Tópicos en Donizetti

8/20/2019 Tópicos en Donizetti

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RODNEY STENNING EDGECOMBE

Topoi and melodic morphology in the operas

of Donizetti

F

OR AS LONG

S

the re has been literature in the world, there have also

been gen res, the institutions by which writers separate and formalise

the many expressive purposes they have in hand. And for as long as

there have been genres, there have been topoi. These components, half

structural and half-thematic, m ediate the materials that the different genres

have evolved to embody. Sometimes topoi are all but co-extensive with the

forms that house them, as when, say, the Anacreontic ode fuses its identity

with the

carpe diem

topos it vect ors (as, incidentally, it does in Or sin i s

ballata from Lucreiia Borgia (1833)). But, more often than n ot, genres gro w

out of an aggreg ation of topo i, each relating to a specific aspect of the larger

design. For example, epics often centre on ideas of contest, contest takes

the form of battles, battles have cerem onious prelu des, and from this chain

of requisites is born the topos of the

arma capiendum

in which the epic

her o vests himself for battle. Th at co nstitutes only a small part of an epic s

compass, of c ourse , but the pattern repeats itself with regard to all the other

elements in the form. It also repeats itself from epic to epic, so that topoi

help, in a sense, to lead the reader to a proper reading of the text in hand.

So central has the

arma capiendum

prove d in shaping an epic design that it

figures in the

Iliad

th e Aeneid th e

Thebaid

and even in such mock-heroic

take-offs as Pope s

Rape of the

lock.

In a vestigial form

—

as a declaration of warlike purpose

—

th e

arma

capiendum also survives into the primo ottocento, whether it be Tebald o s È

serbata e questo acciaro in / apuleti e i Montecchi (1830) or M anrico s D i

quella pira in Iltrovatore (1853). Inde ed, we ha ve a version of its antithetical

mod e, the ab armis discendum at the very end of th e century, wh en O tello cries

Abbasso le spa de in Verdi s opera (1887). Th ereb y han gs a tale, for I would

argue that some kinds of music depend no less extensively on topoi than some

kinds of literature. Given their constitutive function in relation to genre,

and the fact that musical genres have, at certain periods, developed rigidly

prescriptive oudines, that prescriptiveness will embody itself in approved

musico-dramatic procedures - topoi - and composition will to some extent

depend on their reshuffling and re-inflection, the artists originality measured

in small incremental steps rather in bold, revolutionary strides. One such

period is the primo ottocento, and topoi abound in the

melodramme opere

semiserie an d opere

buffe

it spawned in such huge n um bers.

THE MUSICAL TIMES

Spring 2014

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68

Topoi

and

melodic morphology

in the

operas

of Doni\etti

1. Julian Budden:

Th e

operas

of

Verdi 3 vols (London,

1973—81),

vol.1,

p.2i.

2. Margaret Alexiou:

Th e

rttual lament

in Greek tradition

(Cambridge, 1974), p.99.

3.

ibid., p.99.

Plot and versification were, at this time, as predictable as the titles that

vectored them (first name; preposition; place name) so predictable, in

fact, that one wonders why Semiramide (1823) never graced the boards as

Semiramide di

abilonia

or Norma (1831)

diS

Norm a di Ga llia. I t goes without

saying, therefore, that topoi were integrally woven into these operas, topoi

that were in the first instance textual (deriving from the conventions of

the libretto), but also to a large extent musical, since text and setting were

interinvolved. As in the case of the Anacreontic ode, where defining topos

and genre are almost commutable, we have arias that are co-extensive with

their topoi, as witness the ballata from Lucreiia cited above, or the confessio

amantis which subtends the countless love duets of the period. On other

occasions, topoi comprise sub-units that have conjoined into larger ones,

whole situations rather than responses ad hoc. (I shall call these smaller

constituents topia o r little top oi , a wo rd I have coined on the lines of

bib lion , the diminutive of biblo s - bo ok .) In musicological term s, a

topos will encompass bo th the text and the m usic, since the lyric con ventions

of the primo ottocento developed in tandem with dramatic ones, themselves

a tissue of pre-established formulae. A lyric topos will therefore start as a

formulaic dramatic situation, forged from verbal formulae, for, as Julian

Budden has pointed out,

librettists were busy men and tended even more than composers to revert to their own

flxed procedures and turns of phrase. The language of Camm arano and his kind was

both stilted and mo noton ous. Bells are never bells but sacred bro nze s ; midnight is

always the hour of the dead . In a brilliant essay Luigi Dallapicola has compared these

circumlocutions to Homeric epithets, evidence of the essentially epic quality of the

Italian nineteenth-century opera .

But once a lyric topos has been identified by its dramaturgical p urpo se, w e

must tu rn to its musical constituents and see what sort of melod ic, harm onic

and rhythmical symbioses are thus brought into being. This might at first

blush seem a hopelessly mechanical kind of enterprise, but it s importan t to

put it into perspective. Th e verbal recycling that Dallapicola adm ired in the

libretti of the primo ottocento is not peculiar to Homeric epic, but extends

even into such emotive and heartfelt utterances as the threnody.

Writing about the history of Greek lament, Margaret Alexiou has ob-

served that, thanks to its techn ique, the same ideas, formulaic structures

and phrases are re-used and adapted to suit the occasion, so that in the

event of sudden calamity, the popular poet has to hand a ready-made stock

of material .^ She also remarks that these historical laments grew up by

a gradua l process of accretion and refinem ent , which, if we comp ress

the time scheme, could very well describe the sort of processes that drove

operatic composition in the primo ottocento, processes that, as in Greek

lament, d idn t necessarily entail a loss of exp ressive pow er. Lam ents and



epics can move one deeply in spite of such verbal fixtures as the ros y-

fingered da wn and win e-dark sea , partly because their fixture creates a

satisfying rhyth m of expectancy, and partly because of their inheren t bea uty

and idoneity. T he same could be said of the many lyrical topoi of the prim o

ottocento, whose tried appropriateness often prevents them from seeming

perfunctory, however often we encounter them. Here familiarity breeds

respect and affection rather than the proverbial contempt.

W

HILE the libretti were laced, like epic and threnod y, with standard

locutions and standard situations, and while the music that c lothed

them was sometime s infected by the form ularity of these

formulae in turn , that music non e the less served to ennoble and differentiate

the verbal clichés, creating an integral musico-dramatic package - a lyric

topos - as it did so. Gra nted , we have no Ho meric epithets to delight us

in the primo ottocento - only imm easurably poorer , Cam maranesque ones

but those preformulated situations and phrases of Cammarano and his

cohorts evoked formular strategies from the composers who worked with

them, and tog th r they took o n a charge and trenchanc y that can som etimes

bear comparison with the purely verbal craft of epic and lament. Instead

of impugning this music for its reliance on recipe, then, it might be more

profitable to systematise some of the ingredients, and notice the freshness

and nov elty with w hich a resourceful co mpo ser such as Do nizetti can inflect

them.

Not, of course, that Donizetti is unique in this regard. The climate

of the lyric stage at this time - a climate of conform ity so rigorou sly

enforced by the tenets of Rossinismo that even an original musical mind

like Meye rbeer s was forced into slavish imitation - ensured that any o ne

topos from the hand of Rossi or Cammarano (or even Romani) would have

exacted comparab le melodic responses from all the composers of the primo

ottocento. But while it would be impossible, in an article of this scope, to

explore this phenomenon across the board, we can throw som light on the

topic by restricting attention to Do nizetti alo ne, if only because his prolific

outp ut involved a degree of form ulaic thinkin g, and thus caused him to rely

on lyric topoi (whether conscious or not) throughout his career. And even

here, after na rrow ing o ur scope, comp rehensiveness w ill still be impo ssible,

and we shall be able to glance at only some of his many topoi, and at the

smaller units from w hich he fashioned them . A who le book cou ld be written

on the topic.

In devising a tentative classification of these topical elements, I have

had to coin new terms and phrases, if only because, as Julian Budden has

pointed out, the taxonomy of popular operatic forms has lagged behind

other bran ches of music that hav en t suffered the same kind of stigma, at

THE MUSICAL TIMES

Spring OI4

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70 Topoi and melodic morphology in the operas of Doni\etti

4.

Budden:

Operas,

vol . i ,

pp.12-13.

5. Gustave Kobbé:

T he

complete opera book

the

stories

o f

the

operas, together

with

leading airs

a nd

motives

in musical

notation (London,

1922), p.6o8.

6. William Ashbrook:

Doni ^etti a nd his operas

(Cambridge, 1982), p.257.

7. ibid., p.257.

least in academic circles: 'N ob od y has defined the forms of Italian op era in

that way, though they are no less complex. Hence the present-day student

of the period will often find himself obliged to invent his own technical

terms for the purposes of classification.' ' '

But before I proceed to a m ore fine-grained analysis of th e elements from

which top oi derive , let me first distinguish what I am attem pting h ere from

other modes of melodic analysis that have been applied to the period. I am

not, for example, so much concerned with abstract musical patterns as with

the expressive purpo ses they are m ade to serve. Tha t is the essence of a lyric

topos. Thus when Gustav Kobbé finds the key to the primo ottocento in the

dotted note, he enters the arena of melodic morphology, but in terms far

broader than those of my investigation. He distinguishes 'Italian melody,

old style' from the melodic habits of verismo, observing that the former

derives 'much of its character from the dotted note, with the necessarily

marked acceleration of the next note , as, for example, in 'Ah non g iunge '

La sonnamhula

(1831)), and fu rthe rm ore asserting th at it 'is from its

prom inence in the melodic phrase, the impe tus imparted by it, and the sharp

reiterated rhythmic beat which it usually calls for, that Italian melody of

the last century, up to about 1870, derives much of its energy, swing, and

passion'. ' There is general truth in this, even if a good deal of that 'energy,

swing, and passion' can be traced to other melodic habits than dotting, and

even if the dissolution of articular or membral melody into veristic arioso

parlante involved not so much the loss of this rhythmic motif (the opening

measures of La bohème (̂ 1897) are no thin g if no t dotte d and ener getic) as

the loss of those constituent 'members' (and of the smaller components

articuli — within them ).

Much closer to my sort of enterprise is the way in which William

Ashbrook simultaneously establishes a melodic and dramatic tournure by

looking at the way Donizetti assembles melodic cells. He points out, for

example, that ' the second period [of the Seymour/Bolena duet in Anna

Bolena (1B30)] conveys passionate intensity by re peating three times a sh ort

motivic idea, its urgency increased by the raised fourth (C sharp) and by

its syncopated rise to a more expansive phrase'.*^ One could add to that the

fact that the raised fourth, because it 'tries' repeatedly but unsuccessfully

to entrench the dominant through a leading-note chord (but with no effect

on the G major ostinato), also images a fluttering incapacity on Giovanna's

part, and furthermore observe that the nagging iteration of that semitonal

rise to D helps embody her wheedling nature. It goes without saying that

these devices take their meaning from the topos into which they have been

conscripted, and that while Ashbrook might claim that the duet in question

testifies to an effort at escaping 'from formal convention toward dramatic

truth',^ the dramatic truth of the primo ottocento is more often than not



vectored by almost inescapable forms and conventions. The

Bolena

duet

lodges, after all, in a larger topical matrix, one that, with a wry smile at my

own mock-classical pedantry - all standard literary topoi have Latin tags - 1

shall christen the contentio rivalium.

Exam ples of this topos can found in Rosm onda d Inghilterra (1834), which

includes an encounter of the hero ine and the queen, both in love with Enrico,

and Ugo come diParigi (1832), which im parts an additional complication to

the topos given the fact that Bianca and Adelia, both drawn to Ugo, are

sisters, and that the tension here stibsists in Adelia's zniema/distress over the

situation. I have named this clash of com petitors - generally for the love of

another, but occasionally, as in Maria Stuarda (1835) or the confrontation

of Enrico and Edgardo toward the end of Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), for

pow er - after a medieval genre in which two com petitors (say, a nightingale

and an ow l) pit themselves against each other. It s a situation tha t will inclu de

some or all of the following sub-phases - confession, indign ation, e ntreaty

or deprecation, and resolution (either reconciliatory or threatening). These

sub-phases are the ' topia' I mentioned above, constitutive units capable of

standing alone, but often incorporated into larger topical contexts. In the

case of the contentio rivalium, such topia have been shuffled about to reflect

the different kinds of tension implicit in each of them.

For example, different conventions seem to obtain when the contenders

are male. Here the revelatory exchange tends to be more obviously con-

frontational, and even its resolution takes a militaristic turn, as when Enrico

and Edgardo first threaten each over a glowering motivic march, and then

resolve those threats with the prom ise of v iolence sung in conjunct vocal lines

- a ma rchier march altogether Because Leon ora in Ro smonda d Inghilterra

is a mannish bully, Donize tti also rings changes on the contentio topos there.

By having her

arraign

her rival, he draws anoth er topion (the

accusatio

into

th e mbit of the

contentio.

In the process, he has to make adjustments not

only to the co ntribu tory topia but also to elements that are smaller still, and

it is here that topical analysis reveals its interface w ith m elodic mo rpholo gy.

To project the deliberative and insistent natu re of accusation, Donize tti will

sometimes fall back on a motif perhaps, or an ostinato, or an

interv llic

pattern that he finds particularly germane to the task in hand.

For example,

inLucreiia

Borgia, the friends of G enn aro arraign the heroin e

in a comm on m etre melody accompanied by groups of three quavers. This

has the effect of creating portentous pauses in the accompaniment, while,

at the same time, the three notes also take on the semblance of a gavel-like

rapp ing. Th en again, because Donize tti seems to be carving a 6 /8 Gestalt

out of a four-crotchet block, the pattern serves to poise the metre, as if in

judicial uncertainty of its re l rhythmic allegiance. No surprise, then, that

Leonora should use an identical ostinato for

her accusatio,

a few mo nths

THE MUSICAL TIMES Spring 2014 71



72 opoi and melodic morphology in the operas of Doniietti

after O rsini and com pany ha d, in similar fashion, charged Lucrezia with her

crimes. An d yet the roots of this me lom orph em e (which is what I shall

call these lyric ato ms of the topos) go back much further than D onize tti s

middle phase. As early as the second revision of Zoraida di Granata (1822,

rev. 1824), he had sensed an aptness for judicial solemnity in this sub-

parcelling of a metre, even if in Abe nam et s aria-finale - the point where he

pronounces his will for Zoraida - there are spaced groups oi four quavers.

Th ere also are four-quaver bund les in Adelia ( i 840 when Arnoldo demands

justice for his daughter from the Duke. From which we can deduce that

melomorphemes themselves occur as cognate forms and allotropes.

Different kinds of topical adjustment (at the level of melomorphemes)

can be witnessed in the further variants of the contentio rivalium. In the case

of the cxy^io-contentio from Ugo come diParigi and also the vastly different,

combative encounter between Maria and Elisabetta in Maria Stuarda one

finds different but com parable solutions to a com mon problem - that of

musically evoking an effort of will (whether for confession or entreaty),

the palpable screwing of courage to the sticking point. In the case of Ugo

the singer repeatedly has her line nudged forward by a dotted mo tif arising

from a point low down in the orchestra

—

a sort of summons to secrets

(reluctantly yielded) from the nether depths. In Maria on the other hand,

the singer has to gather her strength and com pose herself for an unw elcome

act of abasement. Like Bianca, she is reluctant to speak, but instead of using

a recurrent motif to prod the singer into responding, Donizetti repeats a

single motif u ntil it fuses and lifts off into m elodic flight - a sort of gi dd y-

u p

gesture that guarantees momen tum. Th is anaph oraic energ y , gene-

rated by the repetition of the phrase, has the effect of catapulting itself

forward by an accumulation of power: reculer pour mieux sauter (One other

striking instance can be adduced from the Maria di Rohan overture (1843)

wh ich, given its Viennese provena nce, mig ht yWi have owed som ething

to the Beetho ven Bb Pia no Sona ta op.22, the first subject of w hos e first

movement has a similar sense of revving for take-off.)

Even from this brief glance at a single topos, we can see that it is broad

and flexible enough to accommodate a variety of different inflections and

modifications, and that these depend very largely on what melomorphemes

the composer chooses for his task. The situation might be comparable, but

the protagonists are not, and the prod din g m otif that registers Bianca s

reluctance to declare an illicit love, and the self-spurring melo dy that helps

Maria conquer her revulsion for the figlia impura di Bolena have as many

differences as they have points of contact. The Stuart queen draws on the

topion of the causam agendum where innocence pleads with tyranny as so

often it does in the primo ottocento, while Bianca invokes the altogether

different topion of confessio am antis — the lover s outp ourin g to a confidante



8. Sir Charles Sherrington,

quoted in Richard Dawkins:

limbing mount improbable

(Harmondsworth,

p.294.

that survives into middle -perio d Verdi ( Tu tte le feste in Rigoletto (1851)

and Tac ea la notte in

Iltrovatore

(1853). Such weaving and counterw eaving

of independent elements give proof of the complexity of topical analysis,

recalling as it does in its m ore primitive wa y the neural danc e of the brain : a

dissolving pattern , always a meaningful pattern , but never an abiding on e; a

shifting harm ony of subpatterns .^

I

T WILL E APPARENT from this preliminary survey of a single topos and

its varian t form s, that it com prises a hiera rchy of levels, levels that m ove

down from the matrical topos to its component topia to the melodic and

rhythm ic compon ents that go into their making - the melom orphem es.

But before w e go into greater detail about those , let s adduce two further

significant topoi - from among many others - in the operas of Donizetti.

O ne that I ll call the irruptio aman tis alieni is widely used for its dramatic

potential, for here a lover braves a hostile environment to make contact with

his beloved, or, in some cases, to arraign her (at which point the

accusatio

topion comes into play). Examples can be found in Lucia di Lammermoor,

Parisina

(1833) and

Imelda de Lamberta^i

(1830). In these instances the re

is nearly always a ruminative ensemble followed by a headlong stretta,

which takes form as a quickstep or a galop. Then again, countless libretti

of the period confront us with the image/situation of the waiting lover

from Rossini s

Semiramide

( Bell rag gio ) to Ve rdi s Violetta ( Ah, forse

lui ) , thou gh in the latter instance Verdi and Piave have already m odified the

topos by making the abstraction ( amore ) , rather than the agent ( am ante ),

the subject of expe ctation. Aga in, in my peda ntic way, I shall give it a Latin

tag, the expectatio amantis.

In the first act of Lucia, Lucia is awaiting a visit from Edgardo while,

at a corresponding point of

Linda di Chamounix

(1842), the heroine waits

for Carlo. Since for both women reunion with the beloved is heaven on

earth, Cam ma rano and Rossi present him as a source of radiance - luce

a giorni miei on the one hand and luce di que st anim a . And , given

the similarity of these locutions, it is hardly surprising that they should

predispose Donizetti to think in terms of an intermittent dazzle of notes - a

dazzle that registers ideas both of rapture and

éclaircissement

The radiant

fioritura in each instance functions as a melomorpheme, the element that

supplies a com mon deno mina tor for the otherwise dissimilar arias O luce

di que st anim a and Qu an do rápita in estasi . Althoug h the first is a galop,

and the second a march with an Alberti bass, they both have a fibrillation

at the end of each m elodic me mb er - Luc ia s trills and Lind a s grup petti —

gesture s of em otional excitem ent (like a quiver in the voice ). Modifying this

excitement, however (after all, the women in question are also containing

their happiness while they anticipate it), are gestures (likewise shared) of

THE MUSICAL TIMES Spring 2OI4 73



74 opoi and melodic morphology in the operas of Donizetti

confidence and repose. This Donizetti achieves through a different kind of

musical resource, a sustained no te and shorter one which provid es resolution

of sorts - the prolonged leading-note resolving on to the submediant when

Lucia utters the word ard ore , and the flattened submediant octave leap

from a minim to a quaver when Linda invokes the idea of u nion ( un ita ).

In both there is tension: the thw arting of the F|} s pull to the to nic, and

the chromatic remoteness of the Ab, which is soon corre cted by a perfect

cadence. Donizetti heightens both this tension and its resolution by having

his melo dy linger upo n the alien or inessential note, and resolve it within

the context. I shall call this me lom orphe me the pieg a or fold, for Do nizetti

often invokes this to signify ideas of completion and certitude. Or rather

he uses it in cabalettas, the function of which is more often than not to

mark some sort of anagnorisis or, at least, the provisional resolution of a

crisis. Some cabalettas fail to do this textually but, ironically enough, still

carry melomorphemes of clarification. Imelda de Lamberta^i provides the

curious instance of a piega (here a dw elt-on ap pog giatura) in the service of

an altogether irresolute text ( Ma il Ciel non ode ).

S

o MUCH, then, for some of the many topoi to which D onizetti recurs

again and again. We need now to take a closer look at the elements

out of w hich he fashions his topia and topoi. M elom orph em es , as I

have pointed out, are musical devices - motivic elem ents, or characteristic

intervals, or particular rhyth mic inflections - that have been co nscripted to

me an as well as b e . A prolonged appoggiatura has its own dy namic of

resolution but, harnessed to a text about resolution, it acquires an extra-

mu sical, or (rath er) a para -mu sical , significance, very different from the

exigencies of a prog ramm e

.

The piega ,

a

melomorphem e often projecting

closure, might take form as an appogg iatura in man y instances, but it is not

identical with that or any other musical device. A melody whose members

are dem arcated with a fifth-tonic or fourth-tonic interval - diagram matising

cadential contou rs as they do — would serve just as aptly for the enunciation

of purpose in a standard cabaletta. A lyric topos such as the expectatio

amantis will accordingly often, but not always, combine tensile and frilly

melomorphemes - the piega and some sort of fioritura to embody the

image/situation of love expectant.

Melom orphem es can also have a distinctive rhy thm ic character as well as

characteristic intervals or types of ornament. These I shall call clausulae,

a term familiar to students of classical prose. Because this often resolves

into formal metrical units, a whole science has sprung up to assist in their

description: the science of colome try, which identifies the foot-com binations

from which those units - clau sula e - derive. For exam ple, RGM Nisbet

has remarked that C icero s rhy thm is most prono unc ed in the clausulae.



9. M. Tullius Cicero:

InL.

alpurmum Pisonem

oratio

ed. RGM Nisbet (Oxford,

1961), p.xvii.

10.

Thomas N . Habinek:

Th e colometry of Latin prose

(Berkeley, 1985), p. ii .

i.e. in the phrases which occu r at the ends of cola (the major divisions of a

sentence). Thes e clausulae tend to conform to a limited numb er of metrical

patterns. '^ An othe r classicist, Th om as Hab inek, notes, furtherm ore, tha t ' the

ancient rhetoricians were content to use the same word, kolon or membrum

to refer to either the rhythm ical or rhetorical un its ' , ' which shows how

indivisibly rh ythm ic and sem antic features interface in the clausulae.

Given the fact that music is nonverbal rhetoric, one could easily show

how melodic membra that carry specific texts often break down into

mappable compon ents or motifs . Whe n these take on a formulary contour,

we have the beginnings of 'clausular' system, though (given the manifold

relations that pitch factors into the scheme) the options are not as easily

mapped as their literary equivalents. That is why I would sooner invoke

the term 'melomorpheme ' to characterise vertical relationships across the

stave (e.g. appoggiature) as well as the lateral rhythmical pattern of the

bar, which, if they were registered in monotones,

would

sometimes bear

comparison w ith clausulae. And, of course, there is yet another comp onent

to bear in mind, viz., harmony. Diatonic harmony, after all, is extremely

formular in the way it establishes tonal identity through primary triads,

and will furthermore permit only two ways of ending a melody (from the

dom inant to the tonic or plagally, or — the favoured strategy of Rossini — th e

cast-iron staircase of I V / V / I ) , and only two kinds of cadential markers

midstream (imperfect and interrupted). In that respect, the primo ottocento

has harmo nic 'clausulae

even less negotiable than those of classical prose.

Indeed a musical theorist of the i6th century, Jean le Munerat, stressed the

primacy of musical above verbal language precisely because the curtailment

of choices issued in a m ore logical appara tus of sound s.

Since there is little room for manoeuvre in the case of cadences, which

are,

in function at least, the closest thing music has to clausulae, there is

little point in taking them into account in a study of melodic morphology.

The most complex Beethoven sonata and the most routine cavatina of the

primo ottocento will both end on the tonic, however exquisitely prolonged

its deferment. Much more interesting, because they have many more per-

mutations, are the kinds of representation implicit in the combination

of rhythm and pitch. Only four or five decades before Donizetti began

writing, associationist philosophers had investigated the way in which

expressive values attach themselves in an analogous (rather than mimetic)

way to abstract aesthetic notions like line and movement. Such semi-iconic

suggestiveness is the life-blood of melomorphemes

—

a suggestiveness not

to be confused with programme music's equivalent of mimesis. Archibald

Alison, in his Essay on the nature and principles of taste (1790), insisted that

analogies could be drawn between

THE MUSICAL TIMES

Spring 2014

75



76 opoi

and

melodic morphology

in the

operas

o

11 .

Quoted in Walter Jackson

B a t e : From classic to romantic:

premises o f taste in eighteenth-

century England {^i^á^(ji ,

r p t .

New York, 1961), p.152.

12. ib id . ,pp . i46-47 .

the Sensation of gradual Ascent, and the Em otion of Ambition,—between the Sensation of

gradual Descent, and the Emotion of Decay, — between the lively Sensation of Sunshine,

and the cheerful Emotion of Joy, - between the painful Sensation of Darkness, and the

dispiriting Em otion of Sorrow. In the same manner, there are analogies between Silence

and Tranquillity, — between the lustre of M orning, and the gaiety of H ope, - between

softness of Colou ring, and gentleness of Character, - between slenderness of Fo rm, and

delicacy of Mind."

Th is sort of co rrespon dence by analogue (as opposed to a me rely im itative

impulse) is predicated on our internal capacity to establish connections

between distinct but comparable states of mind and body, something to

which Lord Kames, a contempora ry of Alison, had also drawn attention:

We have, said Lord Kames, an inherent rather than an empathie 'sense of order and

arrangement': 'Thinking upon a body in motion, we follow its natural course. The mind

falls w ith a heavy body, descends with a river, and ascends with flame and smok e.' T hu s

with the serpentine or winding line: slow motion in gentle curves has associations of

'Volition and Ease ; in following the curvin g of the line with the eye, and hence, A rchibald

Alison seems to have implied, by a kind of joining in with its motion, w e attribute these

same associations to the line itself and we designate it beautiful."

Combining these associationist principles with Roman colometry and

with linguistic morphology, we can devise a way of systematising the

smaller elements - elements existing at a lower level of abstraction than the

topia mentioned above — that go to make up such broad lyric topoi as the

contentio rivalium or the expectatio amantis. We saw, in the latter, how the

little bursts of decoration at the end of each melodic member conveyed the

happiness momentarily escaping the control of decorum. However, there

are many other emotions that have to be reined in, but which can escape

in valvular 'releases' at the end of phrases. Verdi could give these a hard-

driven contour (as in 'Di quella pira') to create effects of irresistible energy,

while on other occasions

—

Germont 's cabaletta in

La traviata

(1852), for

example — those terminal fioriture will take on a softer turn (passing notes

as opposed to Manrico's forceful, monomaniac auxiliaries).

That is the tail end of a convention that began in a comparatively mind-

less way when Rossini wrote decorations into his melodies that he knew,

had he failed to map them, would have been superimposed by the singer.

In the hands of Donizetti, however, the flutters and flurries at the end of

each melodic member become expressive devices. One thinks, for example,

of Enrico's 'Cruda funesta smania' in act i oi Lucia di Lammermoor where

note-bunches hang on such crucial words as 'petto ' and 'sospetto ' (both

at terminal nodes of the melody) to suggest that uncontrolled emotion is

breaking into an otherwise measured tune. No less striking is Elisabetta's

aria in

Maria Stuarda

'Ah quando all 'ara ' , where languorous triplets

punctuate each period in an image of thoughtful amplification. Indeed, it

would be possible to construct a typology of the fioriture (largely defined



by Rossini) that Donizetti took over and modified more and more as he

evolved as a composer . When emotion is suffocated and volcanic, as in

the case

of

Cru da, funesta smania ,

the

decorative element takes form

as

some expansion or o ther of the gruppetto. We could call it the scoppio ,

since

it

seems always

to

burs t

out of the

containing line. Elisabetta s p hrase

ends,

on the

other han d, given the ir reflective, capsular quality, wou ld invite

some such name as i ndugio . The generic s copp io and indugio could

also be subdivided in turn. When, in Com è bello, Lucrezia gives rotary

play to all the notes of a minor third at Gioie sog na , following the pattern

with a falling sixth, and its repeat with a r ising appoggiatura (a p iega , in

other words) , the figure recalls the serial movement of a fringe in the wind,

and could thus

be

termed

the

indugio fronzolato .

In the

same opera,

the

scoppio colonises a whole aria, and, no longer a gruppetto manqué, issues

in

the

indignation

of the

he roine s f inal t irade,

as

runs both straight

and

c ambia te .

When melomorphemes are exclusively concerned with rhythm ic p attern,

they becom e musical clausulae. Le t s take

one

very obvious example

by way

of il lustration. Thro ug ho ut the operas of D onize tti, from Zoraida di ranata

at

the one

extreme

to

Maria di Rohan

at the

other ,

we

find

a

characteristic

clausula with m any different local inflections, but with

general purpose that

we could call decisive interjection . A typical example would be the mom ent

in Lucia di Lammermoor when Lucia tells Enrico that she has plighted her

troth to another ( Ad altri giurai mia fè ). Us ing the language of colometry,

we could describe this gesture as a pyrrhic-molossus (which is to say, light

syllable, light syllable / / stressed syllable, stressed, stressed), though it as

often takes form

as an

anapaest-spondee

(the

spondee com prising

one

stress

fewer than the molossus) . As a clausula it

is

by no means unique to Donizetti ,

its history extending back

as far as the

i8th century

at

least, wh ere

we

find

a prototype of sorts in the third movem ent of Vivaldi s Su mm er Con certo

{The four seasons .

There it clearly figures as a thunder motif, anticipating

to some extent the implication of astonishment (from L atin to na re , to

thu nd er ) that often seems to be intimated by its use in the pr imo ottocento.

This clausula had fur thermore become native and endued to the bolero, a

vigorous

and

emphatic dance,

and, in

Do nizetti s h ands,

can

often

be

read

as

a

segment

of

bolero rhythm without

its

down b eat, though sometimes,

in

the example irom Lucia ab ove, this beat does occur at the f irst statem ent. No

surprise, therefore, that

it

should figure

at

heated moments

of the

drama,

when passions are roused, or insights about to crystallise. Perhaps, for this

reason, we ought to christen it the figura di t uono .

In addition to tracking the dispositions of stress, colometry has also {de

facto

been concerned with the definition of the syntactic elem ents to which

the stress patt ern attaches itself. The terminology is rather vague and subject

THE MUSICAL TIMES Spring 2 14

77



78 Topoi and melodic morphology in the operas of Donizetti

to debate, but there can be no dou bting th at classical rhetoric acknow ledged

the existence of self-sufficient, free-standing syntactic elements that were at

the same time too cursory to have a clausular rhythm and fluency. Habinek

points out that when Cicero

describes the passage below s an example of speaking

incisim,

he means, in modern terms,

that while the expressions are independent sentences, they are too short to be described

as clauses:

Do mu s tibi deerat.̂ At habebas. Pecunia superabat. At egeb as.

O ne can find an analogue for this in the melodic structure of Do nizetti s

ope ras. Often he will achieve an effect of succinctness by havin g his charac-

ter utter incisim melodic fragments over a sustained tune in the orche stra,

wh ich, far from being the big guitar - the scornful description most usually

applied to his orchestral habits - wind ow s the character s inner being (the

emotional flux contained there) that only occasionally surfaces at those

moments when the voice reinforces the tune.

UT I BELIEVE it is possible (on occasion) to find even closer inte-

grations of clausula and text than the loose associations mentioned

above. Leo nore s Ich habe M ut from Fidelio (1805), for ex am ple, is

rhythm ically close to Be not afraid from M endelssohn s Elijah (1846) and

Th us saith the Lord, I am the Lo rd in the same comp oser s

St Paul

(1836)

Two of these three examples are linked by their assertions of courage, but

that is only the surface im plication of the clausula. W hat u nites all of them

is the act of assertion or the idea of assertiveness that the trochee-iamb

(stress, light syllable // light syllable, stress) has foursquare, chiastic shape

- seemingly imp regnab le and dauntless. Th e English soldiers in Don izetti s

L assedio di Calais (1836) assert their c oura ge after A urelio s escape wi th

precisely the same clausula ( Fug gi, cod ard o ) and so do the retaine rs in

an apocryphal chorus from Maria de Rudeni (1838) - Fu vista in ar m e . It

also figures, more as defiant gestu re of resilience, in the Lo di al gra n D io

chorus m Marino aliero (1835).

We have already noted the fact that Do nizetti s favoured pyr rhic -

molossus pattern owed some of its force to the bolero rhythm by which it

was nurtured, if not actually brought to birth. With this in mind it might be

wo rth pausin g to consider a typolo gy of ostinato figures, since these played

a part in the evolution of melodic formulae. We could call the standard

arpeggiated version the fruscio d acqu a , a soothing mur m ur associated

with mom ents of reassurance and consolidation, as for example in To rna m i

a dir in Don Pasquale (1843), wh ere thre e falling q uav ers fit effortlessly into

the prolonged beat of the compound metre in a way that recalls the rising

13.

Habinek Colometry -ç.2-j.

triplets inserted into the simple duple of Beeth oven s M oo nlig ht Sonata.



Donizetti also created tension by driving the rhythm through each beat of

a bar - the 'ostinato spin to' - a relentlessness evident at such mo me nts as

Lucrezia's wa rnin g that the Du ke is her fourth husband At the opposite

end of the scale is the broken kind of ostinato borrowed from Rossini's

astonishment ensembles (pre-eminently 'Fredda e immobile ' in II b rbiere

di Siviglia (1816)). The voice parts tend in these instances to be largely a

cappella and the orchestra interjects minimalist strokes after each phrase,

for all the world like an aural ellipsis sign.

Mo ving from bass to treble stave, we should also be aware that D onize tti

seems to have formulated several melodic options - too broad to fall unde r

the definition of clausulae, but distinctive nevertheless, to accord with the

stock options his libretti frequently placed before him. For example, there

is a recognisably 'dialogic' structure comprising two contrasted melodies.

Som etimes this is adversarial as when , in Rosmonda

d Inghilterra.,

Donizetti

follows a crusty first mem ber (C lifford) with a sinuous antipho n of entreaty

(Enrico ). The act I duet between Enrico and G iovanna in

Anna Bolena

is no

less oppositional, its percussive, rapp ing m otifs building u p a stepped marc h

that represents Enrico's peremptory character, which Giovanna answers in

her more sinuous, wheedling way. Equally classifiable is the explorative

melody associated with moments of uncertainty. It will tend to show a

winding, upward momentum such as we find in the duet between Enrico

and Lucia, 'Ti rimprovera tacendo' . Then there are the propulsive tunes,

not infrequently associated with a kind of melodic epiieu.xis or geminatio

the rhetorical terms for repeated words or phrases. In many cabalettas, the

me lody com prises two repeated mem bers (a Gestalt, as it we re, for dwelling

on a topic), and then a descending skein of fioriture (stylized laugh of

triumph at its clarification). The cabaletta to Anna Bolena's first act aria

offers a case in point, and a variant version can be seen in Percy's cabaletta

in the same opera, wh ere the epizeuxis (of a descending co ntou r) is followed

by an ascending colon, signifying his expectation of love to com e. For other

effects of propulsion, we could note how often a triplet gusset will follow

iterative, long-no te sentences in order to concertina in some resistant energy.

The stretta ('Vieni, vieni') in act i of Parisina illustrates th is.

Finally, we must bear in mind the importanc e of dan ce forms to the idiom

of the primo ottocento, and the way in which certain kinds of movement

create 'associationist' vehicles of feeling. In Verdi this alignment of dance

and m ood is evident in his early and m iddle periods , but the habit goes back

to the prim o ottocen to and beyond that to the Baroqu e period, as witness the

sarabande

s

use for mo me nts of grieving meditation - 'Lascia ch'io piang a'

in Handel 's Rinaldo (1711) - or the gav otte 's for light-hearted rejoicing -

'Freely I to Heav'n resign' in the same compo ser s Jephtha (1751). Donizetti

is especially fond of the Ländler for tender, inward moments - the even

THE MUSICAL TIMES

Spring 2014

79



8o Topoi an d melodic morphology in the operas o f Donizetti

distribution of its three stresses distinguishing it from the accented vigour

of such waltzes as that employed for the vaudeville-finale of Don Pasquale.

Maria Stuarda's 'O nube che Heve' provides a typical instance of the

Donizettian Ländler, its tentativeness further enhanced by its melodic sid-

ling from the dom inant. Parisina's 'Ah tu sai, ' and its matc hing m om ent

in the economy of that opera, Ugo's 'Io l 'amai, ' likewise show how the

com poser conscripts this dance for effects of gentle innoce nce. In this he was

clearly influenced b y its pasto ral charac ter, as Verdi realised wh en , follow ing

Do nizetti 's lead, he used it for 'Ai nostri mo nti' in // trov tore and 'Parigi, o

cara' inZ a traviata. The 'topical' function of the Donizettian march, waltz,

barcarole, galop and polka would likewise reward investigation.

Defending the value of genre cr it icism, Graham Hough has drawn

attention to the way in which broad taxonomical issues eventually resolve

into smaller issues of form , and how description and nome nclatu re co mbine

to form a topographical map of any one genre:

In abstraction the theory of kinds is no more than a system of classification. It is given

content and positive value by filling each of its pigeon-holes with adequate description

and adequate theory. And much has been, by collaboration, largely unplanned, of

generations of scholars and critics. Some portions of this Linnean scheme have been very

adequately filled out [...]. Other areas remain relatively empty. It is possible to feel that

the morphology of lyric poetry is still very incomplete; we have lacked until recently an

adequate theory of comedy; and prose fiction as a whole was simply left out of the old

classification.'""

Generic nomenclature necessari ly involves

a

n a m i n g

o f

kinds :

for

example ,

th e

ode , and ,

beyond that ,

the

sub-kinds

-

dirge, elegy, threnody

and

epinicion. But taxonomy o ught a lso to include a ' naming of par t s ' to swap

the telescope

for the

microscope,

and

search further into

the

const i tut ion

of these identifiable structures, classifying

the

topoi that comprise them,

the topia from which

they

der ive ,

and the

melomorphemes that const i tute

thei r 'molecular ' bedrock. H aving

fo r

many decades lacked

the

intellectual

respectability

o f

classical opera

and

W agneri an

Tonkunst, the

p r imo o t t o -

cento

has ,

until recently, suffered

a

Cinderella fate akin

to

that

of the

' p rose

fiction' which,

as

Hough po in ts

ou t ,

neo-classical genre theory failed even

to take into acco unt .

I

hop e this article

has

sketched

o u t one

possible

w ay o f

Itcn tici^m {London, i^6 ,\ reclaiming these operas from the scorn o f 'good taste ' , and of showing h o w

p.84.

complex

and

detailed their formulaic structures

can

often prov e

to be .



C o p y r i g h t o f M u s i c a l T i m e s i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f M u s i c a l T i m e s P u b l i c a t i o n s L t d . a n d i t s

c o n t e n t m a y n o t b e c o p i e d o r e m a i l e d t o m u l t i p l e s i t e s o r p o s t e d t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e

c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r ' s e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . H o w e v e r , u s e r s m a y p r i n t , d o w n l o a d , o r e m a i l

a r t i c l e s f o r i n d i v i d u a l u s e .

Tópicos en Donizetti

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