The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly while the Fowler Deceives the Bird

Sirens in the Later Middle Ages

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3354185
AutoresElizabeth Eva Leach (0000-0001-6212-8091, autor de correspondencia)
Año2006
Volumen87
Número2
Páginas187-211
Fecha de publicación2006-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaMusic and Letters (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0027-4224 • E-ISSN: 1477-4631
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ml/gci250
OpenAlexW2098996129
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas8

The figure of the siren in the Renaissance and later has attracted a good deal of attention, especially from scholars interested in the history of gender. but the role of sirens in the Middle Ages has received much less consideration, at least from musicologists. The siren serves as a metaphor for human singing and musical femininity in a number of texts ranging from the sixth to the fourteenth centuries. In particular, her medieval hybridism as part bird - as opposed to her subsequently more familiar fishy form - places her among a number of bird species used metaphorically and literally to discuss the non-linguistic component of song, its effects, and their dangers. Comparisons with birds serve as a means of discussing a mismatch between positive musical features (attractive song, singer, and sound) and negative ethical features (sweetness as a form of gluttony or lechery), a dichotomy that seems to have been felt acutely in the later Middle Ages. The central part of this article focuses on a striking comparison with sirens in a music theory treatise of the fourteenth century and argues that only by considering the range of meanings for the siren can this reference be understood. The last part traces further bird-like features of both listener and singer in medieval accounts of musical hearing.

Acoustics · Ancient history · Art · Art history · Chorus · Linguistics · Literature · Lyrics · Metaphor · Middle Ages · Musical · Piano · Singing · Siren (mythology) · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Renaissance Literature and Culture