Women’s names in a Mozart score

Abstract

The article takes its inspiration from a score by Mozart which features the names of two women, and launches us into a consideration of what relationship there can be between music and the female image and an exploration of the female image tout court. The author reviews the main female images present in Greek mythology – muses, nymphs, sirens – highlighting how these three were linked and their relationship with mental reality, as well as the link between song, which is a female prerogative, and enchantment, and more generally between the female image and the loss of reason. The author contrasts the traditional vision of the female image deriving from the myths where she is depicted as negative and imbued with a sense of “danger”, to M. Fagioli’s research into the female image which represents the possibility of rediscovering the image of one’s birth which takes on the visible reality of a human being completely different from oneself.