Boccherini’s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology

Contents

contents list of figures xi list of music examples xiii cd playlist xv acknowledgments xxi Introduction 1 The origins of this project—Boccherini’s generally acknowledged merits —some less generally acknowledged qualities—“carnal musicology” as based in the performer’s viewpoint—brief digests of each chapter to come—excursus: historicizing the terms of embodiment—kinesthesia— Condillac—fact and fiction 1. “Cello-and-Bow Thinking”: The First Movement of Boccherini’s Cello Sonata in Eb Major, Fuori Catalogo 14 Reciprocity of relationship between performer and dead composer— framing the cellist-body—a carnal reading of the first half of the movement in question— thumb-position—pleasure in repetition—cellistic bel canto—the predominance of reflective and pathetic affects— communicability and reciprocality—Rousseau on the role of the performer—subjectivity as a necessity—the second half of the movement —relationships between musical form and carnal experience—Boccherini ’s “celestial” topos—carnality and compositional process—the importance of the visual—in conclusion: the necessary ambivalence of my descriptions and analyses 2. “As My Works Show Me to Be”: Biographical 38 Boccherini’s self-representation in his letters—the lack of solid firsthand biographical evidence—the divergence of his performer and composer identities—period anxieties over those identities—early years in Lucca—familial emphasis on dance—travels to Vienna, 1757–63— possibilities of further touring—possible Viennese influences on Boccherini —Paris, 1768: the musical and cultural climate—Parisian virtuoso cellists—circumstantial evidence of meetings between Boccherini and Jean-Pierre Duport—Boccherini’s especial success with Parisian publishers—Spain, 1769—Boccherini’s first court post, 1770—the Spanish musical and cultural climate—Boccherini’s adeptness at finding a place within it 3. Gestures and Tableaux 65 The importance of visuality to period reception—its subsequent decline —the effect of this decline on Boccherini’s posthumous reputation —Spohr: “This does not deserve to be called music!”—a passage that might have provoked such a reaction—Boccherinian stasis and repetitiousness—Boccherinian sensibilité—the paintings of Luis Paret—the predominance of soft dynamics—hyper-precision in performance directions—the lacuna as sensible strategy—Boccherinian abandonment of melody in favor of texture—the influence of acoustics— tableaux in period theater and painting—their relations to sensibilit é—absorption—suppressed eroticism—tragedy and the tableau— the reform body: Angiolini’s classifications of motion styles—Spanish dance and gesture—seguidillas, boleros, and fandangos—Boccherini ’s complex relations to Spanish style—“Instrumentalist, what do you want of me?”: problems in the relation of performance to text 4. Virtuosity, Virtuality, Virtue 105 A theatricalized reading of the Cello Sonata in C Major, G. 17— cyclicity in Boccherini’s works—inter-generic recycling of themes and movements—unconscious recycling of subsidiary passages—the influence of tactile experience on this level of composition—etymologies of the word idiom—the sonatas within Boccherini’s oeuvre—virtuosi— philosophical problems posed by virtuosity—virtuosity contra sensibilit é—the grotesque—actorly virtuosity—the automatic and mechanical —bodily training toward perfection—the paradox of the actor 5. A Melancholy Anatomy 160 Reports of the 1993 exhumation and autopsy of Boccherini’s body— TB, the “white death”—musical melancholies—Boccherinian melancholy —Edward Young’s Night Thoughts—a melancholic reading of the String Quartet in C Minor, op. 9, no. 1, G. 171, Allegro—melancholic labyrinths—from Galen to Descartes—sympathetic vibration as a cause of or cure for melancholy—various consumptions—life and art: some animadversions—satiric melancholy—the performance direction con smorfia—other consumptions—Enlightenment anxieties about nocturnal pollution and consumption—the Marquis de Sade— a melancholic reading of the String Quartet in G Minor, op. 8, no. 4, G. 168, Grave—hypochondria as an aspect of musical hermeneutics 6. “It Is All Cloth of the Same Piece”: The Early String Quartets 207 An overview of Boccherini’s work in this genre—style periodization: Boccherini’s relatively unchanging style—woven music: his penchant for texture over melody—recycling the idea of recycling—the problem of “repetition” in ensemble contexts—sublimated caresses—the rococo —address to a sforzando—two analyses of the String Quartet in E Major, op. 15, no. 3, G. 179—peculiarities of the work—the first analysis (relatively conventional)—readerly relationships to analysis— the second analysis (experimental) 7. The Perfect Listener: A Recreation 254 Boccherini and Haydn’s attempt at correspondence—period comparison of the two composers—using carnal musicology on composers other than Boccherini—the Perfect Listener: re-creating “listener performance...