A sweet bird for the songs of Sappho

Abstract

In the title of this essay, the wording ‘sweet bird’ echoes what we hear in part of a poem by John Milton, Il Penseroso (1645/1646), later set to music by George Frideric Handel (1740), whose librettist merged the poem with Milton’s symmetrical L’Allegro (1645). So, Milton’s poetry became for Handel an extended song blending the mirth of L’Allegro with the melancholy of Il Penseroso. The part of Handel’s sung version that centers on the ‘sweet bird’—and I will quote the words at a later point—is an aria that imitates birdsong by way of a female soprano voice accompanied by a baroque flute. The bird in this English-language song is evidently a nightingale, and it is a ‘she’. What I find remarkable about this nightingale is that she is not only the subject of the song but also the model performer of the song, since the music of what is being sung is ostentatiously modeled on her birdsong. And what I will now argue is that something comparable is happening in the songs of Sappho. Here too we will see a kind of bird—in this case, it is a ‘he’—who is figured both as the subject of song and as a model for singing the song. In this case, however, a question arises: is the ‘sweet bird’ of Sappho, highlighted in the title of my essay, really ‘sweet’ like the pensive and melancholy ‘sweet bird’ of Milton’s poetry turned into song? I will argue that Sappho’s ‘sweet bird’ really is ‘sweet’, yes, though he is also quite mirthful and joyous, like the character by the name of L’Allegro, who is symmetrical with the character named Il Penseroso in the music of Handel. Like L’Allegro, Sappho’s bird takes joy in both pastoral and urban settings. In both settings, he is not only mirthful and joyous: he is even spicy or saucy. Before we consider the famous reference to such a ‘sweet bird’ in one of Sappho’s songs, however, I will first look at relevant references in classical Athenian vase paintings.