<i>Music and the Making of Medieval Venice</i>. By Jamie L Reuland

Jamie Reuland describes her book as follows: ‘This book is about music’s work in raising the medieval city of Venice and in founding the empire on which its fortunes would depend’ (p. 1). The keyword in this first sentence is ‘work’. Reuland’s project is to show that music did more than entertain or ornament: the act of singing texts (and hearing them sung) in specific recurring political and religious contexts played a central role in maintaining the power and efficacy of the Venetian state and its far-flung colonies: it was ‘an element of statecraft’ (p. 3). The book is a series of case studies from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, each of which weaves together evidence drawing on many different kinds of documents, including historical records, political theory, visual art, music, and liturgy. A central theme of the book is music’s role in the concept of repraesentatio, ‘the juristic concept of the proxy’ (p. 14), where re-enactment retains the power of the initial event: not an imitation of the past, but a re-creation and reinforcement of communities, loyalty, and belief in the power of Venice, ‘a statecraft of the imagination’ (pp. 14–16). (Throughout this review I will use ‘St Mark’ for the saint and ‘San Marco’ for the Venetian basilica.) Part I (ch. 1, pp. 19–41, and ch. 2, pp. 42–78), surprisingly, focuses on Venice’s empire in the eastern Mediterranean, especially Crete (pp. 7–9). Chapter 1, ‘Echoes of Empire: The Laudes in Medieval Venetian Crete’, looks at the role of the laudes regiae in the establishment and maintenance of Crete’s status as a colony of Venice. The founding document, the ‘Concessio insulae Cretensis’, requires that all feudatories ‘have laudes sung for [the doge] and for [his] successors in the archbishopric and bishoprics four times a year, on Christmas, Easter, the Feast of Saint Mark, and on the feast of the major church of Crete’ (p. 19) in addition to levying taxes and raising armies. The laudes regiae (famously discussed by Ernst Kantorowicz in 1946) were first composed for Charlemagne in the eighth century. In Crete the laudes ‘Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat’ were followed by an acclamation to the doge and a petition to his patron St Mark. Reuland sees this contractual obligation to sing the laudes as Venice’s first employment of music in service of the state. She also explores issues of the presence of Greek and Roman Christians on the island. This was not just a medieval phenomenon: an anonymous letter from the seventeenth century states that ‘the ceremony of the Laudo … serves as a sign of vassalage’ (p. 39). Chapter 2 looks at conflicts around the state power asserted through the laudes, and at the ‘procession of the icon of the Madonna Mesopanditissa, a state-sponsored event that … was staged each Tuesday’ in the capital city of Candia, where ‘the entire population alternated litanies to the icon with acclamations for the doge’. Greek liturgical texts were also painted on the walls of Cretan churches, along with images of ‘historical and saintly figures’. Reuland describes how ‘sung ceremony on Venetian Crete centered around the imaginative activation of communal memory. In lending their voices to these ceremonies, the inhabitants of the Venetian colony left traces of their living concerns on an otherwise inert material culture’ (pp. 77–8). Song and image work together in the service of colonial and religious power. Part II, ch. 3 (pp. 81–115), ‘Singing Effigies: An Annunciation Drama for the Festa delle Marie’, focuses on the Feast of the Twelve Marys, when an ‘elaborate, multiday affair braided together civic processions, liturgical observances, folk custom, public games, and private domestic celebrations’ (p. 81). Twelve wooden effigies of the Virgin Mary clothed with sumptuous fabrics and jewels were carried on thrones through the city and hosted at lavish parties in noble homes between the eve of the feast of St Mark’s translation (31 January) and the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin (2 February). Reuland explains that effigies ‘came to life for a community’ (pp. 82, 99) through use in ritual space, and ‘song was a constant accompaniment’ to the procession. The most striking element of the lengthy processions and ceremonies (established c.1268) was performed at the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where two clerics from the basilica, costumed as the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, performed a sung dialogue on the Annunciation theme. The clerics were dressed to resemble gilded wooden statues and are carried in procession. En route to the enactment, each procession stopped in front of the ducal palace, where the doge and costumed clerics exchanged silent greetings while accompanying clerics sang laudes to the doge (p. 83). Reuland was able to reconstruct this ceremony with the rediscovery of leaves from missing antiphoners from San Marco in Princeton University’s Special Collections (p. 94). The full-fledged version of the procession was established in the 1260s (pp. 84–5). Reuland provides a detailed description of the procession, a spectacular concatenation of effigies, humans imitating effigies, and song, along with the text and translation of Martin de Canal’s description of the procession on 31 January 1268 (pp. 86–7), showing that each line of dialogue corresponds to a Latin antiphon for the Virgin (pp. 89–90, 93). The highlight of the event is a miniature liturgical drama (not a liturgical service) in the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where the clerics disguised as statues seem to come to life, to sing Gabriel’s salutation and Mary’s response. The final tour de force in this chapter is Reuland’s explanation of how the Annunciation and the Purification of the Virgin are linked to the feast of the Translation of St Mark’s relics to Venice. The Annunciation drama was instituted during the time that a new mosaic portraying the reception of the relics was being constructed on the western façade of San Marco (p. 104). The Purification of the Virgin celebrates the Presentation of Jesus in the temple, ‘the translation of a sacred body across the threshold of a church’ (p. 104). The fresco includes an inscription, translated as ‘The people establish him with worthy laudes …’ (p. 106), understood as the liturgical texts and the laudes described in chapter 1. The Annunciation was also a central image for Venice, found in visual form throughout the city—but especially in San Marco (pp. 107–15). Part III (chs. 4, 5, and 6) discusses the music and liturgy at San Marco. Each chapter is focused on a liturgical feast or a genre: chapter 4 looks at Vespers, chapter 5 Matins for the feast of the Apparition of St Mark, and chapter 6 motets. The power of St Mark’s relics, lost and then miraculously found within the pillars of San Marco, is the focus of chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4, ‘Narrative Fragments: Vespers for the Apparition of Saint Mark’s Relics’, discusses the feast of the Apparition of Saint Mark celebrating the rediscovery of the relics, which arrived in Venice in 828 (two merchants brought them from Alexandria), and were then hidden in San Marco. San Marco was extensively renovated in the eleventh century, but no one could remember where the relics were. After four days of public prayer, while at Mass in San Marco, a stone fell from a column, revealing the relics of St Mark. This became the feast of the Apparitio Sancti Marci and the text of the narrative was divided into texts for the liturgy of the new feast (pp. 119–20). The development of the ritual and musical elements of the liturgy for the apparition of St Mark extended into the fourteenth century. Reuland focuses here on the ‘threat of oblivion’ and the ‘forms, acts, and collective structures of remembrance that hold oblivion at bay…. It was only through the continuation of miracles—or through their continued retelling—that Mark could be proven to be both here and there, present as well as absent’ (p. 123). Music was a framework for the preservation of the relics and the associated liturgy (p. 124). With reference to other historians and theorists of music and liturgy (Henry Parkes, Benjamin Brand, Derek Krueger, and Susan Rankin), Reuland sets out to prove that ‘liturgical chant served as the medium of prayer and an enactment of the spiritual economy that existed between a relic and the community that venerated it’ (p. 126). She also draws on the work of the late fourteenth-century Byzantine liturgist Nicholas Cabasilas, who says that the process of liturgical composition through selection and arrangement of texts allows chants and lessons to ‘fittingly represent the significance of the presence of Christ’ (p. 127). Reuland goes on to draw connections between music and reliquaries. Just as ‘the form and style [of the reliquary] … make the relic visible as both concept and theology’, ‘chant quite literally “contains” the story of … Mark’s relics’ (p. 128). She reviews the history of Venice’s search for, acquisition, and verification of relics in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (pp. 128–34). She then returns to music for the feast of the Apparitio of the relics of San Marco and connects it to the mosaics of San Marco (pp. 135–7). Table 4.1 (pp. 139–40) shows the text of Zanetti’s Leggendario of the Apparitio Sancti Marci and the texts of the chants for the Vespers of that feast, along with English translation. She also discusses the music of the chants, tracing the chant melodies and additional resonances resulting from the borrowings of texts and melodies (pp. 141–55). Chapter 5, ‘History Lessons: Matins for the Apparition of Saint Mark’s Relics’ (pp. 156–90) looks at Matins of the Feast of the Apparition of St Mark, which ‘shows the role of plainchant in composing Venetian history’ (pp. 156–7): once again the music is at work. Reuland also links the Matins narrative of the apparition of the relics with a pair of mosaics (the Preghiera and the Apparitio, figs. 4.1a and 4.1b) in the south transept of San Marco, which are also discussed in chapter 4. Building on the work of Ritva Jonsson (Jacobsson), Emma Hornby, and Rebecca Maloy on the late medieval historia, Reuland describes the Matins office as ‘representation of miraculous history in a liturgical format’ (p. 157), taking the reader through a detailed discussion of illuminated initials, mosaics, and detailed musical analysis (pp. 157–84). She connects the world of creating the office to a whole range of chant scholarship and theories of narrative, including those of Hayden White and Paul Ricoeur. This is the only section of the book that I found difficult to read, given the amount and complexity of material, and I cannot do it justice in this review. The final section of the chapter, ‘Music and the Latent World’ (pp. 184–90) connects the office for the Apparition of St Mark to ‘a much broader project of Venetian history writing’ (p. 185). Chapter 6, ‘Sound Documents: The Midcentury Chancery Motet’ (pp. 191–228), focuses on the two earliest works of polyphony known to have been composed in Venice: the anonymous fourteenth-century motets Ave corpus sanctum and Marce, Marcum imitaris. Reuland begins by emphasizing the connections between the doge and San Marco, pointing out that it was the ducal chancery that created the antiphoners discussed in chapters 4 and 5 (p. 192), and establishing the context for laudatory motets (listed in table 6.1, p. 195). She makes a strong case for the role of the music theorist Marchetto of Padua as the composer of Ave corpus sanctum, which links Doge Francesco Dandolo, the relics of St Stephen, and the abbot of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, combining doge, saint, and abbot within the structure of the motet (pp. 198–201). Marce, Marcum imitaris connects Doge Marco Corner with the relics of St Mark (p. 198). The final section of the chapter brings together music and mosaics as central to the representation and recording of the history of Venice through sound, image, and text. This is a remarkable book that makes sung music, liturgical texts, and visual images central to the Venetian project.

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