Beyond “Beautiful”

The lesson starts by comparing two paintings. One, purely decorative, depicts a vase of flowers. The other, Rembrandt’s portrait of Homer, is meaningful in many ways: to describe it merely as “beautiful” is to miss the point. So it is with music. Johann Mattheson, in Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, gives us a detailed insight into what he calls the “science of melody.” The composer chooses a required affect and turns it into a written composition; the performer studies the written page and, perceiving the affects, turns it into sound. In the lesson’s exercise, “Becoming conscious of the ever-changing affects,” the reader is charged with identifying affects in a movement by Handel on a bar-by-bar basis. Punctuation is another essential aspect of literary and musical texts and is crucial to a rhetorical way of playing. There are two types, written and implied. The reader is asked to identify the punctuation in the Handel movement.