‘More sensual Delights’

Abstract

There is a palpable difference between Addison’s stimulating and thoughtful remarks on literature or the visual arts and his scattered, unconvincing, and dismissive comments on music. His unease about music, the chapter argues, stemmed from ignorance, disappointment, and a tendency to link musical pleasure with secret or illicit sexual pleasure. By basing his aesthetic theory on sight, Addison was able to make contact with scientific discourse, indirectly express his political ideology, and avoid extensive discussions of music, the art about which he knew least. His attempt at an English opera (Rosamond, 1707) failed, and the libretto does not suggest that Addison gave much thought to what it might be like to set or sing his words. As a young man, he wrote two St Cecilia odes, closely following the conventions established in Dryden’s ode for 1687. Printed in the Annual miscellany for 1694 is his translation of an episode from Ovid that purports to explain ‘the secret Cause’ that makes the River Salmacis weaken those who bathe in it. Something about the power of music, its emotional and sensual influence on the body and the mind, was evidently connected in his mind with secret pleasures that he did not wish to acknowledge or reveal. Same-sex love was probably among such pleasures. While there is no definitive evidence that Addison had strong homosexual feelings, or that he acted upon them, there is reason to believe that he associated such feelings with music, an association which shaped his consciousness and therefore his aesthetics.