The Sound of Persuasion: Vocal Enchantments Between Natural Philosophy and the Gerusalemme liberata

Abstract

Sixteenth-century Italy is rich in considerations on the frightening power of song and women’s voices. Looking back to classical sources on sirens, enchantresses, and the power of the ancient modes; consolidating ideas about the body and the world in the burgeoning field of natural philosophy; experimenting with a new metaphysics that emphasized the music of the spheres and the occult ways of harnessing words and music; marking the last days of epic poetry as a sung genre; or striving to define the new role of professional female singers and new, super-emotional musical genres, writers from many different spheres of knowledge grappled with the question: Why do beautiful vocal music and well-chosen words influence how I feel? The first half of this dissertation explores this concern from a wide-ranging cultural history perspective that establishes its breadth and relevance, then points out keys and clues for interpreting the ephemeral and ambivalent presence of the magical voice in literary and other texts. Referencing authors from Aristotle, Plato, Galen, and Cicero to Castiglione, Pietro Pomponazzi, Francesco Alunno, and Tommaso Garzoni, in a broad and chaotic style meant to mimic the Italian Renaissance construction of knowledge, I trace how the perception of the musical voice waxes from calcified traditional education to a relevant, practical, and perceptible unknown that desperately needs explanation. The second half of the dissertation reads Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata as an attentive depiction of physiology and psychology, arguing that in this work, the power of enchanting song should be understood as more than a metaphor. More than just a fantastical retreading of literary tropes, Tasso’s use of siren song, enchantment, persuasion, and gender characteristics is rooted in contemporaneous knowledge about human biology and the world. At the same time, his compelling literary treatment of such themes helps us modern readers to access the historical mindset from a more holistic perspective that incorporates the emotional weight and urgency of the ongoing investigation on the voice: the suspicion, and even fear, of the beautiful, airy, liquid substance that could penetrate a listener’s body and soul, changing his feelings and even his essence.