ROLAND DE LASSUS, ORACULA

Sibyls and Prophets: oracular songs of revelation

 

 

 

 Je ne serai plus si couillon, car on ne gagne rien à jeter l’eau en la mer,

le contraire au doux est amer, mais je veux toujours aimer.

(Lassus au duc Guillaume de Bavuère, 8 oct. 1576)

  

 

 

The language of prophetic revelation has always been associated with a form of artistic synesthaesia, simultaneous perception of the written and the spoken, that makes music one of the preferred vehicles for the transmission of oracles. In Christian iconography, the Sibyls and the Prophets are traditionally represented side by side. So it is no mere coincidence that the Prophetiae Sibyllarum (Sibylline Prophecies) and the Novem Lectiones Sacrae ex libris Hiob (Nine Sacred Readings from the Prophet Job) by Roland de Lassus (1550/52-1594) are found together in a manuscript belonging to the Austrian National Library in Vienna (Mus. ms. 18.744). This volume, copied out by Lassus himself and decorated with miniatures showing the twelve Sibyls painted by Hans Mielich who, like Lassus, was in the service of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich, for whom the manuscript was intended. The book also contains a portrait of the composer at the age of twenty-eight, enabling us to date it to 1558 or 1560.

 

The Prophetiae were not published until 1600 by Roland's son Rudoph de Lassus. The Lectiones were extensively revised and published in 1582 with a dedication to Julius Echter, Bishop of Wiirzburg.

 

According to Heraclitus, the Sibyl,

"speaking with raving mouth, utters solemn, unadorned and unlovely words, but she reaches out over a thousand years with her voice because of the god within her."

 

This description gives the constant features of the priestess over the centuries: a woman uttering predictions in ecstatic frenzy, her words transcending time. The fury that characterises her transnatural state during her revelations and their setting down in writing in the Sibylline Books makes her akin to the poet. Existing since time immemorial, she made prophecies throughout the history of the Greeks, Jews and Christians. An enigmatic figure: is she one or many, itinerant or attached to a particular place?

 

Originally there was only one Sibyl, without any geographical ties, whose presence is attested from the eighth century BCE. She travelled and she made her predictions in a state of trance, but was never asked any particular question, unlike the Pythia, associated with the Delphic oracle, who made her prophecies in response to a petitioner's request. According to Diodorus, the name Sibyl comes from the Greek sibullanein, meaning ‘one who is inspired’. She utters oracles under divine possession. In tradition the logia (sayings) of the Sybil are always associated with a book of oracles and also, and above all, with the voice or with song. Heraclitus uses the Greek word phtongos, which describes the song of the sirens when it becomes a disarticulate cry. Her body and voice are deeply affected when she is under possession. She often dwells in a closed natural space, such as the cavern inhabited by the Sibyl of Cumae. She is the female figure par excellence, associated with the earth and the moon, in her dual appearance as a mother, progenitor of prophecies, and a virgin, revealing the divine message.

 

 

Only fragments of the earliest Sibylline Oracles, written in Greek hexameters, have survived. They have been in existence, through the Hebrew tradition of the Hellenistic Jews of Alexandria, since the third century BCE. In the Jewish version, the Sibyl is seen from a monotheistic and apocalyptic viewpoint, prophesying the Last Judgement. Merging with those two cultures, the Christian viewpoint was added in the second century CE. The texts were reworked and gaps were filled in order to make the Sibyls announce the coming of Christ. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the prophetess becomes an austere, virginal figure. Her pagan origin is however always implicit: we must remember, for example, that the word sibyl was commonly used in medieval times to refer to a fortune-teller or a witch.

 

In the course of history, the number of Sibyls was multiplied, each one associated with a particular place. The medieval tradition enumerates ten Sibyls, following the number established by Lactantius in his Divinae institutiones (third century CE) based on the writings of the Roman historian Marcus Varro. At the time of the Humanists, Filippo Barbieri in his Discordantiae sanctorum doctorum Hieronymi et Augustini (1481) added two more: the European Sibyl and the Agrippine Sibyl. Lassus's work is based on that tradition, as it appears in a volume of Greek poems rediscovered in the sixteenth century and published by Xystus Betuleius (Sixtus Birken) in 1545. To be more precise, he must have used the bilingual version (Greek-Latin) published by Sebastien Castellion in 1555.

 

Of the twelve Sibyls of the Humanist tradition, the most famous are the Erythraean Sibyl, who lived in Asia Minor and predicted the Trojan War, and the Cumaean Sibyl, who lived in a cavern at Cumm, an ancient city not far from Naples. Virgil describes the latter thus:

 

"The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find, dark in a cave, and on a rock reclined. She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits, the notes and names, inscribed, to leafs commits. What she commits to leafs, in order laid, before the cavern's entrance are displayed: unmoved they lie; but, if a blast of wind without, or vapours issue from behind, the leafs are borne aloft in liquid air, and she resumes no more her museful care, nor gathers from the rocks her scattered verse, nor sets in order what the winds disperse" (Aeneid III, 445-452).

 

In the Roman tradition, it was the Cumman Sibyl who sold the Sibylline Books to Tarquinius Superbus, the last of the seven kings of Rome.

 

Virgil describes the oracles being borne aloft by the wind: the words of the Sibyl are enigmatic. Their linearity is lost, their meaning is cryptic. She is always depicted with a book or scroll, but she utters her oracle in speech rather than by the written word. The prophecies frequently appeal for attention, using verbs of listening in the imperative ('People, listen!'), and make constant reference to the prophetess’s voice. Her message becomes not so much a reading as an act of listening. The Sibyl symbolises the human being raised to a transnatural condition (i.e. above or beyond nature) that enables him to communicate with and deliver the messages of the divine: she is the person possessed, the prophetess, the echo of the oracles and the instrument of revelation.

 

In Christian iconography, the Sibyls appeared in the eleventh century and reached the peak of their glory during the Humanist period with the revival of ancient Greek and Roman thought. In the late Middle Ages, the Church adopted the symbol and began to associate the Sibyls with the Prophets as a means of justifying the diffusion of Christianity: the Prophets had announced the good news to believers, and the Sibyls to heathens. In this less heretical form the Sibyls appear in various parts of the Vatican, beginning with the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo presented each Sibyl opposite a Prophet on the ceiling. They also appear in the Library of Julius II and in the Borgia Apartments, decorated by Pinturicchio. Filippino Lippi showed them in a fresco in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, while Raphael painted them in Santa Maria della Pace, both churches in Rome. Matteo di Giovanni was the author of the sumptuous marble paving in Siena Cathedral, in which the twelve Sibyls are depicted.

 

Job, in contrast with the pagan origin of the Sibyls, is one of the Prophets of the Old Testament. The Book of job in the Bible is among the most complex, giving rise to numerous exegeses that are classic attempts to reconcile the co-existence of evil and good (in Greek, these justifications are known as theodicies). Job appears as a figure dedicated to virtue, while at the same time presenting a cynical view of that same virtue. His patience and piety are tried by undeserved misfortunes caused by Satan (he loses his possessions, his children and finally his own health), but despite his bitter lamentations, he remains confident in the goodness and justice of God. After disputes with three of his friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zohar, he converses with God, repents and regains his health and fortune.

 

The Book of job provides an interesting parallel with the Christianised texts of the Sibyls: ]ob's declaration ‘I know that my redeemer liveth' (19:25) is considered as a proto-Christian annunciation of the Saviour. Consequently both job and the Sibyls prefigure the coming of Christ. Moreover, a little-known tradition makes Job the patron of musicians, thus establishing a further link between these two works, since the Sibyls also transmit their message vocally, and therefore musically. The tradition stems from a passage in the Bible in which Job in his suffering compares himself to a harpist - My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep (Iob 30:31) - and above all from the Testament of Job, an apocryphal text dating from the first century BCE, in which the Prophet describes playing the harp after meals while women sing God's praises. Medieval iconography often shows Job either as a musician or surrounded by musicians, a fine example being an altarpiece by the Master of the Legend of St Barbara (c1485) in which three wind musicians are seen playing to comfort Job after he has been flagellated by Satan. The Prophet rewards them with scabs from his wounds, which turn into gold.

 

The liturgy used in Mass changed at certain times of the year, such as Epiphany or Holy Week, when the Epistle was replaced by lessons taken from the books of the Prophets. These liturgical pieces were at first associated with the funeral service, before being adapted for use in private devotional rites. Musically they are often similar to the Sibylline Oracles, although the latter, being of non-canonic origin, cannot be admitted as part of the liturgy.

 

Lassus's cycle of motets devoted to the Sibyls consists of a three-line prologue (Carmina chromatico), and twelve six-line Latin poems, each one dedicated to a prophetess. Famous for its chromaticism, this cycle also involves declamation based on the antique model adopted by the Italian Humanists. This technique consists in adapting the tonic stressing of the lines to the musical declamation and results in a largely homophonic style. Lassus applies this process in the Prophetiae Sibyllarum and in the Hiob Lectiones. As for the use of chromaticism, it was typical of the madrigal from the 1550s onwards, but Lassus uses it in an extreme and curiously enigmatic form that defies analysis: like the Sibyl, his work speaks cryptically.

 

The texts Lassus chose for the cycle of lessons from Job are those that were used for private devotional rites from the Middle Ages onwards. The nine lessons are taken from the parts spoken by Job to his three friends; the texts are limited to the lamentations of Job, leaving aside the narrative episodes, his friends‘ replies and above all God's response. The musical treatment, apart from the declamative structure inspired by antiquity, also approaches the mid-sixteenth century arioso madrigal, a style that was obsolete by the time the second version of the Lectiones ex libris Hiob was published in 1582. Compared to the first version, the style here is less elaborate and festive but more esoteric and sophisticated. Despite its apparent simplicity, it is exceptionally subtle and refined. The meditative nature of the texts, the polyphony — or rather the responsorial style that was practised in the liturgy — and the dedication to a patron make this cycle a perfect example of musica reservata (music intended only for the "initiated").

 

 

Christine Jeanneret

Transation: Mary Pardoe