Vanessa Agnew
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195336665
- eISBN:
- 9780199868544
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336665.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter analyzes debates about the meaning and power of music and the constitution of English culture in the latter part of the century. These debates pitted ideas about the power of music ...
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This chapter analyzes debates about the meaning and power of music and the constitution of English culture in the latter part of the century. These debates pitted ideas about the power of music against an anti-Orphic discourse that challenged what some writers saw as the hyperinflation of music's moral and social uses. The chapter centers on Burney's thwarted efforts to found a music conservatory and makes a detailed study of his opposition — in particular, John Bicknell's parody, Musical Travels thro' England, by Joel Collier, Organist (1774). In so doing, the chapter investigates the kind of cultural work performed by parody, burlesque, and other forms of symbolic inversion. It shows that rather than ushering in a new set of aesthetic values, anti-Orphic discourse used a triangulated argument in which figures like the castrato, the Polynesian, the traveler, and the music scholar were parodied. By burlesquing the outsider, composers and writers sidelined cosmopolitan, aristocratic musical culture in an effort to consolidate middle class forms of cultural production. This suggests that by the latter part of the century, Britons'fascination with foreignness was giving way to new anxieties as debates about music were folded into broader concerns about changing class relations, abolitionism, Jacobinism, and the loss of the American colonies.Less
This chapter analyzes debates about the meaning and power of music and the constitution of English culture in the latter part of the century. These debates pitted ideas about the power of music against an anti-Orphic discourse that challenged what some writers saw as the hyperinflation of music's moral and social uses. The chapter centers on Burney's thwarted efforts to found a music conservatory and makes a detailed study of his opposition — in particular, John Bicknell's parody, Musical Travels thro' England, by Joel Collier, Organist (1774). In so doing, the chapter investigates the kind of cultural work performed by parody, burlesque, and other forms of symbolic inversion. It shows that rather than ushering in a new set of aesthetic values, anti-Orphic discourse used a triangulated argument in which figures like the castrato, the Polynesian, the traveler, and the music scholar were parodied. By burlesquing the outsider, composers and writers sidelined cosmopolitan, aristocratic musical culture in an effort to consolidate middle class forms of cultural production. This suggests that by the latter part of the century, Britons'fascination with foreignness was giving way to new anxieties as debates about music were folded into broader concerns about changing class relations, abolitionism, Jacobinism, and the loss of the American colonies.
Steven Connor
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184331
- eISBN:
- 9780191674204
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184331.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The conception of power articulated, as discussed in this chapter, is interesting. The idea of the reach of the voice seems to emphasize its power to remain itself over distances that would ...
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The conception of power articulated, as discussed in this chapter, is interesting. The idea of the reach of the voice seems to emphasize its power to remain itself over distances that would ordinarily weaken or diffuse it. However, the reach of the voice is also associated with its ability to multiply itself into different forms. The ventriloquial voice is powerful both because it is able to retain its individuality and because it is able to lose it. Perhaps co-operating with this conception of the self-transformative voice is the idea of the voice of the castrato or falsetto voice, the idea, in other words, of a male voice whose power comes from its capacity to incorporate a female register; the castrato voice was never heard as ‘feminine’ or emasculated. The guides to ventriloquism which multiplied in the latter half of the 19th century similarly emphasize the qualities of strength and vigour required of the voice, along with the necessity of continuous care for the vocal organs.Less
The conception of power articulated, as discussed in this chapter, is interesting. The idea of the reach of the voice seems to emphasize its power to remain itself over distances that would ordinarily weaken or diffuse it. However, the reach of the voice is also associated with its ability to multiply itself into different forms. The ventriloquial voice is powerful both because it is able to retain its individuality and because it is able to lose it. Perhaps co-operating with this conception of the self-transformative voice is the idea of the voice of the castrato or falsetto voice, the idea, in other words, of a male voice whose power comes from its capacity to incorporate a female register; the castrato voice was never heard as ‘feminine’ or emasculated. The guides to ventriloquism which multiplied in the latter half of the 19th century similarly emphasize the qualities of strength and vigour required of the voice, along with the necessity of continuous care for the vocal organs.
Patricia Howard
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199365203
- eISBN:
- 9780199374687
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199365203.003.0014
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
The aim of this very short section is to justify the title of the book and show how Guadagni can be called a modern castrato and what characterised the new operatic age. It attempts to establish how ...
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The aim of this very short section is to justify the title of the book and show how Guadagni can be called a modern castrato and what characterised the new operatic age. It attempts to establish how Guadagni’s generation broke with the past (the ‘Farinelli generation’). It suggests how Guadagni came into contact with reform ideas and was precipitated into becoming an active player through the seminal title role in Gluck’s Orfeo. It argues that Guadagni understood the implications of the reform and capitalised on the way in which they suited his strengths and weaknesses.Less
The aim of this very short section is to justify the title of the book and show how Guadagni can be called a modern castrato and what characterised the new operatic age. It attempts to establish how Guadagni’s generation broke with the past (the ‘Farinelli generation’). It suggests how Guadagni came into contact with reform ideas and was precipitated into becoming an active player through the seminal title role in Gluck’s Orfeo. It argues that Guadagni understood the implications of the reform and capitalised on the way in which they suited his strengths and weaknesses.
Martha Feldman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520279490
- eISBN:
- 9780520962033
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520279490.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
The Castrato is the first book to explore in depth why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth century and late nineteenth century. It shows that although the practice ...
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The Castrato is the first book to explore in depth why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth century and late nineteenth century. It shows that although the practice formed the foundation of Western classical singing, it was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires—public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice, as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satires, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin, Pulcinella. Sacrifice in Italy also encompassed a logics of reproduction, involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives. Yet what lured audiences and composers, from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Gluck, Mozart, and Rossini, were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices. The phenomenon was ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality, which castrati failed to survive. But their musicality and vocality, central to this study, persisted long after their literal demise in traditions that extend to bel canto repertories and beyond.Less
The Castrato is the first book to explore in depth why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth century and late nineteenth century. It shows that although the practice formed the foundation of Western classical singing, it was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires—public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice, as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satires, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin, Pulcinella. Sacrifice in Italy also encompassed a logics of reproduction, involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives. Yet what lured audiences and composers, from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Gluck, Mozart, and Rossini, were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices. The phenomenon was ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality, which castrati failed to survive. But their musicality and vocality, central to this study, persisted long after their literal demise in traditions that extend to bel canto repertories and beyond.
Martha Feldman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520279490
- eISBN:
- 9780520962033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520279490.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Chapter 3 takes a radically material turn away from the historical questions of chapters 1 and 2 and to the musically embodied castrato voice, now vexingly lost. While acknowledging the acoustic ...
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Chapter 3 takes a radically material turn away from the historical questions of chapters 1 and 2 and to the musically embodied castrato voice, now vexingly lost. While acknowledging the acoustic problem, it shows that castrato voices can be better understood than heretofore. The chapter uses vocal production and emission to rethink the historical voice as sound, line, envelope, spectrum, frequency, and register. By amassing evidence from castrato scores, embellishments, pedagogical teachings, vocal exercises, anecdotes by fellow musicians, and heirs to castrato performance, and combining it with modern-day strobes, dissections, and MRIs, as well as acoustic analysis of the early recordings of the castrato Alessandro Moreschi and contemporaries, it shows that extraordinary castrato vocality accessed a high chest-dominant register with far-reaching musical consequences. The inferential evidence thus produced builds new methodological ramparts for musicology.Less
Chapter 3 takes a radically material turn away from the historical questions of chapters 1 and 2 and to the musically embodied castrato voice, now vexingly lost. While acknowledging the acoustic problem, it shows that castrato voices can be better understood than heretofore. The chapter uses vocal production and emission to rethink the historical voice as sound, line, envelope, spectrum, frequency, and register. By amassing evidence from castrato scores, embellishments, pedagogical teachings, vocal exercises, anecdotes by fellow musicians, and heirs to castrato performance, and combining it with modern-day strobes, dissections, and MRIs, as well as acoustic analysis of the early recordings of the castrato Alessandro Moreschi and contemporaries, it shows that extraordinary castrato vocality accessed a high chest-dominant register with far-reaching musical consequences. The inferential evidence thus produced builds new methodological ramparts for musicology.
Roger Freitas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759045
- eISBN:
- 9780804787543
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759045.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the castrato had become the overwhelming favorite to portray young, amorous men in the operatic stage. This chapter focuses on the observed effeminate ...
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By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the castrato had become the overwhelming favorite to portray young, amorous men in the operatic stage. This chapter focuses on the observed effeminate characteristics of the castrati and examines how their evident effeminacy was linked to eroticism, arguing that castrati represented a theatrical imitation, characteristically exaggerated, of an erotically charged effeminate boy on the operatic stage.Less
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the castrato had become the overwhelming favorite to portray young, amorous men in the operatic stage. This chapter focuses on the observed effeminate characteristics of the castrati and examines how their evident effeminacy was linked to eroticism, arguing that castrati represented a theatrical imitation, characteristically exaggerated, of an erotically charged effeminate boy on the operatic stage.
