Instruments and images

Abstract

In 1999 I took part in a conference entitled Poetry and music in the French Renaissance (proceedings published under the same title (Cambridge, 2001)), a look at 16th-century French culture with an inspiring interdisciplinary slant. One paper that brought together ideas from literature, music, social history and the history of art was given by Carla Zecher, who explored the rich imagery of musical instruments in French emblem books of the time in relation to issues of governance—how one governs one's own behaviour as well as the state. This book by Zecher expands the theme to investigate the role musical objects played in 16th-century French culture. Boldly grasping the interdisciplinary nettle, Zecher also explores the role of musical performance on different types of instrument, the sometimes complex relationships between poets and musicians, and the mythological role of instruments which allowed them to act as go-betweens in the all-consuming dialogue between Renaissance culture and that of ancient Greece and Rome. Thus the lute really is the one lying on the table, but it also serves as an ancient lyre when it needs to, and can even stand in as a model of poetry itself.