The observations collected here were inspired by Reinhard Strohm’s recent essay, ‘Les Sauvages, Music in Utopia, and the Decline of the Courtly Pastoral’. In an in-depth analysis of Rameau’s celebrated opéra-ballet of 1736, Les Indes galantes, Strohm discusses the significant conceptual and ideological difference between art of ‘utopian’ inspiration and art of ‘pastoral’ inspiration. The former, especially in its musical manifestations (although these are limited in number) is attributed a role of virtuous collaboration in European anthropological self-criticism, often related to a growing awareness of the value of knowledge and a willingness to explore non-European cultures. Art of pastoral inspiration, on the other hand, again especially in its musical manifestations, is attributed a much less virtuous role as a symbolic assertion of the imaginary social peace of the ancien régime. In this role it is described as a kind of decadence commensurate with the precarious social stability it represents.

Within the limits of the following few pages, I wish to reopen Strohm’s proposal, and to identify within the pastoral genre a highly flexible, even paradoxical creative world, capable of absorbing contradictions without damaging its own stability, and of widening its structural mesh to contain extraneous subjects and contents – ‘others’. In highlighting the pastoral’s peculiar capacity for self-renewal (including renewal through absorption of ‘utopian’ aspirations), my exposition in no way aims to refute the ideas of my colleague and friend. Rather I aim to confirm our friendship through dialectical discussion, which I hope will be long and lively.

The numerous and varied meanings of words and ideas related to the notion of the ‘pastoral’ reveals a diversity that shows how different forms have influenced the concept during the course of its development within Western culture. This is especially so in relation to dramatic and music-dramatic works. The point can be illustrated by taking a selection of these meanings from a short time-span in the milieu of late sixteenth-century Ferrara, a milieu that counts among the most responsive to the pastoral’s ethos and pathos. Three examples will be given, in reverse chronological order.