Sounds of Power: Sonic Court Rituals In- and Outside Europe in the 15th – 17th Centuries

Sounds of Power: Sonic Court Rituals In- and Outside Europe in the 15th – 17th Centuries

Organisatoren
Cristina Urchueguía / Margret Scharrer / Tül Demirbaş, Institut für Musikwissenschaft, Universität Bern
Ort
hybrid (Bern /digital)
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
17.06.2021 - 19.06.2021
Url der Konferenzwebsite
Von
Tin Cugelj, Institut für Musikwissenschaft, Universität Bern

Following the workshops in Istanbul (September 2020) and Bern (February 2021), this conference was a part of a project conducted at the University of Bern. The niche topic of the project and the conference emerged from the studies of urban musicology, sound and soundscapes, whose primary goal is to uncover how communities of the past perceived, experienced, felt and understood acoustic environments as a whole. The field was stimulated by the initial acoustic ecology studies by late Murray Schafer (The Tuning of the World, 1977) and Barry Truax (Acoustic Communication, 1984). Focussing on political leaders’ conscious use of music as an expression of power during festivities, the conference explored the meaning of sound in cultural interaction and transmission and investigated the performance and interaction between the media used in the events. An additional successfully achieved goal of the conference was to include court cultures outside the European scope and discuss fundamental anthropological tendencies of a model of domination and sound.

The first part of the introductory panel included thoughts on methodology and the keynote lecture by KATHERINE BUTLER SCHOFIELD (London). She showed how the deeply embedded complex ideological relationship between reason–desire and duty–pleasure forced the Mughal courtier to carefully choose music or another ephemeral artistic expression to achieve the desired effect on the spectator: the stimulation of desired virtues or underpinning sovereign power. Schofield also underlined the connection of music to the social order, the importance of a ‘perfect performer’ image, and the role of music as a sonic vehicle of power.

Fundamental methodological questions were presented by HARRIET RUDOLPH (Regensburg), creating an excellent base for future research. Stimulated by the ephemerality as vital sound quality, she argued that the auditory media had special added value and were an indispensable element of multi-media spectacles.

Rudolph’s latter hypothesis was demonstrated in TOBIAS C. WEISSMAN’s (Mainz) lecture. By analysing sonic manifestations in early modern papal rituals and ceremonies, he concluded that the papal court saw various multi-media events in which auditive elements (sounds and music) had an indispensable place.

The last panel presentation given by EVELYN KORSCH (Erfurt) emphasised the distinction between sounds created by the political power and the sounds that emanated the latter. On the example of the Venetian mechanism of legitimising and conserving political power, Korsch analysed the rappresentationi and proved they were crucial in preserving the myth of Venice. With the analysis of the Mughal performer’s intentions, prioritising the ephemerality of sound, defining the two different types of sonic elements, and accentuating the indispensability of sound in multi-media events, this session set a solid foundation for the thought-formation during the conference.

Rooted in Ottoman and Habsburg-Burgundian court cultures, the second panel analysed relevant historical events. BAPTISTE RAMEAU (Dijon) presented how the Burgundian dukes’ musical ensemble reflected royal power through performance and with dukes’ donations to the musicians. HELEN COFFEY’s (London) paper observed how political power was exerted in the courtly culture of Maximilian I’s court following his marriage to Bianca Maria Sforza in 1493. Coffey imposed the importance of dance in the courtly ceremonial, assigning it a function of political communication and a vessel of political and cultural exchanges of the period. Still in the court of Maximilian I, DANIEL TIEMEYER (Heidelberg) confidently proved that the political power of his only daughter Margret of Austria (1480–1530) was expressed through the production of compositions based on the Marian chants by the court composers (Pierre de la Rue), with which Margret actively staged herself as the Virgin Mary and the mother of her people, in that way publicly legitimising and claiming her right to rule.

The focus shifted to the Ottoman court with SONGÜL KARAHASANOĞLU (Istanbul) and SÜLEYMAN CABIR ÇIPLAK (Istanbul) systematically introducing Ottoman music theory to trace the beginning of the seventeenth-century reflection of the Western ideas. The authors provided a helpful insight into the musical tendencies, offered various parallels between two different musical traditions, and uncovered how Western thought was integrated and adapted into the Ottoman music theory during and after the fifteenth century. Dating it to the fifteenth century, the start of the influence was set much earlier than it was previously thought of and uncovered a complex system of mutual transmission of ideas.

Observing the early modern Ottoman emotional community, IDO BEN-AMI (Tel Aviv) inspected Ottoman carnivals to determine how to induce awe by the politically dominant to strengthen their power. Awe included admiration, astonishment, and mild feelings of beauty, while for the Ottomans, according to Ben-Ami, it included bewilderment, wonder, and fear. Using the imagery of royal festival books of 1582 and 1720 events, Ben-Ami used the example of animal sonorities (howling, hissing, roaring) to show how these were carefully invoked to convey the atmosphere of awe by presenting the animals as submissive creatures that acknowledged the sultan’s authority. Finally, Ben-Ami noticed the shift in inducing awe from utilising fear (1582) to a general aesthetic feeling of beauty accompanied by joyful music (1720). In this way, he presented a great example of how power is not always expressed through fear and strength but often also through playfulness and fun. At the same time, the role of the entertainer as the one that controlled the community’s emotion can similarly be compared with the Mughal example of the keynote lecture. Bringing Ottoman and Habsburg courts together, GAMZE İLASLAN (Regensburg) reassembled the soundscape of diplomacy: sounds that accompanied diplomatic missions, exchanges of ambassadors, and the sound of welcoming the diplomats in Habsburg and Ottoman cities. İlaslan found common elements between the two cultures (gunshot salve) and confirmed the use of intentional silence as an expression of power. In this way, her presentation demonstrated that soundscapes could serve as a useful analytical tool in transcultural diplomatic studies, offering insight into the perception of familiarity, foreignness and otherness, cross-cultural exchange, power relations, and modes of self- and state-representation.

The last panel turned away from the three dominant traditions of the conference by focussing on the early modern Portuguese city of Setúbal, German Landshut, Safavid empire, imperial China, and Mexico. ANA CLAUDIA SILVEIRA (Lisbon) showed how new urban architectural elements in Setúbal became a focal point of expressing the Order’s political power through hosting civic festivals and processions in the newly constructed plaza. The latter’s power character was expressed with the usual symbolism (clothes, decoration, lights) and with the sound of trumpets, bells, chanted litanies, acclamations, speeches, sermons, music, and cannons.

With fascinating historical records of sonic moments during the Landshut wedding of 1475, CHRISTOF PAULUS (Munich) focussed on the event’s overall acoustic profile to uncover a series of indicators for the sonically overwhelmed public, concurrently vividly bringing the noisy soundscape in his presentation and starting a dialogue about noise and emotional reactions of a community. THILO HIRSCH (Bern) and MARINA HAIDUK (Bern) gave the only organological lecture demonstrating how power was expressed using a soft instrument. An analysis of an Italian fifteenth-century rebecchino (a smaller version of a rebec, string instrument used between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries) imposed that the importance of the instrument surpassed its sonic qualities and accentuated its visual symbolism as an element of social and political power. In this way, the importance of silence in historic soundscapes and the versatile meaning of musical instruments were accentuated.

An islamicate soundscape between the Ottoman and Mughal empires was introduced by ZEYNEP ÇAVUŞOĞLU (Istanbul), who has shown the variety of sounds in the seventeenth-century Safavid city of Isfahan with numerous examples from Safavid and European chronicles, in which she confirmed the centrality of sound in multi-media events. Further East, a culturally different topic for the well-known period in the European space was presented by JIEUN KIM (Heidelberg). Kim demonstrated how the Joseon dynasty’s political ideal of Ye–Ak (the concord of ‘function to order and distinguish’ and ‘function to harmony and unity’) was realised in the musical acts of various events, where Ye embodied the ceremonies and Ak performing art that included instrumental music, song, and dance. Ak expressed a powerful philosophical-political mean of strengthening the ethics and moral consciousness of people. Additionally, in the last section of her presentation, Kim presented the various musical forms and characteristics, deeper purpose and development history of the court music under king Sejong (1418–1450), and the contemporary aspects of historically informed performance practice of the repertoire.

GRAYSON WAGSTAFF (Washington) demonstrated the Habsburg influence and cultural transmission in colonial Mexico in 1559, following the death of Charles V. There, the concept of ‘good Catholic death’ was accompanied by Cristóbal de Morales’ music, that concurrently served as a Spanish mean of creating Mexican colonial identity and reflected the royal power in New Spain.

The last presentation of the conference was an analysis of two narrative painting scrolls of the Ming court, with which JOSEPH S. C. LAM (Michigan) provided performance details of wind, percussion military music and a description of a ‘moving soundscape of emperorship’, analysing it through Chinese theories of sound as performance, the discourse of imperial power, and an assumption that various performances constituted multi-media and affective spectacle on imperial presence and power in sixteenth-century imperial China.

Two exceptional roundtables marked the conference. Observing from an extra-disciplinary perspective, MARKUS KOLLER (Bochum) pointed out gaps in historiographical research of the Ottoman court where music’s role should be analysed in greater detail (the ‘forbidden’ music and instruments of Venetian and Ragusan court promoting anti-Ottoman thought), but also questioned the concept of ‘court’ in the Ottoman empire and the transmission and influence of individual traditions between the central court in Istanbul and provincial courts. Finally, Koller touched upon two aspects well known in the field: that music defined social and religious spaces and partially formed identities (acoustic communities) and the important role of architecture in such studies. In contrast, CRISTINA URCHUEGUÍA (Bern) reflected on source quality, credibility, and specified the importance of emotional communities and their perception of space. She argued that the latter two bring the senses together, show the community's primal sensory and cultural reaction to mediality. Finally, KAROLINA ZGRAJA (Zürich) commented on the source quality from the perspective of art history, pointing out the ephemerality of auditive experiences as opposed to visual, urging the listeners to pay more attention should to the materiality, functionality, and representation of the ritual itself in the sources. Interestingly, she also focussed on the importance of artists’ musical backgrounds and how their perception of musical events thus varied from others.

During the second roundtable that functioned as a conclusive session altogether, FRANÇOIS PICARD (Paris), WOLFGANG BEHR (Zürich), and BRITTA SWEERS (Bern) reflected and assessed the methodological problems from an anthropological, literary, and ethnomusicological perspective. The main problem discussed was the comparability of historical cultures and traditions. Aside from that, some central critical points were the complexity of music cultures, context-less comparison, analysing sounds without a deeper meaning, and a problem of scientific racism grounded in political thought. Sweers offered practical solution to many critical points, insisting on the return to cross-cultural comparison under scientific methodology, in which aspects such as classification of sounds (based on degrees of similarity), cultural evolution (how do musical systems change), and music as a marker of human history (migration and power) would possibly offer a broad cultural picture. In this approach, Sweers asserted that we should bear the concern of cultural relativism in mind, the perception of a historical culture as “another” culture which we might not understand as there is no one around to answer questions and the relative nature of sound that is culturally shaped and can be understood only through a context analysis.

In conclusion, this conference not only served with numerous great examples of utilising sound as an expression of political power across the world of the past that need to be systematised further to serve as an excellent basis for future research, and encourage researchers to use more complex ways of comparing different cultures.

Conference overview:

Panel I: Introduction and General Reflections
Chair: Cristina Urchueguía (Bern)

Cristina Urchueguía (Bern) / Margret Scharrer (Bern) / A. Tül Demirbaş (Bern): Introduction

Keynote lecture: Katherine Butler Schofield (London): Sovereign Power and the Place of Pleasure: Musical Patronage in Mughal India, 1593–1707

Harriet Rudolph (Regensburg): What’s All This Noise? Exploring the Soundscapes of the Early Modern Court: Chances and Challenges

Tobias C. Weissman (Mainz): Sight and Sound of Power. Communication Strategies of Papal Rituals in Early Modern Rome

Evelyn Korsch (Erfurt): “Cantiam vittoria, gaudio, honor, trionfo, e pace” – Die Sakralisierung Venedigs mitttels der rappresentazioni (1570–1605)

Panel II: Ottoman and Habsburg-Burgundian Court Cultures
Chair: Margret Scharrer (Bern)

Baptiste Rameau (Dijon): “Pour consideration des bons et aggreables services”: dons, musiciens et communication politique à la cour de Bourgogne (1404–1467)

Helen Coffey (London): Maximilian I and the Musical Experiences of Bianca Maria Sforza

Daniel Tiemeyer (Heidelberg): Marian Devotion as Expression of Power. Aspects of Repertoire and Political Representation at the Court of Margaret of Austria

Chair: A. Tül Demirbaş (Bern)

Songül Karahasanoğlu / Süleyman Cabir Çıplak (Istanbul): Traces of Modern Ideas in the Music of the Ottoman Empire

Ido Ben-Ami (Tel Aviv): The Expression of Awe during the Early Modern Ottoman Carnivals of Animals

Gamze İlaslan (Regensburg): The Soundscape of Ottoman-Habsburg Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century

Chair: Margret Scharrer (Bern)

Roundtable: Markus Koller (Bochum) / Cristina Urchueguía (Bern) / Karolina Zgraja (Zürich): Between Ottoman, Habsburg and Burgundy

Panel III: Other Cultures and Transfers
Chair: Judith I. Haug (Münster)

Ana Cláudia Silveira (Lisbon): Setúbal Soundscapes: Performing the Power of the House of Aveiro during Early Modern Portugal

Christof Paulus (Munich): „Ein solcher Lärm…“ Der Klang auf den Hochzeiten des Spätmittelalters

Chair: Margret Scharrer (Bern)

Thilo Hirsch (Bern) / Marina Haiduk (Bern): Die leisen Klänge der Macht – Das Rebecchino im Kunsthistorischen Museum in Wien

Chair: A. Tül Demirbaş (Bern)

Zeynep Çavuşoğlu (Marmara University / Ibn Haldun University Istanbul): Sonorous Spaces of Splendour: Utilisation of Sound in the Courtly Culture of the Safavid Empire in the 17th Century Isfahan

Jieun Kim (Heidelberg): Koreanische Hofmusik der Joseon-Dynastie zur Zeit von Köning Sejong (1418–1450)

Chair: Cristina Urchueguía

Joseph S. C. Lam (Michigan): Imperial and Far-Reaching: State Processional Music of the 16th Century China

Grayson Wagstaff (Washington): The Sound of Habsburg Power in Colonial Mexico: Ritual and Projection of Identity Throughout Music in Exequias and Other Vieceregal Events

Chair: Songül Karahasanoğlu

François Picard (Paris) / Wolfgang Behr (Zürich) / Britta Sweers (Bern): Roundtable: Sound of Power, Sound of Cultures