), no longer extant, preceded the one from 1602, which itself was succeeded by twelve others, from 1605 to 1639 (according to Zanette, from concluding bibliographical annotations) -

'Reprinted in 1592, 1596, 1605, 1621, 1624, 1626 (details again in Zanette, though there the edition from 1592 is lacking). Of the six editions, I checked the first three in copies variously in the Newberry Library (1 5 9 1: Case K 73.1 5 4) and the Folger Shakespeare Library (1591: 175-776.2q; 1592: BF575 L7 C3 1592 Cage; 1596: BF575 L7 C3 1596 Cage).

9Casoni, Opere. Other works comprise a vita of St. Gerardo Sagredo 0 598), another of Torquato Tasso (in an edition, from 1625, of the Gerusalemme liberata, for which Casoni provided a thematic summary of contents, viz., argomenti), and "sacred meditations" (Meditationi divote applicate ai misteri divini et ai Santi, 1636).

"See bibliography and various references below. "On "Platonismo e filosofia d'arnore," see Garin, 1952, 146-72; on Plato and magic,

Zambelli, 121-42. 12 Della magia, fol. 1v: "Gentil'huomo ornato di belle lettere." The circumstances are

detailed in the opening pages, including an idyllic description of the garden's trees, bushes,




asking questions and interpolating brief remarks, while his brother Giovanni acts as magister, or "teacher," answering the questions and providing often lengthy explanations. Other gentlemen from Serravalle participate in the discussion, but their comments are omitted."

Through his dialogs Casoni intended to expatiate on the thirty-nine manifestations of Love announced in the title, but he tired after the first six, and the treatise remains a torso. It is no less intriguing, though, for the sweep and number of these manifestations. They encompass the full range of speculative and practical sciences, from metaphysics and natural philosophy to the septem artes liberates and the artes humaniores of poetry and history. Casoni provides a grand scheme for their classification, as may be re- constructed from his opening remarks (see table on adjoining page)."

Magia, by which the author meant, to all appearances, "wisdom or doctrine,"" divides into studies that are "scientific," on the one hand, and ((ceremonial," on the other. The scientific ones divide further into speculative and practical, the speculative into real and rational, and so on with further subdivisions, including music placed traditionally within the Quadrivium, or mathematical sciences. Practical sciences divide into active and utilitarian, with politics, ethics, and economics under the first and medicine, warfare, navigation, and agriculture under the second. Some of the practical sciences are necessary for survival, e.g., agriculture, hunting; others are mechanical arts, e.g., painting, sculpture, glass making. Of particular interest are the studies grouped under the "ceremonial sciences": they concern the secret forces of nature, as conjured or divined or utilized for the benefit of humanity.

vines, flowers, birds, streams, etc., a true "Palace of enchantments, where I am the enchanted" (il palagio de gli incanti, et io l'incantato; fol. 2v).

"The dialogue on Love as astrology, for example, was followed by "some discussion, with no little delight, by those gentlemen. Pursuing their ideas and applying them earnestly and with due respect for one another, they, with much laughter, formed various delightful arguments" (attorno la conclusions de I'amorosa Astrologia alquanto da quefli Signori discorso con non picciolo diletto, mentre ripigliando i concetti loro, et applicandoli con gravit, e honesti modi Nno a I'altro, formarono con molto riso varie, e dilettevoli contese; Della magia, fol. 3 1 v).

"See Dialogoprimo, fols. Ir-5v, esp. 3v-5r. 1 5After Zanette, who reads "magia" as a synonym for "sapienza o dottrina" (6). On

magic and music, with special emphasis on Ficino's incantations, see Walker and, more re- cently, Tomlinson, and, with relevance to England, Gouk. On magic as it connects with love, though without reference to Casoni, and as a harbinger of modern sociological and psychological sciences, see Couliano.



LOVE AS MUSIC 887

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Casoni, in his ordering, creates a world of knowledge in which rational and irrational sciences find their place within the conceptual and opera- tional relationships of an extended epistemological system. His classification falls somewhere between the conventional Aristotelian divi- sion of knowledge into theoretical, practical, and poetical and still other divisions by the Roman scholars Cassiodorus and Isidore and by the later scholastics, among them Hugh of St. Victor (in his Didascalicon, twelfth century). 16 It subsumes, further, an admixture of elements from Plato;` the Neoplatonists;1' the Corpus Hermeticum; 19 the occult theory of Agrippa von Nettesheim-" and the partly mystical, partly magical lore of the Jewish and Christian kabbalists."

To understand Casoni on love as music, one must understand him on love in general. His argument for the universality of love appears to rest on four theses. They are never presented as such, yet may be deduced from the author's exposition:

(1) Love is the oldest of all gods, the one, Casoni writes, "whom Or- pheus, Parmenides, and Hesiod called the God of humans and gods."22

"He" stands at the origin of all arts and sciences, "he" directs all persons and divinities.

(2) Love is indivisible, indeed, all persons and their activities are bound together by "his" unity.

(3) Love elevates its practitioners to wisdom.

"Aristotle, Metaphysica, E 1025b.25.121, also Nicomachean Ethics, 6.4.116-17; Cas- siodorus, Institutiones (at large). Isidore's example seems to have been particularly influential. In his Etymologiarum, Isidore divides sciences into the Triviurn (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and Quadriviurn (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy), medicine, law (divine, human), "chronology," the New and Old Testaments, "divinity," and "religion," paying obeisance, moreover, to philosophers, poets, sibyls, magicians, pagans, and heathen gods. Under De magis, he refers, as Casoni seems to have done after him, to "necromantii, hydromantii, geo- mantii, aeromantii, pyromantii, incantatores, ariosi, haruspices, auspices, augures, astrologi, genethliaci, geneses, horoscope, sortilegi, salisatores, auguria," etc. (8.9.9-35). For Hugh's work, in Latin and translation, see Bibliography.

17 For a recent study, see Osborne. 18 Principally Ficino: cf Eisenbichler and Pugliese, and Garfagnini.

19 Cf Copenhaver, 79-1 1 0. '00n Agrippa and music, see his De occultaphilosophia, esp. 3:15-35. "On the Jewish kabbalists, especially Yo*an Alemanno, see below; of the many Chris-

tian ones, Pico della Mirandola will shortly be mentioned in connection with love theory. "Della magia, fol. 5r: "Perb per dimostrarvi brevemente chi egli sia, vi dico ... clegli

il pi u" antico Dio di tutti i Dei, quello, che da Orfeo, da Parmenide, et da Esiodo detto Dio de gli huomini. et delli Dei; Onde vittorioso trionfa, non pur de mortali, ma de Numi infer- nali, maritimi, e celesti."



LOVE AS MUSIC 889

(4) The love of God permeates the entire universe and by its means all creatures attain their perfection; God, therefore, is Love. Casoni reads Love's secrets into the ancient myths. "I say that the ancient poets under the veil of fable ... concealed the lofty mystery of the way Love proceeded in teaching the heavens their sweetest harmony."23

The statement leads to music proper. Love is music, so Casoni asserts, and to illustrate the proposition he referred to myth S24 and to older and contemporary verses.2' Yet he never spelled out his basic assumptions, of which there are at least five:

(1) Regarding harmony and music as a parity, Casoni argues deductively that since Love is harmony, and harmony is music, Love, it follows, is music. Music was invented by Love then, for "harmony is concent, concent is the concord of low and high sounds, and concord was established by Love."26

(2) The result of music, when harmonious, is delight. just as Love 21 causes delight, so does music, incited by Love.

(3) Music is Love's preferred medium. "Love," Casoni observes, "adopts music as 'his' best instrument not only to spread 'his' rule among mortals but also to preserve it."28

(4) As Love, so music is everywhere, on earth, in the heavens, in the human soul. Music is order, proportion, beauty, sweetness. In contemplating a beautiful woman, Casoni declares, "you will hear a most gentle harmony resound in the ears of your souls, and, together with me, you will commend

21 Ibid., fol. 33v: "dico, che gli antichi Poeti sotto il velo della favola ... ascosero l'alto mistero del modo, che tenne Amore in insegnare a i Cieli la dolcissima loro armonia."

2'Alboinus/Rosamund (Della magia, fol. 36v), Arion (38r), Capaneus/Evadne (36v), Demetrius/Lamia (32r), Mithridates/Hypsicratea (37r), Orpheus (32v), Pan/Syrinx (33y, 340, Polyphemus/Galatea (32v), Protesilaus/Laomamia (37r), and many more.

21 Older verses: by Catullus (Della magia, fol. 39v), Athenaeus (ibid.), and Ausonius (ibid.). Contemporary verses: by Andrea dell'Anguillara (fol. 32v), Lodovico Ariosto (39v), Ridolfo Arlotti ON, Giulio Camillo (38r), Bartolomeo Carli (32r), Giuliano Goselini (39r, 39y, 400, Giovanni Guidiccioni (380, and Girolamo Parabosco QN.

26 Della magia, fol. 3 Iv: "essendo che I'armonia concento, il concento Concordia del suono grave e de I'acuto, et la Concordia instituita da Amore."

27 Speaking of the union of high and low "con reciproca, benevolentia," the author says

that without it "non pub seguire 1'effetto della Musica, cH il diletto, e perb ben disse il Fi- cino, che tra loro necessaria l'unione amorosa, della quale poi tanto ei si prevalse, che con ragione fu detta sua ingeniosa ministra; potendo egli cdl mezzo suo rendere maggiori, e piu' ardenti le fiamme nel petto de I'amante" (Della magia, fol. 31v). More will be said about Fi- cino below. On the powers of Love as a musical therapeutist, see Austern.

28 Della magia, fol. 32v: "Et non solo adopra Amore la Musica come ottimo instro- mento, per dilatare il suo imperio tra mortali, ma anco per conservarlo."




Love who, in teaching lovers what human beauty ought to be like, uncov- ered the secrets of human music."29

(5) In order to grasp the concept of Love as music one must metaphor- ize the elements of music contained in its theory. Through music theory, one "contemplates and intellectually considers musical secrets."" On consonance, for one, Casoni notes that just as it "is a uniform and gentle mixture of high and low sounds, so amorous consonance is a thoroughly sweet and gentle relationship between the lover and his beloved."" On the strings of instruments, for another, he submits, after Isidore, that "they are so called from [the strings ofl the heart. Hence the musician, in mixing swift and slow movements, secures amidst the sounds formed by the strings nothing else but Love. From this one understands that Love instituted instrumental music to secure love amidst hearts." 32

As novel as Casoni's exposition is, or seems to be, some of its ideas sound familiar. On the equivalence of music and love, to cite an example, did not Johannes Tinctoris say, in his Complexus effectuum musices (circa 1474), that "Music induces love. Hence Ovid [in his Ars amatoria, book 31 advises young women anxious to induce the love of men to learn to sing ,? 33 Yet there is a difference between music that induces love and love that inheres in music. The difference is that whereas music induces love as, hypothetically, one of a number of other things it induces, including the op- posite of love, hatred, love inheres in music as the primum mobile for its maneuvers and meanings.

'9 Ibid., fol. 36r: "e udirete risuonare nelle orecchie delle anime vostre una soavissima armonia, e meco commendarete Amore, che ne l'insegnare a gli amanti quale esser debba Mumana bellezza, scoprl i secreti de Mumana Musica."

"Ibid.: "Ma venendo al primo, membro della musica artificiale, ch'6 la Teorica, dico, che ella contempla, e intellettualmente considers i musicali secreti.'

" Ibid., fol. 36r-v: "si come la consonanza 6 una mistura del suono acuto, e grave uni- forme e soave; cosi la consonanza amorosa 6 una convenienza de l'amante, e de I'amata tutta dolce, e soave."

12 Ibid., fols. 38v-39: Nuole Isidoro, che le corde de gli instromenti siano cosl dette dal core; onde H Musico, temperando i moti veloci, e tardi, altro non procura tra i suoni formati dalle corde, che Amore; da che si comprende, chegli ha instituito la Musica, instromentale per procurare amore tra i cuori." For Isidore, see Etymologiarum 3.22.6: "Chordas autem dictas a corde, quia sicut pulsus est cordis in pectore, ita pulsus chordae in cithara. Has primus Mer- curius excogitavit, idemque prior in nervos sonum strinxit."

13 Tinctoris, 74-75: "Musica amorern allicit. Unde Ovidius puellis amorem virorum al- licere cupientibus praecipit ut cantare discant."



LOVE AS MUSIC 891

I I

However confident Casoni is in his assertion that, improving on the ancients, he innovatively conceived all sciences as demonstrative of Love's splendor and omnipotence, he adheres, in his arguments, to older traditions of thought. Of these at least three may be designated. I refer, in order, to the various bodies of writings on sacred, secular, and philosophical love. The di- vision is not as rigid as it may appear, for, in reality, sacred draws from secular love and both relate to philosophical love, witness their admixture, below, in the works of Boethius. Still, for purposes of demonstration, they will, as a didactic expedient, be treated separately.

1. Sacred love. Here I mean love in connection with theosophical doctrine. Boethius, Roman philosopher, statesman, and, with his death (in 524), martyr of the Church, laid the christological foundations for sacred love in his Conso- lation ofPhilosophy.' There he describes how the soul, through philosophy, attains knowledge of God. Love is harmony, order, concord: it exists on earth, yet exemplifies the heavens. "Love binds together people joined by a sacred bond," he writes. "Love binds sacred marriages by chaste affections; Love makes the laws which join true friends. Oh, how happy the human race would be if Love ruling the heavens also ruled your SOUIS!,,15 The author goes on to say that "if you wish to discern the laws of the high and mighty God, the high thunderer, with an unclouded mind, look up to the roof of highest heaven.""

Mutual love, we are told, controls the eternal movement of the heavenly spheres; concord rules the elements. Boethius identifies God as the initiator of this harmony: "The Creator sits on high, governing and guiding the course of things. King and lord, source and origins, law and wise judge of right.... 'He' is the common bond of Love by which all things seek to adhere to the goal of good. Only thus can things endure: drawn by love they turn again to the Cause which gave them being.""

'4For Latin, see Boethius, 1984. His specifically theological treatises are five: De trini- tate, Utrum pater etfilius et spiritus sanctus, Quomodo substantiae, Defide catholica, and Contra Eutychen et Nestorium; cf. Boethius, 1973, 2-129. On his concern with theology and philosophy, see Chadwick, also Gibson. On conceptual precedents for his Consolation of Philosophy, see Courcelle.

35 After Boethius, 1962, 41. For Latin, see Boethius, 1984, 45: "Hic sancto populos quoque / lunctos foedere continet, / Hic et coniugii sacrum / Castis nectit amoribus, / Hic fi- dis etiam sua / Dictat iura sodalibus. / 0 felix hominum genus, / Si vestros animos amor, Quo caelurn regitur, regat" (2.8.22-30).

36 Boethius, 1962, 96-97, and, for Latin, 1984, 102: "Si vis celsi iura Tonantis / Pura sol- lers cernere mente, / Aspice summi culmina caeli" (4.6.1-3).

37 Boethius, 1962, 97, and, for Latin, 1984, 103-04: "Sedet interea conditor altus / Rerum- que regens flectit habenas / Rex et dominus, fons et origo, / Lex et sapiens arbiter aequi ... Hic




Earlier, in De institutions musica, Boethius had quoted Plato on universal harmony, namely that "the soul of the universe was joined together according to musical concord" (Timaeus, 35B)." The connection between the soul of the universe and music rested on the equation of music and harmony, with all the metaphysical and cosmological meanings that harmony enfolds. Now, in the Consolation ofPhilosophy, Boethius elevates the equation to a religious tenet, defining the source of concord as Divinity.

2. Secular love. Here I refer to writings, from ancient times on, of two kinds: discourses on love and on amorous poetry. The difference between these writings and those to be designated as concerned with "philosophical love" is that the ambiance for the former is overtly temporal, or knightly, or courtly, as the case may be. Concerning discourses on love, one can trace them in a long tradition beginning with Ovid's Ars amatoria and his Reme- dia amoris, 39 where Love is conceived as sensual, extramarital, bellicose (the lover and his lady are at war with each other). It continues, in the twelfth century, with Andreas Capellanus's De amore libri tres, where, in accordance with chivalrous etiquette, Love is conceived as an art with distinct rules for its cultivation, manipulation, and intended, though usually thwarted con- summation." The tradition may be followed down to Petrarca's Trionfio dAmore, Bernbo's Gli Asolani, portions of Castiglione's K Cortegiano, 41 and of course the vast literature, in the sixteenth century, in praise of women, their beauty, and their amorous charms. Scipione Vasolo, in ardent defense of la donna, writes, in this vein, that "it is a matter of incredible substance and honor to follow Love ... To conclude, Love rules everything and its true habitation is the glorious excellence of women. ,42

What of amorous poetry? It is, needless to say, an intrinsic part of West- ern literature from the Greeks on to (and beyond) the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lyric poets, including amatory verses by Casoni in his Ode. Rather than expand on the characteristics of love poetry, and on its

est cunctis communes amor / Repetuntque boni fine teneri Quia non aliter durare queant, Nisi converso rursus amore / Refluant causae, quae dedit esse" (4.6.34-37, 44-48).

38 Boethius, 1867 (1.1.180), also 1989, 2. 31 See Bibliography. '0Cf Capellanus, 1964. On the problem of whether the treatise is to be read as an ex-

pression of erotic or spiritual love, see Cherchi. 41 Cf Petrarca, 195 1, esp. 481-578. Bembo's Gli Asolani consists of three prose dialogues

on Platonic love, dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia. For Bembo and Castiglione, see Bibliography. 42 Vasolo, 96-97: "perb cosa di incredibile sustantia, et honore seguitare Amore ... in

conclusions Amor domina ogni cosa, e la sua vera habitations la Gloriosa Ecc. [ellenzal delle Donne."



LOVE AS MUSIC 893

blatant eroticism from 1580 on, I shall refer, as relevant to the present discussion, to examples that reinforce the conception of Love as music. Thus Francesco Scaglia writes a canzone on the "music of kisses" in which the lovers converse in "musical accents," with low and high pitches, to create "sweet harmony," by way of ricercate, concenti, and the "double harmony" that resides in kisses and voci." Battista Guarini declares that "while his lovely little angel en- tices all kind souls by singing, [his] heart races and everything depends on the sound of that sweet song." Musical vocabulary abounds: "Songful," "harmony," Ccaccents cc

runs," "Slow," "fast,"Jughe, Ccrests," cctrills" (tremuli), etc. "Hence in singing and repeating the song, / 0 miracle of Love, my heart / Has become a nikhtingale / And, lest it stay with me, it spreads its wings. ,44

True to his conviction that Love is music, Casoni deployed rhetorico-musical vocabulary to amorous ends in his own poetry, to wit: "After sweet singing, / If you breathe calmly, / Acute and grave accents, / Musical sighs, / Im- itations, rhythms, and songs / Learn to repeat [what is said by] amorous SOUIS.,,41

He speaks, in another poem, of "music that, imitating / The concerts of heaven, awakens joy, love, / While, now slowlfi now quickly, / Sweetly, and gracefully it gives / Motion to strings, sounds, voices, harmony.

j,46 Untiring of musical fig-

ures, he remarks, in yet another poem, on "the song&l cmagic' / That, from a celestial muse, / Was marvelously infused into the divine human" and on "the musician, who, as cmagician" was able, / With song, to transform / Envy into wonder and tears into laughter, / And who, with powerful notes, / Within human breasts, / Calmed souls and disturbed their emotions. "4'

43 Scaglia, 27-28: "Sciogliean Musici accenti Armillo, e Delia, / E' i bass, e quasi muti, /

Ella soavemente alti, ed acuti, / Ma'l lor canto soave, / Fu un mantice dAmore, / Anzi amorosa chiave," etc. (for a total of sixty lines).

44 Guarini, fol. 67v (Madrigal 146, entitled "Gorga di cantatrice"): "Mentre vaga An-

gioletta / Ogni anima gentil cantandv alletta, / Corre il rnio core, e pende / Tutto dal suon di

quel soave canto," etc. (altogether twenty-six lines, of which the last four, quoted above, read: "Cosl cantando, e ricantando il core, / 0 miracol dAmore, / t fatto unUsignolo, / E spiega gi per non star meco il volo"). On the musical imagery of this poem, see, in detail, Ossi.

41 Casoni, Ode (I 602), p. 4 1, stanza 21 of thirty-six for "Vedi, cara mia Clori" (pp. 34- 45): "Dopo il cantar soave / Se placida respiri, / Laccento acuto, e grave, / I musici sospiri, Le fughe, i moti, i canti, / Imparano a ridir I'anime arnanti."

41 Ibid., p. 66, stanza 3 of nine for "Questa candida mano" (pp. 65-68): "Musica imita- trice / De' concerti del Ciel, gioia, amor desta, / S'avien, Aor tarda, hor presta, / Dolce, e

leggiadra dia / Moto a le corde, suon, voci, armonia." 47 Ibid., p. 58, stanza 1 of nine (pp. 58-61): "Fu canora magia, / Che da celeste Musa / In

divin'huom mirabilmente infusa," etc., then (59) stanza 3 (in Ul): "Musico mago, ei puote / Far cangiarsi al suo canto / Linvidia in maraviglia, e 'n riso il pianto, / E con possenti note / Dentro gli hurnani petti / Tranquillb l'alme, e torbidb gli affetti."




Though the madrigal had always been amoroso, still the connection between love and music seems to have intensified in what Claudio Monteverdi openly designated madrigali amoroSi4l or in the musicalization of the patently literary lettera amorosa, of which examples can be found, again, in works by Monteverdi,49as in others by his contemporaries (e.g., Sigismondo D'India, Claudio Saracini, Giovanni Valentini, and Biagio Marini).51 "Arn- orous madrigals" and "amorous letters" demonstrate a purposeful use of music in the cause of Love, or to quote Casoni: "music was rightly called 'his' clever minister: by its means Love was able to increase the flames and their burning in the lover's breast."51

I Philosophical love. Here I am referring to a long and venerable tradition of writings that, beginning with Plato's Symposium, treat the nature of love, its kinds, sources, and powers; and its benefits, intellectual and spiritual. The tradition continues and flourishes in Neoplatonic works by Marsilio Ficino, particularly his commentary on Plato's Symposium; 52 by Giovanni Pico delta Mirandola;53 by Marco Equicola;54 and, most effectively, by Leone Ebreo, in his "Dialogues on Love," written, possibly in Hebrew, around 1502, though

55 only published, as Dialoghi di amore, in 1535.

48 Monteverdi, U. 8 of his madrigals, 1638, with a declaratory preface (the "Canti amorosi," twelve in all, constitute the second part of the collection).

41 "Se i languidi miei sguardi" (Claudio Achillini), "Se pur destina e vole": Monteverdi, 1619, nos. 25, 26 (the latter a "partenza amorosa," or "amorous parting song," though when both works were reprinted in the collection Lamento dArianna, 1623, it was designated a "lettera amorosa"). See Gallico, also Fabbri, esp. 222-27.

""Torna dunque, deh torna" (Marino): D'India, no. 9; "O carta avventurosa": Sara- cini, no. 25; Wanne, o carta amorosa" (Marino): Valentini, 1622, no. 2; "Questa candida carta": Valentini, 1625, no. 1; "Le carte in cMo primier scrissi e mostrai": Marini, no. 1; and several others.

"Della magia, fol. 31v: "che con ragione fu detta sua ingeniosa ministra; potendo egli mezzo suo rendere maggiori, e pi' ardenti le fiamme nel petto de I'amante." 52 Ficino, 1561, and in vernacular (originally 1544), 1992. On Ficino and love, see Kris-

teller, 256-89; on Ficino and music, beyond Tbmlinsons book, see Bowen, 51-57. 53piCo, in his commentary on a "poem on love" by Girolamo Benivieni (see under Beni-

vieni in Bibliography). For Pico on love, see "La Filosofia dell'amore," in Garin, 1934, 209-16. 54 For Equicola, see bibliography. 55 Leone Ebreo (otherwise Yehuda Abravanel, ca. 1460-1525), 1535, also 1929 and

1937. On the original Hebrew, there is the testimony of Claudio Tolomei, 1547, fol. 9 (letter from 1547 to Marcantonio Cinuzzi): "Lassando i Grechi e Latini ... ne nostri tempi maestro Leone ha scritto quei divini suoi Dialoghi d'amore, mi par che degnamente era corso a questo segno, sl come bene egli 1'espose in lingua sua cosl netta, e puramente fusse stato tradotto in toscano. et whether in lingua sua refers to Hebrew or to Castilian, Leone's "native tongue," is uncertain. The question is discussed by Pflaum, 1926, 150-51, and by Santino Caramella



LOVE AS MUSIC 895

1 should like to dwell somewhat on Leone's treatise, for three reasons: its diffusion; its sources; and Casoni's partial, if not more substantial indebted- ness to it. The impact of the treatise, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was tremendous: it was reprinted in Italian and in translations into Latin, English, French, and Spanish twenty-five times until the end of the sixteenth century alone; it was imitated in treatises on love by Torquato Tasso and Giordano Bruno;56 Robert Burton cites it repeatedly in his Anat- om ofMilancholy;5I Spinoza derived from it his doctrine of the Intellectual Y Love of God.5' No less significantly, the treatise derived part of its contents from earlier Hebrew works, thereby adding a uniquely Hebrew dimension to the ostensibly Greco-Roman literature on philosophical love. Further- more, Casoni referred to Leone Ebreo twice59 and, while berating him for tedium, he seems to have been stimulated by Leone's ideas on love as music. Indeed, it was not Casoni who conceived the equation, but Leone.

Leone spoke of the essence of love, after Plato, as a search for the beautiful and good. Yet he goes one step further and, together with Ficino, describes the beautiful and the good as harmony, and harmony as music.60 Leone implies

in Leone, 1929, 425-27. For Leone's dialogues in their Jewish context, see Pines, 365-98; and

Lesley, 170-88 (taking off from the premise that the "dialogues" were written in Hebrew). For Hebrew literature on the "dialogues," see Dorman and Levi, and Harari.

"See Tasso's Conclusioni amorose 0 570) and La Molza (I 5 83); and Bruno's Eroicifurori 0 5 8 5). On the last, see Nelson; on the centrality of amor in the theory of the "furors" (after their fourfold description in Plato's Phaedrus edited by Ficino), Tomlinson, 170-83, and on

furorpoeticus in particular, Allen, 1984, 41-67, also 1995. For still earlier treatises on love, see those by Giuseppe Betussi 0 544), Francesco Sansovino 0 545), Tullia dAragona 0 547), and Bartolomeo Gottifredi 0 547), in Zonta. Tullia d'Aragona is especially exuberant in her

praises of Leone, to whom she refers under the pseudonym Filone, the name Leone adopted as interlocutor (together with Sophia) in his dialogues. Her own interlocutor, Benedetto Var- chi, says that of all authors who treated the subject, Leone was the best, indeed he surpassed Plato and Ficino: "Tra tutti quelli che ho letti io, cosl antichi come moderni, che abbiano scritto di Amore in qualunque lingua, a me piace piu' Filone che niuno ... mi paiono amen- due [Platone, Ficino] miracolosi: ma Filone mi contenta pi U"' (Zonta, 224).

"In all, I tabulated twelve references: Burton, 3:2, 9 (twice), 13, 14 (three times), i6, 40, 41, 336.

"As elaborated in his Ethics (ca. 1665, first published in 1677), after "I'amore intelletu- ale" in Leone's third dialogs. On the relation between the two authors' works, see Solmi, also Gentile, 96-106.

"Della magia, fols. 5r: "e specialmente appresso voi altri Sig. che da Platononici longhi discorsi havete udito, e in particolare da Leon Ebreo, che forse ne trattb con tedio"; 6v: "Io non debbo curare I'Academia (se cosl intese, che pur Leone Ebreo s'affatica di far conoscer Platone in quella parte Mosaico)."

6'Ficino speaks, for example, of the harmony that results from properly combined intervals (I 992, 50-5 1): "The makers of music turn high and low pitches, different in nature, into




that by uniting with God through "intellectual love" one who searches for wisdom performs an act of music. The vocabulary, in the treatise, revolves about the terms agreement, coordination, and harmonic adaptation. 61

It Was

from Leone that Casoni may have learned some of his own vocabulary; and from Leone, further, that he seems to have taken the idea of enhancing the ancient myths through a musical metaphorization of their content.

Here is how Leone explains the essence of the fable recounting the love of Pan for the nymph Syrinx:

Into these pipes, from the river's reeds, Syrinx was transformed and the breath (spirits) instilled pleasant sound and harmony. The intellectual breath (spirits), which moves the heavens, causes the consonant musical correspondence of those pipes. Pan made his panpipe with seven of them, which means the operations of the seven planets' wheels and their marvelous harmonic concordances. Hence they say that Pan bears the rod and panpipe on which he always plays, for nature continually makes use of the ordered mutation of the seven planets for the continuous mutations of the lower world."

In searching for another higher, allegorical sense to the fable, Leone takes off from the premise that "Pan, which in Greek means 'everything,' is the universal ordering nature of all earthly things."63

Casoni recounts the story in similar language and with a parallel structure, moving from plain myth to its chimerical elucidation:

friends through certain intervals and modes [= scales], from which the structure and sweetness of Harmony derive' (Costoro le voci acute e gravi per natura diverse, con cerd interval1i e modi, tra loro amiche fanno: onde deriva la composizione e suavit della Armonia).

6'Leone, 1535: "Correspondenza' (fol. [I]r), "unione" ([6]r, 16r, 20y, 21v), "colliga- tione" (16r), "copulatione" (20v, 23v), "congiuntione" (21v, 22v), "uniW' (21v), "perfettione" (20y, 220, "concordantie harmoniali" (39r), "consonants correspondentia musicale' (390, "ordinata, et harmoniaca correspondentia' (39r), "harmonia" (105r), "bellezza spirituals ordinativa, et unitativa' (105v), "bellezza harmonica resonante' (105v), and cognate terms.

62 Leone, 1535 (from Dialogue 2), thus: "i calami de le canne del flume, ne quali fu con- vertita siringa, ne qual' calami lo spirito genera suave suono, et harmonia, perch il spirito intellettuale, che muove i cieli, causa la sua consonants correspondentia musicale, de qual calami; Pan fece la fistula, con sette di loro, che vuol' significare la congregations de gl'Orbi de sette pianeti, et le sue mirabili concordantie harmoniali, et per questo dicono che Pan porta la vergha, et la fistula con la quale sempre suona, perch la natura di continuo si serve de I'ordinata mutations de sette Pianed, per le mutationi continue del Mondo inferiore" ( fol. 39r). On the "mythical" and "allegorical" in Leone's dialogues, see Ariani, and with particular reference to Pan, 148-50.

6'Leone, 1535: "Pan che in Greco vuol' dire tutto, la natura universals ordinatrice di tutte le cose mondane" (fol. 380.



LOVE AS MUSIC 897

The poets claim that Pan, compelled by Cupid, took fire with love for Syrinx, a most beautiful virgin, who inhabited the mountains of Arcadia, 64 and that flee-

ing from him she was transformed into marshy reeds. After taking seven of them and joining them with wax, he constructed a panpipe and, putting it in his mouth and infusing life into the reeds with his breath, he played sweetly. The

highest sense of this myth is as follows: Pan, which, in the Greek tongue, means (C everything," is the universal nature that regulates all worldly things; the same nature, once conquered by Cupid, i.e., stimulated by the desire for perfection, becomes inflamed with love for Syrinx, the beautiful virgin, who stands for the most beautiful and incorruptible heaven. That the nymph then changes into pipes capable of sound designates the heavens' tendency to harmony. Pan takes seven reeds, which signify the wheels of the seven planets; and the result of his

giving them life (spirits) with his breath (fiato) is a most agreeable sound: with nature assigning every heaven its intellectual breath, which lends it its motion, the consequence is marvelous correspondence, the sweetest musical sounds, and the most gentle celestial harmony. We are led to recognize thereupon that Love was the origin of the heavens' concordance. To make the concordance perpetual, Love saw to it that each intelligence, with insatiable affection, move the celestial wheel appropriate to it, enlivening it and striving to unite with it for eternity. 65

But there are two missing links. One is an earlier treatise by Leone Ebreo, no longer extant, in Latin, on "the harmony of the heavens," written for Pico della Mirandola in the 1490s. 66 Here Leone no doubt laid the foundations

64 Arcadia mountainous region in the Peloponnese; its inhabitants were chiefly shep- herds, among iem their god Pan.

6'Della magia, fols. 33v-34r: "Fingono i Poeti, che Pan constretto da Cupido s'accese dell'amore di Siringa vergine bellissima, habitatrice de i Monti d'Arcadia, et chella da lui fuggendo si converse in palustri canne, dellequali havendo egli preso sette calami, e congiuntoli insieme con la cera, forms la fistula, et postola a bocca, dandoli spirito co'l fiato dolcemente suonb; dellaqual favola H senso altissirno questo: Pan, che nella Greca favella significa tutto, la natura universals ordinatrice di tutte le mondane cose, laqual vinta da Cupido cis stirno- lata dal desider[i]o di perfettione, s'infiamma dell'amore di Siringa vergine bella, che il Cielo bellissirno, et incorruttibile; laqual Ninfa poi si cangia in canne atte al suono, ch la disposi- tione de i Cieli all'armonia. Prende Pan sette calami, che s'intendono le sfere delli sette Pianeti, e dandoli spirito co'l fiato, ne rissulta gratissirno suono, ch assignando la natura ad ogni Cielo il suo spirito intellettuale, che li presta il Moto, nacque la mirabile corrispondenza, i dolcissimi suoni musicali, et la soavissirna Celeste armonia; et cosl danno a conoscere, cIfAmore fu ori- gine della concordanza de' Cieli; laquale desiderando egli, che fosse perpetual operb, che ciascuna intelligenza con insatiabile affettione movesse l'orbe Celeste a lei appropriate, Vivifi- candolo, e desiderando seco, eternamente unirsi."

'For reference to the work and to Leone's relations with Pico della Mirandola, see Lusi- tanus, 78-79: "Philosophiae narnque ut obiter hoc dicam apud se librum justae magnitudinis, quem avus suus composuerat, reservaturn habebat, cui de coeli harmonia titu- lus erat, non nisi longobardicis literis inscriptus, et quem bonus ille Leo, divini Mirandulensis Pici precibus composuerat, ut ex eius prooemio elicitur, quem librum ego non semel percurri,




for his musical cosmology and one can only speculate on what must have been its Neoplatonist and Neopythagorean content. A second missing link, though one that may be materially restored, is in the writings of Yohanan Alemanno, who instructed Pico in Hebrew Kabbalah." Publishing a commentary, around 1490, on the Song of Songs, entitled Heshek shelomo, or "Solomon's Desire," Alemanno traces the operations of Love as music and of music as a superior song, which the lover craves, or to quote Alemanno:

The superior song arouses watchfidness and the desire for a kiss, which is its end. . . . Desire begins by achieving a mutual relation between things that exist, as in the relations [intervals] of music, for they lead to desire. Thus a lovely, pleasant relation [interval] produced by a musical instrument imparts to whoever has a palate the desire to savor the sweetness and pleasantness of these relations. Such a one will awaken and long for them, as a person who has a palate awakens and longs to savor the relations [intervals] of music ... and strives to have the player infuse in his or her person the player's spirit and soul, from the player's to his or her own mouth, so as to teach one the knowledge and wisdom needed to understand these same relations [between things that exist]. (fol. 167v)

Alemanno relates the story of a "beautiful and intelligent maiden" who longs for perfect love: 68

She sits in her house, within her walls, while her maiden friends tell her about humans who delight in love and about the shepherd on whom they heap unending praises. Desire burns in flames of fire within their hearts when they remember the love that arises from the glory of his beauty and his splendor. While the maiden burns for the shepherd, behold! he who knows how to play like David on all musical instruments descends from the mountain to the people as he is wont. His song grows and strengthens with him; his hands and fingers pluck the sounds of his voice on the harp and lyre in his hand. Then she heard the voice of the song beat on the walls of her heart and said to her friends who did not hear as she did: "Did you hear what my ears grasped, a particle of the good from the voice of a man who sings in songs about the passionate lover's heart? Incline your ears to his strings, for his song is loftier, more praiseworthy, and more glorious than all songs that persons sing, and it is impossible not to attribute it to anyone but the perfect of all perfect ones in wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and the whole practice of song, and He is the perfect king whom I loved." (fols. 169v-70r)

et legi, et ni mors immatura nepoti huic ita praevenisset, eum brevi in lucem mittere de- creveramus, est sane opus hoc doctissimum, in quo, bonus ille Ixo, quantum in philosophia valebat, satis indicaverat, scholastics tamen stilo inscriptum."

'On Alemanno and Kabbalah, see Idel, 1986, esp. 246-49; and, at length, Idel, 1983, esp. 191-215. On Pico and Kabbalah, see Wirszubski.

"Freely after Song of Songs 5:2-8, where the maiden relates a dream to her friends (I sleep, but my heart is awake," etc.); they ask about her beloved, and she describes him (5:9-16).



LOVE AS MUSIC 899

The perfect song lies, then, in the communion with God Almighty: the maiden is the people of Israel, the shepherd with his song awakens love for Him. "He who knows how to play like David on all musical instruments" and who "descends from the mountain" is Moses. The song he plays to the people is the Torah. It is a song of love.

How Leone Ebreo relates to Yohanan Alernanno, Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola and how Guido Casoni relates, in turn, to all four is a story still to be told. It might be mentioned, for now, that Leone Ebreo dis- closed the "higher meaning" of the Song of Songs, writing as follows:

Know that Solomon and other Mosaic theologians maintain that the world was produced in the manner of a son from Highest Beautiful as father and from Highest Knowledge, [which is] true beauty, as mother. They say that Highest Knowledge became enamored of Highest Beautiful, as a woman of a perfect male, and Highest Beautiful reciprocated her love, whence she became pregnant from the highest power of Highest Beautiful and gave birth to their son, the beautiful universe with all its parts. This, then, is the meaning behind the infatuation, as Solomon related it in his canticle, of the maid with her

69 most beautiful beloved.

In the Song of Songs, as in the commentary to it by Leone, music is a metaphor for Love and Love for music. It is clear that if we are to penetrate to the substructure of Casoni's argument, we shall have to spin our own metaphors, as below.

III In conclusion, two questions will be asked: What does music mean for Ca- soni? And, on a hypostatic level, what is the meaning behind the meaning?

1. What dves music mean for Casoni? Or more precisely, what are the basic ideas behind his exposition and

how do they relate to the understanding of music at large? The author's equation of Love and music may appear naive. Still, it

forces us, when stretched for its implications, to come to grips, as a prob- lematic, with the nature of music. Defining music is something the philosophers have struggled with, ever since Plato; it was the urge to penetrate its obscurity that sparked the cogitations of the medieval and

69Leone, 1535, fols. 128v-29r: "sai che Salamone, et gl'altri Theologi Mosaid tengono che 'I mondo sia prodotto a modo di figlio dal sommo bello come padre et da essa sornma sa-

pientia vera belleza come di madre, et dicono che la somma sapientia innamorata del sommo, bello, come fernmina del perfettissimo maschio, et il sommo bello reciprocando I'amore in lei, essa s'ingravida de la sornma potest del sommo bello, et parturisce il bello universo loro

figlio con tutte sue parti, et questa la significatione de l'innamoramento che Salamone dice ne la cantica de la sua compagna col bellissimo amato."




Renaissance music theorists, who generally tackle "quid est musica?" in the introductory portions to their treatises on music as ars and scientia.

With few exceptions, music is inveterately hailed, by the commenta- tors, for its singularity. Thus addressed, its description falls within the generic confines of the encomium." As a paean to music, Casoni's treatise is, in fact, a musical encomium, one of many in a long tradition of epideic- tic oratory on music as "harmony," construed in the variety of its applications to cosmic, human, and specifically musical phenomena." Aristides Quintilianus wrote, in the early third century, that "music extends through all matter ... and reaches through all time, adorning the soul with the beauties of harmonia" and that "the soul is a certain harmonia and harmonia exists through numbers" (1. 1.72).72 "Since harmonia in music," he continues, "is composed through the same proportions, when the similar proportions are moved the similar passions are also moved at the same time" (2.17-154). Aurelian took up the theme in the mid-ninth century, noting that "You will find that every created thing accords with every other, interrelated in wonderful harmony" (6). Perhaps its most extensive devel- opment occurs in the last nine chapters of Franchinus Gaffurius's treatise De harmonia instrumentorum musicorum O 508), where the author eulo- gazed the universal mysteries of music and their rational intellection.7'He illustrates his comments with a striking woodcut showing the "force of

70I started this report by mentioning (in the first asterized footnote) its connection with an "interdisciplinary" congress, in London, of the International Musicological Society, concerned in its thernatics with, mainly, "what is music?" Five years earlier (I 992), at its previous congress in Madrid, one with avowed "intercultural" aims (it was entitled "Mediterranean musical cultures and their ramifications"), I found myself asking the same question, though addressed it from the vantage point of the musical encomium. Cf. Harrn, 1993, and, for a cognate study, 1999. For a treatise in praise of music as against its censure by the grammari- ans, see Harr6n, 1989.

71As classified by Boethius in his De institutions musica (from a chapter on "Quid sit musicus?"): see 1867, 1.34.224-25, and 1989, 50-5 1. On "Music qua harmony," see, for its Renaissance applications, Harr6n, 1988.

72 That is, measurable pitches. Music as number is the traditional Pythagorean definition one finds in the early and later theorists' pronouncements on its "subject matter," e.g., Cas- siodorus (d. ca. 580), "Musica est discipline vel scientia, quae de numeris loquitur" (Music is a discipline or science that deals with numbers; Institutiones, 70.1209), and, as perhaps the most authoritative figure of the sixteenth century, Gioseffo Zarlino, "il Soggetto della Musica il Numero sonoro" (the subject of music is 'sonorous number'; Istitutioni, 29). On the connection between Pythagorean numbers and Neoplatonism, as a conceptual backdrop to the present study, see, for example, Celenza (and, moreover, in the section "Bibliography," 707, various items by Allen).

73 Cf. Gaffurius, 190-21 1.



LOVE AS MUSIC 901

Apollo's music moving all the muses," i.e., music streaming from the heavens through the various planets to reach earth, where the elements dwell in mutual harmony. 74

Music qua harmony is praised, by Casoni, for its powers, delights, and benefits. We learn, in answer to the question about what music meant for him, and how we ought to deal with it,

(1) that music, as prompted by Love, is almost unlimited in its connotations: they relate to musicapractica and musica speculative, to realities and mysteries, to music as music and music as ideas, to music as literature and music as wisdom;

(2) that music, to be properly understood, should be pondered for its substratum of ontological and epistemological questions: they relate to human essences, to conceptual processes, to behavioral mechanisms, to psychological motivations;

(3) that music can be considered in different ways by different persons. It provides material for the music analyst, yet also for the historian, the poet, the philosopher, the metaphysicist. Its manifestations are, as it were, no fewer than those of Love;

(4) and, finally, that music is "magic, indeed, no matter how far one pursues it for its denotations and connotations there is something unique and ineffable about it.

Music has its secrets, we are being told, and they are, as the secrets of Love, something of which we can only know a part: the rest escapes us. The desire to comprehend "the rest," or the deeper secrets, is as strong today as it was in ancient times. That is why music, as Love, is a theme "for all ages and studies." It underlies, as a "Secret" message, Casoni's discourse and ought to be weighed in any consideration of music in association with its sister disciplines. On the urge to grasp the ineffable, Casoni wrote of Love that "'he' not only opens, with learning, the most hidden secrets of this knowledge to 'his' followers and disciples, and guides them to such a beneficial and rare cognition, but also, with sweet force, rapes and snatches them in such a way that their superior power, fixed upon the infinite Object, leaves the inferior power so weak that lost, in the end, in its operations, there follows the most agreeable amorous ecstasy. ,71

74 Ibid., 20 1: "Mentis Apollineae vis has movet undique musas. " The woodcut is discussed by Seznec, 140-43, and Panofsky, 155-58.

7'Della magia, fol. 7r-v: "egli non solo apre dottamente i piu' occulti secreti di questa scientia alli seguaci, e discepoli suoi, e seco li guida a sl fruttuosa, e rara cognitions, ma con dolze forza liviolenta, e rapisce in modo, che la potenza loro superiors fisandosi [sic] ne Fin- finito Oggetto lascia cosl debile l'inferiore potenza, che persa al fine ne l'operationi sue, ne

segue la tanto gradita estasi amorosa."




2. What is the meaning behind the meaning? Taking a hard look at Casoni's disquisition on music, one might detect

two tendencies working at seeming cross purposes. One of them leads to dispersion, the other to concentration. It will be seen that as dialectical alternatives, the two are complementary.

(1) Dispersion. First impressions of Casoni's survey of "music as love" suggest a muddle of fact and fantasy. The author leaps from one story to another, from reason to surmise, from likelihood to illusion. Wanting to be clever and startling, he crams as many persons, some mythical, others historical, and as much piquant detail about the wondrous effects of music on them as can be encapsulated in the already slim frame, nineteen pages in all, of his discussion. But, in his verbal sallies, he adheres to a well-established tradition of the surprising and ingenious that has as one of its earlier repre- sentatives, for example, Domenico di Giovanni, called II Burchiello (d. 1448). Domenico's verses are described, in the title to their publication, as "full of caprices, phantasies, humors, extravagances, quirks, aberrations, fan- cies, subtleties, witticisms, and pungencies."16 The tradition, including rime piacevoli (pleasant verses) by Girolamo Ruscelli, Francesco Sansovino, An- tonfrancesco Doni, II Lasca (Antonfrancesco Grazzini), and others, 77 and rime grottesche (grotesque verses) by Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, 78 continues down to, and merges in part with, the astuzie (tricks) and argue (subtleties), the hyperboles and incongruities of the marinists and gongorists. It was abetted by the lexically luxuriant sixteenth-century Italian madrigal, which not only was generally sung to music, but often, as has already been shown, feigned whimsically, in its subject matter, to be about music itself; which leads us back in a circle to the question what is music.

How witty Casoni was, to refer to a poem already quoted, in weaving "musical sighs, imitations, rhythms, and songs along with "acute and grave accents," into his amorous verses! How witty his contemporary Ce- sare Rinaldi was in adding to the two accents a third, the "sweet" or "lovely"! "Sweet, grave, and acute," Rinaldi wrote, "these are three accents; / With them it is customary for perfect harmony / To imitate meanings and words. / I've got two of them, the acute and the grave; / The sweet one is

"I checked a later edition (I 5 97; see Bibliography). The title continues: "E piene di ca- pricci, fantasies umori, stravaganze, grilli, frenesie, ghiribizzi, argutie, motti, e sali."

77 Earlier editions were popular, hence reprinted, as, for example, the anthology Delle ?imepiacevoli (I 61 0; see Bibliography). The title continues: "Mentre hanno scritto sue inven- tioni, capriccio fantasies e ghiribizzi, non meno festevoli, che leggiadramente, libro terzo."

71 CE Lomazzo, Rime (1587), esp. "libro terzo de grotteschi," 145-2o6, and I'libro sesto de' grotteschi ... nel quale si contengono varij grilli, chimere, caprizzi, bizarrie, sotto metafore," 415-96.



LOVE AS MUSIC 903

lacking - you've got it. Oh, don't be upset / By giving it to me, Lady, as a gift: / With the grave, acute, and lovely accents, / In a purer style, / My tongue, should it happen that you give me the last one, / Will then sing ut, re, mi, fa, so4 la."" Witty, yes, but also witless. Are we to take Casoni and other anacreontic rhymesters seriously?

Through music one "repeats [what is said by] amorous souls," to "repeat," ourselves, what Casoni asserted above in a poem and, by extension, in his Della magia. He tests, though eventually wins our credence when his remarks on music are shaped, in our mind, by their ordering principle, "omnia vincit amor." In the light of his exposition, it can be reworded as omnia amor sunt (all things are Love) or omnia ex amore wiuntur (all things proceed from Love), in short, love in its multiple manifestations or, to use an appropriately Neoplatonic and kabbalistic term, emanations. It follows that the discourse tends to dissipation and fragmentation. If love is all things, then its totality disintegrates under the force of particularization into a series of minutiae and, in a reverse process, to be discussed below, its minutiae synthesize into larger aggregations, call them species, to constitute, in the end, a totality. The plurality of love is the essence of its unity.

One is reminded of Tommaso Garzoni's "universal square of all the professions in the world," in which Venice as a totality, or "universal square" today we would say "global village" - is inhabited by a throng of dissimi- larly occupied individuals, though, like Casoni's, recte Love's multiple professions, so Garzoni's divide, at root, into "Scientific" and "ceremonial "

(refer back to table). Garzoni designates one class of those who cultivate the Ccceremonial" arts "Soothsayers," among them "prophets, sibyls, seers, haruspices, augurers, . . . teachers of the spectral art that comprises monsters, omens, displays, prodigies, and such similar, prognosticators or natural presagers, teachers of oracles, sorcerers and especially those drawing lots, in- terpreters of dreams, physiognomists, metoposcopists, pyromaniacs, hydromancers, aeromancers, geomancers, chiromancers, and such similar."" The vocabulary is familiar from Della magia, as is that for another

" " Dolce, grave, et acuto; / Questi tre accenti sono; / Con essi imitar suole / La perfetta Ar- monia sensi, e parole. / N'ho due, l'acuto, e I grave; / Manca il dolce; Mai tu; deh non t'aggrave / Darmelo, Donna, in dono: / Col grave, con l'acuto, e col soave, / In pi u" purgato suono / Can- ter poi, s'awien, che tu mel dia, / UT, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, la lingua mia" (Rinaldi, pt. 2, 212). The poem was set to music by Benedetto Pallavicino in his Quinto libro, 1593, 1 1.

'O"De gli indovini in specie, doe Profeti, Sibille, Vati, Aruspid, Auspid, Auguri, . . . professori deff'Arte Speculatoria, che consiste in Monstri, Portenti, Ostenti, Prodigij, e cose tali, Pronosticanti, o Presagienti naturali, Professori di Oracoli, Sortilegi, & massime Lottatori [sic], Interpreti di sogni, Fisionomisti, Metoposcopi, Piromanti, Hidromanti, Aeromanti, Geomanti, Chiromanti, & altri simili" (Garzoni, 401-25, for inclusive treatment).




class of ceremonial practitioners, namely, the "magicians engaging in witch- craft, either beneficial or in' aken at large, furious, or necromancers conjurers, the superstitious, and witches."" Members of both classes, along with those who exercise the diverse "speculative" sciences, do in fact, not- withstanding their differences, congregate in the "square" as separate members of a collective entity (Venice).

The occupational plurality is paralleled, within music, by the multitude of its forms and styles in compositions, and its conceptions and explications in treatises, toward the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Traditional habits of thought were being undermined; novel syn- tactic and cognitive configurations began to emerge. Old and new vied for supremacy; they were subsumed as equals into a larger stylistic complex that, in theory, permitted the antics in sacred composition and the moderns in composition for the courts and the theater, though, in practice, the two were not so differentiated, rather they achieved a symbiosis or intermixed in the various genres." The traditional struggle between Platonistic and Aristotelian modes of musical structuralization and conceptualization continued apace, but was intensified by new conflicts brought on by developments in the natural sciences: ideas versus numbers, metaphors versus representations, the cosmologies and cosmogonies of metaphysics versus the exact figures and measurements of modern astronomy and physics." Said otherwise, if Ca- soni's general exposition and his musical explanations seem to dissolve into particulars, they reflect the multiplicity of orientations in the period of tran- sition from an older to a newer scientific and artistic dispensation.

The problem with multiplicity is that it inevitably leads to ambiguity. In Casoni's presentation the lines between the different species of love blur in the haze that covers its secular versus sacred definitions. Musical gestures and theoretical ideas could, likewise, be fit into one or more styles or prac- tices or be adapted to varying functions. Ambiguity thrives in a world of resemblances or similitudes. It was such a world that framed various expres- sions of secular and sacred music in the later Renaissance. Composers attempted to capture the specificity of words by compatible musical forma- tions. "Joy" implied one kind of expression as opposed to another for cc " It became customary to employ swifter rhythms, running figures, and diatonicism for joy; and slower rhythms, longer note values, and chro-

" "De Maghi Incantatori, o Benefici o Malefici, o Negromanti largamente presi, & Pre-

stigiatori, e Superstitiosi, e Strie" (ibid., 427-41, for inclusive treatment). 12 On the struggle between old and new in relation to the polemics between Artusi and

Monteverdi, and their implications for the shaping of contemporary music, see Carter, 1992, 171-94.

"See, for example, Cohen, also Gozza.



LOVE AS MUSIC 905

maticism for sorrow. But the link between the written word and its musical icon was so tenuous as to engender incertitude. If swifter rhythms, running figures, and diatonicism convey joy, they also do speed, sweetness, content- ment, sanguinity; if slower rhythms, longer note values, and chromaticism convey sorrow, they also do lassitude, melancholy, despair, hesitation.

For words to be perceived as connecting with notes one would presume an affiliation sustained by certain homologies. Yet, at every stage, the pre- sumption is challenged, if not undermined, by linguistic, here both verbal and musical, multivalence. It might be noted that Gioseffo Zarlino gave expression to the tendency to accommodate the music to the text by formulating it as a compositional directive. Not only did he advise an appropriate imitation of words, but, what has not been remarked, in his perspicacity he recognized the indeterminacy of the word-note relationship, saying that similar figures exemplify diverse affections. He exhorted the composer "to take care to accompany every word in such a way that when- ever it denotes harshness, hardness, cruelty, bitterness, and other similar affects, the music will resemble it, that is, sound somewhat hard and harsh, though not in such a way as to offend. Similarly, should any one of the words indicate weeping, sorrow, grief, sighs, tears, and other similar affects,

84 the music ought to be full of sadness" (emphasis editorial). The madrigalism, i.e., the musical idea as fashioned after the word it

simulates, thus cuts across specific words to apply to their synonyms in closer or more distant degrees of kinship: joy connects with pleasure, and, to continue the chain of associations, with delight, exultation, vivacity, an- imation, excitement, sprightliness, vitality, optimism, comfort, hope, and so forth. 'Tomlinson, after Foucault, draws a line between resemblance and representation as separate categories: the one betokens an affinity between the madrigalism and the word prompting it; the other, a musical idea that is autonomous, albeit indicative of a certain emotion or thought or state, as, say, a descending tetrachord that, by a consensual decision reached by composers, was widely utilized as an emblem of lament.5 He demonstrates the central role played by madrigalisms in Monteverdi's "Sfogava con le stelle" as against the patently representative tendencies, including a descending tetrachord, in his "Lamento della ninfa."

84 Zarlino 4.32.339: "Et debbe avertire di accompagnare in tal. maniera ogni parola, che dove ella dinoti asprezza, durezza, crudelth, amaritudine, et altre cose simili, Marmonia sia simile a lei, cio6 alquanto dura, et aspra; di maniera perb, che non offendi. Simigliantemente quando alcuna delle parole dimostrara' pianto, dolore, cordoglio, sospiri, lagrime, et altre cose simili; che Marmonia sia piena di mestitia."

85 See Tomlinson, 237-46, also Carter, 1995, 73-1 1 0; and on the descending tetrachord, Rosand.




Casoni's conceptions of love and music fall into the first category. His is a world of resemblances, not representations. The resemblances are extended, beyond music, to embrace the full range of "speculative" and Ccceremonial" sciences. Love is their progenitor, they are its embodiment. The multiplicity of disciplines is neutralized by the unity of their prime mover; the dissimilarity of their contents is reduced by Love's omnipres- ence. Hence music enters the domain of the rational only naturally to pass on, in a process of dispersion, into the domain of the OCCUlt.16 For the operations and effects of music there is a both a sensible and an arcane explanation. Music, through its vocabulary, be it consonance, harmony, or concord, emphasizes the plurality of correspondences between the words that engender it and the sounds that resemble them. A linking process is at work, the word suggesting the sound, the sound elucidating the word in different degrees of literal, allegorical, and anagogic correlation as perceived or pondered by the listener.

The search for resemblances has been an ongoing preoccupation. In his "Locked Garden" (Gan na'ul) the thirteenth-century kabbalist Abraham Abulafia took the next to last verse of Ecclesiastes (12:13) and deduced from its key words the consanguinity of word and song." "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of beings." The Hebrew for "fear" is yera and for "keep" shemor. By rearranging the letters Abulafia produced the anagram amar shir, or "'he' said a song." Speech becomes song. Linguistic wizardry, alias magic, maybe. Correspondence by resemblance, definitely.

(2) Concentration. Facing the hazard of dispersion, Casoni could rely on Love to gain control. In the story of Pan and Syrinx, so close in its profile to the version in Leone Ebreo's "Dialogues on Love," Casoni goes beyond Le- one, stressing Syrinx's transformation, by Pan, into reeds, upon which he played for his personal fulfilment. Pan functions as a substitute for Love: inflamed with passion for Syrinx, who fled from him, he dominated her sexually by making her his "instrument," i.e., not just a "pipe," but a pipe of his own, or "Panpipe." "Putting it in his mouth," he "infused life" into it, enjoying corporeal and spiritual bliss ("he played sweetly"). The consequence of playing upon the instrument is thereby "Celestial harmony."

Love controls the world through the totality of "his" operations as agent or agency, i.e., potency, instrumentality, and as actor, performing a deed, or

"Cf Ton-dinson, writing that Foucault's "description of the Renaissance episteme of resemblance, if it is nothing more, is the deepest musing I know on the conceptual premises implicated in a particular version of occult thought that arose in early modern Europe" (53).

"Example after Idel, 1987, 61-62.



LOVE AS MUSIC 907

cc act,

)) which, in its replication, becomes an enactment. The result of the act

is that whomever it affects is "acted upon," i.e., his or her behavior is modi- fied. Love, or Eros, is a surrogate figure for God, in omniscience and omnipotence. "He" is both origin and end, directing all sciences in their genesis and unfolding; "he" defines their contents and objectives, "he" ini- tiates processes of conjunction and miscegenation. Love, in a pantheistic sense, is the secret glue that holds together, as one, the diverse exhibitions of "his" powers, whether "scientific" or "ceremonial."

Translated into musical terms, Love exerts a harmonizing influence: connecting, correlating. Love functions, accordingly, as muse, music, and musician, inspiring the composer and performer, informing the content of works as written and interpreted. Love suffuses the whole creative and recre- ative process, from idea to realization.

The harmonization extends to building bridges between disciplines: music, as allegorized, incorporates the parts of the larger, sprawling system of sciences into a network of contingencies. Casoni's Della magia follows in the tradition of medieval and later summae, from Cassiodorus's Institutiones to Gregor ReiscM Margarita philosophica (1 5 03). But while they summa- rized knowledge, hierarchizing the different sciences so as, usually, to culminate in theology, Della magia has "theology," here Love, infiltrate into the sciences as the motivating force for their practice and, axiologically, their valuation. The sciences are indebted to Love for their substance and they, in turn, shape the modalities of its cognition.

The process at work is at one with the efforts deployed by the later Re- naissance literary academies: to narrow the differences between disciplines by demonstrating their conjoint means and subject matter. Learned discussion is oriented toward locating points of concurrence or convergence. Casoni's house in Venice, as has already been noted, was the meeting ground, in the 1590s, for the "finest talents"; the discussions continued, after 1630, in the Accademia degli Incogniti, of which Casoni was a founding member. It is tempting to posit a connection between the Della magia, as an early "academic" work, and the deliberations, forty years hence, of the In- cogniti. Yet speculation on their affinity would seem to be gratuitous, not only because it rests on ante-factum argumentation, but more seriously because Casoni's Della magia is an enterprise of tongue-in-cheek, part fancy and part truth, part amusing and part earnest. Moreover, its ideas are so general and so widely diffused in the love theory literature, from Plato through Ficino and on to Bruno and the rest, 88 as to invalidate, ab initio, any claim to

"As a late example (ca. 1789), now politically oriented (the lessons that governments should draw from love and music), see Meude-Monpas.




a nexus between the principle that music has the power to move the emotions and, as an exemplification of the principle, the Incogniti's commitment to that most emotive of genres, opera. Rather, for present purposes, it would seem more circumspect to underline the role played by the Incogniti, as one of any number of literary academies, in fostering interdisciplinary debate. The discussions of the academies are ordinarily not polemical, but irenical. In Casoni's Battagliepacifiche, similarly, the cavaliers do not ride to defeat, but to delight; in his Della magia, the interlocutors do not mobilize their talents to prove the superiority of one over another science, but to highlight their commonalities as a demonstration of Love. The background for Della magia is a beautiful garden, with beautiful women looking on: all is polite, peaceful, amiable. Against this background the different sciences are reviewed not for their specificity, but for their concordance with Love, as befits its nature as "Concordance."

Rather than devise an inductive method of investigation to suit the par- ticularities of the subject matter, the author of Della magia applies a single deductive measuring rod to all forms of knowledge: their affinity with Love. Searching for congruence, he rules different "sciences" by treating each as Love's avatar. His treatise acts as a buffer against the growing forces of ratio- nalistic, Aristotelian thought that, though firmly entrenched in the sixteenth century, were, under the influence of the early seventeenth-century "scientific" revolution, to reshape the lineaments of reasoned discourse. The methodology of the "new science" is geared, sometimes empirically, to the subjects under investigation. It engenders fragmentation in their survey by a more exacting definition of predicables, from their genus to their species, differences, properties, and accidents. Casoni's fragmentation was of another kind: it resided in the multiplicity of his topics and exempla; but behind them loomed the "higher" Idea, Love, to which all topics and exempla related. The author engaged in a typically syncretistic process of conciliating opposites: "Scientific" disciplines link to "ceremonial" ones; ratio links to myth. All link to magia, which is Love, which is Harmony, which is Music. Magia is a whole, the sum total of its components, yet the components, themselves, exemplify magia in their sundry interrelationships on higher and lower levels of cosmic, natural, and human activity.

Casoni's arguments for the correspondence of the parts to the whole in- volve him in feats of casuistic oversimplification. The author pares Love and individual sciences of their peculiarities to reduce them to a common de- nominator. He engages in reductive reasoning in a search for universals, of which, he submits, Love is primordial. Following through his conception of Love as Harmony, i.e., music, he arrives at the syllogism that since Love is ubiquitous, and Love is Harmony, i.e., music, it follows that Harmony, i.e.,



LOVE AS MUSIC 909

music, is ubiquitous. Music, to recapitulate, is relevant to all forms of schol- arly discourse and human behavior, "at all times and in all seasons."

Love, in Casoni's and other authors' love treatises, prompts the search for unity; its apperception is reason for delight, or, as noted, "amorous ecstasy." We already had occasion to refer to Yohanan Alemanno, who, in his writings, not only reflected ideas of Plato, Ficino, and the Hebrew kabbalists, but allotted importance to magic.'9 Referring to the unity of knowledge, he declared that "all kinds of wisdom are worthy of study, because they all support each other and are mutually connected.... Wisdom is one and inclusive."90 Casoni considered music Love's preferred "instrument." As "harmony," music signifies the unity of nature, of humans and gods, of arts and sciences. Love moves the full gamut from empyreal to earthly harmony and, in a reverse process, returns, pushing upwards, and pulling us along, to the heavens.9' While Casoni's chapter on music treats Love on a terrestrial plane, it clearly should be complemented by his chapter on Love as a metaphysician to complete the circle. Thus the Idea, be it Love, God, Harmony, or Music, is revealed, on all levels, in the plenitude of its Unity. For Casoni, it is through the occult forces of Love as music that we attain to the highest knowledge, or Wisdom.

HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

'9See Idel, 1983, esp. 131-33. He is of the opinion that it was Alemanno who influenced Giovanni Pico in conceiving Kabbalah as magic (123). On the equation of magic and Kab- balah in Pico's works, see, also, Yates, 86-1 1 0.

9'Alemanno, Sefer 'einei haeda, fol. 6v (after Lesley, 1992, 178-79). 9'Della magia, fol. 6v: "Amor ascende, e guida i suoi discepoli alla cognitions della prima

causa."




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Guido Casoni on Love as Music

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