Christina M. Heckman

   In the poetry and prose homilies of the Vercelli Book, a collection of Anglo-Saxon texts dating from the second half of the tenth century, music exercises a constitutive as well as metaphorical force.1 Music not only symbolizes the harmony of communal consensus but also provides a means through which the Christian Church can identify itself with the divine order of the universe and position itself against evil forces. By using music to construct and intensify the fundamental conflict between God and Satan, the Vercelli texts function to restrict and control the Church's internal struggles. But even as music contributes to the reinforcement of ecclesiastical power, it works against that consolidation. Whether music comes from heaven or from hell, the operation of music in human experience always provides space for resistance. That resistance, both in texts and in communal practices, can only be minimized by disciplining music into orderly patterns and restraining it to structured environments such as those of liturgical practice.

   Liturgical music provides one example of music's apparent operation as a simple metaphor, a commonplace that remains in the background. We often see liturgical music as representing the harmony of the Church community, accompanying the activity taking place on the altar, establishing a mood, facilitating prayer, or filling in periods of silence. Music is sometimes relegated to a place below language in a hierarchy of sound: it is better than silence, but not as important as speech. The fact that we often take music for granted, however, ought to motivate us immediately to investigate its operation more carefully. Music is not limited to metaphorical representation nor to a place in the background of other activities. It performs a certain kind of work with social and ideological consequences, as music theorists John Shepherd and Peter Wicke emphasize in their recent book, Music and Cultural Theory. Their work, to which I will return later, asserts the previously overlooked complexity of musical forms, as well as their constitutive and communicative possibilities.2

   The recognition of the musical complexity to which Shepherd and Wicke refer, I argue, can make a difference in the way we read texts. References to music in the texts of the Vercelli Book range from the deceptively simple to the perplexing. Most often, music appears to operate as a metaphor that associates harmony with holiness and disharmony with evil. For example, in Elene, a poetic hagiographical account of the search for the True Cross, Helen's Christians sing to honor the three newly-discovered crosses, as they await a miracle to distinguish Christ's cross from those of the two thieves:

   This song appears to be a straightforward hymn of praise, a way to occupy time in an appropriately worshipful manner until the miracle arrives. In Andreas, another poem in the Vercelli Book that relates the ministry of St. Andrew, music also serves an apparently simple function. Andrew's followers describe their divine vision in which eagles pluck their souls from their sleeping bodies and fly with them to heaven:

   As a direct contrast to the music of holy men and angels, Vercelli Homily XXIII represents the cacophonous voices of the demons who attack St. Guthlac as directly related to the disorder and chaos of evil:

   Like the sounds of demons, the cries of carrion beasts in Elene, as well as in many other Old English poems, 5 signify disorder and destruction. In Elene, the songs of the carrion beasts frame Constantine's vision of the cross before the battle between the Romans and the Huns, heralding the death and devastation of the battlefield:

   The apparently simple musical patterns followed in Elene, Andreas, and Homily XXIII—harmony characterizes good, and discord symbolizes evil—are problematized, however, by references to dirges and mourning songs in other Vercelli texts. This sorrowful music, often signaled by the use of the verb "galan," intervenes in the heretofore direct correlation between good and evil groups and the type of sounds they produce. Both The Dream of the Rood and Andreas include references to songs that mourn losses within lord-thane relationships. In The Dream of the Rood the Cross describes for the Dreamer the lamentation of Christ's thanes after his death:

   In the passage from Andreas, in contrast, the singer is the devil, who laments in song his thanes’ inability to conquer Andrew:

   Again, as in The Dream of the Rood, the verb "galan" is used, establishing a verbal link between the musical activity of Christ's thanes and the devil. In other Anglo-Saxon texts "galan" typically refers to mournful or martial music and implies the action of crying out or wailing in song.6 Andreas and The Dream of the Rood assign the same form—lamentation—to the music of good and evil groups, representing their activity with the same term.

   In the first group of passages from Elene, Andreas, and Homily XXIII music is used in an effort to clarify the universe through binary opposition. While music often facilitates that process, in dirges and mourning songs the potential of music to disrupt that binary universe emerges more clearly, making music visible as a space for resistance. The complexity of music's function in the Vercelli texts, however, as well as its capacity for subversion, emerges most strikingly in Homily X. It begins with an emphasis on the Incarnation and Christ's birth and earthly life, swiftly moving to admonish listeners and readers about the need for penitence and vigilance against sin. The reference to music comes from the devil, who arrives at the Last Judgment to demand boldly that God deal with him justly and deliver to him the wicked souls that are his due, since they served him rather than God in earthly life. Satan directly opposes the preaching of Scripture to the sound of his own evil, but sweet-sounding, music:

   In the binary universe of good and evil turning away from God necessarily sends human souls to the devil. The presence of music in the exchange, however, opens up a problematic space between good and evil. Homily X does not oppose harmonious music to discordant sound, as earlier examples do. Rather, it juxtaposes speech and song. Though the devil claims that human souls turn away from God and toward him, the passage makes clear that they rather turn away from authorized speech and toward the sounds of music. While the devil describes the incident as though the binary oppositions between good and evil remain intact, his words in Homily X signal the dangerous potential of music as an unstable space that cannot be reduced to such oppositions.

   The homily asserts the complexity of music as a medium in sound and demands a reconceptualization of music's social and cultural force. For a theoretical framework through which to examine music's function in this and other texts, I return to Shepherd and Wicke's study of the role of music in the constitution and maintenance of societies. Shepherd and Wicke assert a place for music alongside language rather than subject to it, emphasizing the equal importance of both music and language in the formation of human subjects and in human communication. As fundamental communicative systems, however, language and music function in very different ways, according to Shepherd and Wicke. Language can produce arbitrary meanings, denoting as well as connoting the material world.7 In contrast, music, which cannot denote the external world or ascribe arbitrary meaning to it, must call forth meaning from its listeners. In this way, individual interpretation constitutes a fundamental aspect of interacting with music.

   Because music connotes rather than denotes, it participates in the material world without referring directly to phenomena outside itself.8 Placing priority on music as a link between the material and social worlds, Shepherd and Wicke focus on the "sounds of music themselves": the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and timbral configurations that lead us to recognize music as ‘music.’"9 The material aspect of music's sounds both connects human bodies with the social environment in which they participate and provides a link to the individual consciousness and to the affective responses and meanings produced by that consciousness.

   For Shepherd and Wicke, the material aspect of music and its link with individual consciousness give it fundamental ideological significance.10 Music is especially important in the interpellation of subjects into ideology, a theoretical process formulated by Althusser, because its asemantic and affective aspects, rather than being prior or subject to the linguistic and cognitive aspects of consciousness, operate alongside language and cognition. While language identifies the

   According to Shepherd and Wicke, music positions subjects within social and ideological processes, but subjects also choose to be positioned according to their experience of musical sound. The dialectic between the sounds of music and the body requires the participation of the individual subject in the negotiation of meaning.12 Individual subjects, therefore, can manipulate music to serve particular ideologies and to discipline the musical meaning-making processes of individuals. Particularly in Western Europe, Shepherd and Wicke claim, discourses that produce music as a category have often served the interests of the socially and culturally powerful and participated in "attempts at social control."13

   We can see the perception of music's influence on human action in Boethius's De Institutione Musica, perhaps the most influential musical treatise in early medieval Europe. Boethius claims that music exerts a power that can reshape the mind for good or evil. For this reason, he prioritizes the regulation and ordering of sound to preserve harmony and similitude in music and therefore within human minds and groups.14 Boethius, however, seems to propose a direct relation between the harmony of music and that of the minds who hear it. For Boethius, the creation of musical meaning can be effectively controlled by the discipline of its transmission and reception.

   In the Christian Middle Ages the liturgical and monastic contexts of musical expression themselves perform a disciplinary function, conditioning subjects to interpret music in certain ways. The stringent regulation of the body that is required for singing in unison and producing harmonious sound combinations also disciplines the bodies of participants in religious ritual. Even though monks singing their Office might produce harmony like that of the angels, however, our reading of Shepherd and Wicke has shown that the music's meaning need not be inherent. The interpretation of musical sound, Shepherd and Wicke insist, ultimately lies with the individual subject, who can potentially resist dominant interpretations. This individual capacity for producing meaning must be disciplined, as we can see through the Benedictine Rule and its relentless regulation of musical worship in the Office.

   The psalms that constitute the monastic Office contain their own internal discipline in that they consist of song mediated by the authoritative language of the Scriptures. The words of David, the "sealmscop," are directly cited in Elene and in several Vercelli homilies, which often note the interaction between music

   While we can perceive the discipline exerted by liturgical forms in texts such as the Regularis Concordia and other documents relating to the religious practice of the Church, Bede's story of Cædmon also serves as an example of the ideological constraint exercised by an ecclesiastical institution to restrict and incorporate the music of the secular world outside the monastery's walls. Cædmon's story has been described as the "birth" of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry by Allen J. Frantzen,17 but it also represents a transformation in Anglo-Saxon musical practice. The communal harp music of Anglo-Saxon secular culture and Cædmon's inability to compose or perform it drives him from the hall:

   In leaving the hall Cædmon rejects not only his own inadequacy as a performer, but also the secular communal context, cultural process, and musical idiom of his people.

   When Cædmon receives his gift and first sings his Hymn, Bede orchestrates the episode to highlight the "naturalness" of the incident. Cædmon sleeps in a stable surrounded by beasts, a humble setting reminiscent of the Nativity. In this deceptively natural, simple, and common environment, Cædmon's visitor arrives in a dream. The dialogue that ensues between them emphasizes the visitation's status as a pure beginning, achieved without deliberation or effort on Cædmon's part:

   Earlier in the chapter, Bede emphasizes the unmediated nature of Cædmon's poetry: "Namque ipse non ab hominibus neque per hominem institutus canendi artem didicit, sed diuinitus adiutus gratis canendi donum accepit" ("For he himself did not learn the art of singing from men nor through the instruction of a man, but he received the gift of singing helped by divine grace").20 While the secular music of the hall required such skill that it sent Cædmon into flight, the distinctively Christian song that he recites in his dream springs entirely from the grace of God. Through this episode, Bede cloaks the artistry, deliberation, and ideological force of Christian poetic songs in a story of divine origins: secular music requires human effort and skill, while Christian music proceeds from God through the "religiosam linguam," "pious tongue," of a "natural" man. According to Frantzen, the story, as well as its traditional presentation, "fulfill[s] a fantasy ... in which the hostile proposition (pre-Christian verse) is not simply reconciled to the new proposition (Christian doctrine in verse form), but is obliterated in the process." 21 When Cædmon receives his gift, secular cultural production is effectively replaced through divine inspiration.

   That Cædmon's gift comes to him in a dream introduces an element of danger into the story. The dream-state places Cædmon's gift and vision in a realm inaccessible to ecclesiastical authority. For an uneducated, common man to have unmediated access to divine visitations, songs, and gifts introduces a fundamental instability into the situation, particularly considering Shepherd and Wicke's claims about the affective responses and meanings produced by the individual consciousness through the materiality of music's sounds. Bede solves this problem by placing Cædmon within the institutional hierarchy of the monastery. In the morning Cædmon, having discovered that he has retained his gift and added verses to the song he composed in his dream, reports dutifully to his master the reeve, who brings him to the abbess. Cædmon is then required to give his account of the dream and recite his song:

   In Vercelli Homily X the devil uses the sweet sound of music against the spoken Word; Bede's story of Cædmon, however, suppresses the subversive potential of Cædmon's music by mediating it through the Word of "sacrae historiae," sacred history. Cædmon makes the music, but the learned men provide his material. Even after he joins the monastery at the abbess's instruction, Cædmon is still an illiterate and "natural" man. Bede describes Cædmon's composition process as rumination on the sacred teachings that the learned men feed him:

   Though this passage begins by metaphorically associating Cædmon's composition with the natural processes of animals, it swiftly shifts with the verb "convertere," to turn around, translate, or convert.25 Even though the learned men control the material, the sweetness of Cædmon's song causes a role reversal. Now they learn from him. Cædmon's musical gift also serves as a tool of conversion: "Cuius carminibus multorum saepe animi ad contemtum saeculi et appetitum sunt uitae caelestis accensi" ("Through his songs, the souls of many were often inflamed to a disdain for this life and a passion for heavenly life"). 26

   The appetite or passion that Cædmon inspires in others also characterizes his own religious fervor:

   Bede's vocabulary in this passage emphasizes the intensity of Cædmon's religious passion. Rather than using the more sedate and common "studium" to refer to Cædmon's zeal,28 Bede chooses the construction "zelo magni feruoris," implying a violent heat, a surging madness of religious enthusiasm.29 Cædmon's passion, far from the "studium" of learned men, characterizes him as one who responds affectively rather than rationally to the divine.

   Bede's portrayal of Cædmon testifies to the ideological effects that Shepherd and Wicke claim result from the naturalizing function of music's sounds, its appeal to the emotions, and its resonance within the body. Cædmon's gift and music can only exist within controlled limits. He, his gift, and his song are all swiftly incorporated into the monastic institution,30 moving from the instability of one uneducated man's dream to the discipline of communal musical practice and pedagogy. On one level, this movement emphasizes Cædmon's divine gift and his dutiful reverence for the hierarchy in which he is placed. On another level, however, it tacitly acknowledges the dangerous instability of his musical gift, unaccompanied by linguistic privilege or scriptural knowledge. Bede's story moves from the communal hall, in which everyone, including Cædmon, is expected to sing, to the monastic setting, in which selected people sing with careful direction and instruction under the auspices of an ecclesiastical institution.

   The story of Cædmon, like the song of the devil in Vercelli Homily X, testifies to the dangerous power of music to surpass and subvert spoken sacred texts, and therefore the preaching authority of the Church. As Shepherd and Wicke emphasize, music serves a naturalizing function and resonates within the body, the material site through which social and cultural processes are mediated. Because of these capacities, music exercises a crucial force in the interpellation of subjects into ideology. It draws its listeners in when spoken words cannot. The souls wooed by the devil in Vercelli Homily X respond not to content but to sound: they "close their ears" to the discipline of the spoken Word, turning instead to the sweet music of the devil.

   As music draws individual subjects in, Shepherd and Wicke claim, it also invites them to participate in the negotiation of meaning. Bede had to describe Cædmon's composition process as "natural," because an uneducated man is not authorized to formulate meanings of his own. Cædmon's music, however, in spite of Bede's efforts to efface its subversive potential, still offers the opportunity for listeners to negotiate their own meanings, according to Shepherd and Wicke's formulation. Music can never be entirely regulated; its meaning can never be positively determined by institutional authority.

   It is music's capacity to withstand absolute control that provides opportunities for resistance within musical forms. The devil manages to disrupt the preaching of Scripture because of this profound instability, which inspired a great deal of uneasiness within the institutional Church, as Boethius emphasizes when he

   As the Vercelli texts and Bede's story of Cædmon emphasize, the Church treads a fine line in relation to music. In Homily X Scripture loses a competition with music over human souls. The Church faces a choice: depend on the more rational appeal of the spoken Word and yield to the devil when he uses musical forms for his own designs, or capitalize on music's power for the purposes of conversion and strengthening faith. Through the discipline of music and the textual mediation of song within communal contexts, the Church can choose the latter option with relative safety. Constrained by privileged language and ecclesiastical authority, music can be adjusted to serve the ideological purposes of the Church. No level of regulation, however, can completely suppress the subversive potential of a sweet song.

Loyola University Chicago