The Minstrelsy of Heaven

This chapter examines music as the embodiment of authority in Habsburg Vienna during the reign of Charles VI (1711–40). It explores the structure, liturgical regimen, and stylistic governances of the imperial Kapelle (“music chapel”) as a corporate entity which systematically promoted music as a carefully regulated expression of dynastic authority. It contextualizes this authority through an appraisal of the emperor’s own conception of musical discourse (in which Italian compositional practice was pre-eminent) and of the composers, poets, singers, and instrumentalists who gave it expression. It characterizes the imperial Kapelle as an “imperial noise factory” in which industrious compliance was of far greater account than imaginative freedom. It also countenances the “dynastic style” of Viennese liturgical music as a preoccupation which supervened the agency of individual talent. Lastly, the chapter introduces Fux and his deputy Antonio Caldara in a reading which (not uncritically) privileges Fux as the “truer servant” of the dynastic style.

Steps to Parnassus

In this final chapter, the progression from servitude to autonomy in the European musical imagination is traced through the agency of Fux’s Mass settings for the imperial court to the singular achievement of Bach’s Mass in B Minor (BWV 232). Between these extremes lie the Mass settings of Fux’s deputy, Antonio Caldara, three of which establish a mid-way point between Fux’s dutiful (and unsatisfactory) adherence to the dynastic style (an adherence nevertheless redeemed by the composure and thematic integrity of his far fewer stile antico settings) and the exceptional autonomy of BWV 232, in which the emancipation of the musical subject is fully realized. Two of the Caldara settings, the Missa Sanctorum Cosmae et Damiani and the Missa Matris Dolorosae, moreover, share compelling structural and expressive affinities with BWV 232 which (for the first time) contextualize the autonomy of Bach’s setting. The “either/or” understanding of compositional servitude in relation to imaginative autonomy is thus moderated in favor of both concepts. Likewise the relations between the authority concept and the work-concept in Fux and Bach are fortified.

THE MOCK HEROIC, AN INTRUDER IN ARCADIA: GIROLAMO GIGLI, ANTONIO CALDARA AND L'ANAGILDA (ROME, 1711)

ABSTRACTIn 1711 the opera L'Anagilda was performed in the private theatre of Francesco Maria Ruspoli, an important Roman patron of the Arcadian Academy. L'Anagilda's librettist (Girolamo Gigli) and composer (Antonio Caldara) were both associated with this society, but the opera contrasts with the basic goal of Arcadian aesthetics – namely, to reform literature and opera by imitating the structure of ancient Greek tragedy and the stylistic purity of Italian renaissance poets. Rather, Gigli and Caldara created an opera infused with comedy, interspersed with fantastic intermezzos and formulated according to a genre not endorsed by Arcadian literary critics, the mock heroic. This article explores topics related to one central question: why would Gigli and Caldara openly flout the literary precepts of Arcadia? Gigli was a career satirist whose works eventually caused him to be exiled from his native Siena, all of Tuscany and the Papal States, and to be expelled from three major literary academies, the Intronati, the Cruscanti and the Arcadians. Since he continually criticized the organizations to which he belonged for their narrow-mindedness, prejudice and hypocrisy, I contend that L'Anagilda represents a critique of Arcadia. Yet in the process, Gigli also shows the Arcadians that there is more than one path to verisimilitude and the imitation of classical models. Despite the mock-heroic characteristics of the libretto, Gigli adheres to some Arcadian structural requirements, and Caldara's score heightens the characterizations and the overall verisimilitude of the opera.