Essays on the Origins of Western Music

by

David Whitwell

Essay Nr. 101: Boccaccio on Music

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 - 1375), reared in Florence and Naples, was destined by his family for a career in finance, but like his great friend, Petrarch, he abandoned his profession for poetry.

If my father had only been favorable to such a course at a time of life when I was more adaptable, I do not doubt that I should have taken my place among poets of fame. But while he tried to bend my mind first into business and next into a lucrative profession, it came to pass that I turned out neither a business man nor a lawyer, and missed being a good poet besides.[1]

Today, of course, we recognize him as a famous poet after all. Like Petrarch, much of his poetry was inspired by a woman he could not have, whom he also met in church on an Easter Sunday. In this case, at least, we know she was a real person, Maria d’Aquino, a natural daughter to King Robert of Naples. Boccaccio called her Fiammetta (little flame) and dedicated many of his large works to her, including Filocopo, Teseide (the basis of Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale”) and the Amorosa Visione.

She appears as well as a character in his masterpiece, one of the supreme masterpieces of all literature, The Decameron. There is no greater testimonial to the new spirit of humanism than the fact that Boccaccio could write this work, so filled with joy, humor, beauty and the zest for living, in the wake of the great plague, the Black Death.

Again like Petrarch, Boccaccio became obsessed with ancient literature, saving works from oblivion and promoting them. Upon the ominous urging of a dying cleric, Boccaccio returned to religion late in life and contemplated selling all his books and becoming a monk and a letter from Petrarch helped prevent the destruction of his writings. He died in poverty and, indeed, when Petrarch died the previous year he left in his will money to buy a mantle for Boccaccio. A biographical note written by an author born during Boccaccio’s lifetime paints a rather unhappy portrait of his life.

I will not write Boccaccio’s biography at this time, not because he does not deserve greatest praise, but because I do not know the particulars of his birth or his personal condition and life. Without knowledge of such things, one should not write. However, his works and books are well known to me, and it is clear to me that he had a great mind and was extremely cultured and hardworking. It is amazing that he wrote so many things.... He was greatly hindered by poverty, and was never content with his life; on the contrary he continually wrote complaints and moaned about himself. Sensitive and disdainful by nature, he had many problems because he could neither bear to be with his own peers, nor in the company of princes and lords.[2]

Like Petrarch, Boccaccio accepted without question the ancient dogma that Reason must govern man. It does seem odd for a poet, however, that Boccaccio wrote so little of the value of sensory information and experiences. In one passage, like an early Church father, he assigns Reason to man and the senses to animals.

Animals show their feelings by a movement of their heads, by a whistle or a roar, but to man alone was it granted to express thoughts in words. Nor was this without cause; for how could nature in any other way more wisely separate mankind, endowed with a divine soul, from the beasts, controlled only by sensuality. Servants of their senses, the thoughts of the latter are only on earthly things, and they take pleasure only in these. For the beast it seems superfluous to have a tongue for easy speech. We conclude, and rightly, that unintelligent beings had far better exist without tongues.[3]

In the same spirit, in another place he warns of the dangers, not the virtues, of the senses.

Since the eyes are the gates of the spirit, through them lust sends messages to the mind, through them love sighs and lights blind fires. Through them the heart sends sighs and shows its shameful affections. If one knew them well, he would either keep them closed or turn them heavenward or fix them upon the ground. No other ways but these are safe.[4]

Boccaccio’s discussion of the emotions is limited to the poet’s despair of love. He observes, following most early philosophers, that the stronger emotions, in particular love, have the negative effect of depriving one of Reason. In his Corbaccio, he cries out to the lover, “Oh, poor fool! Where is the meager power of your reason (no, rather, the expulsion of your reason) leading you?”[5]

In a passage in his Concerning Famous Women, Boccaccio, sounding very much like a medieval Church father, argues at length on the dangers of love, how it enters through the senses and how lovers lack Reason. Boccaccio finds virtue only in the first stages of love, when it tends to improve a man’s behavior -- including the inspiration to study music.

This must instill great fear in men who are solicitous of their well-being and must shake them out of their lethargy, when it is clear what a strong and powerful enemy threatens them. We must therefore be vigilant and arm our hearts with great strength, so that we are not overcome against our wishes. First a man must resist. He must curb his eyes so that they do not see vain things, close his ears like an asp, and tame lust with continual toil, because love seems alluring to men who are not wary, and at first sight it is pleasing. If it is well received, when it first enters it pleases a man with happy hopes, makes him adorn himself, encourages good behavior, savoir-faire, dances, songs, music, games, conviviality, and similar things. But after love through foolish consent has seized the entire man, conquered freedom, and chained and bound the mind and the fulfillment of desires is delayed beyond what had been hoped, it awakens sighs, forces the mind to make use of wiles without differentiating between vices and virtues as long as it achieves it desires, and it numbers among its enemies anything which is contrary to this.... If the lovers do not attain their desires, then love, lacking reason and using his spurs and whip, increases their worries, heightens desire, and brings almost intolerable pain, which cannot be cured by any remedy except tears, laments, and at times death.[6]

In his Corbaccio, we find an even more extensive catalog of the dangerous effects of Love.

Love is a blinding passion of the spirit, a seducer of the intellect, which dulls or rather deprives one of memory, a dissipator of earthly wealth, a waster of bodily strength, the enemy of youth, and the death of old age, the parent of vices, and the inhabiter of inane breasts, a thing without reason or order, without the least stability, the vice of unhealthy minds, and the stifler of human liberty.[7]

In one place in The Decameron, Boccaccio reverses this thought and concludes that one must simply set aside the faculty of Reason before engaging in thoughts of Love. In the seventh story of the eighth day, we read,

The learned scholar, laying aside philosophical speculations, turned all his thoughts to her....[8]

With respect to the ancient philosophical debate over the nature of pleasure and pain, Boccaccio finds that pleasure is an important component of the successful choice of a profession. One is by nature, he suggests, attracted to the profession in which he finds pleasure.

While there is one kind of person, there are still many kinds of interests, and each person decides where he can achieve his own happiness as he wishes. For this reason a soldier chooses the wars, the lawyer the court, the farmer the fields -- the examples can be infinite. The poet seeks out a solitary place and lives there. The soldier enjoys the tumult of battle, the lawyer enjoys the argumentation and litigation, the farmer the beauty and greenery of the fields, the poet the harmonious sound of verses. The first is accustomed to combat, the second to judgments, the third to the progress of the seasons, and the last to contemplation. To the soldier the final goal is victory, to the lawyer it is money, to the farmer it is harvest, and to the poet it is reputation. This arises from a great complexity of professions, though each has only one end. What pleases one person is justifiably unattractive to another.[9]

Boccaccio offers a final general warning regarding pleasure. One can never be content in pleasure, because Fortune can in a moment reverse it.

When your mind is filled with joy and something disturbs you, remember that you have risen by the same law as others and that you too will fall into insignificance and be punished for your offenses, if it so pleases Fortune. And so you are not deceived by any kind of belief in the stability of satisfaction, fix this in your mind: Whenever anyone’s situation seems to be taken for granted by everturning Fortune, then in the midst of this unfortunate credulity, she is preparing a trap.[10]

Regarding the pleasures of love, Boccaccio joins nearly all early writers and philosophers in concluding that in the end there is more pain than pleasure resulting from the experience. Nowhere does he make this more personal than in the introduction to his The Corbaccio,

I happened, as I had often done before, to begin thinking very hard about the vicissitudes of carnal love; and pondering over many past occurrences and musing to myself about every word and deed, I concluded that through no fault of mine I had been cruelly ill-treated by her whom I had chosen in my madness as my special lady and whom I honored and revered above all others and loved far more than life itself. Since it seemed to me that I had received abuse and insult in this affair without deserving it, after many sighs and lamentations, driven by resentment, I began not merely to weep bitterly but to cry out loud. I suffered so much, first bemoaning my stupidity, then the insolent cruelty of that woman, that by adding one grief to another in my thoughts, I decided that Death must be far easier to bear than such a life....[11]

In his dedication of Theseus to Fiammetta, however, he seems to find, through the memory of his lover, some solace for the pain of Love.

Although departed joys which return to my memory in my present unhappiness are the unmistakable cause of heavy sorrow, it does not on that account displease me, O cruel lady, to revive in my weary soul from time to time the charming picture of your perfect loveliness.... And its effect on me is the clearest proof that what I believe is true, because when the eyes of my mind behold it, a hidden sweetness, I know not how, beguiles my tormented heart, almost making it oblivious of its unremitting pains.[12]

Boccaccio seemed to be rather sensitive to criticism of poetry and in one place he categorizes some of the types of men who criticize poets and poetry. First, there are those “madmen” who are simply arrogant and criticize everything in sight. Such men, Boccaccio finds, are usually uneducated in the subjects they profess to judge, thus his prescription for them:

If they really are impelled by this desire for glory, and seek a reputation for wisdom, let them go to school, listen to teachers, pore over their books, study late, learn something, frequent the halls of brilliant debaters; and lest they rush into teaching with undue haste, let them remember the Pythagorean caveat, that no one who came to his school to speak on philosophical subjects should open his mouth until he had listened for five years. When they shall win praise in this respect, and earn genuine title, then, if they wish to come forward, let them lecture, or dispute, or refute, or inveigh, and vigorously press their opponents. But any other course is proof rather of madness than wisdom.[13]

Another who criticizes the poet is the lawyer, who, being interested only in money, cannot understand why anyone would desire a profession where they are destined to be poor. Boccaccio answers that the poet’s reward is rather in wisdom and immortality.

I readily grant therefore their contention, that poetry does not make money, and poets have always been poor -- if they can be called poor who of their own accord have scorned wealth. But I do not concede that they were fools to follow the study of poetry, since I regard them as the wisest of men....

.....

Furthermore, if the privilege of long life is not granted a man in any other way, poetry, at any rate, through fame vouchsafes to her followers the lasting benefit of survival -- rightly enough called a benefit, since we all long for it. It is perfectly clear that the songs of poets, like the name of the composer, are almost immortal. As for lawyers, they may shine for a little while in their gorgeous apparel, but their names in most cases perish with the body.[14]

Finally, Boccaccio, like Petrarch, did not associate himself with the broad public. In his dedication of his Concerning Famous Women, for example, he mentions that he wrote the work “while away from the crude multitudes.”[15] In another book, he elaborates on his general distrust of the public.

Envy tortures, but the multitude deceives. The first drives a man to destroy others; the second destroys him by his own conceit. The one inflames the mind; the other mocks hope.... No one should ever put his faith in the praises of the common people. It is in the nature of the multitude to be ever changeable and perverse, preferring always conjecture to truth, crying always for activity, then deserting in times of danger. The crowd follows where Fortune goes, serves her humbly, but rules severely. And after bestowing its gifts, it kills those unfortunates who had trusted it.[16]