According to Monelle, “the tradition encompasses the whole of the noted repertoire, beginning with the troubadour pastourelles and Adam de la Halle’s Jeu de Robin et Marion (thirteenth century) and leading, through the madrigal, early opera, the Arcadian movement, Romantic nature worship, to the songs of Debussy and Strauss’s Daphne” ( ibid.).ĢMusical studies have identified numerous instantiations and a variety of musical signifiers for the pastoral topic, including elements such as rhythm, harmony, instrumentation, and texture. In literature the initiation of the pastoral genre is commonly identified with the Idylls of Theocritus and Virgil’s Eclogues, while in music the case has been made that the pastoral has been present from the onset of notated music. Present in literature, art, and music of different times and places, recreated and reinterpreted for each new age, the pastoral topic has numerous signifiers and a multitude of meanings while simultaneously retaining an underlying essence which makes it identifiable despite its various guises. As Raymond Monelle has observed, “pastoralism is one of the most ancient, and longest lived, of all literary and culture genres” ( The Musical Topic 185).
Adaptable and malleable to the unique problems and societal issues of any given period, the pastoral is ubiquitous.
(Marinelli 9-10)ġ In this quote, Peter Marinelli describes the pastoral as a need to escape from the harsh reality of the world, a desire which extends beyond any one time or place in history. Pastoral’s concern with time is what, first and foremost, renders it universal, for it is one of the most deeply rooted instincts of mankind to claim that the world is too much with us and to find an escape from the overwhelming present in a sanctified past or in some indistinct and redeeming future.
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