Cornetto specified in instrumental ritornello from underworld scene in Jacopo Melanis Ercole in Tebe. Such specification in this score is rare.

According to Collver and Dickey, When indicated in opera manuscripts, the cornett usually appears in a symbolic context in only one or two scenes (often associated with underworld or maritime themes). The evidence seems to agree with their statement about underworld associations, but only to a limited extent in regards to maritime themes. There are at least thirty-three scenes that specify cornett from eighteen operas in my database. My reckoning of operatic associations are as follows: the majority of scenes touch primarily on the infernal (16); dance scenes and scenes dealing with rulers are also numerous (6 for each category); pastoral scenes are next in importance (3 at least), followed by scenes of a maritime, military, or religious nature (1 each); and there were six scenes without any noticeable symbolic association.

Cornett Structures Effect on Symbolism

The cornett, borne out of the Medieval age, owes much of its symbolism to its construction and physical appearance. The physical world had no reality to medieval man except as a symbol, a shadow of the real, spiritual realm beyond, observes Edmund Bowles.60 There are at least five visual aspects of the cornetts structure that ultimately connote the underworld, or the sinister: (1) depending on the type and size of the cornett, it is more or less serpentine; (2) the leather covering of the cornett is black; (3) the leather tooling on Venetian cornetts is sometimes emblematic of death; (4) the cornetts octagonal cross-section echoes octagonal examples of Christian architecture and the symbolism of eight; and (5) the simple curve of the normal treble cornett, reminiscent of an animal horn, connects the cornett with many animal horn instruments of ancient times, many of which have rich associations with death and the underworld.

60 Edmund A. Bowles, The Role of Musical Instruments in Medieval Sacred Drama, The Musical Quarterly 45 (1957): 67.

Tenor (or bass) cornett in serpentine form (from the Musee de la musique, Paris)

The Serpentine as an Intermediary Symbol Between the Cornett and the Underworld.

John McCann, a noted cornett scholar and maker, addresses three of these aspects mentioned above. He touches on the ophidic appearance of the cornett, first:

S-shaped tenor cornett (from Muse de la musique, Paris)

Some very few [treble] cornetts, some altos and most tenors and basses are double-curved serpentine in form or are made in an S shape. . . .

Musically, the cornett has sometimes been associated with the underworld. In this regard, it is unknown if decorative form followed function. Cornetts adopted features of serpents, creatures associated with the underworld. Serpentine-shaped instruments often have a vipers head or some fanciful creature for the cornett bell. These instruments as well as the simple-curved cornetts almost always have the neck (mouthpiece end) of the instrument chip-carved on all facets (sides) in diamond patterns. These are believed to represent scales on the tail of the serpent. . . . The S-shaped larger instruments usually have no serpent-head bell but they do have the diamond carving on the neck.61

Most serpentine and S-shaped cornetts were tenor cornetts (sometimes called the lizard or lyzard), although some treble cornetts have the S-shaped curve.62 This observation, of course, excludes straight and mute cornetts, which have no curves nor (normally) any diamond pattern.

61 John McCann, Snakes, Trees and Flames: A Discussion of Venetian Curved Cornett Decorations, Historic Brass Society Journal 1 (1989): 102. 62 This S-shape enabled a better grip of the instrument. Of the 210 extant treble-sized cornetts noted in the summary table from Edward Tarrs Ein Katalog Erhaltener Zinken, in Basler Jahrbuch fr Historische Musikpraxis, ed. Peter

There are a few examples of historic cornetts with a vipers or some sort of fanciful beasts head carved into the end of the instrument.63 Some cornetts have a wavy, snake-like form, but without a head carving.64 According to the Bible, writes Rita Steblin, it was through Satan (or the Devil), in the guise of a snake, that sin came into the world, and the wages of sin is Death.65 Canto 24 in Dantes Inferno illustrates not only the serpents association with the underworld but also its regenerative power and erotic nature:

Their hands were tied Behind their backswith snakes, that thrust between Where the legs meet, entwining tail and head Into a knot in front. And look!at one Near us a serpent darted, and transfixed Him at the point where neck and shoulders join. No o or i could be made with strokes as fast As he took fire and burned and withered away, Sinking; and when his ashes came to rest Ruined on the ground, the dust spontaneously Resumed its former shape. Just so expires The Phoenix in its flames, great sages agree, To be born again every five hundred years.66

Charles-Franois Lebf, Dying Eurydice (1822), marble

Reidemeister (Winterthur, Switzerland: Amadeus Verlag, 1981), 2426, only 9 (4.3%) are S-shaped, whereas 140 (66.7%) are curved, 13 (6.2%) are straight and 48 (22.9%) are mute instruments. On the other hand, of the 45 alto and tenor instruments surveyed, 35 (77.8%) are S-shaped, 9 (20%) have a simple curve (or are of a unique form), and only 1 (2.2%) is straight. The number of diamond facets varies widely. 63 Tarr and Nicholson, Ein Katalog Erhaltener Zinken, 198, 200, 243. 64 Ibid., 244. 65 Steblin, Death as a Fiddler, 277. 66 Dante Alighieri, The Inferno of Dante; A New Verse Translation, trans. Robert Pinsky, illus. Michael Mazur (New York: The Noonday Press, 1994), 20203.

In Monteverdis Orfeo, one will remember, it is a serpent that strikes the heel of Euridice:

In un fiorito prato Con laltre sue compagne Giva cagliendo fiori Per farne una ghirlanda a le sue chiome, Quandangue insidioso, Chera fra lerbe ascoso, Le punse un pi con velenoso dente.67

The catalyst for the death and rebirth process in the legend of Orpheus is the serpent. The snake-like appearance of many cornetts, therefore, connects the cornett with the allegorical associations of the serpent known during the Renaissance, including the underworld, and the Orphic death/rebirth cycle.

Cornett Leather Coverings and their Chthonic Associations. Charles Gouse states that most references to the generic term cornett are made with respect to the curved model (cornetto curvo). . . . Because of the traditional black leather covering, the curved cornett was sometimes identified as a schwarzer Zink or cornetto nero (black cornett).68 The great majority of extant cornetts are, indeed, covered in black leather (there is a significant, though small, number with brown-dyed leather). Straight, mute and ivory cornetts generally do not have leather coverings (there was no practical reason to cover a cornett that had no seams). The straight cornett was often referred to as a white or yellow cornett in order to differentiate it from its black, leather-covered cousins.69

McCann writes that the color of the leather used to cover and bind the instrument together, black, is reminiscent of the underworld.70 Although intuitive and not documented, McCanns statement here is borne out in others writings on the symbolism of the color black.

John Harvey in Men in Black writes, Black is rich and has many meanings, but still its most widespread and fundamental value lies in its association with darkness and night, and with the ancient natural imagery that connects night with death.71 Although positive connections to blackness exist, the negative associations, such as evil, death, disease, witchcraft, misfortune, and war, are more dominant. Harvey reminds us of the Furies, dressed in black (according to Aeschylus), and of Satan, shown in paintings dressed in black since at least the fourteenth century. The princely class of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often wore black as a token symbol of self-abnegation to deflect the resentment that wealth could provoke.72

67 In a flowery meadow, with her other companions, she was wandering, gathering flowers to make of them a garland for her tresses, when a treacherous snake that was lurking in the grass bit her in the foot with its venomous fangs. Text and translation from Claudio Monteverdi, Alessandro Striggio, jr., and Lionel Salter, trans., LOrfeo: Favola in Musica, Archiv Produktion 419 2502, 1987. Booklet to sound recording, 8488. 68 Gouse, The Cornett, 1011. 69 Ibid., 12. 70 McCann, Snakes, Trees and Flames: A Discussion of Venetian Curved Cornett Decorations, 102. 71 John Harvey, Men in Black (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1995), 41. 72 Ibid., 43 and 64.

In his article The Plague, Melancholy and the Devil, Franois Azouvi discusses how in the Renaissance the pigment of black was thought to be achieved through three alchemic methods: fire, reduction, and putrefication. He then explores how these processes contribute to various symbolic associations of black. Some of the associations he notes are that Satan is invariably pictured as black,73 that black bile represents the melancholic temperament, and that black is the color of the plague with such phrases as black plague, black and dry tongue, blackish lips, black nails, and Black Death. 74

Cornett covered in black leather, tooled with cypress images (reproduction by John McCann)

In addition to being black, cornett leather coverings display tooled impressions, which functionally help integrate the leather to the linen binding underneath. Much of this tooling, such as the linear rings around the instrument, is merely functional, but some designs, using bookbinders blind stamps, are more decorative, revealing symbolic meaning and cultural influences. The predominant symbol on Venetian cornetts is the conifer-shaped tree mark, and McCann postulates that this mark represents cupressus sempervirens, or the Mediterranean cypress.75 According to McCann, the Mediterranean cypress is found in Italian cemeteries, its branches are used in mourning ceremonies, and it has connotations of eternity dating back to ancient Roman times.76 In addition to this symbol, Venetian cornetts also display spade and flaming bush designs. McCann opines that the spade is merely a simplification of the conifer-shaped mark, but offers no explanation of the flaming bush mark.

In more ornate cornetts, McCann also finds arabesques and squiggles. The squiggles are thought to represent the flaming sword of Islam. Both the arabesques and squiggles are believed to be

73 Franois Azouvi, The Plague, Melancholy and the Devil, Diogenes 108 (Winter 1979): 116. Satans blackness comes from the burning of hell (or, as an optional interpretation, from the diabolic coldness of the Prince of Hell). Azouvi discusses how black bile was viewed as the reduction of yellow bile. Bodily putrefication (to the point of turning black) is symptomatic of The (Black) Plague. 74 Azouvi, The Plague, Melancholy and the Devil, 114, 117. 75 McCann, Snakes, Trees and Flames: A Discussion of Venetian Curved Cornett Decorations, 104. 76 Ibid.

an indication of Arab influence on Venetian culture, harking back to Venices role as a powerful trading center between Europe and the Levant.77

In conclusion, the external color and decorations found on most cornetts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reinforce a symbology of death, the nefarious, and the exotic.

Octagonal Profile. Most curved and S-shaped cornetts have an octagonal cross-section. This is no accidental element of construction, nor is it a convenience for the performers grip. In all probability, the octagonal profile became a standard feature because there was a significant symbolic connection between the role of the cornett and the octagon. To the Medieval and ancient mind, the number eight and the octagonal shape figure prominently in the concept of death, rebirth, and eternity. Firstly, the number eight has its own symbolism which relates to the death and rebirth cycle. Secondly, Christian architecture up to the time of Monteverdi articulated the number eight in several types of structures, especially ones devoted to baptism.

Symbolism of the Number Eight. There are traditional associations with the number eight that help us to understand more about the symbolism implied by the cornetts octagonal profile. Vincent Hopper, in his book, Medieval Number Symbolism, surveys several different philosophical views of the number eight. In astrological thought, the eighth Heaventhe one beyond 7 is the goal of the soul: that is, eternal bliss.78 Hopper notes that the Hebrews saw the sanctity in the number eight as being the number after seven. It is the day of circumcision. For this reason the temple is sanctified in 8 days.79 Hopper recalls that future glory was viewed as the eighth age by Clement, Victorinus, and Basil. Moreover, Augustine resolves the problem of whether seven or eight is the real symbolic number of Final Glory: since there was no evening of the seventh day (of creation), then the eighth day, therefore, represents a return to the original

77 Ibid., 105. 78 Vincent Foster Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources, Meaning, and Influence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), 18. 79 Ibid., 25.

life. 80 Because creation is bound to the number seven (seven days in a week), then eight represents Immortality, or Unity (in other words, the first day of the second week). In Purgatory, man must efface the seven peccata. At last, the earthly man reaches the number eight, or the symbol of baptism.81 Dante, of course, fuels this symbolism with his eighth step of Purgatory and in eight figures of the Rose. According to Dante, the eighth age is the age of Final Redemption.82 The number eight points to a symbolism of cyclical completionan ending of the old order and a beginning of the new. Thus, we see the essence of the death and rebirth cycle once again expressed in the structure of the cornett.

The Octagon in Christian Architecture. The church was the most important venue for the cornett, and the coincidence of its octagonal profile with various octagonal structures in the exterior and interior of churches is significant for our study of cornett symbolism. It permits us to incorporate symbolic meaning inherent in these structures into the symbology of the cornett.

Lateran Baptistery or San Giovanni in Fonte in Verona (floor plan clearly showing octagonal profile dating back to the 4th century)

Romanesque baptismal font in San Giovanni (Verona)

80 Ibid., 77. 81 Ibid., 154. 82 Ibid., 19899.

The number eight has long been a symbol of the life in Christ and this number, therefore, is of great importance in relation to octagonal shapes in church architecture, such as baptismal fonts, baptisteries, and other structures. This octagonal trend in church architecture was not just a short-lived phenomenon: its symbolic shape appeared in numerous Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance churches. While Arnold Whittick, in his Symbols, prefers a functional explanation for octagonal structures in Gothic architecture, he nevertheless provides some background information on the symbolism of early octagonal designs in his entry for Octagon:

It has been thought that the early Christian octagonal baptisteries and the octagonal font which, after the Romanesque or normal circular font, became in the Gothic Decorated and Perpendicular periods the commonest form, were due to this symbolism of eight, as baptism would signify a new creation by admission into the Church of Christ. But this explanation is decidedly improbable, as the octagonal form was almost certainly due to reasons of structure and design, for the octagonal shape appears very largely in early Christian and Gothic architecture in a variety of features such as domes, pulpits, and columns. It is also a common form in Gothic churchyard crosses, remains of which are plentiful.83

In Venice, the most important cornett center of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the musicians of St. Marks performed often in the octagonal platform, known as the pulpitum magnum, or sometimes called the bigonzo (literally, the tub).84

The most famous octagonal edifice from the Renaissance was the cathedral in Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. The design of the cathedral had been decided upon in 1375 as an oblong area with four immense bays between the faade and the sanctuary, an octagonal space surmounted by a great drum with a dome on top.85 In 1418 a competition for the design and engineering of the dome was won by Filippo Brunelleschi. The design probably draws upon ancient Roman examples, such as the Domus Aurea, or Golden House of Nero, which was octagonal, and certainly the Pantheon, which was a circular dome built over a structure featuring eight pillars.86 Indeed, the Pantheon and Brunelleschis Dome, viewed as octagons with a rounded structure as a finishing touch, are a reverse-metaphor for the construction of the cornett, which was essentially a round instrument re-worked into an octagonal shape.

The place in the Christian church where the souls new life in Christ begins, the baptismal font, is symbolically linked to death in two ways: (1) the baptized soul dies to his sins and is born again to Christ; and (2) Roman architectural structures such as funerary monuments were often converted into baptismal fonts. According to Johan van Parys, circular, hexagonal and octagonal baptismal fonts seem to have been favored in Italy and France.87 Van Parys further explains the connection between the octagonal font and the theology behind baptism:

In Christian numerology, the number eight refers to the eighth day, the day after the Sabbath, the day of the resurrection. Jewish traditionby which early Christians livedmeasured the week to image the creation story, beginning with Sunday, the first working day, and ending with the

83 Arnold Whittick, Symbols, Signs and Their Meaning (London: Leonard Hill [Books] Limited, 1906), 229. 84 Iain Fenlon, St Marks Before Willaert, Early Music 21 (November 1993): 555. 85 Paul Johnson, The Renaissance: A Short History (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 91. 86 Ross King, Brunelleschis Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture (New York: Walker & Company, 2000), 27. 87 Johan M. J. van Parys, A Place for Baptism: New Trends in Baptismal Architecture Since the Second Vatican Council (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1988), 27.

Sabbath, the seventh day, the day of rest. Christs resurrection occurred on the day after the Sabbath and so did his appearances after the resurrection. This is why the early church gathered on Sunday, a working day, to remember these events in celebration and to await the time when the Lord would again appear in their midst. This days festive character was countercultural, a day beyond the known measure, beyond time, ushering in a new age.

A font shaped after the number eight, to call to mind the resurrection, bespeaks a theology which stresses the fact that the elect not only die with Christ in the waters of baptism, but that as they rise out of the waters of baptism they are also given the promise that one day they will rise with him to eternal life on the eighth daythe first day of the new creationthe beginning of the eschaton.88

Thus the ritual of baptism is both a symbolic death and rebirth. The octagonal shape of the Romanesque baptismal fonts transfers to the cornett, with its octagonal profile, an association of death and rebirth.

The cornetts curved shape evokes animal horns

Curved Cornetts Shape. Gouse states, In the course of development, the [curved] cornett retained the crescent shape of the natural animal horn.89 McCann also notes that the curved appearance of the cornett reflects its descent from hunting horns and fingerhole horns fashioned from cow and similar-shaped horns.90 As a musical instrument, the cornetts ancestors surely were the various animal horns used as instruments in the Medieval and earlier periods. Gouse writes, The etymology of the word cornett is rooted in the Latin cornu which has an Indo-European base (ker-,) meaning the upper part of the body, head, horn, top, or summit, from whence the Latin cerebrum (brain) also comes. The suffix et indicates the diminutive, so that

88 Ibid., 240. 89 Gouse, The Cornett, 7. This statement is significant in terms of the history of the cornetts symbolism. 90 McCann, Snakes, Trees and Flames: A Discussion of Venetian Curved Cornett Decorations, 101.

cornet(t) is then a small horn or trumpet.91 Gouse speculates, It seems likely that the cornetts earliest ancestor was the natural animal horn; at first in its original state as wrenched from the beast to which it was attached and later improved by the addition of holes, pierced in the body, which allowed for a wider variety of tones.92

The Cornetts Instrumental Ancestors

Many themes of cornett symbology are, in part, really the by-products of the cornetts heritage of, and similarity to, certain historic lip-blown instruments of antiquity. Several factors, such as the method of tone production, direct lineage of function, appearance, etymology, musical substitutions, usage in contemporary theoretical writings and selection for translations of ancient texts, lead one to conclude that there might be an ancestral relationship between an ancient instrument and the cornett. If there is sufficient evidence of an ancestral relationship, or if a connection was drawn in the 1600s, then the older instruments symbology arguably becomes, or adds to, that of the cornett.

In order to connect the symbolism of these ancient instrumental ancestors to the cornett in a meaningful way, we first must be convinced that the cornett is symbolically substituting for the other instrument. Then we must determine the symbolic provenance of this other instrument. In our present discussion of the cornett in Orfeo, we are hoping to find precursors on the themes of death, the death and rebirth cycle, the underworld, and, in general, the nefarious.

Ritual horn, Mbuti pygmy people, Central Africa, 19th C.

Because we primarily seek antecedents that look like the curved cornett, we will look at historic instruments of two physical constructions: instruments made directly out of animal horns (and tusks), and instruments made to look and play like animal horns, but which have been improved by some technological method. Theodore Reik posits:

91 Gouse, The Cornett, 2. 92 Ibid., 34.

The horn as an old and consecrated instrument is found as and among the Greeks, and as lituus and buccina among the Romans. The hypothesis is supported by numerous facts that these instruments have all evolved from a simple horn of an animal, and have been perfected by technical improvements and the use of bronze, silver and gold. The primitive blow-horn, the progenitor of all these improved types, was gradually superseded by them, and remains only in the form of the shofar and the signal horn of primitive peoples.93

Oliphant, Southern Italy, 1000-1100 A.D., of Islamic African workmanship

In general, technologically improved instruments are a later development in history, but animal horns and improved horns (or trumpets) have coexisted for thousands of years. The oliphant, made of both ivory and metal, and various types of fingehole horns all coexisted in the Medieval period. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in addition to the wooden cornett, there was the ivory cornett, the exact descendant of the oliphant with finger holes.94 Even today, the shofar is still used in Jewish rituals. This coexistence of instruments born of different times enabled the late-Medieval and Renaissance thinker to see the similarity between an ancient instrumentsuch as the shofar, the oliphant, or the fingerhole hornand the cornett, especially since there were other contributing factors, like similar tone production, shape, and social functions.

The Shofar

Gouse introduces the assumption that the shofar was an ancestor of the cornett: The shofar may well be the most famous of the cornetts predecessors. This ancient Jewish ceremonial instrument is still used in its original form to celebrate the new year (Rosh Hoshanah). It produces only two

93 Theodor Reik, The Shofar, in Ritual: Four Psychoanalytic Studies (New York: Grove Press, 1946), 229. 94 There are nineteen extant ivory cornetts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This represents 6.1% of all 311 extant cornetts. All but one (a descant instrument at 42.5 cms. in the Muse Instrumental du Conservatoire National Suprieur de Musique in Paris) are treble instruments, from 55 to 58 cms. in length. Information from Fontana, Ivory Cornetti, 36.

tones, a fundamental and a fifth above. In its most authentic form, the shofar has no separate mouthpiece.95

Gouses hypothesis that the cornett is a predecessor to the cornett is supported by the general physical shape, etymological evidence, translations of biblical texts in Hebrew to later languages, and the musical assignment of the cornett in pieces where the text refers to the shofar.

Shofar

The shofar is made by softening a rams horn through heat in order to form a straight body with an upturned or twisted hooked bell, according to Jeremy Montagu.96 The symbology of the shofar, which impacts that of the cornett, is infered by its functional uses. There are ten occasions for playing the shofar, according to Erwin Goodenough: (1) every day during the month of Elul; (2) to announce a new moon; (3) to arouse people to repentance on fast days; (4) to announce an excommunication; (5) to proclaim a new rabbinic decision (halachic decision); (6) at funerals; (7) to call to rest for the Sabbath; (8) on Rosh-Hoshanah; (9) on Yom Kippur; and (10) to remember the Akedah, or the binding of Isaac by Abraham.97

There were other occasions to play the shofar in the ancient history of the Hebrews. The shofar announced the coronation of a king. The shofar was a signalling instrument to warn of the enemy, to frighten the enemy, to warn of a flood, if a boat was sinking, or when drought or famine threatened.

The Shofars Etymological Connections to Goat and Ram Horns. In his article, The Shofar and its Symbolism, Malcolm Miller postulates that the word shofar derives from the Assyrian word sapparu, meaning mountain goat.98 Erwin Goodenough also connects the shofar with the goat. He writes, In Jewish ritual the straight horn of the wild goat was at one time used interchangeably with the curved horn of the ram, but by Greco-Roman times the goats horn was

95 Gouse, The Cornett, 4. 96 Jeremy Montagu, Shofar, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: MacMillan Publishers Limited, 1980). 97 Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, The Problem of Method, vol. 4 of Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953), 16768, 188. 98 Malcolm Miller, The Shofar and Its Symbolism, Historic Brass Society Journal 14 (2002): 85.

generally superseded by the rams horn.99 This etymological connection to goat is significant in that the cornett also may show some association to goat in the French language.

Officially, the Trsor de la Langue Franaise ascribes the etymology of the French word for cornett, cornet bouquin, to the Latin word bucca (mouth). 100 The basic idea with this etymology is that the cornet bouquin is a horn with a (little) mouthpiece, or a horn played by the mouth, but the Trsor admits that this etymology is not definitive. Nevertheless, one idea that is not offered seems plausible and intriguing to the idea that the cornett is a descendent from animal horns. Under the second heading for bouquin, the Trsor indicates that it refers to an old male goat (or rabbit).101 Thus, the etymological meaning of cornet bouquin could be an old goats horn. Gouse echoes this idea, but without any documentation, when he writes, The French cornet bouquin refers to a small instrument in the shape of a horn that may be, in fact, made from a goats horn.102

Death Symbolism of the Shofar. Of all the animal horn predecessors to the cornett, it is arguably the shofar that primarily ties the cornett to the theme of death. The shofar also became strongly connected with the Akedah, which is the story of the binding and near sacrifice of Isaac. The shofar specifically recalls the ram, with its horns caught in the bushes, as a substitute for Isaac. Erwin Goodenough declares, Akedah and shofar were interchangeable symbols. . . . The original story suggests a legend artificially formed to rebuke and put an end to the practice of sacrificing the first-born son. But in the material we have reviewed, sacrifice is made once for all, with universal validitya basic idea so powerful that it became the dominant explanation of the death of Jesus.103

Reik describes the shofar in the context of a theoretical totemistic cult forerunner to Judaism.104 In this prehistoric time, the shofar was a visual and audible way of assuming the identity of the totem god, which was the bull or the ram: the sudden resounding tone of the shofar . . . calls to mind the bellowing of a bull at the slaughter, and . . . is the voice of the totemistic father-substitute. . . . The peculiarly fearsome, groaning, blaring and long-sustained tone of the shofar becomes intelligible in that it revives the memory of the bellowing of a bull; it derives its serious significance from the fact that, in the unconscious mental life of the listeners, it represents the anxiety and last death-struggle of the father-god.105

99 Goodenough, The Problem of Method, 167. 100 Bouquin(3), in Trsor de la Langue Franaise: Dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe sicle (17891960) (Paris: ditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975). 101 Bouquin(2), in Trsor de la Langue Franaise: Dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe sicle (17891960) (Paris: ditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975). 102 Gouse, The Cornett, 2. 103 Goodenough, The Problem of Method, 19091. Goodenough examines the Christian-era development of the Akedah theme as it assumes the concept of vicarious sacrifice found in the Christian faith. 104 Reik bases many of his arguments on Freuds Totem und Tabu, which describes the primitive sacrifice as the son killing and devouring the father. This ritual later substituted a totem animal for the father. 105 Reik, The Shofar, 259. Reik explains, a technical advance, besides other factors unknown to us, must have led to the horn, which was originally worn on the head, being used as an instrument for blowing by the believers; but in this way also it helps the imitation of the totemistic god, namely, by imitating his voice. . . . The concept of God goes hand in hand with this evolution in those who believe in him: Jahve no longer roars, he blows the rams horn, as at a similar stage Triton, Heimdall and Brahma received a wind instrument. (Ibid., 257.) In order to broker the contradiction between the use of a rams horn and the idea of a primitive Jewish bull-cult, Reik posits the following scenario: It is . . . quite probable . . . that the ram was the totemistic deity of the Jews in the epoch preceding the domestication of sheep. . . . Nevertheless the testimonies of the Jewish cult of the bull are so numerous and

Reik also examines the shofars historically recorded connection with death:

Our conception of the original significance of the shofar ceremonial facilitates our understanding of its rle in excommunication, in cases of death, and in the idea of the Day of Judgement. It everywhere represents the presence of God; it is He who terrifies the excommunicated with His voice and intensifies the effect of the curses in the synagogue by the threat of death; its call, as it were, shows the uttered curses fulfilled in advance. It is clearly shown in the episode in I Samuel xv. 8 that the purpose of the excommunication was the killing of animal and man in honour of Jahve. The sound of the shofar at death proclaims that the deceased has now expiated his guilt, that is, his participation in the great transgression of which he had made himself guilty through unconscious rebellious tendencies against God; and the last trump on the Day of Judgement is the terrible warning against the old sin renewed in each individual.106

Montagu also notes that it is a reasonable assumption that the calls blown today were part of the military signal code of Joshuas army. . . . It was used for signalling and, as loud instruments are in most religions, to keep away demons and evil spirits.107

In addition to its connection with death, the shofar is also associated with the death and rebirth cycle, due to its role in announcing the new year, being played at the coronation of a new king, and being played at the new moon. In each of these functions, the shofar pinpoints the death of the old order and the birth of the new.

Mantua Haggadah (1560). Illustration of the return of the Messiah at the gates of Jerusalem heralded by the shofar played by Elijah. The Jewish ghetto at Mantua was an important enclave of Judaism. The composer Salamone Rossi, a Mantuan Jew knowledgeable to the biblical traditions of the shofar, would have had significant contact with Monteverdi.

convincing that the assumption . . . is justified that the Jews had worshipped the bull before their immigration. (Ibid., 264.) 106 Reik, The Shofar, 27071. Significant to our discussion of the significance of the black color of curved cornetts, Reik mentions several references to a special black rams horn that was usually used for the great excommunication, the Herem of the Bible. (Ibid., 232.) 107 Montagu, Shofar.

The Shofar in the Bible. In the original Hebrew Old Testament canon, the term shofar occurs sixty-three times in about thirty-three passages. Vernacular translations of these passages help to indicate that the shofar is an ancestor to the cornett. In addition, the Hebrew words chezozorah (silver trumpet) and qeren (animal horn) warrant consideration, because the original meaning and symbolism of the shofar is entangled with these terms. Further confusion ensues from the various anachronistic instruments, which are used to translate the shofar in the Vulgate, the King James Version and Luthers German translation, all versions that had an impact on seventeenth-century thinkers and musicians. For instance, the Vulgate translates shofar as bucina or, less frequently, as tuba, whereas Qeren is translated as cornu.108 Luthers German translation of the Bible almost always translates shofar as posaune (trombone).109 The King James Version of the Bible translates shofar as either trumpet or cornet and qeren as horn or cornet. Thus, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe intermingled the shofars ancient and rich symbolism, by means of biblical translation, with the three ancient Roman brass instruments (tuba, bucina, and cornu), the trombone, and the cornett, as is seen in table 9.110

Table 9. Shofar, Chezozorah, Qeren References in the Old Testament with Comparative Translations in the Vulgate, the LXX (Psalms only), Luthers German Bible and the King James Version

108 It strikes me as more than coincidental that the Indo-European base, , meaning horn, head (according to ker-1, Appendix I: Indo-European Roots, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., 2000.), is phonetically close to the Hebrew word qeren. Perhaps there was some degree of lingual sharing between the Palestinian Hebrews and the Indo-Europeans. It is puzzling why the lituus, another Roman instrument that was curved much like the shofar, wasnt used to translate the word shofar in the Vulgate. 109 There are, for instance, three sacred vocal pieces, specifying the cornett, by Heinrich Schtz, which set verses referent to the shofar. Alleluia, Lobet den Herren in seinem Heiligthumb (SWV 38, from 1619), based on Luthers translation of the Bible, also makes use of trombones in addition to cornetts. In this case, it is doubtful that the specified cornetts are substituting for the posaune, when actual trombones are also playing. The other two pieces, both from Symphoniae Sacrae (1629), are based on the Latin translation. Interestingly, neither Buccinate (SWV 275) nor Jubilate Deo (SWV 276), make use of the trombone. 110 Information for table 9 from Nota Bene for Windows: Lingua Workstation Version 7.0b, Biblical Texts Download (New York: Nota Bene Associates, Inc., 2003).

Jean Fouquet (fl. 1470-1475), The Battle of Jericho (from Joshua 6:1-27). Notice that trumpets are

depicted, as opposed to shofars.

The Cornett as a Substitute for the Shofar in Musical Settings. Don L. Smithers argues in his paper, From Showphar to Cornetto: The Forgotten Sacred Lineage, presented at the Historic Brass Society Cornetto Symposium at Oxford University, that the cornett is a surrogate for the shofar, when used in music with text from the Old Testament where the shofar is mentioned.111 Because of the difficulty in examining every Old Testament citation in order to verify this theory, table 10 compares only the Psalm settings in which the shofar is mentioned to compositions specifying the cornett.112 Thirty-five Latin and German cornett-specific works were found, although no English works were found.113 No cornett-specific compositions were found for one of the Psalm verses which contain the word shofar (Ps. 47:5). Psalm 81:3 is represented

by four compositions, Psalm 98:6 is represented by ten, and Psalm 150:3 by twenty-one.

111 Don L. Smithers, From Showphar to Cornetto: The Forgotten Sacred Lineage, Paper presented at the Historic Brass Society Cornetto Symposium The Sound of the Cornetto, April 2628, 2000, Oxford, England. Smithers did not cite specific examples. 112 See table 6 in the Appendix. 113 In Collver and Dickeys Catalog, there are only three English sacred works that specify the cornett, but none with texted vocal parts. Englands protectionist music printing climate greatly reduced the amount of works specifying cornett that have come down to us. This is not to say that English composers did not use cornetts in ways similar to their Italian and German counterparts.

Title page, LEsaltazione della croce

Another interesting musical example which supports the link between the Renaissance cornett and the shofar in at least five of the eighteen intermedio numbers by Luca Bati for a sacra rappresentazione by Giovanni Maria Cecchi, titled Lesaltazione della croce. This Florentine production concluded the 1589 wedding festivities for Ferdinand I and Christine of Lorraine. These intermedii depict various historical Jewish themes, such as Jacob, Israelites giving thanks, princes of the Hebrew tribes, and the priests together with all the Israelites. The mute cornett is specified in all of these intermedii, and, in addition, straight cornetts with detachable mouthpieces are also specified for the last of these examples (sung by all the priests and Israelites).114

In the preceding sections, we have seen that the shofar is arguably an ancestral instrument of the Renaissance cornett, based upon the instruments typology, etymological conjunctions, importance to sacred music, biblical translations, and musical settings for cornett in which the shofar is mentioned. Thus, we can point to the symbolism of the cornettthe associations with death, the death and rebirth cycle, the coronation of a king, military engagements, and evil (excommunication)as the inherited symbolism of the shofar. Furthermore, it is my hypothesis that the shofar played for the new moon because the crescent shape of an animal horn looks akin to a crescent moon. This visual connection to the crescent moon also applies to the cornett and transfers to the cornett the functional role of time teller (many cornett players were tower musicians, whose duty it was to demark the hours of the day to the town) and the symbology of the night (most cornett leather coverings were black).

Crescent moon visually similar to animal horns (and the cornett) 114 Examples found in Brown, 16th-Century Instrumentation, 13235. The use of two different types of cornetts raises the question as to whether they represent the shofar on the one hand and the hatsotsrah on the other.

The Cornetts Ancestors in the Classical and Medieval Eras

Roman mosaic showing musicians playing during gladiator games. Instruments are the tuba, the cornu, and the water organ

In ancient Rome, there were five lip-blown instruments. In addition to the three we have seen in table 9 that have a connection to the Vulgate (the tuba, bucina, and cornu), there were also the lituus and the classicum.115 The tuba was the Roman equivalent to the Greek (salpinx). Typically, the tuba was long and straight, and functioned primarily as did all of the Roman lip-blown instruments, as a military instrument. Specifically, the tuba signalled troop evolutions. The cornu was a large G-shaped circular instrument that marked the movement of the standards and accompan[ied] the general.116 The lituus was shaped like an augurs staff (J-shaped), had a higher pitch than the tuba, and was used in the cavalry.117 The bucina (or buccina, with two Cs) and the classicum may or may not have been distinct from the musical instruments described above. The bucina, variously known as a cavalry or naval instrument, or as an instrument for calling out the watch hours in a military camp at night, was probably a curved instrument.118 The classicum called the people to assembly (the classes).119

These instruments have a connection with the basic animal horn, though usually modified by some technological improvement. Ziolkowski, in his article The Roman Bucina, cites many relevant examples: The term cornu has two meanings: an animal horn and a metal instrument (usually bronze).120 [The horn] which [comes] from wild oxen, joined with silver, [and] produces a sound controlled by the skill and force of the breath of the player is called the cornu. 121 [The

115 John Ziolkowski, The Roman Bucina: A Distinct Musical Instrument?, Historic Brass Society Journal 14 (2002): 31. 116 Ziolkowski, Bucina, 36. 117 Ibid., 3738. 118 Ibid., 5253. 119 Ibid., 41. 120 Ibid., 36. 121 Vegetius, Epitoma Rei Militaris (3.5); quoted in Ziolkowski, Bucina, 46.

lituus] may have been invented by attaching an animal cornu to the end of a reed stem to provide a bell and then this pattern was reproduced in bronze. 122 And, Our survey of Latin literature demonstrates that the term bucina was commonly used to refer to a curved bronze or natural horn instrument.123 These Roman instruments are thus linked to their animal horn prototypes. In general, the Romans took the shape of the ancient animal horn and remade it with newer, more durable material.

There seems to have been more emphasis on the purpose of the Roman instrument than on its physical characteristics, and this may be the reason for so much confusion over the names of the instruments, especially in regards to the bucina. In addition to the aeneatores (military brass players) and the classici (those who played the classicum), there were the siticines (those who played at funerals). Siticenes had there own kind of tuba, different from others.124 When death was imminent, Romans were jokingly advised to send for the trumpet players.125 Thus, instruments derived from animal horns were seen to have a connection to death.

The cornett assumed the symbology of these Roman instruments, because it was used as a substitute for them both in literature and musical sources. In translating ancient non-biblical Latin poems, for example, the Roman instrumental term was set aside in favor of an instrument contemporary with the intended reader. In the passage from Senecas Troades that follows, Sherburne translates the Latin term cornu as cornet, thereby transferring to the cornett the cornus symbolism in this passage. Note, in addition to the cathartic dancing, an ironic connection to death:

And when exciting Notes shrill Cornets sound, In Phrygian Temples dance an antick round. A Death than Death it self more sad, for thee Remains; and Trojan Walls shall something see More woful yet than Hector draggd.126

There were at least three pieces from the seventeenth century with the word buccinate in the title that specified the cornett.127 Some compositions also pointed to the cornett as a substitute for the tuba. Christoff Strauss wrote a Missa concertata ad modum Tubarum, 11 Voc: certata cum Symphonia 5. Inst. and a Missa Veni sponsa Christi, 13 voc.: Cum Tympnais ac 5. Tubis campestribus & Symphonia, 7. Instr. atque una Tuba sola, partim pleno partim concertato Choro ut in singulis partibus signatum, both of which specified the cornett. Underscoring our discussion of the cornett as a symbol of death, Johann Joseph Fux and Leopold I both composed Dies Irae

122 Ziolkowski, Bucina, 37. 123 Ibid., 47. 124 Ibid., 43. 125 Ibid. 126 Edward Sherburne, trans., Troades, originally published as The Tragedies of L. Annus Seneca: The Philosopher. Medea, Phdra and Hippolytus, and Troades, or the Royal Captives. Translated into English verse with Annotations. To which is Prefixed the Life and Death of Seneca the Philosopher, with a Vindication of the said Tragedies to Him, as their Proper Author. By Sir Edward Sherburne in London by S. Smith and B. Walford [etc.] in 1701, English Verse Drama Full-Text Database (Cambridge, England: Chadwyck-Healey, 1994), 3.3.8690. 127 There is an anonymous Buccinate geminate with four cornetts (or possibly descant cornetts) as possible substitutes for four trumpets; Marco Giuseppe Peranda wrote Buccinate. Concerto ad Festum Michaelis 13 et 18 with a pair of descant cornetts; Heinrich Schtz wrote a Buccinate. . . (1. pars) (SWV 275) with one or two cornetts (the second a substitute for trumpet). Information from Collver and Dickey, A Catalog, 80, 144, 168.

sequences with cornetts (Fux specified mute cornetts).128 In these sequences, as well as in the Strauss pieces, the cornett was the symbolic substitute for the tuba.

Sculpture of angel playing fingerhole horn, Bamberg Cathedral, around 1235

Turning our attention to the Medieval era, we see that the ancestors to the cornett were the oliphant, some types of Byzantine horns, and the subsequent fingerhole-horn, because they exhibited physical, functional and accoustical characteristics very similar the cornett.129 Fingerhole-horns were the direct ancestor to the cornett, differing only in that they had fewer holes than the cornett. They were made of ivory, horn or wood.130 Dietrich Hakelberg identified a fingerhole-horn looking very much like the later cornett: Obvious fingerhole-horns, very long and curved, appear in the hands of angel sculptures on Bamberg cathedral, dating from about 1235.131 The fingerhole-horns

immediate ancestor was, in turn, the oliphant, a simple animal blow horn without holes, usually made of ivory. Although the oliphants niche had more to do with land ownership and military signalling, a few clear symbolical references germane to the death theme emerge. Frederick Crane refers to oliphants being buried with their owners.132 Alfred Bchler, in his article on lip-blown instruments in the Chanson de Roland, summarizes relevant passages in the text, and, among these, the defeat and death of Roland is marked by the playing of the oliphan:

As Roland for the last time feebly sounds the olifan (22), sixty thousand graisles go into action (23), a musical climax that also marks a turning point: it is now the Saracens turn to hear the sound of an approaching army (24-26). When Charlemagne reaches Roncevaux, he finds Roland and his companions dead, and the olifan, too, has been damaged. . . . As to the olifan, with a new pagan army approaching, Charlemagne orders two barons to carry Rolands sword and horn (35). Thus resurrected, the olifan now moves from its location with the rearguard to the van of the army, a visible and audible palladium.133

Thus, we see again an ancestral instrument of the cornett associated with themes of death and the cycle of death and renewed life.

128 Information from Collver and Dickey, A Catalog, 177, 108, 133. 129 As mentioned in Alfred Bchler, Horns and Trumpets in Byzantium: Images and Texts, Historic Brass Society Journal 12 (2000): 2728. 130 The Medieval ivory fingerhole-horn is so similar in appearance to the ivory cornett of the Renaissance, that direct instrumental ancestry is undeniable. 131 Hakelberg, Medieval Instrument, 189. 132 Frederick Crane, Extant Medieval Musical Instruments: A Provisional Catalogue by Types (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1972), 48. 133 Alfred Bchler, Olifan, Graisles, Buisines and Taburs: The Music of War and the Structure and Dating of the Oxford Roland, Olifant 17 (1993): 15960. Numbers in parentheses refer to references in an appendix to this article.

The Death of Roland at the battle of Roncevaux, from an illuminated manuscript, c. 1455-1460

Three musicians playing the tibia, cymbala and tympanum (mosaic from Pompeii)

Tibia. To conclude our examination of ancestral instruments of the cornett, we turn our attention back to the classical era and the most famous wind instrument of that time, the tibia. Considered a loud instrument, the tibia had two pipes, one of which was curved.134 It is easy, based on the cornetts classification as a lip-reed instrument, to overlook instruments, like the tibia, with

134 Horace (Satire 1.6.42ff.) and Juvenal (Satire 10.213) suggest that they produced some of the loudest sounds in ancient society. From Ziolkowski, Bucina, 43.

different accoustical properties as ancestors. Their ancestry is based only on visual and functional factors, rather than their means of tone production. Today we tend to see a taxonomy of instruments based on how they actually produce sound, whereas in the Renaissance and in ages prior to the Renaissance, it was possible to group instruments together based on other factors, one of which was volume. For instance, the ancients may have taxonomically grouped the tuba and lituus together with the tibia, as John Ziolkowski speculates.135 Incidentally, Tibiae were also associated with death: some of the siticines were the tibicines, who accompanied the singers of lamentations (neniae) near the [funeral] bier.136 Ziolkowski includes a figure of a relief from Amiternum, which shows Pompa funebris with two praeficae, two cornicines, liticen, four tibicines, pollinctor, feretrum et dissignator. 137

Funeral Procession with musicians, including four tibia players (relief sculpture from Amiternum)

Because the cornett was also considered a loud instrument, and perhaps because it was curved, it came to be considered a descendent of the tibia. In Edmund Bowles article on The Role of Musical Instruments in Medieval Sacred Drama, sources indicate that loud instruments played during infernal scenes, whereas stringed instruments were associated with the figure of Christ.138 Collver and Dickey confirm that, during its golden era, the cornett was used primarily as a loud, or alta, ensemble instrument in both secular and sacred music.139 This loudness was the primary reason to associate the cornett of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the tibia of ancient Rome.

For Monteverdi, too, the cornett was a substitute for the tibia. In 1616, he received from Alessandro Striggio the Younger what he thought was an opera libretto by Scipione Agnelli. Entitled Le Nozze di Tetide, the production was intended to provide entertainment for the coming marriage of Ferdinando and Caterina de Medici. It turned out to be not an opera, but a proposed intermedio. Unfortunately, it was never performed, and no music for it survives. Nevertheless, Monteverdis response as to the suitability of this libretto in a letter to Striggio dated December 9th of that year reveals a few of Monteverdis general aesthetic tendencies as well as some

135 The tuba and lituus were brass counterparts of the reed instrument known as the Phrygian aulos or double tibiae . . . in which one pipe was straight and the other curved. From Ziolkowski, Bucina, 40. 136 Ziolkowski, Bucina, 43. 137 From Fleischhauer, Etrurien und Rom, plate 25; reprinted in Ziolkowski, Bucina, 42. 138 Bowles, Musical Instruments, 76. 139 Collver and Dickey, A Catalog, 3.

specific notions Monteverdi had about scoring for the cornett. Monteverdi first speaks of the acoustics of the stage and the necessity for many continuo instruments and a loud singer:

I shall say first of all in general that music wishes to be mistress of the air, not only of the water; I mean (in my terminology) that the ensembles described in that fable are all low-pitched and near to the earth, an enormous drawback to beautiful harmony since the continuo instruments will be placed among the bigger creatures at the back of the setdifficult for everyone to hear, and difficult to perform within the set.

And so I leave the decision about this matter to your most refined and most intelligent taste, because of that defect you will need three theorbos instead of one, and you would want three harps instead of one, and so on and so forth: and instead of a delicate singing voice you would have a forced one.140

Denis Stevens explains that In a . . . practical frame of mind, Monteverdi criticized the fact that many of those soliloquies would have to take place in parts of the stage where lutes and harps would not sound well, even if there were three of each. For the composer of Monteverdis time, each stage had its heaven, air, and earth, and instrumentalists as well as singers had to be ready to perform at whatever point the play might dictate.141 Monteverdi then goes on to explain his opinion on orchestrating this work:

Processional float featuring a maritime theme with bass trombone and two cornetts

Besides this, in my opinion, the proper imitation of the words should be dependent upon wind instruments rather than upon strings and delicate instruments, for I think that the music of the Tritons and the other sea-gods should be assigned to trombones and cornetti, not to citterns or harpsichords and harps, since the action (being maritime) properly takes place outside the city; and Plato teaches us that the cithara should be in the city, and the tibia in the countryso either the delicate will be unsuitable, or the suitable not delicate.142

That Monteverdi thought of the cornett as a loud instrument, better suited to playing outside, is evident. Regarding our discussion of the cornetts role in Orfeo, the cornett for Monteverdi was an effective instrument in certain dramatic situations (scenes based in the country, on the sea, or

140 Claudio Monteverdi, The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, trans. Denis Stevens (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 116. 141 Ibid., 115. 142 Ibid., 11617. Monteverdi quotes from Platos Republic, I: cithara debet esse in civitate, et tibia in agris.

wherever loud music is needed). This role for the cornett was in part based upon its symbologic descent from the tibia.

The intensive examination and imitation of the classic world was, of course, a predominant trait of the Renaissance culture, both scholastic and humanistic. This trait extended to musical instruments. As a classical instrument, the lyre represented human rationality and the highest emotions. The lyre was not only Orpheuss instrument, but also the instrument of Apollo, from whom Orpheus derived his divinity and musical ability. String instruments in the Renaissance and Baroque, including the violin, were symbolic descendents of the lyre. One never sees a wind instrument in the hands of Apollo or Orpheus. Indeed, one never sees St. Cecilia or King David play a wind instrument, either. Diametrically opposed to the lyre, the cornett owed its classical symbolic lineage to a completely different instrument. To the classically oriented Renaissance mind, and, more importantly, to Monteverdis mind, the cornett was one of the spiritual descendents of the tibia.

Young satyr playing the tibia in a procession of Bacchus

In the myth of Apollo and Marsyas, a story often repeated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, the tibia, or aulos, was invented by Athena, but she threw it away because in order to play it she had to puff out her cheeks and disfigure her face. Marsyas, a satyr, found it and played so enchantingly upon it that he dared to challenge Apollo to a contest. The god won, of course, and punished Marsyas by flaying him.143 This myth reflects the nationalistic perceptions of the ancient Greeks: The lyre was perceived as essentially a Greek instrument, whereas the aulos was thought to have originated in Asia Minor, according to Edith Wyss.144

The young Alcibiades spurned the ignoble and illiberal aulos, because it robs its master of voice and speech.145 Aristotle similarly disapproved of the immoral aulos except for the purpose of psychic catharsis.146 Emanuel Winternitz points out that in the works of Renaissance painters, instead of depicting the aulos (or diaulos, as he calls it) accurately, the diaulos is frequently

143 Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, illus. Steele Savage (New York: Meridian, 1989), 295. 144 Edith Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas in the Art of the Italian Renaissance: An Inquiry Into the Meaning of Images (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1996), 26. 145 Plutarch, Lives, Alcibiades, 2, quoted in Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas, 26. 146 Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas, 2627.

replaced by contemporary wind instruments.147 Iacopo Tintorettos painting entitled the Contest of Apollo and Marsyas depicts Marsyas playing a curved cornett.148

Tintoretto, Contest of Apollo and Marsyas, oil on panel

Conclusions

Death Dance depiction with cornetts

On the whole, Monteverdis symbolic treatment was straightforward in Orfeo. He evoked the Underworld in part by using the cornett. As we have seen, this symbolic use of the cornett in Orfeo followed many traditions, such as the Death Dance and Vanitas genres of artwork. In addition, his use of the cornett in Orfeo proved to be a continuation of a great tradition of using the cornett in the theater. The very construction of the cornett established its connection to the infernal, through its serpentine attributes, black coloring, leather impressions, octagonal profile, and animal horn shape. Among other factors, this animal horn shape provided a visual nexus to many ancient instruments, including the shofar, Roman lip-blown instruments, the oliphant, the fingerhole-horns, and the ancient tibia, all of which conveyed strong associations with death and the Underworld. The theme of the tibia as a loud instrument was manifested in Orfeo because loud instruments were evocative of evil and the Underworld.

Borghese vase. Detail: satyr playing aulos (tibia)

147 Emanuel. Winternitz, Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 31. 148 Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas, 152. This instrument has no octagonal profile, but it is played with a side embouchure, a trait very common among cornett players of the Renaissance.

The mythic theme of the tibia as Marsyas instrument, in contrast to Apollos lyre, was manifested in the contrast between string ritornellos and brass ritornellos which underscore scene changes in Monverdis Orfeo. Most significantly, in his 9 December 1616 letter to Alessandro Striggio, Monteverdi emphatically pronounced his opinion that the cornett was the symbolic equivalent of the tibia.

Thus, in this chapter we have seen that Monteverdi mainly re-articulated the traditional thought of the cornett as a symbol of death. In Orfeo, his only sui generis use of the cornett as an extra-musical idea was his text-painting in Possente spirto. This balance of traditional, versus original, symbolic use of the cornett tips somewhat the other way in his 1610 Vespers, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Chapter 3

Monteverdis use of the cornett in his 1610 vespers collection

Title page of Monteverdis 1610 Vespers

There are eight places in the fully concerted version of Monteverdis vespers music of 1610 which call for cornett: the respond Domine ad adiuvandum, the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria, and six of the twelve sections of the Magnificat. Each piece of the collection represents a particularly fine example of an early seventeenth-century genre of music, and the pieces scored for cornett are no exception. As Jeffrey G. Kurtzman explains, the Vespers of 1610 are on an unparalled level of musical splendor in the exploitation of vocal and instrumental colors and virtuosity, in the complexity of structures and textures, in the variety of styles and techniques, and in the magnitude of individual pieces.149 This chapter will explore the symbolic use of the cornett in the Domine, the Sonata, and the Deposuit potentes de sede from the Magnificat. It will be seen that, although

149 Jeffrey G. Kurtzman, Essays on the Monteverdi Mass and Vespers of 1610, Rice University Studies, vol. 64, no. 4 (Houston: William March Rice University, 1978), 132.

Monteverdis symbolic use of the cornett in the Vespers of 1610 follows many traditional themes, he also uses the cornett in a much more personal way than was evident in his Orfeo.

Domine ad adiuvandum

Scored for six voices intoning the chant in a falsobordone style, together with six instrumental parts (cornetts play the top three lines) stylized as a faux trumpet fanfare, the opening respond Domine ad adiuvandum is the first piece of Monteverdis vespers.150 The instrumental consort functions in two musical ways: to provide ritornelli (not in a trumpet fanfare style) that separate the vocal material into three parts, and to provide this fanfare-like material, which frames the simple and stark choral material while it is being sung.

Example 1. Domine ad adiuvandum (opening excerpt, instrumental parts only)

As has been noted previously by many authors, the fanfare-like figure that the cornetts and violins play at the beginning of Domine ad adiuvandum is an elaboration upon the trumpet fanfare that Monteverdi used in the Toccata at the beginning of his Orfeo. John Whenham describes the Orfeo Toccata in the following way:

Its musical material consists of a drone for the two lowest parts, above which three instruments (or groups of instruments) play a series of flourishes which may be derived from authentic military signals. The Toccata functions as a call-to-attention, a sign to members of the audience that the opera is about to begin and that they should take their places. The trumpets of the instrumental

150 In The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 and Their Relationship with Italian Sacred Music of the Early Seventeenth Century, (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1972), 24, Jeffrey Kurtzman emphasizes the importance of the simple chordal style called falsobordone, a four-voiced style popular for setting Psalm texts with the newer generation of native Italian composers, who were replacing the Franco-Flemish composers in important court and church positions in northern Italy by the end of the sixteenth century.

ensemble are to be muted. This has the effect of raising their pitch by a whole tone, and the tonality of the Toccata from written C to sounding D, the tonality of the prologue.151

Example 2. Toccata from Orfeo (opening excerpt). From Claudio Monteverdi, LOrfeo, score, ed. Edward H. Tarr (Paris: Editions Costallat, 1974). Original written in C, but here written in D to indicate the fact that the mutes transpose the trumpets up to the sounding pitch of D.

Monteverdis cornettists for the vespers in all probability had already played this fanfare in the 1607 production of Orfeo.152 There is at least one other record of a trumpet fanfare introducing a Mantuan musical production. John Whenham explains that a similar instrumental introduction was used (and thought of as usual) in the performance of Guarinis Idropica at Mantua in 1608: The torches being lit in the theatre, the usual sign of the sound of trumpets was given within the stage; and as the trumpets began to sound a third time the great curtain which masked the stage disappeared.153 Just how frequently this fanfare was played for public functions in Mantua is not known, but the idea, advanced by some writers, that the Orfeo Toccata was the politically-identifying fanfare for the ducal crown of Mantua is, in my opinion, a plausible theory.

Graham Dixon advances this notion, in part based upon a theory of his that the 1610 Vespers were not Marian, but were written for Saint Barbara:

The shared opening section of Orfeo and the 1610 Vespers now takes on a new significance. The scoring of the toccata in Orfeo for Un Clarino con tre trombe sordine strongly suggests that this piece must have had a particular ceremonial role in the context of the Mantuan court. The 151 Whenham, Five Acts: One Action, 48. 152 It is important to remember that Monteverdis rubrics indicate that all the instrumentalists played the Toccata (including cornettists): che si suona avanti il levar de la tela tre volte con tutti li stromenti, & si fa un Tuono piu alto volendo sonar le trombe con le sordine ([The Toccata] is played three times by all the instruments before raising the curtain, and it is played a tone higher on account of the trumpets with mutes). Italian quoted from Jane Glover, A List of Monteverdis Instrumental Specifications, in Claudio Monteverdi: Orfeo, ed. John Whenham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 182. I am presuming that Monteverdis life-long friend, cornettist Giulio Cesare Bianchi (b. Cremona 1576 or 1577, d. ? Cremona in or after 1637), probably played in both Orfeo and the vespers of 1610, since he was the head of the wind ensemble at the Mantuan court from 1602 to 1612. 153 Whenham, Five Acts: One Action, 48.

designations clarino and trombe are only exceptionally found in art music of this period, and the use of mutes suggests that these are outdoor instruments being allowed inside for a particular purpose. Monteverdi is unlikely to have taken a piece with a particular political connotation for the Gonzaga, and used it in a seemingly haphazard way outside court. It was not necessary for Monteverdi to supply music at all for this simple response, let alone such imposing music; no other setting of this text exists which even approaches Monteverdis in the scale of its conception. No day would have been more appropriate than that of Santa Barbara on which to emphasize the connections between the temporal and spiritual roles of the Renaissance prince, whose presence at Vespers was acknowledged as it had been in Orfeo.154

Vincenzo Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua and Montferrat from 1587 to 1612

In this light, the cornett fanfare at the beginning of the 1610 Vespers is an acknowledgement of the patronage of the Gonzagas. The cornett assumes the symbolic role of the trumpet, not only because the thematic material played by the cornetts in the opening respond of the 1610 Vespers is nearly the same as the Orfeo trumpet Toccata (and, as a matter of fact, similar to many other trumpet fanfares of the time), but also because the cornett produces a lip-generated, trumpet-like tone quality.155 To Monteverdi, the cornett substitutes for the trumpet and, by transference, becomes a symbol of the political power and munificence of the Gonzaga family.

154 Graham Dixon, Monteverdis Vespers of 1610: Della Beata Vergine? Early Music 15 (August 1987): 387. Dixon posits that Monteverdis Vespers of 1610 were written for the feast of Santa Barbara between 1607 and 1609. Saint Barbara, being the patron saint of the ducal basilica of Mantua, was, by transference, a symbol of the ducal crown. Thus, a fanfare identified with the Gonzaga was appropriate also for Saint Barbara. 155 According to Praetorius on Performance: Excerpts from Syntagma Musicum III, trans. Hans Lampl and ed. S. E. Plank, Historic Brass Society Journal 6 (1994): 258, Michael Praetorius writes in his Syntagma Musicum III, which addresses the performance practice of concerted works (especially in the Italian style), If one cannot, will not, or must not use the trumpeters . . . these compositions can nevertheless be performed quite well in town churches without trumpeters. . . . If other instrumentalists are available, however, all of this may be played on Geigen, cornetts, and trombones. Note that Praetorius does not write Geigen, cornetts, or trombones. Thus, a reasonable interpretation of this instruction might be that the trumpet consort, when not available, may be replaced by the following group: strings, cornetts and trombones. And this is, indeed, what Monteverdi has done in his re-writing of his Orfeo Toccata.

The Cornett in Domine as a Substitute for the Trumpet

Euterpe, muse of music, with trumpets and cornetts (and some other wind instruments)

Don Smithers, in his Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet, writes, [Monteverdis] association with the Gonzagas, one of the most important families in Italy at the time, would have brought him into close contact with their trombetteri and piffari, and he would certainly have experienced performances and civic affairs where they are known to have played.156 Smithers goes on to explain the title of this opening fanfare for Orfeo:

The opening music in Orfeo is termed a Toccata. Many writers believe that the term is derived from toccare (to touch) and was a rhapsodic type of instrumental music normally associated with keyboard compositions. The toccata or touch piece was characterized by rhapsodic sections with sustained chords, rambling scale passages, and broken figuration over powerful pedal points which abruptly alternated with fugal sections. [from Bukofzer 1947, 47.] . . . Perhaps Monteverdis understanding of the word as it is applied in Orfeo may . . . have something to do with tocco, meaning a beat or stroke. The connotation is involved with the normal scoring of the bass part in trumpet music at the time, usually played by kettle drums and sometimes doubled by a trumpet with a very large mouthpiece, capable of playing only the most fundamental tonic-dominant figures. Perhaps the toccata, as Bukofzer sees it, developed from an earlier musical genre originally intended for trumpets with their ancillary kettledrums.157

156 Don L. Smithers, The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721, 2d ed. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 78. 157 Ibid., 79.

Cesare Bendinellis pretzel-shaped trumpet.

Typical early seventeenth-century trumpet solos, duets, military calls, and fanfares from Northern Italy may be studied in two contemporaneous method books for the trumpet. One, by Cesare Bendinelli, is in manuscript, the other, by Girolamo Fantini, survives in five copies of the original 1638 edition.158 Smithers says of the Toccata, in designating the highest to the lowest parts in the Toccata, Monteverdi most likely drew upon a long-standing tradition of descriptive terminology. In the Amadino print of 1609 the parts are called Clarino, Quinta, Alto e basso, Vulgano, Basso.159 Smithers compares this terminology to the Fantini method:

Fantinis work (1638) on the trumpet . . . gives some idea of what is meant by the scoring terms used by Monteverdi in the Toccata. The second to sixth partials of the trumpet are called Basso, Vurgano, Striano, Toccata, Quinta. Fantini does not mention the term clarino in the entire work, but most of the other names do bear a relationship to Monteverdis designations. Like Monteverdi, Fantini may have been referring to particular trumpet registers, where the above-named notes are simply the mean pitch levels for the highest to the lowest parts. Even though Monteverdi supposedly requires all the instruments to play, it is interesting that the fanfare-like Toccata uses only trumpet terminology in its scoring indications, as well as being written in a definite brass style.160

The trumpet fanfare style, with its slow (or non-existent) harmonic rhythm, with its rapid note repetitions, and, most importantly, with its symbolic connection to the battlefield, contributed, in all probability, to one of Monteverdis most celebrated stylistic conventions. In 1627, Monteverdi claimed to have invented a new style, the stile concitato, for the 1624 production of Il

158 Cesare Bendinelli, Tutta larte della Trombetta, facsimile, Originally published in 1614, ed. Edward H. Tarr (Kassel: Brenreiter, 1975). For information on all of the copies (plus one eighteenth- or nineteenth-century manuscript version) of the Fantini, see Igino Conforzi, Girolamo Fantini, Monarch of the Trumpet: New Light on His Works, Historic Brass Society Journal 6 (1994): 3260. The modern reprint, Girolamo Fantini, Modo per imparare e sonare di tromba tanto di guerra quanto musicalmente: in organo, con tromba sordina, col cimbalo e con ognaltro strumento, facsimile, originally published in 1638, ed. Edward H. Tarr (Nashville: Brass Press, 1978), is also noted by Conforzi. 159 Smithers, Baroque Trumpet, 79. 160 Ibid., 80.

Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, published in his Eighth Book of Madrigals. Denis Arnold explains Monteverdis reason for inventing this style:

Historic chart of the four basic humours.

[Monteverdis] basic idea is that there are three humours in man . . . : stillness, agitation, and supplication. These correspond to the states of calmness, war, and love or passion; and music . . . must be able to inspire these in its listeners. Since other composers have been concerned with calmness and love, leaving aside war, Monteverdi proposes to show how an agitated style can be used.161

Few authors, however, have noted that this style basically involves the same essential elements (rapidly repeating notes) that he used for his earlier Orfeo Toccata and his Domine ad adiuvandum. Smithers posits that these excerpts are based on the trumpet fanfare tradition:

Musically, the Toccata in Orfeo is nothing more than an elaborate fanfare, and may have been . . . an elaboration of traditional household trumpet fanfare figures. The more elongated and contrapuntal opening of Monteverdis Vespers of 1610 is a lengthy parody of the Toccata in Orfeo, but minus trumpets.162

Girolamo Fantinis First Imperial March from his Method of 1638, for instance, demonstrates some of these elements from which Monteverdi may have borrowed (see example 3). Monteverdi used the stile agitato to depict scenes of battle. This naturally relates to the trumpet tradition, because trumpets were the most identifiable military instruments of the time. Monteverdis claim that he invented the stile concitato in 1624 is not supportable, in light of his earlier attempts (the Toccata of 1607 and the Domine of 1610) at this type of style. These earlier attempts, in turn, were clearly derivatives of the trumpet fanfare style already in general use decades (if not centuries) prior to his Il Combattimento. Bendinelli and especially Fantini were making great strides in bringing trumpet music, previously only known on the battlefield and in official signalling for civic purposes, more artistcally acceptable. What Monteverdi could claim was that he helped to

161 Denis Arnold, Monteverdi Madrigals, BBC Music Guides (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1967), 52. 162 Smithers, Baroque Trumpet, 81.

fully integrate this style into the exclusive world of art music, at first by writing out a trumpet fanfare in his Orfeo, then by substituting the cornett for the trumpet in his 1610 Vespers, and finally by using the violin to express this style in his Il Combatimento. Moreover, what is new in 1624 is Monteverdis use of this style for rage and vengeance, emotions which go beyond military applications.

Example 3. Girolamo Fantini, [First] Imperial [March] (opening excerpt). Reconstruction based on Girolamo Fantini, Modo per imparare e sonare di tromba tanto di guerra quanto musicalmente: in organo, con tromba sordina, col cimbalo e con ognaltro strumento, facsimile, originally published in 1638, ed. Edward H. Tarr (Nashville: Brass Press, 1978).

It was not until a few decades later that the cornett was actually specified commonly as a substitute for the trumpet. According to Collver and Dickey, In the second half of the seventeenth century, it is more common to find cornetts without trombones in Italy. Indeed, their function seems to converge with that of trumpets, with which they often dialogue or for whom they sometimes substitute. In the works of Giacomo Perti, Alessandro Stradella, and above all Francesco Passarini, cornett and clarino writing are hardly to be distinguished.163 See figure 4 for my own analysis, which reveals that, compared with the first half of the seventeenth century, the frequency of trumpet substitution during the second half of the century roughly doubles. Also tying in to the symbolism of the cornett as a substitute for a trumpet is the fact that, according to Smithers, nearly all [stadtpfeiferen] were principally wind players, capable of playing lip-vibrated instruments (trumpets, trombones and cornetts).164 Out of 203 cornettists noted in Overton and my own research, twenty-five (12%) were specifically known also to play trumpet.165

Fig. 4. Histogram of number of instances that the cornett was used as a substitute for trumpet from 1425 to 1775 in all media types by quarter centuries

We have seen in the previous chapter that Shakespearean scholars J. S. Manifold and John Sider made the distinction between dramatic characters of trumpet rank (highest social status) and those of cornett rank (a little lower than the trumpet rank). In The Merchant of Venice the cornett is used for the princes of Morocco and Arragon. Their princely rank was socially analogous to the political position of the Gonzagas (Vincenzo was a duke, and his sons were princes). Indeed, it is interesting to note that the ducal crown was known in Italy as the corno, the word (normally meaning horn) from which cornetto derives.166 How appropriate, then, that Monteverdi specified the cornett for the so-called ducal fanfare theme in his response Domine ad adiuvandum. Yet we still have a small problem to resolve. It must be remembered that he specified trumpet for the fanfare in Orfeo (and apparently in Idropica) and not for the same fanfare theme of the 1610 Vespers. Was this an arbitrary choice, or a specification with some symbolic meaning? Although

163 Collver and Dickey, A Catalog, 22. 164 Smithers, Baroque Trumpet, 120. A stadtpfeifer was a professional wind instrument musician, outside of the court, who performed a variety of municipal ceremonies in Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Denmark, Sweden and Holland. 165 Overton, Der Zink, 14579. Overtons profiles of cornettists includes mostly those from Germany. I added to his list only two more known cornettists. 166 Egon Kenton, Life and Works of Giovanni Gabrieli, Musicological Studies and Documents (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1967), 21. Cornetto is merely the diminuitive version of corno.

trumpets may not have been welcome in church, did Monteverdi symbolically demote the Gonzagas by leaving out the trumpet from his Domine? It would seem that the trumpet fanfare for the highest-ranking Mantuan office, first published in Orfeo, had been modified into a slightly-cheapened fanfare played on the slightly-inferior cornett.167

16th-century shofar. Light colored horn, engraved and carved with Hebrew inscriptions.

The Cornett in Domine as a Substitute for the Shofar

Although Smithers established that stylistic and thematic elements of the Domine ad adiuvandum and the Orfeo Toccata derive from trumpet fanfares of the early seventeenth century, another possibility deserves some exploration. We have seen in Chapter 2 that the cornett was an instrumental descendant of the shofar, based on its physical appearance, method of tone production, use in various social and religious functions, and its symbolism relating to death and the death/rebirth cycle. Keeping this in mind and noting the peculiar ways Monteverdi altered motivic material from his Toccata, I believe that he may have been trying to evoke the liturgical calls of the shofar in his Domine. These calls, according to Theodore Reik, are the Tekiah, Shebarim, Teruah and an elongation of the Tekiah called Tekiah Gedolah (see example 4).168

167 Of course, in this 1610 Vespers response, violins also double the cornetts in playing what were originally the highest two trumpet parts of the Orfeo Toccata. The lower trumpet parts of the Toccata are rendered by trombones and lower strings. This does not confuse or complicate my argument, for the dominant instrumental timbre of the 1610 Vespers response unquestionably derives from the cornetts. 168 Reik, The Shofar, 238. Performance of these shofar calls vary widely. In his Music in Ancient Israel (1969), Alred Sendrey notes that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, these calls were notated with special types of neumes. Sendrey includes Ashkenazi and Sephardic examples. Most relevant to the present discussion of Monteverdis possible borrowing of shofar calls is the so-called Parma notation represented in the Codex Shem Simani Noti and the Codex Adler, which in Sendrey is shown as interpreted by Solomon Sulzer (Schir Zion Vienna, 1938, 1865) and Abraham Beer (Baal Tefillah Gothenburg, 1877) on pages 355 and 356. These are essentially the same as Reiks example as shown in example 4.

Example 4. The four basic forms of shofar calls

In the opening of Monteverdis Domine, only the first five notes of his Toccata melody are played at first. Then they are repeated with the rest of the theme in canon (see examples 5 and 6). Monteverdi changed the opening in order to bring attention to this melodic gesture by isolating these first five notes.

Example 5. Opening theme of the Orfeo Toccata as played on trumpet (clarino)

Example 6. Opening of Domine ad adiuvandum (first cornett part)

These five notes fill in an upward-moving perfect fifth, which is the same gesture of the first shofar call, the Tekiah.

Example 7. Tekiah (shofar call)

The dotted rhythmic figuration of the opening theme (mm. 2-3see figure 11 above) then mirrors the second call, the shebarim (example 8), which is a repeated perfect fifth played iambically (short-long short-long short-long). In the Domine and Toccata, this figure also outlines a fifth (inverted).

Example 8. Shebarim shofar call

If we compare the ornamental tag in measures seven and eight in the Toccata to the corresponding place (measures twenty and twenty-one) in the Domine, we find an interesting change, which is difficult to justify solely through music explanations (see example 9).

Example 9. Monteverdis Toccata, compared to corresponding place in his Domine ad adiuvandum

Toccata, Clarino part, mm. 7-8

Domine, Cornetts 1 and 2, mm. 20-21

We see here that the second cornett part has crossed over the first part, and now it is not just filling in harmony below the first cornett part (as was the case in measure five), but it is playing the melodic thememirroring the Clarino part of the Toccata. It preserves all of the notes of the original with some rhythmic adjustments, whereas the first part is now the filler: it plays a third below the second part until the last few notes, the antepenultimate and penultimate of which outline a perfect fifth. By putting this interval in the first cornett, Monteverdi emphasized its importance. The resulting figure in the first cornett partoutlining the perfect fifth and preceded by rapidly repeated notes, alternating back and forthis similar to the third shofar callthe Teruah, which is executed on the shofar by either rapid note repititions at the tr signs and/or by a kind of wavering tone.169

169 Smithers, telephone conversation. Possible ways of execution as described by Smithers to me. These possibilities are also illustrated in Sendrey. The parallel between the teruah and this passage in Domine is even closer in Sendreys sources than in example 10 (which is from Reik), because in Sendrey, most examples of the teruah are illustrated without the second trill sign.

Example 10. Teruah shofar call

How well Monteverdi could have known about the tradition of the shofar to infer its effect through the cornett is speculative. Nevertheless, Monteverdi was not isolated from Jewish culture, as Mantua had an active Jewish community with many musicians, some of whom worked with Monteverdi, such as his colleague Salomone Rossi. In addition, one will recall that the Bassano family, some of whom were still in Italy, such as the famous cornettist Giovanni, who was the concert master of the orchestra at San Marco in Venice, were probably Jewish. Thus, not only can the cornetts symbolic heritage of the shofar be demonstrated in general terms, as was shown in chapter 2, but also Monteverdis personal use of the cornett shows a possible connection to the actual musical calls of the shofar.

Sonata sopra Sancta Maria

Title page to Adriano Banchieris LOrgano suonarino

The next place in the 1610 collection which specifies cornett is the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria. The text, addressed to the Virgin Mary, fits thematically with the rest of the collection.170 Stephen Bonta notes that the motets Nigra sum, Pulchra es, Duo Seraphim, and Audi coelum and the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria ora pro nobis function as antiphon-substitutes in place of the Proper items.171 Bonta bases his argument mainly on Adriano Banchieris LOrgano suonarino of 1605, and notes that Banchieri appended five sonatas in score in his handbook for organists for use at the five psalms that are normally sung at Vespers. It is significant, Bonta points out, that Monteverdi also used the title sonata, for his instrumental piece with the text Sancta Maria, ora