ABSTRACT
According to Sulzer's article 'Music', the goal of the art is 'the arousal of sentiment', its means 'a succession of notes serving to do this', and its ultimate purpose 'the cultivation of the emotions through education'. The rhetorical task of the composer is therefore at least twofold: a sentiment must be aroused and then sustained. Equivalently, attention is to be aroused and sustained on a sentiment. The idea that attention should be captured at the opening of a rhetorical presentation was proposed by the Roman orators, and some of the music theorists dutifully rehearsed their advice. This chapter identifies the means for arousing the attention with the rules for ensuring a comprehensible period structure. In his outline of musical rhetoric in the 'Introduction' to the first volume of his Allgemeine Geschichte, Forkel includes an account of music-rhetorical figures.
