Italian Studies

ISSN: 0075-1634 (Print) 1748-6181 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yits20

Dante and Music

John Stevens

To cite this article: John Stevens (1968) Dante and Music, Italian Studies, 23:1, 1-18, DOI:
10.1179/its.1968.23.1.1

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/its.1968.23.1.1

Published online: 18 Jul 2013.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 20

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=yits20

Download by: [Monash University Library] Date: 02 July 2016, At: 09:43
 ITALIAN STUDIES
XXIII I968

DANTE AND MUSIC *

A striking passage in Dante's Convivio (ILxiii.8 ;20) establishes an
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

elaborate parallel between the Seven Liberal Arts and the seven planets
in their spheres: Heaven allegorically interpreted signifies knowledge,
and the Heavens are the branches of knowledge. The heaven of the
Moon resembles Grammar; the heaven of Mercury may be compared to
Dialectic; the heaven of Venus, to Rhetoric, and so forth. The planet
chosen to represent Music is, rather surprisingly, Mars.
The heaven of Mars has two properties. First, 'the perfect beauty
of its relation to the rest' (la sua pili bella relazione). And, secondly,
its capacity to 'dry up and burn everything because its heat is like
that of fire' (esso Marte dissecca e arde Ie cose, perche 10 suo calore e
simile a quello del fuoco). The beauty of its 'relation' consists in the
fact that it is the fifth planet and occupies a central position with four
planets disposed sYmmetrically on either side of it. This corresponds
to music's first quality, for music is a matter of proportion. At this
point, and in this context, one expects Dante to rehearse ~he tradi-
tional arguments-about the heavenly harmony, the musica mundana,
etc. Instead, he argues that the proportional essence of music is
seen in two things-in words well-according together (parole armoniz-
zate) and in songs (canti):
de' quali tanto pili dolce armonia resulta, quanto pili la relazione e
bella: la quale in essa scienza massimamente e bella, perche massi-
mamente in ella s'intende. (II.xiii.23.)

Dante is clearly defining music in the widest sense: it is the music of

words as well as the music of instruments and voices. The second

• I gratefully acknowledgethe help I have had in preparing this article from

Professor U. Limentani who brought numerous books and papers to my notice;
from Fr. Kenelm Foster in a preliminary discussion; and from Dr. P. Boyde,
whose shrewd comments caused me, amongst other things, to re-work the third
section of the article.
I
 2 J. E. STEVENS

property of Mars-its 'drying_up' property-also finds a parallel in

music. For music
trae a se Ii spiriti umani, ehe quasi sono principalmente vapori del euore,
s1ehe quasi eessano da ogni operazione: s1e l'anima intera, quando l'ode,
e la virtu di tutti quasi eorre a 10 spirito sensibile ehe rieeve 10 suono.
(II.xiii.24·)l

In medieval physiology, we have to remember, the 'spirits' were 'highly

refined substances or fluids . . . supposed to permeate the blood and
chief organs of the body.' Music subdues them all to one-the sense
of hearing.
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

This single passage introduces us to the three main areas of Dante's

concern with music. It is a philosophical concept, an emotional
experience and a practical craft.

By saying that Dante uses music as a philosophical concept, I mean

that in dozens of passages the idea of music is introduced for the force
with which it can convey an idea. He introduces music, that is, as
an image, a symbol or a metaphor. In the Paradiso, especially, we
find the old commonplaces developed with an imaginative warmth and
richness that is truly amazing. In the first canto, for instance, as
Dante turns to look at Beatrice, who has her eyes fixed on the Sun, he
hears the music of the spheres and calls upon the Love that rules the
heaven
Quando la rota ehe tu sempiterni
desiderato, a se mi feee atteso
eon l'armonia ehe temperi e diseerni,
parvemi tanto allor del cielo aeeeso
de la fiamma del sol, ehe pioggia 0 fiume
lago non feee mai tanto disteso.
La novita del suono e '1 grande lume
di lor eagion m'aeeesero un disio
mai non sentito di eotanto acume. (Par. i.76.)
Music, light and love-here we have the great recurring images of the
Paradiso. The canto ends with Beatrice explaining the law of uni-
versal Order, which governs the whole created world and makes it to
resemble God Himself:
.. 'Le eose tutte quante
hanno ordine tra lora, e questo e forma
ehe l'universo a Dio fa simigliante ..' (Par. i.I03.)

1 Cf. V.N. xiv.5-8: Love has the same kind of effect; it subdues all the spirits
to the sense of sight.
 DANTE AND MUSIC 3

All things seek their Final Cause in God, driven by the power of that
'bowstring'-la virtu di queUa corda/che cia che scocca drizza in segno
lido (i.I2S). The Order of the heavens, which music mirrors, is not a
frigid, awesome symmetry, not glacial, not vitreous; it is alive and
warm with singing lights.
It is not simply the music of the spheres which makes Dante's
journey to the Empyrean a musical one. Indeed, not primarily.
Paradise is full of a great variety of choirs and consorts and companies
of dancers. The singing lights of the Heaven of the Sun are the souls
of the Wise-Aquinas, Solomon, Dionysius, Boethius, and others.
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

In the Heaven of Jupiter 'holy creatures' (sante creature) are singing

as they spell in their flight the shapes of letters, DILIGITE
JUSTITIAM. These singers are the souls of the Just. In the previous
heaven-that of Mars-a cross is formed by lights as innumerable as
stars in the Milky Way:
E come giga e arpa, in tempra tesa
di molte corde, fa dolce tintinna
a tal da cui la nota non e intesa,
cos! da' lumi che Ii m'apparinno
s'accogliea per la croce una melode
che mi rapiva, sanza intender l'inno. (Par. xiv.u8.)

Only in the Heaven of the Contemplatives (Saturn) is the music silent:

... si tace in questa rota
la dolce sinfonia di Paradiso. (xxi.58.)

The 'sweet symphony' is often expressed under the form of another

traditional image, related to that of music-the image of a Dance.
Those who take part in the dance do so to symbolize their joyful
participation in the Divine Order. The saints in the Heaven of the
Fixed Stars are dancing caroles-eourtly round-dances which are also
sung. Dancing is not confined to Paradise itself. The image is used
often elsewhere to signify unity and joy. For instance, near the end
of the Purgatorio, when Dante, now in the Earthly Paradise, sees the
Divine Pageant. With it come three ladies dancing-tre donne in giro.
They are the three Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope and Love) dressed
in white, green and red (XXiX.I2I).
There are a number of other subsidiary images behind and within
the major image of music as Order. Besides the straightforward
dance-images (danza, caribo, carola, etc.), there are passages where the
musical order stands for knowledge, for heavenly Wisdom, for in-
scrutable Justice. The Angel of Chastity, admitting the poets to the
 4 J. E. STEVENS

Seventh cornice of Purgatory, tells them to pay attention to the

singing beyond, in the Earthly Paradise:
ed al cantar di Ia non siate sorde (xxvii. 12.)

There is often a contrast in the Paradiso between earthly hearing and

heavenly music, corresponding to the contrast of earthly ignorance to
heavenly Wisdom (Para. xii.6; xxiii. 97 ; xxiv.ll4). And the song of
the eagle in the Heaven of Justice makes the contrast abundantly
clear:
Roteando cantava, e dicea: 'Quali
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

son Ie mie note ate, ehe non Ie 'ntendi,

tal e il giudieio etterno a voi mortali.' (xix.97·)

But how, it may be asked, does Dante succeed in giving life and
warmth to conceptions about music so apparently intellectualized and
static? Boethius's insistence on geometrical ratio and proportion is
not one to warm the heart; and his De Musica, a predominantly
philosophical and speculative treatise, was the standard University
textbook for centuries, prescribed for the study of music as part of the
quadrivium along with the other sciences of number, Arithmetic,
Geometry and Astronomy. The short answer is that there is no
'cold philosophy' in this realm of Dante's thought. No one who has
read his poem could doubt that music was to him an intensely moving
experience. About this experience he, being a poet, speaks more
articulately than his contemporaries, although the ideas he uses are
the familiar ones: he describes it not only in the intellectual concepts
already described but also in psychological terms, and through syn-
aesthetic imagery.
Dante's 'psychology' of music is, of course, a physiology. Its
outlines have already been observed in the Convivio account of Mars.
The spiriti umani (not abstractions but the 'carriers' as they have been
called, of psycho-somatic life) are so drawn by music that they prac-
tically cease from any action of their own (quasi cessano da ogni opera-
zion e) ; their powers are concentrated in the one sense-of hearing.
The experience is described again in Paradiso, xxiii.97:
Qualunque melodia pill dolce sana
qua gill, e pill a se l'anima tira, . . .

Elsewhere, music is described as the power which brings tranquillity

(Purg. ii.loS), or;transport (Par. Xxii.IO),or intoxication (Par. xxvii.3).
The most suggestive poetic description, however, is the passage which
 DANTE AND MUSIC 5
describes Dante's sensations on hearing the angels' song after Beatrice's
revelation of herself (Purg. xxx.8z):
Ella si tacque; e li angeli cantaro
di subito: In te, Domine, speravi;
rna oltre pedes meos non passaro.
5i come neve tra Ie vive travi
per 10 dosso d'Italia si congela,
soffiata e stretta da li venti schiavi,
poi, liquefatta, in se stessa trapela,
pur che la terra che perde ornbra spiri,
si che par foco fonder la candela;
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

cosi fui sanza lacrime e sospiri

anzi 'I cantar di quei che notan sempre
dietro a Ie note de li etterni girl;
rna poi ch'intesi ne Ie dolci ternpre
lor compatire a me, piit che se detto
avesser: 'Donna, perche si 10 stempre?'
10 gel che m'era intorno al cor ristretto,
spirito e acqua fessi, e con angoscia
de la bocca e de li occhi usci del petto.

This experience is, of course, a rich and complex one. More deeply
and importantly than elsewhere there is a spiritual truth to be con-
veyed (though this is always so to some extent). Dante is at first
frozen in his own self-reproaches; but as the music of the angels works
on him and he experiences in their dolci tempre the truth of God's
mercy and love, he dissolves into tears. Like Apennine snow melted
by the south wind, or like the wax candle in the fire, he is transformed.
The experience of music is not just intellectual analogy in this context,
but an actual part, the medium in fact, of spiritual experience.
This passage with its interwoven layers of sense-metaphor can fairly
be called 'synaesthetic'; in it different types of sensuous experience,
visual, aural, and tactile, are fused together. It uses, amongst others,
the favourite medieval term to describe the multifold sensation of
music-dolce. Dolcezza is the quality of Casella's song (Purg. ii.II4);
dolce and profonda describe the song of those who mount up after the
Grifon (xxxii.88); and, when the Divine Pageant is approaching,
E una rnelodia dolce correva
per l'aere luminoso. (Purg. XXix.22.)

Essentially, the reason why Dante's manifold references to music are

telling and memorable (more so, perhaps, than those of any other
poet except Shakespeare) is this. Music to him is not-simply part of
 6 J. E. STEVENS

the great synthesis, a flexible construct which earns its intellectual

place in the most comprehensive of all medieval poems. It is also an
intensely moving experience whose nature can, if only partially, be
expressed through physiological analysis and sensuous analogy.
Dante, moreover, as the inheritor of a great tradition of courtly poetry
and song, links music as a social art with intense emotional experience.
And, most importantly of all, the idea of music and the experience of
it are sacramental for him. As part of this God-created Universe,
music is an aspect of the Word, an incarnation of Love.
It would be impertinent for me to comment at any length on the
wider issues. Love is Dante's unending, inexhaustible theme. Two
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

stanzas from Dante's discourse with St. John, in the Heaven of the
Fixed Stars, must sum it up. Dante, temporarily blinded, prays that
at Beatrice's good pleasure the power of sight may be restored to his
eyes. They were the gates through which she entered with fire-col
foco ond'io sempr' ardo-the fire that bums him for ever. Invited
by St. John to discourse on Love, Dante says that 'God, the "good"
which contents this court (of heaven) is the Alpha and Omega of all
the scripture which Love reads to me.'
Lo ben che fa content a questa corte,
AHa ed 0 e di quanta scrittura
mi legge Amore 0 lievemente 0 forte. (Par. XXVi.I6.)
In this stanza the blend of courtly and religious feeling is so deep that
it cannot be broken down except artificially. The circling, singing
lights of the blessed are also courtiers in the court of Heaven; the
burning of romantic passion is also the burning desire for the highest
of all loves; and the 'lectures' which the God of Love reads to his
servants are the lessons also of St. John's Gospel. The synthesis is
complete.
Music is only one aspect of this great synthesis of courtly and divine.
Like the other images of love, we first meet it in the Vita Nuova (xii.8).
Love addresses the poet and tells him to have one of his poems clothed
in music-faUe [parole] adornare di soave armonia, ne la quale io sara
tutte Ie volle che lara mestiere ('. . . and I shall be in the "music"
whenever there is need').2 The Vita Nuova emerges from a tradition
of courtly love-song, in Italian as well as in Proven<;al. I shall treat
later of Dante's relation to the troubadours and their successors.
Meanwhile, let us recall one well-known episode in the Divine Comedy
where music and love are closely linked.
II See below, for a discussion of the elusive concept of armonia, which I here
translate as 'music.' The present point is not affected.
 DANTE AND MUSIC 7

In Ante-Purgatory Dante meets his friend, the mUSICIanCasella.

Weary with journeying, Dante asks Casella, if he has not lost his
memory and skill in love-song, to sing him a song to solace him.
Casella chooses Dante's own Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona. He has
certainly not lost his uso all' amoroso canto and sings so beautifully
that Virgil and Dante and the rest of the company can pay attention
to nothing else-tutti fissi ed attenti/a le sue note. Their trance-like
delight is rudely shattered by old Cato, guardian of the Mount:
. . . 'Che e cia, spiriti lenti?
qual negligenza, quale stare e questo?' (Purg. ii.120.)
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

The amorous associations of music are renewed later in the Purga-

torio. Matilda, blessing those whose sins are forgiven them, sings
come donna innamorata. The phrase seems to come straight out of an
erotic pastourelle by Cavalcanti.3 Matilda's singing is quite beyond
moral reproach-like the dance-songs of the blest spirits in Paradise.
But the Casella episode hints with delicacy and firmness that the
experience of music, however beautiful, can induce spiritual inattention
and weakness. The pervasive sanity and sympathy of Dante's
utterances on this subject are in marked contrast to the tirades of
many medieval moralists. It is like his treatment of sex-tender,
touching, and yet inexorably true. The most outspoken passage
about musical experience is the one in which Dante dreams of the
Siren. 'When first seen she is a stuttering, squinting woman, distorted
and maimed. But as Dante gazes at her she seems to lose her ugliness,
and her pallid face takes the colour that love wishes to give it:
e 10 smarrito volto
com' amor vuol, cos1 Ie colorava. (Purg: xix.I4.)

Then she sings a song, seductive in itself and telling of her earlier
seductions; of how she has led Ulysses and other sailors astray.
'10 son,' cantava, 'io son dolce serena,
che i marinari in mezzo mar dismago;
tanto son di piacere a sentir piena!
10 volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago
al canto mio; equal meco si ausa
rado sen parte; s1 tutto l'appago.' (xix. 19.)

'the man who gets accustomed to my ways rarely leaves me, so fully
do I satisfy him.' The Siren, as Miss Sayers observed, is 'the pro-
jection upon the outer world of something in the mind.' The soul's

3 I thank Fr. Foster for drawing my attention to this.

 8 J. E. STEVENS

love for [other people and things] is not love for a 'true other' ... but
a devouring egotistical fantasy, by absorption in which the personality
rots away into illusion.4
There is a danger of misunderstanding here. Dante does not intend,
I am sure, to set up an antithesis between 'good' (intellectual and
rational) experience of music, and 'bad' (emotional, sensuous), with
the Casella and Siren episodes showing differing degrees of the 'bad'.
Characteristically, only a few cantos later in the Purgatorio we find the
emotional experience of music used, as I described it above, as a
SYmbol of spiritual understanding. Virgil, Dante and Statius have
reached the westernmost point of the mountain of Purgatory and have
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

to go through the 'immeasurable burning' before they can enter the

Earthly Paradise. The Angel of Chastity sings Beati mundo corde
(Blessed are the pure in heart) and then exhorts them to listen to the
singing beyond the fire which they must enter. As they cross through
the fire it is a voice from beyond which guides and sustains them:
Guidavaci una voce che cantava
di la; e noi, attenti pur a lei,
venimmo fuor la ove si montava. (Purg. xxvii.55.)

The song they heard was Venite benedicti patris mei (Introit to the
Mass for Thursday of Easter Week).
If this singing provides a spiritual directive, the singing of Leah,
Rachel's sister, of whom Dante dreams on the ascent to the Earthly
Paradise, provides music of spiritual consolation.s He dreams of a
young, courtly lady wandering through a plain, gathering flowers and
singing:
giovane e bella in sogno mi parea
donna vedere andar per una land a
cogliendo fiori; e cantando dicea. (Purg. xxvii.97.)

To sum up so far, music in the Divine Comedy not only stands for
Order (relazione) but is bound up with the experience of Love. But, if
'virtue is the setting in order of love,' it follows that not every emotional
experience of music will symbolize the right kind of love. There is a
joy arising from music which can be nearer to the trance of self-
illusion than to experience of the divine Other.
One kind of music, however, always seems to have an uplifting and
enlightening effeet-'enlightening' in a literal sense, too, when as so

D. L. Sayers, trs., Purgatory (Penguin, 1955),p. 220.

4
IICf. also Matilda (Purg. xxviii.40) , another singing lady who gives spiritual
insight.
 DANTE AND MUSIC 9

often it is associated with the shining of lights. I refer to the music of

the liturgy, plainsong. The Purgatorio, in particular, abounds in
references to liturgical chant: psalms, hymns, antiphons, and parts of
the Ordinary of the Mass. Of course, not every Latin quotation from
the Vulgate is also a quotation from the liturgy; the Beatitudes, which
are sung or pronounced by the Angel of each cornice as he erases from
Dante's head one of the Seven Deadly Sins, were not all in liturgical
use. But, in general, we must feel the liturgy, not merely the Bible,
behind these chants. They are not merely doctrinal, or literary, tags;
they should bring the whole worship of the Church to our minds.
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

The inhabitants of Purgatory, like Christians on this earth, are

penitents and worshippers. As penitents they sing, for instance,
Psalm 50, Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam:
venivan genti innanzi a noi un poco
cantando 'Miserere' a verso a verso. (Purg. v.23.)

It is a company of those who repented late in life and were killed

before they could make formal confession. Their singing has a wealth
of unspoken meaning. The M iserere referred to here is one of the
Seven Penitential Psalms; it is sung liturgically at Lauds, on Thursday,
Friday and Saturday of Holy \Veek, and also at the Burial Service.
This one example shows the wealth of meaning that a single line-
here, a single word-may carry. The references to liturgical singing
carry their liturgical meaning with them. They are utterances, in
music, of prayer and praise; they are part of the opus Dei. They
produce also (but this is secondary) a discipline, a purification, of the
emotions. Hence, perhaps, the greatly superior number of references
to plainchant in the Purgatorio than elsewhere in the poem.
Almost every reference to plainsong includes a comment on Dante's
experience of it as music. (Sometimes also a comment on the manner
of its performance.) This experience can be intensely uplifting-as
when, for example, Dante heard the Compline hymn, Te lucis ante
terminum, sung by the Negligent Rulers at the hour of sunset. He
was taken out of himself:
'Te Lucis Ante' s1 devotamente
Ie uscio di bocca e con s1 dolci note,
ehe feee me a me uscir di mente. (Purg. viii.I3.)
And, much later on his journey, the hymn Summae Deus clementiae
makes him eager to tum aside when he hears it sung nel senD/ al
grand'ardore by the souls of the Lustful (Purg. XXV.I2I).
The love-music of the Divine Comedy would not seem complete
 10 J. E. STEVENS

unless it included some chants in honour of the Blessed Virgin.

Naturally, it does. Two of her votive antiphons are sung. The first
is, Salve regina, mater misericordiae. As Dante, Virgil, and the Italian
troubadour, Sordello, are waiting in the Valley of the Negligent Rulers
for the new day to break, they see souls sitting on the grass and flowers
and singing this anthem (Purg. vii.82). The second, Regina coeli,
is sung in heaven for the Coronation of the Virgin. Compared to the
beauty of that music the sweetest earthly music is as dull and formless
as a clap of thunder (parrebbe nube che squarciata tuona: Par. xxiii.gg).
The passage is too long to quote but it contains one image which
compels a slight disgression from my main argument: the song
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

(whether of the archangel Gabriel or of some nameless angel, is not

agreed) is described as la circulata melodia.
'Circling melody' is not an unusual image for the music of Paradise.
This, and several other references, have seemed to invite a polyphonic
explanation. One should be sceptical about this. There are plenty
of reasons why the 'circle' should be a dominating image-the dancing
of caroles, the movement of the spheres, the sign for tempus perfectum
and many others. There are, in fact, few passages in the Divine
Comedy which firmly suggest music in parts.6 Lines like, 10 sentiva
osannar di cora in cora (Par. xxviii.g4) leave the question entirely open.
The stanza with the astonishing image about angels 'making Hosanna
spring-like with three melodies' is more convincing. 7 The second
Triad (of angelic orders)
perpetualemente Osanna sberna
con tre melode, che suonano in tree
ordini di letizia, onde s'interna. (xxviii. II 8.)

But Dante's heaven is inevitably a three-fold place, and perhaps even

here theological discount must be made.
To conclude our main argument, Dante's poetical use of music
bears out, strikingly I think, his analysis of its nature and effects in
his description of the planet Mars in the Convivio. Its two aspects,
Order and Love, are powerfully and beautifully combined in the great
climax of the Purgatorio already quoted. Dante, forsaken now by
his guide Virgil, dolcissimo patre, has just been addressed for the first
time by Beatrice:
Guardaci ben! ben son, ben son Beatrice. (XXX·73·)

8But see Par. vi.I24; Par. viii.I7-I8 (free organum?); etc.

7Dr. Boyde kindly elucidated this textual crux for me: the Temple Classics
edn. reads sverna and translates 'unwintering.'
 DANTE AND MUSIC II

The angels sing In te, Domine, speravi; and Dante weeps. The song in
which he senses the heavenly compassion is

... il eantar di quei ehe notan sempre

dietro a Ie note de Ii etterni giri. (XXX.92.)

There is a third aspect of Dante's concern with music which is no

less fascinating but of an altogether more mundane kind. It has to
do with the craft of song-writing and the relationship of words and
music. The evidence for it is mostly in two works, the Convivio and
Dante's unfinished treatise on vernacular composition, De Vulgari
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

Eloquentia.
Music, for us in the twentieth century, is, whatever the style preferred,
harmonized music. Whether by Weber or Webern, western music has
come to be fully identified with the complicated, synchronous musical
structures which for brevity we may call 'harmony.' Music, for
Dante and his contemporaries, was first and foremost melody; and they
used the word armonia in quite un-harmonic senses. I do not mean
simply that the part-music, the polyphony, they knew had primarily a
melodic interest, though this is true enough, but that when Dante thinks
of music, he thinks of a single line of sound-elaborate in structure,
maybe, and elaborated with ornament beyond the bounds of our
innocent expectation-but still in essence a single melody. Such an
elaborate melody is to be heard, for instance, in Jhesu Crist filh de
Dieu viu. This prayer to Christ was written by Guiraud Riquier, one
of the last of the troubadours, in 1275 when Dante was ten years old.
It is more than likely that the earlier troubadours (or their jongleurs)
ornamented in similar fashion some of the songs which have come down
to us only in skeleton form.
Dante never mentions Guiraud Riquier in his works. But he knew,
of course, songs in the three main literary vernaculars (proven~al,
French, and Italian) and he mentions many troubadours by name,
quoting their works. The Proven<;al poet, Bertrand de Born, is
found in the Eighth Circle of the Inferno, swinging his severed head in
his hand, a guisa di lanterna. Dante places him amongst the 'sowers
of discord'-

sappi eh'i'son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli

ehe diedi al Re giovane i' rna' eomforti. (XXViii.I34.)

In the Divine Comedy, as this passage shows, the troubadours appear

chiefly as personalities, and they are disposed according to their
personal qualities. At the other end of the spiritual scale, the
 12 J. E. STEVENS

troubadour Folquet of Marseilles appears, in the Heaven of Venus, as 'a

shining precious jewel' (luculenta e cara gioia). His fame, the voyager
is told, will outlast five centuries. In fact, an unusually large number
of Folquet's songs have survived 650 years with their music. One of
the survivors is praised by Dante in the De Vulgari Eloquentia (II.vi.6):
Tan m'abellis l'amoros pensamen. Folquet's voice is described as
gladdening heaven ceaselessly, but this may be less on account of his
musical qualities than because he became a Cistercian monk, an abbot,
and finally Bishop of Toulouse when he had given up the life of a
troubadour. He was well known for his part in the crusade against
the Albigensian heretics.
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

The troubadour whom Dante admired most, at least when he was

writing the Comedy, was Arnaut Daniel, the only poet who is privileged
to speak in his vernacular tongue, Proven<;al.
leu sui Amaut, que plor e vau cantan.

Arnaut is found in Purgatorio on the Seventh Cornice, amongst the

lustful. But the occasion is one for great praise of l'uso moderno in
poetry. Dante does great reverence to his forerunner, Guido Guiniz-
zelli, who in his tum points out Arnaut Daniel, in a famous line:
fu miglior fabbro del parlar matemo.

Arnaut, the celebrated exponent of trobar ric, is several times mentioned

in the De V ulgari, usually as an exponent of difficult techniques like
using the same rhymes, or the same end-words, all the way through a
poem. Arnaut's song, Lo ferm voler qu'el cor m'intra, in the sestina
form that he is said to have invented, shows both his admired sotti-
gliezza and his virtuosity as a verse-technician. The stanza is one of
those without rhymes, but with the same end-words repeated according
to a complicated system of permutation in each succeeding verse.
If Dante admired poetry of this degree of sophistication and com-
plexity, what kind of relationship did he envisage between the words
and the music of a song? I t is the last question which I shall attempt;
and it is also the most difficult.
The question may even be wrongly phrased. We cannot even be
sure that Dante would have understood the point of it. We have
been used, for centuries, to conceptual relationships between words and
music in the song-the word-painting of the Elizabethan madrigal;
the stylized declamation of seventeenth-century recitative; the
emotional commentary of the Schubertian L~ed; the imaginative
rhetoric of a song-cycle by Britten. We need, I think, to discard all
 DANTE AND MUSIC I3
this and the assumptions about song-writing which lie behind it.
Dante, I believe, felt the music of poetry and the music of music to be
much closer akin as constructs in sound than we do. Or, to put it
. another way, he was infinitely more sensitive than we are to the
physical affinity of the two arts; they are both arts of 'good measure-
ment' in sound.
Dante's melodic ideal, we may be sure, was something more subtle
than what we would call 'a good tune'. The elaborate and complex
melodies on which his ear was trained were those of the liturgy as well
as those of the troubadours. When Dante uses the word armonia, it
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

is not music in parts that he is thinking of but the harmoniousness of

a perhaps complex, yet perfectly proportioned, set of sounds.

Quella cosa dire l'uomo essere bella, cui Ie parti debitamente si rispon-
dono, per che de la loro armonia resulta piacimento. Onde pare l'uomo
essere bello, quando Ie sue membra debitamente si rispondono; e dicemo
bello 10 canto, quando Ie voci di quello, secondo debito de l'arte, sono
intra se rispondenti. (Con. I.v.I3.)7a

He goes on to argue that the same principle of harmoniousness governs

the Latin language as compared with the vernacular; Latin is more
beautiful than any vernacular, since it follows art not usage. His
comments on translation also fit with this. It is not loss of sense that
he cares about but loss of sound. This conception of armonia
(harmoniousness) is the key, I believe, to his view of the relationship
between words and music. It may also illuminate the whole vexed
question of words and music in early monody.
The most revealing single passage comes not from a prose treatise
but from canto xxviii of the Paradiso. Dante, gazing llPon the
eyes of Beatrice, suddenly becomes aware of something which was not
previously in his sight or thought. It is as if a man were looking into
a mirror and someone lit a taper behind him:

a se rivoIge, per veder se '1 vetro

Ii dice il vero, e vede ch'el s'accorda
con esso come nota con suo metro (Par. xxviii.4.)

('He sees the reality agreeing with the image as music to its verse.')
If here the word metro means the words of a song, as seems likely for
the contrast here, then we have a most revealing analogy for the

7a See also the definition of armonica in Isidore, Etymologies, bk. iii, cap. 19
(edn. of 1797, iii.26): Harmonica est modulatio vocis et concordantia plurim,orum
sonorum vel coaptatio. (I thank Dr. Weiss for this reference.)
 J. E. STEVENS

relationship between words and music as Dante conceived it.8 The

music is as intimately and sensitively bound up with the words, as an
object to its reflection in a mirror, or as a shadow to the body that
casts it. It is not that the 'sound must seem an echo to the sense'
but something more physical-'the sense must seem an echo to the
sound.' The two are not indivisible; but when they are together, they
are closely analogous, or parallel.
The point is made again in the De V ulgari Eloquentia. The melody
alone without words does not make a song. Without words the cantio
is called a sonus, or a nota, or a tonus.
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

Ad quod dicimus, quod nunquam modulatio dicitur cantio, sed sonus, vel
tonus, vel nota, vel melos. Nullus enim tibicen, vel organista, vel
citharedus, melodiam suam cantionem vocat nisi in quantum nupta est
alicui cantioni; sed armonizantes verba opera sua cantiones vocant.
(II.viii.S·)

In this passage Dante defines a song as follows:

cantio nil aliud esse videtur quam actio completa dictantis verba
modulationi armonizzata. (II.viii.S.)

He has just said that those who 'harmonize' words, in his sense, make
songs, whether they have music with them or not; poems are musical
constructs in words. But a song in the fullest sense is 'the completed
action of one who artistically puts words together into a harmonious
whole'8a-harmonious, that is, in itself and ready for the other harmony
of music. Both the mirror-image and the marriage-image suggest the
closest possible physical union. The reflection in the mirror can be
blotted out, but if restored it inevitably takes the same shape as before.
One would dearly like to know how much room for manoeuvre this
actually gave the poet and the musician in Dante's view.
Elsewhere in the De V ulgari Dante propounds another definition
of song:
nichil aliud est quam fictio rethorica musicaque poita. (II.iv.2.)

8 The translators vary in their renderings of nota and metro: 'song' and 'meas-
ure: 'words' and 'air,' 'note' and 'melody: have all been suggested. Dr. Boyde
writes, in a helpful note to me: 'Metro only occurs in rhyme in DC (hencemeanings
may be forced). In Inf. vii.33 and xix.89 it certainly means "words," the words
just spoken by sinners. But in neither case does it specifically mean words-in-
a-poem; and it is clearly used sarcastically. In Inf. XxxiV.IO,it seems to mean
"in poetry, in metrical form." In Purg. xxvii.5I, it means "measure" quite
neutrally (misura). Nota certainly refers to musical sounds, or music, far more
often than to anything else.'
8a Although the logic of the argument seems to forbid it here, modulatio does
elsewherehave the meaning of 'melody: a musical phrase (e.g. II.x.2).
 DANTE AND MUSIC IS
One editor translates this as 'nothing else but a rhetorical composition
set to music. '9 . This seems to me to betray a quite anachronistic
conception of music and poetry as dissociated arts. A more recent
rendering is, 'a product of imagination expressed with the aid of
rhetoric and music.'10 This cannot be fully understood without
further comment. The necessary comment is provided by the passage
from the Convivio which I quoted at the beginning:
tanto piiJ. dolce armonia resulta, quanto piiJ. la relazione e bella: la
quale in essa scienza massimamente e bella, perche massimamente in
ella s'intende. (II.xiii.23.)
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

The crux of the matter, as I see it, is that Dante does not envisage
any of the relationships between words and music with which we are
familiar. Not only are conceptual and expressive relationships totally
ruled out but sometimes even any individual relationship of stress or
accent-if by relationship we mean some kind of contrived mutuality.
Admittedly one could argue that Dante, in centring his remarks
about the craft of song-writing around this elusive concept, armonia,
is, not directly but by implication, arguing that the only aspect of the
music of song which matters is the 'music' of poetry itself. The mO,st
recent editors of the lyrical poems write:
the general drift, without doubt, of Dante's scattered allusions to the
art of poetry is towards identifying its specific element with music,
taking this term in the special sense that it has in this context-the art
of treating words as items in an aural harmony.ll

Their argument is designed to give prominence, and rightly, to the

sound-structure of the poems as distinct from their content of meaning,
their display of rhetorical skills: '. . . The poet has an over-riding
concern with beauty. He is a maker of beautiful objects.' From this
it is a short step, though not a logically necessarily one, to assert, with
Monterosso, that Dante's testimony supports the view that 'la poesia
italiana ... preferisce fare a meno della musica' and that Dante
gives in the Convivio, II.xi.2, example of 'una prassi poetica ormai
deliberatamente staccata da quella musicale. '12
But, surely, we can accept that Dante, even in his early years, had
'una coscienza precisa e nett a della dignita autonoma della poesia,

II Trs. A. G. Ferrers-Howell (1890), p. 55.

10 K. Foster and P. Boyde, Dante's Lyric Poetry, introduction, p. xvii.
11 Ibid.
12 R. Monterosso, 'Musica e poesia nel De Vulgari Eloquentia,' in Dante: Atti
della giornata internazionale di studio per il vii centenario (Ravenna, 1965; Faenza,
1965), pp. 83 fl. A most valuable contribution.
 16 J. E. STEVENS

la quale deve badare innanzi tutto alle esigenze sue proprie' without
accepting that he had a merely perfunctory interest in the 'music' of
music and in its relationship to the 'music' of words. Dante can, I
believe, reveal as no one else can something of the nature of words-
and-music in a period which is all too remote and obscure. Indeed, he
makes this revelation involuntarily, whether his heart was in the
matter or not.
We must begin by emphasizing the negatives. Certainly Dante
does not take what we can now recognize as a post-Reformation or
humanistic view-that music's function in song is to project, clarify
or express the words, as units of sound and as units of meaning. Still
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

less does he subscribe to Romantic notions of music making articulate

the secret longings of the heart which the poet has had to leave un-
uttered. Monterosso has well said that there are innumerable ways
in which 'music and sweet poetry' may 'agree' in medieval times:
quando si parla di identita tra musica e poesia, bisogna, almeno sotto
l'aspetto ritmico, liberarsi da un grave pregiudizio, ossia ehe la prosodia
o la metriea del testo debbano collimare con la metrica musica secondo
la stessa puntuale e irritante precisione con cui il testo di un inno
patriottico puo essere scandito melodicamente sulla cadenza del passo di
parata. L'identita (prosodica, metrica, e ritmica) fra poesia e musica
puo realizzarsi attraverso mille strade, e, assai pili spesso di quanto non
si creda, mediante una concordia discors, grazie alIa quale ciascuna delle
due tecniche mantiene intatta e sovrana la propria autonomia.13

The best example of this, Monterosso observes, is in Gregorian chant

which, though inappropriately adapted to words both from the
'expressive' and from the 'accentual' point of view, realized 'un'
indubbia unita estetica fra Ie due espressioni.'
Positively, we can be sure from the whole tenor of Dante's writing,
in the Convivio and in the De Vulgari Eloquentia, that the relationship
between the words and music of a poem was in essence a physical
matter, a question of pure sounds, not of 'sound-pictures' or of 'pro-
grammes.' It was dependent certainly on 'numbers' (numeri are the
special province of the musician) 14 ; on armonia; on the realization, in
the comparatively formal terms of music, of the 'musical potential' of
the poem. When Dante writes omnis stantia ad quandam odam
reeipiendam armonizzata est, he specifically envisages an armonia in
music closely bound up with the armonia of the poem. He comes

13 Idem, pp. 85-86.

14 See Con. II.xi.g: grammatici, rhetorici, and musici all have their special
contribution to make to the bellezza of a poem, which can be appreciated even if
the bontade is missed.
 DANTE AND MUSIC 17
nearest to saying in detail how this works in the De Vulgari Eloquentia,
Tota igitur, scilicet ars cantionis, circa tria videtur consistere: prima
circa cantus divisionem, secundo circa partium habitudinem, tertio
circa numerum carminum et sillabarum. (II.ix+)
stantia esse sub certo cantu et habitudine limitatam carminum et
sillabarum compagem. (II.ix.6.)

These three techniques which have to be studied in the composition

of the perfect highly-wrought stanza are, as Dante restates them:
(i) cantus division em , the formal melodic structure of the stanza,
into frons (or pedes), diesis, sirma (or versus), sub certo cantu-i.e. so
as to establish a unique melody. Marigo, in his commentary allows
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

the possibility of 'una melodia gia composta'; but Monterosso rightly

discounts it.IS Dante, like the troubadours, calls for specially written
melodies to fit his specially constructed stanzas.
(ii) partium habitudinem, the harmonious putting-together, or
proportioning, of lines and rhymes, as appears from ch. xi: contextum
carminum et rithimorum relationem. Marigo refers to Boethius's use
of habitudo in his Arith., 40, for proporzione numerica; Monterosso adds
an apt reference to his De M usica, ii.20, also. Dante observes that this
particular aspect of stanza-making is the one which requires the highest
art.
(iii) numerum carminum et sillabarum, the 'harmony' of lines and
syllables. Three lines have the prerogative of being used frequently-
the lines of eleven, seven, and five syllables.
From this Dantean idealization of a single stanza it seems clear that
Dante had in mind some 'abstract,' some 'Idea' of an armonia for each
poem-song, which was not closely dependent on the nature of indi-
vidual words or phrases, either as meanings or as sounds.. Thus, in
this part of the discussion there is one (to us) striking omission.
Dante nowhere makes a distinction between what we should call the
'rhythm' of the line-that is, the actual sounds the words make as
individual entities and in groups-and its metre-that is, the assumed
norm or basic underlying pattern. Moreover, his discussion of metre
seems to rest entirely on an arithmetical basis; he theorizes about
'numbers' in the simplest terms. One pertinent fact, however,
emerges. The construction of repeated sections (the pedes, for
instance) must be strictly parallel, for the music's sake (non aliter
ingeminatio cantus fieri posset, ad quam pedes fiunt; II.xii.9). There is

1Ii A. Marigo, ed., De Vulgari Eloquentia, 3rd edn; con appendice di aggioma-

Mento a cura di P. G. Ricci (Florence, 1957).

 18 J. E. STEVENS

not to be unlimited freedom of connection between the words and the

melody; the two are importantly related through the number of
syllables in each line and through the structure of the strophe, even if
not, apparently, through any coincidence of stress.
Dr. Monterosso finds the heart of what Dante has to say in ch. x:
Dante puntualizza innanzitutto che ogni stanza di canzone e potenzial-
mente atta a ricevere la melodia, per il solo fatto di essere provvista di
una propria regolata struttura.

In an earlier comment Monterosso appears to elevate the importance

of the morphology of line and strophe above the composizione dei
vocaboli; but, surely, both elements of relazione must be fully present.
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 09:43 02 July 2016

The individually controlled structure must extend to every detail of

the stanza.
Thus, we are brought back at every point to the contemplation of
parallel structures in sound. The quality of the 'music' of poetry
and the quality of music itself are thought to be the same-
la quale e tutta relativa, 51 come si vede ne Ie parole armonizzate e ne
Ii canti, de' quaIi tanto pili dolce armonia risulta, quanto pili la relazione
e bella.
Words and music are one 'harmony' -cosa per legame musaico armoniz-
zante ('something made harmonious through the bond of art'). This,
of course, is why the terms armonia and armonizzare and musica are
so difficult to translate when Dante uses them-because we have
separated music and poetry in a way which he did not. We think,
rightly, of the 'music of poetry' as something which is almost totally
lost when a song is made of a poem. Dante thought of the 'music of
poetry' as proportion, 'number,' armonia-in fact, as music, which
could be realized anew. The problem that remains (it is one to which
I see no easy solution) is to define the sense in which any particular
poem in a conventional form may be said to have an individual
'harmoniousness' for the musician to realize, when all the criteria on
which individuality is normally based today have apparently been
discounted.
Cambridge. JOHN STEVENS.