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i
Musical Portraits
ii
iii
Musical Portraits
The Composition of Identity
in Contemporary
and Experimental Music
Joshua S. Walden
1
iv
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Walden, Joshua S., 1979– author.
Title: Musical portraits : the composition of identity in contemporary and
experimental music / Joshua S. Walden.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017020694 | ISBN 9780190653507 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780190653521 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Characters and characteristics in music. | Music—20th
century—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML197 .W36 2018 | DDC 781.5/9—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020694
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v
To Judy Schelly, Mike Walden, and Danny Walden

vi
I drew men’s faces on my copy-books,

Scrawled them within the antiphonary’s marge,
Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,
Found eyes and nose and chin for A’s and B’s.
—Robert Browning, “Fra Lippo Lippi,” in Charlotte Porter and
Helen A. Clarke (eds.), Poems of Robert Browning
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1896), 127–8.
vii
CO N T E N T S
List of Figures ix
List of Musical Examples xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Portraiture as a Musical Genre 1

1. Musical and Literary Portraiture 22
2. Musical Portraits of Visual Artists 55
3. Listening in on Composers’ Self-Portraits 81
4. Celebrity, Music, and the Multimedia Portrait 109
Epilogue: Musical Portraiture, the Posthumous,
and the Posthuman 143
Bibliography 161
Index 177
viii
ix
L IST O F F I G UR E S
I.1 Charles Demuth, “The Figure 5 in Gold,” 1928, oil on cardboard,

35-1/2 x 30 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred
Stieglitz Collection, 1949 (49.59.1). Image © The Metropolitan
Museum of Art. 7
I.2 Katherine Dreier, “Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp,” 1918, oil
on canvas, 18 x 32 inches. Museum of Modern Art. Digital Image
© The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/
Art Resource, NY. 8
1.1 Pablo Picasso, “Gertrude Stein,” 1905–1906, oil on canvas,
39-3/8 x 32 inches. © 2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image copyright
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art
Resource, NY. 27
1.2 Buffie Johnson, “Portrait of Virgil Thomson,” 1963, oil on Masonite,
23-3/4 x 19-1/2 inches. Used by permission of the University
of Missouri-Kansas City Libraries, Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde
Department of Special Collections. Additional permission granted
by Jenny J. Sykes. 33
2.1 Willem de Kooning, “Woman, I,” 1950–1952, oil on canvas, 6 feet
3-7/8 x 58 inches. © 2016 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital Image © The
Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art
Resource, NY. 67
2.2 Chuck Close, “Phil,” 1969, acrylic on canvas, 108 x 84 inches.
© Chuck Close, courtesy Pace Gallery. 70
2.3 Chuck Close, “Phil,” 2011–2012, oil on canvas, 108-5/8 x 84 inches.
© Chuck Close, courtesy Pace Gallery. 73
3.1 Brother Rufillus, Initial R, from a Passionale from Weissenau
Abbey, c. 1170–1200, Cod. Bodmer 127, f. 244r. Fondation
Martin Bodmer, Cologny (Geneva). 82
x
( x ) List of Figures
3.2 Eugène Atget, “Coiffeur, Palais Royal,” 1927, albumen silver print

(gold-toned), 7 x 9-1/2 inches. Museum of Modern Art. Digital
Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art
Resource, NY. 83
3.3 Richard Hamilton, “A Portrait of the Artist by Francis Bacon,”
1970–1971, collotype and screenprint, 32-3/8 x 27-3/8 inches.
© R. Hamilton. All Rights Reserved, DACS and ARS 2016. Image
copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source:
Art Resource, NY. 89
3.4 Kazimir Malevich, “Suprematism: Self-Portrait in Two
Dimensions,” 1915, oil on canvas, 31-1/2 x 24-3/8 inches.
Stedelijk Museum. Art Resource, NY. 92
3.5 John Baldessari, “Beethoven’s Trumpet (With Ear) Opus # 133,”
2007, foam, resin, aluminum, cold bronze, and electronics,
84 x 120 x 84 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman
Gallery. 96
4.1 Robert Wilson and Tom Waits, “Robert Downey Jr.,” 2004, video.
Courtesy RW Work Ltd. 117
4.2 Robert Wilson and Michael Galasso, “Winona Ryder,” 2004, video.
Courtesy RW Work Ltd. 118
4.3 Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, “Knee Play 1” from Einstein on the
Beach, 2012–2014 revival production. Courtesy of BAM Hamm
Archives and the Robert Wilson Archives and the Byrd Hoffman
Water Mill Foundation. © Lucie Jansch. 132
4.4 Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, “Knee Play 5” from Einstein on the
Beach, 2012–2014 revival production. Courtesy of BAM Hamm
Archives and the Robert Wilson Archives and the Byrd Hoffman
Water Mill Foundation. © Lucie Jansch. 133
E.1 Kim Novak in Vertigo, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Paramount
Pictures, 1958. 145
E.2 Robert Wilson and Bernard Herrmann, “Princess Caroline,” 2006,
video. Courtesy RW Work Ltd. 149
xi
L IST O F M U SIC A L E X A M P L E S
1.1 Virgil Thomson, “Miss Gertrude Stein as a Young Girl,” 1928,

mm. 1–11. 31
1.2 Virgil Thomson, “Buffie Johnson: Drawing Virgil Thomson in
Charcoal,” 1981, mm. 1–6. 34
1.3 Virgil Thomson, “Buffie Johnson: Drawing Virgil Thomson in
Charcoal,” 1981, mm. 20–4. 34
2.1 Morton Feldman, “de Kooning,” first page. Copyright © 1963
by C. F. Peters Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Used by
permission. 64
4.1 Philip Glass, “Knee Play 1,” from Einstein on the Beach, premiered
1976, organ 1 part, first measure. 132
4.2 Philip Glass, “Knee Play 2,” from Einstein on the Beach, premiered
1976, solo violin part, rehearsal 3. 132
E.1 Bernard Herrmann, Carlotta’s leitmotif, from Vertigo, 1958, dir.
Alfred Hitchcock. David Cooper, Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo:
A Film Score Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
2001), 20. 146
xii
xii
AC KNOWL E DG M E N T S
I am thankful to Alessandra Aquilanti, Andrea Bohlman, Christopher Doll,

Walter Frisch, Sharon Levy, Michael Maul, Laura Protano-Biggs, Hollis
Robbins, David Smooke, and Andrew Talle for the friendship and sup-
port they offered at various stages of my work on this project. This book
received support from the Manfred Bukofzer Endowment of the American
Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the
Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. I want to acknowledge
the insightful editorship of Suzanne Ryan and to thank Andrew Maillet,
Victoria Kouznetsov, and the rest of the Oxford University Press staff who
helped with the production of this book. Peering back further, I am grateful
to the instructor who taught me the most about art and assured it would
always be a source of fascination for me, Michele Metz. Whenever I visit a
museum I still remember her lessons vividly as I come across the artworks
she discussed in her class, and I am sure those lectures played no small part
in the generation of this project. Most importantly, as always, the deepest
thanks are owed to my family. The education I have received from my par-
ents and brother in music, art, and literature has profoundly shaped the way
I think about the world, and no one can be more helpful than they are, as
interlocutors, sounding-boards, editors, and collaborators. It has been great
fun to share this project with them.
xiv
1
Introduction
Portraiture as a Musical Genre
The artist’s work is to show us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge
of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman
creates new men.
—George Bernard Shaw1
“A h guarda, sorella,” sings the love-struck Fiordiligi to her sister

Dorabella in the first act of Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera Così fan tutte
(1790). In a lilting, circling melody, she repeats, “Guarda, guarda”—“Look,
look.” Both sisters wear portrait miniatures of their beaux about their necks.
Fiordiligi gazes admiringly at the portrait of her beloved Guglielmo, but
convincing her sister to look will mean distracting the impulsive Dorabella
from the miniature portrait of Ferrando over which she is swooning.
Fiordiligi doubts one can find a finer mouth or nobler countenance than
those depicted in the portrait she beholds: she sees “the face of a soldier
and a lover.” This characterization comes across in the orchestral accompa-
niment as well, his strength in the dotted rhythms rising in a major arpeg-
gio, his amorousness in the suddenly languorous and melismatic singing
style that follows. For her part, Dorabella is preoccupied by the depiction
of her lover’s eyes, which seem to shoot flames and darts at her. She sees
in her portrait “a face attractive but forbidding,” characteristics conveyed
musically by the sudden change to minor and the ensuing anxious motivic
repetition, an aroused turn to the Sturm und Drang style.
Portraiture depicts aspects of our selves that are available to the senses,
but it also proposes elements of our reality that we might not otherwise
recognize so readily. It can reveal features of the human self that are hidden
2
( 2 ) Musical Portraits
beyond plain view, but it can additionally convince us of attributes of iden-

tity that are pure fabrication. If the opera had opened with this duet, we
might be persuaded that the portraits tell the truth about the subjects they
depict, or at least that these young women’s interpretations of what they see
in their miniatures can be believed. But we met the young men they describe
during the previous scene, in which, drunk and impetuous, they argued over
which of them inspired the more intense devotion in his lover, and devised
a plan to test Fiordiligi and Dorabella’s constancy by dressing as Albanians
and trying to seduce one another’s sweethearts. Can these be the strong and
reputable youths whose respective noble face and fiery eyes are depicted in
their portraits?
The young women’s duet derives its ironic depiction of loving idoliza-
tion from the friction between perception and truth, symbolized simply but
potently by the unreliability of portraits and the pitfalls of believing in the
accuracy of their representations. The sisters’ vocal lines also reveal music’s
ability to conjure aspects of character, bearing, and social status in a way
that reflects the representational power of visual art: Mozart’s text setting
and instrumental writing during this number mirror the portraits’ images
as described by the two young women, evoking the series of affects about
which they sing through the juxtaposition of musical gestures, textures,
and topics. One can almost picture in the imagination the miniatures the
women gaze at through the descriptions presented in the poetry and music.
This operatic scene demonstrates how music, in combination with lan-
guage, can be devised to fashion an impression of human identity. Like the
miniatures that hang from the necks of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, Mozart’s
musical portrayal of their lovers employs well-known sonic tropes that
serve as metaphors to depict qualities of respectability, moral strength,
and maturity that both the young men and the young women would like
to believe reflect the truth about their characters. But members of the
audience—along with the philosopher Don Alfonso and the maid Despina,
the characters who join together to put the couples’ affection through a
series of trials over the course of the narrative—know these musical and
poetic interpretations of the miniature portraits to be exaggerated and false.
To recognize the music as ironic, we have to see the conflict between the
way the men are represented in the first scene and the musical construc-
tion of their identities here. In this manner Mozart’s opera shows that the
representations of individuals that emerge from the mixture of sound and
words must always be viewed as subjective constructions rather than objec-
tive mirrors of reality.
This book is about musical portraiture, a genre of compositions that
operate as musical evocations of aspects of individual identities in the man-
ner of portraits in the visual arts and literature. Musical portraits have been
3
I n t ro d u c t i o n ( 3 )
written in a variety of forms, from the eighteenth-century keyboard mini-

ature to the twentieth-century portrait opera and beyond. With no other
definitive distinguishing features, such works require the aid of a title or
other manner of description by the composer in order to be identified as
portraits. The genre emerged in the early 1700s with works by François
Couperin (1668–1733) and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788) and
has remained of interest to composers through the present day, as a means
of creating sonic depictions of patrons, family members, friends, and his-
torical figures.2
Portraiture in music has proven a more complex and even elusive enter-
prise than portraiture in painting or sculpture, for obvious reasons: in the
absence of a means of depicting physical appearance, an element of por-
traiture in the visual arts that is commonly considered essential, compos-
ers have grappled with the question of how music can convey attributes of
identity other than appearance in such a way that listeners will construe
the composition to represent an individual. The musical portrait invites
interpretation, as the listener, inspired by the composition, constructs in
the imagination an impression of the work’s human subject. Musical por-
traiture therefore evinces a particularly self-conscious, interactive form of
representation, in which a piece’s sounds and structures, in conjunction
with a title identifying it as a portrait, are assembled by the composer and
performer and heard by the listener to evoke abstract attributes of identity
such as character, personality, social status, and profession.
The second half of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first
have brought compelling developments to the genre of visual portraiture,
as Western conceptions of identity have altered in parallel with increasing
challenges to the predominance of mimesis in artistic representation. This
book investigates the ways such recent debates over the nature of the self
inform our understanding of music’s capacity to represent human iden-
tity by considering works of musical portraiture composed since 1950.
Indeed, while composers have created musical portraits with some regu-
larity since the early development of the genre, the contemporary focus in
the arts on challenging traditional modes of representation has provoked
increasing numbers of composers to experiment with the representation of
personal identity in music and in multimedia combinations of sound, text,
and image.
The subjects of the musical portraits examined in this book are princi-
pally artists in the fields of literature, painting, composition, and perfor-
mance. By looking in particular at musical portraits of authors and artists
as well as composers’ self-portraits, the case studies in each chapter explore
the complex relationships among musical, visual, and linguistic modes
of depicting human identity. This introduction offers a brief history
4
of visual and musical portraiture and a discussion of modes of represen-

tation in music. It then examines how the musical portrait operates as a
narrative construction of an identity or self. Finally, it closes with an over-
view of the structure of this book’s exploration of contemporary musical
portraiture.
LIKENESS, IDENTIT Y, AND METAPHOR

IN PORTRAITURE
Portraiture in the visual arts typically assumes the representation of phys-

ical likeness, the fixing for posterity of a person’s appearance in a single
moment of life. Highlighting this function of the genre, the early modern
art theorist Leon Battista Alberti wrote in his 1435 treatise On Painting:
“Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men pres-
ent . . . but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive. . . . Thus the face
of a man who is already dead certainly lives a long life through painting.”3
The notion of the portrait as fixing a life in spite of human mortality is the
focus of the 1850 short story “The Oval Portrait” by Edgar Allan Poe, which
describes the creation of a portrait of a lively young woman that hangs on
the wall of an abandoned chateau. The woman had fallen in love with the
painter, whose devotion to his craft so distracts him that over the course of
sitting for the portrait she becomes increasingly jealous of his attentions.
After completing his last brush stroke and standing back to look at the fin-
ished portrait, the artist “grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and
crying with a loud voice,” he exclaimed, “This is indeed Life itself!” He then
turns to discover, to his horror, that as he painted her portrait, his beloved
has died.4 The artist who preserves a life for posterity, in Poe’s imagination,
and in a reversal of the dynamic Alberti describes, renders that life absent
in the present.5
Artists and critics have long remarked that the representation that
captures an individual life in portraiture for eternity requires more than
simply the reproduction of physical likeness: the portrait must con-
vey a sense of a sitter’s character, understood to include such aspects as
personality, social position, and profession.6 Thus even in the ancient
world, the Greek historian Plutarch praised Lysippos—the artist of the
fourth century bce known as the “father of Hellenistic sculpture” for
his bronze representations of Alexander the Great that combined phys-
ical idealization with the depiction of their subject’s individuality—for
bronzes that “preserve [Alexander’s] manly and leonine quality” and in
so doing “brought out his real character . . . and gave form to his essential
excellence.”7
5
Identity is thus viewed as related to but not defined by the body; as

the analytic philosopher Bernard Williams puts it, “Identity of body is at
least not a sufficient condition of personal identity.”8 The successful por-
trait exceeds the mere representation of the body: it allows the viewer to
infer a broader and multidimensional conception of the invisible aspects
of the sitter’s subjectivity. As Paul Klee wrote of his portraiture in his diary
in 1901, “I am not here to reflect the surface . . . but must penetrate inside.
My mirror probes down to the heart. . . . My human faces are truer than
the real ones.”9
The use of portraiture to represent interior identity rather than simply to
mimic external appearance can be understood as a form of aesthetic real-
ism, even as it involves the development of techniques for depicting some-
thing invisible to the eye. Indeed, a portrait that fails to define the sitter’s
character is likely to be criticized as untruthful or incomplete, no matter
how precise its likeness. In her first novel, Adam Bede (1859, rev. 1861),
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) sets forth her conception of the impor-
tance of creating portraits of characters in all their complexity: she imag-
ines a hypothetical reader asking why she has represented her characters as
flawed individuals, and responds by explaining that her task is not to ide-
alize “life and character entirely after my own liking,” but “to give a faithful
account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind.”10
To describe this literary technique she raises the analogy of paintings of
the Dutch Golden Age, with their focus on the realistic depiction of the
appearance, character, and daily activities of the working classes. Though
she does not call for the wholesale rejection of “the divine beauty of form,”
she writes,
But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the
secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet
robe, and a face paled by the celestial light . . . but do not impose on us any aesthetic
rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with
their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those
rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done
the rough work of the rough curs, and their clusters of onions. . . . It is so needful we
should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our
religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes.
Therefore let Art always remind us of them.11
In this passage, Eliot proposes that the artist has an ethical responsibility to
represent the faces of ordinary people, and to do so in a way that favors the
truthful depiction of interior life over the idealization of external appearance.
6
Eliot makes this distinction with regard to literature and painting, but it
informs our study of portraiture in music as well, and in many of the portraits
examined in the following three chapters of this book, composers explore
ways to represent in music, without idealization, the interior lives of their
subjects.12 The fourth chapter, on the other hand, views the influence of vis-
ual idealization, as found in images of military and political leaders and in
celebrity and fashion photography, on contemporary portraiture in musical
multimedia.
Taking to its extreme this notion of portraiture as the art of depicting a
person’s internal character, a number of artists in the early twentieth cen-
tury began to experiment with the elimination of literal likeness in portrai-
ture, developing innovative methods of representing individuals without
relying on realistic visual mimesis, and thus expanding and challenging the
traditional boundaries implied by standard definitions of the genre.13 For
example, Pablo Picasso engaged the techniques of cubism to deconstruct
his sitters’ bodies, and Francis Bacon painted images of sitters with their
faces and bodies contorted, often beyond recognition. Charles Demuth’s
portrait of William Carlos Williams titled “The Figure 5 in Gold” (1928)
depicts words and images from Williams’s poetry rather than a likeness
of his face to represent his identity (Figure I.1), while Katherine Dreier’s
“Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp” (1918) abandons pictorialism
altogether to offer an abstract, fragmented representation of her subject
(Figure I.2).14 In these works portraiture becomes a sort of game, in which
the viewer is invited to interpret the relationship between various sym-
bolic or abstract elements of the image and the named subject it is said to
represent.15
Such developments in portraiture in the visual arts provide a model
for describing how composers have experimented with depicting human
subjects through music. In a manner reflective of cubism and other
abstract modes of painting, composers of musical portraits have rep-
resented their sitters through musical elements such as form, rhythm,
harmony, and style. Where portrait painters rely on visual art’s stasis
to fix a moment for posterity, however, composers of musical portraits
often take advantage of the temporal aspect of their medium as well.
This allows them to create portraits that render their subjects’ character
and life experiences from various perspectives and unfolding through
time—for example by using narrative techniques to portray events in
their subjects’ biographies, or evoking a succession of affects to convey
the development of character. The musical portraits of artists known for
their work in various media that are discussed in this book also depict
the subjects identified in their titles by suggesting affinities with quali-
ties of their own works of portraiture in the visual arts, literature, and
7
Figure I.1: Charles Demuth, “The Figure 5 in Gold,” 1928, oil on cardboard, 35-1/2 x 30 inches.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949 (49.59.1). Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
music. These portraits call attention to analogies between musical and

other aesthetic means of representation, especially through metaphors
that associate what we hear with what we see.
In all artistic media, portraiture is a genre that relies inherently on met
aphor. Until the more recent era of abstraction in visual portraiture, works
in the genre, including those that idealize their sitters’ likenesses, have tra-
ditionally depended on the standard metaphor that the body is a container
for whatever one believes it is that makes an individual unique—the soul,
the self, character, personality, identity, or some other entity. As Richard
8
Figure I.2: Katherine Dreier, “Abstract Portrait of Marcel Duchamp,” 1918, oil on canvas,
18 x 32 inches. Museum of Modern Art. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by
SCALA/Art Resource, NY.
Leppert writes, “Challenged to make identity visible . . . portraits must

‘employ’ the physical body as the proving ground of the soul, since the body
is the only available terrain onto which the nonphysical can be visualized.”16
Wittgenstein suggests a similar point in his aphorism, “The human body
is the best picture of the human soul.”17 According to this understanding,
portraits represent “outer” attributes of physical appearance such as facial
expression, posture, gesture, and physical bearing as signs of invisible “inner”
aspects of identity.
The notion that the appearance of the body offers a representation of
what lies “on the inside” has been long-standing in the discourse about
portraiture. In a passage from The Memorabilia (fourth century bce),
Xenophon recounts Socrates’s lesson to a sculptor: “Must not the threat-
ening look in the eyes of fighters be accurately represented, and the trium-
phant expression on the face of conquerors be imitated? . . . It follows, then,
that the sculptor must represent in his figures the activities of the soul.”18 In
the late seventeenth century, the influential artist and art theorist Charles
le Brun, who held the title of Premier Peintre du Roi at the court of Louis
XIV, explains his view that facial expression (in the words of a 1701 transla-
tion) “is that which describes the true Characters of Things. . . . The external
Characters, are certain Signs of the Affections of the Soul; so that by the
Form of every Creature may be known its Humours and Temper.”19 In his
1753 treatise The Analysis of Beauty, William Hogarth, acknowledging his
debt to le Brun, similarly writes, “It is by the natural and unaffected move-
ments of the muscles, caused by the passions of the mind, that every man’s
character would in some measure be written in his face.”20 The visible quality
9
of facial expression, according to le Brun and Hogarth, makes apparent the

combination of passions that combine to form a person’s internal self.21
Even as notions of what constitutes the self—the passions, the humors,
character, inherent qualities, or constructed elements of identity—have
changed over the centuries, this basic premise has remained largely intact.
The metaphorical power of portraiture to dissect the body, to investigate
its external aspects to find the self that lies underneath the surface, can be a
source of self-consciousness and anxiety for the sitter. Susan Sontag writes
that in posing for photographs she experiences the distance between body
and soul, the space between her physical appearance and her interior self,
especially acutely: “Immobilized for the camera’s scrutiny, I feel the weight
of my facial mask, the jut and fleshiness of my lips, the spread of my nos-
trils, the unruliness of my hair. I experience myself as behind my face, look-
ing through the windows of my eyes, like the prisoner in the iron mask in
Dumas’s novel.”22
But it is also precisely because identity is thought to reside beneath
the surface, mapped onto but also hidden by the outward, visible aspect
of the individual, that portraiture can operate without conveying phys-
ical likeness at all. Although musical portraits, as well as abstract vis-
ual portraits of the twentieth century such as Demuth’s painting of
Williams and Dreier’s of Duchamp, do not depict physical likeness,
they still rely on the metaphoric conception of an individual’s identity
as interior, available to the senses through artistic representation and
interpretation.
Metaphors factor heavily in the ways music, like identity, is described
in Western cultures, and these metaphors are typically brought into play
in musical portraiture’s representations. Music is often conceptualized
metaphorically through reference to qualities associated with physical
movement, language, the visual, and other domains of human experi-
ence.23 More than simply descriptive tropes or figures of speech, such
metaphors are defining concepts in cultural modes of understanding
music, and contribute to how sound is perceived in relation to other
aspects of aesthetic contemplation, physical and social experience, and
cultural notions of one’s place in the world.24 In the musical portrait,
the metaphorical concepts that govern the understanding of both the
human individual and the musical work interact and combine. For exam-
ple, the twin metaphors of the piece of music as a container for the com-
poser’s ideas and the body as a container for the self overlap in the case
of the musical portrait, so that the expressive and emotional content of
the composition are understood to depict the corresponding attributes
of the person being represented. In this way, for instance, the struc-
ture of the piece may be used to outline ordered aspects of the subject’s
10
biography, in a manner that depends in part on the metaphors of both

music and life as types of narrative.
The metaphors that help form the understanding of music by relating
it to visual art also play an important role in the depiction of the musical
portrait’s subject. Though arguably those musical elements typically char-
acterized as “lines,” “shapes,” “colors,” and “textures” are rarely combined
in the imagination into anything resembling physical likeness, they can
map onto the way we employ visual metaphors in understanding human
character as embodying varying degrees of color, vibrancy, darkness, hard
and soft edges, and so forth. For example, a piece described as colorful—
perhaps because it incorporates a variety of contrasting timbral or “tone
color” effects—might be understood to convey a portrait subject’s “color-
ful” personality.
Paying critical attention to the connections we make between sound and
sight helps to reveal what Simon Shaw-Miller calls the “close and porous
mutual surfaces” between musical and visual art forms that are too often treated
as entirely distinct.25 Adapting philosopher Jerrold Levinson’s approach, in
the essay “Hybrid Art Forms” (1984), to works of art that correlate differ-
ent media types through processes of juxtaposition, synthesis, and transfor-
mation, Shaw-Miller proposes the study of the hybrid arts as a way to reveal
the rich interactions between music and the visual.26 Indeed, the appreciation
of music often entails a visual dimension, one that involves the image of the
human body, particularly that of the performer. Leppert explains, “Whatever
else music is ‘about,’ it is inevitably about the body; music’s aural and visual
presence constitutes both a relation to and a representation of the body.”27
Because many listeners are conditioned to associate the sounds of music with
the appearance—present or imagined—of the body of the performer, and
with human form and movement more generally, music operates particularly
effectively as a medium in the construction of individual identities in portrai-
ture, even if it is incapable of reproducing detailed physical likeness.28
Of course viewing art, like listening to music, also brings us in touch with
the human body; while the sonic and visual arts are distinct in many funda-
mental ways, physical and psychological aspects of perception in both fields
also overlap. In particular, although it may seem intuitive to describe music
as temporal and gestural and visual art as static in time and space, the appre-
ciation of visual art, like the experience of music, in fact also involves phys-
ical movement and gesture, as we reposition ourselves before an artwork
to see it from different angles, move our eyes across its surface, and experi-
ence it in time, shifting our perspective from one area to another to observe
different aspects of the image’s construction and narrative.29 Furthermore,
we might infer from brush strokes and other elements of the canvas the
1
motions that were made by the artist during the creation of the painting,
much as we interpret the physical gestures of musicians when attending a
performance or imagine them when listening to a recording, and such per-
ception of the artist’s movements in any medium can influence the inter-
pretation of the content and subject of the work.30
CONSTRUCTING THE CONTEMPORARY SELF

IN MUSIC
The philosopher Jerrold Seigel writes that the Western conception of the
self consists of three principal components: the bodily, or physical exist-
ence; the relational, deriving from social interaction and cultural contexts;
and the reflective, the capacity to examine and question oneself.31 Of course,
conceptions of what constitutes these three aspects of human identity have
varied considerably over time, and conventions in both visual and musi-
cal portraiture have developed in parallel. According to the modern view,
whose origins are found in the Renaissance, the self entails a coherent entity
associated with notions of autonomy and free will; it is this isolated self that
characterizes people as separate individuals with unique identities.32 With
the postwar perspectives introduced by deconstructionist critique and the
new understandings of identity developed by proponents of postcolonial-
ism, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and other modern schools of thought,
the self came generally to be recognized as fragmented and mutable, and as
formed discursively through social interaction, rather than unified and fixed
at a single point of emergence.33 Madan Sarup writes, “Identity in postmod-
ern thought is not a thing; the self is necessarily incomplete, unfinished—it
is ‘the subject in process.’ ”34
If the self is constructed, it is also performed and interpreted: individu-
als adopt certain actions in public that will express corresponding aspects
of character, and onlookers interpret these behaviors to combine in the
impression of an identity.35 In portraiture, the artist constructs an identity
on the canvas, generally by representing physical appearance, but the sub-
ject posing for the image may also play a role in this construction through
an act of performance that aims to depict the self. Roland Barthes describes
his behavior when he is photographed as involving a self-conscious sort of
performance:
I decide to “let drift” over my lips and in my eyes a faint smile which I mean to be “inde-
finable,” in which I might suggest, along with the qualities of my nature, my amused
consciousness of the whole photographic ritual: I lend myself to the social game, I pose,
12
I know I am posing, I want you to know that I am posing, but (to square the circle) this
additional message must in no way alter the precious essence of my individuality: what
I am, apart from my effigy. What I want, in short, is that my (mobile) image, buffeted
among a thousand shifting photographs, altering with situation and age, should always
coincide with my (profound) “self ”; but it is the contrary that must be said: “myself ”
never coincides with my image.36
For Barthes, this performance, however superficial it might seem in its

predication on the “social game” of image-making, depends on position-
ing his external qualities to provide a view of the identity that resides deep
within himself, under the surface. That the image that results is never suffi-
ciently neutral to be entirely true to his identity is a necessary shortcoming
of representation.
Kenneth Gergen argues that the postmodern view of identity is not “the
result of our ‘personal essence’ ” but the product of “how we are constructed
in various social groups. . . . As a category of ‘real self ’ continues to recede
from view, however, one acquires a pastiche-like personality.”37 This defini-
tion of identity, which overlaps with fundamental aspects of the standard
understanding of postmodernism itself, is characterized by polyvocal-
ity: rather than being guided by a unique, personal voice, our identities,
according to this view, are tuned to parallel streams of the voices of those
around us and the constant drone of contemporary media, and this leads
to a fragmentation and decentering of identity.38 Identity is also viewed as
malleable and transient, constantly being reconstructed and presented in
new ways through social interaction, and therefore lacking in coherence.39
Our understanding of our selves and the world in which we live is rooted in
our relationships with others.40 The self is therefore founded in creative acts
occurring within the contexts provided by one’s social, cultural, and politi-
cal surroundings.41 Invoking Shakespeare’s line “all the world’s a stage,” Olav
Bryant Smith writes, “What is equally true, and more fundamental, is that
we are coauthors of the very plays in which we act.”42
The contemporary understanding of identity as multivalent, mediated,
perpetually under construction, and open to varied interpretation has
posed certain challenges to traditional modes of representing subjectivity
in portraiture. Such complexity is conveyed in Calvin O. Schrag’s descrip-
tion of the philosophical project he undertakes in his book The Self after
Postmodernity, which he describes in the introduction through the meta-
phor of “sketching a portrait of the human self ”:
There is first the obvious truth that we are dealing not with a single, unitary, sharply
defined portrait, but rather with a portrait that is itself curiously diversified. What thus
appears to be at issue is a multiplicity of profiles and perspectives through which the
13
human self moves and is able to come into view. . . . There is, however, another set of
obstacles facing the projected undertaking. This has to do with the very grammar of por-
traits or profiles or perspectives. It is a grammar that invites a philosophical optics bent
upon the field of vision as somehow privileged for the disclosure of self and world. But
knowledge of self is as much the rendering of an account, the telling of a story, as it is the
discernment of perceptual profiles—and indeed it is the telling of a story in which the
self is announced as at once actor and receiver of action. . . . I thus propose a metaphor-
ical extension of the grammar of portraits, profiles, or perspectives to include the telling
and hearing of stories and the performance and reception of action.43
The contemporary understanding of identity and the self has permitted art-
ists to use more abstract means to represent individual subjects in a host
of media. It has also made a space in the field of portraiture for the repre-
sentational techniques of music, whose temporal aspect permits a narrative
quality and whose reliance on performance requires an active and discur-
sive process of creating meaning, reflecting Schrag’s call for “the telling and
hearing of stories and the performance and reception of action” in the post-
modern “grammar of portraits.”
Composers of musical portraits typically construct representations of
identities by selecting and depicting individual aspects of the sitter’s life,
such as biographical experiences, artistic style, and emotional traits, in ways
that reflect how we tell stories in the construction of our own characters. It
is common to define identity through the selection and retelling of stories,
creating what has been called a “narrative self.”44 Marya Schechtman argues,
in her theory of what she calls the “narrative self-construction view”:
At the core of this view is the assertion that individuals constitute themselves as per-
sons by coming to think of themselves as persisting subjects who have had experience
in the past and will continue to have experience in the future, taking certain experiences
as theirs. Some, but not all, individuals weave stories of their lives, and it is their doing
so which makes them persons. On this view a person’s identity . . . is constituted by the
content of her self-narrative, and the traits, actions, and experiences included in it are, by
virtue of that inclusion, hers.45
Though Schechtman is writing primarily about the way individuals con-

struct their own identities through narrative, these principles apply to
much portraiture as well, particularly in music, with its temporal dimen-
sion that permits the weaving of a narrative over a period of time.46 John
Berger, who similarly invokes the value of looking forward and backward
in the description of a life and identity, also links this sort of storytelling to
portraiture: “Drawing a face is one way of noting down a biography. Good
portraits are both prophetic and retrospective.”47
14
It has become a common observation among sociologists of music and

media that music is used every day as a tool of identity construction, a
process viewed as both social and narrative.48 One reason music operates
effectively through composition and performance as a tool in the construc-
tion of identities in portraiture is that we are conditioned in our daily lives
to consider music an important element in the social construction of our
own sense of self as well as in the interpretation of other people’s identi-
ties. In the compositions under examination in this book, music is used to
represent the self through a creative act of aesthetic construction; and the
final product, the musical portrait, is a work of music that permits further
reconstructions through the hermeneutic processes of performance and
listening.
THE CONTENTS OF THIS STUDY
Musical Portraits views works in the genre of musical portraiture composed

after 1950 as representations of human identities that privilege a view of the
self as socially and narratively constructed and changing through time. The
mode of representation in the musical portrait relies principally on meta-
phors that draw connections between music and language, the visual, and
aspects of human character. The musical portrait is a category of program
music that relies on text—at least in its title—to identify it as a constitu-
ent of the genre and to aid in its interpretation; in this way it reflects the
common view of the self as constructed by means of language.49 The form
of programmatic representation in musical portraiture is typically highly
abstract and therefore demands a particularly engaged and often playful
form of interpretation.
The book is structured around case studies that offer detailed readings
of individual musical portraits, showing how one might construct impres-
sions of the subjects of these works through interpretations of the music’s
metaphorical meanings, guided by knowledge of the composers’ and sit-
ters’ biographies. In particular, chapters examine portraits of artists whose
work in the fields of literature, painting, and drama engage in multiple
forms of portraiture, as well as musical self-portraits in which composers
explore various aspects of their own identities, especially by interpreting
their own musical styles and influences. Following these studies of por-
traits that view how music can offer metaphors of linguistic, visual, and
even musical modes of representation, the book turns to a set of works that
combine all of these art forms together in multimedia portraiture, both
in small-scale creations and in the monumental genre of portrait opera,
15
in which music takes center stage in the representation of an individual

identity.
Chapter 1 focuses on the critical role language plays in the composition,
performance, and interpretation of the musical portrait. It examines musi-
cal portraits based on literary models, specifically “Buffie Johnson: Drawing
Virgil Thomson in Charcoal” (1981) by Virgil Thomson (1896–1989)
and Pli selon pli: portrait de Mallarmé (1957–1962, later revised through
1989) by Pierre Boulez (1925–2016). Virgil Thomson was inspired by the
modernist literary portraits of Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) to develop
his unique method of writing over 140 musical portraits, in which he sat
before his subjects while composing in the manner of a portrait painter.
Boulez’s portrait was inspired by his deep familiarity with the poetic works
of the French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), and his interest
in Mallarmé’s description, in his essays, of an idiosyncratic theory accord-
ing to which poetry should aspire to a representational purity and abstrac-
tion exemplified in music. Through the discussion of these two musical
portraits, the chapter explores the crucial role of language in the musical
representation of identity.
Chapter 2 considers the connections between musical and visual modes
of representing identity by examining musical portraits of visual artists.
This chapter examines works that reflect the influence of modern trends
in visual portraiture, focusing on musical portraits of contemporary paint-
ers: “de Kooning” (1963) by Morton Feldman (1926–1987) and “A Musical
Portrait of Chuck Close” (2005) by Philip Glass (b. 1937).50 Considering
these musical portraits of the painters Willem de Kooning (1904–1997)
and Chuck Close (b. 1940) in relation to canvases by these artists reveals
how the works portray their subjects by organizing musical structures to
serve as metaphors of visual strategies of representation, evoking aspects
of biography while mimicking painterly techniques in musical structures.
In chapter 3 the book turns its attention to self-portraiture, to explore
the methods by which composers have depicted themselves and their com-
positional techniques and styles. It views musical self-portraits in relation
to self-portraiture in visual art to identify techniques shared by the two
art forms. The chapter focuses in particular on two self-portraits, one that
explores the question of artistic influence, and a second that represents its
composer’s unique and personal perception of sound. The first case study
is of György Ligeti’s two-piano “Selbstportrait mit Reich und Riley (und
Chopin ist auch dabei)” (Self-Portrait with Reich and Riley (with Chopin
in the Background)), from Drei Stücke (Three Pieces, 1976), in which
Ligeti (1923–2006) portrays himself with two musical contemporaries,
Steve Reich (b. 1936) and Terry Riley (b. 1935), and their forerunner
Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849), by demonstrating overlapping elements
16
of their compositional techniques. In the second case study, “Quadraturen

IV: ‘Selbstportrait mit Berlin’ ” (Self-Portrait with Berlin, 1998), by Peter
Ablinger (b. 1959), a compact disc recording of ambient sounds collected
by the composer accompanies an instrumental ensemble playing a score
produced by a computer analysis of this recording. In their self-portraits,
Ligeti and Ablinger reflect on their professional and artistic identities in the
contexts provided by the music and sounds that they hear around them.
Having explored musical interactions and intersections with literature,
painting, and other music, the book turns in its final chapter to hybrid
works of multimedia portraiture and the genre of the portrait opera, to
consider how music operates in conjunction with these other artistic
forms in the depiction of identity. Focusing in particular on strategies for
the representation of contemporary cultural and intellectual icons, the
chapter first introduces the Voom Portraits of the American avant-garde
director Robert Wilson (b. 1941), an ongoing series of multimedia video
portraits of celebrities begun in 2004, made using high-definition audio-
visual technology. These works rely on the combination of image, music,
and text, and feature eclectic sound effects and scores by composers whose
work occupies a range of contrasting styles, such as Bernard Herrmann
(1911–1975), Michael Galasso (1949–2009), and Tom Waits (b. 1949).
The chapter then examines the portrait opera, with particular attention to
Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, created in collaboration with Wilson
and choreographer Lucinda Childs (b. 1940), and premiered in 1976.
The discussion considers how this trio of artists produced what they call
a “portrait” of Einstein, an abstract representation that combines allusions
to disparate objects, events, and concepts from his biography such as his
physical appearance, his clothing, and the theory of relativity, as well as his
artistry as an amateur violinist. The Voom Portraits and Einstein on the Beach
evoke their subjects’ artistry to engage a particularly contemporary notion
of identity, while they also foreground the complex ways music has been
made to interact with imagery and theater in the production of meaning in
multimedia arts of the second half of the twentieth century and the start of
the twenty-first.
The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the con-
text of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-
called posthuman condition, a way of describing contemporary changes in
the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology
and the body. It first examines the treatment of music in Alfred Hitchcock’s
Vertigo as a medium that can represent the overlapping identities of the
living and the dead through the soundtrack scoring. It then considers the
work of experimental musician Neil Harbisson (b. 1982), who has aimed,
through the use of new digital capabilities, to convey something akin to
17
visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. Harbisson has produced

multiple brief portraits using his implanted audiovisual “eyeborg” device, a
technology that he was inspired to develop as a result of his colorblindness,
to enhance his sensory experience by creating a sonic analog to color, trans-
forming light-waves into pitches. The epilogue shows how an examination
of musical portraiture in the context of the posthumous and the posthuman
helps to illuminate the ways music represents identity throughout the genre
of musical portraiture.
One of the central claims of this book is that musical portraiture does
not typically rely on techniques of mimesis to reproduce a convincing
likeness, but draws instead on more abstract modes of representation
that, through established metaphors that associate music with language,
emotion, the self, and the visual, contribute to the rich opportunity for
interpretation that is characteristic of the genre. Portraits in all art forms
trade on the common belief that the genre makes human identity availa-
ble to the senses. But they also rely on the fact that our understanding of
identity and of how it is represented in art remains a subject of debate.51
Portraits—in visual art, literature, music, and other media—in this way
permit a particularly imaginative form of interpretation on the part of
the audience, and make possible the construction of a sense of iden-
tity through independent contemplation or discourse among multiple
onlookers. For this reason portraits often provoke debate over whether
or not their representations are “successful”: audiences may be likely to
judge them not only on their artistic merits, but also on whether or not
they convey the sitter’s identity in a way that accords with their prior con-
ception of it. The analysis of what a musical portrait reveals to its viewers
about its sitter’s identity is thus always a subjective and highly personal
process, but the impossibility of offering any one definitive interpreta-
tion of a portrait is also what makes portraiture so rich and provocative
a genre.
NOTES
1. George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy (Auckland: The
Floating Press, 2012), 63.
2. Music making and musical instruments are also prominent tropes in painted portrai-
ture. See Richard Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural
Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988); Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of
the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 4–12; Michael A. Brown,
“Portraits, Music and Enlightenment in the Atlantic World,” in Patrick Coleman (ed.),
The Art of Music (San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2015), 167–83.
18
3. Lorenzo Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1956, rev. ed. 1966), 63. For further discussion of the extension of a sub-
ject’s “life” through portraiture, see also Richard Leppert, Art and the Committed Eye: The
Cultural Functions of Imagery (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), 98–9, 153.
4. Edgar Allan Poe, The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition, ed. Stuart
Levine and Susan Levine (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 68.
5. Michal Peled Ginsburg, Portrait Stories (New York: Fordham University Press,
2015), 23–4.
6. See Shearer West, Portraiture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 37; Richard
Brilliant, Portraiture (London: Reaktion Books, 1991), 15; Ludmilla Jordanova, Defining
Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits 1660–2000 (London: Reaktion Books and
National Portrait Gallery, 2000), 22–5.
7. “Bodies: Real and Ideal,” www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/introduction-to-greek-
bronzes/bodies-real-and-ideal.html, accessed June 21, 2016; Luke Syson and Dora Thornton,
Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001), 115.
8. Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956– 1972
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 1.
9. Paul Klee, Paul Klee (New York: Parkstone, 2012), 16.
10. George Eliot, Adam Bede, ed. Carol A. Martin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008;
orig. 1859, rev. 1861), 159.
11. Eliot, Adam Bede, 162.
12. For a description of how realism operates in music, see Joshua S. Walden, Sounding
Authentic: The Rural Miniature and Musical Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014), 7–9.
13. West, Portraiture, 187; Andrew Graham-Dixon, foreword to Andrew Graham-Dixon, Sandy
Nairne, Sarah Howgate, and Jo Higgins (eds.), 21st-Century Portraits (London: National
Portrait Gallery, 2013), 7–9; Lee Siegel, “On the Face of It,” in Donna Gustafson and Susan
Sidlauskas (eds.), Striking Resemblance: The Changing Art of Portraiture (New Brunswick,
NJ: Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University; London: Prestel, 2014), 50.
14. West, Portraiture, 194–201.
15. See Edward A. Aiken, “‘I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold’: Charles Demuth’s Emblematic Portrait
of William Carlos Williams,” Art Journal 46.3 (Autumn 1987): 179.
16. Leppert, Art and the Committed Eye, 153.
17. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1958), II: iv, 178.
18. Jennifer Montagu, The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and Influence of Charles
Le Brun’s Conférence sur l’expression générale et particulière (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1994), 1.
19. Charles le Brun, The Conference of Monsieur Le Brun, cheif [sic] painter of the French King, . . .
upon Expression, General and Particular, trans. J. Smith (London, 1701), 1–2, 39–40.
20. William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty. Written with a View of Fixing the Fluctuating Ideas
of Taste (London: J. Reeves, 1753), 126.
21. For detailed historical and philosophical discussion of the relationship between
expression and personality, see Sandra Kemp, Future Face: Image, Identity, Innovation
(London: Profile, 2004), 56–66.
22. Susan Sontag, “Certain Mapplethorpes,” in Susan Sontag (ed.), Where the Stress
Falls: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 234.
23. Lawrence M. Zbikowski refers to this form of metaphor as “cross-domain mapping,”
in Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 64. On visual metaphors in discourses around music, see also
Gurminder Kaur Bhogal, “Visual Metaphors in Music Analysis and Criticism,” in Tim
Shephard and Anne Leonard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture
(New York: Routledge, 2014), 191–9.
24. On metaphor and the perception of music, see Steven Feld, “‘Flow Like a Waterfall’: The
Metaphors of Kaluli Musical Theory,” Yearbook for Traditional Music 13 (1981): 22–47;
19
Laurence Dreyfus, “Christopher Peacocke’s ‘The Perception of Music,’” British Journal of

Aesthetics 49.3 ( July 2009): 294. In their foundational book on the subject, Metaphors We
Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write that metaphor plays a fundamental role in
constructing the ways people perceive the world and interact culturally and socially with
others. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980), 3–5. On metaphors that characterize the visual arts in relation to
music, see Simon Shaw-Miller, “The Art of Music: A Complex Art,” and Patrick Coleman,
“Music, Said and Scene: Encounters in Metaphor, Theory and Performance,” in Coleman,
Art of Music, 33–59, 105–27.
25. Simon Shaw-Miller, Eye hEar: The Visual in Music (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 185.
An extensive history of artists and art theorists whose work explores the borders between
music and the visual arts can be found in Peter Vergo, That Divine Order: Music and the
Visual Arts from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (London: Phaidon, 2005); Peter
Vergo, The Music of Painting: Music, Modernism, and the Visual Arts from the Romantics to
John Cage (London: Phaidon, 2010).
26. Simon Shaw-Miller, Visible Deeds of Music: Art and Music from Wagner to Cage (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 11. Shaw-Miller partially attributes the ten-
dency to view the arts as fully distinct to academic disciplinarity: “Attempts at purifica-
tion and homogeneity are reinforced by, and carried out within, the professionalization
of academic disciplines as they form themselves into discrete subjects” (35).
27. Leppert, Sight of Sound, xx. The relationships between music, the visual aspects of perfor-
mance, and the physical gestures of the body—even those inferred rather than witnessed
when music is appreciated by listening to sound recording—have also been studied
extensively in the field of psychology. See, from the perspective of perceptual psychology,
W. Luke Windsor, “Gestures in Music-Making: Action, Information and Perception,” in
Anthony Gritten and Elaine King (eds.), New Perspectives on Music and Gesture (Farnham,
UK: Ashgate, 2011), 45–66; and from the field of embodied cognition, Marc Leman
and Pieter-Jan Maes, “The Role of Embodiment in the Perception of Music,” Empirical
Musicology Review 9.3–4 (2014): 236–46; Rolf Inge Godøy, “Gestural Affordances of
Musical Sound,” in Rolf Inge Godøy and Marc Leman (eds.), Musical Gestures: Sound,
Movement, and Meaning (New York: Routledge, 2010), 103–25.
28. The musical gestures in a composition labeled as a portrait might also imply cer-
tain aspects of the subject’s physical presence and bearing. On the correspondences
between the ways meaning is communicated by musical gestures and the physical ges-
tures made during speech, see Lawrence M. Zbikowski, “Musical Gesture and Musical
Grammar: A Cognitive Approach,” in Gritten and King, New Perspectives on Music
and Gesture, 83–98. On music’s influences on the embodied perception of time, see
Barbara G. Goodrich, “Tempos of Eternity: Music, Volition, and Playing with Time,” in
Joseph P. Huston, Marcos Nadal, Francisco Mora, Luigi F. Agnati, and Camilo Jose Cela
Conde (eds.), Art, Aesthetics, and the Brain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015),
500–18.
29. On the functions of body and eye movement in the contemplation of art, see Michael Madary,
“Visual Experience,” in Lawrence Shapiro (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Embodied
Cognition (London: Routledge, 2014), 263; Paul J. Locher, “Empirical Investigation of
an Aesthetic Experience with Art,” in Arthur P. Shimamura and Stephen E. Palmer (eds.),
Aesthetic Science: Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2012), 163–88 (esp. 175–9); Raphael Rosenberg and Christoph Klein, “The Moving
Eye of the Beholder: Eye Tracking and the Perception of Paintings,” in Huston, Nadal,
Mora, Agnati, and Conde, Art, Aesthetics, and the Brain, 79–108.
30. In the twentieth century a number of visual artists began to explore methods for depict-
ing the passing of time, the temporal “movement” of music, and the physical, rhyth-
mic motions of dance through visual means. See Karin v. Maur, The Sound of Painting
(London: Prestel, 1999), 43–59, 94–101.
31. Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the
Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5–6.
20
32. Paul C. Vitz, “Introduction: From the Modern and Postmodern Selves to the Transmodern
Self,” in Paul C. Vitz and Susan M. Felch (eds.), The Self: Beyond the Postmodern Crisis
(Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), xi–xii.
33. John Barresi and Raymond Martin, “History as Prologue: Western Theories of the
Self,” in Shaun Gallagher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Self (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 33–56; Madam Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 14; Kenneth Allan, “The Postmodern
Self: A Theoretical Consideration,” Quarterly Journal of Ideology 20.1–2 (1997): 3–24.
On the ways social and political movements in the 1960s in North America and Western
Europe contributed to the rise of the social constructionist view of identity, see Kenneth
J. Gergen, “The Social Construction of Self,” in Gallagher, Oxford Handbook of the Self,
634. The notion of a fragmented identity is implied by some portraiture from the ear-
lier half of the twentieth century as well. For example, the surrealist artist Max Ernst, in
preparing his 1935 self-portrait, broke the glass-plate negative of a photograph taken of
his face by Man Ray, and adhered it back together, writing the details of the exhibition
onto the surface of the tape. The image of the result of this fractured, reassembled likeness
was then printed on the cover of the invitation to the exhibition of his works in Paris,
Exposition Max Ernst—dernières oeuvres. Ernst repaired the broken glass, but permitted
the cracks in his reflection to remain. See Elza Adamowicz, “The Surrealist (Self-)Portrait:
Convulsive Identities,” in Silvano Levy (ed.), Surrealism: Surrealist Visuality (Edinburgh:
Keele University Press, 1996), 32.
34. Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, 45.
35. An important early study of the performance of the self is found in Erving Goffman, The
Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1959).
36. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang,
1982), 11–12.
37. Kenneth Gergen, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life
(New York: Basic Books, 1991), 170. See also Vitz, “Introduction,” xiii–xiv.
38. Vitz, “Introduction,” xiii. Helene Tallon Russell and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki interpret
the writings on selfhood of Søren Kierkegaard and Alfred North Whitehead, in order to
argue that the self is multiple and relational, but they oppose the common understanding
that the unity of the self ultimately triumphs over its multiplicity in the way the self is
constructed and experienced. They conclude that “the self is composite, not singular; it is
constituted in and through multiple relationships. This multiplicity is essential to the self,
and is also, through dialectic, the basis for the common experience of the self as a unity.”
Helene Tallon Russell and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, “The Multiple Self,” in J. Wentzel
van Huyssteen and Erik P. Wiebe (eds.), In Search of Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on
Personhood (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), 196.
39. Vitz, “Introduction,” xiii–xiv. Shari Stone-Mediatore counsels against viewing identity as
defined entirely in one of two contrasting ways, according to the modern or postmod-
ern conceptions, recommending instead a consideration of identity as merging notions
of the self as at once both true and constructed. Shari Stone-Mediatore, “Postmodernism,
Realism, and the Problem of Identity,” Diaspora 11.1 (2002): 131.
40. Gergen, “Social Construction,” 635.
41. Anthony Elliott, Concepts of the Self, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 9. For Elliott, “all
forms of identity are astonishingly imaginative fabrications of the private and public, per-
sonal and political, individual and historical” (10–11).
42. Olav Bryant Smith, Myths of the Self: Narrative Identity and Postmodern Metaphysics
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 176.
43. Calvin O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1997), 1.
44. Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Constructing the Self (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008), 35.
45. Marya Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996),
94. See also Marya Schechtman, “The Narrative Self,” in Gallagher, Oxford Handbook of
the Self, 394–416.
21
46. On the narrative element in contemporary visual portraiture, see Sarah Howgate and
Sandy Nairne, introduction to 21st-Century Portraits, 16.
47. John Berger, Portraits: John Berger on Artists, ed. Tom Overton (London: Verso, 2015), 442.
48. For example, Simon Frith writes, “Music constructs our sense of identity through the
experiences it offers of the body, time, and sociability, experiences which enable us to
place ourselves in imaginative cultural narratives.” Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the
Value of Popular Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 275. For Tia
DeNora, music is a “building material of self-identity,” a “resource to which people turn
in order to regulate themselves as aesthetic agents, as feeling, thinking and acting beings
in their day-to-day lives.” Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 62.
49. Sarup, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, 47.
50. On Glass’s portrait of Close, as well as György Ligeti’s musical self-portrait explored
in chapter 3, see also Joshua S. Walden, “Representation and Musical Portraiture in
the Twentieth Century,” in Joshua S. Walden (ed.), Representation in Western Music
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 127–43.
51. Ludmilla Jordanova, “Visualizing Identity,” in Giselle Walker and Elisabeth Leedham-
Green (eds.), Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 132. E. H.
Gombrich writes, “Expression is hard to analyze and harder to describe unequivocally. It is
a curious fact, moreover, that our immediate reaction results in firm convictions, but con-
victions which are rarely shared by all—witness the pages of interpretation that have been
devoted to Mona Lisa’s smile.” E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology
of Pictorial Representation (London: Phaidon, 1969), 268.
22
CH A P T E R 1
Musical and Literary Portraiture
Portrait painting is the biography of the pencil, and he who gives most of the peculiarities and
details, with most of the general character . . . is the best biographer, and the best portrait-painter.
—William Hazlitt1
T he first half of George Eliot’s 1876 novel Daniel Deronda focuses pri-
marily on the story of the beautiful, complicated young anti-heroine
Gwendolyn Harleth and her vain attempts to dig herself and her fam-
ily out of financial ruin by attracting a wealthy suitor. In her narration of
Gwendolyn’s story, Eliot describes her authorial task by analogy to portrai-
ture: “Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would
have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not
have had to represent the truth of change—only to give stability to one
beautiful moment.”2 In this statement, Eliot assumes overlaps between the
goals and techniques of portraiture in painting and in literature—princi-
pally, that the genre functions in both media to represent an individual sub-
ject’s appearance and character—but, more significantly, she also points to
an underlying difference that relates to the temporal dimension of writing.
The painted portrait represents the subject in a single moment, even if that
momentary glimpse features some elements that aim to evoke everlasting
characteristics such as heroism, beauty, or social position, and if the experi-
ence of viewing the portraiture necessarily involves an element of time. The
literary portrait, by contrast, must account for how the self varies over some
chronological period. Whether it is a work of fiction or history, its author
demonstrates the effects of the passage of time on the development of char-
acter, showing how all those moments that could be captured in individual
painted portraits unite into a coherent but also changeable self.
The novelist and literary critic A. S. Byatt, elaborating on the differ-
ence between literary and visual portraits, states that the two genres “are
23
M u s i c a l a n d L i t e r a ry P o rt r a i t u r e ( 23 )
opposites, rather than metaphors for each other,” because the painting
depicts surface appearance outside of the progress of time, while the story
records the invisible aspects of a person.3 Literary portraiture may even rely
on this invisibility: “The description in visual language of a face or body may
depend on being unseen for its force.”4 The functions of time, the unfolding
of description, and the triggering of the spectator’s imagination are central
to this distinction between the verbal and the visual in this genre, and the
musical portrait, particularly in works that emulate or show the influence of
literary portraiture, also relies on these attributes to represent its subject’s
self. Byatt concludes, “What a novelist can do, which is difficult for a painter,
is convey what is not, and cannot, be known about a human being.”5 The
composer of a musical portrait has a power similar to that Byatt attributes to
the novelist, but in a medium that minimizes language for an entirely audi-
tory form of narrative or description, or that in some cases employs text in
combination with sound to make possible diverse, hybrid meanings.
Like the musical portrait, the literary portrait—a form whose early
roots are typically traced to the Characters of the classical philosopher
Theophrastus, Aristotle’s pupil and successor at the Lyceum—does not
conform to a single standard form, length, or approach to its subject matter.6
It can be short or long; it can stand on its own as an isolated work or appear
as a passage embedded within a larger text; and it can represent a person’s
outward appearance, inner character, or psychology, or even describe a
painted portrait.7 And though many scholars accept only representations
of living or historical individuals as portraits, others find it helpful to con-
sider descriptions of fictional subjects or even character types as forms of
literary portraiture.8 Meanwhile, portraiture is also frequently invoked as
a metaphor to characterize the more widely recognized and easily defined
genre of biography.9
Literary portraiture, in forms representing general character types as well
as living or historic individuals, offered a source inspiration for composers
of musical portraits at several points in the history of the genre. For exam-
ple, the stimulus for François Couperin’s development of the pièce de carac-
tère (character piece) was the fad in 1650s France for short literary portraits,
prose documents of around 1,000 words written by and about members
of high society.10 During this decade, Couperin’s uncle Louis composed
short keyboard works, which, in a manner prefiguring the pièces de caractère
that his nephew would eventually write, served the aristocratic audiences
for these literary portraits by incorporating playfulness and “preciosity,”
and emphasizing sophistication and delicacy.11 In the nineteenth century,
Robert Schumann’s imaginary duo Florestan and Eusebius, whom the
composer described repeatedly in his portrait essays as studies in contrast-
ing characters—depicted respectively as passionately fiery and dreamily
24
tranquil—found their musical representation in individual movements of

his Carnaval, Op. 9. And in the early twentieth century, Virgil Thomson
decided to write musical portraits after becoming acquainted with the liter-
ary portraits that were an important component of the oeuvre and stylistic
development of his friend, the modernist author Gertrude Stein.12
Even as some other composers of portraits were influenced more directly
by painted rather than literary portraits, the important role of written lan-
guage in musical portraiture brings the genre into perpetual contact with
its linguistic counterpart. Because music cannot directly depict physical
likeness in the manner of images or describe appearance or character the
way language can, musical portraits require the aid of a title simply to be
recognized as such. The title will often include the word “portrait,” but it
will at least posit the name of the individual the work represents. The titles
of musical portraits often also offer additional information that will further
guide the listener’s interpretation of the piece. John Adams’s self-portrait
My Father Knew Charles Ives, for example, indicates that the composer rep-
resents himself in relation to his father, the iconic American composer who
came before him, and the New England region in which he grew up and his
father and Ives both built their homes and careers. Many musical portraits
also use language in their scores’ paratexts to further identify their subjects
and direct the listener’s interpretation; for instance, some of Thomson’s
scores containing multiple brief portraits open with descriptions of each
individual depicted in these works. Written historical documentation
can additionally become a part of the contextual framework surrounding
musical portraits, inspiring how people conceive of them as representa-
tions of individuals. For instance, the subjects of most of Carl Philipp
Emanuel Bach’s musical portraits of the 1750s, long unknown to scholars
and performers, have recently been identified, and this has inspired further
research on and interpretations of these works (not least because this con-
textual writing was necessary to disprove the persistent assumption that his
portraits, titled with the French feminine definite article La followed by the
subject’s last name, were not depictions of women: La implied the noun
pièce, not the sitter’s gender).13
This chapter examines two sets of musical portraits that illuminate the
genre’s association with literary portraiture and its complex and essential
relationship with language. The first is Thomson’s large corpus of musical
portraits, composed across nearly sixty years of his career. These works pro-
vide an example of musical portraiture modeled directly on corresponding
works of literature, rather than painting. In his portraits, Thomson explores
music’s capacity for representation in spite of its perceived abstraction by
developing a method for depicting human subjects that he hoped would
produce something analogous to Stein’s modernist literary experiments.
25
The second is Pierre Boulez’s set of pieces that are combined in his five-
part Pli selon pli: Portrait de Mallarmé (Fold according to Fold: Portrait of
Mallarmé), composed over more than thirty years, between 1957 and 1989.
In Pli selon pli Boulez incorporates, into a large-scale and varied musical con-
text, fragments from the poems of the French symbolist poet and author
Stéphane Mallarmé, whose “L’après-midi d’un faune” (The Afternoon of
a Faun, 1876) famously became the model for Claude Debussy’s path-
breaking orchestral work Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), about
which Boulez stated, “The flute of the faun brought new breath to the art of
music.”14 Through Boulez’s rendering, Mallarmé’s poems become the core
material of his own portrait, in which Boulez transforms Mallarmé’s com-
plex linguistic inventions into a representation of his identity and his ideas
about the relationship between music and literature.15
THE MUSICAL PORTRAITS OF VIRGIL THOMSON AND

THE COMPOSITION OF PRESENCE
Virgil Thomson dedicated himself to experimenting with musical portrai-

ture for many decades, composing over 140 works in the genre, for a variety
of ensembles, between 1928 and 1985. He was inspired to create portraits
by his friend and collaborator Gertrude Stein, who from 1908 onward
wrote approximately 132 literary portraits in which she attempted to depict
her subjects using language abstracted from traditional forms of narrative
and grammar. Thomson had first encountered Stein’s work in 1919, and
the two met several years later and soon developed a close personal rela-
tionship; he wrote in his autobiography that between their first encoun-
ter in 1926 and her death twenty years later, “we were forever loving being
together, whether talking and walking, writing to each other, or at work.”16
In the words of Stein’s partner Alice B. Toklas, Stein and Thomson “got on
like Harvard men.”17 Among other projects that brought them together,
Thomson worked with Stein on the operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The
Mother of Us All, wrote a musical arrangement of her play Capital Capitals
for four male voices, and composed art songs based on her literary portraits
“Susie Asado” and “Preciocilla.” In addition, Thomson wrote frequently
about Stein, including in a chapter of his autobiography titled “A Portrait
of Gertrude Stein” and an essay that served as the introduction to a 1953
collection of her poems.
Thomson recognized a similarity between the modes of representation
in Stein’s use of language and in his own music. In setting her writing in art
songs, he explains, her literary style, “with meanings jumbled and syntax
violated, but with the words themselves all the more shockingly present,”
26
inspired him to “put those texts to music with a minimum of temptation

toward the emotional conventions, spend[ing] my whole effort on the
rhythm of the language, . . . adding shape, where that seemed to be needed,
and it usually was, from music’s own devices.”18 He elaborates on the effects
of working with Stein’s texts in his autobiography:
My hope in putting Gertrude Stein to music had been to break, crack open, and solve
for all time anything still waiting to be solved, which was almost everything, about
English musical declamation. . . . I had no sooner put to music after this recipe one short
Stein text than I knew I had opened a door. I had never had any doubts about Stein’s
poetry; from then on I had none about my ability to handle it in music.19
Setting Stein’s poetry to music proved to be an early turning point for

Thomson in the development of his style.
In his musical experimentations with the depiction of personal identi-
ties in music, Thomson sought to mimic Stein’s linguistic representations of
individuals. As he would write to Stein, “the idea of it comes obviously out of
you.”20 He particularly admired what he viewed as the spontaneity of Stein’s
literary portraits, which he described as “an exercise not only in objectivity
but also in avoiding the premeditated.”21 It has been widely argued that Stein
took technical and aesthetic inspiration in her portraits from her experience
of sitting for Pablo Picasso’s iconic portrait of her, painted in 1905 and 1906
(Figure 1.1). Stein posed for Picasso in his Paris studio repeatedly during
that winter; the details of this process have proven difficult to confirm, but
it seems possible the sittings took place over a period of three months.22 She
and her brother Leo, who together collected modern paintings and inter-
acted with a large number of the cutting-edge artists in France during this
period, had met Picasso in 1905, and they became his most important spon-
sors and collectors for the following nine years.23 The idea to create this por-
trait belonged to Picasso, and he gave the completed canvas to Stein as a gift.
But Picasso took an uncharacteristically long time to finish the portrait of
Stein. In early 1906, at the end of the winter in which she sat repeatedly for
him, he grew frustrated, and, having “painted out the whole head” (in Stein’s
words), left the canvas abandoned. It was not until he returned from Spain
at the conclusion of the summer that he felt able to complete the face, and
to do so without calling Stein in for an additional sitting.24 In its final render-
ing her head took on attributes of the mask-like faces he had begun to paint
that summer, partly on the basis of the inspiration he found in the so-called
Gósol Madonna, a twelfth-century sculpture housed in a church near his
vacation spot. In this way Stein’s likeness presaged the masks that stood in
for the heads of the bathers in Picasso’s monumental and path-breaking paint-
ing “Les demoiselles d’Avignon,” completed the following year.25 The work
27
Figure 1.1: Pablo Picasso, “Gertrude Stein,” 1905–1906, oil on canvas, 39-3/8 x 32 inches.
© 2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image copyright © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.
this proved a critical breakthrough for Picasso in his stylistic development

and the transition to his Cubist phase.26
Picasso acknowledged the portrait’s importance in his career, and Stein
adored the work; she later wrote to Picasso, in 1938, “I was and I still am
satisfied with my portrait, for me, it is I, and it is the only reproduction of me
which is always I, for me.”27 The painting in fact made Stein famous as an icon
of the avant-garde before she had made an international name for herself as
a modernist writer.28 And it appears to have influenced the development of
Stein’s modernist technique of writing portraits, in which she used words
in a manner that resembles how the individual colors and shapes a modern
artist assembles on an abstract canvas may derive meaning from their spatial
relations to one another rather than from any specific signification.29
In her literary portraits, Stein aimed to portray her sitters as they existed
in a single moment, the way they would be represented in painted por-
traiture, rather than in the context of any sort of story that involves action
and change and plays out over time. In this way her portraits come closer
28
to resembling how George Eliot, in the passage from Daniel Deronda dis-
cussed earlier, describes visual, rather than literary, works in the genre.
Stein explains her rejection of narrative and emotion in her portraits in the
1935 essay “Portraits and Repetition,” saying that these are to be avoided
because of their association with memory. These forms of description, for
Stein, portray only a person’s resemblance, not who he is; they render him
into a type rather than an individual self, by inciting the reader to recall
other encounters with similar descriptions of character and thus, through
memory, to draw connections between different people.30 Instead, she
wished to use portraiture to represent what she sometimes dubbed the
subject’s “existence,” and elsewhere characterized as the person’s unique
inner “movement.”31 She aimed to create depictions of her subjects’ interior
selves as she apprehended them, using the most direct, momentary, and
unmediated literary means she could devise.32
Stein’s notion of the self was based in large part on the ideas of psychol-
ogist William James, whose theoretical writings she had read as a student
at Radcliffe College.33 According to James’s The Principles of Psychology,
there are two ways to contemplate other people: through “acquaintance,”
which constitutes a sort of immediate awareness, and through “knowl-
edge about,” which involves the ability to recognize the continuity that
links a succession of moments of awareness into a single entity. For James,
the notion of identity requires “knowledge about,” because it demands
the understanding, through processes of memory and comparison, that
one is the same person from any one moment to the next.34 Stein con-
curred with James’s position in her early essays, but as she developed her
philosophy and prose style, she grew to feel that portraiture required not
the kind of description that will contribute to knowledge about a per-
son, but instead an attempt at representing her unmediated perception
of a subject.35 This way she could approach her goal of making the read-
er’s immediate acquaintance with her subject’s existence, as though in a
moment that stands outside the forward progress of time and therefore
does not permit comparison and memory.
In some of the portraits that Stein wrote in what has been called
the second phase of her work in the genre, including “Susie Asado” and
“Preciosilla,” she felt that she accomplished an effect in language that was
akin to music, producing “an extraordinary melody of words” that was able
to represent the corresponding “internal melody of existence.”36 Though
she subsequently grew to feel that the effect of this style came too perilously
close to beauty, an effect she wished to avoid, and decided to find a more
sober approach to writing, she allowed that this accomplishment served as
an important stage in the development of her portraiture, and indeed these
were two portraits that Thomson would later set to melody.
29
In “Portraits and Repetition,” Stein explains why portraiture was so

inspirational and formative a genre for her and elaborates on her personal
notion of what constitutes the individual self, discussing why she chose to
write her portraits in such abstract language:
I had to find out what it was inside any one, and by any one I mean every one I had to
find out inside every one what was in them that was intrinsically exciting and I had to
find out not by what they said not by what they did not by how much or how little they
resembled any other one but I had to find it out by the intensity of movement that there
was inside in any of them.37
Stein described both the quality of existence that she aimed to portray
in her works and the portraitist’s method of reproducing it by analogy to
the experience of simultaneously “listening and talking”:38 “by listening
and talking I conceived at every moment the existence of some one, and
I put down each moment that I had the existence of that one inside in me
until I had completely emptied myself of this that I had had as a portrait
of that one.”39 It was thus a thorough contemplation of a subject that took
place through a process akin to a deep layering of dialogue within oneself
that brought Stein in touch with the individual, interior existence of her
acquaintances that she wished to represent in her portraits.40
A principal characteristic of many of Stein’s portraits is the restatement
of words and phrases through a technique that she called “insistence,” and
was careful to distinguish from repetition.41 Through insistence, locutions
can take on different emphases each time they recur, despite their simi-
larity, and in this way come to resemble a person’s life, throughout which
attributes of experience frequently reappear but their meanings shift.42
Explaining the process, she writes: “Each sentence is just the difference in
emphasis that inevitably exists in the successive moment of my containing
within me the existence of that other one achieved by talking and listen-
ing inside in me and inside in that one.”43 She likened this technique to the
content of a reel of film, in which the sequence of multiple frames, each of
which is much like the one that preceded it but has its own unique differ-
ences in form and emphasis, merge together when projected, to create a sin-
gle image that contains an overarching sense of movement, or existence.44
During Thomson’s early efforts at writing musical portraits, he devel-
oped a method of composition that was inspired by Stein’s process of creat-
ing her literary portraits, as well as by the tradition in visual portraiture of
creating representations in their sitters’ presence: he sat before his subjects
and composed spontaneously, writing notes on the page as he felt inspired
to by their proximity.45 Thomson explained, “It was in search of . . . immedi-
acy that I began making musical portraits as a painter works, in the model’s
30
presence. This led me toward seeking ways to keep my work spontaneous,

the music flowing out of me unhindered by thoughts, at least by verbaliz-
ings.”46 In doing so, he believed, he was best able to represent the abstract
essence at the core of the sitter’s identity, bypassing physical appearance. As
he wrote, “I do not try evoking visual art; in all my portraits only the sitter’s
presence is portrayed, not his appearance or his profession.”47 Thomson
also drew inspiration from the study of prior composers who took liberties
with traditional musical forms; as he put it in his autobiography, his dis-
covery of their rule-breaking gave him a sense of freedom that “meant that
I could write almost automatically, cultivate the discipline of spontaneity,
let it flow.”48
In describing the genre of musical portraiture, Thomson suggested that
all composition is inherently representational, but that musical portraits are
unusual in that they aim to render a singular, identifiable image: “Very little
has ever been written down that the author did not think was about some-
thing. Some thing or some body. So every musical portrait is tied to an indi-
vidual, and the composer of it tends to believe it a true likeness.”49 Thomson
understood representation in the composition of music to involve creat-
ing metaphoric connections between music and sights, sounds, perfumes,
language, and emotion.50 The musical portrait, therefore, related to its sub-
ject, the sitter named in the title, through a variety of affective and sensory
metaphors linking the music’s compositional structures and those abstract
aspects of a sitter’s presence—Thomson’s analogue to Stein’s existence—
that he believed could be perceived most effectively through a momentary,
spontaneous meeting.
The simplicity and brevity of Thomson’s portraits is an outcome of the
aesthetic goal of rendering the subject present before the listener as he once
sat before the composer, making him available to the senses in a way that
allows for an immediate encounter that does not require the interpretation
of meaning (though it does not preclude such a reading, either, as the fol-
lowing analyses show).51 In this way Thomson attempts in his portraits to
capture the sense of epiphany he feels in a person’s presence, and to repro-
duce this intense but ephemeral event for his portraits’ players and listeners.
In other words, he hopes, in these works, to stage for the listener a similar
confrontation with the sitter in the moment of the performance.52
In the late 1920s, Stein and Thomson exchanged portraits of one another
through the mail. Thomson produced his first, in 1928; after its premiere
performance in Paris (the reviewer for the New Yorker called it a “ ‘bust’ of
Gertrude Stein”), he reported back to her, “Your portrait pleases. Is said to
resemble.”53 Thomson received Stein’s rendering of him the following year.
Stein explained that it exhibited a “profundity” that conveyed her belief in
him, and Thomson wrote back that it was “very beautiful and serious and
Another random document with
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A woman pregnant, while passing through her kitchen, has taken a
disgusting piece of bacon boiling in a soap-kettle, out of the vessel,
eating it afterward, with the greatest relish.
These are, it is true, extreme cases; but there are many which are
far from being of a character so trifling as to warrant the conclusion
that no such thing as longing for strange and disgusting articles
during pregnancy exists. Indeed, the truth of the doctrine is so well
understood among all classes as not to need any further proof.
Should these longings in pregnancy be gratified, and if so, to what
extent? This is a question of great practical importance, and one
which should be deeply pondered upon.
It is notorious, in the first place, that longing seldom, if ever,
occurs in a woman of good health and a well-constituted mind. If we
observe correctly, we shall find that it occurs seldom, if ever, in any
other than delicate and nervously irritable women.
It occurs, in the second place, particularly among those who are
indolent in their habits, having little or nothing to do, and without
any wholesome object of thought or occupation with which to “kill
time.”
It occurs, in the third place, to those who have been in the habit of
being pampered and indulged on every occasion. A woman who is
continually in the habit of saying to her indulgent husband that she
wants this, that, and the other thing, and if the good husband sees fit
to gratify his interesting spouse in every thing which a morbid fancy
can imagine, he will have business enough to kill his time, and a
feeble, sickly wife in the bargain.
If this longing occurs only to the feeble and delicate, to the
nervous, the indolent, and those who have been habitually
pampered, what, I ask, are we to do in the premises? Shall we gratify
every whim of a nervous, unhealthy person, or shall we rather advise
her to live on plain and wholesome food, at the same time directing
her to occupy herself, body and mind, as a reasonable being should?
It does not certainly require much common sense to enable one to
settle this question as it should be.
But there are those among women who honestly believe that if
their cravings are not satisfied in pregnancy, the child is very liable to
become marked with an appearance like that of the article longed for.
The fallacy of this belief will at once be apparent, when it is
considered how many cases of longing there are—cases, too, which
are never gratified, while, at the same time, but very few children are
ever found marked. The imagination can have no more effect here
than in the cases of malformation, the absence or addition of a part,
or in determining the color of a child. Hence a woman need not fear,
as I have known them to do, that if their morbid appetite is not
gratified in every particular, they are in danger of bringing forth a
marked child. But more of this in another place.
Some physicians are of the opinion, it is true, that it is best to
gratify longings to a certain extent. But suppose they are not
gratified: the worst that can come is sickness at the stomach, nausea,
and possibly vomiting—symptoms which, all of them, vanish soon
enough, ordinarily, if the diet is made what it should be, in
connection with good habits generally.
The truth is, that the mind itself is more disordered than the
stomach in these cases. Hence an important consideration in the
cure of it is, to provide the individual with some useful and
wholesome employment, which at the same time engages both the
mind and body healthfully. At the same time the food should be of
such a character as is best suited to a delicate state of the system,
remembering always, that there is no period of life in which more
care is necessary, in this respect, than in pregnancy.
But if, on the other hand, the preternatural craving is indulged,
and the mind is left to prey upon itself, as it will without any suitable
employment, the sensation will grow more and more persistent, and
the fancy will be continually excited to produce new whims for its
gratification, which, if answered, must necessarily be attended with
detriment to both mother and child.
THE IMAGINATION.
Women are sometimes troubled about certain matters in
pregnancy, which, if they had a proper knowledge on the subject,
would cause them no mental disquietude whatever. Thus it is
believed that the marks which sometimes appear on children, and
continue through life, are to be attributed entirely to the workings of
the mother’s imagination during this period, and that even the color
of the offspring may be determined by this circumstance alone.
The origin of this belief is, indeed, coeval with the history of the
race. But antiquity alone is not a sufficient argument for any
doctrine, no matter how old or how venerable a theory, if we know it
to be disproved by the actual facts. If we were to take the antiquity of
a doctrine or belief as the rule, and not have regard to reason and
experience there would be no end to error, and no improvement.
In the earliest period of medicine this delusion prevailed; and
Hippocrates, honest and learned as he was, yet believed it, and aided
in its propagation. Through his influence kings and nobles acted
upon the principle, which, in some cases, at least, was made the cloak
of wickedness and deception. Thus Hippocrates saved a noblewoman
—and honestly, without doubt, though ignorantly—from the severity
of the law, when she had given birth to a colored child, herself and
husband both being white. He alleged that the darkness of its color
was the effect of a picture of an Ethiopian that hung upon the wall in
her chamber, and which was often the object of her contemplation.
Galen was also of the opinion that a picture was sufficient, if
contemplated with interest, to give a corresponding appearance to
the fetus in utero; and Soranus declares that the tyrant Dionysius,
who was deformed and ill-favored himself, employed the aid of
beautiful pictures, with the hope that his wife might have comely
issue. Cælius Rhodius also mentions that Fabius Quintillian saved a
woman from suspicion, after she had brought forth a negro child, by
asserting that the circumstance arose from the fact of her taking
great pleasure in viewing the picture of a black man in her
apartment. From the prevalence of this belief it was, likewise, that
Heliodorus formed the first, and, as is said, one of the most beautiful
novels in the world, called the “Loves of Theagenes and Carachlea,”
the latter having been born white from black parents, but the queen,
her mother, had often viewed, during her pregnancy, the picture of
Andromeda, who was painted with a white face; and the sages
attributed the white color of the child to the force of the mother’s
imagination.
This superstition—for it does not deserve a better name—has
probably always been believed in the world, and for a long time will
continue to be by many, but not to that extent which it anciently was.
We cannot believe, if cases like these, occurring in the time of
Hippocrates and Quintillian, were to occur in our own day, and were
now to be presented for judicial decision, that any judge or jury could
be found so ignorant as to decide that the color of a child can be
changed by force of the mother’s imagination alone; but things
scarcely less ridiculous and absurd are believed by almost every
member of society who has any belief whatever on the subject. Thus
it is now a matter of common belief, that the imagination of the
mother may impose upon the skin certain resemblances to things
upon which the fancy has been much employed, such as fruit, articles
of food and drink, animals, insects, etc., or by the destruction of
certain parts of the body, such as the head, arms or legs, lips, etc., or
by the production of an additional part, as the fingers, toes, head, etc.
In order to settle this question satisfactorily, and beyond the
possibility of mistake or doubt, it is well for us to look at the facts of
nature as they exist everywhere about us, or, in other words, to the
anatomy and physiology of the human body as it really is.
In regard to the anatomical connection between the mother and
fetus, it is to be observed that it is altogether indirect, and is carried
on only through the medium of the circulation. There is no nervous
connection between mother and child; that is, no nervous filament,
however small, has ever been detected passing from one to the other.
“From this wise and all-important arrangement,” observes Dr.
Dewees, “it follows that the fetus is not subject to the various and
fluctuating condition of the sanguiferous, or to the never-ending
changes of the nervous system of the mother; since no direct
communication exists between her blood-vessels or nerves and those
of the fetus, to impose upon it any alteration that may take place in
her system, or to render the child liable, through the medium of
nervous connection, to her affections.” If the indirect connection that
exists between the mother and child were better understood, and
more justly appreciated, we should, doubtless, hear much less of the
influence of the imagination of the mother upon the body of her
infant, and thus one of the greatest of the attendant evils of
pregnancy would be removed.
It is not to be denied that cases do occur in which there seems to
be a hereditary predisposition to the perpetuation of supernumerary
parts, marks, etc., in certain families; such as an additional thumb,
finger, toe, or double teeth, in place of single; but such cases are not
the result of any mental emotion, but are merely the effect of
hereditary predisposition, the truth of which is admitted on all
hands, and is a very different thing from that which we are now
considering.
It has not been attempted, on the part of any, to determine at what
precise period during pregnancy the imagination begins or ceases to
have an influence upon the body of the child, but, according to the
accounts given, every period is liable to the accidents or anomalies in
question. The imagination, it is supposed, has the power, not only of
causing the creation of a new part, but also of destroying one or more
of the members of the body. Now, suppose a leg, an arm, or a toe, to
be cast off, must it not be expelled from the womb? And who has ever
detected such an occurrence? Besides, too, is it to be supposed that
nature would arrest the flow of blood after the part has been
separated from the body of the fetus? There can be no doubt as to
what is the truth in this matter.
Dr. Dewees mentions the case of a child that was born with but the
stump of an arm, which, at the time of birth, was perfectly healed, or,
rather, presented no evidence of ever having had a wound upon it at
all. The mother declared that she had been frightened at the sixth
month of pregnancy by a beggar. But what became of the lopped-off
arm? and what arrested the bleeding? The child was born healthy
and vigorous, and neither scar, wound, or blood could be discovered.
In this case, as in all others of this kind, the “freak of nature”
commenced at the first of gestation, the imagination of the mother
having nothing to do with it.
The most learned and experienced medical men are all agreed on
this subject. Dr. William Hunter, it is said, used to declare in his
lectures, that he experimented in a lying-in-hospital upon two
thousand cases of labor, to ascertain this point. His method was as
follows: As soon as a woman was delivered, he inquired of her
whether she had been disappointed in any object of her longing, and
what that object was? If her answer were Yes, whether she had been
surprised by any circumstance that had given her an unusual shock,
and of what that consisted? Whether she had been alarmed by any
object of an unsightly kind, and what was that object? Then, after
making a note of each of the declarations of the woman, either in the
affirmative or negative, he carefully examined the child; and he
assured his class that he never, in a single instance of the two
thousand, met with a coincidence. He met with blemishes when no
cause was acknowledged, and found none when it had been insisted
on.
Dr. Hunter, however, confessed that he met with one case in his
private practice that puzzled him; and he told his pupils he would
merely relate the facts, and leave them to draw their own
conclusions. A lady had been married several years without proving
pregnant, but at last she had the satisfaction to announce to her
husband that she was in that situation. The joy of the husband was
excessive, nay, unbounded, and he immediately set about to qualify
himself for the all-important duty of educating his long wished-for
offspring. He read much, and had studied Martimus Scribelerus with
great patience and supposed advantage, and had become a complete
convert to the supposed influence of the imagination upon the fetus
in utero. He accordingly acted upon this principle. He guarded his
wife, as far as in him lay, against any contingency that might affect
the child she carried. He therefore gratified all her longings most
scrupulously; he never permitted her to exercise but in a close
carriage, and carefully removed from her view all unsightly objects.
The term of gestation was at length completed, and the lady was
safely delivered, by the skill of Dr. Hunter, of a living and healthy
child; it had, however, one imperfection—it was a confirmed mulatto.
On this discovery being made, the father was at first inexorable, and
was only appeased by his dutiful and sympathizing wife calling to his
recollection the huge, ugly negro that stood near the carriage door
the last time she took an airing, and at whom she was severely
frightened!
Dr. Dewees, whose experience in matters connected with the birth
of children was probably as great as that of any other individual, tells
us that he commenced practice with the popular belief concerning
the effect of the mother’s imagination upon the physical condition of
the child. But he had watched these things attentively for many
years, and for the want of facts to substantiate the truth of the
common belief, he was obliged to abandon it. He came to the
conclusion that the imagination of the mother has no influence
whatever upon the form or complexion of the fetus.
Fortunately, these absurd notions have long since been rejected by
all sensible, observant, and intelligent physicians; and the fact that
multitudes of those who are, or are to become mothers, do yet
believe them, is the only reason for attempting a refutation of them.
If we can but convince mothers of the fallacy of the belief we have
been combating, we shall save them a great amount of anxiety and
alarm. With many, who are not by any means to be classed among
the “weak, ignorant, and superstitious” of females, every sudden or
unexpected occurrence that happens to strike them with fear, or
produces any strong mental emotion or excitement, is apt to impress
them with alarming apprehensions as to the effects it may have on
the development and conformation of the child in the womb. These
ridiculous illusions, moreover, are often much increased by the
strange stories respecting marks and malformations, occasioned, as
is asserted, by the imagination of the mother; and these narratives
always find their way among the credulous in society; for ignorant
nurses, and gossiping idlers among the old women, are everywhere
to be found, and all of them are well stocked with extraordinary
examples of the pretended influence of which we are speaking. If a
child is born with any spot or blemish upon its body, or with any
malformation whatever, forthwith the mother is questioned as to the
whole circumstances of the matter. If, at any time during pregnancy,
any thing has attracted her attention, or strongly impressed the
mind, which bears any resemblance or similitude to the mark, spot,
blemish, or malformation of the child, it is at once put down as the
certain cause of the defect. In this way these absurd apprehensions
are often made to take so deep a hold upon the mind of pregnant
females, that no expostulation or ridicule of the physician, or other
friend, can entirely subdue them; and in some instances these
apprehensions become so fixed as to cause a great degree of anxiety
and distress of mind, and not unfrequently cause a great amount of
physical suffering and ill health.
EFFECTS OF FRIGHT.
I have already remarked that the mind of the pregnant woman
should be kept as calm, composed, and contented as possible during
the pregnant state. In no respect is this advice more appropriate than
in regard to the strong impressions of fear and every sudden emotion
of an unpleasant kind.
Some of the most remarkable cases illustrative of the effects of
fright in pregnancy, are given by Baron Percy, an eminent French
surgeon, as having occurred at the siege of Landau, in 1793. It is
stated that, in addition to a violent cannonading, which kept the
women for some time in a constant state of alarm, the arsenal blew
up with a terrific explosion, which few could listen to with unshaken
nerves. Out of ninety-two children born in that district within a few
months afterward, sixteen died at the instant of birth; thirty-three
languished for from eight to ten months, and then died; eight
became idiotic and died before the age of five years; and two came
into the world with numerous fractures of the bones of the limbs,
caused by the cannonading and explosion! “Here, then,” as Dr.
Combe observes, “is a total of fifty-nine children out of ninety-two, or
within a trifle of two out of every three, actually killed through the
medium of the mother’s alarm, and its natural consequences upon
her own organization.” Cases are recorded, in which the mother,
being abruptly informed of the death of her husband, has suffered an
immediate miscarriage in consequence. In some cases the child has
survived, but has afterward, throughout life, been subject to great
nervousness and liability to fear. James I., King of England, is said
always to have had a constitutional aversion to a drawn sword and to
any kind of danger, which was attributed to the constant anxiety and
apprehension which his mother suffered during the period of
gestation.
It will appear very plain to any one who is at all acquainted with
this subject, that an impression which is powerful enough to cause
such effects upon the child as the cases given by Baron Percy would
indicate, must also act with detriment upon the mother. Indeed, it is
only through the mother’s organization that it is possible for the
impression to be communicated to the child; and although the
mother’s life is not often actually destroyed under such
circumstances, her nervous system may yet receive a shock which is
sufficient to cause her life-long misery and ill health.
The practical lessons to be drawn from such facts are many, and,
for the most part, easy to comprehend. They teach us how important
it is that a woman who is pregnant should, by all that is in her power,
shun scenes of fear and danger. Husbands, and all who are in any
way connected with her, should spare no pains in rendering this
important and trying period of her life as happy and tranquil as the
circumstances will allow. True, she should not make a baby of
herself, or be babied by others; but, considering the liability to
danger while in this condition, she should be careful of herself, in all
respects, while passing through the period, and those about her
should use all due caution in regard to it.
LETTER XX.
DRUG-TREATMENT IN PREGNANCY.
Effects of Blisters—Emetics—Purgative Medicines—Bleeding.
I could hope that not one of the large number of persons whom I
address, would ever be subjected to any of the processes of drug-
treatment in so critical a period as pregnancy. The water-treatment I
regard as being so much safer, as well as more effectual, for the
eradication of any and all the diseases to which you may be subject at
this time, as well as others, that I should be very glad if I could say
something to inspire you with a greater degree of confidence in the
new method. But perhaps I am wrong; some of you, at least, have the
fullest confidence in the sanative powers of water, and have no need
of any thing more being said on that point. It is proper, however, that
I say something here respecting the effects of certain drugs and drug-
appliances, in this period.
BLISTERS.
It is the testimony of honest and capable practitioners, that these
are far more liable to do harm in pregnancy than at other times.
Dr. Dewees asserts that he had known two cases of abortion
caused by the use of blisters, although he acknowledged they had, in
some cases, been advantageously resorted to as a means of
preventing that evil. But how, it may be asked, are physicians to
know when to use them, and when not? This no man can tell. Nor
have we any need of blistering at this or any time, because there are
better means, which are entirely safe.
The same able author whom I just quoted, tells us that blisters are
much more likely to produce strangury during pregnancy than in
other cases; and that when this occurs, it is almost sure to be
followed by the most distressing and untoward symptoms. Entire
retention of urine sometimes follows the use of cantharides in these
circumstances, which can only be relieved by the use of the catheter.
There is also, at such times, not unfrequently so distressing an
inclination and violence of effort to void urine, as to be surpassed
only by the agony of labor itself. Bloody urine has sometimes
followed the use of a blister; and a discharge of mucous from the
internal surface of the bladder has continued, as a consequence, for a
long time after. “It is true,” observes a distinguished author, “these
are extreme cases; but they nevertheless occur, and should,
therefore, suggest a great deal of caution in their employment,
especially in the more advanced periods of gestation.”
EMETICS.
These are no more necessary in pregnancy than blisters. Severe
vomiting is sometimes productive of abortion; and who is wise
enough to foretell what may be the effect of a dose of tartar emetic
given to a woman when in this highly impressible state? A single
emetic has caused severe and permanent pain, which has been
removed only after parturition has taken place.
PURGATIVE MEDICINES.
That pregnant women do not bear purging so well as at other
times, is a matter of common observation among medical men.
There is in such practice a great liability of causing abortion,
especially if it be carried too far. It is not difficult to account for the
fact, when we remember how great is the sympathy which exists
between the womb and the bowels.
If you should be obliged, any of you, under such circumstances, to
be purged, I advise you to see to it that you know what medicines you
take. Those particularly which have a powerful effect upon the
bowels should be avoided; aloes, colocynth, scammony, and
gamboge, should on no account be tolerated. These have a particular
effect in exciting the lower part of the alimentary canal, causing
tenesmus or a bearing-down pain in the rectum, which, by sympathy,
is very liable to be communicated to the womb. This is shown by the
fact that dysentery often causes miscarriage.
BLOOD-LETTING.
Not many years since, it was generally supposed that a woman
could not pass through the period of pregnancy safely without being
bled; and although a change has been wrought in the public mind in
regard to this practice, there are yet many who labor under
erroneous impressions in regard to this subject. There are those who
regard it as indispensable to resort to this measure, notwithstanding
there may be no particular symptom that, under other
circumstances, would be considered necessary to warrant a resort to
the measure.
It must be admitted, however, that pregnancy is attended with a
degree of fullness, and a tendency to plethora, which does not obtain
in other states of the system. There is, indeed, always, during
pregnancy, a greater liability to febrile and inflammatory diseases
than is ordinarily experienced. But all this does not prove that blood-
letting should be practiced in all, or in any considerable number of
cases. Besides, also, it is doubted by many honest and able
practitioners of the medical art, as to whether bleeding is ever, under
any circumstances, necessary. There are others, too, who believe in
the comparative necessity of blood-letting under certain conditions
of the system, but who, at the same time, hold that there are better,
safer, and more efficacious means of bringing about the required
object. At all events, physicians very seldom, at the present day,
resort to blood-letting during pregnancy, either in this country or the
old; and in those rare cases in which this measure is resorted to, it is
in answer only to indications of an imperative and decided nature.
Nor is the practice of blood-letting a comparatively harmless one,
as many suppose it to be. “Why,” it is said, “if it is not absolutely
necessary, it can yet do me no harm.” This is a poor recommendation
of a remedy. If a remedy is not capable of doing harm under some
circumstances, it would hardly be possible for it to do good at any
time. The testimony of the strongest advocates for the practice is,
that blood-letting has frequently been known to do serious, and
sometimes irreparable mischief, when practiced during the period
of which we are speaking.
Dr. Eberle gives the following good advice on this subject: “A very
severe and troublesome pain is often experienced in the right
hypochondrium during the latter period of pregnancy; and this
suffering is, almost always, sought to be mitigated or removed by
blood-letting. When decided evidences of plethora accompany this
painful affection, bleeding will occasionally procure considerable
relief; but in the majority of instances, no mitigation whatever is
obtained from this measure. The relief which is sometimes procured
by bleeding is always of short duration, the pain usually returning in
the course of two or three days; and if the bleeding is thus frequently
repeated, as is sometimes done, much mischief is apt to be produced
by the general debility and languor which it tends to occasion. When
the symptoms of vascular turgescence throughout the system are
conspicuous in connection with this pain in the side, it will certainly
be proper to diminish the mass of the circulating fluid by
venesection; but when no indications of this kind are present, blood
ought not to be abstracted, merely on account of this affection, for it
will most assuredly fail of procuring the desired relief, and may,
when not particularly called for, operate unfavorably on the general
health of the patient. Moderation in diet, together with a proper
attention to the state of the bowels, and the use of gentle exercise by
walking, will, in general, do much more toward the removal of this
source of uneasiness and suffering, than will result from blood-
letting, when this evacuation is not specially indicated by the fullness
and firmness of the pulse, or by other manifestations of general
vascular plethora.”
But in these cases, when so careful a practitioner as Dr. Eberle
even, would think it best to resort to the lancet, it is a well-attested
fact, that fasting and prudent abstemiousness are far better, more
effectual, and more permanent in their action upon the system than
blood-letting. The hunger-cure, which I have so often for years past
recommended, is a most valuable remedy in all plethora or over-
fullness of the system, and in all kinds and degrees of pain arising
from such fullness. See, too, how reasonable it looks; for the body, as
you know, is always wasting itself, so that if we stop off the supply,
the over-fullness must by a natural process very soon become cured;
hence I say, do not be bled in pregnancy; and when you have need
FAST.
LETTER XXI.
STERILITY OR BARRENNESS.
Their Causes—The Catamenial Discharge as affecting it—Fluor Albus—Corpulency

—The Treatment appropriate in these Cases.
When a woman is not able to conceive, the defect must depend

upon a malformation, a diseased state, or a diseased action of the
generative organs.
Causes.—Organic barrenness happens in those cases where there
is some structural hindrance or defect, either natural or accidental.
The vagina may be imperforate, so as wholly to preclude the
intermission of the seminal fluid; the ovaria may be either wholly
wanting or too small; or the Fallopian tubes imperforate; or the
uterus so small as not to be capable of its proper functions. The
hymen may also be so hard and resisting as to prevent the natural
measures for conception.
In most cases of barrenness, however, the organs of generation
appear to be properly formed, but their action is imperfect or
disordered.
If the menses have not appeared, or if the discharge is scanty, and
occurs at irregular periods, the woman rarely conceives.
So also when the menstrual flux is more frequently repeated than
it is in its natural course, or when it occurs even after the proper
time, in too great profusion, and, as is generally the case, intermixed
with genuine blood, there is little prospect of conception taking
place. In such cases there often appears to be as little desire for
cohabitation as there is power of fecundity.
Pregnancy seldom happens when the catamenial discharge is
attended with great and spasmodic pain, particularly if the discharge
is small in amount, and of deteriorated quality. If, under such
circumstances, conception does take place, the next periodical flow is
very apt to cause the uterus to discharge the germ, thus bringing on
an early miscarriage.
The state of weakness and debility of the uterine system
occasioned by too frequent sexual intercourse, is a common cause of
sterility. Those unfortunate creatures who follow a life of prostitution
seldom bear children.
Bad cases of fluor albus often indicate a state of the uterus and
ovaries which does not admit of conception.
There is also to be mentioned, among the causes of barrenness,
what has been called by medical writers copulative incongruity.
“Every one,” observes Dr. Good, “must have noticed occasional
instances in which a husband and wife, apparently in sound health
and vigor of life, have no increase while together, either of whom,
nevertheless, upon the death of the other, has become the parent of a
numerous family; and both of whom, in one or two curious instances
of divorce, upon a second marriage. In various instances, indeed, the
latent cause of sterility, whatever it consists in, seems gradually to
diminish, and the pair that was years childless is at length endowed
with a progeny.”
Corpulency is also to be mentioned among the causes of
barrenness. Women who are very fat are often sterile, from the fact
that obesity is in reality a state of disease.
It is supposed by many that barrenness is almost always the fault
of the female. But this is not necessarily so; the husband, as well as
the wife, may be feeble in the procreative function; and men who
have lived a debauched or dissipated life are very apt to be so. Hence
it is that women are often blamed when they ought not to be.
Treatment.—In regard to the therapeutic management suitable to
be adopted in such cases, it is to be remarked, that if organic disease
is the cause of the difficulty, we cannot, as a general thing, expect by
any means to effect a cure. But in a large majority of cases the
difficulty is only a functional one; in many of these, therefore, a cure
may be brought about.
The sum total of the therapeutic management proper to be
adopted in such cases is, invigorating the general health. That which
will best tend to fortify and strengthen the system generally is also
best for the local weakness. Nor is a cure to be effected in a short
period of time in most cases of sterility. It may require many months,
and even years, to accomplish the object.
“Abstinence by consent for many months,” observes Dr. Good,
“has proved a more frequent remedy than any other, and especially
when the intercourse has been so incessantly repeated as to break
down the staminal strength; and hence the separation produced by a
voyage to India has often proved successful.”
Some years ago I wrote in my note-book the following paragraphs
on this subject:
“A few months since, one of my patients, a gentleman of this city,
informed me that a lady relative of his, with whom also I am
acquainted, had been married about eight years, remaining, much to
her sorrow, childless. She experienced frequent miscarriages,
accompanied with much general debility. About two years since the
subject of water-treatment came under her observation. She at once
commenced a course of bathing, with due attention to regimen, etc.
She became much improved, and, in due time, bore a healthy, well-
formed child. She attributed this most desirable result to the effects
of water in restoring her general health.
“Another lady remained without offspring for fifteen years after
marriage. Her husband, in building a new house since the
introduction of Croton water into this city, erected also convenient
bathing fixtures. The lady practiced perseveringly a course of
bathing, and became much improved in her bodily health. She, too,
was at length blessed with an offspring, and, as she believed, in
consequence of the course she had pursued in restoring her general
health.
“I have known and heard of numbers of cases in which, by a
prudent course of bathing, exercise, etc., the use of a plain and
unstimulating diet, and the observing of proper temperance in the
marital privileges, persons have borne children when most earnestly,
and by a great variety of means, that object had been sought in vain.
Yet be it ever remembered, that little is to be expected from either
water or diet without strict temperance in all things.”

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Musical Portraits: The Composition of

Identity in Contemporary and

Electronic and Experimental Music

Electronic Music School: A Contemporary Approach to

Enacting Musical Time: The Bodily Experience of New

Composing with Constraints: 100 Practical Exercises in

Renegotiating French Identity: Musical Culture and

Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre, 1890–1939

Authenticity and Belonging in the Northern Soul Scene:

Contemporary Orangeism in Canada: Identity,

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

To Judy Schelly, Mike Walden, and Danny Walden

I drew men’s faces on my copy-​books,

Introduction: Portraiture as a Musical Genre 1

I.1 Charles Demuth, “The Figure 5 in Gold,” 1928, oil on cardboard,

( x ) List of Figures

3.2 Eugène Atget, “Coiffeur, Palais Royal,” 1927, albumen silver print

1.1 Virgil Thomson, “Miss Gertrude Stein as a Young Girl,” 1928,

I am thankful to Alessandra Aquilanti, Andrea Bohlman, Christopher Doll,

“A h guarda, sorella,” sings the love-​struck Fiordiligi to her sister

( 2 ) Musical Portraits

beyond plain view, but it can additionally convince us of attributes of iden-

written in a variety of forms, from the eighteenth-​century keyboard mini-

( 4 ) Musical Portraits

of visual and musical portraiture and a discussion of modes of represen-

LIKENESS, IDENTIT Y, AND METAPHOR

Portraiture in the visual arts typically assumes the representation of phys-

Identity is thus viewed as related to but not defined by the body; as

( 6 ) Musical Portraits

music. These portraits call attention to analogies between musical and

( 8 ) Musical Portraits

Leppert writes, “Challenged to make identity visible . . . portraits must

of facial expression, according to le Brun and Hogarth, makes apparent the

( 10 ) Musical Portraits

biography, in a manner that depends in part on the metaphors of both

CONSTRUCTING THE CONTEMPORARY SELF

( 12 ) Musical Portraits

For Barthes, this performance, however superficial it might seem in its

Though Schechtman is writing primarily about the way individuals con-

( 14 ) Musical Portraits

It has become a common observation among sociologists of music and

THE CONTENTS OF THIS STUDY

Musical Portraits views works in the genre of musical portraiture composed

in which music takes center stage in the representation of an individual

( 16 ) Musical Portraits

of their compositional techniques. In the second case study, “Quadraturen

visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. Harbisson has produced

( 18 ) Musical Portraits

Laurence Dreyfus, “Christopher Peacocke’s ‘The Perception of Music,’” British Journal of

( 20 ) Musical Portraits

Musical and Literary Portraiture

( 24 ) Musical Portraits

tranquil—​found their musical representation in individual movements of

THE MUSICAL PORTRAITS OF VIRGIL THOMSON AND

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

I drew men’s faces on my copy-books,

I.1 Charles Demuth, “The Figure 5 in Gold,” 1928, oil on cardboard,

3.2 Eugène Atget, “Coiffeur, Palais Royal,” 1927, albumen silver print

1.1 Virgil Thomson, “Miss Gertrude Stein as a Young Girl,” 1928,

“A h guarda, sorella,” sings the love-struck Fiordiligi to her sister

written in a variety of forms, from the eighteenth-century keyboard mini-

tranquil—found their musical representation in individual movements of