The Interrelationship Between Word and Music in Baroque Musical-Rhetorical Composition

Abstract

The foundation of Baroque musical thought is rooted in the principles of rhetoric, where music is understood as an emotional and expressive continuation of speech. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the significance of the word and, more broadly, of rhetorical art in the music of the Baroque period.

In the XVII-XVIII centuries, European professional music gradually evolved into a meta-language that adopted the structures and functions of verbal discourse. During the Baroque, music was regarded as a powerful means of communication and a tool for influencing the listener. Like rhetorical speech, musical composition aimed at persuading and moving its audience. Rhetoric operates on all levels of XVII and XVIII-century European professional music and manifests itself in:

• the level of creating and inventing a work (Inventio);
• the level of musical style and formal structure (Dispositio);
• the level of the constituent elements of a musical composition, that is, the musical language (rhetorical figures).

Baroque music represents a carefully planned rhetorical process, in which musical units convey ideas through specific topoi. Baroque compositions were typically mono-affective, expressing a single dominant emotional state. The content of the text determined key elements such as tonality, tempo, and melodic-rhythmic design. Accordingly, in Baroque musical-rhetorical composition, word and music form a unified semantic system in which music “speaks,” and the composition is perceived as emotional argumentation.

Thus, in Baroque musical-rhetorical composition, word and music form a unified semantic system in which music “speaks,” and the composition functions as emotional argumentation.