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A Stylistic Synthesis

“rel[y] on the division of speech into distinct, detach- Martines’s more “Baroque” movements refl ect
able units that carry meaning independently… which this rhetorical tradition. A particularly striking exam-
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can then undergo various transformations.” This ple is her setting of the psalm’s fourth verse: not only
view of rhetoric as a structuring principle forms the does she closely associate each segment of text with
basis for the discussion here of “rhetorical” approaches a unique musical gesture, but the resulting sequence
to text-setting. of musico-textual motives closely resembles Handel’s
Handel’s text-setting, particularly in choral move- treatment of the same text. Both composers highlight
ments, is highly “rhetorical” in this sense: by marrying the gravity of “Juravit Dominus” with declamatory
short phrases of text to distinctive musical ideas, and choral homophony. Both composers then set “et non
then subjecting the resulting musico-textual motives poenitebit eum” to a contrasting motive, treated con-
to a rigorous process of repetition and variation, he trapuntally. Both composers conclude the verse with a
explicitly builds his setting out of “distinct detachable fugue involving two contrasting motives. In each case,
units” that are constantly “transform[ed].” Some of “Tu es sacerdos in aeternum” becomes the fugue sub-
these motives entail a literal depiction of the text, as ject; Handel sets “secundum ordinem Melchisedech”
in the concussive repeated notes on “conquassabit,” or to the countersubject of a double fugue, while Mar-
the piling up of rapid passagework on “implebit ruin- tines sets it to a motive that becomes the basis for the
as.” Often, they amplify the text by closely refl ecting fugue’s episodes. This close resemblance shows Mar-
the natural rhythms of speech—for example, on phras- tines’s mastery of the rhetorical, Handelian approach
es such as “et non, non poenitebit” or “et Spiritui Sanc- of creating and developing self-contained musico-tex-
to.” In every instance, they take on meaning through tual motives.
constant reinforcement of their association with a giv- In galant compositional practice, however, melodic
en phrase. structure was as much of a driving force as rhetorical

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