Download Ryan Brown MH-247-02 Prof. Hung 11/8/11 Speaking of Sex

Ryan Brown
MH-247-02
Prof. Hung
11/8/11
Speaking of Sex: Metaphor and Performance in the Italian Madrigal
Death, Spirit, boiling blood… These are some of the key words which composers of madrigals
use to allude to sexual ideas. Laura Macy provides significant evidence of sexual ideas within the the
italian madrigal. The main question which Laura Macy answers is the following: “What was the social
role of the Italian Madrigal in the sixteenth century?”
To answer this question, Macy really writes a narrative history which primarily addresses the
ideas of sex in the italian madrigal as a tool for gaining wit required in high society. This type of wit
was often a result of humor through sexual metaphor. These sexual metaphors were very entertaining
to aristocrats and others in high society. Macy goes into great detail explaining how these madrigals of
the 1500s incorporated sexual metaphor and how these sexual metaphors affected the composition and
performance of italian madrigals.
Macy used several sources ranging from early sixteenth and seventeenth-century medical texts
to early publications of Italian madrigals. She uses these sources to enlightens the reader in a way
which seems a result of their own conscientization. She first gives the evidence and the tools for the
reader to make their own conclusion, then she poses the main point which draws together the
information in a way which makes logical sense. The reader is thus forced to take a more active role in
learning.
In the beginning of the article, Macy focuses on pointing out many of the sexual metaphors in
the type of allegorical language used in madrigals. For example, death:orgasm, spirit:semen, boiling
blood:semen, itch:sexual drive, et cetera some of the metaphors explains. Macy supports her claims
but referring to the information and language used in medical texts of the time. For example, she notes
that men were thought of as being naturally more warm than women. This resulted in medical theories
of female arousal involving “warming” the woman. There was a medical theory that when the blood of
a male was heated to a high level, orgasm occurred and semen was expelled. This is the origin of the
blood-boiling metaphor.
These sexual metaphors are personified in the composition and performance of italian madrigals
which played upon such repartee. Macy goes into the example of Arcadelt's setting of Il bianco e dolce
cigno and how it personifies these sexual metaphors. Macy claims that such repartee and wittily
“scripted dialogue” was used to train courtiers how to act and engage in courtly discourse. This wit, of
course, was often the result of these sexual metaphors.
Macy later goes into how these sexual metaphors led up to the comic relief of those involved
with singing these madrigals. By examining the form of the poetry, we see a particular trend. These
poems often suggested double meanings of words (i.e. sexual innuendo); however, the poet typically
didn't, until the rear of the poem, deliver any type of obvious illumination of meaning. This “punchline” is called the epigrammatic point. This “punch-line” is what composers of madrigals rely on to
make their music have an element of comic relief. Macy notes that these composers took such
innuendo and played with things like words painting to personify the meanings of such “hidden”
profanity. For example, many composers used “musical friction” (dissonance, suspension and release)
as a way of “turning up the heat” referring back to the metaphor of temperature and its necessity in
orgasm. Macy also notes that if this profanity becomes too obvious within the madrigal and the entire
piece appears as a series of epigrammatic points then it simply loses its element of humor. The
madrigal, in order to be comedic, must therefore serve as a contrast to the poetry in some way. If the
poetry lends itself to several epigrammatic points then the music should suggest otherwise; similarly if
the poetry just barely hints sexual innuendo, the composer should bring this out through compositional
techniques. This paradox is the very source of the humor.
Macy continues her narrative history in noting that the social role of the Italian madrigal slightly
changes as madrigal verse changed since both are very intertwined. This major change in madrigal
verse happened in the 1570s as the Court of Ferara. Such changes to the madrigal's social role included
the fact that Courtier singers were replaced by professional musicians and the singing of madrigals
became more of a spectator sport. As such, many of these madrigals often still painted scenes of sex
but more attention on the audience was necessary in order to regulate the types of themes these
madrigals used. Given this information, the approach which a composer used in writing a madrigal
depended upon the date, the listener, as well as the composer's musical preferences.
Macy uses the information that she gathered about sexual metaphor and the italian madrigal in
her narrative explanation of the social role of the italian madrigal.