The origin of the word variatio springs from the process of mixing different colours. It can be understood either as a continuous process or as a result of a process (varying or veränderen vs variation or Veränderung). The term has had ambiguous meanings and subjective interpretations throughout the centuries. In my search of clearer explanation of its meaning, I have recently found some new dimesions of its use in music. This is obviously important for my research!
The concept of variety was considered as an essential category in ancient oratory and rhetoric and was referred in the rhetorical treatises as varietas. According to the instructions of Cicero in his De Oratore (ca. 55 BC) varietas was considered as an ideal directing and shaping all stages of speech preparation including the generation of ideas and their realizations in practice. Varietas formed the essential basis of all the stages of rhetoric – from the invention of the initial subject through the composition of the speech to the stages of memorization and public delivery. The term found its place as a guiding aesthetic principle in all the arts and throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was applied with various meanings and connotations.
As described in the existing research, in architecture it was linked with the mixture of different stylistic elements resulting in the so called eclectic building materials. In literature it was associated with the abundant citations of numerous Classical works to a stage comparable with copiousness. In painting, varietas was represented by varied figural poses and by nuances of colours. Its application in music has resulted in a great deal of controversy and subjective interpretations throughout the time. For some, it was related to phenomena such as irregular unpredictable melodic lines, constant rhythmic change, harmonic diversity and textural contrasts, and juxtaposition of varied modes, registers and mensuration (for an extensive bibliography see Alexis Luko, Tinktoris on Varietas, 2008).
One of the earliest music sources discussing the concept of variety is the treatise of Johannes Tinctoris Liber de arti contrapuncti (1477), dedicated to his patron Ferdinand I, King of Naples. Tinctoris was a broadly educated man of his time and was an expert in the art of languages including grammar, rhetoric and dialectic as well as in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, law and music. His outstanding erudition in such broad fields allowed him to become one of the fifteenth century intellectuals who left important historical sources about rhetoric and music. It is known that Tinctoris’s erudition was based entirely on humanistic and rhetorical thought. In his treatises on music he wanted to establish a link between ancient scholarship and his own ideas of fifteenth century music theory as applied in the art of counterpoint.
According to the article of Alexis Luko, Tinctoris on Variets (2008, Early Music History, 27, pp 99-136), Tinctoris wanted to establish a link between the rhetorical principles and music. He finds out quite a few resemblances between the rhetorical principles of Cicero and Tinctoris’s contrapuntal rules. Instead of, however, concentrating on extensive discussions of technical and highly theoretical contrapuntal issues such as types of intervals, right or wrong (permitted or not permitted) progressions, Tinctoris directs his discussion towards more subjective compositional possibilities. He talks about available choices, inherent in musical ideas, about musical style and compositional refinement. The links with Cicero’s rhetorical principles are already obvious.
The idea to base the process of musical composition to rhetorical principles has persisted through the centuries. In early eighteenth century it was outlined by Johann Mattheson, whose strong opinion about music was that the art is based on humanitarian disciplinse (theology, history and rhetoric) rather than on the scientific branches of knowledge (mathematics and phisics). Mattheson even attempted to explain the act of musical composition as closely consisted of the five rhetorical stages (inventio, dispositio, elaboratio, decoratio, pronunciatio).
Of particular interest for me was Tinctoris’s understanding of music as a mirror reflexion of a rhetorical speech; as a musical rhetoric but using a different building material — the sound and the melodic ideas. The rhetorical stage that was most closely associated with the application of varietas was the elocutio (related with style) where the orator is advised to use ornate and elaborate language in order to influence the audience and eventually to persuade the listeners to accept his particular opinion (version) of the ‘truth’. As Alexis Luko notes, the application of figurative language in this stage permits the use of altered arrangements of words and certain expressions, usually viewed as grammatically incorrect or unclear, as tolerable and even desirable. (see Luko, “Tinctoris on Varietas”, p. 107)
Cicero instructions promote the use of varied language explaining that as all endings are distinctly perceptible by the audience, they should be varied in such a way as the audience has the perception that they are not intentionally made:
“because … endings are easily recognized, we must vary them so that our audience does not condemn them, either on the basis of a conscious judgement or because their ear becomes satiated. In fact, we should carefully pay attention to, say, the last two or three feet, and clearly mark them off … Thanks to variations among these feet, our audience will not be sated by a steady diet of the same thing, and we will avoid giving the impression that what we are doing is intentional.” (Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, 3. 192–4, p. 284.; cited by Luko, p. 112)
The last statement of Cicero implies that what the orator should take care is the impression of improvising on a given topic by demonstrating his virtuoso skills of giving a public speech. Such an idea is easily related with the importance of improvisation in music. Improvisation in early early-eighteenth century although followed some initial plan, was not expected to have a consistent layout. Quite the opposite, it was expected to demonstrate the inventive skills of the performer to elaborate on a given musical idea. To some extent, the improvisational process both in music and in oratory was expected to mask the impression of intentionally memorized plan. It was a necessary requirement to demonstrate the spontaneous and creative thought of the performer (orator or musician) by providing the freedom of pre-fabricated rules and restricting principles.
In this regard, Tinctoris comments that although cadential passages should correspond with the mode, they should be varied especially if happen to be consecutive. Tinctoris’s ideas remind me a lot of Riepel’s compositional thoughts. Riepel shows that the results of the various elaborations of the harmonic plan (by adding or reducing the harmonic outline) can act as different parts (respectively with different function) within the general structure of the piece. So Riepel explains the resulting variants as different units that have different functions as well and are dependent on the compositional circumstances (or respectively on the composer’s creativity). The most interesting in his understanding was that he shows how they are derived from the same source and can lead to many different paths and directions.
Tinctoris does not provide a strict list of rules in his treatise related with how to produce “correct” music (like many of the later instruction counterpoint sources do, eg. Fux’s Gradus ad Parnasum, 1725) but rather hints that such a demonstration depends on the aesthetic choices that the composer makes in regard to a particular audience and in a particular style. There are no clear-cut guidlines about contrapuntal variety (as every guideline per se brings a degree of restriction as well as a dose of certainty). Every rhetorical speech is understood as unique as it depends on contingent elements such as type of audience, style and also personal orator’s choices. The connections with music performance cannot be clearer!
However, the meaning of the word varietas still remains ambiguous and abstract. Starting from its initial connection with colours and nuances I traced its influence in the visual arts. A fifteenth century treatise about painting entitled De pictura, written by Leon Battista Alberti in 1435 -1436, discusses the principles and the essential role of variety. Alberti differentiates two important functions of the term – a quantitative (copious) and a qualitative (varied). According to him the genre of istoria or historia (a setting based on historical, literary or biblical scenes), considered as with the highest status in art, reflects the most valuable balance between the copious and the varied. His discussion expresses the balance between quality and quantity through the perception of pleasure between “the copiousness of things” and “the variety of things”. In painting the copious is related with the quantity of objects reflected in the picture and the “varietas describes the specific qualitative difference between similar things” (Alexis Luko, Tinctoric on Varietas, p. 128). Alberi judges the role of the copious and varietas as with different functions. The copiousness, according to him, is necessary to reflect the richness of the world and is associated with combining totally different objects together (such as people, animals, plants). The varietas is understood as providing variances among the same or similar things/objects but with different expressions (i.e. people in different positions, different shades of the same colour).
Rubens, The Miracles of St. Francis Xavier, Jesuit Church in Antwerp,
1616-1617
Analogously, the articulation in music actually does the same effect. Motifs of the same category (figures, groupings or steps) can be varied by the use of different articulation and with this to provide the variety so highly valued in the genre of istoria. Leopold Mozart and Joseph Riepel are the only music writers from the eighteenth century who clearly outline and illustrate these ideas with numerous examples. In the case of Anna Magdalena’s version of the cello suites, all the similar motives, figures and gestures are abundantly varied with the help of the articulation signs. As implied by Alberti, painter’s goals were to reflect spiritual values, also to move the observer and to affect their emotions. Is it not the same goal of music too? Isn’t such an aesthetic principle a plausible evidence for justifying the rich variety of slurs in Anna Magdalena’s manuscript copy of the cello suites?
In relation to varietas in music Tinctoris applies the same stylistic principles of Alberti’s. As cited by Alexis Luko, he states:
“Horace says in his Poetics: ‘One who sings to the kithara is laughed at if he always wanders over the same string.’ Wherefore, according to the opinion of Tullius [Cicero], as a variety in the art of speaking most delights the hearer, so also in music a diversity of harmonies vehemently provokes the souls of listeners into delight; hence the philosopher [Aristotle], in his Ethics, does not hesitate to state that variety is a most pleasant thing and human nature in need of it. Also, any composer or improviser . . . of the greatest genius may achieve this diversity if he either composes or improvises now by one quantity, then by another, now by one perfection, then by another, now by one proportion, then by another, now by one melodic interval, then by another, now with [suspensions], then without [suspensions], now with fuga, then without fuga, now with pauses, then without pauses,now diminished, now [plain] . . . nor do so many and such varieties enter into one chanson as so many and such in a motet, nor so many and such in one motet as so many and such in one mass. Every composed work, therefore, must be diverse in its quality and quantity, just as an infinite number of works show, works brought out, not only by me, but also by innumerable composers flourishing in the present age” (p. 129)
Tinctoris’s categories of varietas reflect the balance of Alberti’s understanding of copious and varied, between quantity (so many) and quality (such) applied to music. On the one hand, we have the varietas refering to the quantitative quality and requiring the articulation of many different musical ideas. On the other hand, we have the level of quantitative varietas, insisting on the quality-responsible varietas — reflecting the qualitative differences of the same or similar ideas. Such qualities were clearly based on ancient rhetorical rules, which influenced and gave the basis of the aesthetics of all the arts throughout the history. Both art and music were closely linked with the rhetorical idea that the goal of the artist should be to move the soul and to affect the emotions. Johann Mattheson most possibly had in mind exactly this organic link between rhetoric and music but never actually succeeded to convince the representatives of the rationalistic oriented movement of his own historical time. The modern (of the eighteenth century) requirement to provide clear, logical, scientific evidence (clear-cut guidelines, almost like a recipe) was somehow against the sensualistic and utterly contingent ground of the rhetorical principles.
Music/Culture18C 