Sighing Branches

Rameau's Pigmalion begins with the petulant clanging of hammer and chisel against stone.* As the curtain rises, the stage lights up to reveal a ravishing Statue, arising out of the discarded fragments of marble scattered around its feet. There Pigmalion gazes in wonder at the fruit of his artistic labour, a perfect representation of the female body, singing of his futile desire, his 'vain tenderness', for the lifeless figure. After Pigmalion pleads with Venus to release him from longing, the music of Fig. 1 fills the air.' The stage directions draw our attention to the fact that, for the first time in the opera, Pigmalion hears the music around him as music. Following a brief orchestral introduction, Pigmalion sings in amazement of being able to hear this beautiful music, asking 'Whence come these chords?' ('D'oi~ naissent ces accords?') and 'What are these harmonious sounds?' ('Quels sons harmonieux?'), as if until this moment in the drama he has been deaf to the flood of music washing over him. Carolyn Abbate notices that, like Pigmalion, most characters on the operatic stage 'do not hear the music that is the ambient fluid of their music-drowned world' (Abbate 1991: 118). She suggests that moments such as Fig. 1 are heard as intrusions into the normal discourse of opera, a musical discourse the audience alone can hear.2 Listening to Fig. 1, we become aware of the musical gauze that separates us from Pigmalion, who, all of a sudden, begins to hear through the make-believe realism of his own music to 'that other music' surrounding him. Pigmalion is not alone in hearing this other, more phenomenal music, for after a moment of silence, the Statue comes to life and begins to sing. The music of Fig. 1, then, is of great dramatic significance in Pigmalion, signalling the animation of the Statue, but also a becoming of music

Art · Diverse Musicological Studies · Music Technology and Sound Studies · Musicology and Musical Analysis

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