Music vs. Truth: Illustrative Music in the Context of Musical Aesthetics

The paper discusses the problem of musical rhetoric in the Renaissance and the Baroque. In the 16th century, the imitative qualities of music were developed through the concept of imitazione della natura. The relationship between word and music stabilized. Representation was a major function and was inspired by the ancient concept of merging words, harmony, and rhythm. In ancient times, music had become a key to metaphysics and an important educational tool. Thus, specific compositions were related directly to a specific state of the soul, characters and emotions. The author presents the aforementioned concept in later times, i.e. in the Renaissance, when not only theorists but also composers, performers and listeners assigned musical-rhetorical figures to specific meanings. The paper extensively discusses examples of the musical application of different musical-rhetorical figures and how they are used. The author underlines, however, that despite the universalization of musical language, the rhetorical system in music is highly diverse and is subject to individual contextual interpretations.