Pronuntiatio in music

relationship between Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurgand Johann M. Meyfart

Abstract

This paper shows the approximations between Rhetoric and Music, starting with excerpts from Teutsche Rhetorica oder Redekunst (1634) by Johann Matthäus Meyfart and the works of Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, namely Des critischen Musicus an der Spree (1750) and Die Kunst das Clavier zu spielen (1762). The approximations dealt with here, are with regard to actio or pronuntiatio, which is considered to be the fifth part of Rhetoric according to its classical division. As Renaissance Rhetoric (at the time of Meyfart, for example) is deemed literary rhetoric, it is not unusual that no specific part should be exclusively dedicated to pronuntiatio. Teutsche Rhetorica oder Redekunst is, in this case, an exception. The closeness between Rhetoric and Music, which occurred primarily as a result of the curriculum reform of the German Lateinschulen, proposed by Martin Luther, resulted in Music being described and analysed in rhetorical terms.  In Music, pronuntiatio is found within the musikalischer Vortrag framework, in which rules, regarding a sound performance of musical "discourse" are given. We seek herein to compare the rules and advice given to speakers upon the deliverance of speech, to those given to performers while playing or singing. By comparing such excerpts, it will be possible to notice the approximations and similarities of the speaker and interpreter's modus operandi.