Abstract

334 RHETORICA literary character" (p. 249), in which Sterne uses novelistic techiques to represent Bible characters as embodied. Wehrs attributes to Sterne the insight, confirmed by cognitive scientists, that to picture a scene provokes the same emotional response as actually witnessing the scene. Moral instincts, which in Sterne's worldview are natural to anyone with a "heart," must be activated whenever scenes are representedfeelingly. Thus Sterne's achievement in the sermons is to employ a sentimental rhetoric in order to gain his audience s full participation in religion. Divine Rhetoric prepares readers to reconsider the value, not just of Sterne's sermons, but of eighteenth-century sermons in general. Shayda Hoover University of California, Irvine Catherine Gordon-Seifert, Music and the Language ofLove: SeventeenthCentury French Airs. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Univer­ sity Press, 2011, xiii, 390pp.: black and white illustrations, tables, musical exx. ISBN 978-0-253-35461-7. $44.95 The air, a song, generally with the accompaniment of one of a variety of musical instruments (harpsichord, theorbo, or viol), is one of the largest yet least understood repertories in seventeenth-century France. Thousands were composed to be performed in an intimate setting, such as the salon, for a small, cultivated group of listeners. As the author Catherine GordonSeifert observes, "... the air was so important, its influence so pervasive, that the repertory was connected in some way to almost every major aesthetic, cultural, and social movement after 1650." These works are rarely performed today, because they require a thorough knowledge of the significance of every word in the text. The poets who prepared the lyrics used a highly restricted vocabulary, often with multiple meanings, which are reflected in the musical setting. The texts deal with the various passions associated with love, in part because these are strong emotions that lend themselves well to musical intensification. While recent research has increased our knowledge of the issues sur­ rounding this repertory (a discussion of this research serves as part of the introduction), this book is a major contribution to our understanding of the rhetorical elements of the song texts and the way in which composers ex­ pressed them in their musical settings. The task of the singer was to present the songs in such a way that the listener was moved to experience the pas­ sions being expressed. In this sense the singer played the role of an actor who used the additional persuasive power of music to move the listener, in essence a "harmonic orator." In the first chapter the author provides an overview of the repertorv under discussion. She limits her examination to the works of four composers Reviews 335 who made the most significant contributions to the air repertory in the 1660s and 1670s: Michel Lambert (1610-96), Benigne de Bacilly (c.1625-90), Joseph Chabanceau de la Barre (1633-78), and Sébastien Le Camus (c.161077 ). These composers are represented by contemporary publications of their work which may be said to represent their music as they intended (Airs often circulated in corrupted editions, or in manuscript obtained second-hand). An overview of the form and style of the song texts is provided, which lays the groundwork for a more detailed examination in subsequent chapters. Chapter Two provides an overview of the work of seventeenth-century theorists who explored the relationship among rhetoric, poetics and music, the most important of which are René Descartes, Marin Mersenne, and Jean-Léonor de Grimarest. The author contrasts the privileged relationship of music and poetry in sixteenth-century theory with its decline as an academic consideration in the seventeenth centurv. Music lost its intellectual J and spiritual associations and was regarded primarily as a means of “... providing pleasure and expressing the passions." (p.42) The final portion of the chapter discusses the passions and what Mersenne and Bacilly reveal concerning their specific expression through musical figures, or musical gestures. In discussing them, Gordon-Seifert relies heavily on Descartes and Bernard Lamy. In addition Bacilly provides an element of practicality to theoretical issues. Chapter Three applies the principles discussed previously to specific analyses of sample airs for each of the passions deemed most impor­ tant in the poetic texts set to...