third and last part of this grandiose work, however, and it is of an especially “literary” kind. At the first
mention of the word “crucify” (Ex. 18-12), a really jarring harmony (a C#-minor triad, we would call it)
is introduced—simply for its shock-value, it might appear—as a way of underscoring the horror of the
event.
But there is another dimension to it as well. The harmony is produced by the abrupt and “unprepared”
apparition of sharps in all parts. The word for “sharp” in German is Kreuz—“cross.” Thus the strange
harmony is not only an audible effect; it is a visual effect as well—or rather, a literary pun based on the
visual appearance of the notated music. (Another instance of such a visually inspired pun, and a popular
one among madrigalists, was setting the word occhi—“eyes”—as two semibreves on the same pitch side
by side, each representing an eye; yet another was coloring all the notes in a lament or funeral piece
black.) The Germans have a word for this sort of thing: Augenmusik, “eye-music.” It may seem a
particularly trivial or frivolous variety of “madrigalism,” but it carries an important cultural message.
Composers who indulge in Augenmusik tacitly equate notation with music, or at least give evidence of
regarding the notation as being as much a part of the music as the performance. The music, in short, has
become indelibly associated with its written embodiment (not to say “text,” which for music can merely
mean the words to be sung). Musicians who think this way have come to regard music as being a
primarily literate, secondarily oral medium rather than the other way around. So it has been regarded, by
composers in the so-called “classical” or “art music” tradition, ever since. This is, in fact, the most
accurate definition possible of that notoriously hard-to-define yet definitely recognizable tradition, the
tradition of which this book is a history.
EX. 18-11 Jacobus Gallus, St. John Passion, tertia pars, end