Through a series of essays originating from a conference held in June 2015, editors Sarah Hibberd and Miranda Stanyon present a volume which seeks to give ‘sustained attention’ (p. 1) to music and the sublime. Yet, the book addresses more than sublimity in musical sound. As the editors note, the musical sublime is situated within sound studies as a subset of ‘the sonorous’ and ‘sonic power’ (p. 2). Indeed, the contents reveal that the ‘sonorous sublime’ extends to French sermons (Chapter 1), revolutionary rhetoric (Chapter 5), bells and cannons (Chapter 10), and even, paradoxically, to silence (Chapter 8).
Scholars of music will be relieved to learn that, with a few exceptions, the volume is primarily about music. And while traditional composers and genres associated with the sublime are addressed (for example, Handel's choral music and Haydn's oratorios), five of the ten chapters address musical sublimity in the surprising genre of opera (both as musical works and with regard to their performance).
Scholars of the sublime will then inquire: which sublime is considered ‘sonorous’? Is it a rhetorical sublime (as found in Longinus)? Or is it the ‘aesthetic sublime’ which emerged in the eighteenth century? The contents of this volume show that the ‘sonorous sublime’ can include both of these and more, including the historical sublime (Chapter 3), the ‘neoclassical sublime’ (Chapter 4) and the ‘pathetic sublime’ (Chapter 7). As the editors admit, ‘recent scholarship has been wary of seeking a singular concept underpinning the long history of the sublime’ (p. 8).
Music and the Sonorous Sublime's invaluable introduction by the editors surveys sublime aesthetics beginning in the seventeenth century, emphasizing the expanding connections between music and the sublime commencing in the eighteenth century. Then, the first chapter examines seventeenth-century French sermons, preaching manuals and liturgical treatises in relation to the rhetorical sublime of Longinus (as translated by Boileau). Here Sophie Hache asserts that, ‘Although Longinus's name is not mentioned in this context, his treatise is present in the background, together with the debates on the sublime that were absorbing the attention of the literary world during this period’ (p. 43). Hache's essay provides fascinating insights on literature replete with references to the sublime that preceded the heyday of English sublime discourse in the eighteenth century. However, despite evidence of sublimity in celestial sounds, Hache confirms that, according to her sources, terrestrial music ‘heard in churches’ (p. 42) falls short of sublimity.
Matthew Head then considers the relation of the sublime with sodomy, arguing that John Dennis, the London critic, poet and dramatist, ‘linked the sublime with (sexual) violence with notorious explicitness’ (p. 45). He cites the oft-quoted phrase from Dennis's description of the Longinian sublime – ‘a pleasing rape’ – and goes on to read Dennis's early works and his 1698 ‘dramatick opera’ Rinaldo & Armidde in line with twenty-first century homoerotic literature. With respect to the volume's theme, this article spends more time on (supposed) innuendo in writings than on the analysis of sounds. There is only brief interaction with actual music (p. 61).
In contrast, Suzanne Aspden's chapter brings the reader familiar with English discourse on the sublime and music back into familiar territory. Aspden lays out strong evidence for Handel's influence on English composers, including Maurice Greene, William Hayes, Thomas Linley and Thomas Arne. She confirms, through score-by-score comparisons, that these composers ‘appropriat[ed] the same musical lexicon of the sublime that Handel himself used’ (p. 68). As affirmed in eighteenth-century literature on music, Handel's music was the source for the sound of the sublime. And, as Aspden demonstrates, this sound continued in Handel's musical progeny – those who adopted his sublime style.Footnote 1
Next, Keith Chapin considers how the music of C.P.E. Bach was heard as sublime in the eighteenth century, including both simple songs (for example, the Gellert Lieder) and complex choral pieces (for example, Heilig). He surveys contemporaneous German, British and French aesthetic theory to go beyond ‘sublime simplicity’ to the mixed emotion of ‘delightful horror’ (p. 92). From a broader perspective, Chapin's article points towards the growing importance – and complexity – of the sublime as a category of musical aesthetics in the nineteenth century.
Remaining in the eighteenth century, Sarah Hibberd finds the ‘sonorous sublime’ in the ‘Revolutionary Rhetoric’ of the French Revolution, as well as in Cherubini's music, as performed by the singer Julie-Angélique Scio. Locating the sublime in the experience of terror is not new (as readers of Edmund Burke are aware). But Hibberd's emphasis on internal sublimation (a ‘psychological defence mechanism’) via French opera over ‘the height and limit implied by sub limen’ (p. 122, n. 9) certainly brings the sublime experience more down to earth, and from the mind to the heart.
Elaine Sisman then picks up where Aspden's chapter left off by addressing one of the ‘small group of canonical composers’ (p. 8) usually associated with the sublime. In a comparison of the widely recognized sublimity of Haydn's Creation with the lacklustre reception of its musical sequel, she asks ‘When Does the Sublime Stop?’. She answers this with a reading of The Seasons as a ‘shrine to sublime Mozart’ (p. 17), allowing for the continuation of the sublime in both Haydn's music and the composer himself.
In the third chapter to address opera, Miranda Stanyon searches for the sublime in ‘harmony’ – a contrast to the typical route to musical sublimity through dissonance (p. 178). Provocatively, Stanyon looks for the ‘harmonious sublime’ in late Romantic author Thomas De Quincey's experience of listening to contralto Josephine Grassini in London while under the influence of opium, as detailed in his Confessions. Apparently, few details regarding the ‘harmonious sublime’ can be found De Quincey's account (pp. 180, 190). Stanyon supplements these with a few lines from music reviews, concluding that Grassini is a ‘queer voice and subject’ (p. 185). Although she briefly traces the ‘elusive’ origins of the music to a scene and aria adapted by Niccolò Zingarelli from his Giulietta e Romeo (p. 186, described more fully pp. 190–91), the reader is left searching for more sustained attention to music and sound.Footnote 2
Benedict Taylor then compares nineteenth-century compositions by Weber and Spohr with Haydn's Creation, showing that ‘although the power of light is ostensibly being celebrated, it is pre-eminently sound that eclipses the visual and carries all before it’ (p. 201). Weber's Der erste Ton is shown to be ‘indebted’ to The Creation, but with a musical depiction of light ‘now subservient to the birth of sound’ (p. 207), and a depiction of silence through ‘obscure, intermittent sound’ (p. 208). In contrast, Spohr's Die Weihe der Töne, based on a poem by Carl Pfeiffer, is judged to be ‘a work of considerable charm and beauty’, yet ‘no longer sublime’ due to its resorting ‘back to words’ (p. 220). As Taylor concludes, ‘to mediate the sublime is always perilous’ (p. 221), and Spohr's attempt to celebrate ‘sound's divine creation’ unfortunately relies upon the mediation of ‘the verbal program’ (p. 219).
Next, Dana Gooley brings us back to opera performances in London, focusing on the intriguing political history surrounding Queen Victoria's attendance at Jenny Lind's performance of Bellini's La sonnambula and Pauline Viardot-Garcia's ‘command performance’ (p. 224) of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. Through these case studies of nineteenth-century events, he shows how ‘queen and diva … “surrogated” one another’ (p. 224). Yet, Gooley attends more to the intriguing history surrounding Victoria's presence at the performances than the performances themselves, emphasizing the sublime effect of royalty more than the ‘sonorous sublime’ of the singers.
Finally, David Trippett provides the clearest answer to the editors’ question, ‘what were the sonic, aesthetic and formal qualities that made sounds sublime for listeners of the period?’ (p. 2). In his study of the relationship between Wagner's sublime experience of war (from atop a bell tower in Dresden in 1849) and his later music involving bell sounds (including Parsifal and Das Rheingold), Trippett traces the connection between ‘the purely sonic’ (p. 247) and music itself. As the subtitle indicates (‘Bells, Cannon and the Perception of Heavy Sound’), his method allows for ‘investigations into historical soundscapes [that] offer a means of accessing the identity of sounds beyond music’ (p. 247).
As suggested above, several contributions to Music and the Sonorous Sublime seem to avoid the sonorous to consider other possible sources of the sublime. Yet, overall, the volume makes a substantial contribution to the literature on music and the sublime, expanding the musical breadth and conceptual depth of the discussion.
