The Cambridge Companion to French Music

France has a long and rich music history that has had a far-reaching
impact upon music and cultures around the world. This accessible
Companion provides a comprehensive introduction to the music of
France. With chapters on a range of music genres, internationally
renowned authors survey music-making from the early Middle Ages
to the present day. The first part provides a complete chronological
history structured around key historical events. The second part
considers opera and ballet and their institutions and works, and the
third part explores traditional and popular music. In the final part,
contributors analyse five themes and topics, including the early
church and its institutions, manuscript sources, the musical
aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières and music at the court during
the ancien régime. Illustrated with photographs and music examples,
this book will be essential reading for both students and music
lovers.

s i m o n t r e z i s e is an associate professor in the School of Drama,

Film and Music at Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on
the music of Debussy and France in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, the history and practice of recording, aspects of
performance practice and film music. His publications include
Debussy: La mer (Cambridge, 1995) and The Cambridge Companion
to Debussy (as editor, Cambridge, 2003).
The Cambridge Companion to

FRENCH
MUSIC
............................

EDITED BY

Simon Trezise
Trinity College Dublin
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom

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© Cambridge University Press 2015
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First published 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
The Cambridge companion to French music / edited by Simon Trezise.
pages cm. – (Cambridge companions to music)
ISBN 978-0-521-70176-1 (paperback)
1. Music – France – History and criticism. I. Trezise, Simon, editor of compilation.
ML270.C36 2014
780.944–dc23
2014013700
ISBN 978-0-521-87794-7 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-70176-1 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
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and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
In memoriam Debbie Metrustry
6 April 1961–11 February 2010
 Contents

List of figures [page ix]

List of tables [xi]
List of music examples [xii]
Notes on contributors [xiii]
Preface [xvii]
Simon Trezise

Part I  Chronological history of French music

from the early Middle Ages to the present [1]
1 From abbey to cathedral and court: music under
the Merovingian, Carolingian and Capetian kings
in France until Louis IX [3]
Alice V. Clark
2 Cathedral and court: music under the late Capetian
and Valois kings, to Louis XI [21]
Lawrence Earp
3 The Renaissance [49]
Fabrice Fitch
4 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715 [69]
Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart
5 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789 [88]
Debra Nagy
6 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848 [111]
Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise
7 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy [133]
Simon Trezise
8 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945 [159]
Andy Fry
9 Cultural and generational querelles in the musical domain:
music from the Second World War [180]
Jonathan Goldman

Part II  Opera [199]

10 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck [201]
Jacqueline Waeber
[vii]
viii Contents

11 Opera and ballet after the Revolution [221]

Steven Huebner

Part III  Other musics [243]

12 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study [245]
Luc Charles-Dominique
13 Popular music [271]
David Looseley

Part IV  Themes and topics [291]

14 Manuscript sources and calligraphy [293]
John Haines
15 Church and state in the early medieval period [313]
Andrew Tomasello
16 Music and the court of the ancien régime [330]
Jeanice Brooks
17 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières [346]
Georgia Cowart
18 Paris and the regions from the Revolution to the First
World War [362]
Katharine Ellis

Select bibliography [379]

Index [391]
 Figures

The editor and publishers acknowledge the following sources of copyright

material and are grateful for the permissions granted. While every effort has
been made, it has not always been possible to identify the sources of all
material used, or to trace all copyright holders. If any omissions are brought
to our notice, we will be happy to include the appropriate acknowledgements
on reprinting.

12.1 Jeanty Benquet (1870–1957), boha player, in Bazas

(Gironde, Gascony), photographed in 1937 [page 248]
12.2 Pierre Aussenac (1878–1945), bodega player [249]
12.3 Bombardes constructed by Jean-Pierre Jacob
(1865–1919), a professional turner from Lorient
(Morbihan, Brittany) [250]
12.4 Marc Culouscou de Gèdre (High Pyrenees) plays the clarin.
Photographic document given by Marcel Gastellu-
Etchegorry [251]
12.5 Group of tambourinaires (galoubet-tambourin players)
in Provence [252]
12.6 Rondo suite from Gascony, constructed and written
by the violinist Joseph Roméo (1903–89). Author’s private
collection [261]
14.1 Early neumes: podatus, clivis, S-shape torculus, half-circle
torculus, clivis-pressus [295]
14.2 Square notes: Breton climacus, two pedes from Chartres [296]
14.3 Square ligatures: pes, climacus [297]
14.4 Pricking and ruling pattern in a Carthusian gradual.
Grenoble, Bibliothèque Municipale, 84 (catalogue 395),
fol. 98r [298]
14.5 Dominican master book from c. 1260. London, British
Library, Additional 23935, fol. 294v [299]
14.6 Gautier de Coinci sight-reading music for the vielle.
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 10747, fol. 3r [302]
14.7 Scribe of trouvère songs writing on a parchment roll.
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, f. fr. 846, fol. 94r [303]
14.8 Machaut reading a parchment roll. Paris, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, f. fr. 1586, fol. 26r [304]
[ix]
x List of figures

14.9 Two versions of the porrectus, and the Arabic

letter kaaf [307]
14.10 Two versions of the virga and three of the pes [308]
14.11 Tironian notes and neumes in wax [308]
14.12 Neumes in wax [309]
 Tables

2.1 Text distribution in Du Fay’s Ave regina celorum (III),

first section [page 44]
14.1 Sources of Notre-Dame polyphony: Anonymous IV’s
description and corresponding contents in F [301]
14.2 Comparison of the contents of Machaut
manuscripts C and A [304]

[xi]
 Music examples

1.1 Fulbert of Chartres, Stirps Jesse, responsory for the Nativity

of the Virgin, respond only [page 10]
1.2 Gace Brulé, ‘Desconfortez’ [14]
2.1a Alleluia Nativitas, organum purum (beginning)
by Leonin(?) [22]
2.1b Alleluia Nativitas, discant on ‘Ex semine’ (beginning)
by Leonin(?) [22]
2.1c Alleluia Nativitas, discant on ‘Ex semine’ (beginning)
by Perotin(?) [23]
2.2 Perotin(?) and Philip the Chancellor(?), motet Ex semine
Abrahe/Ex semine [24]
2.3 Periodic structure in Philippe de Vitry(?), motet Garrit
gallus/In nova fert/[Tenor] [29]
2.4 Guillaume de Machaut, ballade Dame de qui toute ma
joie vient, beginning [32]
2.5a Guillaume Du Fay, ballade Se la face ay pale, last phrase [42]
2.5b Guillaume Du Fay, Missa Se la face ay pale,
Gloria, last phrase [43]
2.6 Guillaume Du Fay, Marian antiphon Ave regina celorum (III),
end of first section [44]
4.1 Authors’ transcription of a Guédron récit from the
Ballet de la délivrance de Renaud [76]
6.1 Giuseppe Maria Cambini, Symphonie concertante in D,
‘La patriote’, finale, bars 239–43 [124]
7.1 Fauré, Violin Sonata No. 1, first movement, bars 22–33,
harmonic reduction [145]
7.2 Fauré, Nocturne No. 6 in D♭, Op. 63, bars 1–3 [149]
7.3 (a) Fauré, Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’, Op. 58 No. 5, ‘C’est
l’exstase’, bars 2–7 (b) Debussy, Ariettes oubliées, ‘C’est
l’extase’, bars 3–9 [156]
12.1 Grace notes on the accented notes of a melody [257]
12.2 In this sung branle from the Pyrenees, the range
of the melody is just a third [262]
12.3 Two rondos taken from the repertoire of Léa Saint-Pé
(1904–90), region of Lombez (Gers, Gascony) [263]

[xii]
 Contributors

Peter Bennett is Associate Professor of Musicology at Case Western Reserve

University and Head of Harpsichord at the Cleveland Institute of Music. His
research and performance interests cover the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries,
with a particular focus on the intersection of music, politics and wider intellectual
history at the court of Louis XIII. His recent publications include Sacred
Repertories in Paris under Louis XIII (2009) and Antoine Boesset: Complete
Sacred Music (2010).
Jeanice Brooks is a professor of music at the University of Southampton. She works on
French music and culture in the Renaissance and gender studies. Her research on
women and song has led to new work on domestic music performance in Britain. She
is author of Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France (2000) and The Musical
Work of Nadia Boulanger: Performing Past and Future between the Wars (2013).
Luc Charles-Dominique is a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of
Nice–Sophia Antipolis. He is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He
has written extensively on traditional music. His books include Les ménétriers
français sous l’ancien régime (1994) and Musiques savantes, musiques populaires:
les symboliques du sonore en France, 1200–1750 (2006).
Alice V. Clark is Professor of Music History at Loyola University New Orleans,
where she teaches a wide range of courses for music majors and other students.
Her scholarship focuses on the fourteenth-century motet; her recent publications
include ‘The motets read and heard’, in Deborah McGrady and Jennifer Bain
(eds), A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut: An Interdisciplinary Approach to
the Master (2012), ‘Prope est ruina: the transformation of a medieval tenor’, in
Ann Buckley and Cynthia J. Cyrus (eds), Music, Dance, and Society: Medieval and
Renaissance Studies in Memory of Ingrid G. Brainard (2011) and ‘The fourteenth-
century motet’, in the forthcoming Cambridge History of Medieval Music, edited
by Mark Everist.
Georgia Cowart is Professor of Musicology at Case Western Reserve University. Her
published work includes The Origins of Modern Musical Criticism: French and
Italian Music, 1600–1750 (1981), French Musical Thought, 1600–1800 (as editor,
1989) and The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle (2008),
as well as articles on the intersections of music, art, ideology and aesthetics in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France.
Lawrence Earp is Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is
the author of Guillaume de Machaut: A Guide to Research (1995). His published
articles focus on music in late medieval France.
Katharine Ellis holds the Stanley Hugh Badock Chair in Music at the University of
Bristol. She is author of three monographs: Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century
France: La Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 1834–80 (Cambridge, 1995),
[xiii] Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century France (2005)
xiv Notes on contributors

and The Politics of Plainchant in fin de siècle France (2013). Her research is

directed towards explaining how music and musicians operated in the light of
cultural, social and regulatory frameworks.
Fabrice Fitch taught music for fifteen years at Durham University, and is now Head
of Graduate School at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.
He has a dual career as a composer and musicologist, and has written extensively
on composers of the early Renaissance, including Ockeghem, Obrecht and
Agricola.
Andy Fry teaches music at King’s College London. His principal research areas are
jazz (particularly pre-1950) and music in twentieth-century France. In addition to
a number of articles in scholarly books and journals, he has published Paris Blues:
African American Music and French Popular Culture, 1920–1960 (2014).
Jonathan Goldman is Associate Professor of Musicology in the Faculty of Music of
the Université de Montréal. He published The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez:
Writings and Compositions in 2011 (Cambridge). His research focuses on regional
manifestations of musical modernism in the post-war period. Since 2006, he has
been Editor-in-Chief of the journal Circuit: musiques contemporaines.
John Haines is Professor of Musicology and Medieval Studies at the University of
Toronto. His primary areas of research are medieval music and its reception. His
published books include Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères: The
Changing Identity of Medieval Music (Cambridge, 2004) and Music in Films on
the Middle Ages: Authenticity vs. Fantasy (2013).
Steven Huebner is a James McGill Professor (musicology) of McGill University. He
is the author of two books, The Operas of Charles Gounod (1990) and French
Opera at the fin de siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (1999), and many
scholarly essays.
David Looseley is Emeritus Professor of Contemporary French Culture at Leeds
University and Honorary Research Fellow at Bristol University. His research
concerns the contemporary history of cultural practices, policies and institu-
tions, in particular popular music. His publications include Popular Music in
Contemporary France: Authenticity, Politics, Debate (2003) and Imagining the
Popular in Contemporary French Culture (edited with D. Holmes, 2013).
Michael McClellan was Chairman of the Music Department of the Chinese University
of Hong Kong. His primary area of research was French music and culture of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with emphasis on the operas and musical
aesthetics of the French Revolution.
Debra Nagy is a lecturer in historical performance practice at Case Western Reserve
University. In addition to being one of North America’s most sought-after
Baroque oboists, she directs Les Délices, an ensemble devoted to French chamber
music from the Baroque and early Classical periods, and writes on late medieval
and eighteenth-century French music.
Andrew Tomasello is Associate Professor and Deputy Chair of Music at Baruch
College (CUNY). His interests include music and cultural life in medieval Europe.
He has published extensively on medieval topics, including the book Music and
Ritual at Papal Avignon, 1309–1403 (1983). His current research and teaching
interests lie in popular commercial music in American culture.
xv Notes on contributors

Simon Trezise is an associate professor of the Music Department of the School of

Drama, Film and Music of Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on the
music of Debussy and France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
the history and practice of recording, various aspects of performance practice and
film music. His publications include Debussy: La mer (Cambridge, 1995) and The
Cambridge Companion to Debussy (as editor, Cambridge, 2003).
Jacqueline Waeber is Associate Professor of Music at Duke University. She is the
author of En musique dans le texte: le mélodrame, de Rousseau à Schoenberg
(2005) and the editor of Musique et geste en France de Lully à la Révolution: études
sur la musique, le théâtre et la danse (2009). Her research interests include
melodrama and related genres and French musical aesthetics.
 Preface

This Companion is based on the assumption that ‘France’ is and has been
a recognisable entity over many centuries. It is therefore of value to talk
about a ‘French music’ even many centuries before the country that we
now know as France existed. In truth, we are talking about activities that
occurred within or in the vicinity of modern France, but will take the
liberty of espousing the view that this activity is somewhat distinct from
that of other lands now known by such unequivocal titles as Germany
and Italy. Roger Price poses the question of when France might ‘be said to
have come into existence’ and proceeds to answer it in detail over many
pages. He tentatively offers the view at the outset that by ‘the late Middle
Ages, a vague sense of loyalty to a particular dynasty might have been
created and, derived from the Hundred Years War, a sense of being
different from other peoples’.1 This is a helpful guide, but many upheavals
were to be undergone before the modern country, so beloved and yet
seemingly so beset by problems, came into being. Nevertheless, the early
‘French’ polyphonists and many of their twentieth-century counterparts
heard their music in the medieval splendour of Notre-Dame Cathedral
built on the central island of Paris. We may also imagine a common thread
in the country’s magnificent and diverse landscape with its mountains,
vineyards, forests and medieval bastide towns looking down on valleys
with small farms and elegant stone buildings. Qualities that constitute a
French cultural identity, evident in a certain style of text-setting and general
refinement, for instance, also encourage the belief that some things have
retained a familiarity over many centuries.
The art of writing music history may have receded at this time of intense
topical specialisation and anxiety about the very act of telling a historical
story, but for this Companion to French Music it was revived in order to
present a broad, chronological coverage of almost 2,000 years rich in incident
and artistic productivity. Each author of the historical part (Chapters 1–9)
and the section on opera (Chapters 10–11) was presented with the daunting
task of writing about often great tracts of time in a few thousand words.
They did so in a variety of ways. While some authors focused on broad
institutional issues and the general character of repertoires, others sampled
representative works in some detail. All these chapters offer revealing treat-
ments of their subjects and – this was a priority – launch points for those who
[xvii] wish to explore further.
xviii Preface

The division of the historical periods follows traditional practice, with

the first break occurring at the advent of polyphony. After that the old
markers have sufficed very well, up to the early modern period, when the
sheer quantity of activity compressed the periods covered, to the extent
that Chapter 8 is devoted to just thirty-two years of history (1914–45), in
contrast to Chapter 1, which falls a little shy of 1,000. Opera has been so
important in France that it seemed both more economical and effective
to separate it from the chronological chapters; this separation allows
two specialists in the field to dwell on the evolution of opera’s institutions
and repertoire, which would have been a tough call for the authors of
Chapters 4–9.
Inevitably, this Companion’s emphasis is on ‘art’ music, but when we
hear of nuns writing religious music that is taken up in the streets by the
general populace and sung raucously, and of monarchs, no less, who
fancied themselves as shepherds or others in the rural community, adopt-
ing or adapting traditional instruments like the hurdy-gurdy, we realise
that the familiar modern divisions between ‘popular’, ‘traditional’ and ‘art’
music can be misleading. So although traditional and popular music each
have their own chapter, some of the writing encourages us to allow these
stylistic boundaries to fade away, for it often seems unlikely that contem-
porary audiences and practitioners always shared our experience of sty-
listic demarcations.
Having entrusted nine chapters to a broad chronological survey rather
than attempting to achieve the coverage through topical divisions (for
example, ‘motet’, ‘secular song’), the last part of the Companion focuses
on five topics and themes that are crucial to an understanding of French
music. While they are inevitably mentioned in the historical survey,
making areas such as music at the court in the ancien régime and in the
church after the Roman occupation the subject of detailed treatment
enables the intricate relationship between musicians and society to be
studied in depth. An added advantage of this approach is the opportunity
in the chapter devoted to the church (Chapter 15) to explore the political
evolution of Gaul through various early formulations that many centuries
later evolved into the modern republic of France. Other chapters in this
part deal with manuscript sources and calligraphy, the aesthetics of the
Siècle des Lumières and music in Paris and the provinces in the nineteenth
century, an essential corrective to the often Paris-centric emphasis of
other chapters.
The long gestation of this Companion was darkened by three deaths.
Frank Dobbins, in addition to assisting Fabrice Fitch with Chapter 3,
wrote a highly detailed, potentially invaluable study of music publishing
for this Companion. As it stood the draft chapter was too long for
xix Preface

inclusion and would have needed drastic pruning, so, as his health was
failing, Frank requested leave to withdraw the chapter and make other use
of it. Aspects of publishing are therefore discussed elsewhere, spread out
among several chapters. Frank Dobbins died in 2012. Michael McClellan
had produced a first draft of Chapter 6; he was about to start revising and
adding to it when his sudden death was announced, also in 2012. With his
family’s agreement, I decided to attempt to finish the work myself. The
completed chapter turned out to be roughly equal parts McClellan and
Trezise. Finally, I have to mention the shock and hurt of my wife Debbie’s
very sudden death on 11 February 2010, which made any progress impos-
sible for a long while.
Working with so many distinguished specialists in French music has
been a great pleasure. It goes without saying that the project is indebted to
their patience, diligence, freely offered advice and expertise. I am espe-
cially grateful to authors who came in late to the project in response to
changes of mind and other circumstances beyond anyone’s control. And I
am sure we all wish to thank Vicki Cooper and Fleur Jones of Cambridge
University Press for their unstinting support and encouragement. I would
also like to thank Mark Flisher for picture suggestions, Julian Rushton for
advice on Chapters 6 and 7, Sharon Krummel for some very helpful
editorial suggestions, my colleague Michael Taylor at Trinity College for
his constantly stimulating conversation, and Shauna Caffrey and Stephen
O’Brien for helping with the index.

Simon Trezise

Note
1 Roger Price, A Concise History of France, 2nd edn (Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 14.
part i

Chronological history of French music

from the early Middle Ages to the present
 1 From abbey to cathedral and court: music under
the Merovingian, Carolingian and Capetian
kings in France until Louis IX
a l i c e v . cl a r k

Music for much of the Middle Ages is mostly treated as a trans-national

repertoire, except in the area of vernacular song. Nevertheless, many of the
most important documented developments in medieval music took place
in what is now France. Certainly, if the concept of ‘France’ existed at all for
most of the Middle Ages, it did not encompass anything like the modern
hexagone: French kings (or, more properly, ‘kings of the French’) usually
did not directly control all the territories they nominally ruled, and
southern territories in particular sought to maintain their political and
cultural distinctiveness. Still, it can be useful to consider medieval music
in relation to other developments in French culture. From the intersec-
tions of chant and politics in the Carolingian era, to the flowerings of
music and Gothic architecture, to the growth of vernacular song in the
context of courtly society, music participated in broader intellectual and
institutional conversations. While those conversations did not generally
have truly national goals, they took place within what is now France,
among people who often considered themselves to be, on some level,
French.

The Gallican rite of Merovingian France (c. 500–751)

As the Roman empire gradually disintegrated, its authority was largely
replaced by local leaders and institutions. The Christian church took up
some of the empire’s unifying functions, but it too was geographically
fractured as communication became more difficult. A distinct Gallican
liturgy can be seen even before the conversion of Clovis, the first of the
Merovingian kings, around the year 500. In light of future events, it is
interesting to note that the earliest document attesting to Gallican liturgy
is a letter by Pope Innocent I, dated 416, requesting that the churches of

I am grateful to William Chester Jordan and Daniel DiCenso for comments that kept me from several
inaccuracies in areas outside my area of specialisation. The members of my research group here at
[3] Loyola, as usual, forced me to clarify my thoughts. All remaining errors are my own.
4 Alice V. Clark

Gaul follow the Roman rite, but surviving texts attest to the persistence of
the local liturgy.1
While the existence of a Gallican rite is clear enough, what it sounded
like is harder to determine.2 No musical sources survive, since Gregorian
chant effectively suppressed Gallican melodies before the advent of notation
in the ninth century. Some texts and descriptions give hints, and traces may
remain within the Gregorian liturgy, but teasing out the details is difficult,
and scholars do not always agree on methods or results.3 What evidence
survives suggests less a single coherent rite than a heterogeneous body of
materials whose specific contents may vary from place to place, perhaps
sharing a basic liturgical structure but using different readings or prayers.
Though it largely disappeared, Gallican chant provided the Frankish roots
onto which the Roman rite was grafted to create what we know as Gregorian
chant. This new hybrid was inextricably linked to Carolingian reforms.

The Carolingian renaissance and the creation

of ‘Gregorian’ chant (751–c. 850)
While the effective power of the Merovingian kings declined over the
seventh century, that of the mayors of the palace who ruled in the king’s
name increased, until in 751 Pépin III (the Short, d. 768) definitively took
the royal title himself. He sought to enhance his new royal status in part
by a renewed Frankish alliance with Rome.4 Pope Stephen II travelled
to Francia, making the first trip of any pope north of the Alps, and in 754,
at the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, he anointed Pépin and his sons. By the
end of the century Pépin’s son Charles, later known as Charlemagne
(r. 768–814), was the most important ruler in the West, controlling much
of what is now France, Germany and Italy, and he was crowned by the pope
in Rome on Christmas Day 800.5
The Carolingians took their role as protectors of the church seriously,
seeking to reform religious life through the better education of clerics.6
The cultural flowering that resulted, often called the Carolingian renais-
sance, built on both Merovingian and Gallo-Roman roots. Monastic and
cathedral schools were created to foster basic Latinity, which could be
passed by parish priests to the laity, and to provide further education in
the liberal arts and theology. Both patristic texts and classical works by
authors such as Cicero, Suetonius and Tacitus, largely neglected in Frankish
lands for a couple of hundred years, were copied in the new script known as
Carolingian minuscule, developed at the monastery of Corbie.7 Not only
were older texts copied, but Carolingian masters wrote new commentaries
on both sacred and secular texts, as well as poetry and treatises on a wide
5 From abbey to cathedral and court

variety of subjects. Through all this can be seen not only a concern for
proper doctrine, but also an increased emphasis on the written word.
The church was also the primary beneficiary of many developments in
the visual sphere.8 Liturgical manuscripts and other books were often
highly decorated, both on the page and in their bindings, which may include
ivory carvings or jewels. New churches, cathedrals and monasteries were
built and supplied with elaborate altar furnishings, such as chalices and
reliquaries. Few examples survive of textiles and paintings, but ample
evidence exists of their use. Charlemagne’s court chapel at Aachen is a
superlative example of visual splendour in the service of both religion and
royal power.
The importing of the Roman liturgy and its chant into the Frankish
royal domain was an important part of the Carolingian reforming agenda.
Roman liturgical books and singers circulated in Francia as early as the
760s. The effort to displace the existing Gallican liturgy in favour of the
Roman, however, was never as successful as the Carolingian rulers might
have liked. The number of documents that mandate the Roman use
suggests a general lack of cooperation on the part of the Franks, and the
surviving books attest to far greater diversity in practice than Carolingian
statements would suggest.9 Moreover, melodic differences between the
earliest sources of Gregorian chant and later Roman manuscripts show
that Gregorian chant is in reality a hybrid, created through the interaction
of the rite brought from Rome and Frankish singers. Susan Rankin com-
pares Gregorian and Roman versions of the introit Ad te levavi, arguing that
the Gregorian version shows a Carolingian concern for ‘reading’ its text
in terms of both sound and meaning to a greater degree than the Old
Roman melody does.10 This fits within the Carolingian reforming ideas
already seen. In any case, Gregorian chant eventually became more than just
another local liturgy: it was transmitted across the Carolingian empire and
beyond, and given a uniquely divine authority through its attachment to
Gregory I (d. 604), Doctor of the Church, reforming pope and saint. The
earliest surviving Frankish chant book, copied about 800, uses his name,
and an antiphoner copied in the late tenth century provides what becomes
a familiar image: Gregory (identifiable by monastic tonsure and saintly
nimbus) receiving the chant by dictation from the Holy Spirit in the
shape of a dove.11
The need to learn, understand and transmit this new body of liturgical
song led to developments in notation and practical theory that are first
attested in Frankish lands.12 The earliest surviving examples of notation
come from the 840s, and the first fully notated chant books were copied at
the end of the ninth century. A system of eight modes may have been in use
as early as the late eighth century, as witnessed by a tonary, which classifies
6 Alice V. Clark

chant melodies according to mode, copied around 800 at the Frankish

monastery of Saint-Riquier. Treatises explaining the modes and other
aspects of chant theory appear in the ninth century; early examples include
the Musica disciplina of Aurelian of Réôme, a Burgundian monk writing in
the first half of the ninth century, and Hucbald (d. 930), a scholar and
teacher from the royal abbey of Saint-Amand. In addition to chant books
and treatises on practical theory, the earliest surviving copy of Boethius’s
treatise on music, a fundamental source for the transmission of ancient
Greek speculative theory to the Latin West, was copied in the first half of the
ninth century, perhaps at Saint-Amand. The proper performance of chant,
as aided by these tools, was an essential element in the education of clerics in
Carolingian times and beyond.

Monastic culture under the later Carolingians

and the early Capetians (c. 840–c. 1000)
By his death Charlemagne ruled much of Western Europe, but the later
ninth century and the tenth century were marked by a return to local
concerns, even while the authority of monarch and church were acknowl-
edged. This attitude may be reflected in the flowering of musical creativity
associated with individual religious institutions. Even as Gregorian chant
took hold, new chants were created to enhance local saints’ cults, and new
genres such as sequences and hymns allowed additions to established
liturgies. Just as glosses became important in the second half of the
ninth century as a way of commenting on texts, tropes were created to
enhance existing chants, adding words and/or music to explain or expand
upon the original.13 For instance, the notion of Jesus’ birth as the fulfilment
of prophecy is underlined in this trope added to the Christmas introit found
in a manuscript from Chartres (chant text underlined):
Let us rejoice today because God descended from Heaven and to earth for our
sakes
A boy is born to us
Whom long the prophets predicted
and a son is given to us
Now we know that this child was sent into the world by the father
upon whose shoulder dominion rests and his name will be called
wonderful counsellor, mighty god, prince of peace
angel of great counsel.14

Polyphony, which will be discussed in the next chapter, likewise began as a

way to enhance chant. While these practices can be found all over the
Christian West, and some specific examples were transmitted widely,
7 From abbey to cathedral and court

these additions to the central Gregorian repertoire were not standardised,

but rather locally chosen, and often locally composed.
A major factor in the fracturing of the Carolingian empire was the
common practice of dividing territory among all male heirs, rather than
passing on a title only to the eldest. When Charlemagne’s son Louis the
Pious died in 840, he left three sons. At the Treaty of Verdun in 843, they
agreed on a division of the empire, and Charles the Bald, the youngest,
inherited most of what is now France. The notion of a unified kingdom,
however, was difficult to maintain as areas such as Brittany, Gascony,
Burgundy and Aquitaine each held on to their own culture and traditions,
and often their own laws and language. The Frankish kingdom was further
challenged by Viking raids, which became more numerous from the 840s.
In 845 the Vikings reached Paris, and from the 850s winter settlements can
be found in the Seine valley. In 911, Charles the Bald’s grandson Charles
the Simple ceded the area around Rouen, creating what eventually became
the duchy of Normandy. A further crisis came in 888, when, for the first
time since Pépin III became king in 751, there was effectively no adult
Carolingian candidate to take the throne. After a century of conflict, Hugh
Capet was elected king in 987. Under these circumstances, it is not
surprising that Frankish culture was located more within individual reli-
gious institutions than at a royal court.
Monasteries were particularly important sites for the creation of new
types of chant, and for the study and transmission of learning in general.
From Alcuin, an English monk who was Charlemagne’s chief advisor and
was named abbot of Saint-Martin of Tours in 796, to Suger (c. 1081–1151),
abbot of Saint-Denis and confidant of Louis VI, and beyond, churchmen
were key advisors to kings. New monasteries flourished even as royal
power waned, and old ones were reformed and better endowed by local
patrons, who requested in return prayers for their souls and those of their
relatives. The best-known reform house was founded at Cluny in 910 by
William the Pious, duc d’Aquitaine.15 Cluny and its many daughter houses
fostered proper celebration of the Office, reinforcing the idea that a mon-
astery’s primary work is corporate prayer. Cluniac houses, like Benedictine
monasteries, cathedrals, chapels in royal palaces and other churches, were
adorned with new buildings and decorations to enhance the liturgy, which
was preserved in notated and sometimes decorated manuscripts. Reforming
impulses also led to the formation of new orders, most notably the
Cistercians in the twelfth century, and the Franciscans and Dominicans in
the thirteenth. These tended to take a more austere attitude towards chant,
but they too copied liturgical books.
A number of Frankish abbeys can be associated with specific musical
developments. The library of the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Gall, in
8 Alice V. Clark

modern Switzerland, still holds a number of the earliest surviving manu-

scripts containing musical notation, as well as standard works such as
Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae, classical authors such as Cicero, Virgil
and Ovid, and vernacular texts.16 Saint-Gall was also the home of major
early creators of tropes and sequences such as Notker and Tuotilo, and
an early example of the Quem quaeritis dialogue can be found there.17
Another early centre of both troping and Latin song, as well as liturgical
drama and early polyphony, was the abbey of Saint-Martial in Limoges,
founded in 848. The cultural flowering associated with this monastery in the
late tenth century and eleventh century included an attempt to proclaim its
namesake, a third-century bishop, as an apostle. This effort, spearheaded by
Adémar de Chabannes, who wrote a new liturgy for Martial, was ultimately
unsuccessful, but it did enhance the fame of the abbey and its value as a
pilgrimage site.18
Saint-Denis, just outside Paris, had been a royal abbey since Merovingian
times, and served as burial site of many French kings.19 Pope Stephen II and
his schola cantorum stayed there in 754, and demonstrations of the Roman
chant and liturgy probably took place at the abbey at that time. New efforts
to foster Denis’s cult in the ninth century led to the conflation of the third-
century bishop of Paris with the fifth-century theologian Pseudo-Dionysius,
in turn linked to Dionysius the Areopagite, a Greek disciple of Paul. The
octave or one-week anniversary of this enhanced Denis’s feast was cele-
brated by a Mass with Greek Propers, the only one of its kind. In the twelfth
century Abbot Suger, a close advisor and friend to Louis VI who had been
educated at the abbey, built one of the earliest manifestations of the new
Gothic architectural style there, replacing a Carolingian church. Aspects of
the building reflect principles of Pseudo-Dionysian thought, and a mid-
eleventh-century rhymed office for Denis emphasises ‘the light of divine
wisdom’ as described in the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius.20 Saint-Denis
did not cultivate polyphony, as the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris did,
but its widespread practice of melismatic embellishments of chant can be
seen as an attempt to move the singer or listener to the immaterial world,
reflecting the belief that vocalisation without words approximated angelic
speech and the Divine Voice.21

The Capetians and the age of cathedrals (987–c. 1300)

The focus on individual institutions as sites for musical developments
continued under the early Capetians. While monasteries continued to
serve an important role, urban cathedrals received increased attention,
especially in the royal heartland still known as the Île-de-France. The
9 From abbey to cathedral and court

election of Hugh Capet (r. 987–96) did not immediately lead to a resur-
gence of royal authority across the land, but it increased over the course of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Primogeniture was still gaining accept-
ance and was not uncontested, so the early Capetians formally crowned
and associated their eldest sons with them in their own lifetimes. This
stability of succession allowed them time to build power. They also
encouraged a new ideal of kingship: while coronation had long been
seen as a sacrament, and the notion that the monarch is defender of the
church had long roots, the early Capetians went a step further to build an
image of the king as holy man. This can be seen in Helgaud of Fleury’s life
of Robert the Pious (r. 996–1031), and in the widespread belief in the
king’s touch, by which scrofula and other illnesses were said to be cured.22
The strongest manifestation of the sacralisation of kingship was the canon-
isation of Louis IX in 1297.
The early Capetians directly controlled only the area around Paris,
but they gradually extended their geographic control westwards and
southwards, and this culminated in the reclaiming of Normandy from
the English kings in 1204. Philip Augustus (r. 1179–1223) further
enhanced the position of Paris as his royal capital, building a new wall
to protect recent growth. An economic recovery, beginning in the second
half of the eleventh century, also benefited the French kings: the agricul-
tural riches of northern France, including the royal domain, began to be
realised, and trade between these areas and markets to the north, south
and east was strengthened. Urban areas, especially Paris, became trans-
portation hubs. Because cathedrals, unlike monasteries, tend to be
located in cities, they benefited from this economic activity through the
patronage of kings, nobles and townsfolk. New buildings were created in
the new Gothic style, which encouraged liturgical and musical develop-
ments as well.
After the cathedral in Chartres burned in 1020, Bishop Fulbert (d. 1028)
began work on the current building, which was also dedicated to the Virgin
Mary. The Marian cult already active there was enhanced, with a new focus
on the Nativity of the Virgin.23 The liturgy fashioned for this new celebra-
tion combined chants for Advent and Christmas from the traditional
Gregorian repertoire with newly composed material, including three
responsories attributed to Fulbert himself. The best-known of these outlines
the lineage of Mary through the Jesse tree, which is spectacularly expressed
in glass at the west end of the cathedral (see Example 1.1).24
The shoot of Jesse produced a rod, and the rod a flower; and now over
the flower rests a nurturing spirit. [V.] The shoot is the virgin Genetrix of
God, and the flower is her Son.
10 Alice V. Clark

Example 1.1 Fulbert of Chartres, Stirps Jesse, responsory for the Nativity of the Virgin,
respond only

Styrps Jes - - - - se

vir - - gam pro - du - xit

vir - - - - ga - que flo - rem.

Et su - per hunc flo - rem

re - qui - e - - - scit spi - ri - tus

al - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - mus.

This melody begins by hovering around its final, D, dipping down to A at

the word ‘Jesse’, in the process emphasising Jesse as the root of this
genealogical tree. It then rises a little, centring on F with hints of G at
the two appearances of the word virga (rod), showing how the branch
lifts away from the root, but by moving downwards again links the
branch to that root, as well as to the flower it produces. When the Spirit
rests on that flower, it releases a luxurious melisma on the word almus
(nurturing), which both rises to A, the highest note of the chant, and falls
to the octave below before cadencing on the final. The effect is one of a
gradual ascent, but one that is thoroughly grounded, like the Jesse tree
itself. A similar process operates in the verse, which explains the image
described in the respond: the melody rises to A on dei (God), then falls to
flos (flower), showing how Christ ultimately serves as both culmination
and source of the Jesse tree. Fulbert, or whoever composed the music, did
not choose the perhaps obvious path and create a melody that rises
inexorably from beginning to end through an authentic range (or that
might even extend its range to show the scope of the tree’s ascent), but by
using a plagal mode, with a relatively limited compass that envelops its
final, he followed a different path, one that emphasises stability and
rootedness.25
Notre-Dame of Paris, at the heart of Philip Augustus’s capital city, is
perhaps the best-known Gothic cathedral. It was renowned for its
11 From abbey to cathedral and court

cultivation of polyphony, which will be discussed in the next chapter, but

chant and other forms of monophonic song continued to be central to its
liturgical life.26 Its canons had connections outside the cathedral, most
notably at the abbey of Saint-Victor and the nascent university. Saint-
Victor was a major centre of Augustinian reform in the twelfth century,
balancing rejection of the world with serving the laity and seeking to create
clerics who would teach ‘by word and example’.27 Its canons translated their
reforming doctrine into liturgical song through a substantial group of
sequences, many associated with Adam (d. 1146), who served as a canon
and precentor of Notre-Dame before retiring to the abbey. Philip, chancel-
lor of Notre-Dame from 1217 to 1236, wrote a number of conductus texts
(for more on the conductus see below), though it is uncertain whether he
wrote music, and indeed several are linked to melodies by Perotin, who will
be discussed in the next chapter. Since Philip’s position brought him into
contact with the university, it is not surprising that some of his conductus
refer to student conflicts in the early thirteenth century.28
The growth of the University of Paris reflected a renewed concern for
the proper education of clerics. Paris became the centre of a new cadre of
clerks, associated with noble and royal households, educated at cathedral
schools and universities and often remunerated in part through the
acquisition of church benefices. University-trained clerics also enhanced
the rosters of monasteries, cathedrals and other sacred foundations. This
educated non-noble class, whether based at church or court or moving
between the two, provided a number of the creators and performers of
the written musical tradition, monophonic and polyphonic, in both Latin
and the vernacular. Music as an abstract mathematical art was one of the
seven liberal arts, but Joseph Dyer argues that it and the other disciplines
in the quadrivium were effectively eliminated from the curriculum at
the University of Paris by the mid-thirteenth century in favour of other
subjects, especially Aristotelian logic.29 There is evidence, however, that
university students had significant contact with practical music-making,
through their early education, the liturgical practices of colleges and rela-
tionships with cathedral canons and singers of the Chapelle Royale. Peter
Abelard and Peter of Blois are known to have written songs in Latin, and
Abelard also composed hymns and six planctus. In perhaps the best-known
witness to university-related music-making, the theorist known to us as
Anonymous IV, probably a monk of St Albans in England, tells us about
sacred music in Paris, especially Notre-Dame polyphony, on the basis of his
experience as a university student.
Cathedrals were not the only witnesses to the Gothic style. After
Louis IX (r. 1226–70) bought the Crown of Thorns from the Byzantine
emperor in 1241, he built a chapel within the royal palace to house it. The
12 Alice V. Clark

Sainte-Chapelle is a masterpiece of colour in glass and paint that visibly

links the French kings to those of the Old Testament and both to Christ
the King.30 These connections were made in the liturgy for the chapel as
well, perhaps most notably in the Offices created to celebrate Louis IX after
canonisation:

Rex regum regis filio

regales parans nuptias,
post certamen in stadio
celi prebet delicias
glorioso commercio.
[V.] Pro regno temporalium
regnum habet celestium
Ludovicus in premium.

The King of kings, laying out a kingly wedding feast for the king’s son, offers
him, after the race in the stadium, the delights of heaven in glorious
exchange. [V] In exchange for the kingdom of earthly things, Louis has the
celestial kingdom as reward.31

In this responsory, Louis is explicitly linked to the New Testament parable,

and both Christ (by analogue) and Louis are offered celestial kingship for
their earthly work. The responsory is less melismatic than many examples,
perhaps in part so that it can reflect the rhyming text.32 Its fourth-mode
melody is restless, beginning with a leap from D to A and cadencing on
various pitches before the extended melismas on glorioso commercio (glor-
ious exchange, referring to Louis’s exchange of earthly rule for spiritual
delights) close on E, as though finding at last in heaven the rest the saint
could not find on earth.

Secular monophony and the growth of courtly song

(c. 1100–c. 1300)
To this point we have focused mostly on music for the church, but other
forms of Latin song appear as early as the ninth and tenth centuries.
Particularly associated with the abbey of Saint-Martial is a group of
songs variously called carmen, ritmus and especially versus. While many
of these pieces are sacred or even para-liturgical, they also include planctus
or laments, such as those on the death of Charlemagne and on the battle
of Fontenay (842), satirical songs and so forth. These songs are mostly
syllabic and usually strophic in form, with a single melody used for
multiple stanzas of text, though the planctus and lai share the paired-
verse form of the sequence, where a new melody is used for each pair of
13 From abbey to cathedral and court

verses.33 From the twelfth century Latin songs called conductus appear in
Aquitaine and Paris; these are likewise strophic and largely syllabic, though
sometimes melismas appear at the beginning and/or the end of the stanza.
The conductus can be either monophonic or polyphonic, with all voices
moving together homorhythmically.
Peter Abelard wrote six planctus, though their melodies are written
only in unheightened neumes that cannot be read, except for this lament
of David on the deaths of Saul and Jonathan:
Dolorum solatium, laborum remedium, mea michi cithara
Nunc quo maior dolor est iustiorque meror est plus est necessaria.
My harp, my consolation in sorrow and cure for pain,
is now the more needful to me, as my sorrow is greater and my grief more
fitting.34

Songs in the language now known as Occitan or Provençal began to

appear at the turn of the twelfth century. The relative autonomy of the
southern territories and their generally more urban culture may have
allowed greater scope for the creation and transmission of vernacular
song than was possible in the north. Some have also suggested influence
from Arabic songs, by way of Spain, but that cannot be proved. Created
by poet-composers known as troubadours, these songs flourished into
the thirteenth century, though southern culture was largely cut off by
the Albigensian Crusade in the 1220s. Troubadours included both noble
amateurs and professionals of lower rank: Guillaume IX, duc d’Aquitaine
(d. 1127), and Bernart de Ventadorn (d. c. 1190–1200), who may have
been the son of servants of the comte de Ventadorn,35 give an idea of the
range possible. Others came from the urban merchant class, and several
ended their days in the church; one is known to us only under the name
Monge (Monk) de Montaudon. Several women wrote songs, though only
one melody, by the comtessa de Dia, survives.
Stylistically, troubadour songs are much like their Latin counterparts:
a single melody is used for multiple stanzas of poetry, and mostly syllabic
text-setting allows that text to be heard clearly. While laments, crusade
songs and satirical songs exist, the most common subject is love, specif-
ically the kind of sacralised devotion known as fin’amors, often translated
into English as ‘courtly love’. This is in many ways comparable to the
Marian devotion that also flowered in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
and it can be difficult sometimes to determine whether the subject of a
given song is the Virgin or an earthly lady. While erotic feelings can exist
within fin’amors (or within a mystical spiritual context in Marian devo-
tion), they usually cannot be consummated, because the lady is married,
of higher social status, or otherwise unavailable. She can, however, be
14 Alice V. Clark

worshipped, and deeds can be done in her name. As Bernart de Ventadorn

writes, ‘Fair lady, I ask you nothing/Except that you take me as your
servant.’36 On the other hand, the lady’s rejection can be a mortal blow for
the poet, as Bernart says elsewhere:
Since with my lady nothing avails me
...
And I go away, since she does not retain me,
Wretched, into exile, I know not where.37

Perhaps more importantly, songs can be sung to and for her, and many
examples speak of the narrator’s compulsion to sing. Troubadour songs
therefore are in some ways less about love than about singing about love,
especially in the high-register examples known as cansos (or grande chanson
courtoise).38 Gace Brulé (d. after 1213), a minor noble from Champagne and
a trouvère, provides one of many examples (see Example 1.2).39

Desconfortez, plain de dolor et d’ire,

M’estuet chanter, qu’ailleurs n’ai on entende;
Tot le mont voi, fors moi, joer et rire,
Ne je ne truis qui d’ennui me desfende.
Cele m’ocit qui mes cuers plus desirre,
Si sui irez quant ele n’en amende,
Chascuns dit q’il aime autresi;
Pour ce ne conoist on l’ami.

Example 1.2 Gace Brulé, ‘Desconfortez’

Des - con - for - tez plains de do - lor et d'i - re

m'es - tuet chan - ter qu'ail - leurs n'ai a en - ten - dre

tot le mont voi fors moi jo - er et ri - re

ne je ne truis qui d'en - nui me des - fen - de

ce - le m'o - cit qui mes cuers plus de - sir - re

si sui i - rez quant e - le n'en a - men - de

chas - cuns dit q'il aime aut - re - si

pour ce ne con - oist on l'a - - mi.

15 From abbey to cathedral and court

Disconsolate, full of pain and sorrow, I have to sing for I cannot direct my
attention elsewhere; I see everyone, except me, play and laugh, nor do I
find anyone who can protect me from distress. She whom my heart most
desires is killing me, so I am distressed as she offers no redress. Each one says
that he loves in this way; one cannot discern a lover by that.

The melody of this song is typical of troubadour and trouvère song in

many ways: strophic with a refrain, it sets the text with mostly one note per
syllable, sometimes marking the cadences at ends of lines with short
melismas. This kind of setting allows the performer to focus on declaiming
the text. Lines 1–2 and 3–4 receive paired melodies, which draw the ear to
link the lover’s sad state to his separation from those around him. (This
reading reflects only the first stanza, which usually seems to be most
carefully set to the melody.) The next section rises into the upper range
as he sings of how his desire is killing him, but then falls as he realises she
will not save him.
In the short final stanza or envoi, the poet names himself and refers
directly to his song:
Gascez a chanter feni
Qui touz jorz aime et n’a merci.
Gace, who always loves and receives no mercy, has finished his song.

This self-referential aspect, foreign to chant and early polyphony, may be

reflected in the manuscript transmission of the songs: they often appear in
collections organised by author, frequently including author ‘portraits’ and
even short ‘biographies’ (vidas). The vidas cannot be trusted for strict docu-
mentary veracity, but they demonstrate an interest not only in the songs but
in the lives of the individuals who created them, an attitude far removed from
the fundamentally anonymous nature of chant and sacred polyphony.
The surviving sources of troubadour song come from the mid-
thirteenth century and beyond, considerably later than the main flowering
of composition. Some manuscripts come from Occitan areas, but many
were copied elsewhere, in northern France, Catalonia and especially Italy.
Only four of about forty surviving sources or fragments include musical
notation. The notation used, like that for chant, generally gives no infor-
mation about rhythm, much less other nuances of performance, such as
the use of dynamics or instrumental accompaniment. This lack of nota-
tional specificity has created difficulties for scholars and modern perform-
ers, but it seems to suggest a kind of performative flexibility that could not
be written in any system available to thirteenth-century scribes.40 Texts are
generally unstable, and where a melody appears in more than one manu-
script, there are nearly always variants that show a similar lack of concern
16 Alice V. Clark

for fixity and suggest not only oral transmission but also the possibility that
scribes intervened in the copying of melodies as well as texts, creating and
fixing problems in transmission and ‘improving’ readings according to their
lights.41
While many examples of troubadour song are in the elevated style of
the canso, lower-register poetry such as that of the pastourelle also exists,
set to popularising melodies reminiscent of dance styles. Such songs were
probably performed metrically, whether or not they are so written, and
they may well have had some form of improvised instrumental accom-
paniment. The higher-register songs, on the other hand, may have been
performed without accompaniment, facilitating the rhythmic flexibility
that allows greater expression of the text.42
From the late twelfth century poet-composers known as trouvères appear
in northern lands, working in French dialects. The shift may not be directly
attributable to the influence of Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122–1204), as has
sometimes been argued, but it is worth noting her extensive family connec-
tions to secular song: her grandfather, Guillaume IX, duc d’Aquitaine, was the
first documented troubadour, while her descendants included two trouvères,
her son Richard, King of England, and Thibaut de Navarre, grandson of
Marie de Champagne, one of Eleanor’s daughters by Louis VII and a major
literary patron in her own right.43 Paris and the royal court, however, were
less important for the development of trouvère song than Picardy and
Champagne, and in the thirteenth century Arras became an important
centre of trouvère activity among members of the merchant class, notably
the poet and composer Adam de la Halle (b. c. 1245–50; d. 1285–8?). Most
of the basic formal and stylistic features of trouvère songs are similar to
those already outlined for the troubadours, but by the mid-thirteenth
century a shift of emphasis may be seen, away from the high-register
grant chant courtois and towards less elevated and more popularising styles
and genres such as the pastourelle and the jeu-parti.44
Trouvère song survives in written form much more strongly than its
southern counterpart. This may be in part because it flourished rather
later, so it benefited from the growing book culture of Paris and the Île-de-
France during the thirteenth century. It is not surprising, then, that not
only more sources exist, but more sources with musical notation, and that
therefore far more songs survive with melodies intact. Where Elizabeth
Aubrey calculates 195 distinct melodies for 246 troubadour songs, approx-
imately 10 per cent of the surviving poems, surviving in four sources with
notation,45 Mary O’Neill cites ‘some twenty substantial extant chanson-
niers’ of trouvère song containing approximately ‘1500 songs [that] survive
with their melodies’.46
17 From abbey to cathedral and court

Ample evidence exists in literature, sermons and other texts for dance
music, ceremonial music, popular song and so forth, but few traces of
these remain.47 Courtly song and dance were often performed by minstrels
or jongleurs, whose activities went beyond music to include storytelling,
conversation and other forms of entertainment. Minstrels and heralds also
sometimes served diplomatic or messenger roles, since they tended to travel
from place to place; in the process, they could facilitate the movement of
musical styles and genres. In a song written around 1210 the troubadour
Raimon Vidal outlines a fictional journey from Riom at Christmas time to
Montferrand (with the Dalfi d’Alvernhe), Provence (and the court of
Savoy), Toulouse (where the narrator receives a suit of clothes), Cabarès,
Foix (where the count is unfortunately absent) and Castillon, finally arriv-
ing at Mataplana in April.48 There is no reason to believe that similar travels
were not undertaken by actual musicians.
Music can also be found in dramatic genres, from debate songs and
dialogue tropes to more fully developed plays.49 Latin liturgical dramas
such as those found in sources from Saint-Martial in Limoges and Saint-
Benoit in Fleury, near Orléans, were completely sung, mostly using chant
and chant-like styles. The Play of Daniel, one of the best-known examples
today, was created by students of the cathedral school in Beauvais in the
early thirteenth century for performance in the Christmas season, perhaps
in conjunction with Matins on the Feast of the Circumcision (1 January).50
Vernacular religious drama tended to use spoken dialogue along with a
wide range of musical styles, from chant to instrumental music. The only
French secular drama that survives with a substantial body of music is Adam
de la Halle’s Jeu de Robin et de Marion, probably intended to entertain troops
from Arras spending Christmas in Italy around 1283. The melodies it contains
use the style of popular refrains like those also found inserted into narrative
poems, so they may have been borrowed rather than newly composed.

Christopher Page traces a ‘powerful secularising impulse . . . in many areas

of cultural life’ as in other areas of culture during the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries.51 The ability to write and sing songs becomes an essential
attribute of the courtier, a manly art suitable for indoor display in front of
women.52 Indeed, this ideal of the noble who can sing and play is common
within romance, and this image surely not only reflects lived reality but in
turn influenced the training and self-image of young nobles who read and
heard such tales. Employing minstrels or jongleurs could also enhance the
reputation of a nobleman, because it showed his generosity and ability to
entertain his courtiers; those travelling entertainers in turn could carry
songs and tales about his prowess to other lands.53
18 Alice V. Clark

By the thirteenth century clearly secular forms of music were much

more likely to be written down and discussed by both courtiers and
churchmen than they had ever been. Sacred and secular, however, were
frequently intertwined throughout medieval culture: liturgy and politics
served each other at the Sainte-Chapelle as at Charlemagne’s court, court
functionaries from Alcuin to Machaut were educated in schools tied to the
church and rewarded with ecclesiastical positions, and the languages of
fin’amors and Marian devotion continually overlapped. Our neat catego-
ries do not always fit the medieval reality.
It is easy to believe that the story of French monophony ends at this
point, and indeed polyphony has taken over most readers’ attention well
before the end of the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, monophony con-
tinued to be performed, and it probably dominated the average person’s
daily experience well into the early modern era. Monophonic dance music
and popular song surely flourished – it simply was not usually written
down. Gregorian chant remained the foundational musical experience of
choirboys, so it served as the roots, both literally and figuratively, from
which polyphony grew. New chant continued to be composed when
needed, for instance by Guillaume Du Fay for a new celebration at
Cambrai Cathedral in the 1450s. Since the primary tale of music history,
however, is the story of compositional innovation in the written tradition,
we turn the page towards a polyphonic future.

Notes
1 Michel Huglo et al., ‘Gallican chant’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
2 Specialists in this area emphasise the
fundamental heterogeneity of Merovingian
liturgy; see, for example, the introduction to
Missale gothicum, ed. Els Rose, Corpus
Christianorum Series Latina, 159D (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2005), 190–3.
3 For example, see Kenneth Levy, ‘Toledo,
Rome and the Legacy of Gaul’, Early Music
History, 4 (1984), 49–99.
4 There had already been extensive contact
between Rome and Francia by this time. See
Susan Rankin, ‘Carolingian music’, in
Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian
Culture: Emulation and Innovation
(Cambridge University Press, 1994), 275–7;
and Christopher Page, The Christian West and
its Singers: The First Thousand Years (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010),
especially chapters 8–17.
5 Charlemagne was clearly considered to be an
emperor, but apparently he avoided taking that
title, perhaps wishing to emphasise that he
ruled a new, Christian empire rather than
simply taking on the mantle of the Romans. See
Pierre Riché, The Carolingians: A Family who
Forged Europe, trans. Michael Idomir Allen
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1993), 122–3.
6 See John J. Contreni, ‘The Carolingian
renaissance: education and literary culture’, in
Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), The New
Cambridge Medieval History, vol. II:
c. 700–c. 900 (Cambridge University Press,
2008), 709–57. See also the work of
Rosamond McKitterick, especially The
Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians,
751–987 (London and New York: Longman,
1983), and Charlemagne: The Formation of a
European Identity (Cambridge University
Press, 2008).
7 Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians
and the Written Word (Cambridge University
Press, 1989); and David Ganz, ‘Book
production in the Carolingian empire and the
spread of Carolingian minuscule’, in
McKitterick (ed.), The New Cambridge
Medieval History, vol. II, 786–808.
19 From abbey to cathedral and court
8 George Henderson, ‘Emulation and
invention in Carolingian art’, in
McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture,
248–73; and Lawrence Nees, ‘Art and
architecture’, in McKitterick (ed.), The
New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. II,
809–44.
9 Susan Rankin, ‘The making of Carolingian
Mass chant books’, in David Butler Cannata
et al. (eds), Quomodo cantabimus canticum?
Studies in Honor of Edward H. Roesner
(Middleton, WI: American Institute of
Musicology, 2008), 37–63.
10 Rankin, ‘Carolingian music’, 281–9.
11 The role of Gregory I is summarised in
David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A
Handbook (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993),
503–13.
12 See Rankin, ‘Carolingian music’, 290–1;
and Charles M. Atkinson, ‘Some thoughts on
music pedagogy in the Carolingian era’, in
Russell E. Murray Jr, Susan Forscher Weiss and
Cynthia J. Cyrus (eds), Music Education in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2010), 37–51.
13 On the origins of glossing, see McKitterick,
The Frankish Kingdoms, 289.
14 Text ed. and trans. in Margot Fassler,
‘Liturgy and sacred history in the
twelfth-century tympana at Chartres’, Art
Bulletin, 75 (1993), 506.
15 McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms, 281.
16 Many of the Saint-Gall manuscripts
have now been digitised as part of the
Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland.
See www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en (accessed
22 May 2014).
17 This is the mid-tenth-century manuscript
St-Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 484; see David
A. Bjork, ‘On the dissemination of Quem
quaeritis and the Visitatio sepulchri and the
chronology of their early sources’,
Comparative Drama, 14 (1980), 46–69.
18 James Grier, The Musical World of a
Medieval Monk: Adémar de Chabannes in
Eleventh-Century Aquitaine (Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
19 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, ‘The cult of Saint
Denis and Capetian kingship’, Journal of
Medieval History, 1 (1975), 43–69; and
William Chester Jordan, A Tale of Two
Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in
the Thirteenth Century (Princeton University
Press, 2009).
20 The reference to divine luce comes from the
verse of the Vespers responsory Cum sol
nocturnas, quoted in Anne Walters Robertson,
The Service-Books of the Royal Abbey of
Saint-Denis: Images of Ritual and Music in the
Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991),
230. The seventh responsory speaks of ‘the
angelic companies’, another Pseudo-
Dionysian concept. Ibid., 232.
21 Ibid., 245–8.
22 Spiegel addresses the creation of the idea of
the holy king in ‘The cult of Saint Denis’.
On scrofula, see Frank Barlow, ‘The King’s
evil’, English Historical Review, 95 (1980),
3–27.
23 Margot E. Fassler, The Virgin of Chartres:
Making History through Liturgy and the
Arts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2010).
24 Example 1.1 is edited from Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fonds
latin 15181, fol. 379v; image accessed from
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/
btv1b8447768b/f766.item (accessed 22 May
2014). The manuscript is the first part of a
two-volume early fourteenth-century noted
breviary from Notre-Dame of Paris according
to the CANTUS database (cantusdatabase.
org). Spelling is as given in the manuscript,
except that abbreviations have been silently
expanded and i/j and u/v have been given their
modern forms. Slurs indicate ligatures in the
source. This chant is also edited in Fassler, The
Virgin of Chartres, 414 (text and translation)
and 415 (music).
25 This reading is independent of Fassler’s,
which rightly stresses the music’s support of
the structural units of the text, along with
emphasis on key words. Ibid., 125–6.
26 Craig Wright, Music and Ceremony at
Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1550 (Cambridge
University Press, 1989).
27 The phrase docere verbo et exemplo is
common in Augustinian literature. This
paragraph is largely based on Margot
E. Fassler, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences
and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century
Paris (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
28 Thomas B. Payne, ‘Aurelianis civitas:
student unrest in medieval France and a
conductus by Philip the Chancellor’, Speculum,
75 (2000), 589–614.
29 Joseph Dyer, ‘Speculative “musica” and the
medieval University of Paris’, Music and
Letters, 90 (2009), 177–204.
30 Alyce A. Jordan, Visualizing Kingship in
the Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2002), v.
31 M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, The Making of
Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in
the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2008), 105, 261.
32 The melody is given as the first responsory
for Matins in Marcy J. Epstein, ‘Ludovicus
20 Alice V. Clark
decus regnantium: perspectives on the rhymed
office’, Speculum, 53 (1978), 316–17.
33 For the intersections among these three
genres, see John Stevens, Words and Music in
the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and
Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge University
Press, 1986), 80–2.
34 This melody is from a thirteenth-century
English source, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS
Bodley 79, fols 53v–56. Stevens, Words and
Music in the Middle Ages, 121–6.
35 Bernart’s origin is based on untrustworthy
sources and has been questioned; for a
summary of the issue see Elizabeth Aubrey,
The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996), 9.
36 From the seventh stanza of ‘Non es
meravelha s’eu chan’: Samuel N. Rosenberg,
Margaret Switten and Gérard Le Vot (eds and
trans.), Songs of the Troubadours and
Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and
Melodies (New York: Garland, 1998), 64–5.
37 From the seventh stanza of ‘Can vei la
lauzeta mover’: Rosenberg, Switten and Le Vot
(eds and trans.), Songs of the Troubadours and
Trouvères, 68–9.
38 On the self-referentiality of songs, see for
instance Mary O’Neill, Courtly Love Songs of
Medieval France: Transmission and Style in the
Trouvère Repertoire (Oxford University Press,
2006), 56–62.
39 Example 2.1 is edited from Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fonds
français 845, fol. 38r; image accessed from
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/
btv1b6000955r/f85.image.r=845.langEN
(accessed 22 May 2014). Spelling is as given in
the manuscript, except that abbreviations have
been silently expanded, apostrophes are given
when appropriate, and i/j and u/v have been
given their modern forms. Slurs indicate
ligatures in the source. See Christopher Page
(ed.), Songs of the Trouvères (Newton Abbot:
Antico Edition, 1995), xv (text and translation)
and 13 (music).
40 The various theories are summarised in
Aubrey, The Music of the Troubadours,
240–54. Christopher Page has made the fullest
study of the question of instrumental
participation in Voices and Instruments of the
Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and Songs
in France, 1100–1300 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1986).
41 See Aubrey, The Music of the
Troubadours, 51–65; and O’Neill, Courtly Love
Songs, 53–92.
42 Aubrey discusses the genres of troubadour
song in chapter 4 of The Music of the
Troubadours, 80–131.
43 The best introduction to Eleanor is Ralph
V. Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of
France, Queen of England (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2009).
44 O’Neill, Courtly Love Songs, especially
chapter 5, 132–73. In chapter 6, 174–205,
however, O’Neill argues that to some degree
Adam de la Halle attempts to reverse this
movement, returning to an older aesthetic.
45 Aubrey, The Music of the Troubadours, 49.
46 O’Neill, Courtly Love Songs, 13, 2.
47 Christopher Page has mined this area
particularly well in The Owl and the
Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France,
1100–1300 (London: Dent, 1989).
48 This song is discussed in Christopher Page,
‘Court and city in France, 1100–1300’, in
James McKinnon (ed.), Antiquity and the
Middle Ages: From Ancient Greece to the 15th
Century (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1990), 209–12, and in Page, The Owl and the
Nightingale, 42–60.
49 Most of this paragraph draws from
John Stevens et al., ‘Medieval drama’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014). See also Thomas P. Campbell,
‘Liturgical drama and community discourse’,
in Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter
(eds), The Liturgy of the Medieval Church
(Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute
Publications, 2001), 619–44.
50 Dunbar H. Ogden, ‘The staging of The Play
of Daniel in the twelfth century’, in Dunbar
H. Ogden (ed.), The Play of Daniel: Critical
Essays (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute
Publications, 1996), 15–17.
51 Page, The Owl and the Nightingale, 3.
52 Page, Voices and Instruments, 3–8.
53 Page, The Owl and the Nightingale, 42–4.
 2 Cathedral and court: music under the late
Capetian and Valois kings, to Louis XI
lawrence earp

The period extending from the end of the twelfth century to the middle of
the fifteenth marks the highpoint of French influence on European music.
French composers contributed brilliantly to contemporary genres after
1450, but it was in the earlier period that northern French composers
steered a path forward in an environment that paradoxically admitted
both constant renewal – a normal participatory music-making – and an
aesthetic of authority and fixity, the legacy of Carolingian liturgical chant.
The coordination of active musical creativity with constructivist techni-
ques of polyphonic elaboration in rational synthesis (is that what ‘French’
is?) created the fundamental profile of what we recognise as ‘Western’
music in the first place.

The Notre-Dame school

In the years from 1163 to 1250, a new cathedral of Notre-Dame was built
on the central island in Paris. Remarkably, the construction paralleled the
development of a new polyphonic music, the first to be regulated by
metrical rhythm. Much of what we know about the so-called Notre-
Dame school of composers comes from a music treatise penned perhaps
in the 1270s by ‘Anonymous IV’, an unnamed English student who had
once studied in Paris.1 He records the achievements of two composers,
Leonin, organista, author of a great book (magnus liber) of organa, and
Perotin, discantor, who made ‘better clausulae’ than Leonin.
Extant musical manuscripts confirm that the first great achievement of
the Notre-Dame composers lay in a collection of two-part organa (settings
of the Gregorian cantus firmus plus one added voice, the duplum). For
the most part, three plainchant genres were subject to elaboration: the
Gradual and Alleluia from the Mass, and the Great Responsory from the
Divine Office. As monophony, these are ‘responsorial’ chants, alternating
virtuosic solo passages with unison choral passages. In the new organa,
segments originally delivered by the soloist provide the cantus firmus, as
another soloist sings new music above. Segments originally delivered by
[21] the choir remained the domain of the choir.
22 Lawrence Earp

Example 2.1a Alleluia Nativitas, organum purum (beginning) by Leonin(?)

Example 2.1b Alleluia Nativitas, discant on ‘Ex semine’ (beginning) by Leonin(?)

Theorists distinguished two styles of polyphony, organum purum and

discant. Broadly speaking, the two styles respond to two patterns of text
declamation in the original plainchant. Segments of syllabic text were set
in organum purum, sustaining the individual pitches of the cantus firmus
in the long tones of the tenor, above which the added voice would
rhapsodise freely. Melismatic segments were set in faster-moving discant,
one or two notes in counterpoint against the cantus firmus. At first
probably unmeasured, by around 1200 discant segments exhibited metri-
cal rhythm based on a regular pulse. In these isolated discant segments of
Leonin’s two-part organa, a fateful step towards a fundamental prereq-
uisite of Western music occurs: the ability to control polyphonic voices
in rhythm. Examples 2.1a and b illustrate excerpts from a Notre-Dame
organum purum and discant, extracted from the organum Alleluia
Nativitas for the Nativity of the Virgin.2
Craig Wright has shown that Leonin may be identified with a canon at
the cathedral of Notre-Dame who lived from around 1135 to after 1201.3
Anonymous IV credits Leonin as the best organista, a specialist in organum
purum. Does he mean a skilled singer capable of negotiating a new work as a
performance unfolds or a figure closer to what we would label a ‘composer’,
someone who literally puts together a work, which is then notated and
transmitted as an entity? The question is currently debated.4
Anonymous IV has much more to say about Perotin (d. c. 1238?). First,
his superior skill as discantor produced better clausulae (phrases), discant
segments that can replace corresponding segments in Leonin’s settings.
Such ‘substitute clausulae’ utilise the same snippet of chant, but exhibit
increasing rhythmic sophistication. Our most complete source of music of
the Notre-Dame school, the Florence Codex, finished in 1248 for the
dedication of Louis IX’s Sainte-Chapelle, has a fascicle of no fewer than
23 Cathedral and court

Example 2.1c Alleluia Nativitas, discant on ‘Ex semine’ (beginning) by Perotin(?)

462 of these two-voice substitute discant segments.5 Example 2.1c illus-

trates a modernised reworking of Example 2.1b, presumably by Perotin.6
Unlike most chansonniers of the troubadours and trouvères, manu-
scripts of polyphony in this period lack composer attributions, but thanks
to Anonymous IV seven specific works preserved in the extant manu-
scripts can be attributed to Perotin. Two highly sophisticated four-part
works can even be dated: the Viderunt (Gradual for the third Christmas
Mass) of 1198 and the Sederunt (Gradual for St Stephen’s Day) of 1199.
Three of the attributions involve a second genre cultivated by the Notre-
Dame school, the conductus, a freely composed setting of strophic Latin
poetry in one to three voices. Several conductus texts can be attributed to
Philip the Chancellor (b. c. 1160–70; d. 1236), a direct contemporary of
Perotin, and in fact Beata viscera, a monophonic conductus, is a collabo-
ration between them.

The early motet

Notre-Dame organa and conductus soon receded from compositional
history, but a third genre, the motet, became the crucible for all advances
in polyphony for at least the next 125 years. Unfortunately, our informant
Anonymous IV is completely silent on its origins. The usual musicological
narrative links the earliest motets to the active development of discant in
the early thirteenth century: the initial step that created the motet was the
application of a poetic text to the most modern rhythmised music of the
time, pre-existing discant clausulae.
Consider again the Alleluia for the Nativity of the Virgin (Example
2.1a). Our earliest source, W1 (c. 1230), transmits a rudimentary discant
setting the words ex semine (Example 2.1b), modernised in the Florence
Codex (Example 2.1c).7 Indeed this modernised clausula saw double duty
in a work that Anonymous IV attributed to Perotin, the three-voice Alleluia
Nativitas, with the addition of a triplum voice. Both as a two- and three-
voice form we can count this segment one of the ‘better clausulae’ composed
by Perotin. The text, probably by Philip the Chancellor, fits Perotin’s music
and makes the segment into a motet (Example 2.2).8
24 Lawrence Earp

Example 2.2 Perotin(?) and Philip the Chancellor(?), motet Ex semine Abrahe/Ex semine

Ex semine From the seed

Abrahe, divino moderamine, of Abraham, by divine intervention,
igne, pio numine, producis, Domine, with fire, with godly strength, you bring
forth, O Lord,
hominis salutem paupertate nuda, mankind’s salvation in abject poverty,
virginis nativitate de tribu Juda. through the birth of a virgin from the tribe
of Judah.
Iam propinas ovum per natale novum, Now that you pass on your egg through this
marvel of childbirth,
piscem, panem dabis, you will give us fish and bread
partu sine semine. from this birth without a seed.9

In explicating the mysteries of the birth of the Virgin Mary, Philip

framed his text with the words of the cantus firmus, and skilfully incorpo-
rated bits of text from elsewhere in the Alleluia verse (these connections
are set in italic type). Note that the poetic impulse behind the motet has a
different emphasis from that of a purely occasional conductus text.
Because of its ultimate origins in liturgical organum, the motet’s text
glosses the original liturgical context of the parent organum; indeed, it is
possible that early motets, like tropes, were used liturgically.
Besides responding to the liturgical moment, a poet faced a special
challenge, for it happens that the discant clausula was not a kind of music
suited to traditional poetic forms, which build strophes out of regular
patterns of rhyme and syllable count. The melody of the cantus firmus is
25 Cathedral and court

usually broken into groups of two or three notes, separated by rests and set
in rhythmic ostinato, as in Example 2.2. Phrases in the duplum voice play
off the recurring patterns, now bridging across rests, now pausing with the
tenor. The text given above divides lines according to their distribution
across each statement of the five-note ostinato. One might also print the
text observing rhymes, which produces a flood of irregular short lines:
neither option produces an orthodox piece of poetry, because musical
exigencies generated ad hoc poetic designs.
Thomas Payne argues that the creation of the motet was a product of
collaboration between Perotin and Philip the Chancellor: its conceptual
beginnings lie in surviving organum prosulas (texting just the duplum of
the four-voice Viderunt and Sederunt) whose texts can be ascribed to
Philip.10 One might push Payne’s thesis a step further and seek the earliest
notation of rhythm itself in the application of text, for this simple means
was available well before modal rhythmic notation, first attested in W1.11
The motet texts themselves suggest musical rhythm, a sing-song that results
from the alternation of strong and weak word accents organised into lines of
specific syllable count, and from the chiming of the frequent rhymes. The
texted form of the duplum voice of Perotin’s Viderunt is thus a surviving
remnant of compositional process: each phrase of text preserves the
rhythms of a phrase of music right from the start – a true collaboration of
a skilled musician and a skilled poet. The other two voices, the triplum and
quadruplum, did not require separate notation, for they operated closely in
tandem with the texted duplum through voice exchange, and could apply
the same words. Guided by Philip’s text, performers learned Perotin’s
music. Such a scenario allows us to imagine the construction of Perotin’s
organum as a ‘work’, even before an efficient notation was devised to fix it
onto parchment.

The motet in the mid-thirteenth century

Motets of the early and middle years of the thirteenth century are protean
works, products of collective and collaborative creative efforts. The ‘case
history’ of motets based on Perotin’s Ex semine clausula in its two forms, a
two-voice discant updating Leonin’s Alleluia Nativitas and a three-voice
discant taking its proper place in Perotin’s new three-voice Alleluia
Nativitas, can serve as a simple example. We have seen that Philip’s
poem Ex semine Abrahe was key to the initial fixing of the rhythms of
the new work, and thus motet and clausula were interlinked from the
beginning. Once the music was set, it was available for further use. For
example, the three-voice version appears with a new text for the triplum,
26 Lawrence Earp

again alluding to a liturgical context by borrowing words from the parent

Alleluia.12
Crucial to the explosive development of the motet was its quick accept-
ance of vernacular French texts. Two use Perotin’s discant as their musical
source: Se j’ai amé/Ex semine and Hier main trespensis/Ex semine.13 Most
often, new vernacular texts are in no way tied to the liturgical context of the
tenor cantus firmus, but the tenor text may relate emblematically or ironi-
cally to the texts of the upper voices. In general, the direction of develop-
ment is towards more phrase overlap between the voices than we observe in
Example 2.2, a musical characteristic confirmed by poly-textuality (a sep-
arate poem for each upper voice) and different verse structures in each text.
Often new music as well as new text can replace an existing voice.
Once the motet entered the world of vernacular literature, it began to
participate in a highly ramified and interconnected cultural endeavour. Its
polyphonic and poly-textual nature made it the ideal form for the syn-
chronous juxtaposition of diverse materials (the French motet can draw
upon the wide variety of contemporary trouvère genres, such as the gran
chant, chanson de mal mariée, chanson de toile, pastourelle and rondet, as
well as the ubiquitous refrain), which in turn stand in dialogue with the
sacred associations of the tenor. For example, one could juxtapose a male
and a female voice, or different voices that represent different sides of a
single persona, or place courtly love conceits side by side with Marian
adoration and with earthy pastoral high jinks.14
The French motet epitomises in miniature the most characteristic
large-scale literary production of this period: the narrative with lyrical
insertions (‘hybrid narrative’). Indeed, the first hybrid narrative, Jean
Renart’s Roman de la rose (c. 1210?), which includes forty-six lyrics of
diverse genres cited in the course of the narrative, appeared about the
same time as the first French motets. The most familiar of the hybrid
narratives is Le jeu de Robin et de Marion (c. 1283, seventeen refrains
and chansons), a pastoral drama by Adam de la Halle (b. c. 1245–50;
d. 1285–8?), working at a French outpost, the Angevin court at Naples.
Integration and unity were not artistically desirable traits in this aesthetic:
its essence lies in the unexpected and ingenious juxtaposition of dissimilar
materials. Intertextual citations, cross-references within and between gen-
res (especially prominent in French motets that cite refrains), can be
bewilderingly complex.15
For us today the most elusive aspect of the mid-thirteenth-century
motet is its social context.16 Hybrid narratives, such as Renart’s Roman de
la rose, often present credible social contexts for the lyrical insertions. No
one in a hybrid narrative stands up at a banquet to sing a polyphonic motet,
however. The best information we have is the statement of the Norman
27 Cathedral and court

theorist Johannes Grocheio, writing in Paris around 1300: ‘This kind of

music should not be set before a lay public because they are not alert to its
refinement nor are they delighted by hearing it, but [it should only be
performed] before the clergy and those who look for the refinements of
skills.’17 Yet the clerics, in creating works for their peers, proved themselves
thoroughly conversant with the vernacular courtly-popular literary culture
of the day. In the French motet, the elite clerical culture transforms ‘lewd
entertainment’ into ‘spiritual performance’.18

The late thirteenth-century motet

By the end of the thirteenth century the motet had assumed a level of
complexity that excluded the casual contribution of a new poem or the
revision of a single musical voice, favouring instead skilled individual
creators of unique works. The new diversity meant that the mensural
system needed to be regularised. For a time, the old ostinato patterns of
the Notre-Dame tenors held sway along with the Notre-Dame cantus firmi
(cf. Example 2.2). But when a refrain with pre-existing music was incor-
porated into the upper voices, it meant that the tenor required more
flexibility so that the tenor pitches could be adjusted as needed to fit
with the refrain, and hence there was a growing urgency for the exact
specification of rhythmic values. The new system of mensural notation
drew upon the notational figures of Gregorian chant, utilising three tradi-
tional shapes, but now assigning them the durations of long ( ), breve ( )
and semibreve ( ). A definitive and rational mensural notation was
codified by the theorist Franco of Cologne around 1280.19
The late thirteenth century was a period of great experimentation. For
example, the motet Mout me fu grief/Robin m’aime/Portare incorporates
Marion’s well-known opening song from Adam de la Halle’s pastoral
drama Jeu de Robin et de Marion as its duplum.

Robin m’aime, Robin m’a;
Robin m’a demandee, si m’avra.
Robin m’achata corroie
et aumonniere de soie;
pour quoi donc ne l’ameroie?
Aleuriva!
Robin m’aime, Robin m’a;
Robin m’a demandee, si m’avra.
Robin loves me, Robin has me;
Robin asked for me, and he will have me.
Robin bought me a belt
and a silk purse;
why then would I not love him?
Hurrah!
Robin loves me, Robin has me;
Robin asked for me, and he will have me.

Maintaining the song’s original rhythms, it is the duplum’s phrase struc-

ture and irregular repeating patterns (ABaabAB, rondeau-like) that shape
28 Lawrence Earp

the overall structure of the motet, not the tenor. Yet the composer was
also able to incorporate a second bit of pre-existing music, a Gregorian
cantus firmus carried by the tenor.20 This was but one experiment
among many.
Beginning with collective and collaborative creative efforts, the motet
underwent enormous expansion in the thirteenth-century creative nexus,
more and more delighting in connections that touched every sort of
literary and musical creation until the emergence at the end of the century
of individual works. The late thirteenth-century motet exhibits a striking
variety of organisational techniques, each aiming at a new flexibility in
handling long-range structural articulation that had not been possible
with the short ostinatos that structured the earliest motets. In the early
fourteenth century, by dint of powerful intellectual application, this quest
for variety converged in a new approach, which created a concentrated
and reflexive form that would overturn the old aesthetic of rupture.

The ars nova and the Roman de Fauvel

Until this point, musical rhythm had been largely based on triple metre
(‘perfect time’). The potentialities of duple metre (‘imperfect time’) were
first rationally worked out in the early fourteenth century. The new
notation, epitomising a dawning new age of music, is a product of the
ars nova, a term attested by four witnesses of around 1325. While two
music-theory treatises celebrate the new developments, a third treatise
and a papal document deride them. Regardless of opinion, the ars nova
brought an enormous expansion to the possibilities of organising and
notating rhythm, best expressed by the music theorist Johannis des
Muris: ‘whatever can be sung can be written down’.21
The most important musical monument of the early ars nova is a version
of the Roman de Fauvel found in only one manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque
Nationale, fr. 146.22 It expands two earlier allegorical hybrid narratives (of
1310 and 1314) critiquing the government of King Philip IV and admon-
ishing his heirs Louis X and Philip V. The revised Fauvel of fr. 146 (c. 1318)
incorporates seventy-two miniatures as well as 169 musical insertions,
including items of Gregorian chant, newly composed pseudo-Gregorian
chant, conductus (some with newly composed music), motets, French
refrains, ars nova chansons, lais and satirical or obscene sottes chansons.
Perhaps compiled with the patronage of a prince in the king’s council,
the Roman de Fauvel gives satiric artistic expression to the discontent felt
by officials of the royal chancery over a government in crisis. It is a topsy-
turvy world ruled by Fauvel, a corrupt half-man-half-horse creature; here,
29 Cathedral and court

Example 2.3 Periodic structure in Philippe de Vitry(?), motet Garrit gallus/In nova fert/[Tenor]

the sort of grotesqueries formerly relegated to the margins of a manuscript

have been transformed into the principal players, front and centre.23
Though we lack certain proof, for no music is attributed in the manu-
script, it appears likely that the young Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361) was
the principal composer of new music for the Fauvel project. Arguably the
most progressive musical work of the entire manuscript is his ingenious
motet Garrit Gallus/In nova fert/Neuma.24 The quotation of the opening of
Ovid’s Metamorphoses at the start of the duplum voice – ‘In nova fert
animus mutatas dicere formas’ (‘I am moved to speak of forms changed
into new bodies’) – epitomises the work’s message, an expression of the
political transformations that threatened society. In this motet Vitry bril-
liantly succeeds in transferring the essence of this message – the abstract
notion of transformation – into the very core of the musical structure. He
accomplishes this first through the absolutely unprecedented rhythmic
design of the tenor, which transforms itself from perfect to imperfect time
and back again, employing red ink for the imperfect notes and rests, an ars
nova innovation (Example 2.3). (In the original notation, the note shapes
form a palindrome.)
30 Lawrence Earp

Further, in composing out the poetic idea, Vitry drew on a new aesthetic
of integration. We have seen that the Roman de Fauvel as a whole incorpo-
rates both old and new works among the musical insertions. Sometimes
they stand in loose juxtaposition with the narrative, an extreme expression
of thirteenth-century discontinuity, while at other times they form coherent
episodes. In a performative sense, they are ‘staged’.25 The same can be said
of the motet. Since its inception, the form had exhibited discontinuities: a
stratification of voices and especially poly-textuality, which before had
allowed for a refreshing independence in phrase lengths between the differ-
ent voices. In this motet, Vitry ‘stages’ these discontinuities by coordinating
the phrase lengths of both upper voices with the tenor. In Example 2.3, the
rests above the tenor talea indicate the placement of rests in the duplum and
triplum (there are no other rests in these voices).26 Except at the very
beginning and at the very end, rests always recur at the beginning and
end of the tenor segment transformed into imperfect time. By means of this
‘periodicity’, the whole musical structure is subject to transformation, not
just the tenor. The poetic message is integrated into the deepest structure of
the work, permeating it.

The polyphonic chanson

The motet was not the only genre revolutionised by the Roman de Fauvel.
The Roman de Fauvel also turned vernacular song on its head. Although it
took longer to accomplish the full measure of change in the chanson than
it did in the motet, eventually the transformation set in motion in the early
fourteenth century came to fruition with polyphonic chansons in ‘fixed
forms’ that saw their first maturity in the 1340s in the works of Guillaume
de Machaut (c. 1300–1377) and his contemporaries. Ultimately built on
thirteenth-century dance genres, the three fixed forms – ballade, rondeau
and virelai – each incorporate the text and music of refrain and stanza in a
different pattern.
The emergence of the Machaut-style chanson involved at least three
steps.27 First, the projection of rhythm through syllabic declamation at
times dissolves in melismatic passages. In the monophonic fixed-form
chansons inserted into the Roman de Fauvel, melismas can sever the direct
tie to the sung dance, for now syllabic declamation no longer animates the
rhythm; further, the melismas effectively slow the text delivery, or relegate it
to isolated active patches. At the same time, melismatic melody imbues the
refrain form with an unaccustomed highbrow artifice.
Another stage of development, which we can follow in early fourteenth-
century hybrid narratives, lends the ballade a certain dignity stemming from
31 Cathedral and court

long poetic lines, as had been characteristic of the most precious chansons of
the trouvères. Finally, the chanson takes on polyphony, a new disjunctive
polyphony rare in the chanson before Machaut. Earlier essays in the poly-
phonic setting of refrain lyrics, such as those of Adam de la Halle, exhibit an
integrated projection of the poetic structure, too uniform to command
sustained compositional interest.28 Rendered fully independent by the new
notation, now the tenor operates freely, creating discant-based counter-
point with the texted cantus voice. Other parameters that may be in play,
and which may be staged with disjunction or with integration depending on
the needs of the moment, include text projection (syllabic or melismatic,
normal or syncopated declamation patterns), tonal centres (degree of tonal
unity, use of directed progressions) and sonorities.
As with the motet, our role as attentive listeners in coming to terms
with this aesthetic is to discover the poetic image that the work reifies.
Examples are legion in Machaut: the harsh leaps and unexpected turns, as
well as the wholly unorthodox cadence formation of the ballade Honte,
paour, represent the contortions a faithful lover must endure; the fra-
grance of the rose in the rondeau Rose, lis, which is sensed in sonorous
descending progressions, now with E♮, now with E♭; the ‘sweet’ opening
sonority of the rondeau Douce, viare, which concludes on a soft B♭; one
might continue such examples at will.29

Guillaume de Machaut and the Remede de Fortune

The figure of Guillaume de Machaut looms large in any discussion of
fourteenth-century music. Equally distinguished as a poet and musician,
he was unusual for the care he took in the preservation of well-organised
manuscript collections of his works.30
Machaut’s early works were written in the service of John of
Luxembourg, King of Bohemia (r. 1311–46), son of an emperor and father
of another emperor, an itinerant king active in political affairs throughout
Europe. A favourable marriage sealed an alliance with King Philip VI of
France: in 1332, John’s daughter Bonne married John, Duke of Normandy
(the future King John II the Good, r. 1350–64). Bonne spent most of her
time at Vincennes, the royal manor just east of Paris. It was here that most
of the royal children were born and raised, including Charles (the future
King Charles V, r. 1364–80) and his siblings, many of them patrons of
music of the next generation.
Although full documentation does not survive, it appears likely that
Machaut served Bonne at Vincennes at least from around 1340 until she
succumbed to the Black Death in 1349. It was at her court that Machaut
32 Lawrence Earp

Example 2.4 Guillaume de Machaut, ballade Dame de qui toute ma joie vient, beginning

produced the hybrid narrative Remede de Fortune, a didactic treatise on

poetic forms couched in a love story that waxes and seems to wane (one
rotation of Fortune’s wheel?).31 The seven interlarded model genres, all
supplied with music, include a lai, complainte, chanson royale, duplex
ballade, ballade, virelai and rondeau, that is, the three fixed forms (with
two forms of ballade) as well as the lyric lai (itself newly ‘fixed’). All of the
fixed-form chansons are radically new, to the point that a thirteenth-
century courtier would scarcely recognise them as music. Dame de qui
toute ma joie vient, the second of the two ballades, is typical of the new
style, now holding back and lingering on a syllable, now pushing rambunc-
tiously ahead, always playfully unpredictable and yet affording a satisfying
whole (Example 2.4).32
In the Remede de Fortune Machaut created his own universe, a self-
contained world of allusion and intertextual complexity. While he does
cite from past authorities such as Adam de la Halle, more frequently he
33 Cathedral and court

cites himself.33 Like the complete works themselves, it is a world ruled by

Machaut, the professional author.

The motet after the Roman de Fauvel

Philippe de Vitry had a particular expressive purpose in mind in compos-
ing the motet Garrit/In nova fert/Neuma. In realising that purpose, he hit
upon the new concept of periodicity, a systematic coordination of long-
range phrase articulation in all voices. Once such a powerful organisa-
tional technique was discovered, it soon transformed the motet. In so far
as we can tell, all subsequent motets of Vitry, and most of the twenty-three
motets of Machaut, are stamped with periodicity, always in the service of a
particular poetic image.
As the century progressed, further developments continued to serve a
poetic focus. For example, many ars nova motets have two sections, with
an additional statement or more of the color (melody of the cantus
firmus) in a different rhythmicisation, usually in diminution by one-
half. The second section frequently incorporates hocket, the ‘hiccup’
effect of an isolated note in one part emphasised by a rest in the other
part, a striking texture that enhances articulation of periodicity in the
diminished taleae, thus making relationships clear that had been obscure
in the section of long rhythmic values. An early example, Vitry’s
O canenda vulgo/Rex quem metrorum/Rex regum (1330s?), leaves the
diminished section without text. Yet the unusual texture is justified by
a poetic image, announced in the final lines of the duplum, which speak
of ‘[the king] whose virtues, mores, race, and the deeds of his son I
cannot write; may they be written above the heavens’.34 What more fitting
response to follow than pure music, an evocation of the music of the
spheres?
After around 1360, motets might appear in three or four sections, with
proportional reduction of tenor rhythms, as in Ida capillorum/Portio
nature/[Ante tronum], in four sections in the proportions 6:4:3:2.35
Further, the periodicity of the upper voices often extends itself well beyond
rests (as in Example 2.3), even to ‘isorhythm’ throughout each talea, in
which each iteration is absolutely identical, as regards rhythm, from one
talea to the next.36
Isorhythm in this literal sense has often been regarded as a desirable, even
inevitable, consequence of periodicity. Paradoxically, however, isorhythm is
a symptom of the breakdown of the founding principles of the ars nova
motet, for it tends towards disintegration – strophic projection – instead of
the integration and accumulation of poetic and musical expression that had
34 Lawrence Earp

been the ideal of the motet since Philippe de Vitry. More and more the motet
tends to represent a certain generic model, a series of sections, each culmi-
nating in imposing washes of hocket sonorities. The gain was a form of
polyphony impressive for public display, since a motet effectively cast in
movements, with regular pockets of sublime sonorities, could be appreciated
for an overall effect, as an assertion of power. This, along with easy adapt-
ability to dedicatory or celebratory Latin texts in a variety of forms, made the
motet useful in state functions in grand architectural settings.37 Later exam-
ples of grand political motets include works by Ciconia (a native of Liège) as
well as many by Guillaume Du Fay.

Towards a new synthesis

The years from 1360 to 1450 saw palpable increases both in the functions
assigned to polyphony and in the diffusion of works. In terms of French
music, the period begins with the consolidation of the motet and poly-
phonic chanson within the French orbit, and the first applications of
compositional techniques learned in those genres to sacred art music. It
ends with the cultivation over a wide geographical area of a broadened
spectrum of forms, for use in a variety of sacred and political contexts, in
which the French input, decisive at the beginning, was tempered and
merged with streams from the Low Countries, Italy and England in new
syntheses, which eventually consolidated into the pan-European ‘interna-
tional’ style that we associate with the Josquin generation of the late
fifteenth century.38
Despite enormous social instability, a number of historical develop-
ments contributed to an environment in which musicians and music
circulated freely, leading to the diffusion of the advanced French poly-
phonic style beyond Francophone limits and allowing cross-pollination
with indigenous elements. Among these factors were (1) a weakened and
unstable central French government under Charles VI and the increased
influence of outlying courts; (2) the cultivation and development of
sophisticated art polyphony at the courts of the pope and cardinals in
Avignon, with a new centre opening in Rome as a consequence of the
Great Schism; (3) the international diplomatic missions, with full musical
retinues, that gathered at the early fifteenth-century church councils
designed to lift the Schism; and (4) an increase in private endowments
for polyphony in side chapels of churches, giving rise to service works in
sets and cycles. It would be a long and uneven process to establish artistic
polyphony at court and church; indeed, the process was far from finished
at the end of the period covered in this chapter.
35 Cathedral and court

France under Charles VI and the Valois princes

The death of Charles V marked the beginning of a long period of decline
for France as a central power. Charles VI (r. 1380–1422), at first too young
to rule, then subject to intermittent bouts of insanity, stood by as his
brother and his uncles vied for power. This phase of the Hundred Years
War saw the English gain traction, with the victory of King Henry V at
Agincourt (1415) and the occupation until 1435 of northern France by the
English.39 Slow recovery, with the encouragement of Joan of Arc and the
forces she rallied, came with Charles VII (r. 1422–61), crowned at Reims in
1429. The princely power centres, particularly Burgundy and Berry, stood
in fierce competition with each other for the best performers and compos-
ers, although a given ruler’s active support for music might vary in times of
peace or war, depending on financial resources. Dynastic marriages of
Charles V’s sisters and their progeny brought French influence even further
afield, to Aragon and northern Italy. One further important princely patron
important for the diffusion of northern French culture, with close ties to
Aragon, was Gaston Fébus, comte de Foix and vicomte de Béarn
(r. 1343–91). Froissart reported that Fébus not only ‘took great pleasure
in minstrelsy, for he was well versed in it’, but also ‘gladly had his clerks sing
polyphonic chansons, rondeaux and virelais in his presence’.40 As musi-
cians moved around, the cultivation of French polyphony radiated further.

Music at court
The favourable survival of archival sources for the Valois dukes of
Burgundy have made it possible to form a detailed picture of courtly
musical activities in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.41
Servants of widely varying musical skills provided a broad range of musical
functions. Trumpeters played an essential role, conveying military orders in
the din of battle (indeed they were issued with armour). Their fanfares,
along with the blare of the minstrels, also contributed to the pomp accom-
panying the duke’s grand entry into a city, or added to the clangour of the
tournament, or to the ceremonial tattoo at diplomatic gatherings and peace
conferences.
Closer to the duke (and also issued with armour in war) was his harper, a
courtier who not only provided soft music as an ornament to the chamber
or to the duke’s immediate proximity in the banquet hall, but was also
essential for the duke’s diversion over his numerous displacements between
Flanders, Burgundy and Paris. Sometimes such virtuosos of harp and song
can be identified as known composers (for example, Jaquemin de Senleches,
36 Lawrence Earp

fl. 1382–3, and later Gilles Binchois, c. 1400–60), allowing us to imagine a

social context for a portion of the extant written repertoire. Other chamber
valets serving the duke (or ladies-in-waiting serving the duchess) might
cultivate musical skills as a singer-poet (faiseur), or play estampies on the
portative organ or clavichord (eschequier).42
Chapel singers and choirboys were essential to the cultivation of the holy
rites, even when the court was in transit. While plainsong sufficed for
church processions as well as the day-to-day Office, Philip the Bold’s chapel
performed polyphony for special expanded celebrations at Christmas,
Easter, Pentecost and All Saints’ Day, as well as New Year’s Day.
Finally, among the musicians serving at court were minstrels skilled in
strings, winds, percussion, portative organ and clavichord, who played for
the entries, banquets and balls that accompanied weddings, baptisms and
important political gatherings. Minstrels performed music learned by
memory, perhaps employing strategies worked out in meetings – the
so-called minstrel schools – held yearly in different cities during Lent.43
The grandest occasions were supported by the full range of court musicians,
at times massing the forces of several separate courts with town musicians.
Perhaps the most notorious large gathering, occasioned by a planned
crusade against the Turks after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, was
Duke Philip the Good’s ‘Feast of the Pheasant’ held the next year in Lille,
which enacted musical entremets between chapel musicians in a miniature
church at one end of the hall and minstrels performing from an enormous
pastry at the other.44

The Avignon papacy and the Great Schism

Pope Benedict XII (r. 1334–42) had established a college of some dozen
singers for papal Masses, a group that subsequent popes maintained
throughout the fourteenth century.45 Although solemn feasts, bound
more rigidly by tradition and often officiated or at least attended by
the pope, were sung in plainchant, polyphony was probably introduced in
lesser feasts and left to the direction of the college of singers. Polyphonic
Mass Ordinaries could be performed for most of the year. It was also
possible, at least by the early fifteenth century, to use the organ in hymns,
probably in alternatim practice (alternating verses, one in the choir, unac-
companied, the next in the organ, instrumentally elaborating the cantus
firmus).
The importance of Avignon as a musical centre in the fourteenth
century was due not merely to the pope’s singers, but also to the chaplains
and clerks in the retinues of the many resident cardinals, whose
37 Cathedral and court

households rivalled those of secular princes in splendour. Grand festivals

celebrating visits of kings and great princes offered ample occasion for
musical exchanges and interaction. Surviving written polyphony celebra-
tes particularly the more luxury-loving popes.46
The emergence of the pope and ambient cardinals as patrons of music
came to a head with the return to Rome and the Great Schism (1378–1417).
The reconstituted Roman papacy maintained the Avignonese model of
bureaucracy and patronage, as well as a chapel of skilled singers from
northern dioceses. In addition, the Roman pope controlled lucrative bene-
fices in territories that aligned with Rome, notably the county of Hainault
and bishopric of Liège, which would funnel skilled musicians to Rome.
Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370–1412) of Liège, who journeyed to Rome around
1390, was one of the first of a long line that would include Du Fay and later
Josquin des Prez.47 Ciconia is best known for a series of political motets that
synthesise French and Italian elements, and for his Italian songs.48 A
significant work in French is his virelai Sus un’ fontayne, perhaps written
for the Visconti court at Pavia, which quotes the opening passages of three
French ballades of Philipoctus de Caserta, an Italian composer who wrote
exclusively in the most complex French style.49

Musical styles in the years around 1400: an ars subtilior

The style of motet and chanson that consolidated around 1360 was well
known in the courts and curia of the late fourteenth century. An example –
the most widely transmitted work of the entire fourteenth century – is the
ballade De ce que fols pense (‘What a fool thinks’) by Pierre des Molins, a
chaplain of John II who served the captured French king in English exile
during the years 1357–9. (He is later found in the service of the duc de
Berry.) To judge from its refrain, ‘d’ainsi languir en estrange contree’
(‘thus to languish in a foreign country’), the ballade was written in
England. Works of a core ars nova repertoire such as this one seem to
have been cultivated for many years: to judge from transmission patterns,
perhaps as late as around 1420.
Another popular style of artistic polyphony cultivated in these courts
(one with no precedent in Machaut) is the mimetic chanson, particularly
the so-called ‘bird-call virelai’, such as Jean de Vaillant’s widely known
Par maintes foys (‘Many times’). Here the disruptive call of the envious
cuckoo competes with the complex song of the nightingale, providing a
neat justification for a rhythmic innovation, in which four fast minims can
replace three, in effect shifting between quaver triplets and groups of four
semiquavers.
38 Lawrence Earp

The confrontation and combination of disjunct elements that poly-

phony makes possible occasionally affords a glimpse of a realm of music
normally left unwritten. For example, the anonymous virelai Contre le
temps et la sason jolye/He! Mari, mari! (‘Against the pretty weather and
season/Hey, husband, husband!’) pits a virtuosic and rhythmically com-
plex upper voice against a simple dance-song in the tenor. (The opening
text of the upper voice is a pun, with the additional meaning of ‘against the
time’ or ‘against the measure’.) We can only be grateful that a window on
what must have been a large and vital phenomenon at court survives in
such a work: the performance of a sung dance on the sort of refrain known
since the thirteenth century. This and a few similar works delight in a
stylistic disjunction between ultra-refinement and a continuing oral tra-
dition, a rupture savoured in high French courts as an outward manifes-
tation of cultural sophistication. Such works became even more common
in the course of the fifteenth century, for instance the charming Filles a
marier (‘Girls to be married’) by Binchois on a popular song tenor Se tu
t’en marias, tu t’en repentiras (‘If you get married you’ll regret it’).50
By the 1380s some works display an ars subtilior, a fever pitch of com-
plexity, the ultimate expression of high French culture.51 Justification for
extreme compositional virtuosity sometimes lies in mimesis, of which Par
maintes foys is a modest example. At other times, a work may comment in
apparent irony on the current woeful state of music, as in the very complex
ballade by Guido, Or voit tout en aventure (‘Now everything is run amok’),
which employs three different note shapes to express the same duration,
seeming to prompt the refrain ‘Certes ce n’est pas bien fayt’ (‘Certainly this
is not well made’). On the one hand this navel-gazing may appear to focus
on musical developments of restricted value and function, but on the other
such works manifest a growing focus on the individual artist.52
The most skilled of these ars subtilior musicians also played games of
one-upmanship with each other, multiplying intertextual citations and
allusions in their works. A good example is the ‘En attendant’ series,
involving at least two rondeaux and three ballades by various composers,
works that have been related to the ill-fated Neapolitan campaign of Louis
I, duc d’Anjou, of the early 1380s, aided by Pope Clement VII and Bernabò
Visconti.53
The complex style also manifests itself in many dedicatory songs, such
as ballades for Pope Clement VII, ballades celebrating Gaston Fébus and
ballades celebrating the wedding of John, duc de Berry, and Jeanne de
Boulogne (a princess raised by Fébus) in 1389. Characteristics of the style
include fast ornamental passages in complex cross-rhythms, motet-like
hocket segments and held notes to set off the refrain rhetorically. Long
after simpler styles had begun to dominate the scene, such highly refined
39 Cathedral and court

and hyper-virtuosic display was prized in aristocratic circles quite far

afield, as for example in Du Fay’s ballade Resvelliés vous (‘Rouse your-
selves’) for the wedding of Carlo Malatesta da Pesaro and Vittoria di
Lorenzo Colonna at Rimini in 1423.

Church councils and papal politics

An effort to end the Schism at the brief Council of Pisa (1409) succeeded
only in electing a third pope. It was the Council of Constance (1414–18),
culminating in the election of Martin V in 1417, that finally deposed the
pretenders. Countless receptions and ceremonies of high officials of
church and state, processions and grand Masses gave thousands of par-
ticipants ample opportunity to hear diverse practices, both the unwritten
musical collaborations of trumpeters and minstrels and the artistic poly-
phony of chapel singers.
One index of the reception specifically of French music at Constance is
seen in the contrafacts (new textings of old music) of the poet and
composer Oswald von Wolkenstein (c. 1376–1445), in the service of
King Sigismund of Luxembourg, an architect of the Council. Among
several popular French works that Oswald heard was Vaillant’s Par main-
tes foys, reworked as Der mai mit lieber zal (‘May, with a lovely throng’).54
Vaillant’s virelai also appeared in the Strasbourg manuscript (Bibliothèque
Municipale, 222 C.22, burned in 1871) with a sacred contrafact text Ave
virgo gloriosa. It must have been jarring for French clerics to hear familiar
vernacular chansons subjected to Latin sacred contrafacture by German
and Bohemian clerics, let alone the amusingly incomprehensible prolixity of
von Wolkenstein’s South Tyrolian dialect. Thus did foreigners reimagine
French musical art. Even so, the new Latin sacred settings were attractive
vehicles, communicating their messages in the appealing garb of a chanson
rather than the high formality of a motet. It is worth considering this and
other possible scenarios (including English input at the re-established papal
chapel in Rome, and the English occupation of Paris and northern France)
to ground the development of the cantilena motet (more like a chanson with
sacred text than a traditional motet), a new genre emerging in the 1420s.55
Several manuscripts document the widespread transmission of English
music to the Continent during the extended period of the Council of Basel
(1431–49).56 By now the cantilena motet was a well-established fact; at this
point the most useful lesson for further development lay in the enormous
potential of undergirding several movements of the Mass Ordinary with a
single cantus firmus, a technique first found in some English Masses of the
1420s.57 The compositional (and aesthetic) lessons of the old motet were
40 Lawrence Earp

brought to bear in this multi-movement ‘tenor Mass’, a form increasingly

employed in Mass cycles composed for special functions.

Votive Masses and anniversaries, sets and cycles

Even at large churches throughout a good part of the fifteenth century,
High Mass in the choir remained hidebound, celebrated in monophonic
plainchant. Nevertheless, manuscripts show that as the fifteenth century
unfolded, there was a growing demand for polyphonic service music,
answered more and more by sets or cycles of works, for both Mass
(Propers, Sequences, Ordinaries) and Office (especially hymns, antiphons
and Magnificat settings for Vespers).58 Two tendencies are present. On the
one hand, a composer might fill out feasts in the liturgical year with
workaday elaborations of plainchant cantus firmi, often paraphrased (ren-
dered into modern-sounding melodies) in the upper voice or tenor of a
three-voice setting. For example, Du Fay wrote large cycles of hymn and
Kyrie settings, products of his many years of service to the papal chapel and
to princely chapels.59 On a far larger scale, Du Fay supervised the collection
of polyphonic service music – both Ordinaries and Propers – for the entire
liturgical year at Cambrai Cathedral in the 1440s.
On the other hand, a composer might write a set of Propers, or most
usually a polyphonic Mass, a cycle of Ordinaries, for special-purpose
endowments.60 Members of elite social strata, at first princes and rich
churchmen, and increasingly rich merchants and guilds, endowed such
private devotions in side chapels, most usually a Mass to the Virgin per-
formed in a lady chapel, to ease the path of their souls to salvation. Such
‘anniversary’ services were not restricted to yearly observance, as the name
seems to imply, but might be observed weekly or even daily; it depended on
the revenues made available by the patron to pay the singers. An early
example is the Machaut Mass (c. 1364), the composer’s own memorial to be
sung at the Saturday Lady Mass at Reims Cathedral.61 Reinhard Strohm has
proposed an analogous commemorative function for Du Fay’s last Mass, the
Missa Ave regina celorum (c. 1470–1), replaced after his death by a three-
voice Requiem (not extant).62

Guillaume Du Fay
At the close of this chapter, it is appropriate to focus on Du Fay
(c. 1397–1474), a figure who not only sums up the principal stylistic
heritage of the fourteenth century, the motet and the fixed-form chanson,
41 Cathedral and court

but also, in absorbing contemporary influences and tendencies, materially

contributed to a new beginning, broadening the domain of art music with
the cantilena motet and a vastly expanded repertoire of simple service
music for Mass and Office, as well as contributing model cantus-firmus
Masses, which synthesised English and Continental tendencies.63 No
other composer of polyphony, from any previous period, composed as
much music in as many different styles. Yet despite this new beginning,
Du Fay at the same time marked a point of termination in that his music
had a short shelf life: what he helped to begin was continued in new
directions after his death.
Educated as a choirboy at Cambrai Cathedral, Du Fay probably figured
among the some 19,000 clerics and church dignitaries who in 1414
descended on Constance, where he would have observed written and
unwritten local practices of ecclesiastical and courtly chapels from all
over Europe. From there he proceeded to Italy, one of the most distin-
guished of the French-speaking northerners to forge a new style in that
land. Over the next twenty-five years, Du Fay established himself as a
leading composer whose works were actively sought by ecclesiastical and
secular patrons alike, including an Italian noble family, the Malatesta, two
popes and finally duc Amédée VIII de Savoie. By hiring Du Fay, the duke
in one stroke raised the level of his musical establishment to such a degree
that in 1434, at the marriage of his son Louis with Anne of Cyprus, he
could without embarrassment greet the visiting Burgundian Duke Philip
the Good, who had travelled to Chambéry with a retinue of some 200,
among them the distinguished composer Binchois.
The marriage was doubtless the occasion for the meeting of Du Fay
and Binchois celebrated by the Savoyard poet Martin Le Franc in his
Champion des dames (c. 1438–42). The passage, well known in music
history, proclaims a shift in musical style, occasioned by Du Fay and
Binchois, who in some sense ‘followed’ the English composer Dunstable
and adopted the ‘English manner’ (contenance angloise). Many music
historians have associated Le Franc’s commentary, as well as some
related statements in the music theorist Tinctoris, with the watershed
of a musical ‘Renaissance’.64 In the end, the attempt to find some occasion
or other to justify such an apocalyptic label is not helpful, but it is certainly
true that these years of stylistic assimilation served a rapid transformation
of music.
The music of this first period of Du Fay’s compositional career, which
exhibits maturity from the start, counts major works in the full range of
genres he cultivated. Solemn occasions found expression in the learned
style of the political and dedicatory motet, of which the best known is
Nuper rosarum flores, celebrating the consecration of Florence Cathedral
42 Lawrence Earp

Example 2.5a Guillaume Du Fay, ballade Se la face ay pale, last phrase

in 1436. The proportional lengths of its four sections – 6:4:2:3 – represent

the model church, Solomon’s temple.65
Probably a little more than fifty of around eighty extant songs belong to
these early years. Among them is the ars subtilior dedicatory ballade
Resvelliés vous (1423), mentioned earlier. By contrast, smooth and flowing
rhythms (some consider this quality a matter of English influence) dom-
inate the ballade Se la face ay pale, perhaps originally destined for the 1434
Savoy wedding and popular for many years thereafter (the last section is
given in Example 2.5a).66 French-language songs enjoyed an overwhelming
preponderance in Italian sources until at least 1440, and there exist only a
handful of works in Italian from these years in Italy, notably Du Fay’s own
setting of the Petrarchan canzona Vergine bella.67
Du Fay returned to Cambrai in 1439, now as a resident at his home
church, enjoying the canonicate that papal service had netted. The next
decade saw the completion of some large-scale sacred projects, including a
thorough-going reorganisation of liturgical music at Cambrai Cathedral,
encompassing both plainchant and polyphony.
A good part of the 1450s found Du Fay back in the south, mostly at
Savoy. One important work of this period, the Missa Se la face ay pale,
creates a uniquely Continental response to the English cantus firmus
Mass cycle, building especially on the anonymous Missa Caput.68 The
reception of the relic known today as the Shroud of Turin (held at
Chambéry from 1453 until 1578) was probably the occasion for Du Fay’s
Mass. The cantus firmus, the tenor of the ballade Se la face ay pale, which
Du Fay had composed for Savoy twenty years earlier, infuses each of the five
movements of the Mass with the musical emblem of Christ’s pale face.69
Musically, Du Fay’s cyclic Mass draws on form-defining aspects of the
43 Cathedral and court

Example 2.5b Guillaume Du Fay, Missa Se la face ay pale, Gloria, last phrase

grand motet: cantus firmus iterations in proportional diminution prefaced

by introductory duets, and culminating in rhythmically animated segments.
For example, both the Gloria and Credo movements of the Missa Se la face
ay pale are laid out in three colores, with the cantus firmus subject to
proportional diminution (3:2:1); see Example 2.5b for the last phrase, and
compare Example 2.5a.71
As far as we know, Du Fay spent his last sixteen years at Cambrai. By the
late 1450s, the composition of Mass cycles on the Continent had exploded. Du
Fay’s own Missa L’homme armé was composed then, perhaps becoming the
first of a long line of Mass settings on that tune.72 But the work that best sums
up the moment is a devotional motet that Du Fay had asked to be sung at his
deathbed, a work that combines a setting of the Marian antiphon Ave regina
celorum (‘Hail Queen of Heaven’) with a personal prayer. Table 2.1 shows
the interlocking layout of the texts in the first section, as the antiphon is
interrupted by Du Fay’s prayer (italic text). As in the earliest polyphony, the
tenor (shown in the right-hand column) carries only the cantus firmus, first
entering at the point when the other voices intone Du Fay’s prayer. Du Fay
exhibits his fluid mastery of cantus firmus paraphrase in this work, for the
borrowed melody may appear in voices besides the tenor, always recognis-
able at the beginning of a phrase, but free to break into florid melisma to
drive to an important cadence, thereby supplying the excitement of the old
hocket segments without the hard edges. The tenor statement in Example
2.6 is by contrast rather literal (cantus firmus pitches are indicated by ‘x’).73
Gradually over the course of the first half of the fifteenth century, itinerant
performers and composers, in restlessly absorbing new influences as they
44 Lawrence Earp

Table 2.1 Text distribution in Du Fay’s Ave regina

celorum (III), first section

Other voices Tenor

Ave regina celorum

Ave domina angelorum
Miserere tui labentis Du Fay Ave regina celorum
Ne peccatorum ruat in ignem fervorum. Ave domina angelorum70

Example 2.6 Guillaume Du Fay, Marian antiphon Ave regina celorum (III), end of first section

responded to demands from new centres of activity, effectively transformed

musical genres, broadening uses and venues for polyphony. The new syn-
theses and diversity of forms made a preponderantly rhetorical music possible
later in the century, a new emphasis that would shake the foundations of
expression.74 This, however, was a matter for the future. A familiar Marian
antiphon resounds throughout Du Fay’s funeral motet, directing his per-
sonal prayer; despite some modern details, it remains emblematic of the
‘totalising’ aesthetic set in place in the early fourteenth century.

Notes
1 Charles Edmond Henri de Coussemaker
(ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi: novam
seriem a Gerbertina alteram, 4 vols (1864; repr.
Hildesheim: Olms, 1963), vol. I, 327–64,
designates the writer ‘Anonymous IV’. See the
English translation in The Music Treatise of
Anonymous IV: A New Translation, ed. and
trans. Jeremy Yudkin (Stuttgart: Hänssler,
1985).
2 Example 2.1a is based on Wolfenbüttel,
Herzog August Bibliothek, 628, fol. 36r (old
fol. 42r); image accessed from http://diglib.
hab.de/wdb.php?dir=mss/628-helmst
(accessed 22 May 2014); slurs indicate ligatures
45 Cathedral and court
in the source. Example 2.1b is based on the
same manuscript, fol. 36v (old fol. 42v);
ligatures in the source are not indicated in the
edition. Example 2.1b presents the rhythmic
shape of the discant segment as it was
transmitted c. 1230 in our earliest extant
source (see n. 7 below). A complete edition is in
Le Magnus Liber organi de Notre-Dame de
Paris, vol. IV: Les organa à deux voix pour la
messe (de l’Assomption au Commun des Saints)
du manuscrit de Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-
Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1 ed. Mark Everist
(Monaco: L’Oiseau-Lyre, 2002), 50–7.
3 On the dates, see Craig Wright, Music
and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris,
500–1550 (Cambridge University Press, 1989),
281–8.
4 Anna Maria Busse Berger, Medieval Music
and the Art of Memory (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2005), 161–97.
5 Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1.
On the date, see Barbara Haggh and
Michel Huglo, ‘Magnus liber – maius munus:
origine et destinée du manuscript F ’, Revue de
musicologie, 90 (2004), 193–230.
6 Example 2.1c is based on Florence,
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1, fol.
129v (online image fol. 112v); image accessed
from http://teca.bmlonline.it/TecaViewer/
index.jsp?RisIdr=TECA0000342136 (accessed
22 May 2014); ligatures in the source are not
indicated in the edition.
7 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek,
628. On the date, see Mark Everist, ‘From Paris
to St. Andrews: the origins of W1’, Journal of
the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990),
1–42.
8 Example 2.2 is based on Wolfenbüttel,
Herzog August Bibliothek, 1099, fols
146v–147r; image accessed from http://diglib.
hab.de/wdb.php?dir=mss/1099-helmst
(accessed 22 May 2014); ligatures in the source
are not indicated in the edition.
9 Text and translation from Philip the
Chancellor: Motets and Prosulas, ed.
Thomas B. Payne, Recent Researches in the
Music of the Middle Ages and Early
Renaissance, 41 (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions,
2011), 91–3 (I have altered the line divisions in
the example). Payne attributes this text to
Philip the Chancellor. See also Richard
H. Hoppin (ed.), Anthology of Medieval
Music (New York: Norton, 1978), 72–4.
10 See Philip the Chancellor: Motets and
Prosulas, ed. Payne, xi–xxx.
11 Two early treatises on modal notation are
in Oliver Strunk (ed.), Source Readings in
Music History, rev. edn (New York: Norton,
1998), 218–26.
12 The three-voice form, Ex semine rosa / Ex
semine Abrahe/Ex semine, is edited in Richard
Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western
Music, vol. I: Music from the Earliest Notations
to the Sixteenth Century (Oxford University
Press, 2005), 209–13, with facsimiles of some
sources.
13 The texts and music of Se j’ai amé (‘If I have
loved I should not be blamed for it if I am
committed to the most courtly little thing in
the city of Paris’) and Hier main trespensis
(‘Yesterday morning, deep in thought, I
wandered along my way, I saw beneath a pine a
shepherdess, who was calling Robin with a
pure heart’) are in Hoppin (ed.), Anthology of
Medieval Music, 72–4.
14 See Sylvia Huot, Allegorical Play in the Old
French Motet: The Sacred and the Profane in
Thirteenth-Century Polyphony (Stanford
University Press, 1997); and Ardis Butterfield,
Poetry and Music in Medieval France: From
Jean Renart to Guillaume de Machaut
(Cambridge University Press, 2002).
15 Nico H. J. van den Boogaard, Rondeaux et
refrains du XIIe siècle au début du XIVe (Paris:
Klincksieck, 1969), 14–15. Butterfield, Poetry
and Music in Medieval France, is an important
recent study of the refrain, with full
bibliography.
16 See Christopher Page, The Owl and the
Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France,
1100–1300 (London: Dent, 1989), 144–54;
Page, Discarding Images: Reflections on Music
and Culture in Medieval France (Oxford
University Press, 1993), 43–111; and Taruskin,
The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. I,
207–8, 226.
17 Trans. in Christopher Page, ‘Johannes
de Grocheio on secular music: a corrected
text and a new translation’, Plainsong and
Medieval Music, 2 (1993), 36 (footnotes
omitted).
18 Quoting Butterfield, Poetry and Music in
Medieval France, 105. See also Page, The Owl
and the Nightingale, 187–207.
19 Franco of Cologne, Ars cantus
mensurabilis, in Strunk (ed.), Source Readings,
226–45.
20 Edition in The Montpellier Codex, ed.
Hans Tischler (Madison: A-R Editions, 1978),
vol. III, 88–9. For a complete analysis, see
Dolores Pesce, ‘Beyond glossing: the old made
new in Mout me fu grief/Robin m’aime/
Portare’, in Dolores Pesce (ed.), Hearing the
Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages
and Renaissance (Oxford University Press,
1997), 28–51.
21 Jehan des Murs, Notitia artis musicae, in
Strunk (ed.), Source Readings, 268.
46 Lawrence Earp
22 Facsimile and commentary in Le roman de
Fauvel in the Edition of Mesire Chaillou de
Pesstain: A Reproduction in Facsimile of the
Complete Manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque
Nationale, fonds français 146 ed. Edward
H. Roesner, François Avril and Nancy
Freeman Regalado (New York: Broude
Brothers, 1990).
23 Michael Camille, ‘Hybridity, monstrosity,
and bestiality in the Roman de Fauvel’, in
Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (eds),
Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and
Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, MS Français 146 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1998), 161–74.
24 Hoppin (ed.), Anthology of Medieval
Music, 120–6.
25 See Ardis Butterfield, ‘The refrain and the
transformation of genre in the Roman de
Fauvel’, in Bent and Wathey (eds), Fauvel
Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image
in Paris, 105–59; and Emma Dillon, Medieval
Music-Making and the Roman de Fauvel
(Cambridge University Press, 2002), 216–82.
26 Each crotchet of the music in Example 2.3,
corresponding to a breve in the original, is
equal to one full bar (dotted minim) of the
transcription in Hoppin, Anthology of
Medieval Music, No. 59 (bar numbers reflect
that edition). Each line of the example is one
talea (repeating rhythmic unit) of the tenor –
the entire motet is made up of six taleae. There
are two repetitions of the color (melody of the
cantus firmus), each taking up three taleae
(6T = 2C). Notes and rests of the tenor in red
notation, indicating a change from modus
perfectus to modus imperfectus, are set between
angle brackets. The rhythmic values of the
complete tenor are indicated, but little beyond
the location of rests in the upper voices (blank
spaces in the upper voices are filled with free
music).
27 Lawrence Earp, ‘Lyrics for reading and
lyrics for singing in late medieval France: the
development of the dance lyric from Adam de
la Halle to Guillaume de Machaut’, in Rebecca
A. Baltzer, Thomas Cable and James
I. Wimsatt (eds), The Union of Words and
Music in Medieval Poetry (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1991), 101–31; see also
Butterfield, Poetry and Music in Medieval
France, 273–90.
28 Mark Everist studies the polyphonic
chanson before Machaut in three articles: ‘The
polyphonic “rondeau” c. 1300: repertory and
context’, Early Music History, 15 (1996),
59–96; ‘Motets, French tenors, and the
polyphonic chanson ca. 1300’, Journal of
Musicology, 24 (2007), 365–406; and
‘“Souspirant en terre estrainge”: the
polyphonic rondeau from Adam de la Halle to
Guillaume de Machaut’, Early Music History,
26 (2007), 1–42.
29 On Honte, paour, see Sarah Fuller,
‘Tendencies and resolutions: the directed
progression in “ars nova” music’, Journal of
Music Theory, 36 (1992), 240–6; on Rose, lis,
see Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, ‘Machaut’s Rose,
lis and the problem of early music analysis’,
Music Analysis, 3 (1984), 9–28.
30 Lawrence Earp, ‘Machaut’s role in the
production of manuscripts of his works’,
Journal of the American Musicological Society,
42 (1989), 461–503.
31 For an edition and translation of the
Remede de Fortune, see Guillaume de Machaut,
Le Jugement du roy de Behaigne and Remede
de Fortune, ed. James I. Wimsatt and William
W. Kibler (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1988).
32 Example 2.4 is based on Paris, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, fr. 1584, fols 70v–71r;
image accessed from http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/
12148/btv1b84490444/f162.image.r=francais
%201584%20machaut.langEN; ligatures in the
source are not indicated in the edition.
33 On citation in Machaut, see
Yolanda Plumley, The Art of Grafted Song:
Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut
(Oxford University Press, 2013).
34 Trans. David Howlett in booklet for CD
recording, Philippe de Vitry and the Ars Nova:
14th-Century Motets, The Orlando Consort,
Amon Ra CD-SAR 49 (1991).
35 Motets of French Provenance, ed. Frank
L. L. Harrison, Polyphonic Music of the
Fourteenth Century, 5 (Monaco: L’Oiseau-
Lyre, 1968), Nos. 5 and 5a, 24–35.
36 On the modern historiography of this term,
see Margaret Bent, ‘What is isorhythm?’, in
David Butler Cannata et al. (eds), Quomodo
cantabimus canticum? Studies in Honor of
Edward H. Roesner (Middleton, WI: American
Institute of Musicology, 2008), 121–43.
37 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western
Music, vol. I, 277–81.
38 In The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500
(Cambridge University Press, 1993), Reinhard
Strohm studies traditions in all parts of Europe
as they intermingled and transformed
themselves.
39 On the possible repercussions of the
English occupation, see ibid., 239.
40 Jean Froissart, Chroniques: Livre III (du
voyage en Béarn à la compagne de Gascogne) et
Livre IV (années 1389–1400), ed.
Peter Ainsworth and Alberto Varvaro, Le
livre de Poche ‘Lettres Gothiques’ (Paris:
47 Cathedral and court
Librairie Générale Française, 2004), book 3,
§13, 176–7.
41 For Philip the Bold and John the Fearless,
see Craig Wright, Music at the Court of
Burgundy, 1364–1419: A Documentary History,
Musicological Studies, 28 (Henryville, PA:
Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1979). For Philip
the Good and Charles the Bold, see
Jeanne Marix, Histoire de la musique et des
musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne sous le
règne de Philippe le Bon (1420–1467)
(Strasbourg: Heitz, 1939). On the other
Valois dukes, see, for John of Berry, Wright,
Music at the Court of Burgundy; and
Paula Higgins, ‘Music and musicians at the
Sainte-Chapelle of the Bourges palace,
1405–1515’, in Atti del XIV congresso della
Società Internazionale di Musicologia, 3 vols
(Turin, 1990), vol. III, 689–701; and for Louis
of Anjou, Alice V. Clark, ‘Music for Louis
of Anjou’, in Karl Kügle and Lorenz Welker
(eds), Borderline Areas in Fourteenth and
Fifteenth-Century Music (Münster and
Middleton, WI: American Institute of
Musicology, 2009), 15–32. On the urban
context for music in the most important
northern centre of the Burgundian realm, see
Reinhard Strohm, Music in Late Medieval
Bruges, rev. edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1990), 1–9, 74–101.
42 On ladies-in-waiting, see Paula Higgins,
‘Parisian nobles, a Scottish princess, and the
woman’s voice in late medieval song’, Early
Music History, 10 (1991), 145–200.
43 On ‘unwritten’ strategies of realising
music, see Strohm, The Rise of European
Music, 348–9, 357–67 and 557–8. On minstrel
schools, see Wright, Music at the Court of
Burgundy, 32–4; and Strohm, The Rise of
European Music, 307–8.
44 See the account of Olivier de la Marche in
Strunk (ed.), Source Readings, 312–16.
45 The best treatment of music at Avignon is
Andrew Tomasello, Music and Ritual at Papal
Avignon, 1309–1403 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press, 1983).
46 Margaret Bent, ‘Early papal motets’, in
Richard Sherr (ed.), Papal Music and
Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance
Rome (Oxford University Press, 1998), 5–43.
47 See Giuliano Di Bacco and John Nádas,
‘The papal chapels and Italian sources of
polyphony during the Great Schism’, in Sherr
(ed.), Papal Music and Musicians, 50–6.
48 On Ciconia’s motets, see Margaret Bent,
‘The fourteenth-century Italian motet’, in
Giulio Cattin and Patrizia Dalla Vecchia (eds),
L’ars nova italiana del Trecento VI: Atti del
congresso internazionale ‘L’Europa e la musica
del Trecento’ (Certaldo: Polis, 1992), 85–125;
and Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 96–9.
49 See Yolanda Plumley, ‘Ciconia’s Sus un’
fontayne and the legacy of Philipoctus de
Caserta’, in Philippe Vendrix (ed.), Johannes
Ciconia, musicien de la transition (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2003), 131–68.
50 On Filles a marier, see Strohm, Music in
Late Medieval Bruges, 85.
51 Ursula Günther, ‘Das Ende der ars nova’,
Musikforschung, 16 (1963), 105–21;
Anne Stone, ‘Che cosa c’è di più sottile?
riguardo l’ars subtilior?’, Rivista italiana di
musicologia, 31 (1996), 3–31.
52 On music about music, see Anne Stone,
‘The composer’s voice in the late-medieval
song: four case studies’, in Vendrix (ed.),
Johannes Ciconia, musicien de la transition,
169–94; and Jehoash Hirshberg, ‘Criticism of
music and music as criticism in the Chantilly
Codex’, in Yolanda Plumley and Anne Stone
(eds), A Late Medieval Songbook and its
Context: New Perspectives on the Chantilly
Codex (Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly,
Ms. 564) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 133–59.
For the case of Or voit, see Dorit Tanay,
‘Between the fig tree and the laurel: Or voit tout
en aventure revisited’, in Plumley and Stone
(eds), A Late Medieval Songbook and its
Context, 161–78.
53 See Yolanda Plumley, ‘Citation and
allusion in the late ars nova: the case of
Esperance and the En attendant songs’, Early
Music History, 18 (1999), 287–363; and
Reinhard Strohm, ‘Diplomatic relationships
between Chantilly and Cividale?’, in Plumley
and Stone (eds), A Late Medieval Songbook and
its Context, 238–40.
54 Strohm, The Rise of European Music,
119–21. Nine of the eleven songs in Strohm’s
list of contrafacts were originally French.
55 On Rome, see Di Bacco and Nádas, ‘The
papal chapels’, 58–87; on the English in Paris,
see Strohm, The Rise of European Music,
197–206, 239.
56 Strohm, The Rise of European Music,
251–60.
57 On the development of the cantus firmus
Mass cycle, see ibid., 228–38.
58 The formulation ‘sets and cycles’ is
Strohm’s. Ibid., 435–40.
59 Alejandro Enrique Planchart, ‘Music for
the papal chapel in the early fifteenth century’,
in Sherr (ed.), Papal Music and Musicians,
109–17.
60 Planchart, ‘Guillaume Du Fay’s benefices
and his relationship to the Court of Burgundy’,
Early Music History, 8 (1988), 117–71; Strohm,
The Rise of European Music, 170–81, 273–81;
48 Lawrence Earp
and Andrew Kirkman, The Cultural Life of the
Early Polyphonic Mass: Medieval Context to
Modern Revival (Cambridge University Press,
2010), 39, 270 n. 2.
61 On the Machaut Mass, see Anne
Walters Robertson, Guillaume de Machaut and
Reims: Context and Meaning in his Musical
Works (Cambridge University Press, 2002),
257–75.
62 Strohm, The Rise of European Music,
283–7.
63 David Fallows, Dufay, The Master
Musicians, rev. edn (London: Dent, 1987),
remains a superb longer study of the composer.
64 The passage in Martin Le Franc has been
much discussed; see Gustave Reese, Music in
the Renaissance, rev. edn (New York: Norton,
1959), 12–14; Craig Wright, ‘Dufay at
Cambrai: discoveries and revisions’, Journal of
the American Musicological Society, 28 (1975),
180; Andrew Wathey, ‘Dunstable in France’,
Music and Letters, 67 (1986), 1–3;
David Fallows, ‘The contenance angloise:
English influence on Continental composers of
the fifteenth century’, Renaissance Studies, 1
(1987), 189–208; Strohm, The Rise of European
Music, 127–9; Margaret Bent, ‘The musical
stanzas in Martin Le Franc’s Le champion des
dames’, in John Haines and Randall Rosenfeld
(eds), Music and Medieval Manuscripts:
Paleography and Performance: Essays
Dedicated to Andrew Hughes (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2004), 91–127; Rob C. Wegman, ‘New
music for a world grown old: Martin Le Franc
and the “contenance angloise”’, Acta
musicologica, 75 (2003), 201–41;
Reinhard Strohm, ‘Neue Aspekte von Musik
und Humanismus im 15. Jahrhundert’, Acta
musicologica, 76 (2004), 135–57. For Tinctoris,
see the dedication of the Proportionale musices
(1473–4), in Strunk (ed.), Source Readings,
291–3.
65 See Craig Wright, ‘Dufay’s Nuper rosarum
flores, King Solomon’s temple, and the
veneration of the Virgin’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 47 (1994),
395–441.
66 Example 2.5a is based on Guglielmi Dufay
opera omnia, ed. Heinrich Besseler, vol. VI,
rev. David Fallows (Middleton, WI: American
Institute of Musicology/Hänssler, 2006), p. 38;
numerous emendations.
67 See David Fallows, ‘French as a courtly
language in fifteenth-century Italy: the musical
evidence’, Renaissance Studies, 3 (1989), 429–41.
68 Anne Walters Robertson, ‘The Savior, the
woman, and the head of the dragon in the
Caput Masses and motet’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 59 (2006),
537–630.
69 Anne Walters Robertson, ‘The man with
the pale face, the shroud, and Du Fay’s Missa Se
la face ay pale’, Journal of Musicology, 27
(2010), 377–434.
70 Antiphon: ‘Hail Queen of Heaven, Hail
mistress over the angels’; prayer: ‘Have mercy
on thy dying Dufay Lest, a sinner, he be hurled
down into seething hot hellfire.’ Trans. in
Sarah Fuller (ed.), The European Musical
Heritage, 800–1750, rev. edn (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2006), 159–60, with musical
edn, 153–9.
71 Example 2.5b is based on Guglielmi Dufay
opera omnia, ed. Heinrich Bessler, vol. III
(Neuhausen Stuttgart: American Institute of
Musicology/Hänssler, 1951), 12–13; numerous
emendations. On the influence of ‘isorhythmic’
techniques in Mass movements, see Bent,
‘What is isorhythm?’; and Kirkman, The
Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass, 264
n. 66.
72 Craig Wright, The Maze and the Warrior:
Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2001), 175–205.
73 Example 2.6 is based on Guglielmi Dufay
opera omnia, ed. Heinrich Besseler, vol. V
(Neuhausen Stuttgart: American Institute of
Musicology/Hänssler, 1966), 124–5; numerous
emendations.
74 On the change in musical expression from
a ‘medieval’ symbolism to a ‘Renaissance’
mimesis, see Wright, The Maze and the
Warrior, 203–5.
 3 The Renaissance
f a b r i c e fit c h
In memory of Frank Dobbins (1943–2012)

Introduction
In most surveys of Renaissance music of the past fifty years, the guiding
narrative thread is one of transition from one dominant aesthetic para-
digm to another, from the ‘Gothic’ north, centred on the Low Countries, to
the humanist-inspired, properly ‘Renaissance’ south, centred on Italy.
Within this narrative the notion of a distinctly French music assumes a
subordinate position. This is a paradoxical situation, since while French
remained the international courtly language for most of the Renaissance
period, the music to which its poetic forms were set enjoyed a wider
international currency than that of any other vernacular: thus pieces like
De tous biens plaine, J’ay pris amours, Mille regretz, Jouyssance vous
donneray, Doulce mémoire, Susanne un jour and many others were copied
and known by name throughout Europe. Before the middle of the six-
teenth century, very few songs in other languages could boast a compara-
ble vogue. To complicate matters further, the composers of these
international ‘hits’ were by no means all native francophones, and of
those who were, many were born in territories outside the direct control
of the French crown. Thus defining French music in this period is no easy
matter. During the early sixteenth century, however, the situation
becomes somewhat clearer. After 1500 the classically francophone formes
fixes, inherited from the medieval period, were on the wane throughout
Europe; meanwhile French composers showed a marked predilection
for declamatory clarity that surpassed their former interest in more
intrinsically musical priorities. A further paradox was that this relative
loss of international currency saw the rise of poetic and musical forms and
idioms that came to be seen by outsiders as specifically French (as shown
in the Italian term canzona alla francese and its cognates, which, ironi-
cally, designate an instrumental piece opening with dactylic rhythmic
patterns and following closely the clear sectional structure of a song

I wish to record my debt to Frank Dobbins, first, in the formulation of certain passages of this chapter,
which helped avert some omissions and encouraged me further to elaborate some of its themes; and
second, his friendly and timely support at several significant junctures of our professional relationship.
May the dedication of this chapter to his memory stand as a modest but fitting tribute, concerning as it
[49] does the time and place that were closest to his scholarly career and, I think, his sensibility as a person.
50 Fabrice Fitch

model). This brand of ‘Parisian’ chanson was thus imitated by composers

working and publishing far from Paris, such as Nicolas Gombert and
Thomas Créquillon at the peripatetic imperial chapel of Charles V,
Orlande de Lassus in Munich and Philippe de Monte in Prague. In what
follows it will be useful to keep in mind the distinction between ‘music in
France’ and ‘music setting French texts’, while remembering that such a
distinction would have had little pertinence at the time.1
The period 1460–1600 saw the restoration and growth of central
French power on the European political and economic stage following
the conclusion of the Hundred Years War, despite the lengthy struggle
between King Louis XI (r. 1461–83) and his Burgundian cousin Duke
Charles the Bold (r. 1467–77). The international conflicts centred on Italy,
which began under Charles VIII (r. 1483–98), were not fully resolved until
the 1550s. But they prevented neither French singers and their music from
dominating the chapels and chambers of royal, princely and ecclesiastical
courts, nor the dissemination of their works in print and manuscripts
throughout Europe. Political events and the reformation of religious
thought and ceremony also had important consequences for the arts
and music. The individual and congregational interpretation of the scrip-
tures, encouraged by Luther and followed by Calvin, led to a profusion of
simpler monophonic and homophonic settings of biblical psalms (trans-
lated by Clément Marot and Théodore de Beze), which were widely
printed and copied for the bourgeoisie and menu peuple (common people)
during the 1540s. The bloody Wars of Religion, which from the mid-
century decade embroiled the realm in civil conflict, took their toll on all
levels of French society, including princes and even kings. The thousands
of Huguenots massacred on St Bartholomew’s Day (1572) and its after-
math included at least one composer, Claude Goudimel, who had devoted
most of his considerable skills to setting the new French psalms. A
measure of political and religious stability returned with the advent to
the throne of Henri IV in 1589. The tradition of strong, centralising royal
power begun under Louis XI and reinforced by François I (who moved the
previously itinerant court from the castles of the Loire valley to the palace
of the Louvre) was thus resumed with increased vigour, and the position of
Paris as the seat of that power definitively established.

The musical landscape: church and court

The key role of the French royal court within musical life is undeniable. Its
prestige may be gauged from the calibre of the singer-composers it
attracted, especially from 1454, when Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1425–97)
51 The Renaissance

was appointed head of the Chapelle Royale. Ockeghem merits pride of

place not only chronologically, for he was clearly an outstanding figure:
apart from his musical excellence as both singer and composer, he was
evidently an impressive administrator and valued royal advisor. His posi-
tion as treasurer of the abbey of Saint-Martin of Tours (whose titular,
hereditary abbot was none other than the king himself) made him prob-
ably the most powerful French musician before Lully. His long tenure as
premier chappelain ushered in a long period of sustained musical excellence
and prestige at the French court. All the same, the Chapelle Royale is
perhaps best understood as part of a complex network of musical establish-
ments throughout the realm. Charles VII and his successors preferred the
Loire valley to their fractious capital, and throughout the Italian wars, Lyons
was a more convenient base of operations, with the court in permanent
residence there between 1499 and 1503. But wherever it was located, the
court exerted a direct influence on the surrounding area. During its period
of residence in Tours, connections existed with neighbouring ecclesiastical
institutions in Tours itself, but also at Bourges and Poitiers. Thus in the early
1460s, Antoine Busnoys (c. 1430–92) was certainly active within the court’s
orbit. Later, during the Parisian period beginning with François I
(r. 1515–47), links with the neighbouring Sainte-Chapelle were particularly
close, owing no doubt in part to its own royal pedigree.2 These links took the
form of a more or less regular exchange of personnel between the two
institutions, so that Claudin de Sermisy (c. 1490–1562) and Pierre Certon
(d. 1572), for example, were attached to both. By contrast, Notre-Dame’s
relations with the crown remained uneasy, and the more august ecclesias-
tical institutions were often similarly jealous of their prerogatives. Recent
research has uncovered much unsuspected information on the activities of
regional collegiate institutions.3 There is scarcely a town of any importance
that cannot boast of the presence, however fleeting, of a major musical
figure. Most of Janequin’s long career, for example, was spent en province,
notably at Angers and Bordeaux; by the time official royal preferment came
his way, over half of his extant output had been published.
With a few significant exceptions, throughout the fifteenth century
the singer-chaplains of the Chapelle Royale tended to be French or
francophone, and their number (little over a dozen singers and an organ-
ist) remained comparatively stable. During Charles VIII’s reign their
number included Alexander Agricola (b. 1456?; d. 1506) and Loÿset
Compère (c. 1445–1518), as well as Ockeghem. Under his successor
Louis XII (r. 1498–1515) there was considerable expansion: his consort,
Anne de Bretagne (d. 1514), established a chapel of her own, equal to the
king’s in size and excellence. The membership of their combined
chapels included Compère, Antoine Brumel (b. c. 1460; d. 1512–13?),
52 Fabrice Fitch

Antoine de Févin (b. c. 1470; d. 1511–12), Johannes Ghiselin (fl. 1491–1507),

Jean Mouton (b. c. 1459; d. 1522) and Dionisius Prioris (fl. c. 1485–1512),4 and
later the young Sermisy. This period was surely one of the highpoints of
the chapel’s history. The trend throughout the sixteenth century was for
increased formalisation and specialisation. The long reign of François I
marked a number of significant innovations. By 1526 at the latest, the
chapel was placed under the control of a high-ranking cleric, although his
direct subordinates (sous-maîtres) continued to be singers and composers;
from that date, the singing of plainchant and polyphony was entrusted to
different ensembles (the former being by a considerable margin the larger of
the two), while certain musicians were specifically named as composers or
even scribes. A smaller group of singers and instrumentalists was attached
to the king’s household or chamber, which during François’s reign was
established as distinct from the chapel. In some cases the association
appears to have been merely formal or honorary (as may have been the
case with Janequin). Although François’s personal interest in music may
not have matched his demonstrable enthusiasm for the other arts, philos-
ophy and sciences,5 he clearly appreciated its value within courtly life,
ceremonial ritual and diplomacy. Some of the later Valois were probably
more enthusiastic: François’s successor, Henri II, is reported to have com-
posed, and both he and his son Charles IX (r. 1560–74) were known to join
in singing with their choirs. Charles IX tried unsuccessfully to coax the most
celebrated composer of the day, Orlande de Lassus (c. 1532–94), to join his
service. His younger brothers, Henri III (r. 1574–89) and François, duc
d’Alençon (d. 1584), carried on this lavish musical patronage. In the closing
years of the century the chapel was further expanded, the leading composer
being Eustache Du Caurroy (1549–1609), whose Requiem was used for the
obsequies of Henri IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV. Baptised in the Protestant
faith and a pragmatic convert to Catholicism, Henri IV (r. 1589–1610) was
content to leave the structure of the Chapelle Royale unchanged, but his
interest in music is attested by the quality of his musiciens de chambre, who
included the lutenist Charles Tessier and the singer Pierre Guédron.
Throughout our period, the provision of instrumental music at court
had been similarly expanded and formalised. In contrast to the singers of the
chapel, these musicians included a high proportion of foreigners, particu-
larly Italians recruited from the time of the wars of Charles VIII and Louis
XII. The distinction between the musicians’ different functions becomes
explicit under François I, who established a military band (écurie) consisting
of loud instruments, while several lutenists (including Albert de Rippe)
were paid as servants in the king’s household as musiciens de chambre.
As queen and later regent, Catherine de Médicis (d. 1589) shared her
adoptive family’s enthusiasm for sacred music, but inclined also towards
53 The Renaissance

secular entertainments of the sort she had known in her native Florence,
particularly dance. A well-documented occasion was the visit of the
Polish ambassadors in 1573, which saw the staging at court of one of
the first ballets, followed in 1581 by the Balet comique de la royne, with
choreography by the Italian-born violinist Balthasar de Beaujoyeux (or
Beaujoyeulx) and music in the form of récits, airs, choruses and dances by
Girard de Beaulieu and Jacques Salmon. It was most likely at Catherine’s
behest that a set of violins (including, that is, all the instruments of the violin
family) was sent from Italy to France. The Valois court also imported Italian
musicians in great number to provide the music at secular entertainments.
Their standing was beginning to change: for the most part, their education
continued to differ markedly from that of singers, and with the obvious
exception of organists, the ecclesiastical revenues available to singers were
closed to them; yet certain individuals, like the blind menestriers (minstrels)
of Charles the Bold, or later Albert de Rippe, were more admired and highly
rewarded than the chapel singers. Finally, it was during the reign of Henri
IV that the violin band was put on a more formal footing (partly to please
his queen, Marie de Médicis), laying the groundwork for the famous Vingt-
Quatre Violons, which was eventually transferred from the écurie to the
chambre, further elevating its status.

The musical landscape away from court

The overwhelming presence of the church within later medieval and
Renaissance society is today increasingly difficult to imagine. The second
of the three estates (the first being represented by the crown and the
aristocracy), it provided the only meritocratic route to social advancement
for members of the third. Through a network of choir schools (maîtrises) it
afforded musically gifted boys an excellent general education and a secure,
lucrative career.6 Just as the wealthier nobility kept their own chapels, so did
the most powerful ecclesiasts, who also employed musicians for secular
entertainments.7
The craft of instrumental musicians was, in contrast to the polyphony
of singers, largely unwritten, and had its own professional organisations:
the confraternités or guilds, which regulated the pay and status of their
members and stipulated their years of apprenticeship. The guilds were
involved in state occasions and public entertainments, as when visiting
nobles or foreign dignitaries were welcomed, or when the king was
received on an official visit. These occasions, known by the term joyeuse
entrée, were also a common feature of urban life in the Burgundian lands.
The festivities were reported in locally published pamphlets that reflect the
54 Fabrice Fitch

role and importance of musicians at such events, and the attainment of a

degree of musical literacy as a mark of breeding increasingly filtered down
from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. The growing middle classes’
enthusiasm for the music sponsored by church and courts is most con-
cretely signalled by the advent of music printing in France, which occurred
simultaneously in Paris and Lyons in 1528.
The Parisian Pierre Attaingnant was the first to develop a more eco-
nomic single-impression method of musical typography, an invention
soon adapted by others. Supported by royal funding and privilege, his
firm was also the first to achieve a truly international distribution based on
a wide aristocratic and bourgeois readership. In 1547 Henri II relaxed his
father’s monopolies, opening music publishing opportunities to compet-
itors including Nicolas Du Chemin, Robert Granjon and the lutenist
Adrian Le Roy, who in collaboration with Robert Ballard established a
dominant position supported by new royal patents.
For much of the sixteenth century the populous city of Lyons func-
tioned as a second capital through the quantity and quality of its literary
and musical publication.8 Its strategic location and safe distance from Paris
engendered a greater cosmopolitanism and diversity of outlook, making it a
natural home for intellectuals, freethinkers and Huguenots (owing to the
proximity of Geneva). Although Lyons represents a special case by virtue of
its administrative independence from royal authority and its commercial
prosperity, its individuality offered a valuable corrective to the royal and
centripetal view of Paris’s cultural dominance.
For much of our period, and with the limited exceptions just noted in
church and court, the social status of practising musicians was on a par
with that of artisans. The medieval distinction between musicus and
cantor (that is, those versed in music theory and its practitioners) con-
tinued to hold sway throughout the Renaissance. This was a consequence
of music’s position as one of the seven liberal arts taught at university, in
which it was placed with the three other number-based sciences, arith-
metic, geometry and astronomy. With music considered a speculative
branch of knowledge, it was almost de rigueur for theorists to profess
disdain of their practising counterparts, including clerical singers of poly-
phony. Yet many of those theorists were composers with a university
education, such as Johannes Tinctoris (c. 1430–1511), the most influential
theorist of his generation, who was connected with the university and
cathedral of Orleans in the late 1450s and early 1460s. All the same, the
later Renaissance evinced a growing unease at a theoretical model dating
back to Boethius, and the universities themselves were increasingly
derided for clinging to outdated models.9 Intellectuals and artists
responded by forming ‘academies’, at which questions could be debated
55 The Renaissance

in a freer manner than was possible at the university. In Paris the writer
Jean-Antoine de Baïf (1532–89) gathered one such circle around him under
the patronage of Charles IX, who granted the Académie de Poésie et de
Musique its own royal charter in 1570. A crucial point of discussion, also
carried on at contemporary Italian accademie, concerned the relation
of text and music. A similar concern animated the deliberations of the
Council of Trent (1545–63), in response to the Reformed church’s
criticisms of the textual unintelligibility of the music being composed for
the Catholic Church. As in the accademie, Baïf and his musical collabora-
tors Guillaume Costeley (c. 1530–1606), Joachim Thibault de Courville
(d. 1581) and Girard de Beaulieu (fl. 1559–87) sought a model inspired by
the supposed musical practices of ancient Greece; but, typical of the French
propensity to give rhythm and metre predominance over melody and
harmony, the Académie’s musical fruits were very different from the
rather freer Italian monody: the vers mesurés à l’antique presented stressed
and unstressed syllables with long and short note values, respectively.
The proximity of this approach to the Huguenot tradition of metrical
psalm singing is striking: though it stemmed from different ideological
premises, the parallel can hardly be coincidental. The metrical formulations
devised by Marot for his psalm translations followed the melodies of Calvin’s
Genevan musicians, and their harmonisations by Loÿs Bourgeois, Janequin
and others were combined with the dance rhythms of the same composers’
settings of secular strophic verse (voix de villes and airs). These formulations
no doubt inspired the declamatory patterns found in the airs mesurés.
The significance of the Académie’s classicising stance for music history
and its implications for musical style (in particular the move away from
complex polyphony) have tended to overshadow its larger intellectual
programme, indeed the deep moral purpose with which it saw itself
invested, to which the king’s charter repeatedly refers. In France as else-
where throughout Europe, the late Renaissance was the last period in
Western music in which music was regarded almost universally as
unequivocally positive, essential for the improvement and proper conduct
of individuals, for their peaceable coexistence in society and for the very
fabric of the universe. Music was perceived not only as positive, but as
popular: familiarity with music and its terminology was therefore more
widespread in this than in any other subsequent period. Further evidence
for this is the establishment in 1570 of the Puy d’Evreux, an annual
competition – the first of its kind – to which composers submitted
works in different categories, including motets and chansons, and whose
victors included the most prestigious composers of the day, including
Lassus, Du Caurroy and many others. In the following century, however,
music’s status as a science increasingly came under scrutiny. Although
56 Fabrice Fitch

later thinkers (particularly the encyclopédistes) became deeply concerned

with the acoustic bases of tonality, music itself was no longer considered a
tool of cognition. It may be argued that, even compared with the other
arts, music never regained the position within French culture that it
enjoyed in the Renaissance.

From formes fixes to strophic song

In the last forty years it has been established that several of the most
significant French-language formes fixes manuscripts transmitting the
song repertoire of the later fifteenth century originated in the Loire
Valley – that is, in the orbit of the French royal court.10 Further, two of
its major composers, Ockeghem and Busnoys, were closely associated with
the court’s circle. The close collaboration between two of the century’s most
influential composers marks out the period around 1460 as one of the
highpoints of French music. It is not unreasonable to ascribe to this time
and place certain key developments in French song: first, the revival of the
virelai in an abbreviated form, sometimes referred to as bergerette (ABbaA).
This was a particular favourite of Busnoys, and the surviving examples from
Du Fay and Ockeghem count among their most memorable and distinctive
songs. Ockeghem’s Ma bouche rit and Presque trainsi, both virelais in the
Phrygian mode, seem in different ways to have been extraordinarily influ-
ential, and it is quite possible that the use of the Phrygian mode in poly-
phony, with its attendant textual topos of mourning, is due to the success of
these pieces. However, Busnoys was arguably the more immediately influ-
ential figure of the two stylistically: the songs of several other figures of the
time (for example Caron and Delahaye) show remarkable affinities with his.
During the third quarter of the century, this group of composers also
resumed experimentation with poly-textual pieces, in which different texts
were brought into relation with each other. The textual play with different
narrative voices (typically opposing the courtly and the pastoral or rustic)
harks back to the early motet; but the graphic obscenity of some pieces (like
Caron’s Corps contre corps) was carried on in the épigrammes which, along-
side the strophic song and the ‘popular’ song with regular symmetrical
strophes, supplanted the courtly formes fixes early in the following century.
However, it should be realised that, notwithstanding these differences of
tone, the evidence that ‘native’ popular idioms played a significant role in
that transition is scant: as in the fifteenth century, references to the menu
peuple are entirely from an aristocratic perspective, even though those
popular references may themselves have contributed to the widening demo-
graphic appeal of the music observed in prints.
57 The Renaissance

Until recently, the transition was difficult to pin down, owing to several
documentary problems: first, the transmission of French printed and
manuscript chanson sources in the second and third decades of the
century is extremely patchy; second, poetry manuscripts and printed
anthologies (such as the monumental Jardin de plaisance, published in
Paris by Antoine Vérard in 1502) continued to transmit formes fixes
poetry that had long ceased to be set to music; and finally, contemporary
nomenclature (even of an apparently straightforward term like ‘chanson’)
is by no means straightforward. But as Frank Dobbins has shown, a clear
transitional stage is perceptible in other contemporary collections of verse
and music, including the well-known monophonic ‘Bayeux’ chansonnier,
commonly known as the manuscrit de Bayeux, probably copied for
Charles de Bourbon and transmitting melodies set polyphonically by
countless composers.11 A shift of emphasis is also detectable with the two
most prolific song composers of the following generation, Compère and
Agricola, both of whom composed superb formes fixes settings alongside
strophic and through-composed songs. The varied strophic structure with
refrain of Compère’s ribald Nous sommes de l’ordre de Saint Babouin
prefigures the later songs of Janequin and his emulators. By the turn of
the century, these strophic forms (including single strophes, such as the
famous Mille regretz) became increasingly the norm for polyphonic settings,
and their affective range broadened commensurately. Josquin’s Nymphes
des bois, setting Cretin’s lament for Ockeghem, is an outstanding example of
a relatively new trend. A few songs that may confidently be ascribed to
Mouton adumbrate the ‘new songs’ of Sermisy, Janequin and the younger
generation found in the earliest books published by Attaingnant, starting
with the Chansons nouvelles of 1528. As with the Italian madrigal, printing
(initially in Italy, but soon afterwards in France) was to play a crucial role in
the dissemination of the chanson.
This new style is far too diverse and widespread for the designation
‘Parisian chanson’ that attaches to it.12 The variety of the poetic texts in
their forms, metrical structures and use of refrains is mirrored in their
musical settings. Sermisy is perhaps the purest exponent of the style in its
courtly vein. The melody of Je n’ay poinct plus d’affection illustrates it neatly.
The repetition of the music for the third and fourth lines of text, though not
ubiquitous, is typical enough; still more common is the reprise of the
opening phrase for the end, which may be lightly varied or expanded. A
lighter variant of the basic form is the drinking song (e.g. Hau, hau je bois
and La, la, Maistre Pierre), in which the refrain punctuates the text at
intervals (sometimes in truncated form). Janequin’s style is occasionally
close to Sermisy’s lyrical simplicity, though inclining to a more melismatic
approach, but he far outshines him in the variety of his rhythm and brilliant
58 Fabrice Fitch

articulation of a syllabic counterpoint that is perfectly matched to the words

of the narrative. A distinct category is the épigramme, setting single strophes
whose last line introduces a pointe or punch-line. The narrative is often
obscene, and some of the wittiest settings (such as Janequin’s Ung jour
Colin) contrive a musical representation of the (usually sexual) activity
described. Strophic settings were less often associated with ribald texts; an
exception is Sermisy’s scatological Je ne menge point de porc, whose two
strophes with refrain are through-composed. The pointe is not the refrain
here but the penultimate line, in which a pig addresses a piece of excrement
as he prepares to eat it. To emphasise this surreal moment, Sermisy moves
to perfect time (by then seldom used), effectively slowing down the beat to
stress the pig’s apostrophe.
Janequin’s narrative songs with their lively counterpoint and neat
structures profoundly inspired the song-writing of generations of fol-
lowers. The best known are Le chant des oyseaulx and La bataille, which
must commemorate the victory of François I over imperial forces at
Marignano in 1515; but the hunt-scene in La chasse, which paints a
tableau including the king himself, and Le caquet des femmes (‘The
chatterbox of women’) are just as accomplished. The formal mastery
and sense of pacing that he deploys in these large-scale compositions are
remarkable: moments of harmonic stasis, in which the music is overrun
with onomatopoeia, set the scene for a sudden dramatic breakthrough, as
when the quarry is finally sighted in La chasse. The impact of these pieces
in live performance is undeniable, and they were frequently imitated: even
the usually straight-laced Gombert was moved to try his hand in La chasse
au lièvre and his own setting of Le chant des oyseaulx.
The later sixteenth century was dominated by Costeley and Claude Le
Jeune, both closely associated with Baïf’s académie and its vers mesurés à
l’antique. These might be described as a typically French attempt to
impose a rational framework on an inherently fluid medium; not coinci-
dentally, however, the concern to systematise the French language itself
was shared by countless authors and intellectuals of the time, from
Rabelais to the circle of the Pléiade.
Between these early and late figures is a group of significant person-
alities mostly active outside France: Thomas Créquillon and Pierre de
Manchicourt, both born in the northern town of Béthune but employed by
the Habsburgs, and Jacobus Clemens (alias ‘non Papa’ owing to his
dissolute lifestyle). To some extent they stand apart from the composers
working in France, exhibiting the Flemish preference for more elaborate
and stricter imitative counterpoint, stricter fugal sequence, stretto entries,
dovetailed cadences and denser textures most markedly exhibited in the
work of Gombert. There will be more to say concerning the distinction
59 The Renaissance

between ‘Franco-Flemish’ and French, but the most gifted of these

Ausländer – indeed, arguably the most versatile of all composers in the
genre – is Lassus, who settled in Munich from the mid-1550s. Much has
been written about his phenomenal sensitivity to text, which ranges from
the mimetic games dear to Janequin to extraordinarily subtle references
audible (or, in the case of Augenmusik, visible) to musicians alone. This
psychological acuteness is matched by an effortless facility with counter-
point and an elfin sense of play with style unmatched by any of his
contemporaries. His lyricism, figuralism and word-painting are illustrated
in songs like Bonjour mon coeur, which neatly balances Ronsard’s poem;
La nuit froide et sombre, which depicts each antithetical image portrayed
in a few lines from Du Bellay’s Ode à l’inconstance des choses; and Paisible
demaine, which succinctly sets an old ‘Blason de Paris’. His compositions
combine Sermisy’s stylised elegance with Janequin’s rhythmic verve and
Arcadelt’s allusive touches. Lassus set French verse ranging from Villon to
Baïf and never fails to show his skill and originality in reworking the many
musical models provided by the previous generation of composers. In
turn, his songs profoundly influenced countless later settings of the same
verses.13 Although Lassus’s delight in contrapuntal mastery and emotive
use of harmony appears to flout classic French sensibility, which holds that
art should conceal art, his pith and lucidity mark him out as one of the
greatest composers ever to have set the language.
In 1571, the publisher and lutenist Adrian Le Roy brought out a
collection of solo songs with lute accompaniment, which he called Airs
de cour (the first known use of the term). These arrangements of strophic
songs, mostly composed by King Charles IX’s organist, Nicholas de La
Grotte, and published by Le Roy in a four-voice version in 1569, included
texts that Ronsard had composed for masquerades and other quasi-
dramatic festivities performed at Fontainebleau in 1564. Le Roy’s monodic
arrangements introduce a novel unmeasured, declamatory rhythm, rarely
found earlier, though it occurs in some of his own airs, including Est-ce pas
mort quand un corps froid (Second livre de chansons, 1564). The air de cour
had less of a European vogue than the chanson, but it was still widely
disseminated – the best-known instances being the publication by Thomas
East of Charles Tessier’s Chansons et airs de court, which influenced the
first book of Dowland’s ayres printed in the same year, 1597. Although the
fashion for solo singing may have been influenced by developments in
Italy, the directness and simple elegance of the air de cour is typically
French. But that simplicity is deceptive, for the best singers ornamented the
melody as lavishly as their Italian counterparts. The highly stylised attitude
that characterises the genre, already evident with Pierre Guédron, was
carried still further by his successors. This rarefied sophistication reflects
60 Fabrice Fitch

the tone of airs de cour texts, which is subtly different from that of the
chanson. Humour, though present in the sub-generic airs à boire (drinking
songs), seldom matches the ribaldry of the chanson at its most direct; more
typically, allegorical descriptions of the beloved are pursued to the point of
preciosity – or so it would seem, were it not for the excellence of the music.
The change of sensibility indicates a significant aesthetic shift.

Instrumental music
Instrumental music remained subordinate to vocal music in France, as in
other European countries during the period. The minstrel’s oral traditions
are only marginally represented in notated sources like the published
dance books, the earliest being that of Michel de Tholoze (c. 1510).
These included mostly basses danses, pavanes and gaillardes, such as
were danced in courtly ballrooms and town halls for weddings and other
festivities arranged for four-part instrumental ensemble, keyboard, or solo
lute. The arrangers are rarely named, but they included Claude Gervaise,
the bandsman Étienne du Tertre, Tielman Susato and the distinguished
lutenists Albert de Rippe, Guillaume Morlaye and Adrian Le Roy, as well
as the guitarist Simon Gorlier. Many of these dances were structured and
strictly rhythmicised versions of chansons, which also provided a vast
repertoire of straight arrangements. Freer arrangements of chansons and
occasionally motets or mass sections were also published in the form of
phantaisies and rechercars, and some were preceded by virtuosic preludes,
which were often mere finger-warming exercises with scales and arpeggios.
Several books of choreographies were printed in Lyons and even Troyes,
where in 1588 Thoinot Arbeau (Étienne Tabouret) issued his treatise
Orchésographie. In 1576 under the title ‘voix de villes’ Jehan Chardavoine
published the melodies for many airs and other songs that were sung and
danced on the Pont Neuf in Paris. Music and notably chansons played a key
role in French drama, from the passion plays, mysteries and moralities of the
fifteenth century to the farces, pastorals and tragedies of the sixteenth cen-
tury.14 The repertoire is clearly represented in the song-books of the time,
and a few examples of full scores survive (e.g. a nativity play by Barthélemy
Aneau with noëls by Étienne Du Tertre, Didier Lupi and Goudimel).

Sacred versus secular music

Because of the social structures within which leading musicians worked,
there was little distinction between composers of sacred and secular music
61 The Renaissance

before the sixteenth century, even though individual composers might

favour the one over the other. Thus Busnoys’s sacred output is compara-
tively small in relation to the number of his chansons, and the reverse is
true with Ockeghem; but conversely, more copies survive of Busnoys’s
justly celebrated L’homme armé Mass than of any of Ockeghem’s Mass
cycles, while none of Busnoys’s songs matched the popularity of Ma
bouche rit. In the following century, Sermisy, though master of King
François I’s chapel, published more songs than Masses or motets, while
the priest Janequin hardly touched sacred genres. The enduring amalga-
mation of the sacred and the secular is marked by the fact that a significant
proportion of the Masses, and many Magnificats, composed after 1500
were ‘imitations’ or ‘parodies’ of polyphonic chansons.
All the same, a number of points testify to the gradual split between
the two. The most far-reaching event from this standpoint was the
Reformation, and the reaction it triggered in Catholic countries. The rise
of Reformed churches led to forms of worship in the vernacular, and a
need for new musical genres suited to them. In French, this led most
notably to countless settings of the Psalter, newly translated by Clément
Marot and Théodore de Beze. As we have seen, the singing of these psalms
in French was very popular at court, and they were set by the Catholic
composers Janequin and Certon. Conversely, prominent Huguenots like
Goudimel composed and edited collections of Masses for the Parisian
printer Nicolas Du Chemin, and the pastor Simon Goulart made a career
out of contrafacts, devising spiritual verse to fit the words of Ronsardian
sonnets set by Bertrand, Boni and even Lassus. It was only from the 1560s
onwards, when attitudes hardened on both sides, that the linguistic divide
was perceived to mirror the confessional. Thus the entire production of
Paschal de l’Estocart (a generation on from Goudimel) was conditioned by
religious considerations. His Octonnaires de la vanité du monde set insist-
ently moralising vernacular texts, albeit in a musical idiom strongly tinted
with Italianate chromaticism. A remarkable degree of chromaticism also
informs the spiritual as well as secular songs of Jean Servin and the airs
spirituels of Antoine de Bertrand. It can hardly be coincidence that this
emphasis on the devotional use of the vernacular corresponds to the
emergence of new secular forms within each linguistic group – chanson,
madrigal and the like.
The linguistic question aside, there is little doubt that the growing
rift between sacred and secular was a pan-European phenomenon: while
the Spaniard Victoria’s decision to concentrate on sacred music appears
to have arisen out of personal conviction, Palestrina’s in Rome seems to
have been more calculated. But either position would have been unthink-
able forty years earlier. In French-speaking areas matters were rarely
62 Fabrice Fitch

so clear-cut, as we have seen with Goulart’s practice of framing sacred

texts to the very chansons that Reformed religious leaders denounced for
their scandalous content! Trends in printed music, similarly, cut both
ways: at first glance, the publications devoted to genre argued for the
perception of sacred and secular as distinct; yet the two were often found
alongside each other in collections known as meslanges (miscellanies),
whether collective (as with those issued in Paris in 1560 and 1572) or
from individuals.

Latin-texted sacred music: French versus Franco-Flemish?

To return to the question broached at the beginning of this chapter: what,
if anything, qualifies as specifically ‘French’ in the music written in French,
or in France, during the Renaissance? The problem is posed perhaps most
acutely in the sacred music written for the Catholic ritual, and not just for
the obvious reason that it sets Latin rather than French texts.
With Ockeghem, the Chapelle Royale – and by extension, France –
could claim the most respected composer of his generation. But because
barely a handful of contemporary French sources of sacred polyphony
have come down to us, such knowledge as we have of the music itself
comes second-hand at best, often from sources copied very far afield.
Hence the impression that French sacred polyphony of the late fifteenth
century is well-nigh indissociable from an international style practised
by the ‘Franco-Flemish’ musicians who disseminated it throughout
Europe. In fact, most of the principal composers active in France at the
time were francophone. Long believed to have been of Flemish origin,
Ockeghem is now known to have been born near Mons, in French-
speaking Belgium. A survey of his sacred music is beyond the scope of
this chapter, but a word is in order concerning his contribution (and
through him, that of composers working on French soil) to that most
lofty of fifteenth-century musical genres, the polyphonic Mass cycle.15
Ockeghem’s posthumous reputation rested on a group of works of a
distinctly speculative sort: the three-voice canonic song Prenez sur moy,
the Missa Cuiusvis toni, designed for performance on several starting
pitches, and the Missa Prolationum, conceived almost entirely in double
canon. Such pieces may have been designed as audition pieces for the
French Chapelle Royale, but compositionally they seem also to straddle
the fault lines of the theoretical systems within which they are conceived.
(The idea that a notated work may have several sounding realisations was
revisited a couple of generations later by Pierre Moulu in his Missa Alma
redemptoris mater, which can be performed with or without rests longer
63 The Renaissance

than a minim.) At first glance, these important pieces are exceptions within
his output, and they have often been portrayed as such. Nevertheless, their
speculative bent is typical of the composer more generally, for in his other
Masses he frequently adopts a questioning stance towards the borrowed
material that serves as their basis.
Apart from their theoretical bases (or rather, precisely on account of
them), the Masses Cuiusvis toni and Prolationum are exceptional in
relying on no pre-existing material whatever.16 The more usual way of
treating the Mass cycle was to take pre-existing material of one sort or
another as a basis for a new work, the options available to the composer
depending on the nature of the borrowed work. The tradition of using a line
of plainsong as a compositional starting-point was already centuries old, but
its application as a recurrent structuring (hence the term ‘cantus firmus’)
across the five movements of the Mass Ordinary counts as one of the
fifteenth century’s greatest innovations. If its invention is credited to the
English composers of the generation of Leonel Power (c. 1380–1445) and
John Dunstable (c. 1390–1453), its development and diversification seems
to have been a largely French affair, most notably through Guillaume Du
Fay (c. 1397–1474), and Ockeghem and Busnoys in the following gener-
ation. Where the English tended to present the plainsong in the same
guise in each movement, their successors might ornament it differently
each time, as in the Ecce ancilla Masses by Du Fay and Ockeghem. And it
may also have been Du Fay who first hit upon the idea of using a line from
an existing polyphonic song as a cantus firmus in his Se la face ay pale
cycle, probably composed in the 1450s and based on a strophic song of Du
Fay’s own. (This intersection of sacred and secular can be surprising to
modern sensibilities, but it would have seemed entirely natural to con-
temporary observers. For one thing, God and his saints were everywhere,
tangible presences; for another, medieval culture delighted in the sort of
analogical relationship that such correspondences set up: thus the Virgin
Mary was readily assimilated to the idealised, unattainable Lady of chiv-
alry, subject of countless chansons of the period.17) Bold though these
developments undoubtedly are, still more striking is the speed with which
new ideas were not only adopted, but their implications pursued and
extended. More or less from the off, composers began to quote not only
from the single line but from several or, again, from the entire polyphonic
texture of borrowed pieces. Most of these developments may be observed in
Ockeghem’s Mass output, and whether or not he initiated them himself, the
number of his surviving Masses (over a dozen, whether complete or frag-
mentary), most of which must have been written during his long tenure at
the French court, is indicative of an influence beyond what the surviving
sources suggest.
64 Fabrice Fitch

Independently of his international reputation, within France itself

Ockeghem was unquestionably the dominant figure of his generation.
Once again, the lack of primary sources obscures the picture; but with
the exception of Busnoys (who had left France by the mid-1460s),
Ockeghem had no rival in the domain of sacred music. Busnoys’s
L’homme armé Mass has already been mentioned, and was one of the
most influential works of the century; and his motet in honour of
Ockeghem, In hydraulis, composed just before his leave-taking of his
colleague around 1465, was also echoed in a number of works, including,
for example, Josquin’s Illibata virgo nutrix. More obviously, perhaps, than
Ockeghem’s, Busnoys’s music exhibits traits that might be described as
quintessentially French: innate balance and sense of line, and fastidious
contrapuntal technique. And of the two, it was arguably Busnoys who was
the more influential. Like many of his songs, his Missa L’homme armé
(which may well date from his last years at the French court) supremely
embodies a form of mid-fifteenth-century classicism, refined, consum-
mately sure-footed and yet capable of coups de théâtre as breathtaking as
they are carefully staged (as the concluding section of the Agnus Dei
reveals). Not only was it widely copied, but its elegant design led to a
number of homages by younger composers, notably Jacob Obrecht and
Josquin (the latter in his Missa L’homme armé super voces musicales).
Close to Busnoys in style is his probable near contemporary Firmin Caron,
who was probably born at Amiens and left five elegantly executed Masses,
including a Missa L’homme armé. (The popularity of his songs has already
been mentioned.) In the 1480s and 1490s, the royal court was joined by
more distinguished figures. Although born in Ghent and therefore of
Flemish birth, Agricola appears to have made some impact during his
tenure there. His highly individual style might be held up as a synthesis of
his two most illustrious predecessors at the French court, for its textural
vocabulary owes much to Busnoys, but its subversive streak is reminiscent
of Ockeghem. It is possible that there existed a relationship between
Agricola and Ockeghem similar to the one that had linked Ockeghem
and Busnoys twenty years earlier.18
The music of both Ockeghem and Agricola exhibits stylistic traits often
described as ‘Flemish’: a preference for convoluted, intricate lines, dense
textures (whatever the number of voices) and contrapuntal sophistication.
These features have sometimes been contrasted with the gradual simpli-
fication of style observed in the early years of the next century in the works
of the chapel members Prioris, Divitis, Moulu and Févin, characterised by
a greater clarity of texture, melodic design and form, and a preference for
four-voice textures where five and six voices were increasingly the norm
elsewhere (for example with Habsburg musicians in the Low Countries
65 The Renaissance

and northerners in Italy). But the interpretation of these changes as

evidence of a specifically French sensibility emerging from the shadow
of a Franco-Flemish school is overhasty. Divitis, for example, was born in
Leuven and spent most of his career in Flemish-speaking areas. His works
exhibit a stepping-down of contrapuntal virtuosity comparable to that of
his francophone contemporaries at the Chapelle Royale. Conversely, in
the work of the francophone Mouton the propensity for clear textures is
balanced by an occasional interest in contrapuntal artifice, so the ‘Franco/
Flemish’ duality is hardly clear-cut. The difference may depend more on
the formation received in certain choir schools like those of Cambrai or
Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, or from the prevailing fashion at the
place of employment. To view it from the other side, the composers
working in the Habsburg orbit continued in the ‘Flemish’ manner just
noted, particularly retaining the preference for rich and dense textures;
but not a few of these composers (Manchicourt, Crecquillon) were fran-
cophone. So one need hardly invoke the tunefulness and the textual and
formal clarity of the new ‘Parisian’ chanson (a quintessential symbol of the
French Renaissance) to explain the lack of contrapuntal artifice in
Sermisy’s sacred music, which is better viewed in light of trends extending
beyond France to include much of Europe.
The early sixteenth century ushered in the heyday of the motet, which
replaced the Mass as the main focus for composers of sacred music, and of
canonic writing as a privileged locus of contrapuntal virtuosity. The
simplification of style just discussed applies here also, for in the fifteenth
century the term ‘canon’ was applied to a wide variety of techniques for
transforming a single line of music by means of externally imposed
criteria, of which the technique designated by the term nowadays (that
is, the exact replication of a single notated line by two or more voices
sounding at different times) was only one.19 After the turn of the sixteenth
century the vogue for abstruse and cryptic ‘non-fugal’ forms of canon went
out of fashion (notwithstanding the odd exception), while the strict imi-
tative sort became increasingly popular, as in the Chanzoni franciose a
quatro sopra doi, which consists entirely of canonic pieces (in the sense of
‘fuga’), both sacred and secular. In its concentration on fugal canon this was
the first publication of its kind; but it is striking that nearly all the composers
represented had close links with the French court in the decade preceding
the volume’s appearance. Its title should not be read anachronistically, since
national and linguistic labels were quite loosely applied during this period;
but it plainly signals a perception of French composers (or of composers
working in France) as a distinctive presence on the international scene.20
The influence of Italy on courtly French culture in the Renaissance is widely
documented; but it is worth noting that the traffic was not exclusively in one
66 Fabrice Fitch

direction, since at least one of the pioneers of the Italian madrigal, Philippe
Verdelot, was French.
Compared with that of the preceding period, sacred music in France
during the latter half of the sixteenth century gives the impression of being
somewhat insular or conservative, but this perception is neither fair nor
accurate. Until recently, musicology has neglected the abundant and often
fine sacred polyphony of such figures from the middle of the century as
Arcadelt, Certon, Maillard, Phinot and Boni.21 True, no French composer
of the time has since achieved the iconic status of Byrd for England, of
Victoria for Spain or of Palestrina for Italy, though Du Caurroy’s reputa-
tion within France was nearly comparable, eliciting enthusiastic citations
fifty years after his death, not least from Mersenne. The fact that Du
Caurroy’s music was not widely published until the very end of his life
(two major collections appeared in 1609 and 1610, and Mersenne mentions
several Masses that are now lost) must explain, at least in part, why his fame
did not spread more widely. But his Preces ecclesiasticae is an impressive
collection of motets, to which a modern edition has only recently done
justice,22 and in Nicolas Formé he left a talented disciple who succeeded
him as sous-maître of the royal chapel and contributed to the development
of the grand motet that was to characterise the sacred music of the grand
siècle. In the closing years of the sixteenth century, however, Lassus’s
reputation eclipsed Du Caurroy’s in France as it did that of so many
contemporaries elsewhere. Yet Ronsard’s famous encomium of Lassus as
‘nostre divin Orlande’ reminds us that the composer could reasonably be
regarded by native French speakers as one of their own. Not for the first
time in this survey, the correlation between linguistic and national boun-
daries fails to do justice to the complexity of the situation. But if that
situation resists convenient packaging, the fluidity of musical exchange
that characterises it is one that Europe would hardly encounter again before
the twentieth century.

Notes
1 Despite the breadth of the chronological
span covered in this chapter, there are few
monographs in English devoted to French or
French-speaking composers of this period in a
traditional ‘life-and-works’ format. Useful
exceptions are David Fallows, Dufay: The
Master Musicians, rev. edn (London: Dent,
1987); and Jerome Roche, Lassus (Oxford
University Press, 1982). Even specialised
composer-centred studies are rare. On the
major figures of Ockeghem and Busnoys, see
Fabrice Fitch, Johannes Ockeghem: Masses and
Models (Paris: Champion, 1997);
Philippe Vendrix (ed.), Johannes Ockeghem:
Actes du XLe Colloque international d’études
humanistes (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998); and
Paula Higgins (ed.), Antoine Busnoys: Method,
Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).
2 For the period after c. 1520, the most
complete summary of biographical
information remains François Lesure,
Musicians and Poets of the French Renaissance
(New York: Merlin Press, 1955), which is
usefully supplemented by the impressive study
by Christelle Cazaux, La musique à la cour de
67 The Renaissance
François Ier (Paris: École Nationale des
Chartes, 2002). The later Valois court is well
treated in Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Songs in Late
Sixteenth-Century France (University of
Chicago Press, 2000).
3 As in the particular case of Saint-Omer in
the Pas-de-Calais, where Mouton was active in
1494–5. It should be noted that Saint-Omer
was not formally joined to the French kingdom
until 1677. See Andrew Kirkman, ‘La musique
à la collégiale à la fin du moyen âge’, in
Nicolette Delanne-Logié and Yves-Marie
Hilaire (eds), La cathédrale de Saint-Omer:
800 ans de mémoire vive (Paris: CNRS,
2000), 133–8.
4 The report of the name Dionisius Prioris
(Denis Prieur) and its identification with the
composer ‘Prioris’ appears, with a full
reconsideration of the composer’s biography,
in Theodor Dumitrescu, ‘Who was “Prioris”? A
royal composer recovered’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 65 (2012),
5–65.
5 See Cazaux, La musique à la cour de
François Ier.
6 Recent studies of the education of choirboys
include Kate van Orden, ‘Children’s voices:
singing and literacy in sixteenth-century
France’, Early Music History, 25 (2006),
209–56; and Andrew Kirkman, ‘The seeds of
medieval music: choirboys and musical
training in a late-medieval maîtrise’, in
Susan Boynton and Eric Rice (eds), Young
Choristers, 650–1700 (Woodbridge: Boydell
and Brewer, 2008), 104–22.
7 Two recent studies that give a fine-grained
picture of the life of the jobbing fifteenth-
century composer are Rob C. Wegman, ‘Fremin
Caron at Amiens: new documents’, in
Fabrice Fitch and Jacobijn Kiel (eds), Essays on
Renaissance Music in Honour of David Fallows:
Bon jour, bon mois et bonne estrenne
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), 2–32; and
Andrew Kirkman, ‘Johannes Sohier dit Fede
and St Omer: a story of pragmatic sanctions’, in
Fitch and Kiel (eds), Essays on Renaissance
Music, 68–79.
8 Frank Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons
(Oxford University Press, 1992).
9 Philippe Vendrix, La musique à la
renaissance (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1999), 17–20, 87–8.
10 This was first proposed in print in
Joshua Rifkin, ‘Scribal concordances for some
Renaissance manuscripts in Florentine
libraries’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 26 (1973), 305–26. A
recent study of these manuscripts and their
cultural context is Jane Alden, Songs, Scribes,
and Society: The History and Reception of the
Loire Valley Chansonniers (Oxford University
Press, 2010).
11 Frank Dobbins, ‘Strophic and
epigrammatic forms in the French chanson
and air of the sixteenth century’, Acta
musicologica, 78 (2006), 197–234.
12 The first known use of the term, by
François Lesure in 1951, is reported by Frank
Dobbins. Ibid, 197.
13 Frank Dobbins, ‘Lassus – borrower or lender’,
Revue belge de musicologie, 39–40 (1985–6),
101–57; and Dobbins, ‘Textual sources and
compositional techniques in the French chansons
of Orlando de Lassus’, in Ignace Bossuyt,
Eugeen Schreurs and Annelies Wouters (eds),
Orlandus Lassus and his Time (Peer: Alamire,
1995), 139–61.
14 See Howard Mayer Brown, Music in the
French Secular Theater, 1400–1550
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1963); and Frank Dobbins, ‘Music in French
theatre of the late sixteenth century’, Early
Music History, 13 (1994), 85–122.
15 For the most recent discussion of
this seminal genre, see Andrew Kirkman, The
Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass:
Medieval Context to Modern Revival
(Cambridge University Press, 2010).
16 As Kirkman has argued, however, the
tendency of modern-day scholarship to
privilege Masses unified by shared material
should not obscure the fact that other
approaches also had currency in the period.
See Andrew Kirkman, ‘The invention of the
cyclic Mass’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 54 (2001), 1–47.
17 M. Jennifer Bloxam, ‘A cultural context for
the chanson mass’, in Honey Meconi (ed.),
Early Musical Borrowing (New York:
Routledge, 2004), 7–35.
18 Fabrice Fitch, ‘“Who cares who is
speaking?” An essay in style-criticism’, Acta
musicologica, 82 (2010), 49–70.
19 One must bear in mind that musicians
designated both imitation and strict canon (in
the modern sense) with the same term ‘fuga’,
whereas the Latin word ‘canon’ (meaning
‘rule’) covered any sort of verbal instruction to
the performer, including one prescribing ‘fuga’
(e.g. ‘Canon: 4 ex 1’, which requires that the
same notated part be read at four different
speeds).
20 Its editor was probably Adrian Willaert,
who may have come from Belgium but spent
some formative years in France. Nearly all the
composers represented were active at the court
of Louis XII at Blois. Antico probably intended
his book for the French market; it is significant
68 Fabrice Fitch
that it was pirated by Pierre Attaingnant in
Paris as probably the first example of an
edition produced by the new single-impression
typography.
21 A recent exception is Marie-Alexis Colin,
‘Eustache du Caurroy et le motet en France à la
fin du XVIe siècle’ (PhD thesis, University of
Tours, 2001).
22 Eustache du Caurroy, Preces ecclesiasticae,
ed. Marie-Alexis Colin, Musica Gallica,
collection ‘Epitome musical’ (Paris:
Klincksieck, 2000).
 4 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715
p e t e r be n n e t t a n d g e o r g i a c o w a r t

After the domestic religious wars of the sixteenth century, seventeenth-

century France saw a period of relative internal stability during the reigns
of Louis XIII (r. 1610–43) and Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), though religious
conflict with the Huguenots was never far from the surface, and external
wars occupied both Louis XIII (the Thirty Years War, 1618–48) and Louis
XIV (particularly the War of Spanish Succession, 1701–14) for much of
their reigns. With the help of his premier ministre Cardinal Richelieu,
Louis XIII worked to consolidate and centralise the power of the Bourbon
dynasty; Louis XIV continued this process with Cardinal Mazarin until
1661, and then alone, from Paris and later Versailles. Although recent
scholars have questioned the concept of ‘absolute power’ or ‘absolutism’,
Louis XIV, through a programme of image-making and the arts, as well
as through political means, probably did more than any other single ruler
to create a mystique of grandiloquence and glory that posterity has not
effaced.
Tendencies towards centralisation and a resulting isolation were
reflected in seventeenth-century French music.1 In contrast to Italy,
where the near-simultaneous appearance of the first solo-monody publica-
tion and the first opera production signalled the rise of what later became
known as the Baroque period, France witnessed no such dramatic shift in
aesthetic, and in France the term has generally been applied less frequently.
Instead, for much of the early part of the seventeenth century, French
musicians remained strongly influenced by the practice of so-called musi-
que mesurée (the practice of declaiming text in ‘syllabic homophony’ in
supposed imitation of classical metres), with polyphony remaining more
attractive to the French than monody: as Claude Le Jeune (c. 1530–1600)
stated in the preface to his Printemps (1603), the French retained the
‘improvements’ of polyphony attained over the past centuries, rather than
discarding them as the Italians had done. In broader musical terms, this
influence was expressed in the continuing multi-voiced character of the air
de cour, liturgical music and instrumental ensemble music. Although this
character was often homophonic (especially in instrumental music based on
the dance), liturgical music often looked back to the counterpoint of the
sixteenth century, and some instrumental works adopted a self-consciously
[69] archaic contrapuntal style. By the middle of the century, the solo voice had
70 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

gained in importance, both airs sérieux for domestic performance and opera
airs now being conceived as ‘solo with accompaniment’ rather than as
homophony; but in contrast to Italy, where opera choruses were rare, the
homophonic chorus never lost its attraction for Jean-Baptiste Lully
(1632–87), the most important composer of the second half of the century.
French music continued to remain relatively isolated for much of the
seventeenth century, as it tended to exhibit a tuneful directness and to
eschew virtuosity. This style held sway in all genres until the late seven-
teenth century, when Italian influence began to be felt through the use of
abstract forms such as the sonata, virtuosity and the rise of Italian-
influenced opera. The incorporation of Italian influences into French
music preoccupied critics and theorists in the early years of the eighteenth
century, and through these debates over the comparative merits of the
French versus the Italian style, modern musical criticism began to develop.
Finally, French musicians learned to incorporate and reconcile these Italian
elements to produce the famous goûts réunis of figures such as François
Couperin (1668–1733).2

Music under Louis XIII

When the eight-year-old Louis succeeded to the French throne after the
assassination of his father Henri IV in 1610, the outward organisation of
the musical establishment at court and the roles it played did not change,
nor would they for the remainder of the century. As Louis XIII tightened
his grip on power, however (he assumed personal rule in 1617, after
the regency of his mother, Marie de Médicis), music at court became as
much directed to political ends as to entertainment and worship.
Although the most obvious examples of a political role for music were
the frequent performances of ballets de cour (court ballets), which fea-
tured thinly disguised allegories of Louis as victorious over adversity,
most famously in the Ballet de la délivrance de Renaud in 1617, in other
ways too music served, and was subject to, the growth of Louis’s abso-
lutist rule. Only forty years earlier, Charles IX’s Académie de Poésie et de
Musique had made explicit the Platonic conception of the harmony
inherent in music reflecting and reinforcing the harmony of a well-
governed state. Under Louis too, all genres of music, from liturgical
and devotional to court entertainment and music for entrées (ceremonial
entrances into towns and cities), were engaged to serve the political needs
of the king.3
As part of Louis’s controlling influence, musical activity became cen-
tralised at court. This centralisation extended to music publishing, with the
71 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715

king continuing to grant a monopoly (known as a privilège) to members of

the Ballard family, during most of this period Pierre. From his appointment
in 1607 until his death in 1639, Pierre Ballard’s musical tastes and commer-
cial interests dominated music publishing in Paris and indeed France more
widely, with only the occasional threat to his hegemony emerging from
figures such as the composer Nicolas Métru (c. 1610–c. 1663) in 1635. After
that threat, in 1637 Ballard was granted an even more exclusive monopoly
in a decree from Louis XIII which also extravagantly praised the quality of
his work, but on Ballard’s death the king nevertheless complicated matters
by granting a privilège to Jacques Senlecque for the printing of plainchant, as
well as to Pierre’s son and successor, Robert. The Ballards were eager to
publish popular and fashionable repertoires (such as the books of airs de
cour by the court composers Pierre Guédron, after 1564–c. 1620, and
Antoine Boësset, 1586–1643), but less inclined towards sacred or instru-
mental ensemble music, though the firm was responsible for the publication
of Jehan Titelouze’s Hymnes de l’église pour toucher sur l’orgue (1623), the
only printed keyboard music to survive from the entire era. In the context of
musical activity already centralised at court (a hallmark of absolutist rule,
continuing with the reign of Louis XIV), Ballard’s selective choices and
commercial impulses, together with the favourable survival of manuscripts
from royal circles, preserve a historical picture of musical activity almost
completely dominated by the royal household.
The musicians of the royal household were distributed among a num-
ber of performing ensembles (some musicians being members of more
than one). The musique de la chambre was controlled by a surintendant
(probably the most important musician at court) and participated in
all aspects of the court’s musical life – sacred, secular and ceremonial.
Under the direction of the surintendant (during Louis XIII’s reign
Pierre Guédron, Henry Le Bailly, d. 1637, Paul Auget, c. 1592–1660, and
Boësset), a small vocal ensemble (one elite singer to a part, with three boys
taking the top line) together with a few instruments (lute, harpsichord,
flute and viols) provided both secular and devotional entertainment for
the court, while the Violons du Roi, considerably enlarged in the early
years of Louis XIII’s reign with players from the Paris violin guilds,
provided music for both social dancing and ballets de cour. While the
musicians of the grande écurie (literally ‘large stable’), which consisted of
trumpets, oboes and drums, provided ceremonial music for processions
and large-scale events such as the entrées, the Chapelle Royale (sixteen
men singing the lower parts and eight boys singing the top line, all under
the direction of a sous-maître) performed music for the daily liturgy at
court, and combined with the singers of the musique de la chambre on
special occasions.
72 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

Music and ceremony

Music was an essential component of a number of royal ceremonies, and
was clearly intended to heighten their effectiveness as projections of royal
power both in Paris and throughout the country. In particular, as an
absolute monarch ruling by divine right, Louis wished to be identified
with God himself (or to be a ‘Vice-God’, as Godeau, bishop of Grasse, later
put it). To that end, biblical (particularly psalm) texts featured promi-
nently in ceremonial musical settings: just as David, the king-musician
and author of many psalms, wisely ruled over the Israelites (God’s chosen
people), so Louis (incidentally also in reality a proficient musician) ruled
over the French (also supposedly God’s chosen people) with the help of
music.
As Louis travelled through France consolidating power, ceremonial
entrées, accompanied by music, were often organised to celebrate his arrival
at a particular town or city. Although none of the music used on these
occasions has survived, eye-witness accounts describe the kinds of perform-
ances that took place. During the entrée into Paris in 1628 following the
military success against the Huguenots at La Rochelle, for example, the
procession stopped at numerous ‘Arcs de Triomphe’. At the St Jacques gate
the ‘Trompettes & les Tambours’ performed; at the arch of St Benedict, the
‘Hauts-bois’ (loud wind instruments); at the arch of St Severin, the ‘Musetes
de Poictou’ (a consort of bagpipe-like instruments, part of the grande
écurie); at the ‘Petit Pont’, ‘la Musique douce de voix, & d’Instruments’
(probably a description of the musique de la chambre); at the New Market,
‘le concert de Violons’; and at the Arch of Glory, ‘two choirs of musicians
answered each other back and forth: one of wind instruments, the other of
violins’.4
Music as a vehicle for biblical text was inevitably an important feature of
Louis’s coronation at the cathedral of Notre-Dame, Reims, on 17 October
1610. Early in the ceremony the archbishop of Rheims sang the verse
‘Domine salvum fac Regem’, to which the people responded ‘Et exaudi
nos in die qua invocaverimus te’ (Psalm 20: ‘O Lord save the King’, ‘And
mercifully hear us when we call upon thee’), a text that played on the
ambiguity of the psalmist and portrayed Louis as ‘king’ in the heavenly
sense. Musical settings of this text would become ubiquitous during the later
reign of Louis XIII and that of Louis XIV, forming an integral part of the
daily Low Mass at Versailles. Later, the canons of the cathedral sang, in
fauxbourdon, ‘Domine in virtute tua letabitur Rex’ (Psalm 21: ‘The King
shall rejoice in thy strength, O Lord’), another psalm text highlighting the
parallels between King David and King Louis. At the end of the coronation,
the assembled gathering sang the Te Deum; this was also used frequently for
other celebrations such as peace treaties and the culmination of entrées,
73 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715

including the one in 1628. According to the account preserved by

Godefroy, ‘all the people made their acclamation and cried “Long live
the King!”, while trumpets, shawms and other instruments sounded: and
then the bishop of Reims began the Te Deum accompanied by the organ
and other musicians’.5

Sacred music
Sacred music was clearly influenced by the musical and religious currents
of the day.6 Although later in the century a strong desire to retain inde-
pendence from Rome would manifest itself in the adoption of a Neo-
Gallican liturgy and chant, under Louis XIII the revised Tridentine
Roman liturgy was officially adopted as the liturgy of France in 1615.
By contrast, the specific reforms of the Council of Trent were never
formally adopted, but their spirit, and that of the entire Counter-
Reformation, could be felt in much sacred music. Figures such as
François de Sales, with their message of personal devotion and individual
piety, were widely revered in France, and sacred music reflected this
individualism. Sacred music also became more open to secular influen-
ces, with devotional music in particular adopting characteristics of the
air de cour.
Under Louis XIII, the Chapelle Royale lost its pre-eminent position as
a musical establishment. Virtually no music survives from this period,
but what little there is suggests a conservative repertoire based almost
entirely on sixteenth-century compositional practices, using instruments
(cornets and sackbuts) only to double the voices. The music of Eustache
Du Caurroy (1549–1609), chapel composer or sous-maître until 1609,
exemplifies this conservative style, and a surviving set of eight Magnificats
by Nicolas Formé from the middle of Louis XIII’s reign shows little
advance in technique. Only in Formé’s Mass Aeternae Henrici
Magni . . . (1638) do we see any hint of the compositional procedures
later used there under Louis XIV, with the vocal forces divided into two
contrasting choirs.7
If the Chapelle Royale remained primarily conservative, the musique de
la chambre was quicker to adopt more progressive musical practices.
According to contemporary accounts the musique de la chambre was
required to sing ‘graces’ after the king’s meals, and the influence of the
polyphonic air de cour (which they otherwise regularly sang) on these
devotional works is clear. Setting Latin texts based on psalms or from the
Song of Solomon, these works were often imbued with allegorical mean-
ing: the anonymous Egredimini filiae Sion, for example, makes reference to
the coronation of King Solomon by his mother, a clear allusion to the
74 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

regency of Marie de Médicis, Louis’s mother. More clearly dependent on

the air de cour is Veni, sponsa mea, a dialogue between Christ and his
Bride (a common Counter-Reformation analogy for the church), which
makes use of the musique mesurée rhythms and the variable scoring found
in the air de cour.
Elsewhere in Paris, and indeed in the rest of France, most secular (i.e.
non-monastic) churches remained conservative in outlook. The cathedral
of Notre-Dame remained so throughout the seventeenth century, with
polyphonic Mass settings by figures such as Henri Frémart (d. after 1646)
forming the core of the repertoire. The Sainte-Chapelle maintained a similar
musical staff and performed similarly conservative repertoire. Under the
composer André Pechon (c. 1600–after 1683) much of the liturgy was sung
in fauxbourdon at the royal parish church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, as
in other major churches. Only in the south-west of France, where a school of
composers including Guillaume Bouzignac (c. 1587–after 1642) developed a
more madrigalian and dramatic style, did church music break free from
sixteenth-century practices. It was left to the monastic institutions, freed
from the control of the diocese of Paris, to embrace more progressive ideas
from Italy, although music from only one of these survives: the royal
Benedictine abbey of Montmartre.
During the reign of Louis XIII, the abbey of Montmartre witnessed a
flourishing of sacred music under Abbess Marie de Beauvilliers and her
maître de musique, Boësset (also surintendant de la musique de la cham-
bre).8 Boësset composed for the unusual combination of three or four high
voices (sung by the nuns), bass (probably sung by Boësset himself) and
basso continuo of organ and bass viol (the earliest use of the basso continuo
in France). Often referred to as ‘transitional’ in style, this repertoire made
use of the learned polyphonic techniques of the sixteenth century (in France
and elsewhere seen as a symbol of ‘church music’) softened by the influence
of the air de cour. The works skilfully juxtapose supple melodic solos
accompanied by basso continuo with full choruses and points of strict
imitation. Montmartre, together with the church of the Congregation of
the Oratory next to the Louvre, also saw the instigation of a particularly
French phenomenon, so-called plain-chant musical. Under the influence of
the Counter-Reformation, the air de cour and humanist impulses surviving
from the end of the sixteenth century, the Gregorian chant used for the
majority of the liturgy was considered too melismatic and complex. In the
early decades of Louis’s rule, the leader of the Oratorian Order, François
Bourgoing, and an anonymous nun at Montmartre independently devel-
oped simpler, syllabic repertoires of chant which embodied the new trends.
At Montmartre this body of chant (particularly the hymns) was subse-
quently incorporated into Boësset’s polyphonic repertoire.
75 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715

Secular music
During the reign of Louis XIII, vocal music was more highly valued than
abstract instrumental music. Accordingly, instrumental music, though of
course widely performed, remained firmly rooted in dance, with the lute
and later the harpsichord the most popular solo instruments. (The Ballard
house published numerous collections of lute music during this period.)
Ensemble music for the chamber remained particularly conservative: only
a few works such as the polyphonic fantasias of Métru survive, although
the fantasias of Le Jeune and Du Caurroy were probably also still being
performed. Thus it was to the air de cour that the great composers of
the day (those generally associated with the musique de la chambre)
turned their attention. Based on models from the late sixteenth century
(most notably Le Roy’s 1571 collection Livre d’airs de cour, which set
poetry by Ronsard and others), the air de cour set strophic ‘courtly’ poetry
to a simple and singable melody (the air). Like the sixteenth-century
models, the air under Louis XIII remained essentially a polyphonic genre,
with versions for solo voice and lute intabulation appearing only after the
polyphonic original (generally four or five voices with or without lute
accompaniment).
The most important composer of the early years of Louis’s reign,
Guédron, published five volumes of airs for four and five voices
(Ballard, 1602–20).9 Guédron’s earliest airs (setting poetry by contempo-
rary poets such as Du Perron, Malherbe and Durand) remained influ-
enced by musique mesurée: while their rhythmic motion was often
restricted to homophonic crotchets and minims, their melodies
eschewed all melisma and virtuosity in an effort to declaim the poetry
clearly and correctly. By the time of Guédron’s later collections, however,
the influence of musique mesurée had waned. Instead, a sensitive and
supple approach was taken to text setting, and a complex patchwork of
scoring was used to highlight the text: one line of text for treble and bass,
the next for lower parts only, the next for upper two only and so on. Later
volumes also introduced a particularly declamatory style, the récit, in
which the line between theatrical declamation and singing was blurred.
Sometimes unaccompanied, these works were generally composed for
ballets de cour before being made available to a wider audience in the
published volume (see Example 4.1).
The better-known and more widely distributed versions of Guédron’s
airs de cour appeared in a parallel series of publications from the Ballard
house, the Airs de différents autheurs mis en tablature de luth (16 vols,
Ballard, 1608–43: Guédron’s works appear in vols III–VI, 1611–15), a
series in which (like the 1571 publication) the melodic voice was repro-
duced, accompanied by an intabulation for lute (at this time by Gabriel
76 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

Example 4.1 Authors’ transcription of a Guédron récit from the Ballet de la délivrance de Renaud

Bataille) of the other voices. In an era in which the song for solo voice and
continuo (or monody) was becoming prevalent in Italy, these more ‘mod-
ern’ versions found a receptive audience among the French elite; also more
practical and convenient, they are the arrangements generally heard today.
After Guédron’s death, the most widely renowned composer of airs de
cour, and probably the most influential composer of Louis XIII’s reign, was
his son-in-law Antoine Boësset. Like Guédron’s, Boësset’s airs were orig-
inally composed for four to five voices (9 vols, Ballard, 1617–42), but from
77 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715

1632 onwards, a basso continuo or basse-continue accompaniment began

to be specified for some works. More widely disseminated were the
versions for solo voice and lute intabulation, these versions being arranged
by Bataille and then Boësset himself (9 vols, Ballard, 1614–43). Boësset’s
airs (now setting formulaic texts by minor and largely anonymous poets)
no longer exhibited any obvious musique mesurée influence or the exag-
gerated declamatory style of some Guédron. Instead, he took Guédron’s
‘patchwork’ approach to scoring but developed an easy melodic style (now
much more frequently moving in triple time), which remained influential
throughout the remainder of the century. The critic Le Cerf de la Viéville
(1674–1707) in the early eighteenth century distinguished Antoine from
his son Jean-Baptiste thus: ‘The Boësset you knew was the younger, a very
mediocre musician. Everything good written under this name is by his
father, whom we call the “old” Boësset, and whom we have always talked
about. It was the father Lully esteemed, a man whose memory will be
immortal because of his famous air Si c’est un crime de l’aimer, etc.’10 This
simple ‘classical’ style was subject to a practice of elaborate ornamentation
and diminution, as documented by the principal music theorist of the
period (and one of its foremost mathematicians), Marin Mersenne.11
Although the French style avoided technical display, the diminutions on
Boësset’s air N’esperez plus mes yeux (by Boësset himself and Le Bailly, his
colleague at court) represent the height of veiled virtuosity, at the same time
retaining the French interest in correct declamation.

Music under Louis XIV

Under Louis XIV, music and music patronage, building on the model of
Louis XIII, set a standard for magnificence that was emulated throughout
Europe. On the death of Louis XIII in 1643, France entered into the
regency of the queen mother, Anne of Austria, who ruled with the aid of
her premier ministre, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. As a young man, Louis
XIV showed little interest in the government of the kingdom, devoting
himself instead to his education in the courtly arts. Like his father, he
became quite proficient as a dancer and instrumentalist, but unlike Louis
XIII, who excelled on the lute, Louis XIV chose the guitar – formerly
associated with the lower classes – as his primary instrument, which
contributed to a new acceptance for that instrument among the aristoc-
racy. With the death of the cardinal in 1661, Louis unexpectedly chose to
reign alone rather than appointing another premier ministre. From
that date forward he took an active interest in the government of the
kingdom and in the creation of a body of music that would reflect his glory
78 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

as monarch and his patronage of the artistic production of Europe’s pre-

eminent court.12
Music under Louis XIV may be divided into periods of emphasis
according to the king’s shifting musical interests. During the 1650s and
1660s, Louis himself danced in the court ballet, to which he committed an
enormous amount of time, energy and financial resources. In the 1670s
and 1680s, after his retirement as a dancer, emphasis shifted to the
creation of a uniquely French version of opera called the tragédie en
musique or tragédie lyrique. In his late years, under the influence of his
devout second wife, Françoise de Maintenon, the king’s increasing reli-
gious devotion entailed a further shift away from the theatre and towards
sacred music.
Until the death of Lully in 1687, musical taste in Paris and the rest of
France was influenced by that of the king and the court. Chamber music
was developed in the salon in imitation of the elegance and refinement of a
courtly style. Ceremonial music, which continued at court and in the
king’s public entrances and other royal celebrations, also left its stamp
on the adulatory prologues and heroic plots of French opera. In the last
two decades of the century, the centre of music production began to shift
away from Versailles to the urban arena and commercial market. From
that time onwards, musical taste tended more to be imported from Paris,
rather than set by the court, in a process that would only intensify in later
years. The development of the opéra-ballet and the enthusiastic importa-
tion of the Italian style around the turn of the century defined a clear
demarcation between the conservative taste of the king and a developing
public taste for a more modern style.

Secular music
The most illustrious composer of France under Louis XIV, Lully, came to
France from his native Italy to serve as a garçon de chambre in the house-
hold of Louis’s cousin, the duchesse de Montpensier (La Grande
Mademoiselle). When she was exiled for her participation in a series of
civil wars (the wars of the Fronde), Lully entered the service of the king as a
violinist and dancer in the court ballet, and in 1653 he was appointed
compositeur de la musique instrumentale. Not long after this he became
the leader of the Petits Violons, an instrumental group in the king’s
personal service that augmented the official orchestra known as the
Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi. In 1661 Lully was named surintendant de
la musique de la chambre du roi, a post that effectively assured his control
over the development of French music for the next quarter of a century. In
the court ballet, Lully developed a style that, assimilated from a variety of
79 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715

elements including the music of his native country, came to be perceived

as uniquely French. Dance music for the ballet was mostly freely com-
posed, but also referenced a seventeenth-century ballroom repertoire
including the bourrée, minuet, sarabande, gavotte, canaries and courante.
Vocal récits, used atmospherically rather than dramatically, opened the
major parts (parties) of the ballet and also appeared within many of its
entrées. Lully’s first fully developed example of what later became known
as the French overture, with its pompous dotted rhythms combined with a
lively Italian fugato, was introduced as early as the Ballet d’Alcidiane of
1657. With the expansion of its vocal portions and the addition of large
choruses of monarchical praise in the 1660s, the music of the court ballet
had a strong influence on the tragédie en musique of the following decade.
Except for isolated productions for special occasions, the court ballet
virtually ended with the retirement of its librettist, Isaac de Benserade,
in 1669 and with the decision of Louis XIV to give up dancing around that
time. The French affinity for the ballet continued, however, in the diver-
tissements of the later tragédie en musique and opéra-ballet.13
Parallel to the development of the court ballet of the 1660s, Lully
collaborated with the comic playwright Molière to develop the comédie-
ballet, a genre that had made its debut in Les fâcheux by Molière, with
music and choreography by the ballet master Pierre Beauchamps. Created
as a means of allowing the actors of the play to rest between scenes, the
danced portions of the comédie-ballet, far from mere interludes, are
tightly integrated into the comic action. The comedy or ‘burlesque’ style
in this genre grows directly out of the court ballet’s burlesque scenes,
which are designed to set off the noble character of the court through the
contrasting ridicule of foreigners, the bourgeoisie and persons in the
professions. The comédie-ballet makes no such class distinctions, target-
ing everyone including the nobility and at times even the king. The
comédie-ballets of Molière and Lully were performed at court and at
Molière’s theatre in Paris; after Lully left the collaboration with Molière
to take over the Opéra, the playwright collaborated with the composer
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704) in a final work entitled Le mal-
ade imaginaire (1673).14
Lully’s father-in-law, Michel Lambert (c. 1610–96), served, like Lully,
as both a dancer and musician in the court ballet. Lambert, along with his
contemporaries Jean-Baptiste Boësset (1614–85, son of Antoine Boësset),
Bénigne de Bacilly (c. 1625–90) and Sébastien Le Camus (c. 1610–c. 1677),
brought the air sérieux to its apogee. As a singer and lutenist, Lambert was
famous for his nuanced text-setting, his expressiveness and the delicate
filigree of his doubles, the ornamented strophes following the first strophe
80 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

of the air. With his sister-in-law, the well-known soprano Hilaire Dupuis,
Lambert performed both at court and in the salons of the précieuses,
enclaves of society women who sought to transfer the appurtenances of
an elegant and noble life from the court to Parisian society.15
Instrumental chamber music was also very much a part of the life of
these salon gatherings. The late seventeenth century represented a period
of decline for the lute, which at mid-century was already beginning to be
replaced by the harpsichord. (The bass instrument of the lute family,
known as the théorbe or theorbo, had greater carrying power and
remained in use well into the eighteenth century, especially as an accom-
panying instrument.) The lute’s vaporous, improvisatory style, filled with
ornaments, arpeggios and unexpected turns, strongly influenced the first
generation of harpsichord composers, including Jacques Champion de
Chambonnières (c. 1602–72), Louis Couperin (c. 1626–61) and Jean-
Henri D’Anglebert (1629–91). Although linked to the dance repertoire,
dances composed for harpsichord, like those for lute, tended towards
extreme stylisation. Allemandes and gigues commonly incorporated
points of imitation, while the courante could be quite rhythmically com-
plex and irregular in phrase structure. As in the ballet, chaconnes and
passacailles provided the opportunity for larger architectural structures.
The unmeasured prelude, especially as exemplified by Louis Couperin,
represents a richly textured, deeply expressive statement of an improvisa-
tory nature. Much of the lute and early harpsichord literature had an effect
of discontinuity and timelessness, undermining any clear sense of tonal
direction or rhythmic drive. This aesthetic suited the salon, which like the
court valued sensuousness and pleasure for their own sake, suitable for
passing leisure time without pressing goals or the need for forceful or
pointed rhetoric.16
Private concerts had arisen at least as early as the sixteenth century. In
the seventeenth century they became a requisite component of social life not
only at court, but also in the homes of the lesser nobility and bourgeoisie.
Parisian concert life is described in the journals of Madeleine de Scudéry,
La Grande Mademoiselle, Madame de Sévigné and others, as well as in Jean
Loret’s Muze historique and in the fashionable periodical Le Mercure
galant. Musicians such as the bass viol player Jean de Sainte-Colombe
(fl. 1670–1700) and the lutenist Jacques Gallot, as well as Lambert and
Dupuis, gave concerts in their homes on a regular basis. In her early career,
the harpsichordist and composer Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre
(1665–1729) was associated with the court; in the last decades of the century
she gave concerts to great acclaim in her home and throughout Paris. Viols
and lutes, the staple instruments of chamber-music performance in the early
seventeenth century, continued in use through the late seventeenth century
81 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715

and into the eighteenth, giving way to the violin family much later than in
Italy. Important viol composers included Sainte-Colombe, Marin Marais
(1656–1728) and Antoine Forqueray (1672–1745). In early seventeenth-
century France the violin, associated with open-air performance and with
dance instruction, was rejected as an instrument for chamber music. In the
late seventeenth century violins, along with flutes, recorders and oboes,
gradually began to replace viols as treble instruments.17
The main forms of instrumental chamber and ensemble music in
seventeenth-century France were the overture and dance suite, reflecting
the continuing influence of dance and the ballet. The last decade of the
century saw an influx of Italian instrumental music in the form of solo and
trio sonatas (respectively for one and two solo instruments with basse-
continue) and concertos (either solo concertos for solo and orchestra or
concerti grossi for multiple soloists). The genres of sonata and concerto
(called sonade and concert in France) were not clearly separated, as sonatas
were often expanded to include more than one player to a part, and
orchestral pieces could be performed by soloists as well. François
Couperin incorporated Italian elements through both absorption and
juxtaposition. These elements included more idiomatic writing, contra-
puntal textures, driving rhythms, Italian dances, virtuosity and more
directional harmonies defined by devices such as the circle of fifths.
Several of Couperin’s early sonatas were included in a later collection,
Les nations: sonades et suites de simphonies en trio (1726). His fourteen
concerts were divided into two groups. The first four of these, entitled
Concerts royaux, were performed at Versailles in Louis XIV’s last years
(1714–15, published 1722). While incorporating some Italian elements,
they mainly adhered to the king’s preference for a French style. The
slightly later Les goûts réunis, ou Nouveaux concerts (1724) reflect a
deeper assimilation of the Italian style associated with the Regency. At
the end of this collection, Couperin appended his famous Le Parnasse, ou
L’apothéose de Corelli, a tribute to Corelli and Italian music; a parallel
Concert instrumental sous le titre d’Apothéose composé à la mémoire
immortelle de l’incomparable Monsieur de Lully, emphasising French
elements, followed in 1725.18
An Italian vocal style, in the form of the secular cantata, also invaded
France and influenced French music around the turn of the century.
Examples of early French cantates include those by Jean-Baptiste Morin
(1677–1745), Nicolas Bernier (1665–1734) and Jean-Baptiste Stuck
(1680–1755). In his first book of cantates (1708), André Campra
(1660–1744) claimed to have mixed French ‘gentleness’ with Italian ‘viva-
city’. Campra’s second and third books (1714, 1728) began to incorporate
a more operatic idiom. This was taken up by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault
82 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

(1676–1749), whose five books of cantates (1710–26) were particularly

revered. The famous quarrels over French and Italian music, initiated
in François Raguenet’s Paralèle des italiens et des françois, en ce qui
regarde la musique et les opéras in 1702 and answered by Le Cerf de la
Viéville’s Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique françoise
(1704–6), represented the larger debate between an eighteenth-century
cosmopolitan modernism as it challenged traditional modes of thought
in France.19

Sacred music
Sacred music during Louis XIV’s reign was still characterised by a clear
division between the conservative polyphony that continued to
be composed into the eighteenth century for secular parish churches
and the cathedral of Notre-Dame (composers such as François Cosset,
c. 1610–after 1664, Jean Mignon, c. 1640–c. 1707, and Campra) and the
more progressive music for monastic churches (such as the church of
the Feuillants, Notre-Dame des Victoires and the Jesuits of Saint-Louis),
noble households (including Marie de Lorraine, known as Mademoiselle
de Guise) and the Chapelle Royale, which in contrast to earlier in the
century was now in the vanguard of sacred music.
The most important figure of the early years of Louis XIV’s reign was
Henry Du Mont (c. 1610–84), a composer trained in a more progressive
style in the Low Countries around Liège and Maastricht.20 Although the
devotional music of the musique de la chambre and Boësset’s liturgical
works for Montmartre had made use of the basse-continue, Du Mont’s
arrival in Paris, and his first publication, the Cantica sacra of 1652
(a publication intended for performance by nuns, according to Du
Mont, even though the works are mainly scored for mixed voices),
introduced other Italian elements into French sacred music. Du Mont
used a much more expressive and affective style than Boësset: it included
dramatic dialogues, independent instrumental parts and a figured basse-
continue.
After the stagnation under Louis XIII and the disruption of the Fronde
(1648–53), the Chapelle Royale underwent something of a renaissance in
the 1650s. A new chapel was built at the Louvre in 1655–9, the Chapelle de
Notre-Dame de la Paix (until then the court had used the chapel of the
Petit Bourbon, the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois or various small
chapels in the Louvre). Around the same time the sous-maître Jean Veillot
(d. 1662) began to compose on a larger scale than his predecessors,
providing the occasional works Alleluia, o filii and Sacris solemnis
(1659), the first to use independent ‘symphonies’ in addition to two choirs.
(Otherwise, virtually no music survives from this period.) But it was with
83 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715

the appointment of Du Mont as Veillot’s successor at the Chapelle Royale,

in 1663, that the era of the systematic composition of grands motets was
inaugurated. Formalising a practice dating from the late sixteenth century,
in which the singers of the musique de la chambre collaborated with the
singers of the Chapelle Royale at important ceremonial events, Du Mont
‘created’ the grand motet, in which a choir of soloists (the petit choeur), a
larger choir (the grand choeur) and an orchestra (the Violons du Roi)
combined to set a text (either neo-Latin poetry or a psalm) verse by verse
in a combination of solos, ensembles, tuttis and instrumental interludes.21
The grand motet was then performed in conjunction with a petit motet (for
the elevation) and a Domine salvum fac regem (to conclude) as part of the
celebration of Low Mass, a rite in which a priest spoke the liturgy to himself
while the king listened to the music. Lully contributed to the genre only
occasionally; his use of orchestra and choir remained less sophisticated and
varied than that of Du Mont, though many of his works are more dramatic.
After the court moved permanently to Versailles and after Du Mont’s death
in 1684, Du Mont’s successor Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657–1726)
continued the tradition, expanding the motet into a long work with indi-
vidual ‘numbers’ and more advanced scoring and compositional techni-
ques. Even so, the basic principle and function of the grand motet remained
the same well into the middle of the eighteenth century.22
Elsewhere in Paris the petit motet for soloists and basse-continue flour-
ished. While figures such as Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers (c. 1632–1714), André
Raison (before 1650–1719) and Nicolas Lebègue (c. 1631–1702) published
collections for the expanding market of monastic institutions, François
Couperin provided few-voiced settings of Holy Week Lamentations for
the same market. Couperin also contributed short organ pieces (versets) to
the genre of the ‘organ Mass’, which could be substituted for portions of the
liturgy. Active in several different circles, the Italian-trained Charpentier was
at the forefront of musical developments, bringing the Italian oratorio to
France as the histoire sacrée and producing grands motets for the Sainte-
Chapelle and the Jesuit church of Saint-Louis. More generally, the reforms of
the Neo-Gallican movement (primarily concerned with asserting French
independence from Rome) led to the composition of new chants and mod-
ifications to the liturgy, a trend that would continue apace throughout the
eighteenth century.

Ideology, aesthetics, society

In the seventeenth century a number of royal academies were formed with
the aim of centralising and controlling the arts. The Académie Royale de
84 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

Musique was founded in 1669, following the models of the Académie

Française (founded 1634), the Académie Royale de Peinture et de
Sculpture (1648) and the Académie Royale de Danse (1661). Lully is
well known as the director of the Opéra (as the Académie Royale de
Musique was informally known), for which, with the king’s support, he
wrested the monopoly or privilège from Pierre Perrin in 1672. With his
librettist Philippe Quinault, Lully produced a series of tragédies en musi-
que that, both through the overt praise contained in their prologues and
through the glorious heroism of their plots, served as a keystone of
monarchical representation during the 1660s and 1670s, when Louis
XIV was at the height of his power.
Lully and a number of his fellow artists, while contributing to an
ideology and aesthetic of sovereign power, also belonged to a loosely
knit community of French libertines, a group of individuals who com-
bined in varying degrees transgressive sexual behaviour with political free
thought. In the last years of his life (1685–7), Lully fell into disgrace with
the king, at least in part because of his libertine behaviour. During these
years he was patronised by the duc de Vendôme and his brother Philippe,
leaders of a community lying outside police jurisdiction, within and
around an old castle known as the Temple.23 Lully’s final stage works,
Acis et Galathée (1687) and Achilles et Polixène (1687, completed by Pascal
Collasse), were settings of librettos by Jean de Campistron, a playwright
who was also part of this community. These works, along with two operas
by Lully’s sons, Jean and Jean-Louis, may be read as a stringent critique of
Louis XIV in the late years of his reign. Treating themes of tyranny, victim-
isation of the artist and the sacrifice of the arts to an overweening milita-
rism, they use an imagery of the abandoned theatre and deprived audiences
as metaphors for a crisis in the arts in the last decades of the century.
Similarly, the Muses appear in Lully’s last, uncompleted opera, as well as in
several operas of his successors, as the voice of Louis’s artists, complaining
that the ‘greatest hero’ has forgotten their games and pleasures. A similar
critique, cast in a more utopian tone of optimism, characterises the new
genre of the opéra-ballet developed by Campra and his librettists Antoine
Houdar de La Motte and Antoine Danchet at the turn of the century.
Campra’s opéra-ballet Les Muses (1703) may be read as a satire on a court
ballet of Louis XIV, Le ballet des Muses (1666). It also represents a tribute to
the genres of comedy and satire itself over the outworn gestures of monar-
chical praise. Likewise, Les fêtes vénitiennes presents the arts of a public,
libertine Paris under the transparent mask of Venetian carnival. The music of
these opéras-ballets, like their dances, light-hearted scenarios and Italianate
idiom, exemplifies the galanterie, hedonistic spirit and anti-authoritarianism
that audiences craved during the dismal late years of the Sun King.24
85 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715

Lully, his sons and Campra all had connections with Louis, the
Dauphin of France (‘le Grand Dauphin’), who patronised and protected
Lully during the period of his disgrace. During these years a cabal arose
around the dauphin, later known as the ‘cabal de Vendôme’ because of the
leadership of that libertine duke. The Grand Dauphin, who attended the
Paris Opéra on a regular basis (to the extent that it became a kind of
counter-court), was favoured by libertines and artists because of his
hedonism and love of the arts, particularly opera. The French fascination
with italianisme was not shared by the king. Recent scholarship has
shown, however, that an Italianate repertoire was performed at court in
the chambers of the Grand Dauphin.25
It can be argued that despite its importance for French art and identity,
a seventeenth-century aesthetic of sovereign power, reflected in a literary
classicism paralleling the apex of the reign of Louis XIV, merely obscured
rather than effaced a more long-standing aesthetic of galanterie equated
with an aristocratic taste. It is true that ceremonial music, associated with
conquest and glory through large choruses, heavy instrumentation, trum-
pet fanfares, drumrolls and other military motifs, branded the European
imagination with the grandeur of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. At the same
time, another form of power could be discerned in the king’s ability to
make of the court a ‘society of pleasures’ dependent on his patronage. In
the late seventeenth century, the high nobility (les grands seigneurs),
largely divested of their former feudal powers, were constrained to live
at court and to fashion a new identity from the pleasures it afforded. The
king traditionally partook of these diversions, but as Louis XIV aged he
withdrew from the social life of the court for a variety of reasons, including
illness, a turn to religious devotion, military losses, a worsening economy
and continuing tensions with his nobility. If the king was associated in his
late years with grandeur, his nobility was associated with the quality of
galanterie, a term evoking games of love, satiric wit and chic fashion-
ability. This quality was absorbed by the bourgeoisie, who were eager to
develop a taste for music, dance and the other arts as the reflection of an
enhanced social status accompanying the wealth that had begun to accrue
to their class.
The style galant, codified by German theorists in the eighteenth cen-
tury, had its roots in the delicate ornamentation of the air de cour and the
lute and harpsichord repertoire, as well as in the more brilliant coloratura
of Italian opera. The qualities of galanterie and a light-hearted joie de vivre
pervade the harpsichord music as well as much of the chamber music of
Couperin. Like Campra’s opéras-ballets, these works shun the profound,
majestic and grand for the topical, satirical and fashionable. The insou-
ciant spirit of galanterie paralleled more serious philosophies of pleasure.
86 Peter Bennett and Georgia Cowart

In the early seventeenth century a group known as libertins érudits

espoused a doctrine derived from the writings of Epicurus, which had
been transmitted by the Roman philosopher Lucretius. The libertine
movement tended to go underground in the late seventeenth century,
though its tenets, overlapping with Epicureanism, were encoded in various
doctrines of love as most particularly embodied in the goddess Venus.26
These ideas challenged the emphasis on reason that had come to
France via the rediscovery of Aristotle in late Renaissance Italy, which
thrived in the local soil of Cartesian rationalism and political absolutism.
Another challenge came from across the Channel, in England, where John
Locke and Thomas Hobbes formulated theories of cognition through the
senses. In the early eighteenth century, French philosophers began to eke
out a place for sensory perception in a field that around mid-century
would come to be known as aesthetics. Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, a follower
of Descartes, formulated a system in which the senses could function
without disrupting reason. The abbé Dubos, who went the furthest in
developing an aesthetic dependent on the senses, also developed the
concept of ‘the sixth sense’, a direct physical apprehension of beauty
circumventing reason altogether. Instead of imitating Descartes’s ‘pas-
sions of the soul’, the arts were now seen as setting in motion more delicate
sensibilities, with the aim of touching lightly rather than moving forcibly.
This appeal to the senses allowed the appreciation of the arts to bypass
reason, so that the message of the text was now overshadowed by the direct
apprehension of musical sound. This aesthetic, then, opened the way for a
full appreciation of instrumental music. Finally, Dubos’s connection of
this sixth sense with good taste, bon goût, illustrates the change that had
come about since the height of seventeenth-century classicism, which had
equated good taste with reason and the rules. Dubos in effect allowed the
substitution of a relative taste, in which an individual could manifest
preferences according to personal sensitivities. All these philosophies, in
supporting a relative taste at the expense of a universal standard, under-
mined the authority of the academies, and indirectly the power of the king,
to set the standards by which art should be created and judged.27

Notes
1 The distinctive character of French music
during this century is described in probably
the best survey of the seventeenth century:
James R. Anthony, French Baroque Music
from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, rev. and
expanded edn (Portland, OR: Amadeus
Press, 1997).
2 On the querelles over French and Italian
music, see Georgia Cowart, The Origins of
Modern Musical Criticism: French and Italian
Music, 1600–1750 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press, 1981); and Don Fader, ‘The
honnête homme as music critic: taste, rhetoric,
and politesse in the 17th-century reception of
Italian music’, Journal of Musicology, 20
(2003), 3–44.
3 For important cultural background and
context, see Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline,
87 Music under Louis XIII and XIV, 1610–1715
and Arms in Early Modern France (University
of Chicago Press, 2005).
4 Théodore Godefroy, Le cérémonial françois
(Paris: Cramoisy, 1649), 998.
5 Ibid., 72.
6 The most exhaustive general description of
sacred music during the century remains
Denise Launay, La musique réligieuse en
France du Concile de Trente à 1804 (Paris:
Société Française de Musicologie, 1993). For a
more detailed discussion of specific repertoires
under Louis XIII, see Peter Bennett, Sacred
Repertories in Paris under Louis XIII: Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Vma rés.
571 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).
7 See Peter Bennett, ‘Collaborations between
the Musique de la Chambre and the Musique
de la Chapelle at the court of Louis XIII:
Nicolas Formé’s Missa Æternae Henrici Magni
(1638) and the rise of the grand motet’, Early
Music, 38 (2010), 369–86.
8 See Peter Bennett, ‘Antoine Boësset’s sacred
music for the royal abbey of Montmartre:
newly identified polyphony and plain-chant
musical from the “Deslauriers” manuscript
(F-Pn Vma ms. rés. 571)’, Revue de
musicologie, 91 (2005), 321–67.
9 The most detailed study of the air de cour is
Georgie Durosoir, L’air de cour en France,
1571–1655 (Liège: Mardaga, 1991). See also
Catherine Gordon-Seifert, Music and the
Language of Love: Seventeenth-Century French
Airs (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2011).
10 Jean-Laurent Le Cerf de la Viéville,
Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la
musique françoise, 3 vols (1704–6; repr.
Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), vol. II, 123–4.
11 Marin Mersenne, ‘Traitez des consonances,
des dissonances, des genres, des modes, & de la
composition’, in Harmonie universelle (Paris:
Cramoisy, 1636), 411–15.
12 The standard work on music at Louis XIV’s
court is Robert M. Isherwood, Music in the
Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth
Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1973). On Louis XIV as a musician, see
Philippe Beaussant, Louis XIV, artiste (Paris:
Payot, 1999).
13 An excellent recent study of the life and
works of Lully is Jérôme de La Gorce, Jean-
Baptiste Lully (Paris: Fayard, 2002).
14 On the comédie-ballet, see Stephen
H. Fleck, Music, Dance, and Laughter:
Comic Creation in Molière’s Comedy-Ballets,
PFSCL-Biblio, 17 88 (Tübingen, 1995).
15 On Lambert, see Catherine Massip, L’art de
bien chanter: Michel Lambert, 1610–1696
(Paris: Société Française de Musicologie,
1999).
16 On the ‘timeless’ quality of music in this
period, see Susan McClary, ‘Temporality and
ideology: qualities of motion in seventeenth-
century France’, ECHO: A Music-Centered
Journal, 2 (2000), www.humnet.ucla.edu/echo
(accessed 22 May 2014).
17 On concert life in early modern France, a
classic text is Michel Brenet, Les concerts en
France sous l’ancien régime (Paris:
Fischbacher, 1900).
18 On Couperin, see Philippe Beaussant,
François Couperin, trans. Alexandra Land
(Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1990).
19 On Campra, see Maurice Barthélemy,
André Campra, 1660–1744: étude biographique
et musicologique (Arles: Actes Sud, 1995). On
the quarrels over French and Italian Music, see
Cowart, The Origins of Modern Musical
Criticism.
20 For an important study of Du Mont and
sacred music in the middle years of the century
see Henri Quittard, Un musicien en France au
XVIIe siècle: Henry Du Mont (Paris: Mercure
de France, 1906).
21 For a number of contributions to the early
history of the grand motet, see the essays in
John Hajdu Heyer (ed.), Jean-Baptiste Lully
and the Music of the French Baroque: Essays in
Honor of James R. Anthony (Cambridge
University Press, 1989); and in Jean-Robert
Mongredien and Yves Ferraton (eds), Actes du
Colloque International de Musicologie sur le
grand motet français, 1663–1792 (Paris:
Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1986).
22 For an account of the development of the
grand motet, see Anthony, French Baroque
Music, 216–46, 247–69; see also Thierry Favier,
Le motet à grand choeur (1660–1792): gloria in
Gallia Deo (Paris: Fayard, 2009).
23 Georgia Cowart, The Triumph of Pleasure:
Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle
(University of Chicago Press, 2008), 139–44.
24 On the politics of the ballet and opera in the
era of Louis XIV, see ibid.
25 Don Fader, ‘The “Cabale du Dauphin”,
Campra, and Italian comedy: the courtly
politics of musical patronage around 1700’,
Music and Letters, 86 (2005), 380–413.
26 Cowart, The Triumph of Pleasure, 51–4.
27 On musical aesthetics in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century France, see Downing
A. Thomas, Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien
Régime, 1647–1785 (Cambridge University
Press, 2002); and Georgia Cowart (ed.), French
Musical Thought, 1600–1800 (Ann Arbor, MI:
UMI Research Press, 1989).
 5 Music from the Regency to the Revolution,
1715–1789
d e b r a na g y

Introduction
In Louis XIV’s twilight years, illness, lack of enthusiasm, increased reli-
gious conservatism and shrinking coffers all contributed to the declining
influence of musical establishments at Versailles. The ultra-nationalistic
music that had been characteristic of Louis XIV’s reign lost its potency,
shifting the locus for trend-setting away from Versailles. Power and
influence over musical forms and tastes became increasingly decentralised
as the eighteenth century wore on. Residing in Paris (rather than at
Versailles) while governing as regent during the period of Louis XV’s
minority, Philippe, duc d’Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of Louis XIV,
cultivated an interest in the fashionable Italian music that would become
an all-out public obsession, inspiring a generation of French composers to
experiment with an international style that fused Gallic lyricism with the
rhythmic propulsion and harmonic drive of Italian idioms. The passion-
ate, polemical debates over the merits of French and Italian style that
played out in the public sphere became de facto political arguments, all
the while fuelling demand for the new, audacious music. Meanwhile,
members of the lesser nobility established themselves as patrons of the
arts such that private concerts at invitation-only salons and public con-
certs (beginning with the advent of the Concert Spirituel in 1725) took the
lead in introducing performers and composers from Italy and Germany
to increasingly diverse audiences. A growing bourgeoisie also stoked
demand for music that would be enjoyed and performed by amateurs
within the home: vocal chamber music, instrumental duos and works for
solo keyboard.
This chapter traces changing tastes and the development of instrumental
forms such as the symphony and string quartet in eighteenth-century
France. From the Chapelle Royale and petits appartements at Versailles to
Paris’s exclusive salons, and from the concert stage of the Concert Spirituel
to the intimate confines of the middle-class drawing room, we will witness
the profound influence of foreign musical styles on native composers. We
will also note the myriad effects of broader public access to the arts: new
[88] platforms (like public concerts and journals that chronicled fashion, art and
89 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

music) fostered appreciation for technical accomplishment that led to the

rise of the virtuoso, elevated the status of the professional musician and
contributed to the rapid expansion of the music publishing industry.
While the debates between the French and Italian styles were vociferously
played out in the public spheres of print and performance, music intended
for private, personal entertainment happily integrated the new, foreign-
influenced music with quintessentially French idioms of the ancien régime:
we observe the updating of nostalgic, century-old songs (brunettes and
vaudevilles) with contemporary harmonisations and Italianate walking
bass lines, as well as the publication of modern, Italianate concertos and
sonatas for refined versions of traditional folk instruments such as the
hurdy-gurdy and musette (a bellows-blown bagpipe).

Music at Versailles
The Regency (1715–23) was a quiet period for music at Versailles. While
Philippe, duc d’Orléans, presided over the government from his private
residence at the Palais Royal in Paris, the young Louis XV was educated in
Vincennes and at the Tuileries palace. Philippe d’Orléans was an avid
amateur who studied music and composition with some of France’s
leading Italian-trained musicians, including Marc-Antoine Charpentier
(1643–1704), Nicolas Bernier (1665–1734) and Charles-Hubert Gervais
(1671–1744), even composing his own operas under their tutelage.1
Louis XV assumed control of the government upon reaching maturity
in 1723, and his long reign (1715–74) ushered in a new era for music in
France, even if music at the court remained conservative: rather than
expanding, court music and entertainments had been contracting for
some time. That said, Louis XV, Queen Marie Leszczinska and her daugh-
ters were all accomplished musical amateurs. The queen played several
instruments, including the vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy), and hosted con-
certs several times a week in the Salon de la Paix at Versailles.2 From 1751
her musical evenings were held in the Salon des Nobles in her own apart-
ments. Repertoire and musicians for these private concerts were arranged
by the surintendants de la musique de la chambre, including André Cardinal
Destouches (1672–1749), Colin de Blamont (1690–1760), François Rebel
(1701–75) and François Francoeur (1698–1787). Many publications were
dedicated to Leszczinska’s daughters, including the first book of Pièces de
clavecin (1746) by Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer (c. 1705–55) and
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sonates pour le clavecin qui peuvent se jouer
avec l’accompagnement de violon, K. 8 and 9 (1764).3 In addition to the
salon concerts she had hosted since the early 1740s, the marquise de
90 Debra Nagy

Pompadour (Louix XV’s official mistress from 1745) created the ‘Théâtre
des Petits Appartements’ or ‘Théâtre des Petits Cabinets’, which once
again allowed for the presentation of theatre pieces, operas and ballets at
Versailles from 1747. The marchioness herself frequently took part in
these entertainments.4
However, religious music comprised the bulk of daily musical activity
at Versailles. Despite the prevalence of republican philosophies during the
reign of Louis XV, France was still a conservative and devoutly Christian
country. Daily life was rooted in Christian traditions and rites from birth
until death. The sounds of church bells, the celebration of weddings,
funerals and baptisms, processions, the feast days of local patron saints
and holy days permeated the fabric of daily life for peasants, lower classes,
bourgeoisie and aristocracy alike. The conservative religious fervour that
had dominated the court under the influence of Madame de Maintenon
(Louis XIV’s second wife) continued under Louis XV.5
As it had since the time of Louis XIV, the Chapelle de la Musique
Royale played a major role in the life of the court. In addition to Masses on
Sundays, solemn Masses on high feast days, official ceremonies and
Vespers services, daily Masses were celebrated for both the king and the
queen. The highlight of the service was the performance of a grand motet.
In addition, a petit motet for one or two voices might be performed during
the elevation of the Host. On Easter, Pentecost, All Saints, Christmas,
Pentecost, the Feast of the Circumcision, the Feast of the Purification,
Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday and Saturday, High Masses (through-
composed with choir and instruments) were also sung for the king on
Sundays and ordinary feast days. The Mass itself was generally performed
in fauxbourdon (plainchant accompanied by instruments), though the
tradition and performance of the contrapuntal, polyphonic Mass per-
sisted.6 Rather than being an anachronistic or stylistic anomaly, the poly-
phonic Mass continued to be appreciated and cultivated, and this attests to
its perceived solemnity. Henri Madin, a sous-maître at the Chapelle Royale
from 1738, ultimately failed in his attempt to reintroduce the ancient
practice of polyphonic improvisation over a plainchant tenor in the late
1730s (he published his Traité de chant sur le livre in 1742) as a tool for
performing the Mass.7
For all the seeming activity of daily Mass and private concerts, court
musicians’ duties were relatively light. Although Louis XV initially main-
tained the three principal arms of the traditional court musical establish-
ment (chapelle, chambre and écurie), the livelihood of the king’s musicians
began to resemble that of freelancers: musicians increasingly compiled
their yearly income from multiple streams (whether from various part- or
full-time appointments held at court, or playing for the Opéra and other
91 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

Paris theatres). In 1761 major organisational reform swept the court’s

musical institutions: Louix XV capped the music budget at 320,000 livres
and began to buy back and limit the number of offices available. The
chapelle and chambre were merged, resulting in a reduced number of
musicians to serve in both sacred and secular settings. The Vingt-Quatre
Violons, the group which had comprised the core of the king’s musical
establishment for so long, was eliminated.8
Louis XVI (who succeeded his grandfather as king in 1774) did not show
the same interest in music as his predecessors, but his young bride Marie-
Antoinette sang, played the harpsichord and harp and championed a num-
ber of foreign musicians, including Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87).9
Marie-Antoinette hosted extravagant balls during the carnival season and
presented spectacles in her own specially designed theatre in the Petit
Trianon from 1780, whose repertoire included operas by Gluck (Iphigénie
en Tauride), Niccolò Piccinni (1728–1800, Le dormeur éveillé), Antonio
Sacchini (1730–86, Dardanus), André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741–1813,
Zémire et Azor) and Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729–1817, Le roi et le
fermier) that not only reflected the queen’s tastes but mirrored those of
Paris.10 In 1782, however, Versailles’s musical establishment was cut back
still further. Limited to forty-two members, the court orchestra was now
eclipsed in size and prestige by various concert associations in Paris.11 As a
result, the musical establishment at Versailles was reduced to importing
performers who had already established their reputations at the Opéra, the
Concert Spirituel and the inner circles of Paris salons to fill its ranks,
including the violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, the oboist Gaetano Besozzi and
the bassoonist Étienne Ozi.12

The public concert: the Concert Spirituel

During Louis XIV’s reign, music and musicians from the French court had
been a valuable international commodity, but as the eighteenth century
progressed, the court increasingly found itself reacting to Parisian fashions
rather than creating them. Publicly supported concerts in Paris and
increased private patronage were central to cultivating tastes for interna-
tional music and development of instrumental genres such as the concerto
and symphony.
Following the success of private concerts at the home of the financier
Antoine Crozat, in 1724 he and the marquise de Prie initiated a
subscription-only concert association that promoted Italian music: ‘gli
Academici paganti’, or the Concert Italien.13 Convents and monasteries
with ties to aristocratic families had also offered resplendent concerts of
92 Debra Nagy

sacred music on high feast days at least since the turn of the seventeenth
century. These events drew large crowds that – with the help of donations –
supported the work of the church.14 An enterprising individual, Anne-
Danican Philidor, sought to take advantage of the opportunity to present
performances when other major venues were closed. To this end he applied
for a royal privilège to establish the Concert Spirituel in 1725. After the
Opéra, it would become Paris’s most important presenting organisation
until its suspension in 1790.
The Concert Spirituel’s concerts filled a clearly defined niche. As
spoken theatre and opera were forbidden during Lent and the Easter
season and at Pentecost, Christmas and other religious feast days, the
Concert Spirituel primarily presented appropriate sacred music in
twenty to thirty concerts per year. For example, concert-goers would
hear O filii et filiae by Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657–1726) at Easter,
Christmas concerts frequently included the motet Fugit nox by Joseph
Bodin de Boismortier (1689–1755, now lost) interleaved with popular
noëls, and Corpus Christi was observed with settings of Pange lingua
or Sacris solemniis by Lalande.15 In effect, the Concert Spirituel deferred
to the programming and performance schedule of the Académie Royale de
Musique (Opéra) by restricting its repertoire to sacred Latin motets pre-
sented as concert pieces (divorced from any para-liturgical context) and
instrumental music.
While programmes at the Concert Spirituel privileged diversity and
variety of musical genres, they nonetheless adhered to a fairly standard
format. They were usually bookended by grands motets (traditionally by
maîtres from the Chapelle Royale de la Musique) interspersed with a
variety of instrumental solos, chamber music and Italianate concertos
featuring both native and foreign virtuosos. At different times in the
history of the Concert Spirituel, these would be replaced or augmented
by short vocal airs and airs italiennes.16
Because of its royal privilège and the strong associations of its leader-
ship with the court establishment, the Concert Spirituel effectively func-
tioned as a Parisian satellite of the Chapelle Royale.17 Commonalities
between the two institutions extended to repertoire, such that motets by
Lalande dominated programmes not only in Versailles but also in Paris for
decades following his death in 1726. Only the motets of Joseph Cassanea de
Mondonville (1711–72), of which nine survive, achieved similar popularity
to Lalande’s following their introduction in the late 1730s; motets by
Antoine Dauvergne (1713–97) and François Giroust (1737–99) entered
the repertoire in the 1760s and 1770s. A remarkable conservatism governed
the sacred repertoire of the Chapelle Royale and Concert Spirituel. This
canonical approach, coupled with first-rank composers’ overwhelming
93 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

interest in and commitment to instrumental or stage works, ensured that

motets from Louis XIV’s twilight years by Bernier, Charpentier and Jean
Gilles also lived on in the repertoire into the 1770s.

Trends in the grand motet

The endurance of Lalande’s sacred oeuvre was not simply the product of
conservatism. Dubbed the ‘Latin Lully’ by Colin de Blamont, Lalande
composed music that is rich and varied, displaying both noble and grace-
ful sentiments, keenly affective text-setting and expressive harmony.18
Interestingly, Lalande’s dedication to repeatedly revising compositions
also makes it possible to trace the influence of the goûts réunis in his work
and on the grand motet more generally. The late seventeenth-century
motet’s aesthetic of homophonic choruses of voices and instruments,
short ritornellos and simple yet graceful récits accompanied by five-part
strings gave way in the 1720s to elaborate ‘concert arias’ with obbligato
instruments, polyphonic or fugal choruses and greater independence
between voices and instruments. The chorus ‘Et ipse redimet Israel’ from
Lalande’s De profundis is an excellent example of this development.19
Italian influence and trends from the Opéra were also felt in sacred
genres. Grands motets from the 1730s increasingly exchanged récits for da
capo airs, and featured lavish instrumental forces borrowed from the
opera pit, including oboes, trumpets and drums.20 André Campra
(1660–1744) went further by incorporating pictorial, dramatic elements
directly from opera, such as the storm-scene figuration of ‘Velociter currit
sermo eius’ from Lauda Jerusalem and the sommeil (‘Dormi erunt’) and
subsequent tremblement de terre (‘Terra tremuit’) of his Notus in Judea
Deus. Building on the works of Campra and Jean-Philippe Rameau
(1683–1764), Mondonville’s Dominus regnavit uses similar operatic devices
to depict the potent imagery of Psalm 92: the chorus ‘Elevaverunt flumina
vocem suam’ (‘The floods have lifted up, O Lord’) features swirling semi-
quaver runs for both orchestra and chorus. In addition to elaborate, vir-
tuosic symphonies, popular elements found their way into the grand motet.
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier’s Fugit nox (1741), for instance, adapted the
melodies of well-known noëls to the sacred text. Indeed, the grand motet fell
prey to such competing influences and inspirations as to give life to the
Laudate Dominum of Michel Corrette (1707–95), a ‘Motet à grand choeur
arrangé dans le Concerto du Printemps de Vivaldi’ (1766) for full orchestra
with woodwinds. Such extravagance gave credence to criticism that long,
concerted para-liturgical music served only to distract and divert rather
than enrich and deepen the spiritual value of the music.
94 Debra Nagy

The rise of the virtuoso

From the outset the public concert became a platform for virtuoso –
especially instrumental – display. Several elements contributed to the
rise of the virtuoso in this arena. First, the public concert brought together
a large, highly educated and passionate audience capable of judging and
making comparisons between artists. The rise of the virtuoso in France
also corresponded to the proliferation of periodicals and journals dedi-
cated to the arts: Le Mercure de France, L’avant-coureur, Le journal des
sciences et des beaux-arts and Les affiches de Province contained reports
and reviews of performers and performances that served to publicise,
create and build the reputations (and mythologies) of native and foreign
virtuosos.21 In addition to popularising Italian concertos and sonatas by
Vivaldi and Tartini, native virtuosos developed their own distinctive com-
positional styles and influential schools of playing.
Jean-Marie Leclair (1697–1764) is considered the founder of the French
school of violin playing. Leclair benefited from the private patronage of
Joseph Bonnier, studied with the Italian violinist Giovanni Battista Somis in
Turin and built a formidable reputation through regular appearances at the
Concert Spirituel. Also taught by Somis, Jean-Pierre Guignon (1702–74)
made his Paris debut at the Concert Spirituel in 1725 and simultaneously
held positions in the retinue of the prince de Carignan and as ordinaire de la
musique du roy. The violinist Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (1705–70) studied
with Somis following early professional success in Lyons and Dijon. He was
appointed musicien ordinaire to Louis XV and served in the private orches-
tra of the marquise de Pompadour. Pierre Gavignès earned the epithet
‘the French Tartini’ and was Leclair’s successor as chief proponent of the
French violin school.22 He made his debut at the Concert Spirituel at the
age of thirteen, and performed his own concertos and symphonies there in
the 1760s and 1770s. He was appointed professor of violin at the Paris
Conservatoire from its establishment in 1795. Violinists such as Leclair and
Gavignès, and the flautists Michel Blavet (1700–68), Pierre-Gabriel
Buffardin (1690–1768) and Antoine Mahaut (c. 1720–1785), all benefited
from an elevated status on account of their association with the Concert
Spirituel.
Furthermore, new instruments and their players met with enthusi-
astic receptions at the Concert Spirituel. The cello was elevated from
accompanist to first-rank soloist in the hands of Jean-Baptiste-Aimé
Janson (1742–1808) and the brothers Jean-Louis and Jean-Pierre
Duport. The Concert Spirituel also witnessed the first appearance of
the pedal harp (a German invention), concerto soloists on the bassoon,
oboe, clarinet (also a German import), trumpet and horn, plus more
95 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

unusual fare for instruments such as the mandolin, musette and pardes-
sus de viole.

Private patronage
While public concerts made large-scale concerted music available to
members of Paris’s rising middle class, the real cutting edge of art,
philosophy and fashion was cultivated within Paris’s luxurious private
homes. Just as the title character of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme
(Act II, scene 1) was advised by his music master to host a concert ‘every
Wednesday or every Thursday’ in order to be considered a person of
quality, so did a great number of the aristocracy and haute-bourgeoisie
host regular salons in their own homes. In fact, music featured in virtually
all types of salon gatherings, even those for which music was not a primary
focus. Salons welcomed a wealth of interesting and influential people, for
whom entry was by invitation only.23 The diplomat and critic Friedrich-
Melchior Grimm observed that the home of the fermier-général (tax farmer-
general) Alexandre le Riche de La Pouplinière was ‘a meeting-place for all
classes: courtiers, men of the world, literary folk, artists, foreigners, actors,
actresses, filles de joie, all were assembled there. The house was known as the
menagerie and the host as the sultan.’24 It was at La Pouplinière’s, for
instance, that Rameau first met many of his future librettists, and the
house became ‘la citadelle du Ramisme’.25
Private concerts promulgated changes in taste, which through the first
half of the eighteenth century often meant the introduction and appreci-
ation of Italian music. Reflecting this penchant, the household musicians
of the regent Philippe d’Orléans included the castrato Pasqualino Tiepolo
and the violinists Michele Mascitti and Giovanni Antonio Guido.26
Antoine Crozat, the wealthy treasurer of the États du Languedoc, also
held twice-weekly concerts at his home from 1715 to 1725.27 Crozat’s
Italophilic presentations included a troupe from London: the famous sopra-
nos Francesca Cuzzoni and Margherita Durastanti, who performed operatic
selections of Handel and Bononcini.28 The prince de Carignan similarly
maintained a private orchestra that included notable Italian instrumental-
ists and some of the finest French virtuosos, who cultivated the new, Italian-
French mixed style known as les goûts réunis.29 Following Carignan’s death
in 1741, many of his personal instrumentalists were absorbed into La
Pouplinière’s orchestra.
Patrons from the aristocracy and bourgeoisie provided refuge –
metaphorical and physical – for foreign musicians in France. Patrons
such as Philippe d’Orléans, Crozat, La Pouplinière and the baron de
96 Debra Nagy

Bagge not only granted foreign composers and performers exposure to a

tight-knit circle of knowledgeable and influential amateurs, but also
offered non-native musicians lodging for the duration of their stay. La
Pouplinière sponsored Johann Stamitz (1717–57) to reside at Passy and
direct his personal orchestra in 1754, at which time he also conducted his
works at the Concert Spirituel and Concert Italien. The baron de Bagge
similarly sponsored Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805) and Filippo Manfredi
in 1767, during which time Boccherini published his Sonatas for keyboard
with violin accompaniment, Op. 5, which were dedicated to another
salonnière, Anne-Louise Boyvin d’Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy.30
Finally, the taste-makers of the salon had the opportunity to preview
(and judge) new instrumental works and operas. Excerpts from Rameau’s
ground-breaking Hippolyte et Aricie were first heard at La Pouplinière’s
home, Passy, in 1731,31 and André Grétry acknowledged that the response
of members of the elite salons would be essential to his success in Paris.32
Grétry looked on with fretful anticipation as an early version of his Les
mariages samnites (1776) was presented before the entire court at the home
of the prince de Conti.33
As several of Mozart’s letters from 1777–8 attest, eighteenth-century Paris
was potentially an excellent place to earn a living as a professional musician.
Rather than work as duty-bound servants at a single court, professional
musicians could support themselves as free agents on Paris’s large and diverse
arts scene. Citing the success of his friend Johann Baptist Wendling (the
Mannheim flautist), Mozart waxed poetic about the potential for artistic
independence that came with varied income streams: one could perform or
compose in virtually any genre (including opera seria, opéra comique and
oratorio), present symphonies for one of the public concert associations, give
private lessons and publish chamber music by subscription.34
Paris’s finest musicians also found professional success performing in
the private orchestras of the aristocracy and haute-bourgeoisie. Interest in
maintaining private orchestras blossomed in the 1750s and 1760s in partic-
ular. Starting around 1731, La Pouplinière had maintained his small house
orchestra, which performed an international repertoire of orchestral works
that included pairs of winds and brass. The prince de Conti established his
own highly regarded private orchestra in 1757; it included Pierre Vachon
(1738–1803) as concertmaster, the Italian virtuoso oboist Filippo Prover,
the cellist Jean-Pierre Duport, German horn and clarinet players, and the
keyboard player Johann Schobert (c. 1735–67), plus François-Joseph Gossec
(1734–1829), who joined Conti’s establishment following his stint at La
Pouplinière’s.35
From the 1750s, La Pouplinière’s home Passy was a haven for German
composers and instrumentalists cultivating a taste for the nascent
97 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

symphonic genre. In fact, it was La Pouplinière who engaged horn and

clarinet players from Germany to make their first appearances in France in
the late 1740s. Succeeding Rameau’s long tenure there, Stamitz led the
orchestra at Passy for one year in 1754; he was followed by the twenty-one-
year-old Gossec.36 Despite their relatively small size – generally fourteen to
fifteen players – private orchestras and their sponsors played an important
role in the development and dissemination of the symphony in France.37
While some of the larger salons – like La Pouplinière’s and Crozat’s –
focused on symphonic or operatic repertoire, others cultivated the art of
accompanied song and new genres in chamber music. In these more
intimate salon settings, professionals played beside accomplished ama-
teurs. The many chamber music works dedicated to the baron de Bagge
(including quartets by Gossec, Boccherini and Capron) testify to his
dedication to the music and musicians he patronised.
Salons like Bagge’s facilitated transformations in instrumental cham-
ber music during the second half of the eighteenth century. These impor-
tant changes took the form of expanding textures (from Baroque trio
texture to quartets or larger ensembles), newly obligatory instrumenta-
tion, the standardisation of specific ensemble combinations and the grad-
ual disappearance of a performer-realised figured bass.

Large ensemble music, 1720–1750

As imported forms, concertos and symphonies first found an enthusiastic
response in private, Italophilic salons. Subsequently, however, their evo-
lution and development owe a significant debt to the public concert.
Concertos by French composers began to appear in print at the height of
the goûts réunis craze in the 1720s and 1730s, and for decades, ‘Spring’ from
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was regularly heard alongside sonatas by Corelli and
Tartini at the Concert Spirituel.38 Michel Corrette composed twenty-five
‘comic’ concertos, which were generally for three treble instruments (with
flexible instrumentation that could include violins, flutes, oboes, hurdy-
gurdy and musettes) and basso continuo. Like their Vivaldian models, they
adopted ritornello form for outer, fast movements, and frequently made use
of a unison theme for opening and closing ritornellos. The second move-
ment was usually just a chord progression with decorated suspensions
linking the outer movements. Corrette’s Concertos comiques frequently
quoted popular tunes from the Foire (fair) theatres and noëls (see, for
instance, the concertos entitled ‘L’allure’ and ‘Margoton’ from his Op. 8,
and the tunes ‘Les sauvages’ and ‘La Furstemburg’ in his Concerto comique,
No. 25).39 Boismortier also made significant contributions to this genre
98 Debra Nagy

with his Opp. 21, 24 and 30 concertos for three treble instruments and his
Noels en concerto, Op. 68 (1737).
Through the 1740s, the trio (two generic dessus plus basso continuo)
remained the predominant texture for large ensemble music performed at
the Concert Spirituel. The performing tradition of playing en simphonie
created a kaleidoscope of instrumental colours, but it has also been respon-
sible for some confusion regarding the genesis of the Classical symphony
in France. Multi-movement works with designations like pièces de simpho-
nies or concert de simphonies by Jacques Aubert (1689–1753), Boismortier,
Corrette, Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682–1738), Dauvergne and Mondonville
all utilised trio textures with the addition of figured bass. Transcriptions of
harpsichord solos by Mondonville (from his 1734 Pièces de clavecin en
sonates avec accompagnement de violon, Op. 3) and Francesco Geminiani
(‘arrangées en grand concerto pour orchestre’ or ‘mises en simphonie’) were
also regularly performed as ensemble music at the Concert Spirituel.40 As
late as 1750, even Corelli’s celebrated Op. 5 sonatas could be heard at the
Concert Spirituel ‘mise en gd concert par Geminiani’.41
The 1730s witnessed various experimental works for large ensembles,
ranging from the symphonie nouvelle Les élémens (1738) by Jean-Féry
Rebel (1666–1747) to Mondonville’s lost Concert à trois choeurs and
Concerto de violon avec chant.42 Rebel’s Les élémens is the most daring of
his seven choreographed simphonies for the dancers of the Paris Opéra. The
justifiably famous opening uses stacked dissonance to depict chaos, from
which four distinct themes representing air, fire, water and earth emerge.
In contrast to large ensemble works performed en simphonie with only
limited instructions regarding orchestration, the virtuoso violinist Leclair’s
twelve published concertos (Op. 7, 1737, and Op. 10, 1745) were explicit in
their instrumentation, for solo violin accompanied by string orchestra and
continuo, and made specialised technical demands upon the player. Leclair’s
incorporation of Italian style and techniques drew on his own training and
experiences with the celebrated violinists Giovanni Battista Somis (a student
of Corelli) in Turin and Pietro Locatelli in London. While his concertos also
typified goûts réunis in their adoption of Vivaldi’s models in the outer move-
ments, the lyricism of the slow movements reflected French taste and
sensibility.

The symphony and concerto, 1750–1790

Alongside the infiltration of German music and musicians into Paris’s
private salons, the 1750s saw the arrival of the nascent Classical symphony
by proponents of the Mannheim school on the concert stage. New
99 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

leadership at the Concert Spirituel from 1748 ushered in a period of

financial stability that enabled the organisation’s concert venue and rep-
ertoire to expand. Under the direction of the harpsichordist Royer and the
violinist Gabriel Capperan, the Tuileries palace underwent major renova-
tions (including the installation of an organ on which the virtuoso Claude
Balbastre (1724–99) frequently performed concertos and his own tran-
scriptions of opera overtures) and saw the first French performances of
Pergolesi’s Stabat mater and the first foreign symphonies.43
The French Classical symphony of the 1750s combined Classical ele-
ments of structure, melody, rhythm and harmonic organisation with
thematic development and prolonged sequences.44 Whereas early essays
in the symphonic genre such as Louis-Gabriel Guillemain’s Premier livre de
simphonies dans le goût italien en trio (1740) had been composed in a trio
texture, ensemble music of the 1750s was increasingly composed in four
parts (such as Antoine Dauvergne’s 1751 Concerts de simphonies, Opp. 3
and 4). Similarly, Gossec’s earliest symphonies (Op. 3, 1756) were published
in four parts, with oboe parts interleaved in the viola book. In all likelihood,
pairs of horns would also have been added for performances at the Concert
Spirituel.45 At this stage, most published works still included a figured bass,
and a three-movement structure based on Italian models predominated.46
Following Royer’s death in 1755, Mondonville upheld his predecessor’s
commitment to innovation, introducing symphonies by Wagenseil,
Hasse, Beck, Jomelli and Geminiani as well as native composers’ first
forays into the genre (Guillemain, Gavignès, Davesne and Gossec).
Complete with trumpets, timpani and (after 1760) horns and clarinets
from Germany, these expanded grandes simphonies or sinfonie a più
strumenti would soon become the standard, even though conservative
factions would not allow this progressive symphonic music to become
fully established on Concert Spirituel programmes until the 1770s. In the
mean time, the orchestra at the Concert des Amateurs (1769–81) quickly
gained a reputation for commissions and performances of symphonies.
Supported in part by the fermier-général La Haye and the baron d’Ogny as
well as by public subscriptions, the Concert des Amateurs was established
at the Hôtel de Soubise by Gossec in 1769. During the four years he led the
Concert des Amateurs, Gossec conducted many of his own works and was
the first to conduct a Haydn symphony in France.
Synthesising foreign elements with inherent French lyricism, the French
Classical symphony of the 1770s and the burgeoning symphonie concertante
exhibited the influence of Grétry’s comic operas in addition to the powerful,
dramatic stage works of Gluck.47 French symphonies from this period,
which were in three or even two movements (rarely four), were character-
ised by their ‘brilliant orchestral effect’ and ‘fluid, singing melodies’.48
100 Debra Nagy

Gossec’s innovations lay in his grand instrumental works, which despite

their harmonic and thematic simplicity displayed keen, colourful orches-
tration and refined use of dynamic markings. Works for the new grande
orchestre included ample sonorities such as two viola parts, divisi violins,
additional winds (including clarinets) and brass (horns, trumpets and
drums). Similarly, the three symphonies that Simon Leduc (1742–77)
composed for performance at both the Concert Spirituel and the Concert
des Amateurs take full advantage of the orchestra’s sonic possibilities, with
pairs of flutes and horns, trumpets and drums in the Amsterdam edition of
Schmitt, periodically divided second violins and violas and in places an
independent part for double bass.49
Comparable in style and structure to the Classical symphony, symph-
onies concertantes comprised another important element in Concert
Spirituel programmes from the 1770s. The form flourished in France
and particularly in Paris, owing its popularity to contemporary social
changes, such as the proliferation of concert societies patronised by
bourgeois audiences, as well as to an increased fascination with virtuoso
display and enthusiasm for rich orchestral sonorities. Featuring two, three,
four or occasionally more solo instruments in dialogue with each other
and the orchestra, the symphonie concertante was essentially a Classical
concerto for multiple instruments that fused elements of the solo concerto,
Baroque concerto grosso, divertimento and symphony. The symphonie
concertante’s appeal lay in its light, pleasing and melodious character, and
in the flexibility of its instrumentation, which provided a platform for a
variety of local performers. Performances frequently included the com-
poser as one of the soloists, as in symphonies concertantes by the violinists
Joseph Boulogne, chevalier de Saint-George (1745–99), Simon Leduc and
Jean-Baptiste Davaux (1742–1822).50
Gossec is generally considered the most important composer of
Classical symphonies in France. Following formative studies in his native
Wallonia, Antwerp and Brussels, he arrived in Paris at the age of seven-
teen. With the support of Rameau, he joined the orchestra at La
Pouplinière’s and held leadership positions in the private orchestras of
both the prince de Condé and the prince de Conti in the 1760s. He served
briefly as the general director of the Opéra before assuming leadership of the
École Royale de Chant (a predecessor to the Conservatoire de Musique) in
1784.51 Following his success with the Concert des Amateurs, Gossec was
persuaded in 1773 to join the violinists Leduc and Gavignès in leading the
Concert Spirituel, where he responded to a mandate to improve the ensem-
ble’s performing standards (which had lagged in recent years), expand the
size of the orchestra and overhaul its stale programming. As a result,
symphonies by Stamitz, Toeschi, Giuseppe Maria Cambini (1746–1825),
101 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

Wagenseil, Sterkel, Cannabich and Haydn were regularly brought to

Parisian audiences, which had the effect of undermining the achievements
of native composers in the symphonic genre in the years prior to the
Revolution. Not only did French composers of instrumental music have
to grapple with the celebrity and popularity of Haydn,52 but they faced a
constant struggle in justifying the merits of abstract symphonies and quar-
tets against the prevailing aesthetic criticisms of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Grimm and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, who defined the function and poten-
tial of instrumental music in terms of painting and the imitation of nature.
The final decades before the Revolution witnessed increased access
to public concerts and the expansion of concert societies. For instance,
the Concert des Amateurs, Concert des Associés (1770–?), Concert de
l’École Graduite de Dessein (1781–6), Concert des Amis (1772–?), Société
du Concert d’Émulation (1781–6) and Concert de la Loge Olympique
(1783–9) all flourished. At the same time, private orchestras, which had
played an important role in cultivating symphonies and soloists, began to be
disbanded because of financial difficulties and the proliferation of orchestras
elsewhere, which took away the prestige of maintaining an orchestra.53

Chamber music
The ‘trio’ for four players persisted as a popular texture for chamber music
throughout the eighteenth century. Generally, this meant that two treble
instruments (perhaps two violins or flutes) were joined by a bowed bass
(viola da gamba, basse de violon or cello) and a chordal accompaniment
usually on the harpsichord. In the 1720s and 1730s, trio sonatas were
frequently expanded to quartets in a variety of instrumental combinations.
Telemann’s ‘Paris’ Quartets (flute, violin, viola and continuo, 1738),
Guillemain’s Quatuors ou conversations galantes (two flutes, violin and
continuo, 1743) and the Quatuors de l’art de la modulation (oboe or flute,
two violins and continuo, 1755) by François-André Philidor (1726–95) are
all representative of the Rococo quartet in France.
The generalised dessus had long been a cornerstone of French instru-
mental conventions, whereby a treble part could be played by violin, flute,
oboe, pardessus de viole or a variety of other instruments. Furthermore,
instrumental doubling had been a standard practice since the mid-
seventeenth century. The result had been relatively undifferentiated, ‘idi-
omatic’ writing for treble instruments, and an approach to large-ensemble
orchestration that emphasised combinations of instrumental timbres. By
the 1760s, however, obligatory instrumentation and the standardisation of
specific ensemble combinations (such as the string quartet with two
102 Debra Nagy

violins, viola and violoncello) began to take hold. The new specificity of
the 1760s excluded the inclusion of wind instruments in pieces that did
not call specifically for them; the century-old French instrumental practice
of playing en simphonie (that is, doubling instrumental parts) was, in
effect, abandoned.
These trends inspired a typically French approach to ensemble writing:
the vogue for works concertant et dialogué. Publications of quatuors
concertants flooded the Parisian market between 1770 and 1800.54
Cambini was an essential figure in their development, which would
be further cultivated by Vachon, Étienne-Bernard-Joseph Barrière
(b. 1748; d. 1816–18), Jean-Baptiste-Sébastien Bréval (1753–1823),
Davaux, Jean-Baptiste Janson and Saint-George. A famous mulatto vio-
linist, Saint-George led the Concert des Amateurs from 1773, was
orchestra leader for Madame de Montesson’s private concerts and pub-
lished eighteen string quartets in three collections between 1773 and 1785.
Cambini’s Op. 1 quartets were published by Vernier in 1773 and were
lauded for their excellent harmony, natural interplay and originality
of style.55
Quatuors concertants were generally for two violins, viola and cello,
though in some cases an oboe or flute could replace the first violin. Marked
by a galant, sentimental style and conservative harmonic language, these
works reflect the influence of Boccherini and are generally in two or very
occasionally three movements. The first movement most often adopts a
sonata form with two themes, while the second movement consists of
lighter fare: a rondo, minuetto or aria con variazoni. The word concertant
referred not to the virtuosity of the music, but to its conversational aspect:
all four parts were equally important (contrasting with a traditional
Viennese quartet in which the presentation of melodic material is domi-
nated by the first violin).56 In a quatuor concertant, each player would have
the opportunity to offer and elaborate motifs, contributing to the larger
sense of musical dialogue or conversation in much the same way as a
salonnière’s guests each made their own witty contributions to an evening’s
entertainment. By comparison, the Viennese quartet of Haydn was charac-
terised by a greater variety of forms, intense working-through and elabo-
ration of a single theme by way of expanded development sections, and
more wide-ranging modulations.57

Vocal music: cantata and cantatille

Just as Corelli’s violin sonatas found a warm reception in Paris’s aristo-
cratic salons, the French cantata (inspired by Italian models) counted
103 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

Italophilic cognoscenti among its most ardent admirers. Indeed, the

cantata’s popularity took hold with a virtual explosion in published
compositions around the final years of Louis XIV’s life. The cantata’s
heyday coincided with the short-lived Concert Français series
(1727–33), an offshoot of the Concert Spirituel. Initiated but not ulti-
mately directed by Anne-Danican Philidor (Mouret took over following
his resignation in 1727), the Concert Français presented weekly concerts
in the Tuileries on Saturdays and Sundays in the winter (thus competing
with other concert series as well as the Opéra and various theatres) and
once per week in the summer.58 Cantatas and divertissements formed the
focal point of the Concert Français’s programmes, which featured the
cantatas of Colin de Blamont, Battistin Stuck, Louis-Nicolas Clérambault
(1676–1749), Rameau, Mouret, Jean-Baptiste Morin (1677–1745), Louis Le
Maire (c. 1693–c. 1750), Louis-Claude Daquin (1694–1772) and others,
performed by some of the era’s finest singers (in particular Mademoiselle
Antier and Le Maure).59 The brief but intense interest in the cantata can be
understood as a response to the insular aesthetic cultivated at court and the
petrification of the operatic repertoire in the years between Lully’s death
and Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie (1733).60
A true manifestation of the goûts réunis, the French cantata borrowed
from Italian forms such as the da capo aria while adhering to distinctly
Gallic aesthetics of lyricism and sensibility, ornamentation and flexibility
in recitative.61 Most cantatas adapted a format of three arias interspersed
with recitatives, with or without obbligato instruments (most often a single
violin or flute, but occasionally larger or more varied forces). Although
many cantatas were obviously intended for the chamber and use just voice
and continuo, sometimes with two violins or other obbligato instruments, a
significant minority specify orchestral forces for accompaniment.62 With
their concise texts on attractive subjects, mostly drawn from classical
mythology, though occasionally from the Old Testament, cantata texts
were a minor yet fashionable poetic form and were regularly published in
the Mercure de France from 1711 to the 1740s.63
Cantatas also brought operatic elements into the salon. The cantata’s
dramatic symphonies served to illustrate a host of natural or deity-induced
disasters ranging from storms to earthquakes and potent magical slum-
ber.64 As Michele Cabrini has recently argued, the significance of the
instrumental contributions to the cantata should not be underestimated.
Rather, the instruments ‘are raised to the status of dramatic character and
equal partner to the voice, thus increasing the theatricality of the action’.65
Le sommeil d’Ulisse (1715) by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729)
serves as a prime example of a cantata that creatively expands on the
standard form (with five airs and récits) and includes dramatic elements
104 Debra Nagy

borrowed from the stage, including a swirling tempest and an extensive,

beguiling sommeil. It is important, however, to recognise the differences
between cantatas and dramatic works for small forces. Cantatas were not
operas ‘in miniature’. They generally depict a single event (rather than the
progression of a drama), and the singer narrates the scene rather than
embodying a character. In addition, cantatas were never staged; neither
did they incorporate the all-important elements of the tragédie lyrique, a
chorus and dance.66
In the wake of renewed interest in the tragédie en musique in the 1730s,
the composition of large-scale, dramatic cantatas decreased dramati-
cally.67 Composers of vocal chamber music instead cultivated the cantatille,
which – as the diminutive of the name implies – was generally shorter than
the cantata. Cantatilles usually included only a pair of arias interspersed
with one or two recitatives. Although cantatilles were formally small-scale
works, surviving scores frequently imply the use of large orchestral forces.68
In addition, despite their generally light, charming subjects and predispo-
sition towards triple metre, cantatilles were musically no less complex than
the cantatas that had preceded them. The cantatilles of Mouret, for instance,
beautifully pair the grace of dance metres with subtle, varied phrase
lengths.69 At turns intimate and virtuosic, the air ‘Doux rossignol’ from
Julie Pinel’s 1737 Le printems exults in conversational interplay between
soprano and obbligato flute or violin.
Overshadowed by the opera, and with only limited success in adapting
to the new aesthetic requirements of the German-influenced Classical
style, cantatas and cantatilles continued to be composed into the 1770s,
though they had made little impact since the zenith of their popularity in
the 1720s and 1730s. Working in the 1740s and 1750s, Louis-Antoine
Lefebvre composed twenty-three cantatilles and one cantata that attemp-
ted to integrate the accompanimental textures, melodic contours and
phrase structure of the Classical style.70 By contrast, the court composer
Pierre de La Garde responded to changing tastes by adopting the tuneful,
naive style of opéra comique to the cantatille and providing an accompani-
ment of guitar (which was very much in vogue), violin and harpsichord.71

Music in the home: vocal music

Songs and other small forms of vocal chamber music were ubiquitous in
eighteenth-century France. Paris’s blossoming publishing industry issued
numerous new songs each year, and periodicals like the Mercure de France
not only kept the new bourgeoisie abreast of developing fashions in
literature, art and music, but also frequently published songs and tunes
105 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

from current operas and announced new publications of ‘sheet music’.72

By mid-century, publishers were printing weekly and monthly tabloids of
sheet music, designed for domestic music-making and purchased by
subscription.73
Eighteenth-century French song drew on the rich rhetorical language
of the seventeenth-century air sérieux, but cultivated a lightness and ease
that, as a whole, reflected the Epicurean tenets of the Rococo: leisure,
pleasure and charm. Popular forms included the brunette, which was a
simple, bipartite song that expressed tender sentiments within a limited
vocal compass. Alternately known as an air tendre or gavotte tendre
(which betrayed its origin as a dance tune), the brunette was quintessen-
tially French in its natural simplicity, refinement and frequent precios-
ity.74 Collections, or recueils d’airs, freely mixed brunettes with Italian
ariettes, vaudevilles and drinking songs (airs à boire).75 The romance is
found in song collections from the 1760s onwards. A lyric narrative poem of
Spanish origins, the romance, like the strophic brunette, hewed to an
aesthetic of simplicity, naturalness and sentimentality. The form exerted a
strong influence on the Opéra-Comique, where it featured in Rousseau’s
Devin du village (most famously, ‘Dans ma cabane obscure’) and
Mondonville’s Titon et l’Aurore, as well as works by Monsigny and
François-André Philidor.76
Although the repertoire was limited to charming but simple bipartite
airs with light, pastoral subjects, successive collections nonetheless reflect
changing tastes through the eighteenth century. Michel Pignolet de
Montéclair (1667–1737), for instance, in his Brunètes anciènes et mod-
ernes (c. 1725), appended Italianate walking bass lines to airs dating back
to the mid-seventeenth century. In his nine collections of airs from the
1730s and 1740s, François Bouvard (c. 1683–1760) expanded the form of
the brunette to include introductory simphonies with ornate accompani-
ment consisting of flute, violin and bass.77 The 1760s periodical La feuille
chantante, ou Le journal hebdomadaire, by comparison, included all the
traditional small vocal forms (chansons, vaudevilles, rondeaux, ariettes,
duos, brunettes, etc.) but added harp as an accompaniment option along
with violin and harpsichord.78 Publications from the 1770s also began to
include romances (made popular at the Opéra-Comique) with harp accom-
paniments, tablature for the increasingly popular guitar or fully realised
harpsichord accompaniments.
Airs and brunettes were not just the province of amateur singers, but
were also performed by instrumentalists. Following Jacques Hotteterre’s
1721 Airs et brunettes, a steady stream of publications featuring vocal
repertoire adapted to instruments appeared.79 Brunettes were considered
extremely useful pedagogical tools and could also be adapted as a vehicle for
106 Debra Nagy

soloists (as in the virtuoso variations included in Blavet’s three-volume

Recueil de pièces, petits airs, brunettes, menuets, etc. avec des doubles et
variations, issued in 1744–51).
Parodies – whether spiritual texts added to profane airs or satiric verses
set to the tunes of well-known songs – were another important genre in
both domestic music-making and larger society. The simple, syllabic
vaudeville formed a cornerstone of the early opéra comique because it
was well suited to satirical or topical subjects. As Dorothy Packer
has observed, ‘the vaudeville’s brevity encouraged a concise musical
expression; its pointedness gave it a distinguishing piquancy’.80
Vaudevilles ranged from drinking songs to biting political satire, from
moralistic or didactic airs to love songs, or even to recipes.81 While many
vaudevilles were included in recueils d’airs, they were also transmitted
orally: like English ballad tunes, vaudevilles could simply be provided with
a timbre (or verbal cue) identifying the famous tune to which the new text
should be sung.

Instrumental fashions in the drawing room

From the Regency until the Revolution, solo music increasingly favoured
novelty and emphasised virtuoso display. While the fiery sonatas of the
violinists Jean-Féry Rebel and Leclair and flautists like Blavet and Mahaut
stressed technical accomplishment, the harpsichord suites or concerts of
François Couperin (1668–1733), Rameau, Royer, Daquin and Jacques
Duphly (1715–89) reflect a prolonged fascination with the character
piece. Individual pieces often carried fanciful titles, paid homage to col-
leagues or patrons, or were transcriptions of stage works. For instance,
Rameau arranged excerpts from his Les Indes galantes (1735), Royer
included dramatic set pieces from his operas Pyrrhus, Le pouvoir de
l’amour and Zaide in his Pièces de clavecin (1746), and Balbastre was
famous for arranging opera overtures for performance at the Concert
Spirituel.82
The clavecinistes of the 1740s and beyond were also interested in
exploring the limits of the instrument’s colouristic possibilities. Contrary
to modern expectations, the dynamically endowed forte-piano did not
eclipse the harpsichord upon its introduction in Paris in 1761. Rather,
harpsichord production in Paris increased through the 1770s and showed
no signs of slowing until the 1780s.83 The most famous harpsichord
builders were consumed with rebuilding old Flemish and French instru-
ments (particularly those of Ruckers and Couchet) – updating actions,
reinforcing soundboard and case and enlarging the compass to a full five
107 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789

octaves – and with installing buff stops, which were ubiquitous by 1750.84
Balbastre pushed the harpsichord to its technical and colouristic limits and
is credited with the invention of the peau de buffle (a rank of soft leather
plectra); he used knee pedals for special effects.
Since virtually all pianos were imported prior to the Erard firm’s first
serious attempts to manufacture instruments in 1777, it was the English
square piano that found a home in French drawing rooms in the 1770s
and 1780s (while the Erard firm was experimenting with hammer actions
in the 1750s and 1760s, serious manufacturing of square pianos began
in 1777; production of grand pianos began in the 1780s).85 The piano
made its debut at the Concert Spirituel on 8 September 1768 when
Mademoiselle Le Chantre performed works by her teacher Romain de
Brasseur, but, perhaps because of the popularity of Balbastre’s organ con-
certos, the piano only rarely made subsequent appearances on the concert
stage. The four symphonies concertantes (1777–83) of Jean-François Tapray
(b. 1738–9; d. after 1798), which juxtapose harpsichord and piano, mark the
last ‘French music in which the harpsichord was indispensable’.86
The same fashion for depictions of amorous shepherds and gently
warbling nightingales that inspired scenes by Antoine Watteau and
François Boucher, and which drove the publication of a seemingly endless
stream of sentimental airs and brunettes, also popularised the appropria-
tion of ‘folk’ instruments by the aristocracy. But just as Marie-Antoinette’s
Hameau de la Reine (the rustic farm she had built behind the Petit
Trianon at Versailles) allowed her to play at peasantry within the lux-
urious confines of the royal estate, so were the musette and vielle à roue
(hurdy-gurdy) suitably ‘civilised’ to appeal to noble amateurs. Rococo
iterations of the hurdy-gurdy and musette were highly ornamented;
stripped of previously negative associations,87 they were championed by
virtuosos, including Jacques Hotteterre, Nicolas Chédeville (1705–82) and
Jean-Baptiste Dupuits.88
Music for musette and hurdy-gurdy spanned a wide variety of genres
from chamber concertos to sonatas and duos, character pieces and suites
of dance music sporting titles that celebrated their supposedly rustic
origins, such as Fêtes rustiques (c. 1732) by Jacques-Christophe Naudot
(c. 1690–1762), Boismortier’s Balets de village (1734) and Chédeville’s
Amusements champêtres (three volumes, 1729, c. 1731, c. 1733).89
Interestingly, the craze for goûts réunis also extended to the peculiarly
French fashion for playing the musette and hurdy-gurdy: Chédeville passed
off Il pastor fido (a collection of sonatas for musette, 1737) as the work of
Vivaldi and likewise reworked concertos from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as Le
printems, ou Les saisons amusantes (1739) for hurdy-gurdy and chamber
ensemble.90
108 Debra Nagy

Conclusion
As the Revolution approached, the effects of Enlightenment philosophy,
which privileged the diffusion of culture and celebrated the liberating
power of knowledge, extended to the large, public venue of the concert
hall and the intimacy of the drawing room. Although the advent of concert
societies and explosion of periodicals and published sheet music in Paris
in the second half of the eighteenth century increased public access to arts
and culture, music was still most successfully cultivated within the realm
of the social elite. Ultimately, throughout the eighteenth century private
patrons among the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie played an essential
role in shaping public taste for virtually every musical genre.

Notes
1 Jean-Paul C. Montagnier, ‘Royal peculiar:
the music and patronage of Philippe of
Orléans, Regent of France’, Musical Times,
148 (2007), 56.
2 Olivier Baumont, La musique à Versailles
(Versailles: Centre de Musique Baroque de
Versailles, 2007), 214.
3 Ibid., 220–7.
4 For a brief overview, see ibid., 233–5.
5 Alexis Meunier, ‘La musique religieuse sous
Louis XV’, in Jean Duron (ed.), Regards sur la
musique au temps de Louis XV (Wavre:
Mardaga, 2007), 33–4.
6 See Jean-Paul C. Montagnier, ‘La messe
polyphonique imprimée en France au XVIIIe
siècle: survivance et décadence d’une
tradition séculaire’, Acta musicologica, 77
(2005), 47–69.
7 Bernadette Lespinard, ‘La chapelle royale
sous la règne de Louis XV’, Recherches sur la
musique française classique, 23 (1985), 136. See
also Jean-Paul Montagnier, ‘Le chant sur le
livre au 18e siècle: les traités de Louis-Joseph
Marchand et Henry Madin’, Revue de
musicologie, 81 (1995), 37–63.
8 John Spitzer and Neal Zaslaw, The Birth of
the Orchestra: History of an Institution,
1650–1815 (Oxford University Press, 2004),
183. See also Roberte Machard, ‘Les musiciens
en France au temps de Jean-Philippe Rameau
d’après les actes du secrétariat de la Maison du
Roi’, Recherches sur la musique française
classique, 11 (1971), 144–7.
9 Baumont, La musique à Versailles, 296–8.
10 Ibid., 310–14.
11 Brigitte François-Sappey, ‘Le personnel de
la musique royale de l’avènement de Louis XVI
à la chute de la monarchie (1774–1792)’,
Recherches sur la musique française classique,
26 (1988–90), 164–8.
12 Spitzer and Zaslaw, The Birth of the
Orchestra, 184.
13 Rosalie McQuaide, ‘The Crozat concerts,
1720–1727: a study of concert life in Paris’
(PhD thesis, New York University, 1978),
149–54. See also Lowell Lindgren, ‘Parisian
patronage of performers from the Royal
Academy of Musick (1719–28)’, Music and
Letters, 58 (1977), 17–24.
14 Thierry Favier, ‘Nouvelles sociabilités,
nouvelles pratiques: les concerts sous le règne
de Louix XV’, in Duron (ed.), Regards sur la
musique au temps de Louis XV, 108–9. In 1704
Jean-Laurent Le Cerf de la Viéville, seigneur de
Fresneuse, observed that presentations during
Holy Week ‘replaced those performances
suspended during the fortnight’. See Le Cerf de
la Viéville, Comparaison de la musique
italienne et de la musique françoise, 3 vols
(1704–6; repr. Geneva: Minkoff, 1972),
vol. III, 188.
15 Meunier, ‘La musique religieuse’, 53.
16 Concert programmes have been
reconstructed by Constant Pierre, Histoire du
Concert Spirituel, 1725–1790 (Paris: Société
Française de Musicologie, 1975), 232–44.
17 Meunier, ‘La musique religieuse’, 53.
18 James R. Anthony, French Baroque Music
from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, rev. edn (New
York: Norton, 1978), 194.
19 Ibid., 198.
20 See Jean-Paul C. Montagnier, ‘Da capo
arias in French church music (c. 1700–1760)’,
Musica e storia, 16 (2008), 615–36.
21 Sylvette Milliot, ‘Le virtuose international’,
Dix-huitième siècle, 25 (1993), 61.
109 Music from the Regency to the Revolution, 1715–1789
22 According to Constance Pipelet, who
quotes a Gavignès contemporary, Giovanni
Battista Viotti. Jeffrey Cooper and
Anthony Ginter, ‘Gaviniés [Gaviniès,
Gaviniez, Gavigniès, Gavignès, Gabignet and
other variations], Pierre’, Grove Music Online,
Oxford Music Online (accessed 22 May 2014).
23 Richard Viano, ‘By invitation only: private
concerts in France during the second half of
the eighteenth century’, Recherches sur la
musique française classique, 27 (1991), 136–7.
24 Georges Cucuel, La Pouplinière et la
musique de chambre au XVIIIe siècle (Paris:
Fischbacher, 1913), 258–9.
25 Ibid., 75.
26 Montagnier, ‘Royal peculiar’, 54.
27 McQuaide, ‘The Crozat concerts
1720–1727’.
28 Favier, ‘Nouvelles sociabilités’, 120.
29 Lindgren, ‘Parisian patronage’, 4–28.
30 Charles Michael Carroll, ‘A beneficient
[sic] poseur: Charles Ernest, Baron de Bagge’,
Recherches sur la musique française classique,
16 (1976), 24–36.
31 Graham Sadler questions when Rameau
entered La Pouplinière’s circle of influence in
‘Patrons and pasquinades: Rameau in the
1730s’, Journal of the Royal Musical
Association, 113 (1988), 314–37.
32 Viano, ‘By invitation only’, 152.
33 André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, Mémoires,
ou Essais sur la musique, 3 vols (New York: Da
Capo Press, 1971), vol. I, 156–7.
34 Mozart to his father, Mannheim, 3
December 1777, in Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s
Life, ed. and trans. Robert Spaethling (New
York: Norton, 2000), 107.
35 Herbert C. Turrentine, ‘The Prince de
Conti: a royal patron of music’, Musical
Quarterly, 54 (1968), 311–12.
36 Cucuel, La Pouplinière, 324–5.
37 Ibid., 306–9.
38 Paul Everett, Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
(Cambridge University Press, 1996), 3–5.
39 Corrette was also music director at the
Foire Saint-Germain and Foire Saint-Laurent
(1732–9).
40 Favier, ‘Nouvelles sociabilités’, 117.
41 Concert of 8 December 1750, in Pierre,
Histoire du Concert Spirituel, 259.
42 Barry S. Brook, La symphonie française
dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols
(University of Paris, 1962), vol. I, 46–9.
43 Pierre, Histoire du Concert Spirituel, 109,
260.
44 Brook, La symphonie française, vol. I, 84.
45 Ibid., 153–6.
46 Ibid., 93–4.
47 Ibid., 242.
48 Ibid., 243.
49 Ibid., 285.
50 See Barry S. Brook, ‘The symphonie
concertante: its musical and sociological
bases’, International Review of the Aesthetics
and Sociology of Music, 6 (1975), 9–28.
51 Brook, La symphonie française, vol. I, 146.
52 Ibid., 333.
53 Spitzer and Zaslaw, The Birth of the
Orchestra, 203. See also David Hennebelle,
‘Nobles, musique et musiciens à Paris à la fin de
l’Ancien Régime: les transformations d’un
patronage séculaire (1760–1780)’, Revue de
musicologie, 87 (2001), 413–16.
54 Michelle Garnier-Butel, ‘La naissance du
quatuor à cordes français au siècle des
lumières’, in Le quatuor à cordes en France de
1750 à nos jours (Paris: Association Française
pour le Patrimoine Musical, 1995), 41–52.
55 Garnier-Butel, ibid., 74, cites the Almanach
musical (1775).
56 Garnier-Butel, ‘La naissance du quatuor à
cordes français’, 50–1.
57 Ibid.
58 David Tunley, The Eighteenth-Century
French Cantata (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997), 6–11.
59 For a listing of programmes of the Concert
Français, see ibid., 250–9.
60 Ibid., 13–14.
61 Just as François Couperin had done in his
Nouveaux concerts ou goût-réünis, some
cantata composers even paid homage to the
Italian origins of the form by writing
instrumental parts in the Italian treble clef.
62 See Graham Sadler, ‘The orchestral French
cantata (1706–1730): performance, edition
and classification of a neglected repertory’, in
Michael Talbot (ed.), Aspects of the Secular
Cantata in Late Baroque Italy (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2009), 228–9.
63 Tunley, The Eighteenth-Century French
Cantata, 145.
64 See Michele Cabrini, ‘Breaking form
through sound: instrumental aesthetics,
tempête, and temporality in the French
Baroque cantata’, Journal of Musicology, 26
(2009), 327–78.
65 Michele Cabrini, ‘Upstaging the voice:
diegetic sound and instrumental interventions
in the French Baroque cantata’, Early Music, 38
(2010), 74.
66 Tunley, The Eighteenth-Century French
Cantata, 15.
67 Ibid., 168.
68 For a discussion of the term cantatille, see
ibid., 168–70.
69 Ibid., 170–3.
70 Ibid., 176–9.
110 Debra Nagy
71 Ibid., 182–4.
72 The Ballard and Leclerc firms regularly
issued collections of French airs and drinking
songs, Italian airs, brunettes, vaudevilles,
parodies and contredanses in both anthologies
and single-composer collections. For
instance, Christophe Ballard issued
twenty-one volumes of Jean-Baptiste Bousset’s
Airs nouveaux sérieux et à boire (Paris: Ballard,
1702–25).
73 See Anik DeVries, Édition et commerce de
la musique gravée à Paris dans la première
moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Geneva: Minkoff,
1976), 59–61.
74 For additional information on the brunette,
see Elissa Poole, ‘The sources for Christophe
Ballard’s Brunetes ou petits airs tendres and the
tradition of seventeenth-century French song’
(PhD thesis, University of Victoria, 1984).
75 The vaudeville was a simple tune often used
in parodies, sometimes with political or
satirical implications. See Philip Robinson,
‘Vaudevilles et genre comique à Paris au milieu
du XVIIIe siècle’, in Michael Talbot (ed.),
Timbre und Vaudeville: Zur Geschichte und
Problematik einer populären Gattung im 17.
und 18. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Georg Olms,
1999), 292–305.
76 See Daniel Heartz, ‘The beginnings of the
operatic romance: Rousseau, Sedaine, and
Monsigny’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15
(1982), 149–78.
77 François Bouvard’s nine volumes of airs
and brunettes call for slightly different
performing forces (vols II and VIII are lost).
See, for example, Bouvard’s Quatrième
recueil d’airs sérieux et à boire à une et deux
voix avec accompagnement de flûte et de violon
et la basse-continue (Paris: chez l’auteur, 1740).
78 La feuille chantante called for ‘un
accompagnement de violon et basse chiffrée
pour le clavecin ou la harpe’, and appeared
each Monday from 1764 to 1766. See http://
dictionnaire-journaux.gazettes18e.fr/journal/
0443-la-feuille-chantante (accessed 22 May
2014).
79 See Michelle Garnier-Butel, ‘Du répertoire
vocal à la musique instrumentale: les
transcriptions d’airs connus en France dans la
seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle’, in
Jean Quéniart (ed.), Le chant, acteur de
l’histoire (Presses Universitaires de Rennes,
1999), 125–35.
80 Dorothy S. Packer, ‘“La Calotte” and the
18th-century French vaudeville’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 23 (1970), 63;
Robert Darnton, Poetry and the Police:
Communication Networks in Eighteenth-
Century Paris (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2010).
81 See the ‘singing’ cookbook Festin joyeux, ou
la cuisine en musique en vers libres (Paris:
Lebas, 1738); Nouvelles poésies spirituelles et
morales sur les plus beaux airs de la musique
françoise et italienne, avec la basse (Paris:
Lottin, 1737); Dorothy S. Packer, ‘Horatian
moral philosophy in French song, 1649–1749’,
Musical Quarterly, 61 (1975), 240–71.
82 On operatic transcriptions for harpsichord,
see Graham Sadler, ‘Rameau’s harpsichord
transcriptions from Les Indes galantes’, Early
Music, 7 (1979), 18–24. For an overview of the
French harpsichord repertoire, see
Bruce Gustafson and David R. Fuller, A
Catalogue of French Harpsichord Music,
1699–1780 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
83 Michael Cole, The Pianoforte in the
Classical Era (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998), 1.
84 The most important eighteenth-century
French harpsichord builders were Pascal
Taskin and the Blanchet family. See Edward
L. Kottick, A History of the Harpsichord
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2003), 280.
85 See Gustafson and Fuller, A Catalogue of
French Harpsichord Music, 7.
86 Ibid., 1.
87 While the mouth-blown bagpipe had
sexual connotations, the hurdy-gurdy was
traditionally associated with the poor and
blind. For the symbolism of instruments, see
Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments and
their Symbolism in Western Art (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 74–5,
157–62. Richard Leppert reviews the
‘ennobling mythologies’ applied to the musette
and hurdy-gurdy in Arcadia at Versailles
(Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1978),
41–4.
88 See Jacques Hotteterre, Méthode pour la
musette (Paris: Ballard, 1738). Robert A. Green
references and comments on many of the
composer-performers on the musette and
hurdy-gurdy in ‘Eighteenth-century French
chamber music for vielle’, Early Music, 15
(1987), 468–79.
89 Robert A. Green catalogues the repertoire
for the hurdy-gurdy in Hurdy-Gurdy in
Eighteenth-Century France (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1995), 72–98.
90 Philippe Lescat, ‘“Il pastor fido”, une
oeuvre de Nicolas Chédeville’, Informazioni e
studi vivaldiani, 11 (1990), 5–10.
 6 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848
m i c h a e l mc c l e l l a n an d s i m o n tr e z i s e

Political and cultural context

On 14 July 1789 a republican crowd stormed the Bastille, a fortress and
prison in Paris. Until the formation of the Third Republic in 1870,
France’s government lurched from constitutional monarchy, to republic,
to empire, back to monarchy and so on, finally settling on a republic. The
first constitutional monarchy failed early on; Louis XVI was guillotined on
21 January 1793, an event which ushered in the First Republic. The Reign
of Terror began on 6 September 1793 with the formation of the euphe-
mistically named Committee of Public Safety and ended on 27 July 1794.
Thousands were killed and massive damage was inflicted. The Terror was
followed by the Thermidorian Reaction, which reversed the trend, inau-
gurating the slow process of ending the Revolution.1
Under the constitution of 1795 the legislature was divided between two
bodies that, respectively, initiated legislation and passed resolutions into
law. Severely damaged by military disasters, the Directory – a small group
of members to which the executive was entrusted – failed to realise a stable
republican order; as a result, the conditions allowed Napoleon Bonaparte
to seize power. From the establishment of the Consulate after the
Brumaire coup d’état in 1799, which ended the Directory, and the start
of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804, Napoleon rapidly consolidated the
changes the Revolution had made.2
By the early nineteenth century, musical and political institutions were
strong enough to withstand the sometimes bloody paroxysms that fol-
lowed. Napoleon’s demise led to a restoration of a constitutional mon-
archy in 1814. Louis XVIII was succeeded in 1824 by the reactionary
Charles X, who headed a government that abolished the freedoms of
the press and reduced the electorate. This inspired the July Revolution
of 1830, which brought Louis-Philippe I to the throne. His liberal, bour-
geois policies were not sufficient to stem demands for a larger electorate
and parliamentary reform, and in 1848 crowds barricaded the streets;

Michael McClellan was set to revise and extend the coverage of this chapter when illness overtook him
in 2012. I (Simon Trezise) have refashioned much of it, but the sections closest to his draft are ‘The
restoration of religious music’ and ‘Music journalism’. The section devoted to instrumental music is
[111] entirely mine.
112 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

Louis-Philippe followed Charles X in abdicating and fleeing to England;

the short-lived Second Republic was under way.
The Revolution asked how and for whose benefit society should be
ruled, and challenged the role of the arts in ways that were novel (though
anticipated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–78). In the last years of
the ancien régime the musical highpoints were the grands motets at the
Chapelle Royale, the tragédies lyriques of Rameau and Gluck and the
symphonies of Haydn, Johann Stamitz and François-Joseph Gossec
(1734–1829) at the Concert Spirituel.3 Not all of these suited the anti-
religious world of the Revolution: the Concert Spirituel ended in 1790 after
sixty-five years and the Chapelle Royale was suspended in 1792.4
While noting discontinuities, it is also important to stress continuities.
In 1856 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: ‘unbeknownst to themselves, [the
French] had taken from the Ancien Régime most of the feelings, habits,
and ideas that guided the Revolution which destroyed it . . . they had built
the new society out of the debris of the old’.5 Even secularism, which
constituted a striking discontinuity for musical institutions, had prece-
dents in Enlightenment thought. Robespierre’s pursuit of a cult of the
‘supreme being’ – one of several attempts to create a ‘bourgeois non-
Christian morality’, which maintained ‘the apparatus of ritual and cults’ –
had its origins in Rousseau.6 After 1789 operatic and concert life soon
picked up almost where it had left off, without Rameau and motets, but
with Gluck and several major initiatives, which redirected the arts towards
the ascendant bourgeoisie (hence the rehousing of the royal art collection
and confiscated church art for public access – 537 paintings – in the Louvre
in 1793).
During and out of the highly disparate movements of the eighteenth
century and the Revolution, French Romanticism struggled to free itself
from conservative forces, like the musical and architectural tastes of
Napoleon, who favoured tuneful Italian music and classical architecture.
It was perhaps in literature – in the works of English poets like Shelley and
Byron – that the impact of the Revolution had its first resonance. Rousseau
was vital: his influence, specifically his ‘emotional individualism’, is felt in the
work of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre and François-René de Chateaubriand, who
transmitted it to Victor Hugo and George Sand.7 Even though the surging
espousal of the individual’s freedom from tyranny might have been contra-
dicted by purges and the police state, the rhetoric lived on in the arts.
Paradoxes abound, for the irrationality of religious observance was dis-
placed temporarily by a Cult of Reason, which is perhaps more evocative of
the Enlightenment than of Romanticism. Chateaubriand cultivated the
colourful and picturesque without binding himself to accuracy, hence the
allure of the exotic and oriental in much of the art and music of the period.
113 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

Literary French Romanticism first peaked in 1830 with Hugo’s Ernani, in

which drama mirrors life: ‘Decorum was banished and the wildest and
weirdest scenes were portrayed without restraint.’8 Romantic poets show
a freedom in their forms and expression, which we find echoed in Hector
Berlioz (1803–69), and especially in the spontaneous lyricism of Liszt’s and
Chopin’s music.

Music for the Revolutionary state

Institutions associated with the court found themselves vulnerable, par-
ticularly in the wake of the monarchy’s collapse in August 1792. This was
true of the Catholic Church, which had been intimately connected with
the monarchy. At the most extreme point in the Revolution the church
was disestablished and churches were closed, which led first to the Cult of
Reason (c. 1792) and then to Robespierre’s attempt to establish the Cult of
the Supreme Being as a new state religion (he was appalled by the rejection
of divinity by many of his fellow revolutionaries).9 For many musicians,
this break was ruinous. What had been a traditional sphere for music-
making and an important source of income simply disappeared, effectively
halting the composition and performance of sacred music during the 1790s.
With careers and education went infrastructure: thousands of organs were
destroyed or left to rack and ruin, choirbooks were lost, countless manu-
scripts of early music vanished with the closure of the great monastic
libraries, and many buildings were destroyed or damaged.10
At first religious music of a traditional kind was still heard, albeit in
quite different circumstances. Gossec, already well known for his stage
music, symphonies, religious works and much else, became one of the
most prolific composers for the Revolution. In 1790 he wrote a Te Deum
pour la fête de Fédération, which marked the first anniversary of the
storming of the Bastille. Mass was also celebrated. It was held outdoors
on the Champ de Mars, then outside Paris, which had been specially
adapted for 400,000 spectators. Gossec’s Te Deum is for three-part male
choir, wind and percussion; it employed a chorus of a thousand and a large
orchestra.11 Stylistically it is typical of the ceremonial music of the 1790s in
its robust homophonic style with martial rhythms and simple cadential
formulas regularly punctuating the phrases. Reflections of the past abound,
though, for instance in the orchestral passepied (a French court dance,
faster than the minuet) that precedes the ‘Te gloriosus’ section (bar 204).12
The fête was the harbinger of many such outdoor occasions. By means of
‘Revolutionary hymns’, large groups of people directly participated in the
mass musical performances of the festivals, celebrating the membership of
114 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

everyone present in the civic body, in an acknowledgement of their con-

version from subjects of a king into citizens of the state. These ceremonies
included symbolic rituals such as the planting of Liberty Trees, the erecting
of statues of Goddesses of Liberty and the burning of effigies of Ignorance,
all accompanied by wind bands and choruses that sometimes exceeded a
thousand musicians.13 The festivals thus became secular liturgies in which
Revolutionary hymns replaced sacred genres. Rousseau had adumbrated
the character of these events in his Lettre sur les spectacles, in which he
proposed open-air festivals in which the public came together en masse. As
for the character of the hymns, they had to succeed as propaganda, which
meant that the composer was required to ‘respect the poetic stresses of the
refrain and first couplet, while the poet . . . would have to see that his verses
scanned regularly’.14
The music for these events, used in conjunction with arrangements of
popular patriotic songs like J. Rouget de Lisle’s Hymne à la liberté (La
Marseillaise), ‘Ah, ça ira’ and La Carmagnole,15 formed the musical foun-
dation of the Revolutionary festivals.16 Intended for performance at vast
outdoor gatherings, these works were exceptionally grand in scale but
necessarily simple in composition. An entire generation of composers was
called upon: the more productive composers included Charles-Simon Catel
(1773–1830), Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842), Gossec, Louis-Emmanuel Jadin
(1768–1853), Jean-François Le Sueur (or Lesueur, 1760–1837) and Étienne-
Nicolas Méhul (1763–1817).17 Méhul’s Le chant du départ (words by Marie-
Joseph Chénier), a hymne de guerre, is characteristic. Unlike many others, it
outlived its era and is still played by the French army. It was first performed
at a concert by the choirs and orchestra of the Institut National de Musique
on 4 July 1794 in the Jardin National (Tuileries). Additional musicians were
recruited from Paris theatres.18 It is strophic, with music for the first verse
and chorus; there are seven verses, each of which gives voice to a character
in the Revolutionary struggle: a deputy of the people, a mother of a family,
two old men, a child, a wife, a young girl and three warriors, who conclude
that ‘by destroying the notorious royalty/the French shall give the world/
peace and liberty’. Like La Marseillaise, it is in C major with a simple,
extremely direct melody that nevertheless briefly expresses doubt in itself by
glancing at the tonic minor (on the words ‘Kings drunk on blood and pride’
in the first verse).
As well as enabling commissions for new music, the festivals created a
demand for musicians, especially wind players, to support the choruses.
This demand led to the establishment of the Institut National de Musique
in 1793, under Bernard Sarrette, which became a source of such musicians.
The Institut was absorbed into the Conservatoire de Musique, established
by the government in 1795.
115 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

The restoration of religious music

Napoleon recognised that efforts to replace Catholicism had put the
government in an adversarial position with a large section of the popula-
tion. His negotiations with the papacy brought an end to that conflict, at
least officially, by means of the 1801 concordat with Pope Pius VII. But
this was no simple return to the pre-Revolutionary status quo, for
Napoleon used his political and military strength in conjunction with
the weak position of the papacy to restore the church to a position of
spiritual prominence, without returning its former property and power.19
Nonetheless, the normalisation of worship in France inaugurated a new
era of sacred music composition. So when the Chapel of the Tuileries palace
was reopened in 1802 with Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816) as its director,
composition of works for the Catholic liturgy was once again sanctioned by
the French state. The choice of Paisiello revealed the First Consul’s pro-
nounced preference for Italianate musical styles. Shortly before the pro-
clamation of the Empire in May 1804 Paisiello retired and was replaced by
Le Sueur, who had earned a reputation prior to the Revolution as an
innovative composer of sacred music.20 Le Sueur’s work on behalf of the
imperial chapel reflected his fondness for simple textures for use within
highly resonant spaces; the repertoire also reflected the emperor’s taste
and his limited patience for extended liturgies.21 A Mass in this context
could consist of any piece of music that set a religious text, including
small-scale oratorios or cantatas. Le Sueur survived Napoleon’s fall and
continued as surintendant of the Chapel under the Bourbon Restoration. By
then age forced him to share the burdens of the job, first with Jean-Paul-
Gilles Martini (1741–1816) and then, after Martini’s death in 1816, with
Cherubini.
Although better known today for his music for the stage, Cherubini
was arguably the most influential composer of French sacred music of the
nineteenth century. His operatic successes of the 1790s were not repeated
during the Empire, and from 1805 to 1815 he experienced bouts of
depression related to a loss of inspiration.22 Towards the end of this period
Cherubini became intrigued by the possibilities of sacred music, and
through his work for the restored Bourbon rulers he found a new creative
outlet, to which the public responded enthusiastically. Characteristic of his
innovative and dramatic approach is his use of a tam-tam at the opening the
Dies irae of his first Requiem (C minor), written for the 1817 anniversary of
the execution of Louis XVI.23 His religious works draw on the broad syn-
thesis encountered in the music of Haydn and Mozart, where symphonic,
operatic and religious styles happily coalesce (Cherubini must have known
and valued Mozart’s Requiem, for he conducted its Parisian premiere in
116 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

1804). While Cherubini’s sense of drama is clearly evident, so is his skill at

counterpoint, honed when he was still a young musician working in Italy. In
his best works from this period, he approaches the setting of text soberly, at
times limiting vocal lines to the recitation of a single pitch, compensating
for the lack of vocal lyricism by means of ostinato figures in the instrumen-
tal accompaniment that provide the necessary interest and momentum.
Cherubini’s tenure at the court came to an abrupt end with the
Revolution of 1830 and the establishment of the July Monarchy. The
new king, Louis-Philippe, wanting to emphasise the bourgeois qualities
of his reign, disbanded the entire Chapel in order to disassociate himself
from his Bourbon predecessors. In doing so, he brought the tradition of
courtly sacred music in France to an end, though not the production of
religious music in general.
Cherubini’s coronation Masses and first Requiem were composed for
occasions of grandeur and political significance. Not surprisingly, a work
like the Requiem was soon receiving concert performances. Paradoxically,
this development bespeaks continuity with the ancien régime, not rupture:
the Concert Spirituel had taken grands motets for chorus and orchestra
conceived for chapel services and ‘gradually turned [them] into a sort of
fashionable sacred music’ outside their original setting.24 Some sacred
genres also acquired national or political significance. This was true of
Berlioz’s Grande messe des morts (Requiem, 1837). Written as a government
commission, it is a stunning achievement in which the composer explored
space and sound through the deployment of a large choir and orchestra,
with four brass groups, one positioned at each corner of the auditorium.
The extravagant effects of this massive work have precedents in the
Revolutionary works of Le Sueur (among others), for his Symphonic Ode
of 1801 also ‘employed four separate orchestras, each one stationed at a
corner of the Invalides’, which was Berlioz’s venue as well.25
Berlioz wrote his Te Deum (1849) without a commission, but with
similarly large-scale performance in mind; the use of an organ gave him
another architectural element to deploy in, for example, the epic counter-
point of the opening movement, which recalls Handel’s blend of fugal and
homophonic writing. The statuesque qualities of the music owe much to
the ambitious use of the brass in doubling vocal lines.
The grandiosity of Berlioz’s Requiem and Te Deum was only one
expression of the way in which sacred music was evolving in nineteenth-
century France. A Romanising liturgical drive was under way, but the move
towards the adoption of plainchant was slow. We see the process in the work
of the Benedictine monks of the abbey at Solesmes, in northern France,
where the monks inaugurated a project aiming to restore ‘authentic’
Gregorian chant through scholarly scrutiny and comparison of disparate
117 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

sources. Some forty years after its dissolution and partial destruction, a local
priest, Dom Prosper Guéranger, embarked on a revival of Benedictine
monastic life in what remained of the old abbey in 1833. A key component
of this was the restoration of Gregorian chant. The goals of this abbot and
his zealous group of Benedictines were clearly antiquarian and closely
associated with the historicist impulses evident in the first half of the nine-
teenth century; they also revealed a desire to rehabilitate contemporary life
through the recuperation of a lost spirituality that they believed would
renew France as a Catholic nation.26 The reforms, however, were not widely
accepted until the 1890s (around the time of the foundation of the Schola
Cantorum), because of the withholding of texts, which restricted access to a
few abbeys. It was a slow process, but by the start of the twentieth century,
Counter-Reformation polyphony, with Palestrina at the forefront, was
deemed second only to Gregorian chant ‘as an appropriate vehicle for the
Catholic liturgy’.27
Enthusiasm for sacred repertoires of the past was not limited to the
monks of Solesmes. Music educators like Alexandre-Étienne Choron
(1771–1834) made significant contributions to the study and performance
of early sacred music in the first half of the century.28 In addition to being
an author, publisher and committed teacher (and concomitantly founder of
the Institution Royale de Musique Classique et Religieuse, which was
revived by Niedermeyer – see Chapter 7 below), Choron exhibited an
abiding interest in the reclamation of music from before 1800. At a time
when very little music of the past was readily available, he published music
of Renaissance and Baroque composers and actively participated in the
Palestrina revival through his programming of Palestrina’s music in con-
certs devoted to historical works.29 These performances were surprisingly
successful and helped encourage a taste for a cappella performance.30 The
staunch classicist François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871), composer, teacher,
critic and one of the foremost music scholars of the period, applauded
Choron’s efforts and started his own series of concerts historiques in the
1830s. Thus both men cultivated an interest in historical performance of
sacred music that continued to develop and flourish later in the century at
the École Niedermeyer and eventually the Schola Cantorum.31

Concert life
Concert life continued after the Revolution, although with at first fewer
opportunities to hear instrumental and vocal music in a concert setting
than hitherto. Life was chaotic, but musicians ‘hobbled along’,32 often
unpredictably: in 1791 an orchestral concert was announced for the
118 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

Cirque National in the inner courtyard of the Palais Royal, ‘where a young
woman was to “perform a pianoforte concerto”; a ball was to follow the
concert’.33 With the increasing importance of the piano – an instrument
that could play operas, symphonies and solo works, and accompany any
instrument – tiny venues turned into concert halls, as the violinist Pierre
Baillot lamented.34
Paris theatres maintained much of the ancien régime’s momentum of
concert-giving. The Feydeau theatre orchestra played symphonies, con-
certos and overtures during theatrical evenings. The concerts became
fashionable and were the subject of ‘at least two short comedies’, in one
of which a perfumed dandy remarks to a lady, ‘I don’t enjoy myself, or
even exist, except at a concert.’35 Jean Mongrédien reproduces a typical
programme: a Haydn symphony, a Viotti violin concerto, an Italian aria, a
Viotti piano concerto, an excerpt from Cimarosa’s Le sacrifice d’Abraham, a
Gluck overture, a symphonie concertante by Devienne and Mengozzi’s Air
savoyard. This was given on 8 January 1797, one of a dozen concerts in the
autumn–winter season.36 Similar programmes were produced at other
theatres, including the Opéra and Opéra-Comique, as well as in various
pleasure gardens.37
In 1798 the influential Concerts de la rue de Cléry began their subscrip-
tion series in which the music of Haydn was prominently programmed,
often with two symphonies per concert. The emphasis on Haydn provides a
connection with pre-Revolutionary musical life (he had been popular at the
Concerts de la Loge Olympique, for example).38
The performances organised by the Conservatoire were the most
prominent concert series of the early 1800s. Growing out of ‘public
exercises’ for students in the 1790s, under the First Empire they quickly
grew in scope and esteem. The conductor for many Conservatoire con-
certs was a former pupil, François-Antoine Habeneck, who proved to be a
driving force.39 After the series ended in 1824, Habeneck established the
Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1828. This series was responsible
for some of the most important musical premieres in nineteenth-century
France, including Beethoven’s symphonic works. The first music played in
the 1828 series was the ‘Eroica’, a duet from Rossini’s Sémiramis, a
new work by Joseph Maillard illustrating a piston-valved horn he had
helped design, a violin concerto by Rode and three works by the
Conservatoire director Cherubini, including portions of his 1824 Mass for
Charles X (all concerts included a chorus).40 Berlioz spoke about the
significance of the programming of Beethoven in his Mémoires, claiming
that ‘they opened before me a new world of music’.41 These performances
ushered Beethoven’s symphonic works into the French concert repertoire
and inspired emulation by Berlioz and other composers.42 The audience for
119 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

these concerts was from the upper bourgeoisie and nobility, who were
nothing if not loyal. Lists of subscribers clearly indicate the well-heeled
character of the attendees, whose subscriptions to the concert series were
passed on to family members from one generation to the next.43 For the
audiences, the concerts represented exclusivity in terms of both social
profile and musical values.44
The seriousness that greeted the Conservatoire’s concerts was matched
by the growing interest in chamber music from the period of the
Restoration and after.45 The concerts organised by the violinist Pierre
Baillot were influential. Starting in 1814 (and finishing in 1836), he organ-
ised performances that helped transform chamber music from an amateur
pastime into a body of work intended for serious contemplation.46 The
audiences attracted to the chamber music performances, like those for the
Conservatoire concerts, were a wealthy mix of aristocrats and the upper
middle class, but Baillot performed less Beethoven than the Conservatoire
performers, preferring the quartets and quintets of Haydn, Mozart and
Boccherini. A sextet arrangement of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony was
nevertheless played six times, as was his String Quartet in G, Op. 18 No. 2.
But while several of Beethoven’s late quartets were never played, all of
Haydn’s Op. 76 featured at least once, and No. 2 in D minor seven
times.47 More recent compositions were also performed, including works
by Cherubini, Hummel and Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824). Within a
few decades, several additional concert series dedicated to chamber music
were founded by musicians inspired by Baillot.48
Outside Paris the picture of concert life is much less clear (see
Chapter 17 below). In the eighteenth century, a number of provincial
concert series, often organised by local music societies, were to be found
in centres such as Bordeaux and Lille.49 The interest in concert activities
was, in part, supported by the number of virtuoso performers who toured
Europe, stopping briefly in smaller towns in between longer stays in major
urban centres. Nonetheless, even large regional capitals like Lyons and
Marseilles could not compete with Paris. As a centre of European instru-
ment building and music-making, Paris was attractive to many performing
artists who stayed there for varying periods of time, performing in any
number of venues within the capital.50
It was Rossini who inspired Paganini and many others through the
brilliance and virtuosity of his vocal writing. In the years after the demo-
lition of Napoleon’s empire he was Europe’s most famous composer, and
he lived in Paris.51 Although virtuoso musicians were to be found through-
out Europe, their concentration in Paris was a product of that city’s high
status as a focal point of musical culture. Many nineteenth-century musi-
cians traced their determination to develop their virtuosity back to the
120 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

influence of Paganini in his Parisian concerts.52 A veritable flood of pianist-

composers came to Paris and adopted the new instruments of Erard and
Pleyel. They included Dussek, Steibelt, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Liszt,
Thalberg, Hiller, Heller, Léopold de Meyer and Chopin. To sample what
they did, it is worth itemising Chopin’s first concert in Paris, on 26 February
1832, for it gives a distinct flavour of what audiences expected and received.
Liszt, Mendelssohn and around a hundred others assembled in the rooms of
Pleyel et Cie (significantly, a piano manufacturer, emphasising the link
between industry and concertising53) to hear Beethoven’s Quintet in C,
Op. 29, a vocal duet, Chopin playing his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor
with orchestral parts played by string quintet, Chopin and five other pianists
in Kalkbrenner’s Introduction, March and Grande Polonaise for six pianos,
an opera aria, an oboe solo and finally Chopin playing his ‘La ci darem’
Variations, similarly accompanied.54 Although concert programmes typi-
cally mixed orchestral, chamber and vocal music, increasingly it was the
piano that was heard throughout, either in concertos or as a member of a
small ensemble, as here.
Situated between the public and private performing worlds was the
salon culture, which reappeared in Paris in the early nineteenth century
following a brief hiatus during the early years of the Revolution. Private
recitals given in the homes of aristocrats and the haute bourgeoisie offered
a semi-public showcase for professional performers and talented amateurs
from the upper classes.55 Some salon concerts received notice in the press, a
celebrated example being the pianistic ‘duel’ between Liszt and Thalberg
that Princess Cristina Belgiojoso organised as a benefit for Italian political
exiles in 1837. But most of these social and musical events were not so widely
advertised, being more private affairs.56 They featured solo and chamber
works, freely mixing operatic arias and virtuosic piano solos with more
modest vocal romances, and later, after mid-century, mélodies.57 These
concerts served purposes of social advancement for their hosts, afforded
certain amateurs a venue for performance and provided professional musi-
cians with a significant supplemental means of income.

Instrumental music
Introduction
Between 1789 and 1830, the year of the Symphonie fantastique, there is a
remarkable dearth of enduring music, apart from Berlioz’s early works.
Cherubini’s overtures have lingered, as has some of his chamber and
choral music; thanks to David Charlton, Méhul’s symphonies are becom-
ing better known; and foraging for forgotten concertos and chamber
121 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

music by, for example, adventurous recording companies like CPO and
Naxos has resurrected more from this obscure period. Yet the record
shows that music was as widely composed, played and listened to in this
period as in any other, and a huge amount was published, especially in
Paris. Although France was primarily in love with opera, Mongrédien has
done much to alert us to the rich musical experience of the period.58
Representative works of a few key genres of instrumental music up to the
end of the monarchy are discussed in the following paragraphs.

The symphony
Having found the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart just as congenial as
their forebears before the Revolution, French audiences and composers
after 1789 seem to have been reluctant to furnish competition. This is
surprising, for before the Revolution hundreds of French symphonies
were composed and published, not least Gossec’s; between 1790 and
1829 only fifty-seven were published.59 Méhul left traces of a symphony
from 1797 – just two movements – but in spite of his acknowledgement that
the public needed no new symphonies because of their devotion to the
perfect specimens of Haydn and Mozart, he wrote four more in the years
1809–10 ‘to accustom the public little by little to think that a Frenchman
may follow Haydn and Mozart at a distance’.60 All four of Méhul’s complete
symphonies are of interest. They earned approbation at the time, as wit-
nessed by a review in the Journal de Paris (25 May 1809), which noted ‘Pure,
melodious themes, brilliant passages, ingenious transitions’, and of the slow
movement of No. 3 in C the anonymous author wrote, ‘it is one of those
epoch-making pieces of which one does not grow tired’.61 No. 4 in E is
described by David Charlton as ‘an achievement of profound and enter-
taining utterance’.62 The first movement of No. 4 is of Classical proportions
and follows late Haydn and Mozart in omitting a second-half repeat. The
music is full of incident, especially in some startling harmonic digressions
and prolific contrapuntal activity, though it lacks the individual melodic
character of a Romantic symphony. But the slow movement is original,
devoting its first fifty-six bars to a long-breathed, striking melody for (two?)
solo cellos accompanied by pizzicato basses. The second movement, a
minuet, recalls Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E, Op. 14 No. 1. Given that the
French symphony was to establish its independence through the adoption of
cyclic techniques, it is intriguing to find Méhul incorporating the opening of
the first movement’s slow introduction motif G♯–B–E–D♯ unambiguously
into the finale from the beginning of the exposition transition.
That these attractive symphonies were not taken up in concerts indi-
cates a museum culture in which canonised works, often by non-French
composers, were preferred to novelties closer to home, no matter how
122 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

appealing. Berlioz suffered a similar fate: his music pleased French audien-
ces and critics at the time, but struggled to find an afterlife. Charlton blames
the ‘public’s preference for gaiety and spectacle and . . . conservatism’.63
Berlioz was studying at the Paris Conservatoire in the late 1820s,
having started part-time study there earlier in the decade. By the time he
won the Prix de Rome in 1830 he was already a composer of extraordinary
originality and was reluctant to spend time abroad, as prescribed by the
Prix,64 but the experience of Italy nevertheless inspired much of his later
music, notably the symphony Harold en Italie (1834).65 In 1828 he gave his
first orchestral concert in Paris: self-promotion was the only means of
getting his music before the public.
Under the influence of Beethoven, Berlioz brought before the public
the first great Romantic symphony, Symphonie fantastique (1830). Berlioz
distributed a programme to the first audience, thereby making explicit
what had only been hinted at in earlier works. The five movements are
summed up under the heading ‘Episode in the Life of an Artist’. They chart
(1) intimations of passion and frenzied passion, among many other listed
moods, (2) a ball, (3) a scene in the country, (4) a march to the scaffold and
(5) a dream of a witches’ sabbath. In each an idée fixe represents the
beloved in various forms (the beloved existed for Berlioz in the shape of
the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, whom he first encoun-
tered on stage in 1827 and married in 1833). In the first movement it is also
the first and by far the most substantial subject in an unusual adaptation of
sonata form, which privileges melodic intensification and climax over
balanced recapitulation, even though it retains the harmonic scheme
I–V–I as the primary arc of the movement. The symphony has been
misrepresented by authors who consider it a mishmash of pre-existing
material, even if the slow introduction to the first movement and idée fixe,
for example, did have their origins in other works.66 Edward T. Cone and
others have argued strongly for its unity as a symphonic work.67
The symphony’s first performance at the Conservatoire with an orches-
tra of over a hundred on 5 December 1830 excited great interest and general
approval (Fétis’s marked disapproval notwithstanding). It was attended by
Liszt, among other luminaries, who heard at first hand the cyclic principle
that would underpin much of his own work. He experienced too a sym-
phony that liberated the orchestra, establishing a Romantic style that would
find rich progeny in his music and that of Wagner, the Russian nationalists
and many others. 1830 was the year of Romanticism, when the movement
achieved a crescendo of expression in France after many setbacks.68
Berlioz wrote three more symphonies and a strange sequel to the
Symphonie fantastique, Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie (1831), which mixes
123 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

existing works and declamation; it reflects on the ‘events’ and circum-

stances of the symphony. Harold en Italie has no programme beyond
movement titles, but it too uses an idée fixe to suggest a brooding hero
in various picturesque situations. It makes extensive use of a solo viola to
represent its Byronic hero, though not in the virtuosic way of a conven-
tional concerto. Roméo et Juliette (1839) is a symphonie dramatique in
seven movements for soloists, chorus and orchestra; as Julian Rushton
remarks, it bears little resemblance to any symphony then known.
Berlioz’s intention was to ‘present the essence of the play in a work for
the concert hall’, using all the means of the Romantic orchestra at his
disposal.69 The resulting work probed the limits of expressive and pro-
gramme music. It had a liberating effect on Wagner and others, and
inspired other hybrid symphonic works.70 Berlioz’s last symphony, entitled
Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, was commissioned by the govern-
ment to celebrate the tenth anniversary (1840) of the July Revolution. It is
scored for large wind band and percussion with optional chorus and strings.
Created for a great outdoor occasion, it is in the tradition of the
Revolutionary works of Gossec and Méhul. Berlioz’s music bears witness
to the many changes made to instruments in the early nineteenth century,
not least in Paris, a major centre of their manufacture.
Before the breakthrough works of the 1880s (by Franck and Saint-
Saëns) audiences gravitated towards the ‘pure’ works of the German
tradition, the symphonie dramatique (after Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette)
and the ode-symphonie, definitively represented by Le désert (1844) by
Félicien David (1810–76), a ‘multi-movement work for orchestra, soloists
and chorus [which] combined elements of the symphony, symphonic
poem and oratorio’.71 Its ten movements are grouped in three parts. Each
movement opens with a recitation, and there are solos for tenor, male
choruses and instrumental sections. It concludes with a chorus to Allah.
There are many orientalisms, which reflect a popular tendency in French
music that lasted well into the twentieth century. The C upper pedal note
that opens the first movement and is maintained for many bars is effective
in evoking the vast empty space of a desert.
The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire played German works and
usually ignored French composers, but with the revival of the abstract
symphony in the 1850s, new organisations sprang up to play works by, for
example, Gounod, Saint-Saëns and Henry Litolff (1818–91), notably Jules
Pasdeloup’s Société des Jeunes Artistes (1853–61).72 As Chapter 7 sug-
gests, ‘absolute’ symphonies of the period tended to be rather ‘academic’; at
least, they looked back to the Viennese classics, including Beethoven, rather
than to Berlioz.
124 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

Example 6.1 Giuseppe Maria Cambini, Symphonie concertante in D, ‘La patriote’, finale,
bars 239–43

The symphonie concertante

The symphonie concertante continued to flourish until around 1830, its
galant origins somehow not counted dissonant with the stirring events of
the time (see Chapter 5). Giuseppe Maria Cambini (1746–1825) was a
prolific composer of Italian origin who settled in Paris in the 1770s and
thrived there after the Revolution. His Symphonie concertante in D for two
violins and orchestra, ‘La patriote’ (1794), unlike many others, is fully
suited to the period of Robespierre, even in its scoring for oboes, clarinets,
bassoons, horns, trombone and strings. Its first movement, Allegro maes-
toso, uses La Marseillaise for its first subject and forte transitional material.
Rushing string semiquavers accompany its familiar strains. Formally the
movement follows Mozart’s concerto form, with a new second subject for
the soloists’ establishment of the dominant. The finale starts with a
Haydnesque 6/8 of a fairly light-hearted character, based on the popular
French song ‘Cadet Rousselle’, but at bar 239 Revolutionary zeal returns in
an assertive, rhetorical closing Allegro (see Example 6.1).73
In contrast, the Symphonie concertante in F, Op. 38 (c. 1795), by Jean-
Baptiste Sébastien Breval (1753–1823) is of a much lighter character,
which recalls Ralph P. Locke’s characterisation of these works: ‘audiences
saw in the alternately chattering and cantabile interplay between the
soloists . . . something similar to the conversation between characters in
a play or opera’.74 Mozart’s first-movement concerto form is followed here
as well.75

The concerto
The symphonie concertante may have retained a surprising popularity with
the French public until long after Napoleon’s demise, but the solo concerto
was the genre suited to Romantic sensibilities. It was responsive to the
burgeoning array of formidable players at the Conservatoire and virtuosos
visiting the salons and the increasing number of concert rooms. The
concerto of this period is not well studied, but two clarinet concertos
(c. 1800–5) by Xavier Lefèvre (1763–1829) show the way it was going.
Each has three movements – fast, slow, fast – and the modest orchestra of
125 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

two oboes, two horns and strings (the orchestra of the Baroque!) is gaining
some independence.76 Viotti’s violin concertos, some written for Paris and
several later ones composed for London in the 1790s after his position in
Paris became untenable, show an unusual bias to the minor mode. They
exhibit a fine grasp of Classical expressive rhetoric, with many passages
hinting of the dramatic style of Beethoven. The Concerto No. 22 in A minor
was composed in London (c. 1793–7); it was admired by Brahms, who
praised its ‘remarkable freedom of invention’. The orchestra’s role has been
amplified, as has its size. Although the first movement has a long opening
tutti, which remains in the tonic, after the soloist’s first entry the key
suddenly changes to A major, which presages a second subject in the
unusual key of the dominant major (E). This and abundant other shifts of
mood and harmony give the work an innovative character. It is nevertheless
a characteristic work of the prolific and highly influential French violin
school.
Pierre Rode (1774–1830) was considered the most distinguished expo-
nent of the school after Viotti. He was a fine violinist and composer, who
developed his style in the Revolutionary 1790s with composers like
Cherubini and Méhul around him, though it is congruent with Haydn
and Mozart. In 1795 he was appointed professor of violin at the new
Conservatoire, and in 1800 he was named solo violinist to Napoleon. His
music balances brilliant display and affective lyricism. The tunefulness,
often of a melancholy nature (and therefore well suited to emerging
French Romanticism), evinces more repetition of ideas than one might
find in Mozart, for example, which is typical of ‘bridge’ composers who
adopted many of the manners of the Classical style but allowed melody
and accompaniment greater prominence. Rode’s Violin Concerto in B♭
(1800) is representative. The several restatements of the attractive main
theme of the second-subject group in the exposition offer the soloist a
chance to improvise variations on the material and imbue it with greater
expressiveness. Rode’s solo-violin output includes the once-famous 24
caprices en forme d’études (c. 1815), which recall Paganini’s 24 caprices
(c. 1805).77

Chamber music
Until 1814, when Baillot started his series, there were few public chamber
concerts, but there was a vast appetite for music in the home. Groupings of
flutes, guitars, clarinets, strings and other instruments in duos, trios,
quartets, quintets and less often sextets and septets in mixed or homoge-
neous ensembles performed a massive published repertoire that is little
known today. According to Mongrédien, original compositions and
arrangements existed in equal numbers.78 Certainly, private clients were
126 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

keen to have arrangements of their favourite operas, and the ubiquitous

Haydn symphonies were typically transcribed as quintets.
From around 1770 string quartets as we understand them were known
mainly as quatuors concertants. Janet Levy attempts to define what was
meant by this term, concluding that it had much to do with texture and
part-writing, ‘the interaction or interplay of parts . . . one instrument to a
part’, and so on.79 A key figure in the development of the genre was
not French: Boccherini supplied works that were supposed to be short
and accessible, as the publisher and composer Ignace-Joseph Pleyel
(1757–1831) demanded they should be. In each published collection of six
quartets, however, Boccherini cunningly slipped in two quartets that suited
his own, more ambitious tastes, for the sake of his reputation.80 Pleyel
himself wrote quartets that met his requirement for easy tunefulness and
constant variety, without taxing the listener or player. In spite of this, the
first movement of the String Quartet in C major, Ben 365 (1803), is
substantial; it lasts over thirteen minutes and contains several different
themes in the second-subject area, the first of which is subject to various
contrapuntal treatments. The minor-mode slow movement brings with it
greater seriousness and an elevated melodic manner in the central section,
which evokes an operatic aria. The finale recalls the last movement of
Haydn’s Op. 33 No. 3, also in C, though the stratospherically high writing
for cello at one point brings to mind Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ Quartets. There is
no minuet or scherzo.
Later composers of quatuors concertants include George Onslow
(1784–1853), Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) and Cherubini. For the most
part these composers stayed close to Haydn and Mozart, though
Beethoven’s influence, especially of the Op. 18 quartets, is evident in, for
example, Cherubini’s adoption of the scherzo in place of the minuet. In
addition to thirty-six string quartets, Onslow wrote thirty-four string
quintets, which draw together many of the different traditions of French
chamber music. Amid a great variety of chamber works, Reicha’s wind
quintets stand out for their acute responsiveness to instrumental sonor-
ities and influence on the genre.
As virtuosity grew in importance, so did a type of quartet that placed
the emphasis on the first violin, reducing the other instruments to accom-
paniment; it was known as the quatuor brillant. Quartets based on well-
known tunes were called Quatuor d’airs connus or Quatuor d’airs variés.
Composers tended to be instrumentalists like J. B. Gambaro, who
arranged works by Rossini for various quartet groupings.81
For much of the period covered by this chapter, the dominant solo
instrument was the piano. Nevertheless, the interest in the instrument, the
skilled instrument manufacturers and the extensive activity of publishers
127 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

were not matched by remarkable compositional activity by French com-

posers. That had to wait a generation or two, for the French were well
entertained by an influx of mainly foreign virtuosos, particularly Chopin,
Liszt and Thalberg. If, on the other hand, one accepts Chopin as an
honorary French composer, for it was in Paris that he settled in 1831
and was feted as a teacher, performer (chiefly in the salons, which suited
his light technique better than the concert hall) and composer, France had
one of the outstanding composer-pianists of the day. His connection for
many years with George Sand brought him into intimate communion
with a major force of French Romanticism. He favoured short lyrical
forms and dances (mazurkas, waltzes and polonaises), though his mature
piano sonatas, No. 2 in B♭ minor (1837) and No. 3 in B minor (1844),
remarkably combine a free Romantic lyricism with extended post-
Classical forms. Other works fall in between, such as his ballades and
scherzos. Several sets of variations and two sets of études (1832, 1837) are
among his most obvious concessions to the abiding love of virtuoso dis-
play in Paris at the time. Chopin’s emulation of operatic vocal styles in his
piano writing, his advanced harmony and constantly innovative formal
solutions had a deep influence on French music. That his Romanticism
was famously infused with an admiration for pre-Romantic music made
him irresistible to French taste.

Music journalism
No reader of Balzac’s Illusions perdues will forget his depiction of the
ruthless world of nineteenth-century Parisian journalism. However, amid
the aggressive competition, corruption and greed, much artful music
criticism appeared both in general newspapers like the Journal des
débats and in the specialist music periodicals that began to proliferate in
the 1830s. Music reviewers of the early 1800s resembled their eighteenth-
century counterparts; they were literary figures. In spite of their literary
backgrounds and biases, some authors were perfectly competent; yet their
outspoken, imperious judgements were unsupported by much musical
substance.82 Nevertheless, their writings helped to shape public taste as
well as the development of the nineteenth-century French musical canon,
exerting influence on musically trained critics active later in the century.83
They served as a link between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as
well as foreshadowing a number of the debates that would mark the latter
years of the 1800s. Julien-Louis Geoffroy, who wrote for the Journal des
débats, was among the most prominent of this group of authors. He was
indebted to Rousseau, and shared his view that ‘melody was the seat of
128 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise

beauty in music’. His deep-rooted antipathy to what he identified as

German musical values, as well as distaste for certain Italianate musical
extremes, led him to emphasise a French national operatic style that
privileged an aesthetic balance, based on ‘uniting the best elements from
diverse sources’.84
Musicians who subsequently entered the ranks of music journalism
managed to subtly transform the discourse of the profession and cover a
broader repertoire in their reviews.85 One of Geoffroy’s successors as music
critic at the Journal des débats, François-Henri-Joseph Blaze, known as
Castil-Blaze, was a musician. Recent research has revealed his significance
and influence as a keen observer of French musical culture in the first half of
the nineteenth century.86 Part of the first generation of Conservatoire
students, Castil-Blaze had a thorough musical education, and he employed
that training to develop a technically knowledgeable and adept music
criticism.87 This was evident in his interest in a wide range of musical
genres and his enlarging of the scope of reviews beyond opera to include
concerts, educational publications and published scores. Other critics wor-
thy of mention include the poet Théophile Gautier, Joseph d’Ortigue, Jules
Janin and Maurice Bourges.
Throughout the 1820s most music criticism was in periodicals of
general interest, but in 1827 Fétis began publishing the Revue musicale, a
weekly specialist journal devoted to music.88 The Revue set a standard
pattern by including historical articles, biographies and essays on instru-
ment construction, as well as performance reviews and announcements of
upcoming concerts and publications.89 The fact that Fétis wrote almost all
the articles gave the journal a consistent critical vision that aimed, for the
most part, at educating the public. The Revue ushered in a new era of music
criticism, and for the nine years of its independent existence it served as a
model for the periodicals that followed in its wake. When Fétis left Paris to
become director of the Brussels Conservatoire, he left the journal in the care
of his son Édouard. A few months later Édouard withdrew and arranged a
merger with a rival, the Gazette musicale de Paris, which had been in
operation for only eleven months.90 The resulting Revue et gazette musicale
de Paris continued until 31 December 1880.
The Gazette was the house journal of Maurice Schlesinger, a Paris-based
member of a prominent Berlin music publishing family. The Gazette’s
‘dominant character was . . . German Romanticism’. From the outset it
attacked Fétis and seemed disposed to wage war on the ‘meaningless
virtuosity of fashionable piano music’.91 The proliferation of music journals
in the 1830s also meant that the editors had to vie for the attention of the
public. Schlesinger therefore designed his journal to avoid overt educational
goals. Instead, the Gazette prominently featured Hoffmannesque contes
129 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848

musicaux, which were entertaining diversions and connected the journal to

a Romantic aesthetic that would ultimately permeate many of its articles.92
The first ‘portrayed Beethoven as a social outcast, alienated and misunder-
stood’.93 Others were by such celebrated authors as Sand, Janin, Dumas,
Balzac, Berlioz and Wagner, whose ‘Une visite à Beethoven’ (1840) features
the popular subject of alienated genius.
The journals provided forums for a wide variety of composers, pro-
fessional critics and on occasion more scholarly figures like Fétis to voice
their opinions about not only performance but music generally. Some, like
Berlioz, chafed under the demands of journal editors,94 but the extraordi-
nary mix of knowledgeable authors engaging music seriously was truly
outstanding. The articles vividly detailed that musical world and the figures
who dominated it. Moreover, they chronicled the changes in musical
composition of this period, tracking a shift in compositional aesthetics as
well as providing, through their criticism, a framework for understanding
the new musical values that resulted.95

Notes
1 Thermidor was the eleventh month,
otherwise July, in the Revolutionary calendar;
it was on 27 July 1794 that the National
Convention attacked Robespierre and other
Revolutionary hardliners.
2 Isser Woloch, Napoleon and his
Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship
(New York: Norton, 2001); Louis Bergeron,
France under Napoleon, trans. R. R. Palmer
(Princeton University Press, 1981).
3 Ralph P. Locke, ‘Paris: centre of intellectual
ferment’, in Alexander Ringer (ed.), The Early
Romantic Era: Between Revolutions: 1789 and 1848
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 32–3.
4 Constant Pierre, Histoire du Concert
Spirituel, 1725–1790 (Paris: Société Française
de Musicologie, 1975).
5 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime
and the French Revolution, ed. Jon Elster, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 1.
6 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution:
Europe 1789–1848 (London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1962), 219.
7 Arthur Locke, ‘The background of the
Romantic movement in French music’,
Musical Quarterly, 6 (1920), 259.
8 Ibid., 264. See also D. G. Charlton, ‘The
French Romantic movement’, in D. G. Charlton
(ed.), The French Romantics, 2 vols (Cambridge
University Press, 1984), vol. I, 1–32.
9 For a balanced account that relates
Revolutionary anti-clerical action to long-
standing anti-religious sentiment see
Mona Ozouf, ‘De-Christianization’, in
François Furet and Mona Ozouf (eds), A
Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1989), 20–32.
10 For a discussion of the vandalism of the
Revolution, see Bronislaw Baczko, Ending the
Terror: The French Revolution after
Robespierre, trans. Michel Petheram
(Cambridge University Press, 1994), 185–223.
11 Barry S. Brook et al., ‘Gossec, François-
Joseph’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music
Online (accessed 22 May 2014).
12 148 revolutionary works, in vocal score
only, are found in Constant Pierre (ed.),
Musique des fêtes et cérémonies de la
Révolution française (Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale, 1899), including Gossec’s Te Deum
of 1790 (pp. 1–12). For a discussion of Gossec,
his collaborator Chénier in many later
projects, and the Te Deum, see Jean-Louis Jam,
‘Marie-Joseph Chénier and François-Joseph
Gossec: two artists in the service of
Revolutionary propaganda’, in Malcolm Boyd
(ed.), Music and the French Revolution
(Cambridge University Press, 1992), 221–35.
13 Locke, ‘Paris: centre of intellectual
ferment’, 37; Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and
Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984), 60–2.
14 Jam, ‘Marie-Joseph Chénier and François-
Joseph Gossec’, 227–8.
130 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise
15 The three songs mentioned here were only
the most common of a huge body of popular
political songs that appeared in the 1790s. See
Laura Mason, Singing the French Revolution:
Popular Culture and Politics, 1787–1799
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).
16 Jam, ‘Marie-Joseph Chénier and François-
Joseph Gossec’; Mona Ozouf, La fête
révolutionnaire, 1789–1799 (Paris: Gallimard,
1976), 441–74; Béatrice Didier, Écrire la
Révolution, 1789–1799 (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1989), 149–59. The
question of whether or not a Revolutionary
religion (or religions) was developed in the
1790s has been much debated. For a summary
see Mona Ozouf, ‘Revolutionary religion’, in
Furet and Ozouf (eds), A Critical Dictionary of
the French Revolution, 560–70.
17 For a selection of their music, see Pierre
(ed.), Musique des fêtes et cérémonies.
18 Jean Mongrédien, French Music from the
Enlightenment to Romanticism, 1789–1830,
trans. Sylvain Frémaux (Portland, OR:
Amadeus, 1996), 15.
19 François Furet, Revolutionary France,
1770–1880, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1995), 226–8.
20 Almost none of Le Sueur’s pre-
Revolutionary sacred music survives. See
Jean Mongrédien, Catalogue thématique de
l’oeuvre complète du compositeur Jean-
François Le Sueur, 1760–1837 (New York:
Pendragon Press, 1980), 15–16.
21 Mongrédien, French Music, 123–5, 169.
22 Michael Fend, ‘Cherubini, Luigi’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
23 A recent exception to the general lack of
scholarly interest in Cherubini’s sacred work is
Ho-Yee Connie Lau, ‘In memory of a king:
Luigi Cherubini’s C minor Requiem in context’
(PhD thesis, Stanford University, 2009).
24 Mongrédien, French Music, 159.
25 David Cairns, Berlioz, vol. II: Servitude and
Greatness, 1832–1869 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999), 135–6.
26 Ibid., 9–11.
27 Katharine Ellis, Interpreting the Musical
Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century
France (Oxford University Press, 2005), 179.
For important background on Solesmes, see
Robert Wangermée, ‘Avant Solesmes: les essais
de rénovation du chant grégorien en France au
XIXe siècle’, in Christine Ballman and
Valérie Dufour (eds), ‘La la la . . . Maistre
Henri’: mélanges de musicologie offerts à Henri
Vanhulst (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 407–14.
28 Katharine Ellis, ‘Vocal training at the Paris
Conservatoire and the choir schools of
Alexandre-Étienne Choron: debates, rivalries,
and consequences’, in Michael Fend and
Michel Noiray (eds), Musical Education in
Europe (1770–1914): Compositional,
Institutional, and Political Challenges, 2 vols
(Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2005),
vol. I, 125–44.
29 James Haar, ‘Music of the Renaissance as
viewed by the Romantics’, in Paul Corneilson
(ed.), The Science and Art of Renaissance Music
(Princeton University Press, 1998), 368–9;
Mongrédien, French Music, 200–3.
30 Mongrédien, French Music, 197.
31 James C. Kidd, ‘Louis Niedermeyer’s
system for Gregorian chant accompaniment as
a compositional source for Gabriel Fauré’
(PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1973);
Catrena M. Flint, ‘The Schola Cantorum, early
music and French political culture, from 1894
to 1914’ (PhD thesis, McGill University, 2007).
32 Richard Leppert and Stephen Zank, ‘The
concert and the virtuoso’, in James Parakilas
(ed.), Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life
with the Piano (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1999), 242.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 242–3.
35 Quoted in Mongrédien, French Music, 212.
36 Ibid., 210.
37 Ibid., 225–33.
38 Patrick Taïeb, ‘Le Concert des Amateurs de
la rue de Cléry en l’an VIII (1799–1800), ou la
résurgence d’un établissement “dont la France
s’honorait avant la Révolution”’, in Hans
Erich Bödeker and Patrice Veit (eds), Les
sociétés de musique en Europe 1700–1920:
structures, pratiques musicales, sociabilités
(Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2007),
81–99; James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A
Cultural History (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995), 198–200.
39 Mongrédien, French Music, 213–14.
40 A vast amount of information relating to
the Conservatoire concerts, compiled by
D. Kern Holomon, is available at http://hector.
ucdavis.edu/sdc/ (accessed 22 May 2014).
41 The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, ed. and
trans. David Cairns (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2002), 80.
42 Johnson, Listening in Paris, 257–9, 263–4.
43 Elisabeth Bernard, ‘Les abonnés à la Société
des Concerts du Conservatoire en 1837’, in
Peter Bloom (ed.), Music in Paris in the
Eighteen-Thirties (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon
Press, 1987), 41–54.
44 William Weber, Music and the Middle
Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in
London, Paris and Vienna (London: Croom
Helm, 1975), 71–2; D. Kern Holoman, The
131 The Revolution and Romanticism to 1848
Société des Concerts du Conservatoire,
1828–1967 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004).
45 Locke, ‘Paris: centre of intellectual
ferment’, 70–1. The demand for chamber
music in France before these concert series got
under way is amply attested by Philippe
Oboussier, ‘The French string quartet
1770–1800’, in Boyd (ed.), Music and the
French Revolution, 74–92.
46 Joël-Marie Fauquet, ‘La musique de
chambre à Paris dans les années 1830’, in
Bloom (ed.), Music in Paris in the Eighteen-
Thirties, 299–326.
47 Statistics are taken from Joël-Marie
Fauquet, Les sociétés de musique de chambre à
Paris de la Restauration à 1870 (Paris: Aux
Amateurs de Livres, 1986), 335–44.
48 Locke, ‘Paris: centre of intellectual
ferment’, 71.
49 One of the few attempts to make sense of
the situation in the provinces in general is
Mongrédien, French Music, 251–9.
50 Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso:
Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris
during the Age of Revolution (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998), 129.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., 131–4.
53 Johnson, Listening in Paris, 264; Fauquet,
‘La musique de chambre’, 299–326.
54 Which of his two concertos was played has
been the subject of debate, as has the manner of
the accompaniment. Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger
came to the conclusions presented here in ‘Les
premiers concerts de Chopin à Paris
(1832–1838): essai de mise au point’, in Bloom
(ed.), Music in Paris in the Eighteen-Thirties,
257–65.
55 David Tunley, Salons, Singers and Songs: A
Background to Romantic French Song,
1830–1870 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
56 Ibid., 20–1.
57 Ibid., 102–18.
58 Mongrédien, French Music.
59 Figures are based on the work of Barry
S. Brook, quoted in Mongrédien, French Music,
265.
60 Étienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763–1817): Three
Symphonies, ed. David Charlton, The
Symphony 1720–1840: A Comprehensive
Collection of Full Scores in Sixty Volumes, ed.
Barry S. Brook, ser. D, vol. VIII (New York:
Garland, 1982), xii–xiii.
61 Quoted in ibid., xv.
62 Ibid., xix.
63 Ibid., xiii.
64 For a discussion of the Prix de Rome, see
Chapter 7 below.
65 A complete list of prize winners, ‘Le “cas
Berlioz”’ and more may be found in Julia Lu
and Alexandre Dratwicki, Le concours du prix
de Rome de musique, 1803–1968 (Lyons:
Symétrie, 2011), 841–8, 409–87.
66 For a detailed account of its genesis and
premiere see David Cairns, Berlioz, vol. I: The
Making of an Artist, 1803–1832 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000), 352–75,
424–30. It is not clear whether the march
already existed in its current form or not, as
Cairns debates in ‘Reflections on the
Symphonie fantastique of 1830’, in Bloom
(ed.), Music in Paris in the Eighteen-Thirties,
82–6.
67 Berlioz, Fantastic Symphony: An
Authoritative Score, Historical Background,
Analysis, Views and Comments (New York:
Norton, 1971).
68 For an account of the emergence of French
Romanticism, see Paul T. Comeau, Diehards
and Innovators: The French Romantic
Struggle: 1800–1830 (New York: Peter Lang,
1988).
69 Julian Rushton, Berlioz, Roméo et Juliette
(Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1.
70 See Robert Tallant Laudon, The Dramatic
Symphony: Issues and Explorations from
Berlioz to Liszt (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon
Press, 2012).
71 ‘The French symphony after Berlioz: from
the Second Empire to the First World War’, in
A. Peter Brown and Brian Hart (eds), The
Symphonic Repertoire, vol. IIIB: The European
Symphony from ca. 1800 to ca. 1930: Great
Britain, Russia, and France (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2008), 529–30.
72 Ibid., 530.
73 Example 6.1 is from The Symphonie
Concertante, The Symphony 1720–1840: A
Comprehensive Collection of Full Scores in
Sixty Volumes, ed. Barry S. Brook, ser. D, vol.
V (New York: Garland, 1983), 183–242.
74 Locke, ‘Paris: centre of intellectual
ferment’, 63.
75 The full score may be found in Barry
S. Brook, La symphonie française dans la
seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Institut
de Musicologie de l’Université de Paris, 1962),
vol. III, 171–231.
76 Mongrédien, French Music, 287.
77 A score of a violin and piano transcription
is available at IMSLP: http://imslp.org/wiki/
24_Caprices_for_Violin_(Rode,_Pierre)
(accessed 22 May 2014); the work has been
recorded.
78 Mongrédien, French Music, 290.
79 Janet Levy, ‘The quatuor concertant in
Paris in the latter half of the eighteenth
132 Michael McClellan and Simon Trezise
century’ (PhD thesis, Stanford University,
1971), 59.
80 Mongrédien, French Music, 293.
81 Ibid., 297.
82 Katherine Kolb Reeve, ‘Rhetoric and
reason in French music criticism of the 1830s’,
in Bloom (ed.), Music in Paris in the Eighteen-
Thirties, 538.
83 Katharine Ellis, ‘A dilettante at the opera:
issues in the criticism of Julien-Louis Geoffroy,
1800–1814’, in Roger Parker and Mary
Ann Smart (eds), Reading Critics Reading:
Opera and Ballet Criticism in France from the
Revolution to 1848 (Oxford University Press,
2001), 46–68.
84 Ibid., 51–4, 60–2.
85 Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in
Nineteenth-Century France: La revue et gazette
musicale de Paris, 1834–80 (Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 8.
86 Mark Everist, ‘Gluck, Berlioz, and Castil-
Blaze: the poetics and reception of French
opera’, in Parker and Smart (eds), Reading
Critics Reading, 86–90.
87 Ellis, Music Criticism, 27–32; Everist,
‘Gluck, Berlioz, and Castil-Blaze’, 103.
88 Ellis, Music Criticism, 33–45.
89 Peter Bloom, ‘A review of Fétis’s Revue
musicale’, in Bloom (ed.), Music in Paris in the
Eighteen-Thirties, 55–79.
90 Ibid., 70–1.
91 Ellis, Music Criticism, 48.
92 Ibid., 48–50. Fétis had already published
translations of some Hoffmann stories and
essays in the Revue musicale, but not as a regular
feature of that journal. Reeve, ‘Rhetoric and
reason’, 539 n. 4.
93 Ellis, Music Criticism, 48–9.
94 Cairns, Berlioz, vol. II, 45–6.
95 Johnson, Listening in Paris, 270–80.
 7 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death
of Debussy
s i m o n tr e z i s e

Background
France’s revolutions were far from over in 1848. The 1789 Revolution
continued to be revisited as conservative and revolutionary factions fought
for the right to define the nation’s government. The restored Bourbons
had fallen in 1830, because they became identified with the ancien régime,
to be followed in 1848 by the collapse of the July Monarchy of Louis-
Philippe I after his government attempted to restrict suffrage. Paris
became a city of barricades, from which Chopin and many others fled.
In the end another dynasty triumphed, first that of Louis-Napoleon
Bonaparte as president of the Second Republic and then, after a coup
d’état, as Emperor Napoleon III in 1852, initiating the Second Empire. The
defeat by the Prussians in 1870 marked the end of the Second Empire and
start of the Third Republic. The Revolution had finally ended.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) reflected on music of the 1850s. Italian
opera dominated and ‘Verdi’s sun . . . was rising above the horizon . . .
nothing existed beyond French opera and oopéra-comique’, which included
foreign works. Melody was valued above all else. Nevertheless, in the
margins ‘was a small nucleus . . . attracted by music that was loved and
cultivated for its own sake, and who secretly adored Haydn, Mozart and
Beethoven’.1 The poverty of non-operatic musical life up to the 1860s can be
glimpsed in a random sampling of Charles J. Hall’s chronicle of first
performances. For 1866 we find operas, operettas and ballets by Léo
Delibes (1836–91), Édouard Lalo (1823–92), Charles Lecocq (1832–1918),
Jacques Offenbach (1819–80) and Ambroise Thomas (1811–96); an ora-
torio by Théodore Dubois (1837–1924); and a cantata by Charles-François
Gounod (1818–93); but just one instrumental work, Saint-Saëns’s three
Organ Rhapsodies, Op. 7.2
Ranked high among the key players in the period prior to the renaissance
of French instrumental and non-operatic vocal music, Gounod stands out.
In the 1850s he was the successful composer of religious choral works, two
symphonies and some songs, but his operatic breakthrough awaited Faust’s
triumphant reception in the 1860s. He learned much in ‘attendance [at]
[133] Mme Viardot’s salon’. Pauline Viardot (1821–1910), singer, pedagogue and
134 Simon Trezise

composer, ‘not only inspired composers such as Chopin, Berlioz, Meyerbeer,

Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Liszt, Wagner and Schumann with her dramatic gifts
but also collaborated on . . . roles created especially for her’.3 Viardot’s
fecund knowledge of musicians, literature and art ‘encouraged the flowering
of an emerging talent’.4
Nineteenth-century salons were a vital counterpoint to the dominance
of the opera house and a major contributor to the renaissance of French
music, which was hastened by waves of nationalism prompted by the 1870
humiliation. Alongside the salon, educational institutions, concert soci-
eties and other institutions – some are discussed below – paved the way for
French music to become its own mainstream, indebted to but distinct
from developments elsewhere. By the end of the century France was the
powerhouse for a changing cosmos, heard initially in the modernism of
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) and later in Stravinsky and the premiere, in
Paris, of Le sacre du printemps (1913).

Institutions and a great event

Educational, literary, publishing and other institutions provided a strong
foundation for the production of operas and, as the century progressed,
the proliferation of other genres. France was and remains an institution-
ally minded country, where generous patronage and a sense of cultural
mission underpin progress in the arts.
Although a few composers might look to alternative institutions for their
tuition, the Paris Conservatoire was still the rite of passage for most. It is often
criticised for its emphasis on dramatic music, but for instrumentalists the
standards were exacting, and a first prize placed one’s career on a certain
footing. Although the teaching was conservative and the emphasis operatic,
Debussy was surely stimulated by the teaching he received there from the likes
of César Franck (1822–90) and Ernest Guiraud (1837–92, creator of the
recitatives in Carmen and completer of Les contes d’Hoffmann).
Thomas ruled over the Conservatoire from 1871 until his death, when
he was replaced by Dubois, a composer, organist and teacher. Dubois
might have enjoyed many more years as director had it not been for the
determination that Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) showed to win the Prix de
Rome. From 1900 to 1905 he made five attempts, resulting finally in the
Affaire Ravel, when the erstwhile Conservatoire student failed to get
beyond the first round. The musical world was upset by his rejection;
Dubois resigned.5 In spite of his lack of ambition, Gabriel Fauré
(1845–1924) was invited to take over the directorship. He embarked on
reform, which included separate professors for counterpoint and fugue,
135 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

more emphasis on ensemble classes and compulsory attendance at Louis-

Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray’s history class for all students of composition
and harmony. Students now engaged with music of the past in a way
redolent of the Schola Cantorum (see below).6
Given the emphasis on opera and stage at the Conservatoire, the École
Niedermeyer (École de Musique Religieuse) was a robust alternative, which
fostered an array of talented pupils from its establishment in 1853 by Louis
Niedermeyer (1802–61). His foundation had important allies in the Catholic
Church, who welcomed Niedermeyer’s desire to re-establish church music in
its classical forms. The regime included solfège, harmony and counterpoint,
with emphasis on practical organ and piano-playing. Although students were
steered away from Romantic music and towards Bach, Mozart, Beethoven
and the more conservative works of Mendelssohn, the harmony teaching was
unusual, for it included providing accompaniments to modal Gregorian
chant. Saint-Saëns came there after Niedermeyer’s death in 1861; he officially
taught the piano but unofficially mentored in composition.
A full-scale Palestrina revival had been in evidence at least since mid-
century, when a ‘cluster of cathedrals in the east’, Autun, Langres and
Moulins, adopted this repertoire.7 Rather than the renewal of religious
choral music being based on the Franco-Flemish tradition, Italian music,
paired with Gregorian chant, won through. In 1890 Charles Bordes
(1863–1909) became maître de chapelle at Saint-Gervais in Paris, from
where he continued the revival of Palestrina and other ‘then unknown
polyphonic composers’. This musical antiquarianism permeated many
facets of musical life, especially with Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931) at
Bordes’s side. The outcome was a sort of Parisian Counter-Reformation
in the Société Schola Cantorum, founded by Bordes, d’Indy and Alexandre
Guilmant (1837–1911) in 1894. Policies included the ‘return to Gregorian
tradition in the performance of plainsong . . . and the creation of a modern
church style founded upon the technique of Palestrina’.8 In 1896 the
institution of the Schola Cantorum was founded in Paris, with extensions
in the provinces. Pupils would receive a thorough grounding in composi-
tion, counterpoint, organ, solfège and more. One can easily detect in
d’Indy’s historically biased approach the mind of the modern musicologist,
for he believed that in order to undertake the present, students must
understand the past.9
Pupils of the Schola Cantorum included Edgard Varèse (1883–1965),
an important French composer whose career mainly resided in the United
States.10 One of Varèse’s teachers at the Schola was Albert Roussel
(1869–1937), an example of the practising composer favoured by d’Indy.
The Prix de Rome, organised and judged by the music section of the
Académie des Beaux-Arts, endured from 1803 to 1968, with breaks for the
136 Simon Trezise

world wars. Although it was intended to further French culture, winners

were sent for two years to Rome, where they resided in the magnificent
Villa Medici. Composers had to display knowledge of the academic
ground rules; those who succeeded were ‘sequestered for four or five
weeks to compose an operatic scene’.11 Many of the winners had no
obvious afterlife beyond this prize, and some major composers, including
Saint-Saëns and Ravel, failed to get it, but others did, among them Berlioz
(in 1830), Gounod (in 1839), Georges Bizet (1838–75; in 1857), Jules
Massenet (1842–1912; in 1863) and Debussy (in 1884). Once in Rome,
winners were required to send back envois. In 1884, the envois included a
symphonic poem, a scherzo, an orchestral suite and an orchestral fantasy
with solo violin. From 1883 a statute guaranteed the performance of one
work at the Conservatoire, to be chosen by a panel.12
As the century progressed, there was an ever-richer choice of concerts.
François-Antoine Habeneck conducted the first concert of the Société des
Concerts at the Paris Conservatoire on 9 March 1828.13 Programmes
favoured the German repertoire, especially Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
and Weber, but as the century wore on, Berlioz and Saint-Saëns became
occasional treats. Audiences wanted Beethovenian symphonies, not the
programmatic or three-movement cyclic works of contemporary French
composers. The 1875–6 season revealed growing historicism in the inclu-
sion of works by Handel, Lully, Emilio de’ Cavalieri and Bach, but modern
French music was represented only in symphonies by Edmé Deldevez
(1817–97) and Louis-Théodore Gouvy (1819–98) and in Saint-Saëns’s
symphonic poem Le rouet d’Omphale (1871).14 All seats were subscribed,
so visitors, students and so on stood little chance of getting in unless there
were returns.15
A turning point in the history of French concert life arrived in 1852
when the young conductor Jules-Étienne Pasdeloup organised a group of
musicians to form what became known as the Société des Jeunes Artistes
du Conservatoire. Lasting nine years, the series featured ‘classics’ as well as
recent compositions. Building on the precedent that Habeneck had estab-
lished, this orchestra helped consolidate French appreciation for Viennese
symphonic repertoire as well as that of Mendelssohn and Schumann. High
costs and dwindling revenues, however, led Pasdeloup to rethink his
approach, and in 1861 he began a series entitled the Concerts Populaires
de Musique Classique.16 The concerts were held in a large amphitheatre,
the Cirque Napoléon (subsequently renamed Cirque d’Hiver), and made
orchestral music available to a much larger and socially diverse public. The
Cirque’s capacity of over 4,000 made it possible to charge lower admission
prices, attract enormous crowds and earn a handsome profit. Although
works by Gounod, Saint-Saëns and Berlioz received performances, the
137 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

majority of the repertoire was drawn from the German canon, with
Beethoven taking pride of place.17
In the 1860s and 1870s the dominance of the Société des Concerts
was further challenged by two other societies: the Concerts Colonne at
the Théâtre du Châtelet (starting as Concert National, from 1873) and
the Concerts Lamoureux (from 1881). D. Kern Holoman writes: ‘The
newer associations, being hungrier, were more progressive [than the
Société des Concerts] on several fronts . . . they found programming
niches the Conservatoire concerts seemed to overlook: Colonne . . . with
Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust; Lamoureux with Wagner.’18 Édouard
Colonne’s orchestra played works by Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Fauré,
d’Indy, Gustave Charpentier (1860–1956), Debussy, Ravel, Charles-Marie
Widor (1844–1937), Paul Dukas (1865–1935) and Emmanuel Chabrier
(1841–94). While Charles Lamoureux’s orchestra was pioneering in its
advocacy of Wagner, it also gave some significant French premieres, inclu-
ding that of Debussy’s La mer in 1905.
The Société Nationale de Musique (1871–1939) was an early fruit of the
profound reaction to the Franco-Prussian War. It also marked a response to
the foreign emphasis of the Conservatoire and other institutions, hence the
decision of its founders Romain Bussine and Saint-Saëns to commission only
French works. The original prospectus proclaimed a determination to ‘favor
the production and diffusion of all serious works; and encourage and bring
to light . . . all musical experiments . . . [provided] they reveal high artistic
aspirations’. In 1882 the patronage of the society was limited to French
composers involved in the organisation. Membership was conditional upon
submission of works and sponsorship of existing members. It was ‘serious,
albeit parochial’.19 Concerts came round at least six times a year, with
financial constraints dictating that chamber programmes dominated.
The Société Nationale was vital to the rebirth of French music, and its
importance led to political shenanigans surrounding Franck. D’Indy was
the most influential member of his circle, which included the composers
Ernest Chausson (1855–99) and Henri Duparc (1848–1933). He took over
the presidency in 1886. D’Indy was an internationalist, so he proposed the
inclusion of foreign works. Faced with a coup, Saint-Saëns left the organ-
isation he had created.20 The ‘progressive’ internationalists got their way.
The first major beneficiary of the changes was Grieg, whose string quartet
was performed at the first concert of the new season on 8 January 1887.21
Nevertheless, national music still benefited most. The majority of Franck’s
and Fauré’s chamber works received their premieres with the Société.
Staged to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution and attended by
more than 30,000,000 people, the Exposition Universelle of 1889 (one of
several held in Paris in the nineteenth century), which saw the creation of
138 Simon Trezise

the world’s ‘highest iron tower’ (the Eiffel Tower), was one of the greatest
confluences of art and technology in the nineteenth century.22 French
composers’ penchant for the exotic was excited by dancers and musicians
from Java, and a pair of orchestral concerts introduced works by Russian
nationalists. Debussy whiled away many hours in the Dutch pavilion, where
he heard gamelan music (its influence can be heard most obviously in
‘Pagodes’ from Estampes for piano).

Wagner and ‘Frenchness’

Paradoxically, Wagner’s formidable presence in this period was as much
an enabling force as a disabling one: his power to attract and repulse like
no other composer galvanised French music. In his lavishly eccentric book
L’esprit de la musique française (de Rameau à l’invasion wagnérienne),23
Pierre Lasserre devotes himself in successive chapters to Grétry; Rameau;
‘The modern Italians’; Meyerbeer; Wagner, the poet; and Wagner, the
musician. Even more peculiar is the fact the book was written during the
First World War, when Wagner was excluded from musical venues.
Lasserre provocatively denies Wagner’s music its German-ness without
going so far as to bestow upon him honorary French-ness, which ‘would
be to overlook huge differences of taste and style. With Frenchmen the
musical rendering of things is subtle, sober, dainty, vibrant, lively, stripped
and free from excess of matter, full of rhythm.’24
Lasserre encapsulates some of the anxiety and excitement that France’s
extraordinary encounter with Wagner entailed. The defeat in the Prussian
war had been accompanied by some provocative literary activity by
Wagner, which made it very difficult for state-funded opera companies
to mount his works, so for many years Wagner’s music was almost forced
underground; but French composers, poets and intellectuals happily lap-
ped at the master’s feet in Munich, Bayreuth and elsewhere. Wagner first
came in through the salons, then gradually via new orchestras, and finally
the sluices were opened late in the century when he was feted in the opera
houses.
The Revue Wagnérienne (1885–8) appeared when the battle for
Wagner was all but won. It is of great significance as enshrining an early
blast of Symbolism in its publication of the eight Symbolist sonnets by
Stéphane Mallarmé and others in January 1886, before Jean Moréas’s Le
Figaro manifesto. It is also ‘an invaluable documented journal of
Wagnerism in France’.25
For French nationalists, Wagner was a positive force, a means of
liberation, of aspiring to lofty ideals, even though the catalyst was foreign.
139 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

D’Indy headed the Wagner movement in the latter part of the century, and
used his Schola Cantorum to promote his ideals.
There were constant fears that Wagner’s influence would suffocate the
revival of a true French music; yet even assiduously Wagnerian works,
such as Franck’s Les Éolides (1876), which was written in the wake of an
encounter with the Tristan prelude, and Chausson’s gorgeous orchestral
song cycle Poème de l’amour et de la mer (1892), possess French qualities.
In both the harmony caresses Wagner’s Tristan and there are meandering
chromatic bass lines, but the melodies are rhythmically regular for the
most part and thus free from Wagner’s musical prose, and there is a native
quality of clarity and sensuality. Remarkably, Wagner’s influence aided
the rebirth of French music, and when French composers were ready to
move beyond it, they did.26

Franck and his school

Franck’s family moved from his birthplace Liège in 1835 to Paris, where he
studied with Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) for ten months (he taught
Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod and George Onslow, 1784–1853). After his family
secured citizenship he was admitted to the Conservatoire in 1837. Among
his first important compositions are the Trios concertants (piano trios),
Op. 1 (1842).
His stop-start career as a composer led to long periods of inactivity until
quite late in his life, but more stable was his work as an organist, especially
after his appointment to the newly built Sainte-Clotilde. He supplemented
his income with teaching posts before he succeeded François Benoist
(1794–1878) as professor of organ at the Conservatoire. By this time
Franck was attracting disciples – the bande à Franck. Duparc, one of the
most celebrated composers of mélodies, was prominent among them; he was
joined by d’Indy, who entered Franck’s organ class in 1872. These classes
had great influence in propagating a certain musical style, including the
acceptance of Wagner’s and Liszt’s influence; wide-ranging chromaticism,
mostly within the major-minor system; a heightened expressiveness; a
concomitant openness to the erotic; and cyclic form.
Franck’s output before his emergence in the 1870s as a key figure
included chamber music, the oratorio Ruth and various sacred works,
but it is his music from 1871 onwards, starting with the oratorio
Rédemption (1871–2, final version 1874), that has secured his position as
one of France’s greatest composers. His works include the symphonic
poems Les Éolides and Le chasseur maudit (1882), the Variations sympho-
niques for piano and orchestra (1885), a Symphony in D minor (1888), a
140 Simon Trezise

Piano Quintet (1879), Violin Sonata (1886) and String Quartet (1889), the
oratorio Les béatitudes (1879) and the opera Hulda (1885).
Martin Cooper chastises Franck for a lack of emotional restraint, which
suggests stronger affinities with Germanic traditions than with the balance
between expression and form that is so characteristic of Saint-Saëns.27
One should also recall distinctly French moments, such as the exquisite use
of canon in the last movement of the Violin Sonata, which, coupled with a
melody of rare grace and expressive simplicity, invites comparison with
remoter French traditions.
D’Indy is one of several composers who was almost fanatically attached
to the example and personality of Franck. He composed extensively for the
stage, orchestra, voices (sacred and secular works), chamber ensembles
and keyboard. In addition, his wide-ranging and influential Cours de
composition musicale, completed posthumously (1903–50), is one of the
most influential pedagogic works of the period.

Saint-Saëns and his circle

In 1848 Saint-Saëns entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied
organ with Benoist and composition and orchestration with Fromental
Halévy (1799–1862). His early works reveal strong traces of the Viennese
classics, not least in the opening of the Symphony in A (1850), which uses
the fugal do–re–fa–mi of the finale of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’, albeit in a non-
contrapuntal context. The second movement bathes in the melodic legacy
of Beethoven’s Elysian slow movements, especially that of the ‘Emperor’
Piano Concerto. His early works are consistent with much of what was to
follow in the way they seize upon basic building blocks of music to shape
movements. This in itself would not create a satisfying basis for a creative
artist, but Saint-Saëns combined this facility in handling musical materials
with a capacity to fuse these materials into irresistible gestures – fusions of,
say, melody and texture, such as we encounter in the second movement of
the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor (1868).
With its birdsong, ponderous reworking of Offenbach’s most famous
can-can, exquisite cello solo for the swan and bursts of musical humour,
Saint-Saëns’s Le carnaval des animaux (1886) is a fine example of the
composer’s ‘Parisian streak of urchin impudence’. Saint-Saëns refused to
have it published in his lifetime, as he ‘feared . . . it would harm his
reputation as a serious composer’.28
Early on, Saint-Saëns’s circle embraced figures such as Gounod,
Viardot, Rossini and Berlioz, whom he admired greatly. Throughout his
early career Saint-Saëns espoused the musical avant-garde, for he brought
141 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

Liszt’s symphonic poems and other works to the attention of French

audiences and promoted Wagner.29 In 1861 he became a teacher at the
École Niedermeyer, where we find hints of a circle of younger composers
growing up around him. First there was André Messager (1853–1929), who
became a major composer of opera and ballet; then there was the sixteen-
year-old Fauré, who remained a lifelong friend.
Fauré became a boarder at the École Niedermeyer in 1854 and stayed
there for eleven years. It is believed that, alongside the counterpoint
teaching, the unusual approach to the harmonisation of modal chant at
the school shaped Fauré’s compositional style.30 A series of organist posts
followed his departure from the school with the premier prix in composition
for his Cantique de Jean Racine (1865). His organist posts culminated in his
appointment as chief organist at the Madeleine in 1896. That he had finally
moved into the forefront of French music, after years on the sidelines, is
attested by his surprising appointment to the directorship of the Paris
Conservatoire.
Fauré’s compositional voice speaks little of the influence of Wagner
and only occasionally of the German and Viennese classics so beloved of
Saint-Saëns and Franck. Most of his output comprises song, solo piano
works and chamber music. Exceptions include two operas, some highly
characterful incidental music (including music for Pelléas et Mélisande,
1898) and a tiny number of orchestral works. Even the highly successful
Requiem (1877, 1887–93), one of several sacred works, was conceived as a
chamber work, and its scoring augmented to full orchestra only in 1900.
His ‘taste for musical purity and sobriety of expression’ led him to con-
demn the more popular musical manifestations of his day, such as ver-
ismo.31 As well as in the Société Nationale, Fauré’s place for many years
was, therefore, the salon.
Ravel is generally paired with Debussy, often under the confusing
heading ‘impressionism’, but many aspects of their work should encour-
age a clear separation of the two. Born in the Basque village of Ciboure,
Ravel, like Debussy, entered piano and harmony classes at the Paris
Conservatoire in 1891. Failing to win any prizes, he was dismissed in
1895, but he returned in 1897 to study composition with Fauré and
counterpoint with André Gédalge (1856–1926). Although he had already
composed several works that have remained in the repertoire, his aca-
demic career was dismal. Unlike Debussy, who worked well within the
system, Ravel was an outsider. Nevertheless, his attachment to Fauré and
the classicising nature of works like the String Quartet, Piano Trio and
G major Piano Concerto bring him closer to Saint-Saëns’s sphere.
Ravel’s music encompasses both the opulence of the ballet Daphnis et
Chloé (1912) and the leanness of his piano suite Le tombeau de Couperin
142 Simon Trezise

(1917), which looks back to the eighteenth century. His musical language
evinces facets of ‘modernism’, including bitonality, but in many works he
keeps a clear tonal trajectory in spite of his extensive use of dissonance,
and his forms are often conservative. Melody is central to much of his
music. He was, in short, quite distinct from Debussy and Stravinsky in the
development of modern music, though his early classicising was prophetic
of post-First World War neoclassicism. His output embraces piano music,
opera, ballet, chamber works, vocal music, orchestral works (including the
song cycle Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, inspired by Schoenberg’s
Pierrot lunaire) and choral music. Although he did not write a symphony,
Daphnis is subtitled Symphonie choréographique, and is divided into three
parts, like many French symphonies.

Debussy
Debussy came through the same system as many other French compos-
ers.32 He was educated at the Paris Conservatoire, tried for and finally
won the Prix de Rome and joined the Société Nationale, which arranged
the premiere of his crucially important Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
in 1894.33 He eventually conquered the operatic firmament with Pelléas
et Mélisande (first performed 1902), based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s
Symbolist drama (1892).
Debussy’s early works – those composed before the breakthrough of
the Prélude – tend to be treated rather casually in much of the literature,
which is a shame, for many are highly original. They evince signs of
radicalism in harmony and form. We may see the prolific succession of
works from around 1892 to around 1914 as typical of a middle period,
and his final works, from the summer of 1915, when he wrote the Cello
Sonata, as a turning away from extra-musical preoccupations to a more
abstract art.
Discussions of Debussy sometimes give the impression of him as
highly intuitive; his intellectualism, if acknowledged, is likely to be envi-
sioned as his experimentalism. However, his Conservatoire training
emerges constantly, and the more one probes, the more interested
Debussy seems to have been in compositional process. We catch this in
his use of Golden Section; its frequent discovery in his music belies the
notion that such close coincidences with Pythagorean form could have
been accidental.34 Then one finds passages of counterpoint in many works,
including the early Petite suite (1889), where he ingeniously combines
themes (as did Berlioz). There are also works in which he takes sonata
form and subverts it, suggesting that he revoked formal musical rhetoric. In
143 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

his later music, for example ‘Gigues’ (1912, from Images), a layering of fast-
and slow-moving music produces intricate rhythmic textures. One might
hear an effortless unfolding of ideas, but behind them an acute intellect was
at work devising new tonal formulations, rhythmic structures and so on.
Richard Parks explicates Debussy’s harmonic language in terms of four
separate genera: diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic and chromatic. In the
song ‘Recueillement’ (1889, from Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire) he finds
diatonic, octatonic and whole-tone collections, some separated by ‘mod-
ulation’.35 That Debussy integrates these diverse materials is undeniable;
how he does it continues to excite theoretical debate.
Debussy’s name sits alone, for it is hard to speak of a circle. Debussy’s
influence on other composers seems to have been – at least in the period
under review here – superficial and sporadic. Aspects of his music rever-
berate, including some chord progressions, the whole-tone scale and his
orchestral style. Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) sometimes seems closest in
spirit. After the Second World War his contribution to modernism was
better understood and, to a limited extent, emulated.

Survey of key genres and works

Chamber music
By the end of the century the string quartet had acquired a special status as
the chamber music combination that composers aspired to conquer.36
On the way we encounter two string quartets by Alexis de Castillon
(1838–73), composed before 1867 (Op. 3 No. 1) and in 1868 (Op. 3
No. 2). Beethovenian roots are revealed in the adventurous part-writing,
sudden shifts of tempo in movements and detailed motivic working. It was
not until the renewal of instrumental genres in general that new forces were
to shape the string quartet.37
These forces included the adoption of cyclic techniques in such works
as Franck’s String Quartet (1889), with its rich polyphony and melodic
expressiveness. Sylvio Lazzari (1857–1944) had already moved in this
direction in his String Quartet (1888), albeit in a subtler manner than
was soon to be the norm. He adumbrates the melodic content of the slow
movement at the end of the development section of the first movement,
and the rondo finale incorporates varied ‘recollections of the preceding
movements . . . transformed by the technique of variation’.38
Other quartets of this period are either cyclic in the Franck manner or
in the style of Castillon and the German tradition. Debussy’s lack of
enthusiasm for the German tradition is encapsulated in his overt applica-
tion of Franck’s cyclic principle in his String Quartet (1893). His precedent
144 Simon Trezise

was taken up in Ravel’s String Quartet (1903), where we find Classical

formal transparency alongside rhapsodic freedom and exotic textures, as
well as the cyclic principle. In contrast, the somewhat austere and rather
hard-written String Quartet of 1903 by Albéric Magnard (1865–1914)
returns to Beethovenian roots.
Composers found mixed combinations liberating after the limitations
of the string quartet. Among those that distinguish the flowering of
French chamber music in the later nineteenth century, combinations
with piano and strings are the most successful. Onslow often seems to
expand outside the string quartet, as in his wide-ranging Piano Trio in
F minor, Op. 83 (1853), whose first movement lives up to its marking of
‘Allegro patetico’.
As often happened before the Société Nationale, Saint-Saëns gave the
first performance of his Piano Trio No. 1 in F at one of his regular soirées
in 1864. In every movement the composer hits upon a happy combination
of melody and texture and rhythmic inventiveness, as in the hemiola
rhythm of the principal theme of the sonata-form first movement. Long
passages in one key contrast with sudden chromatic excursions, often for
just a few bars; this comes to a head in the recapitulation when the second
subject is initially presented in D♭ major. The slow second movement has
a Baroque quality in its formality and double dotting, indicative of Saint-
Saëns’s preoccupation with the past. Beethoven’s scherzos resonate in the
third movement, and the rondo finale mixes Gallic refinement, particu-
larly in the delicate interaction of main melody and accompaniment at the
start, and virtuosity.
Fauré’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A (1876) is described by Robert Orledge
as ‘one of the first landmarks in the renaissance of French chamber
music’.39 The four-movement work was wildly successful and showed the
general direction in which French chamber music was heading, not least in
its virtuosity. Although the sonata is in A major, Fauré’s elliptical harmonic
and melodic style is in evidence. The piano alone adumbrates the principal
theme at the start, playing a ‘lesser’ version of it, which is then given a more
distinctive outline but with the same rhythm when the violin first enters in
bar 23. Bars 1–22 end on the mediant C♯ minor, and the violin enters on the
harmonic progression c♯–D–E–D, which denies the dominant of A its
voice-leading role, clouding one’s sense of key. Fauré’s oblique harmonic
writing in part of the principal theme is summarised in Example 7.1.
Fauré was moving far from traditional harmonic practice, and his
rhythmic structures were similarly innovative. The Scherzo, an Allegro
vivo in 2/8, sparkles in a manner worthy of Mendelssohn. It plays with
phrase lengths and groupings, 3–3–3–3–2–3–2–3; accents on the second
quaver further enrich the scintillating rhythmic play, which is matched
145 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

Example 7.1 Fauré, Violin Sonata No. 1, first movement, bars 22–33, harmonic reduction

harmonically by a descending harmonic progression from the tonic A

major, down through triads of G major, F major, V7 of E♭/V7 of A, and E♭
major (bars 13–31). The rondo finale’s main theme is one of Fauré’s most
haunting creations, whose whimsical character can best be grasped in
performances that follow the marking ‘Allegro quasi presto’.
Just a few years later the first work of Franck’s chamber music triptych
arrived, the Piano Quintet in F minor. The Société Nationale premiere had
Saint-Saëns largely sight-reading the part. He felt a ‘growing sense of
horror . . . [the] emotional fervour offended his firmly-held principles of
taste, balance and proportion’, which led him to walk off the stage at the
end, leaving the manuscript and its dedication to him on the piano, and
the applause unacknowledged. The break with Saint-Saëns’s concept of
Frenchness was a deliberate move against ‘the superficiality of French
tradition’.40 We hear this in the chromaticism, the escalating repetitions of
themes (using model and sequence in the Tristan manner) and the incor-
poration of rhetorical devices associated with longing. In spite of the
quintet’s emotional fervour, the first movement is firmly in sonata form.
It is bound together both by the type of motivic working one associates with
the German tradition and by cyclic recurrences of themes, such as the
reprise of the first movement’s subsidiary theme in the closing bars of the
finale.
We pass over chamber works by Fauré, Lalo, Saint-Saëns, Roussel,
Franck, Florent Schmitt (1870–1958), Joseph-Guy Ropartz (1864–1955),
Magnard, Gabriel Pierné (1863–1937), Castillon, Chausson, Guillaume
Lekeu (1870–94) and others to consider two contrasting trios by Ravel and
Debussy that represent their composers’ mature styles. Ravel’s Piano Trio
(1914) was premiered by the Société Musicale Indépendante, which had
been founded to promote music of all nations, styles and genres in 1909. It
is in four movements, all with ties to Classical models. Nevertheless, this is
a work of burgeoning modernism. One encounters it in the irregular time
signatures, such as the 8/8 of the first movement (with the beats grouped
3–2–3), the changes of metre in the finale (5/4–7/4–5/4) and the super-
position of metric structures in the Scherzo. Harmonics and other effects
exhibit a concern for extending the sound canvas. And the harmonic style
146 Simon Trezise

is more dissonant than anything we find in Fauré and Debussy. Even so,
Ravel maintains the Classical rhetoric of form and harmony. In spite of the
fact that none of this music can be called ‘tonal’ in the sense of it being
major or minor – his tonic notes are almost always approached through a
flat leading note below or a semitone above (as in the Phrygian scale) – his
bass lines are often adapted from common-practice tonality.41 At the end
of the tonal argument of the first movement, in bars 77–96, we hear a bass
line that proceeds in fifths, A–D–G–C, where the movement closes a few
bars later (i.e. in C – whatever key this trio is ‘in’, it is not A minor!). This
directional bass line, coupled with a level of consistency in rich harmonies –
often compilations of thirds up to ninths, elevenths and beyond, generally
favouring semitones rather than tones – gives Ravel’s harmonic world a
greater homogeneity than Debussy’s.
Ravel’s formal procedures are faithful to Classical and Romantic mod-
els. The first movement is in sonata form with a transition to the subsid-
iary theme based on a climactic drive to a varied restatement of the first
subject, now fortissimo, in bars 17 ff., after the manner of the ‘Eroica’ and
other first movements. A contrasted subsidiary theme is presented at bar
35, albeit in the tonic A mode. He follows Tchaikovsky’s example in
starting the recapitulation on the crest of a climax, allowing a highly
reduced version of the transition to mark the start of the section, which
brings us quickly to the second subject in bar 83. Rhetorical gestures
proliferate in the finale, where the main theme is developed with repeti-
tion, variation and sequence, leading at the end of each section to climactic
moments marked with string trills and piano chords, toujours ff. The
cyclic work is held together by the use of the auxiliary figure of the main
theme of the first movement in each succeeding movement.
Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (1916) is the second of
what were to have been six sonatas; it comes between the Cello Sonata
(1915) and Violin Sonata (1917). Its ‘classical grace and elegance’ have
often been deemed to evoke Couperin, but as Edward Lockspeiser writes,

the clarity and the merciless precision of detail in both the solo and the
ensemble writing is so poignantly expressive that the composer was himself
forced to declare . . . that the music . . . is ‘so terribly melancholy that I can’t
say whether one should laugh or cry. . . . I am horrified by a deliberate
disorder, which is nothing but aural bluff, and also by those eccentric
harmonies . . . How much has to be explored, and discarded, before reaching
the naked flesh of emotion!’42

The ‘deliberate disorder’ might describe the almost cinematic montage of

fragmentary material, with little of the ordered development of Ravel.
Moreover, Debussy’s thematic ideas are arabesques, with occasional short
147 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

motifs that stand out, such as the opening of the Interlude. Further
enhancing the calculated disunity is the endlessly changing harmonic
vocabulary, including seconds, triads, sevenths, occasional progressions
reminiscent of the part-writing of common-practice tonality, parallel
triads and seventh chords, whole-tone and other ‘non-tonal’ chords
and more.
Debussy’s forms are as elusive as his tonal structures. The first move-
ment, Pastorale, conceals aspects of sonata form, but the fragmentary
nature of the material and frequent tempo modifications make the
boundaries hard to distinguish. At rehearsal cue 2 the music rests on
the ‘dominant’, but in place of a development, the music flies off with an
A♭ major key signature, ‘Vif et joyeux’. The return to the main tempo,
‘Lento, dolce rubato’, signals a recapitulation, but the material is presented
in a reordered sequence. Parks considers the formal plan of the sonata as
close to Debussy’s ballet Jeux (1912) in that ‘its structure builds through a
series of contrasting passages and is more additive than hierarchic’.43 In
this Debussy epitomises an anti-rhetorical stance that is as far removed
from the classicising forms of Saint-Saëns, Fauré and Ravel as his tonal
structures are from his key signatures.44

Instrumental music
The last decades of the nineteenth century were a great age of organ music.
Saint-Saëns’s Trois rhapsodies sur des cantiques bretons (1866) are indi-
cative both of the pervasive influence of traditional music (and the exotic)
in French music and of the composer’s engagement with the organ. In the
latter part of the first rhapsody, wide-ranging arpeggiations in the right
hand for flute stops suggest orchestral aspirations in the writing. Other
works by Saint-Saëns speak of the Bach revival, which affected many
composers, and resulted in works like the two sets of Trois préludes et
fugues (1894 and 1898). Saint-Saëns even emulates Baroque notation by
omitting articulative markings.
The magnificent instruments being built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll
(1811–99), with their seamless crescendo and orchestrally conceived
stops, led to organ composers seeking the dimensions and impact of the
symphony: Widor wrote ten organ symphonies (1872–1900), though it is
the exuberant Toccata of Symphony No. 5 (1879) that is most often played
today rather than the more obviously symphonic movements.
Franck’s organ music, like that of Saint-Saëns, is permeated by
Baroque influences. In the third of the Trois chorals (1890), in A minor,
he begins with a toccata texture, which alternates with an exultant chorale.
At the climax of the work the two ideas are combined. Before the long
ascent to the transcendent climax, Franck incorporates a slow central
148 Simon Trezise

section in A major ripe with sliding chromaticism and harmonising a

meditative melody for an oboe and trumpet stop combination. The
influence of the Baroque chorale prelude is heard in numerous works;
we find it, for example, in Saint-Saëns’s often Brahmsian Piano Quartet in
B♭ (1875). The use of chorales and chorale-like themes is also common
and provided composers with a ready means to achieve ambitious closing
summations.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century prominent composers such
as Dukas, Roussel, Debussy and Ravel proved indifferent to the organ and
the maintenance of its repertoire fell to more peripheral figures, including
Guilmant and Louis Vierne (1870–1937).
In contrast, almost all composers contributed extensively to the piano
literature. Curiously, given the interest Saint-Saëns displayed in Classical
forms, almost all of his mature piano works are single-movement works or
suites, such as the four-movement Suite in F, Op. 90 (1891), in which he
time-travels back to the Baroque eighteenth century. The movements are
Prélude et fugue, Menuet, Gavotte and a fugal Gigue. Harmonically and in
other ways this is late nineteenth-century music, but the texture and
characterisation are of the past. Such historical expressions abound:
they include Debussy’s Pour le piano of 1901 (Prélude, Sarabande,
Toccata) and Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin (Prélude, Fugue, Forlane,
Rigaudon, Menuet, Toccata).
The avoidance of the Classical sonata in French piano music is
apparent in Franck’s output, which features two remarkable three-
movement works with only vestiges of the sonata: Prélude, choral et
fugue (1884) and Prélude, aria et final (1887). An exception was Dukas,
whose Piano Sonata (1900) is one of the most ambitious works of its time.
Dukas encompasses clear Classical forms in a work that stands ‘on the
threshold of dramatic music’ in its intensity of expression and surging
Romantic writing.45
Fauré wrote prolifically for piano. Drawing on neither Classical forms
nor the descriptive piano piece, his output is closely related to Chopin’s,
which is reflected in the fact that his mature piano works are mostly
entitled ‘Nocturne’, ‘Ballade’, ‘Prelude’, ‘Impromptu’, ‘Barcarolle’ and
‘Valse-caprice’. The relationship to Chopin is apparent in the Nocturne
in B♭, Op. 37 (1884), particularly in the syncopated chordal accompani-
ment and arpeggiated embellishment of the first cadence. As in Chopin’s
Nocturne in F, Op. 15 No. 2, the slowish opening tempo gives way to a
dramatically contrasted faster central section. The subtlety of Fauré’s style
is shown in the Nocturne No. 6 in D♭, Op. 63 (1894), where the melody is
subjected to a delicate rubato by placing the second note, the quaver, of a
dotted-crotchet–quaver figure in 3/2 on the second note of a triplet group,
149 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

Example 7.2 Fauré, Nocturne No. 6 in D♭, Op. 63, bars 1–3

which makes the quaver arrive a fraction earlier than it would in 3/2 time
without the triplets (see Example 7.2).
Nowhere is Fauré’s individuality more marked than in his undermin-
ing of the major-minor system. The Nocturne No. 11 in F♯ minor, Op. 104
No. 1 (1913), starts on a 6/4 chord. The first root-position tonic chord we
encounter is in bar 5, approached by an E minor chord with added sixth.
Such individual, oblique progressions are balanced at a few structural
moments by often conventional dominant–tonic progressions, as in bars
7–8, where there is a perfect cadence in C♯ minor.
Many of Saint-Saëns’s piano works bear generic titles, such as Six
études, Op. 52 (1877), Valse canariote (1890) and Berceuse for duet
(1896). Some have descriptive titles – a characteristic even more manifest
in Chabrier, Debussy and Ravel. Chabrier’s Dix pièces pittoresques (1881)
are an early harbinger of French modernism. Rollo Myers wrote that the
‘astonishing thing about [them] is that, while appearing superficially to be
little more than rather high-class salon music they are seen on closer
examination to be a veritable treasure-house of new and ingenious har-
monic and rhythmic trouvailles’.46 Pièce pittoresque No. 4, ‘Sous bois’ (‘In
the woods’), opens, Andantino, with a murmuring semiquaver bass figure
over which a widely spread melody unfolds with arpeggiated grace notes.
Although it is harmonically simple, complexity is achieved through variety
of articulation and metrical and rhythmic manipulation, resulting in cross-
rhythms. The piano language of the early twentieth century is not far away.
Not long after Chabrier’s influential work, Debussy wrote an early
masterpiece entitled ‘Clair de lune’ as part of the Suite bergamasque
(c. 1890, revised 1905). Its delicate manipulation of the 9/8 metre and
diaphanous pianissimo textures are only part of its attraction; it also gives
an early indication of the redundancy of common-practice voice leading
150 Simon Trezise

in his music; although many of its notes belong to D♭ major, the leading
note has lost its attraction. With it goes the resolving pull of the dominant
seventh, a point demonstrated in bars 8–9, where a dominant seventh
chord on A♭ is followed by its tonic D♭. At no point does one get a sense of
this C leading to D♭; rather, the emphasis is on the tonic-chord pitches F
and A♭ in bar 9. Here, in embryo, we find Debussy’s system of chord
succession, which makes him the most radical of French composers and
offers a striking alternative to the atonality of the Second Viennese School,
for Debussy still ends most of his works on a major or, less often, minor
triad.
Debussy, like Ravel in his Miroirs (1905) and Gaspard de la nuit (1908),
wrote piano music with descriptive titles. The two series of piano Images
(1905, 1907), Children’s Corner (1908), two books of twelve Préludes
(1910, 1913) and several other works all seem to evoke something. Only
in his two books of Études (1915) do abstract musical considerations
consistently figure in the titles (‘Pour les cinq doigts’, ‘Pour les tierces’);
a similar title in the Préludes (Book 2, No. 11), ‘Les tierces alternées’, is a
rare exception. Almost all aspects of Debussy’s style are found in the piano
preludes. In ‘ . . . Voiles’ (‘Veils’, Book 1, No. 2), the tonal world has been
reduced to two pitch collections, the whole-tone scale on C in the outer
sections of this ternary work and the black-note pentatonic collection in
the B section. Musical ‘development’ is determined by rhythm, register,
textural density, ostinato B♭ and other parameters. In ‘Les sons et les
parfums tournent dans l’air du soir’ (Préludes, Book 1, No. 4) the refer-
ential pitch collection is an A major triad. A dominant on E is absent until
the final cadence, but even though a V7 chord is followed by I in A, there is
no voice-leading connection between them, and a D♯ is prominent in the
closing bars (Debussy preferred to use a tritone between scale-steps 1 and
4 in his scales rather than the perfect fourth of the major-minor modes,
and in many works scale-step 7 is lowered, though not here). Elsewhere in
this prelude chords move by parallel movement, such as the chromatic
dominant sevenths over an A pedal in bars 3–4. Formally, the piece is
articulated by a variation of the opening material a semitone below the
tonic, which hints at a ternary form, but a straightforward categorisation is
impossible.
Ravel’s three-movement suite Gaspard de la nuit is based on poems
by Aloysius Bertrand. The first, ‘Ondine’, recalls the influential water
music of Ravel’s Jeux d’eau (1901). ‘Scarbo’, the last movement, is
notorious for its technical difficulty – an attribute that Ravel actively
sought. It places his music in the tradition of Liszt and Balakirev. In
contrast, there is a small number of classicising works, including the
attractive Sonatine (1905).
151 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

The symphony
The immersion of French composers in Beethoven is attested by Gounod:
‘Beethoven’s symphonies I knew by heart . . . we [Gounod and Ingres]
spent the greater part of the night deep in talk over the great master’s
works.’47 Gounod wrote a pair of symphonies (1855) that paid tribute to
Austro-German composers: there are elements of Haydn and Schumann,
neither of which overshadow Gounod’s ‘Gallic sensibility’.48 More distinc-
tive is Bizet’s tuneful Symphony in C (1855), composed at the age of
seventeen while under Gounod’s tutelage at the Conservatoire. It has been
regularly performed since its first performance in 1935.
Between Saint-Saëns’s Symphonies Nos. 2 (1859) and 3 (1886), which
marked the turning point for the revival, there was considerable activity,
especially in the traditions of the ‘dramatic symphony’ and ‘ode sym-
phony’. Composers included Benjamin Godard (1849–95), Augusta
Holmès (1847–1903) and possibly the century’s most successful female
composer, Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944). Amid symphonies with titles
like Godard’s Symphonie gothique (1883) are conventional, abstract
works.49
With Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, France started
to produce works to rival production in Vienna and elsewhere. Many
compositional choices native to the symphonic poem inform the sym-
phony, which enable him to circumnavigate some challenging aspects of
symphonic writing, and reveal his debt to Liszt. As Saint-Saëns remarks in
his programme note for the premiere, the symphony follows the example
of his Piano Concerto No. 4 (1875) and Violin Sonata No. 1 (1885) in
being bipartite, though each part comprises two movements. Although the
composer was impatient of ‘endless resumptions and repetitions’ (as he
wrote in a programme note),50 in the first movement there is a clearly
articulated return to C minor and the principal theme at rehearsal cue M
after several bars of dominant preparation (in other words the start of a
recapitulation). However, after a reprise of the first subject and transition to
the second, the music starts to transition to the D♭ major Adagio. This
undermining of the recapitulation recalls symphonic poems in which
features of sonata form are cherry-picked. In his analysis of the triumphant
finale, a movement swept along by the glory of the Romantic organ and a
tinkling, four-handed piano part, Saint-Saëns makes no attempt in his
programme note to fit his work into sonata form, preferring the language
of the symphonic poem in his discussion of an ‘episode, quiet and some-
what pastoral in character’ (first at rehearsal cue V). In fact, the finale omits
a full recapitulation of its famous principal theme; instead Saint-Saëns
builds up the tension by a series of thematic and timbral transformations,
bringing the work to a conclusion of unprecedented splendour.51
152 Simon Trezise

Saint-Saëns makes full use of cyclic procedures in this symphony. The

first subject of the first movement, closely related to the opening of the
Dies irae chant, becomes a triumphal hymn after the C major chords set
the finale in motion, and the main theme of the slow movement forms part
of the elaborate transition to the finale that interrupts the usual cycle of
repeats in the Scherzo.
The next symphony to grace the world stage was less successful, but
Lalo’s Symphony in G minor (1886) has retained a modest place in the
repertoire. The brief slow introduction of the symphony introduces the
motto theme, which sounds shockingly like the opening of Brahms Piano
Concerto No. 2 (first performed 1881), and there are occasional echoes of
his Academic Festival Overture (first performed 1881). Wagner is also
present, especially in the chromatic harmony, but Lalo’s brightly lit,
rhythmic manner is pervasive.
More influential than either of these symphonies was Franck’s
Symphony, which became a seminal work for French music. It is in
three movements with the central slow movement incorporating, as
Franck put it, ‘a very light and very gentle’ central section, which belongs
‘to the scherzo genre’.52 The symphony epitomises Franck’s cyclic proce-
dures. The opening motif of the introduction of the first movement is heard
again, transformed, at the start of the slow movement, which is representa-
tive of ‘the dense network of ideas that marks the Symphony from the
outset’.53 Even more remarkable is the manner in which the sonata-form
finale recalls material from previous movements, which, as Franck put it to
his students, ‘do not appear as mere citations . . . they take on the role of new
elements’.54 Frequently reviled for its organ-like orchestration, the sym-
phony seems to have been orchestrated in a way that perfectly realises the
sculptural qualities of its melodic lines, and the manner in which these lines
rise with nearly mystical yearning from the bass register to the treble is
superbly realised in the instrumental mixture.
In 1890 Chausson contributed a decidedly Franckian symphony,
and in 1896 Dukas concluded his Symphony in C, which also adopted
the three-movement Franckian mould.55 However, if we go back a few
years we find a hybrid symphony that exudes more charm and invention
than most: d’Indy’s Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français
(Symphonie cévenole), Op. 25 (1886). The symphony is bound together
by the cyclic use of a shepherd’s song. D’Indy considered the scoring
Wagnerian, but an unusual feature is the presence of a virtuoso piano part
in an obbligato role.
Many more French symphonies were to follow, including four each by
Magnard (c. 1890, 1893, 1896, 1913) – described by Malcolm MacDonald
as ‘the last significant examples of the Franck–d’Indy tradition’,56 albeit in
153 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

four movements with remarkably individual scherzos – and Roussel (1906,

1921, 1930, 1934). Some later works avoid the word ‘symphony’, often
preferring ‘symphonic’ in some form. In its embracing of the three-
movement design and the cyclic principle, and its incorporation of elements
of a first movement, a scherzo and a rondo-like finale with a grand-slam
conclusion, Debussy’s La mer (1905) is in the newly minted tradition of the
French symphony.

Other orchestral music

The symphonic poem prospered as long in France as in Russia, Germany
and other countries. Saint-Saëns composed four in a short period, includ-
ing the remarkably colourful Danse macabre (1874) and the Lisztian La
jeunesse d’Hercule (1877). Franck’s most ambitious contribution is Le
chasseur maudit (1882), one of many nineteenth-century depictions of
the wild hunt.
Debussy’s extraordinary Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is based on
Mallarmé’s poem and was originally intended to accompany a recitation.
The poem evokes the erotic imaginings of a faun on a languorous after-
noon. Lockspeiser describes it as a work that ‘reproduces the essentially
fleeting qualities of memory, the myriad sensations of forgotten dreams
pass through the score, and . . . what remains are the inexhaustible treas-
ures of memory’s indefiniteness’.57 This indefiniteness is expressed
through the harmonic and rhythmic ambiguities of the opening flute
solo and subsequent musical material; they are not resolved until the
final bars of the work, when, unusually for Debussy, the E major triad is
preceded by a dominant harmony – a dominant ninth (bar 105). As
William Austin has demonstrated, this quality also extends to the form of
the piece, whose ternary form defies precise specification; hence one reading
gives section B1 starting at bar 37 and B2 at bar 55, while others find the
subdivision at bar 31.58
Pierre Boulez writes that ‘the flute in the Faune brings a new breath to
the art of music . . . modern music began [with it]’. He describes how ‘form
is turned on its head . . . lending wing to a supple and mobile expressivity’;
and he notes the treatment of timbre, which prefigures twentieth-century
music.59 Debussy’s modernism climaxed in Jeux, a ballet commissioned by
Serge Diaghilev. Herbert Eimert claims that ‘traditional theory is helpless in
face of this work’. While motifs no longer work as motifs, but ‘play their part
in the ornamental linear coloratura’, timbre ‘functions as another integral
category of form’. It is as if Jeux is a precursor of 1950s electronic music.
Debussy’s ‘Javanese counterpoint’ takes his gamelan-inspired heterophony
to its furthest point in his music.60
154 Simon Trezise

French orchestral music was strongly drawn to the exotic and pictu-
resque. We find several rhapsodies and suites inspired by foreign lands.
These qualities flourish in Lalo’s Rapsodie norvégienne (1879); Saint-
Saëns’s Suite algérienne (1880); and Debussy’s orchestral Images, espe-
cially the triptych’s central piece, Ibéria (1910), which uses an extensive
range of musical devices to evoke Spain. Ravel’s fascination with musical
travelogues and the exotic found early expression in the luxuriant textures
and modal writing of his overture Shéhérazade (1898) and orchestral
songs, also entitled Shéhérazade (1903), especially ‘Asie’.
In comparison with the vitality of the symphony and symphonic poem
in France during this period, the concerto presents a historical conun-
drum: dozens of concertos were written and performed, which suggests
that the genre flourished, but very few have taken root in the repertoire.
The point is illustrated by examining one very productive year, 1901, for
we find a typical range of variations on the concertante theme here, all
from composers who are little played today.
Théodore Dubois, Entr’acte et rigaudon de Xavière for cello
Baron d’Erlanger, Violin Concerto
Baron d’Erlanger, Andante symphonique for cello
Gabriel Pierné, Poème symphonique for piano and orchestra
Gabriel Pierné, Morceau de concert for harp
Henriette Renié, Harp Concerto61

Apart from several once very popular concertos by Lalo, including the
Symphonie espagnole for violin and orchestra (1874) and the Cello
Concerto (1877), the most durable contributions to the genre came from
Saint-Saëns, who wrote five piano concertos, three violin concertos, two
cello concertos and assorted works in (mainly) single movements with
diverse titles.
The virtuoso concerto held sway for much of the nineteenth century in
France, and its influence is felt in many of Saint-Saëns’s works, but he
avoided the extremes of this type in its skeletal form and overwhelming
emphasis on the soloist. At the opposite extreme was the symphonic con-
certo, whose presence can be felt in the appellation of some of the works
listed above and, for example, in the concertos of Henry Litolff (1818–91),
whose five piano concertos are called concertos symphoniques (1844–69).
Saint-Saëns shows the influence of both. The Piano Concerto No. 3 in E♭
(1869) is in three movements. The first modifies sonata form with a slow
introduction that is repeated before the development; a cadenza directly
follows this repeat. There are many changes of tempo from the development
to the end of the first movement, but coherence is ensured by motivic
development. From the outset the projection of virtuosity is never in doubt.
155 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy

Vocal music
In the early nineteenth century French composers were mostly writing
vocal compositions known by the designation romance. As the century
progressed, and certainly by the fourth decade, it had been displaced by
mélodie. The terms were often interchangeable, though mélodie suggests a
greater degree of sophistication and freedom of form, especially in freeing
itself from strophic setting, as in Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été (1841, orches-
trated and adapted for soprano in 1856); both imply ‘the quality of grace-
ful, tender lyricism’.62
Saint-Saëns wrote numerous songs, most of which are now neglected, as
are Gounod’s. They are full of surprises, however, and should be considered
alongside the mélodies of Fauré (totalling c. 100), Debussy (c. 90) and
Duparc (13), which are held to epitomise the genre. In his Chanson triste
(1872), Saint-Saëns enshrines the sensuality of the mélodie genre, alongside
refinement, sensitivity to the nuances of the language and preference for the
voice’s middle range. Although the song is in C♯ major, it begins on a chord
of A♮, which moves immediately to the tonic C♯. This adds an exotic quality
to the setting. In a later song, ‘Guitares et mandolines’ (1890), Saint-Saëns
seems to echo Debussy’s ‘Mandoline’ (1882) in the imitation of guitar
playing and reference to popular song idioms.
Fauré’s sensitivity to the poetry he set did not prevent his making
judicious changes. Most writers consider ‘Lydia’ (c. 1870) his break-
through song. Leconte de Lisle described Lydia’s neck as ‘fresh and pale
as milk’, which Fauré amended to ‘so fresh and pale’.63 The music has both
simplicity and sophistication, and its beautiful melody evokes ancient
Greece through its use of the tritone F–B♮ at the outset, as in the Lydian
mode. At this stage, Fauré’s music, though chromatic and often obliquely
aligned with the tonic, nevertheless gives an unambiguous sense of F major.
In his later songs, Fauré’s language becomes ever more individual and
remote from traditional harmonic practice.
For both Fauré and Debussy, the discovery of the Symbolist poet Paul
Verlaine (1844–96) was crucial. Debussy’s setting of ‘C’est l’extase’ in
1885–7 (revised in his Ariette oubliées of 1903) was followed in 1891 by
Fauré in his Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’ (see Example 7.3). The first two lines
of the poem constitute a rhyming couplet:
C’est l’extase langoureuse, It is languorous ecstasy,
C’est la fatigue amoureuse, It is the fatigue of love,64

which is closely reflected by Fauré in his ending of both lines with a falling
major third. Fauré takes the tone of his setting from this opening.
Characteristically, Debussy fragments the opening lines by differentiating
‘langoureuse’ and ‘amoureuse’, setting the latter to an erotic descending
156 Simon Trezise

Example 7.3 (a) Fauré, Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’, Op. 58 No. 5, ‘C’est l’exstase’, bars 2–7
(b) Debussy, Ariettes oubliées, ‘C’est l’extase’, bars 3–9

semitone figure. This, in microcosm, offers an insight into the mélodies of

the two composers, for while Fauré seems to create his songs out of a single
affect, Debussy picks the poem apart, responding to individual lines with
greater specificity. Debussy’s development of a kind of ‘moment’ form is
vividly characterised by Lockspeiser, who writes of his last set of songs,
Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913): ‘[they consist] of an endless
succession of tiny musical images – some no more than a trill, an arpeggio,
or an unexpected change of rhythm’.65 Fauré is fast detaching himself from
the harmony of his more conservative contemporaries in ‘C’est l’extase’, but
retaining dominant–tonic progressions at key points of articulation. Like
him, Debussy retains the appearances of a key, E major, in that we find
punctuating chords on the dominant and tonic, but here all resemblance to
Fauré ends, for whereas we still find Fauré’s harmony informed by tonal
voice leading, Debussy’s generally is not.66
Fauré confined himself to four cycles in his final period: La chanson d’Ève
(1910), Le jardin clos (1914), Mirages (1919) and L’horizon chimérique (1921).
And the history of French song does not stop with Debussy and Fauré; Roussel,
Poulenc, Ravel and others carried the torch well into the twentieth century.

Conclusion
It seems extraordinary that some writers can still write begrudgingly of the
music of this period. Louise Cuyler patronises Saint-Saëns’s Third
Symphony as ‘a pleasant novelty’ and bemoans Franck’s Symphony’s
‘excessive length . . . tiresome repetition and interminable sequential pro-
cedures’.67 Charles Rosen and Carl Dahlhaus were as bad. Martin Cooper,
many years previously, set a different tone, as Jonathan Dunsby and
Richard Taruskin have done in recent years. Apart from Debussy and
Ravel, it seems, however, that Franck, Saint-Saëns, Fauré and many con-
temporaries still have to struggle for recognition. For those who engage with
157 Renaissance and change, 1848 to the death of Debussy
it, this emerges as an immensely satisfying period in French cultural history,
when music soared freely with the other arts.
Notes
1 Camille Saint-Saëns, ‘Charles Gounod’, in
Camille Saint-Saëns on Music and
Musicians, ed. and trans. Roger Nichols
(Oxford University Press, 2008), 117–21.
2 Charles J. Hall (ed.), A Nineteenth-Century
Musical Chronicle: Events, 1800–1899 (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 201.
3 Beatrix Borchard, ‘Viardot, Pauline’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
4 Saint-Saëns, ‘Charles Gounod’, 121.
5 See Barbara L. Kelly, ‘Ravel, (Joseph)
Maurice’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music
Online (accessed 22 May 2014); and
Robert Orledge, Gabriel Fauré, rev. edn
(London: Eulenburg, 1983), 21–2.
6 Orledge, Gabriel Fauré, 22–3.
7 Katharine Ellis, Interpreting the Musical
Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century
France (Oxford University Press, 2005), 72–3.
8 Norman Demuth, Vincent d’Indy,
1851–1931: Champion of Classicism (London:
Rockliff, 1951), 13–14.
9 See Katharine Ellis, ‘Defining Palestrina’, in
Interpreting the Musical Past, 179–207.
10 Otto Luening, ‘Varèse and the Schola
Cantorum, Busoni and New York’,
Contemporary Music Review, 23 (2004), 13.
11 David Gilbert, ‘Prix de Rome’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
12 See Alexandre Dratwicki, ‘Les “Envois de
Rome” des compositeurs pensionnaires de la
Villa Médicis, 1804–1914’, Revue de
musicologie, 91 (2005), 99–193.
13 D. Kern Holoman, The Société des Concerts
du Conservatoire, 1828–1967 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2004), 524.
14 See too D. Kern Holoman, The Société des
Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828–1967, http://
hector.ucdavis.edu/sdc/ (accessed 22 May
2014).
15 Holoman, The Société des Concerts, 91.
16 Elisabeth Bernard, ‘Jules Pasdeloup et les
concerts populaires’, Revue de musicologie,
57 (1971), 150–78.
17 James Harding, ‘Paris: opera reigns
supreme’, in Jim Samson (ed.), The Late
Romantic Era: From the Mid-19th Century to
World War I (London: Macmillan, 1991),
115–16.
18 Holoman, The Société des Concerts du
Conservatoire, 257.
19 Teresa Davidian, ‘Debussy, d’Indy and the
Société Nationale’, Journal of Musicological
Research, 11 (1991), 286–7.
20 James Harding, Saint-Saëns and his Circle
(London: Chapman & Hall, 1965), 174.
21 Davidian, ‘Debussy, d’Indy and the Société
Nationale’, 288.
22 Annegret Fauser, Musical Encounters at the
1889 Paris World’s Fair (University of
Rochester Press, 2005), 1.
23 Pierre Lasserre, L’esprit de la musique
française (de Rameau à l’invasion
wagnérienne) (Paris: Payot, 1917). In English
this became The Spirit of French Music, trans.
Denis Turner (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner & Co., 1921).
24 Lasserre, The Spirit of French Music, 203.
25 D. Hampton Morris, A Descriptive Study
of the Periodical Revue Wagnérienne
Concerning Richard Wagner (Lewiston, NY:
Edwin Mellen Press, 2002), 79–80.
26 See, for example, Robin Holloway, Debussy
and Wagner (London: Eulenburg, 1979).
27 Martin Cooper, French Music from the
Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré (Oxford
University Press, 1951), 31.
28 Harding, Saint-Saëns and his Circle,
168–70.
29 Ibid., 49, 83–4.
30 There is an excellent discussion of the links
between Saint-Saëns and Fauré’s music in The
Correspondence of Camille Saint-Saëns and
Gabriel Fauré, ed. Jean-Michel Nectoux, trans.
J. Barrie Jones (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004),
20–7.
31 Jean-Michel Nectoux, ‘Fauré, Gabriel’,
Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online
(accessed 22 May 2014).
32 An illustrated chronology of Debussy’s life
is located at www.debussy.fr/encd/bio/
bio1_62-82.php (accessed 22 May 2014).
33 For complete concert listings of the Société
Nationale and Société Musicale
Indépendante, see Michel Duchesneau,
L’avant-garde musicale et ses sociétés à Paris
de 1871 à 1939 (Sprimont: Mardaga, 1997),
225–327.
34 See Roy Howat, Debussy in Proportion: A
Musical Analysis (Cambridge University Press,
1983).
35 Richard S. Parks, The Music of Claude
Debussy (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1989), 93–8.
158 Simon Trezise
36 For a survey of chamber music in this
period, see Joël-Marie Fauquet, ‘Chamber
music in France from Cherubini to Debussy’,
in Stephen E. Hefling (ed.), Nineteenth-
Century Chamber Music (New York: Schirmer,
1998), 287–314; Serge Gut and
Danièle Pistone, La musique de chambre en
France de 1870 à 1918 (Paris: Champion,
1978).
37 See Fauquet, ‘Chamber music in France’,
291–302, 307–11.
38 Ibid., 307.
39 Orledge, Gabriel Fauré, 61.
40 Stephen Studd, Saint-Saëns: A Critical
Biography (London: Cygnus Arts, 1999), 136.
41 For a detailed study of modal usage in
French music, see Henri Gonnard, La musique
modale en France de Berlioz à Debussy (Paris:
Champion, 2000).
42 Lockspeiser is quoting a letter to Robert
Godet of 4 September 1916: Debussy, The
Master Musicians, rev. edn (London: Dent,
1980), 179–80.
43 Parks, The Music of Debussy, 126.
44 For a detailed study of Debussy’s late style,
see Marianne Wheeldon, Debussy’s Late Style
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2009).
45 Simon-Pierre Perret and Marie-Laure
Ragot, Paul Dukas (Paris: Fayard, 2007),
416–17.
46 Rollo Myers, Emmanuel Chabrier and his
Circle (London: Dent, 1969), 33.
47 Charles Gounod, Autobiographical
Reminiscences, with Family Letters and Notes
on Music, trans. W. Hely Hutchinson (New
York: Da Capo, 1970), 62.
48 James Harding, Gounod (London: Allen
and Unwin, 1973), 90.
49 See Brian Hart, ‘The French symphony’, in
A. Peter Brown and Brian Hart (eds), The
Symphonic Repertoire, vol. IIIB: The European
Symphony from ca. 1800 to ca. 1930: Great
Britain, Russia, and France (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2008), 562–5.
50 Saint-Saëns’s programme note is
reproduced in ibid., 566–70.
51 For a detailed reading of the symphony, see
ibid., 565–82.
52 Franck’s concert note is given in ibid., 594–6.
53 Timothy Jones, ‘Nineteenth-century
orchestral and chamber music’, in Richard
Langham Smith and Caroline Potter (eds),
French Music since Berlioz (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006), 84.
54 Hart, ‘The French symphony’, 596.
55 See ibid., 611–36.
56 Malcolm MacDonald, ‘Magnard, (Lucien
Denis Gabriel) Albéric’, Grove Music Online,
Oxford Music Online (accessed 22 May 2014).
57 Lockspeiser, Debussy, 185.
58 William W. Austin (ed.), Claude Debussy,
Prelude to ‘The Afternoon of a Faun’: An
Authoritative Score, Mallarmé’s Poem,
Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism and
Analysis, Norton Critical Scores (New York:
Norton, 1970), 71–5.
59 Pierre Boulez, ‘Entries for a musical
encyclopaedia’, in Stocktakings from an
Apprenticeship, ed. Paule Thévenin, trans.
Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991), 267.
60 Herbert Eimert, ‘Debussy’s “Jeux”’, Die
Reihe, 5 (1961), 4, 19, 22.
61 Michael Stegemann, Camille Saint-Saëns
and the French Solo Concerto from 1850 to
1920, trans. Ann C. Sherwin (Portland, OR:
Amadeus, 1991), 284–5.
62 David Tunley and Frits Noske, ‘Mélodie’,
Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online
(accessed 22 May 2014).
63 Graham Johnson, Gabriel Fauré: The Songs
and their Poets (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009),
63–4.
64 Translation by Arachne, http://bonne-
chanson.blogspot.com/2009/11/cest-lextase.
html (accessed 22 May 2014).
65 Lockspeiser, Debussy, 140–1.
66 For a detailed discussion of the two settings
see Arthur B. Wenk, Claude Debussy and the
Poets (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976), 42–50.
67 Louise Cuyler, The Symphony (Warren,
MI: Harmonie Park, 1995), 150, 153.
 8 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945
andy fry

Background
A disproportionate amount of the French music performed today dates
from the thirty-odd years between the start of one world war and the end
of another. Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963),
Arthur Honegger (1892–1955) and even Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) are
familiar to most listeners, not forgetting that many popular works of Igor
Stravinsky (1882–1971) were written in France, for France. If our sense of
German music is determined above all in the nineteenth century, our idea
of musical Frenchness may come rather from the early twentieth, albeit
now challenged – and complemented – by our increasing awareness of the
French Baroque. This accessibility (in both senses) extends back to the fin
de siècle; but if it stretches to the post-Second World War years, it does so
primarily through the music of composers already active before the war.
Even so, how can we sum up a period embracing works as diverse as Le
boeuf sur le toit (1919) by Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) and Messiaen’s
Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941), or Stravinsky’s Symphonie de
psaumes (1930) and Honegger’s Pacific 231 (1923)? Modernity and time-
lessness, ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures, harmony and discord – all seem to come
up against each other in this extraordinarily diverse repertoire. This was,
of course, a tumultuous period, even in the context of France’s often
tumultuous history. Aside from two world wars (the second of which
found the country occupied and divided) and the concomitant loss of
life and depletion of resources, there was social upheaval and political
unrest even in times of peace. We should expect this to rub off, to some
degree, on the music of the period, and particularly to be revealed in its
musical culture. But should we not also imagine that a certain common-
ality of purpose, a few shared values, might emerge in these troubled
times?
Our perspective is skewed by the passing of time. Scanning the chro-
nology in the contemporary critic René Dumesnil’s La musique en France
entre les deux guerres, 1919–1939 (1946), for example, is a mildly discon-
certing experience: he lists more composers and works that are forgotten
than are remembered. The same goes for Paul Landormy’s La musique
française après Debussy (1943), despite its initial focus on routes to and
[159]
160 Andy Fry

from Les Six. This short chapter is not the place to rediscover music that,
for better or worse, has fallen out of the repertoire over the intervening
decades. But such books usefully remind us that ‘great works’ and ‘great
composers’ are made in particular musical cultures and institutional
contexts, ones whose evolution is far steadier than a history of stylistic
innovation and aesthetic revolution would suppose.1 Plus ça change, plus
c’est la même chose.
So I want cautiously to retain a sense of a national tradition here, while
seeking to relocate some well-loved music in its context. Without under-
estimating the disagreement and sometimes disdain that emerged in
interactions of composers and their supporters, I prefer to emphasise
their often unexpected alliances and agreements. This is a historiograph-
ical decision, of course, a choice made among the narratives available. But
it is one that seeks to take advantage of the limitations of space to consider
this vibrant and much-discussed period in terms of continuity as well as
change.

The Parade ground

The First World War, as later the Nazi occupation, is commonly imagined
as a time in which musical activity must have ground to a halt. In fact, after
a brief hiatus at the outbreak of conflict, cultural life resumed in a modified
yet recognisable form. Questions about the seemliness of performing
during the conflict faded as the war’s longevity became clear. Concerts
were defended in terms of their power to raise morale, employment and
taxes. By the spring of 1915, most theatres in Paris had reopened, although
the most prestigious, the Opéra, did not begin performances until the end
of the year. While the Colonne and Lamoureux orchestras combined their
remaining personnel into one ensemble, those of the Société des Concerts
formed the core of the orchestra for the patriotic Matinées Nationales held
on Sundays in the huge amphitheatre of the Sorbonne.2 Although Fauré
was the conciliatory president of both the Société Nationale and the Société
Musicale Indépendante, these composers’ societies were unable to set aside
their differences: refusing to combine their efforts, they could not offer
concerts at all until 1917, and then did so intermittently.3 Not for everyone,
then, the truce (agreed by political parties in support of the war) known as
the union sacrée.
Programming too was subject to some review. In 1916, a Ligue pour la
Défense de la Musique Française, which sought to ban the performance of
German music still in copyright, was established by the critic Charles Tenroc;
Saint-Saëns, d’Indy and Charpentier were named among its honorary
161 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

presidents. On the other hand, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and others refused to
join; recent research by Rachel Moore suggests that the league’s impact may
have been minimal.4 The same might be said for Saint-Saëns’s infamous
condemnation of the domination of German music, Germanophilie (1916),
the work of a seventy-nine-year-old composer sounding some vitriolic
views on the noisy battlefield of propaganda.5 In practice, the effect of all
this on repertoire was largely limited to Wagner, whose music and ideas
were sufficiently controversial to see him withdrawn from programmes.6 In
the first season of performances, Moore has shown, German music was
avoided altogether, but that restriction gradually passed as a narrative of the
universality of classical masterworks re-emerged.7
The relationship between music and politics during the war was thus
complex and contested. French orchestras went on state-sponsored tours
to neutral or allied countries, performing Beethoven alongside French and
Russian works; one even performed Wagner abroad.8 At the same time,
‘national’ French editions of German music were created to replace ‘enemy’
ones; and concerts of modern French works and Austro-German classics
were often framed not just by choruses of La Marseillaise but also by
patriotic speeches.9 Such uneasy intersections of verbal rhetoric and musi-
cal practice would be repeated many times over subsequent decades.
In this somewhat austere context, it is conventional to locate the
beginning of a new, irreverent sensibility in the ballet Parade (1917) by
Erik Satie (1866–1925). It is not difficult to see why. Parade famously
brought together figures who were – or would go on to be – leaders in their
respective fields: Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) as set and costume designer,
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) as scenarist and Léonide Massine (1896–1979)
as choreographer (and dancer). It also constituted the latest succès de
scandale of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, successfully updating the
company’s exotic-cum-primitivist pre-war repertoire (whose last mani-
festation had been Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, 1913) into what
would become known as the esprit nouveau.
Cocteau’s scenario itself seems to thematise questions of modern art’s
relationship to its audience. The parade in question is an impromptu outdoor
preview of a show, performed to drum up an audience. But the entertainers
(a Chinese conjurer, an American girl and some acrobats) are so good
that passers-by believe they have seen the performance gratis. Meanwhile,
the managers pace anxiously, unable to persuade people to come inside the
theatre. Thus Cocteau’s Parade is less a show-within-a-show (a familiar
enough device) than a no-show-within-a-show: a performance of the public’s
self-absorption and misunderstanding, around an empty core.10 This sce-
nario replicated itself within the elegant Théâtre du Châtelet, where the
premiere of Parade inspired the audience’s irritation and confusion.
162 Andy Fry

Satie’s music did nothing to assuage concerns about the ballet. Although
scored for full orchestra, it drew heavily on popular idioms of the day,
seeming to blur the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, between what
was allowed into a respectable theatre and what was left outside. To make
matters worse, Cocteau had added a number of noisemakers, such as a
typewriter and a foghorn; these factors combined to justify the work’s
description as a ballet réaliste. Or even sur-réaliste, for this was the word
coined by the celebrated modernist poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)
to describe the alliance of sets, costumes and choreography that transformed
the everyday into the fantastical. Importantly, though, Apollinaire also found
the music ‘astonishingly expressive . . . so clean-cut and so simple that it
mirrors the marvelously lucid spirit of France itself’, thus tying Parade at once
to the esprit nouveau and to French tradition.11
Certainly, if the music of Parade is irreverent, it is a carefully con-
structed irreverence. The one-act ballet comprises five (later six) sections:
a prelude and a coda surrounding numbers for the Chinese conjurer, the
American girl and the acrobats (followed, in the final version for a 1919
revival, by reprises of each). A series of mirrors are embedded: in each
section, the performers enter and exit to the same music; and the opening
‘curtain’ and managers’ entrance music is repeated in reverse order for
their exit and the final curtain.12 At the very centre, the American girl’s
music derives from ragtime. This was not in itself a novelty, given that both
Debussy and Satie himself had drawn on it some years earlier. But Satie
went one further in Parade by parodying a specific tune, Irving Berlin’s
‘That Mysterious Rag’, whose rhythmic structure is replicated more or less
exactly, while its melody is adapted, and its harmony re- or misdirected.
Satie shapes the rag into a ternary form, frames it with the American girl’s
entrance and exit music, and locates it in the middle of the third section of
the original five.13 As was Satie’s practice, then, patterns and numerical
relations aspire to a medieval level of intricacy and, similarly, are seen more
than they are heard.

At sixes and sevens

In retrospect, this revolution, if such it was, had been heavily trailed. Satie
was not of the same generation as his bright young collaborators, or of the
composers of Les Six with whom he would soon be associated. Until
recently, however, he had been a rather obscure figure, eking out a living
as a cabaret pianist at Le Chat Noir and other venues in the bohemian
quartier of Montmartre. Satie was not untrained, as is sometimes imag-
ined: he studied lackadaisically at the Paris Conservatoire for a number of
163 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

years before he was expelled. Much later, in 1905, he took himself back to
school at the (still new) Schola Cantorum and worked to improve his
technique in the classes of d’Indy and Albert Roussel (1869–1937), Satie’s
junior by three years.
Many of Satie’s most well-known pieces date from the interim years,
yet they made almost no impact until they were (re)published in the 1910s.
If there is a certain naivety to such piano miniatures as Trois gnossiennes
(1890–3), Pièces froides (1897) and Trois morceaux en forme de poire for
piano duet (1903), with their sparse textures, odd harmonies and disap-
pearing metres and bar lines, it is a deliberate naivety, a refusal of conven-
tional musical codes rather than a lack of awareness of them.
Recognition as a composer was slow in coming for Satie, though his
friend Debussy orchestrated two of the Gymnopédies (1888) as early as
1896. His breakthrough finally came in 1911 when, in swift succession,
Ravel performed a number of Satie’s early piano pieces at a concert of the
new Société Musicale Indépendante, Debussy conducted his orchestra-
tions of the Gymnopédies at one of the Cercle Musical, and Satie began to
receive favourable notices in the musical press; publications of old and
new pieces soon followed. In 1913, Satie met the artist Valentine Gross
(Valentine Hugo) and, through her, Lucien Vogel, who commissioned the
extraordinary set of piano pieces Sports et divertissements (1914); in 1915
Gross introduced Satie to Cocteau, hence setting in motion Parade.14
Although other important works would follow (the oratorio Socrate,
1918; the ballets Mercure and Relâche, both 1924), Satie’s growing repu-
tation over the next few years arguably owed less to his new music than it
did to his social cachet and adoption as forefather by a younger generation
of composers. Chief among these were the members of Les Six, Georges
Auric (1899–1983), Louis Durey (1888–1979), Honegger, Milhaud,
Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983) – a group whose aesthetic
congruity and collaborative output must not be overstated, but whose
interaction and association should not be doubted.
Les Six’s nebulous origins are located among the composers who paid
tribute to Satie in a series of concerts after the success of Parade: first
Auric, Durey and Honegger, then Tailleferre and Poulenc, but not yet
Milhaud (who did not return to Paris from Brazil until 1919). At this
point, the group also included others such as Jean Roger-Ducasse
(1873–1954) and Alexis Roland-Manuel (1891–1966), a loose assembly
of Satie’s acolytes, including some performers and other artists, whom he
referred to as ‘Les Nouveaux Jeunes’.15 Anxious to demonstrate his cre-
dentials as an impresario as well as a dramatist, Cocteau subsequently took
some of the young composers under his wing and arranged for a sympa-
thetic journalist, Henri Collet, to offer some free publicity. The group so
164 Andy Fry

defined collaborated on only two works, the Album des six for piano (1920)
and the ballet Les mariés de la tour Eiffel (1921), by which time Durey had
already deserted.16
If Cocteau had yet to receive the acclaim he desired as a writer and a
dramatist, his work as a propagandist for the cause of a chic avant-garde
attracted a lot of attention. In particular, his pamphlet Le coq et l’arlequin
(1918) sought to define a modern aesthetic, ostensibly on the model of
Satie. Here, Cocteau contrasts Satie’s linear precision with the ‘impres-
sionist’ haze of Debussy, now cast as a Russophile Wagnerian: ‘Debussy
missed his way because he fell from the German frying-pan into the
Russian fire. . . . Satie remains intact. Hear his “Gymnopédies”, so clear
in their form and melancholy feeling. Debussy orchestrates them, confuses
them . . . The thick lightning-pierced fog of Bayreuth becomes a thin
snowy mist flecked with impressionist sunshine.’17 More a series of aphor-
isms than a reasoned argument, Le coq is at once progressively cosmopol-
itan in engaging with foreign and popular music – ‘Impressionist music is
outdone . . . by a certain American dance which I saw at the Casino de
Paris’ – and oddly provincial in its insistence that ‘The music I want must be
French, of France.’18 Cocteau’s dismissal of everything boche (German, i.e.
Kraut) as bombastic and overblown is hardly surprising, given the date and
France’s recent history of seeking to escape German influence; but it finds
the self-proclaimed avant-garde writer in some curiously conservative
company. He writes: ‘To defend Wagner merely because Saint-Saëns attacks
him is too simple. We must cry “Down with Wagner!” together with Saint-
Saëns. That requires real courage.’19
Similarly, Cocteau’s engagement with popular culture is a double-
edged sword. Images of his circle ‘slumming’ to jazz at the nightclub Le
Boeuf sur le Toit capture a moment in fashionable Parisian society, but Le
coq et l’arlequin makes a strict division between these sources of inspira-
tion and musicians’ own artistic outputs: ‘The music-hall, the circus, and
American negro-bands, all these things fertilise an artist just as life does’,
Cocteau says, but ‘These entertainments are not art. They stimulate in the
same way as machinery, animals, natural scenery, or danger.’20 It is a sign
of weakness to derive one art from another, and Cocteau warns against it in
no uncertain terms: ‘DO NOT DERIVE ART FROM ART.’21 Ultimately,
then, popular entertainment is of interest only in as much as it helps to rid
France of the perceived pretensions of German metaphysics and their
realisation in overblown Romantic art: ‘what we need is a music of the
earth, every-day music’.22
As if in response to Apollinaire’s characterisation of Parade, Cocteau’s
scenario of Les mariés de la tour Eiffel transformed the everyday further
towards the surreal. A photographer seeks to capture wedding guests on
165 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

film, but his camera instead releases the prey it caught earlier, including an
ostrich, a bathing beauty and a lion (who eats a guest), while two mechan-
ical voices issue instructions. Les mariés was premiered by the Ballets
Suédois, a company set up by Rolf de Maré (1888–1964) and his star
dancer and choreographer Jean Börlin (1893–1930) in ostentatious com-
petition with the Ballets Russes. During their short existence from 1920 to
1925, the Ballets Suédois introduced, always at the neoclassical Théâtre
des Champs-Élysées, any number of avant-garde works. In addition to Les
mariés came ballets by individual members of Les Six: Milhaud (L’homme
et son désir, 1921; La création du monde, 1923), Honegger (Skating Rink,
1922) and Tailleferre (Marchand d’oiseaux, 1923), as well, most contro-
versially, as by Satie (Relâche, 1924).23
An African creation myth danced to a jazzy score, Milhaud’s La
création du monde is at once the most successful and the most problem-
atic outcome of Les Six’s encounter with American popular music. While
interpretations – musical, theatrical and aesthetic – are several, this
piece, with its disciplined jazz fugue, is certainly not marked by
Dionysian abandon. On the contrary, in both its musical form and its
geometrical set and ‘dancers’, it is a work concerned, as Cocteau would
have it, with measured statement and classical proportion. Nor does it
leave much room for the performers’ expression. The score, even when it
gestures towards improvisation, is played exactly as written, without any
unconventional techniques. In Jean Börlin’s production, with scenery
and costumes by the modernist artist Fernand Léger (1881–1955), the
dancers were even further removed, hidden behind huge cut-outs
that masked not just their faces but also their bodies. While Le sacre
brings the ‘primitive’ to life (and then death), La création holds it at a
cool distance.24
If the circumstances of Les Six’s founding are uncertain, those of its
quick demise are less clear still. Four members – Honegger, Milhaud,
Poulenc and Auric – would go on to become major composers in the
decades that followed, Auric primarily in music for film. Satie himself
soon divided the group in two, complaining that Durey, Honegger and
Tailleferre did not represent the new spirit at all and were ‘pure “impres-
sionnistes” ’.25 He became associated instead with another group of young
composers, known as the École d’Arcueil, after the suburb of Paris where
Satie lived. All students of Charles Koechlin (1867–1950), they were Henri
Cliquet (1894–1963), Roger Désormière (1898–1963), Maxime Jacob
(1906–77) and Henri Sauguet (1901–89), of whom only Sauguet was ever
especially celebrated as a composer. Despite all the twists and turns of the
story, then, Les Six has remained a symbol of an aesthetic that was shared by
few if any of its members and which they played little role in devising.
166 Andy Fry

A Russian in Paris
If Wagner weighed heavily on French music across the turn of the century,
the composer who caused the most soul-searching (and head-scratching)
in the 1920s and 1930s was Stravinsky. Even as the conventional sketch of
his career in three main periods – Russian folklore-ism, neoclassicism and
serialism – has faded to reveal the common core underlying superficial
difference, the stylistic shift from, say, L’oiseau de feu (1910) to the Octet
(1923) is profound. The rhapsodic structure and colourful orchestration
of the earlier ballet are replaced by the cold, precise tone of eight wind
players who are asked not to interpret but merely to execute the notes on
the page. The ‘retour à Bach’ was an efficient motto for the new aesthetic,
but this music lacks both the contrapuntal complexity and the harmonic
drive of the German Baroque. More germane is the stance of ‘objective’
craftsmanship and quasi-religious restraint that Stravinsky did much to
cultivate, in contrast to the ‘decadent’ self-expression of Romanticism, and
its extension into the self-proclaimed innovation of the avant-garde.
A great deal of scholarly energy has been expended in seeking to
define twentieth-century neoclassicism – what it is and, perhaps harder,
what it is not. The trouble is that composers had always modelled
compositions on earlier styles or made more or less obvious reference
to them in their works; the turn of the twentieth century, in particular,
overflows with examples. But, as Richard Taruskin has written, ‘stylistic
“retrospectivism” as such was neither a necessary component of neo-
classicism or, when present, a sufficient one’.26 According to his inter-
pretation, Stravinsky’s Octet is a neoclassical piece, though it has no
historical model (and, at least in the finale, it obviously draws on a recent
one – ragtime).27 More surprisingly, Pulcinella (1920), a ballet score that
Stravinsky arranged from eighteenth-century Italian manuscripts, is not
neoclassical, even though it is obviously more than a simple completion or
pastiche (just ask the solo trombonist).
Pulcinella had been another commission from Diaghilev for the Ballets
Russes, this time to craft a ballet from some fragments of Giovanni
Battista Pergolesi (1710–36) – or, rather, from manuscripts then believed
to be Pergolesi – that Diaghilev had located in Naples.28 An old story tells
how Stravinsky, initially reluctant, finally became so absorbed in the mate-
rials that he made an ironic reinvention of that style his own for the
subsequent several decades. Taruskin argues, by contrast, that Stravinsky
approached the arrangement in workmanlike fashion after some lean
years; he ‘spiked’ the harmony with dissonant notes which undercut rather
than conceded tonal function. Pulcinella was, in Taruskin’s words, ‘nothing
to do with [Stravinsky’s] own inclinations at the time’.29 This may not have
167 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

been how it seemed to the notoriously unreliable composer in his later

years – ‘Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through
which the whole of my late work became possible’30 – but it is a convincing
argument. Ahead of Stravinsky, Diaghilev had, once again, taken the French
pulse.31
Stravinsky’s real turning point, in the eyes of Taruskin and others, was
Mavra (1922), a one-act opéra bouffe. The story, such as it is, concerns a
girl who sneaks her lover into the house disguised as a maid, only for him
to be discovered shaving. Although set in Russia (it is based on Pushkin),
Mavra is far from the ritualistic, peasant Russia of Le sacre or Les noces
(final version, 1923): the opera’s is, rather, a domesticated, bourgeois Russia,
as assimilated to and by Europe. Several dance types (polonaise, polka,
waltz, ragtime) imbue its seven short numbers, which are interspersed
with dialogue, as do gypsy and Russian folksong, in knowing reference to
Stravinsky’s own folk style. Essential to the effect, sections can simply close
with a perfect cadence, in true Classical fashion, establishing formal order
within the trivial drama. Where in Pulcinella Stravinsky had subtly sub-
verted tonal function, in Mavra he plays with rather than against such
logic.32
Over the next few years, the defining works of Stravinsky’s neoclassi-
cism (the Octet; Concerto for Piano and Winds, 1924; Sonata for Piano,
1924, etc.) tumbled out, with their short forms, precise timbres and tonal
(though not unambiguous) harmonies. The aesthetic certainly overlapped
with that promoted by Cocteau with and for Les Six, but it was not the
same: at least in Stravinsky’s head, his was not an art of the everyday, but
an art for all time, consciously striving to connect itself (and him) to the
great European tradition. All the same, the fact that both Stravinsky and
his music retained an unmistakable element of chic did neither his pocket
nor his ego any harm.
Quite how far Stravinsky had travelled was shown when he returned to
ritual of a sort in the opera-oratorio Oedipus rex (1927). A strange and
arresting hybrid, Oedipus comprises a libretto by Cocteau, translated into
Latin but interspersed with vernacular narration, such that the piece
alternates between describing, representing and enacting the drama. The
archaic language, the ritualistic repetitions of the music and the statuesque
movements required of the singers combine to hold the whole in a
symbolic realm – though not so securely as to rob it of dramatic power.
It is as if Stravinsky were revisiting Le sacre or Les noces with a new musical
language – one rooted less in Rimsky-Korsakov and Russian musical
tradition and more in the Mozart, Berlioz and Verdi of their Requiems.
This reconnection to the European tradition was precisely what Stravinsky
sought, and thought he needed, in interwar France.33
168 Andy Fry

Older and wiser?

Satie and Stravinsky (only sixteen years apart) were far from the only
composers whose careers bridged the First World War. A number of
others – notably Paul Dukas (1865–1935), Koechlin, Roussel, Florent
Schmitt (1870–1958) and Roger-Ducasse – would come to occupy the
centre ground as composers, teachers and critics in the 1920s and 1930s.
But following the deaths of Debussy in 1918, Saint-Saëns in 1921, Fauré in
1924 and Satie in 1925 – d’Indy would cling on until 1931 and Widor to
1937 – the composer best able to stand as a French challenger to the pre-
eminence of Stravinsky was still Ravel.
Frequently paired with Debussy as an ‘impressionist’ (the term fits him
even less well than the older composer), Ravel is in some ways better
considered alongside Stravinsky, and not only because these two were
closer in age. Both composers wrote a substantial part of their music
for the theatre, the ballet in particular; both have an eclectic but immedi-
ately recognisable style, of extraordinary technical sophistication; and
both had been members of the artistic group Les Apaches before the
war, when they had even collaborated on an orchestration for the
Ballets Russes. On the other hand, the two composers since that time
had been moving apart. Ravel could not accept Stravinsky’s apparent
volte-face in Mavra, and Stravinsky famously snubbed Ravel – impugning
both his national identity and his music’s spontaneity – by calling him a
‘Swiss clockmaker’. For sure, Ravel’s compositions of the post-war years
retain a more straightforward connection to his earlier works, and to
those of the preceding generation, than is the case with Stravinsky; but
his style, too, continued to evolve, and he was far from impervious to the
charms of neoclassicism.
As Barbara Kelly has shown particularly well, a strong vein of
Classicism was always found in Ravel’s music, and he naturally modelled
his compositions on those of others, while also reinventing them.34 Thus
even such works as Ravel’s two piano concertos retain close ties to the
Classical tradition, despite their obvious references to jazz, and without
assuming Stravinsky’s ‘frostiness’. These popular pieces are unusual in
Ravel’s (relatively small) oeuvre, which in addition to the theatre is domi-
nated by music for salon (chamber music, songs and solo piano pieces, often
later orchestrated). Both date from the turn of the 1930s, Ravel interrupting
work on the Piano Concerto in G (1929–31) to write the Piano Concerto for
the Left Hand (1929–30) for Paul Wittgenstein. Having taken a while to
warm to it, Wittgenstein finally premiered it in Vienna in January 1932, the
month in which Marguerite Long gave the first performance of the Piano
Concerto in G in Paris.
169 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

One way of hearing these late pieces is as a synthesis of trends in Ravel’s

music of the preceding several decades, and indeed of those in French
music tout court. The single-movement Concerto for the Left Hand, for
example, begins hushed with contrabassoon over cellos and basses, which
is reminiscent of the two bassoons over divided basses that initiate La valse
(1920) and, before that, of the lone bassoon joined by winds of Stravinsky’s
Le sacre. A melancholy (bluesy?) new melody in the horn suggests Ravel’s
Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899, orchestrated 1910). An orchestral
tutti quickly builds, and momentarily one thinks of Daphnis et Chloé
(1912) or even Debussy’s La mer (1905). As soon as the soloist enters
unaccompanied, however, we are into the virtuosic, exotically harmonised
piano writing of the French tradition dating back at least to Emmanuel
Chabrier (1841–94). And this despite the fact that Ravel had only half as
many digits available to him – a situation he addresses not by writing in a
more limited register, or in fewer voices, but by rhythmically offsetting
lines in such a way that an athletic hand can reach them all.35
Both piano concertos reveal rather straightforwardly their debts to
jazz, reminding us of Ravel’s comic opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (1925)
and Violin Sonata (1927), as well as of Milhaud, Stravinsky and indeed
Gershwin. To follow Ravel’s own commentary, however, this observation
is less interesting in itself than in terms of the synthesis he achieves with
other styles. ‘What is being written today without the influence of jazz?’ he
asked: ‘It is not the only influence, however: in the concerto [in G] one also
finds bass accompaniments from the time of Bach, and a melody that
recalls Mozart, the Mozart of the Clarinet Quintet, which by the way is the
most beautiful piece he wrote.’36 Elsewhere Ravel described the work as a
divertissement ‘very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-
Saëns’.37 The Mozartian melody in question is the ostensibly simple one at
the heart of the restrained second movement of the concerto, which is
modelled on the slow movement of the Clarinet Quintet: in each case, the
composers extend the melodic line to an inordinate length without once
repeating themselves, or giving any inkling of the struggle involved. Ravel
put it plainly: ‘That flowing phrase! . . . It nearly killed me!’38
What is disarming about Ravel’s music of this period, then, is that it
synthesises multiple sources while barely registering their incongruity
and without a hint of parody. If Stravinsky’s neoclassicism came from a
desire to make himself a European composer, and Les Six’s came, at least
in part, from a need to remove the stain of Wagnerism or so-called
Impressionism (Ravel’s included), Ravel’s was more organic, stemming
from a desire to position himself in a national lineage and to model his
work, albeit idiosyncratically, on the great composers of the past. It was
not a historicised reinvention of earlier styles, therefore, but a progressive
170 Andy Fry

‘modernization’ of them, to borrow a term from Roy Howat.39 As Kelly

writes: ‘Ravel drew unconsciously from his heritage, incorporating new
elements into an essentially diatonic and modal framework, without over-
throwing or dislocating the past.’40
The prominence in repertoire dating from the first half of the twentieth
century of ballet and various forms of ‘mixed media’ might suggest that
younger composers were not as interested as Ravel in traditional forms
like the concerto. Such an impression is a product less of the music
actually composed during the era than of those works’ respective after-
lives, however; ballet’s importance is emphasised rather than disguised by
the fact that its scores are most often heard in the concert hall. For
example, several composers wrote concertos that enabled them to develop
second careers as soloists: this was true for works of Poulenc (notably, the
Concerto for Two Pianos, 1932) and Stravinsky (Concerto for Piano and
Winds, and Capriccio, 1929). These concertos are not played nearly as
often as Ravel’s today, but their occasional revival enriches not only the
repertoire but also our understanding of the music of the period.
Opera is another case in point. It is striking both how many operas
were premiered in the interwar years and how few garnered any hold,
whether nationally or internationally. The Paris Opéra fared worst of all,
even under the benevolent and modernising leadership of Jacques Rouché,
its director from 1914 to 1945: among the operas from this period that
have stuck around, Stravinsky’s Mavra was premiered by the Ballets
Russes (albeit at the Palais Garnier, home of the Paris Opéra), while
Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges was introduced in Monte Carlo (and
then in Paris at the Opéra-Comique). The Opéra did, however, have the
dubious coup of reactionary works such as Vincent d’Indy’s La légende de
Saint Christophe (1915, first performed 1920). Aside from belated French
premieres of foreign works (of Puccini and Strauss, for example), only
Roussel’s opéra-ballet Padmâvatî (1918, first performed 1923) has limited
ongoing circulation. Large-scale opera, on the historical model of the
grand opéra cultivated at the Opéra in the nineteenth century, simply
struggled to keep up with modern aesthetic sensibilities.41
Nevertheless, many composers were concerned, obsessed even, with
adapting traditional forms to their needs and those that they perceived in
French music. Milhaud, for example, who would be enduringly frustrated
that he continued to be defined by a few early works, wrote six chamber
symphonies (1917–23) before graduating to symphonies for full orchestra
(twelve, 1939–62), as well as eighteen string quartets (1912–50, of which
Nos. 14 and 15 may be combined as an octet). He even wrote a trilogy of
opéras-minutes (L’enlèvement d’Europe, L’abandon d’Ariane, La délivrance
de Thésée, 1927): each lasts around ten minutes and took just a day to
171 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

write, and all were premiered abroad (as was his gargantuan and more or
less unperformable Christophe Colomb, 1928, premiered Berlin 1930).42 If
this might not seem a wholehearted embrace of some of the most ‘elevated’
genres of Western music, nor was it a complete rejection of them.
Honegger also wrote important works for orchestra. He, like Milhaud,
however, continues to be remembered primarily for early pieces such
as Pacific 231, his orchestral impression of a steam train (specifically one
with two axles in front, three in the middle and one at the back). Although
he protested that the title was added after the fact, it is rather hard to
hear this proto-film music in any other terms; Honegger did indeed go on
to compose for movies.43 Yet such pictorialism is rarely felt in the symph-
onies (the first written in 1929–30, the other four in 1940–50), even
those that carry titles, and is not typical of Honegger’s concert works. As
composers matured and the bluster of the immediate post-war years faded,
then, continuities with pre-war styles that had previously been hidden
re-emerged.

New gods and old ones

Accounts of music in interwar France often position the 1930s as a pointed
response to the 1920s, as if the Wall Street Crash of 1929 suddenly swept
away frivolity and cosmopolitanism, engendering a return to tradition,
religion and even reactionary politics (anticipating France’s collaboration
in the Second World War). There is an element of truth in this, of course,
but growing continuities with the pre-First World War era (as identified
above) should not automatically indicate an about-turn on the 1920s.
On the matter of a spiritual revival, the connection between music and
worship in France had never been broken, with the Schola Cantorum only
the richest of several training grounds for church musicians. If Messiaen’s
service for more than sixty years as organist at La Trinité is frequently
sounded as a sign of his anomalous commitment to the church in a secular
age, he stood in a long line of spry French organist-composers, many of
whom played until their deaths (literally so in the case of Louis Vierne
(1880–1937) at the console of Notre-Dame de Paris). As Nigel Simeone
has recounted, César Franck served at the church of Sainte-Clotilde for
more than thirty years in the late nineteenth century, his student Charles
Tournemire (1870–1939) for over forty; Widor (1844–1937) spent more
than sixty years at Saint-Sulpice, and his successor Marcel Dupré
(1886–1971) almost forty; Maurice Duruflé (1902–86) put in forty-five
years at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, and so it goes on.44 All these figures
composed prolifically, in part as a natural outgrowth of their improvisations
172 Andy Fry

and church duties. Although there is not space here to survey this grand
(if rather conventional) repertoire, this tradition provides an important
context for composers’ engagements with religious works that is too often
forgotten.
Modernist composers were increasingly drawn to sacred works,
whether through renewed faith, an abstract interest in ritual or more
earthly concerns. Stravinsky’s cunning dedication of his Symphonie de
psaumes, a commission from Serge Koussevitzky for the fiftieth anniver-
sary of his rich American orchestra – ‘This symphony composed to the
glory of GOD is dedicated to the “Boston Symphony Orchestra”’ – rather
wonderfully brings these all together. Honegger, always the most serious
of Les Six, completed a number of oratorio-like works: Le roi David (1921),
which made his international reputation; Judith (1925); and Jeanne d’Arc
au bûcher (1935). Poulenc also wrote a lot of religious music, beginning
with Litanies à la vierge noire for female chorus (1936), followed by a Mass
in G major (1937) and a number of motets. This new inclination would see
its fullest expression after the war in his Stabat mater (1951) and Gloria
(1960), as well as his opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1956), one of the
most popular of the post-war era.
The so-called return to spiritualism in 1930s France was also strongly
tinged with eclecticism. If Messiaen’s Catholic faith and his dedication to
the Catholic Church were not in doubt, nor were his interests in musics and
practices from afar, which combine to create a distinctive sound-world. This
is even more true of Messiaen’s friend André Jolivet (1905–74), whose
fascination with ritual and magic was loosely informed by anthropology
and channelled through his vivid imagination. Far less well known than
Messiaen today, Jolivet was the only student of Edgard Varèse (1883–1965),
the French-born composer who spent much of his career in the United
States. Although they worked together intensely in the early 1930s, Jolivet
was influenced less by Varèse’s compositional technique – the younger man
wrote almost no works during this time – than by his constant experimen-
tation with sound and search for new aural experiences.
Varèse lies in a different sense behind one of Jolivet’s first mature
works, Mana for piano (1935). As the story goes, on leaving France in
1933, he gave his student a curious collection of objets d’art, which Jolivet
invested with a spiritual force connecting him to his teacher.45 Each thus
spawned a movement of the suite, whose title derives from a Pacific island
term (generalised in classic anthropology) for such supernatural power.
Mana initiated what is sometimes described as Jolivet’s ‘magic’ or, better,
‘ritual’ period. While his freely atonal (though not serial) style obviously
owes a lot to the Second Viennese School, several features of the music may
be identified with French traditions of piano writing: an interest in the full
173 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

timbral and textural range of the instrument; an ‘exotic’ sound-world, even

given the predominantly atonal language, with pedal notes and modal
passages; and a dynamic (and ritualistic) use of rhythmic stasis and pro-
pulsion. In a similar vein came Cinq incantations for flute (1936), Danse
incantatoire for orchestra (1936) and Cinq danses rituelles for piano or for
orchestra (1939), which collectively established Jolivet as one of the most
distinctive voices of his generation.
In 1936, Jolivet and Messiaen became members of a group that seemed
to strike a chord. La Jeune France comprised, in addition, Yves Baudrier
(1906–88), who was its prime motivation and wrote the manifesto (but
later became a composer primarily for film), and one of his teachers, Jean-
Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908–2002), professor of counterpoint at the Schola
Cantorum. They set out their intentions in a manifesto:
As life becomes increasingly strenuous, mechanized and impersonal,
musicians ought to endeavor to contribute spiritual excitement to music
lovers . . . The aim of the group [La Jeune France] is to promote
performances of musical works which are youthful and free, standing aloof
from revolutionary slogans or academic formulas . . . [The members’]
common agreement lies in their desire to cultivate sincerity, generosity and
artistic good faith.46

Like Les Six, La Jeune France had rather convoluted beginnings, growing in
part from La Spirale, an association formed to perform and propagate new
chamber music. Where La Spirale’s concerts were notably diverse (includ-
ing whole concerts dedicated to contemporary music of the United States,
Hungary and Germany), however, the new group’s were limited, with rare
exceptions, to French composers and largely to the four members.47
Despite friendly relations and joint concerts (which continued after the
war), little actually connects the more conservative music of Baudrier and
Daniel-Lesur to that of Jolivet and Messiaen, beyond a certain seriousness
of purpose. In the literature, La Jeune France has sometimes been posi-
tioned in opposition to Les Six, but this is not the case: Tailleferre’s Ballade
for piano and orchestra (1922) was actually heard at the inaugural concert,
a ‘conscious tribute from “Les Quatre” to “Les Six”’ in the words of the
Messiaen biographers Nigel Simeone and Peter Hill; and Auric, Poulenc
and Honegger all wrote in support of the group.48 In addition, the soloist in
Tailleferre’s Ballade was its dedicatee Ricardo Viñes (1875–1943), an exact
contemporary of Ravel’s, whose works were among the many he had
premiered; and the conductor of both the first and several subsequent
Jeune France concerts was Désormière, formerly of Satie’s École d’Arcueil.
Here again, then, there are as many signs of collegiality and continuity
among generations of composers as there are of antagonism.
174 Andy Fry

Occupying time
War came to France more slowly in 1939 than it did in 1914, the official
declaration in September preceding months of the so-called ‘drôle de
guerre’ (phoney war). When the German offensive finally arrived in May
1940, troops swiftly outflanked the French to take Paris and led to sur-
render. The country was partitioned, with the north and west of France
occupied by the Nazis while the south-east was left (until November 1942)
to the puppet Vichy regime, located in the spa town 200 miles to the south.
Parisians initially fled southwards in huge numbers, but as reports came
back that life under Nazi occupation was bearable (save for certain
groups), many returned, and soon a vibrant cultural life had resumed.49
Musicians were among the many who had been called up during the
phoney war and had seen active service for the few weeks of the conflict.
Famously, Messiaen was one of the 1.5 million soldiers captured in June
1940 and taken to a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he spent almost
a year and composed Quatuor pour la fin du temps (for violin, cello,
clarinet and piano, 1940–1): not the end of time as experienced by an
incarcerated soldier, Messiaen always insisted, but as signalled by the
angel of the Apocalypse, to whose Revelation the quartet was an earnest
response. The unusual instrumentation reflects the musicians available
among fellow prisoners (the violinist Jean le Boulaire, the cellist Étienne
Pasquier and the clarinettist Henri Akoka), who premiered the work with
Messiaen in the camp. Across the quartet’s eight movements, the full
ensemble is heard somewhat rarely (though the sixth movement is in
unison throughout). This may reflect the piecemeal composition of the
work as much as the peculiarity of the ensemble, however, since the
movements for clarinet solo (No. 3), cello and piano (No. 5), violin and
piano (No. 8) and trio sans piano (No. 4) all originated prior to the
quartet’s conceptualisation as such.50
Accounts of Quatuor pour la fin du temps have typically emphasised
the remarkable conditions of its composition and premiere as the key to
unlocking its meaning. In a thought-provoking discussion, however,
Leslie Sprout follows Messiaen’s own first description, as well as early
reviews of the work, in stressing instead its distance from the war.51 In fact,
neither of the very slow duet movements, which contain the quartet’s most
heart-wrenching music, originated in the camp at all: the concluding violin
movement, ‘Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus’, derives from Messiaen’s
Diptique for organ (1930), and the central cello movement, ‘Louange à
l’éternité de Jésus’, comes, rather wonderfully, from Fêtes des belles eaux, a
piece for six ondes Martenot that Messiaen wrote to accompany a water
feature at the ‘Fêtes de la lumière’ of the 1937 Paris World’s Fair.52
175 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

Moreover, a description from the camp premiere of captured soldiers

‘divided between passionate approval and incomprehension’ sounds rather
more likely than the rapt masses of Messiaen’s own later account (‘Never
have I been listened to with such attention and such understanding’).53
For broader French audiences at the time, Sprout argues, it was not
works like Quatuor that communicated the horrors of war, but rather
those like the symphonic poem Stalag IX, ou Musique d’exil (1941) by Jean
Martinon (1910–76), with its folkloric interludes for flute, and particularly
Jolivet’s song cycle Trois complaintes du soldat (1940), which sets his own
text, written after his battalion evaded capture but lost two-thirds of its
men in the process.54 Composed for a baritone alternately representing and
describing the defeated soldier, the latter piece did not entirely reject
Jolivet’s modernist language, but it featured a direct form of address with
which, Sprout argues, audiences could identify more easily than with
Messiaen’s somewhat abstruse theological references. The second song,
‘La complainte du pont de Gien’, is also quite consonant, like a folksong
partially disfigured, and reconnects with the French song tradition inherited
from Fauré and Debussy.
Differing reactions to these wartime pieces were not simply responses
to their musical styles. According to Sprout, ‘Critics and audiences in Paris
readily accepted other modernist works as testimonials to the war, as long
as they used music to confront, not escape, the harrowing current
events.’55 Jolivet’s Trois complaintes were performed widely by Pierre
Bernac, later orchestrated by Jolivet, and both broadcast and recorded
during the war. Meanwhile, Messiaen had difficulty securing further public
performances of his Quatuor, which was not finally recorded until 1957. By
this point, Messiaen’s own liner notes emphasised the circumstances of the
piece’s composition and its premiere in front of ‘several thousand . . .
prisoners of all classes of society: peasants, workers, merchants, writers,
doctors, priests, etc.’, as if wishing on the work a greater power to speak to
ordinary people than had thus far been the case (not to mention inflating
their number, since the hall in fact held fewer than 500).56
In any case, it does no dishonour to Messiaen to observe that, within a
year of his imprisonment, he was back in Paris, in a teaching position at the
Paris Conservatoire, secured during a brief stay in Vichy.57 His new post is
symbolic both of the uneasy return to a form of normality as the occupation
wore on, and of the exceptional circumstances: although Messiaen seems to
have been in line for a position for some time, in the event he took over the
harmony class of André Bloch (1873–1960), who had been removed under
the Statut des juifs (Vichy’s self-imposed racial laws). More important than
Messiaen’s official teaching at the Conservatoire, however, were the private
classes in analysis and composition that he began to hold for a group of
176 Andy Fry

young composers known as ‘Les Flèches’ (The Arrows); his most celebrated
graduate, Pierre Boulez (b. 1925), first attended on 8 December 1944, at
which meeting Messiaen discussed Ravel’s Ma mère l’oye (1911).58 His
famous class was incorporated into the Conservatoire schedule from
1947, though officially it was in analysis and not composition.
During this period, Messiaen also completed a major exposition of his
own music, his two-volume Technique de mon langage musical (Paris,
1944), with Quatuor as the prime example. He had early on devised his
so-called seven modes of limited transposition (limited in the sense that, if
the intervallic pattern is transposed by a semitone, one soon arrives at the
same set of notes). These modes might be seen as an extension of the
principle of the whole-tone and octatonic (semitone–tone alternation)
scales already widely used in French and Russian music (Messiaen’s first
and second modes, respectively), and like those scales remove any auto-
matic gravitational pull (the dominant function of tonal harmony).59 A
similar interest in the limitation of possibilities and symmetrical rather than
linear structures lay behind Messiaen’s principal rhythmic innovation of
this period: his non-retrogradable rhythms (phrases, sometimes long,
whose rhythm – though not whose pitch – is the same read backwards as
forwards). Such features combine to make Messiaen’s music immediately
recognisable, even after limited exposure.
Although Messiaen rarely employed twelve-tone techniques, and never
did so conventionally, after the war he briefly experimented with the
serialisation of rhythm, dynamics and articulation, alongside pitch, in
his ‘Mode de valeurs et d’intensités’ (from Quatre études de rythme,
1950). His innovations were more important for his students, such as
Boulez, who took them up and extended them, than they were for
Messiaen himself, however. Indeed, Anthony Pople has noted that the
spirit and in many ways even the sound of Messiaen’s music remained
more closely connected to the generation of Debussy and Dukas
(Messiaen’s teacher) than to Les Six, who immediately preceded him.60
As we have seen above, the range of music of a Poulenc or a Honegger far
exceeds the flippancy to which descriptions of Les Six are too often limited.
Nevertheless, Messiaen’s loyalty to the music he grew up with usefully
encourages us, once more, to think in terms of continuity as well as change.
So I would like to end with a work that is as canonical as any discussed
here, but not in music history. La belle et la bête (1946) was only Cocteau’s
second film as director (after Le sang d’un poète of 1932), though he had
contributed to writing several during the war, when the French industry
was surprisingly vibrant. In film studies, it is rightly celebrated as a semi-
nal text of the fantasy genre. The music is by Georges Auric, the former
member of Les Six who, back in 1918, had been the dedicatee of Cocteau’s
177 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945

Le coq et l’arlequin. By the point of La belle, Auric had already written

more than thirty film scores, and he would finally complete well over a
hundred: if this compositional mode were taken more seriously in music
history, Auric’s would surely be considered a major twentieth-century
voice.
The score of La belle et la bête at first sounds of a piece with countless
mid-century films: it has march-like dramatic music, cymbals to the fore
and soaring romantic music, with full-blooded brass and prominent harp
glissandos. Gradually, though, we hear styles that are far less familiar, or
rather, less familiar in this context: Auric’s ‘magic’ music has learned little
from Jolivet or Messiaen, but it owes a lot to colourful French orchestral
scores from Massenet to Dukas. Most striking is the sound of the beast’s
spooky castle, complete with the female and male wordless choruses
employed evocatively by Debussy and Ravel before the First World War.
So it is hard not to hear ‘clouds, waves . . . and nocturnal scents’, possibly
even some ‘thin snowy mist flecked with impressionist sunshine’, to turn
Cocteau’s rebukes of musical impressionism in Le coq et l’harlequin
against its dedicatee (and still his collaborator, some thirty years later).61
The obvious explanation for this turnaround is that all styles sooner or
later become grist to the mill of the film composer, whose work relies upon
familiar musical associations. In plying his new trade, Auric drew on
everything he knew of his musical past. Not only Auric but also other
composers who have been discussed above, notably Honegger and
Baudrier, increasingly wrote for film in their later careers. Arguably, this
became in the twentieth century the new compositional mainstream and
an important counterpart to art music, from which it however poached
constantly. A more telling way to hear La belle’s score, then, may be as part
of France’s reckoning with history. If a younger generation of composers,
most vocally Boulez, often defined themselves in angry renunciation of the
past, an older one dealt with it more discerningly (though no less self-
servingly) by choosing what to remember.
As a survey such as this one proves, a selective memory is paradoxically
at once essential and antithetical to history, giving it shape at the expense
of detail. Composers (and those who speak for and about them) do not
simply inherit their tradition, but work to create it, crafting a past that
suits their projections for the future. We should not be at all surprised if
this craft and those projections change over time, least of all in the
turbulent twentieth century. Yet, for all that, invented traditions are
sometimes the most long-lasting and the most keenly felt. Perhaps that
is one reason why this diverse repertoire, composed in times of war and
peace, continues to sound to us so self-evidently – so self-confidently –
French.
178 Andy Fry
Notes
1 René Dumesnil, La musique en France entre
les deux guerres, 1919–1939 (Geneva: Éditions
du Milieu du Monde, 1946); Paul Landormy,
La musique française après Debussy (Paris:
Gallimard, 1943).
2 See Rachel Moore, ‘Performing propaganda:
musical life and culture in Paris, 1914–1918’
(PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of
London, 2012), 34–68, 126–74.
3 Michel Duchesneau, ‘La musique française
pendant la guerre de 1914–1918: autour de la
tentative de fusion de la Société Nationale et de
la Société Musicale Indépendante’, Revue de
musicologie, 82 (1996), 123–53;
Carlo Caballero, ‘Patriotism or nationalism?
Fauré and the Great War’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 52 (1999),
610–13. Complete concert listings for both
societies are provided in Michel Duchesneau,
L’avant-garde musicale et ses sociétés à Paris de
1871 à 1939 (Sprimont: Mardaga, 1997),
225–327.
4 Moore, ‘Performing propaganda’, 18–19.
See also Caballero, ‘Patriotism or
nationalism?’, 593–8.
5 See Moore, ‘Performing propaganda’,
94–125.
6 Marion Schmid, ‘À bas Wagner! The
French press campaign against Wagner during
World War I’, in Barbara L. Kelly (ed.), French
Music, Culture, and National Identity,
1870–1939 (University of Rochester Press,
2008), 77–91.
7 Moore, ‘Performing propaganda’, 129–32.
8 Ibid., 82–6; Caballero, ‘Patriotism or
nationalism?’, 613.
9 Moore, ‘Performing propaganda’, 175–221,
136–54.
10 On Parade, see Francis Steegmuller,
Cocteau: A Biography (London: Constable,
1986), 160–97; Nancy Perloff, Art and the
Everyday: Popular Entertainment and the
Circle of Erik Satie (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991), 112–52; and Deborah Menaker
Rothschild, Picasso’s Parade: From Street to
Stage (London: Sotheby’s Publications, 1991).
11 Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘Parade’,
programme note, 1917, in Steegmuller,
Cocteau, 513.
12 See Steven Moore Whiting, Satie the
Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall
(Oxford University Press, 1999), 309–15.
13 Robert Orledge, Satie the Composer
(Cambridge University Press, 1990), 172–5.
14 For a concise and insightful account of
Satie’s life, see Mary E. Davis, Erik Satie
(London: Reaktion Books, 2007).
15 See Robert Orledge, ‘Satie & Les Six’, in
Richard Langham Smith and Caroline Potter
(eds), French Music since Berlioz (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006), 231–4.
16 Ibid., 234–6. See also Barbara L. Kelly,
Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius
Milhaud, 1912–1939 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003),
1–26.
17 Jean Cocteau, ‘The cock and the harlequin’,
in A Call to Order, trans. Rollo Myers (London:
Faber & Gwyer, 1926), 19.
18 Ibid., 14, 19.
19 Ibid., 14.
20 Ibid., 23.
21 Ibid., 34.
22 Ibid., 21. See Bernard Gendron, Between
Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular
Music and the Avant-Garde (University of
Chicago Press, 2002), 83–101; Andy Fry,
‘Beyond Le Boeuf: interdisciplinary rereadings
of jazz in France’, review article, Journal of
the Royal Musical Association, 128 (2003),
137–53.
23 See Bengt Hager, Ballets suédois, trans.
Ruth Sharman (London: Thames and Hudson,
1990); and Nancy Van Norman Baer (ed.),
Paris Modern: The Swedish Ballet,
1920–1925 (Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco, 1995).
24 On La création du monde, see
Glenn Watkins, Pyramids at the Louvre: Music,
Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the
Postmodernists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1994), 112–33; and
Jody Blake, Le tumulte noir: Modernist Art and
Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris,
1900–1930 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1999), 137–62.
25 Erik Satie, Écrits, ed. Ornella Volta, 3rd edn
(Paris: Champ Libre, 1990), 90.
26 Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of
Western Music, vol. IV: Music in the Early
Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press,
2005), 496.
27 Ibid., 478–88.
28 Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the
Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works
through Mavra, 2 vols (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1996), vol. II, 1462–5.
29 Ibid., 1501.
30 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft,
Expositions and Developments (1959; repr.
Berkeley: University of California Press,
1981), 113.
31 Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian
Traditions, vol. II, 1501–7.
32 Ibid., 1529–39, 1549–84.
179 La guerre et la paix, 1914–1945
33 On the politics of neoclassicism in France,
see Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music from
the Genesis of the Concept through the
Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor,
MI: UMI Research Press, 1988); and
Richard Taruskin, ‘Review: Back to whom?
Neoclassicism as ideology’, Nineteenth-
Century Music, 16 (1993), 286–302.
34 See Barbara L. Kelly, ‘Ravel, (Joseph)
Maurice’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music
Online (accessed 22 May 2014); Barbara
L. Kelly, ‘History and homage’, in
Deborah Mawer (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Ravel (Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 7–26; and Barbara L. Kelly, Music
and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile
Consensus, 1913–1939 (Woodbridge: Boydell
and Brewer, 2013).
35 Michael Russ, ‘Ravel and the orchestra’, in
Mawer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Ravel, 125–6.
36 Maurice Ravel, ‘Ten opinions of Mr. Ravel:
on compositions and composers’, De Telegraaf,
6 April 1932, in A Ravel Reader:
Correspondence, Articles, Interviews, ed.
Arbie Orenstein (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990), 494.
37 M. D. Calvocoressi, ‘M. Ravel discusses his
own work: the Boléro explained’, in A Ravel
Reader, 477.
38 Marguerite Long, At the Piano with Ravel,
ed. Pierre Laumonier, trans. Olive Senior-Ellis
(London: Dent, 1973), 41.
39 Roy Howat, ‘Modernization: from
Chabrier and Fauré to Debussy and Ravel’, in
Smith and Potter (eds), French Music since
Berlioz, 197–221.
40 Kelly, ‘Ravel’.
41 On the repertoire of the Opéra and Opéra-
Comique, see Roger Nichols, The Harlequin
Years: Music in Paris, 1917–1929 (London:
Thames & Hudson, 2002), 59–105.
42 Kelly, Tradition and Style, 87–93.
43 Harry Halbreich, Arthur Honegger, trans.
Roger Nichols (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press,
1999), 350–1.
44 Nigel Simeone, ‘Church and organ music’,
in Smith and Potter (eds), French Music since
Berlioz, 161–96.
45 Hilda Jolivet, Avec . . . André Jolivet (Paris:
Flammarion, 1978), 77.
46 Nicolas Slonimsky, Music since 1900, rev.
Laura Kuhn, 6th edn (New York: Schirmer,
2001), 309.
47 See Nigel Simeone, ‘Group identities:
La Spirale and La Jeune France’, Musical
Times, 143 (autumn 2002), 10–36.
48 See Nigel Simeone and Peter Hill,
Messiaen (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2005), 62; and Simeone, ‘Group
identities’, 17–18.
49 See Myriam Chimènes (ed.), La vie
musicale sous Vichy (Bruxelles: Éditions
Complexe, 2001); Stéphanie Corcy, La vie
culturelle sous l’occupation (Paris: Perrin,
2005); and Jean-Pierre Rioux (ed.), La vie
culturelle sous Vichy (Brussels: Complexe,
1990).
50 On the genesis, see Anthony Pople,
Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps
(Cambridge University Press, 1998), 7–11.
51 Leslie A. Sprout, ‘Messiaen, Jolivet, and the
soldier-composers of wartime France’, Musical
Quarterly, 87 (2004), 259–304. See also Leslie
A. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime
France (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 2013), 80–119.
52 See Simeone and Hill, Messiaen, 73–6, 97–8.
53 M. H. [Marcel Haedrich], ‘Une grande
première au Stalag VIIIC [sic]: Oliver
Messiaen présente son Quatuor pour la fin
des [sic] temps’, Le Figaro (28 January 1942),
repr. and trans. in Sprout, ‘Messiaen, Jolivet’,
294; Antoine Goléa, Rencontres avec Olivier
Messiaen (Paris: René Juillard, 1960), 63.
54 Sprout, ‘Messiaen, Jolivet’, 276–86.
55 Ibid., 276.
56 Messiaen, liner notes for recording, Club
Français du Disque 77 (1957), repr. in ibid.,
295; on the hall and audience, ibid., 287.
57 See Simeone and Hill, Messiaen, 103–11.
58 Ibid., 131–2, 138–9.
59 Pople, Messiaen: Quatuor, 96–9.
60 Ibid., 3.
61 On music in Cocteau’s films, see
Laura Anderson, ‘The poetry of sound: Jean
Cocteau, film and early sound design’ (PhD thesis,
Royal Holloway, University of London, 2012).
 9 Cultural and generational querelles in the musical
domain: music from the Second World War
jonathan goldman

Business as usual or rupture?

On 12 February 1945, less than six months after the liberation of Paris, the
pianist Yvette Grimaud premiered twelve miniatures by a nineteen-year-
old composer named Pierre Boulez. It is tempting to view the violent
gestures of these twelve-tone Notations as teetering on the threshold of a
specifically French post-war musical adventure, even if a typical Parisian
concert–goer would certainly not have had the occasion to hear them (and
they were not published until 1975). To make such a symbolic claim is to
view this era through the retrospective lens of the dominant avant-garde
currents of later years – the story self-consciously constructed by Boulez
and his contemporaries. Other narratives are conceivable, since the fabric
of musical life in the years 1945–54 was woven from many simultaneous
musical threads. Several generations of composers were productive in the
same years, and there was no shortage of signs of business as usual among
prominent French musicians after the war. At the liberation, on 19 August
1944, the composers of Les Six were only middle-aged, and were for the
most part highly productive as composers, educators and administrators.
Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) and Arthur Honegger (1892–1955) were
fifty-two and fifty-three respectively, Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) forty-
five. Milhaud, whose Jewish origins had made it difficult for his works
to be performed under the occupation,1 returned to France in triumph:
his Bolivar (1943, premiered in 1950) and David (1954, French premiere
1955) were produced with much aplomb, and he would later go on to teach
composition at the Paris Conservatoire (giving lessons from his home).2
Poulenc’s music also held a prominent place on the French lyric stage.
Until 1968, the Prix de Rome, something of its aura still intact, con-
tinued to be handed out to composers of conventional concert music, their
names today unfamiliar to many concert-goers both outside and within
France. Prix de Rome winners from every generation, such as Tony Aubin
(1907–81, Prix de Rome 1930) and Jacques Castérède (b. 1926, Prix de
Rome 1953). State subsidies were mostly handed out to the national opera
houses (the Opéra Garnier and Opéra-Comique) and to orchestras held
[180]
181 Cultural and generational querelles

over from the nineteenth century, including those of Colonne, Lamoureux

and Pasdeloup and the Concerts du Conservatoire.3
Some composers trod a fine line between tradition and innovation.
Henri Dutilleux (1916–2013) and Maurice Ohana (1913–92), for example,
earned a prominent place in concert life in France. Dutilleux, whose works
could be symphonic in scope, as for example his monumental Métaboles
(1964) and Second Symphony (‘Le double’, 1959), effectively synthesised
many of the prevailing musical idioms of the day, including atonality,
modality and strong polarities. Other musical traditions continued to
thrive well into the late twentieth century and beyond, such as the quin-
tessentially French tradition of Catholic organ composers, represented by
composers like Olivier Messiaen (1908–92), Maurice Duruflé (1902–86)
and Jean Langlais (1907–91) and continuing through to a younger gen-
eration of composers like Thierry Escaich (b. 1965). Messiaen’s peers in
the group La Jeune France (inaugurated in 1936), André Jolivet (1905–74),
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908–2002) and Yves Baudrier (1906–88), also
continued to compose, largely in a spiritual vein.
New opera seemed to be floundering in the post-war period. The
composers of Les Six were not immediately replaced by a post-war
generation interested in lyric theatre, and opera houses were not going
out of their way to encourage a new generation of opera composers. At
the Opéra, housed until 1987 in the Palais Garnier, the most prestigious
house in France, not a single world premiere was presented between
1955 (Henry Barraud’s Numance) and 1983 (Charles Chaynes’s Erzsebet
and Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise).4 At the same time, notable
innovations in the realm of lyric music were being implemented in certain
quarters. Dutilleux held various administrative functions with Radio France
between 1943 and 1963, eventually becoming director of the Service des
Illustrations Musicales, a kind of creative workshop for the exploration of
new forms of expression for radio.5 With this mandate, Dutilleux commis-
sioned some of the most pioneering musical dramas of the period, including
Maurice Jarre’s Ruiselle (1951), Serge Nigg’s L’étrange aventure de Gulliver à
Lilliput (1958) and Ohana’s Histoire véridique de Jacotin (1961).6 They
marked the 1950s as an era of innovative programming for French radio
(although perhaps not to the same extent as their counterparts in Germany,
such as the West German Radio WDR), which became an important
conduit for new compositional paths.

Watershed year
In 1954, signs of a sea change were notably felt at the Théâtre des Champs-
Élysées, the site forty-one years earlier of the riotous premiere of Stravinsky’s
182 Jonathan Goldman

Le sacre du printemps. The season finished with an ill-received first perform-

ance of Déserts, for orchestra and taped electronic sounds, by the French-
born American expatriate Varèse, which was broadcast live on radio between
works by Mozart and Tchaikovsky. While Hermann Scherchen attempted
to conduct this work, the first of its kind to combine live orchestral and
pre-recorded electronic sounds, another raucous ‘riot’ ensued: the audience
reacted noisily to Varèse’s work, expressing their distaste with shouts that
were simultaneously transmitted over Radio France’s airwaves. Varèse’s
blocks of ‘organised sound’, combined with cries of protest, were beamed
into the public imagination.7
Earlier that year, the Domaine Musical, the concert society founded by
Boulez with help from the theatrical directors Jean-Louis Barrault and
Madeleine Renaud as well as the benefactress Suzanne Tézenas, produced
its first concert of avant-garde music at the Théâtre du Petit-Marigny.
The Domaine Musical included major works from the pre-war atonal
repertoire (by Berg, Schoenberg and Webern and others) in addition to
new compositions by a younger generation of composers, including
works by Luigi Nono and Karlheinz Stockhausen in the first concert.
These works made use of tone rows or ‘series’, a principle that replaced
tonality with pitch permutations, polarity with equal weighting of the
twelve tones of the tempered scale, and a familiar temporal flow of
musical material with unpredictable rhythms and forms. Serialist
music was, according to the surrealist poet René Char, himself a regular
at the Domaine concerts, ‘the mobile, cruel, true mirror – at once interior
and exterior – of a point of novel fusion of the enigma of men’.8 As for
the audience of the Domaine concerts, it mixed intellectuals and artists,
as well as prominent members of the upper classes. Even such unlikely
figures as Nadia Boulanger, champion of Stravinskian neoclassicism, and
Jean Cocteau, spiritual leader of Les Six, purportedly attended the first
concert.9
As diverse as audience demographics may have been, the same could
not be said of the aesthetic convictions of most of the composers whose
works were performed at the Domaine concerts. Avant-garde composers
not subscribing to serial doctrines were either omitted from programmes
or performed reluctantly, most notably Iannis Xenakis, whose highly
original attempts to exploit analogies (‘alloys’ as he called them10)
between music and mathematical principles had led him to decry a ‘crisis
of serial music’ as early as 1955,11 and to apply principles of statistical
distribution of densities to produce scores regulated by ‘stochastic’
(i.e. random) rather than serial processes. In the same year, his
Metastaseis (1954), for sixty-one players, projected geometrical forms
onto a musical score in which sloped lines corresponded to string glissandos
183 Cultural and generational querelles

of variable speeds – a musical translation of the polytope that Xenakis, a

trained engineer working as the assistant of Le Corbusier, used to design
the Philips Pavilion at Expo 58 (the Brussels World’s Fair). Xenakis’s
public dismissal of serialism was enough to exclude him from Domaine
programmes, until the organisation’s benefactress Tézenas persuaded
Boulez to place Xenakis’s piano piece Herma at a 1963 concert.12 Other
composers managed to straddle the conflicting exigencies of both the
Domaine and the traditional concert societies. The Franco-American
Betsy Jolas (b. 1926), for example, was the only composer to have had her
works performed by both Boulez’s Domaine and the august Societé
Nationale de Musique.13
The significance of the Domaine Musical is largely symbolic: attended
as it was by intellectuals, ‘chic’ Parisians and government officials, it
represented, as François Porcile has noted, a transitional step between
the pre-war system of aristocratic benefaction and the post-war system of
state intervention in cultural affairs.14 As such it heralded the projects that
would come to fruition under the presidency of Georges Pompidou
(1969–74) and especially in the large-scale state-subsidised cultural projects
of François Mitterrand (1981–95). Nevertheless, the mystique surrounding
the institution of the Domaine, the concept of the series and the dominant
figure of Boulez himself in the ten years that followed the Domaine’s first
concert is indisputable; some would go so far as to declare a near-
apocalyptic deliverance from musical mediocrity.15

Three pillars
The change in musical mores was ushered in by three formative person-
alities, all born around the year 1910: Messiaen, René Leibowitz (1913–72)
and Pierre Schaeffer (1910–95).

Messiaen
The meteoric rise of Messiaen as the most prominent composer to emerge
from the années noires was a striking feature of post-war musical France. His
internment in the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VIIIA at Görlitz,
Silesia, in which he famously composed and premiered what is arguably the
most significant work to come out of the war years in France, Quatuor pour la
fin du temps (1941), and the fact that he had not received any commissions
from the Vichy regime,16 were a prelude to a glorious post-war career. A
‘Messiaen spring’ comprising three successive premieres in 1945 confirmed
his prominent standing: Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (26 March), Les
corps glorieux (15 April) and Trois petites liturgies (21 April).17 In 1949
184 Jonathan Goldman

Messiaen’s monumental ten-movement Turangalîla-symphonie for piano

solo and orchestra (with a prominent ondes Martenot part) was premiered
by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; its French premiere was yet another
highlight of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées’s dynamic 1954 season, along-
side Varèse’s Déserts.18 With its Berliozian dimensions, rich orchestration,
‘chord themes’ and mysterious modal harmonies, this peculiarly French ode
to love has since been widely performed.
As well as being considered the most original composer of his gener-
ation in France, by the end of the war Messiaen had also developed a
reputation as a formidable musical pedagogue. In 1942, the thirty-three-
year-old Messiaen set about writing Technique de mon langage musical,
which would become the basis for his courses at the Paris Conservatoire.19
He had been employed there as professor of harmony since 1941.
Messiaen’s class, essentially devoted to analysis, would become the obliga-
tory rite of passage for two generations of avant-garde composers, including
Stockhausen, Boulez, Xenakis, Karel Goeyvaerts, Jean-Louis Martinet, Nigg
and Maurice Le Roux; in the 1960s and 1970s, Tristan Murail (b. 1947),
Gérard Grisey (1946–98), Michèle Reverdy (b. 1943) and Michaël Levinas
(b. 1949) also benefited from his instruction. As Messiaen’s renown grew in
the late 1970s and 1980s, many foreign musicians came to Paris to attend
his classes, including George Benjamin from England and Qigang Chen
from China.20
The content of these classes was famously eclectic. Students were
exposed to Greek and Indian rhythms (including those of the famous
‘non-retrogradable’ – i.e. palindromic – variety), modes of limited trans-
position and analyses of works from all periods, whether by Claude
Lejeune, Mozart, Stravinsky or Berg. While many of Messiaen’s students
assimilated a penchant for the use of exotic modes and predominantly
harmonic writing, several of his students in the post-war years were
inspired to explore serial techniques. They would go on to comprise the
bread-and-butter of the Domaine concerts, as well as those of the famous
Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, the Mecca of the
post-war avant-garde, which had a prominent French contingent almost
from its beginnings in the early post-war years (including Messiaen and
Boulez). In 1952 Boulez wrote, ‘Serial rhythmic principles could not have
been conceived without the rhythmic nervousness and the technique which
Messiaen transmitted to us.’21 In a further extension of serialist techniques,
Messiaen’s piano study ‘Mode de valeurs et d’intensités’ (1949) from his
Quatre études de rythme (1950), itself inspired by the serialist adventures
of his students, gave rise to what was to become known as ‘total’, ‘integral’
or ‘multi-parametric’ serialism, a procedure best exemplified by the first
piece of Boulez’s Structures Ia for two pianos (1952), in which proportions
185 Cultural and generational querelles

abstracted from pitch relationships in a series are used to govern the

successions of durations, dynamics, timbres and tempos.

Leibowitz
In his apartment on Paris’s Left Bank, Leibowitz, the Polish-born composer
who had been living in France since the age of twelve, would convene
students (including Vinko Globokar, Hans Werner Henze and Boulez
among many others) for lessons in Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method.22
Leibowitz, like Messiaen, had also been working on a seminal book during
the war years. In 1947 he published what the music critic Antoine Goléa
belligerently described as ‘the bomb that he dropped . . . first on Parisian
musical life, then on Germany, Western Europe and North America’.23 This
was Schoenberg et son école, the first thorough introduction to twelve-tone
music in French.24 In the decade and a half that followed the war, serialism
(and for a time the person of Leibowitz himself) carried enormous cultural
prestige. Jean-Paul Sartre himself wrote the preface to Leibowitz’s book
L’artiste et sa conscience: esquisse d’une dialectique de la conscience
artistique.25
The decline of Leibowitz’s influence is often attributed to his continued
attachment to the twelve-tone music of Schoenberg when the young
avant-gardists (Boulez first and foremost) were in the process of forging
the language of total serialism. Recent research suggests, however, that
Leibowitz was interested in transposing serial organisation to rhythm,
timbre and other musical parameters.26 His receding influence may have
had more to do with a personal rift with Boulez than with aesthetic-
philosophical differences. Nevertheless, it was he who helped to light the
serial fires in post-war France.

Schaeffer
Schaeffer, the other imposing godfather of post-war French music, noted
in his diary on 5 May 1948 that he had composed a score made from
recorded sounds of a train, isolated into leitmotifs and superimposed in
counterpoint.27 Three weeks later he completed the first work of musique
concrète, the Étude No. 2 imposée, better known as Étude aux chemins de fer
(‘Locomotive study’).28 Thus was born another essential branch of avant-
garde experimentation, one that distinguishes itself from traditional concert
music in that it dispenses with performers altogether, albeit not with concerts
per se: on 18 March 1950 the first public concert of musique concrète took place
at the École Normale de Musique in Paris.29 The programme note defined
musique concrète as ‘the use of sound in its native state, supplied by nature,
fixed by machines and transformed through their manipulations’.30 The
programme announced a single work, the forty-six-minute-long Symphonie
186 Jonathan Goldman

pour un homme seul (‘Symphony for one man alone’) by Schaeffer and
Pierre Henry (b. 1927), a former student of Messiaen.31
Schaeffer himself was an employee of Radiodiffusion Française (later
known as Radio France32) who from the 1930s dreamed of composing a
‘symphony of noise’ under the influence of German radio Hörspiele.33 He
began experimenting with the notion of composing sounds ‘fixed’ onto a
capturing medium. In 1942, the Studio d’Essai was created, a kind of
research group that explored the sonic possibilities of the medium of
radio.34 This eventually gained institutional weight, becoming first the
Club d’Essai and finally in 1958 the Groupe de Recherches Musicales
(GRM), which Schaeffer co-founded with Luc Ferrari (1929–2005) and
François-Bernard Mâche (b. 1935). The two Pierres (Schaeffer and
Henry) symbolically embodied the double vocation of the GRM as both
an institute of sound research (Schaeffer) and one devoted to the creation of
concert music (Henry). Musique concrète was later subsumed under the
umbrella term ‘electro-acoustic music’, which includes both recordings of
naturally and electronically generated sounds. The productions of this
institute (and soon thereafter of countless electronic music studios in
France and around the world) would continue to embody this double
character, which is caught by the expression ‘recherche musicale’ (musical
research): it is both an acoustic laboratory and a studio for musical compo-
sition.35 Like Messiaen and Leibowitz, Schaeffer developed his ideas in
systematic, book-length form in an attempt to found a new discipline that
went well beyond the ‘art of noises’ with which the Italian Futurists had
experimented half a century earlier. Schaeffer’s seminal book, with the
suitably weighty title Traité des objets musicaux: essai interdisciplines, was
the culmination of fifteen years of research at the GRM that marked a
crucial turning point in the institutional acceptance of electro-acoustic
music as a legitimate art form.36 In 1968 the first electro-acoustic classes
were offered at the conservatoires of Paris and Marseilles.37
While Schaeffer’s Étude aux chemins de fer and Études aux allures have
something of the character of laboratory experiments, the collaborations
with Henry, such as the Symphonie pour un homme seul and Henry’s
Variations pour une porte et un soupir have an undeniable musical inter-
est. In the latter work, the fanciful transformations of the sound of a
creaking door constitute an unmistakably ‘discursive’ use of noises. The
electro-acoustic genre would gain considerable currency over the course of
the 1960s and 1970s. Ultimately, many adventurous French and European
composers came through the studios of the GRM, including Messiaen,
Boulez, Jean Barraqué (1928–73), Stockhausen, Xenakis and Luciano
Berio, as well as Bernard Parmegiani (1927–2013), Michel Chion
(b. 1947), Eliane Radigue (b. 1932) and Ivo Malec. Their productions
187 Cultural and generational querelles

ran the gamut from the incongruous curiosity of Messiaen’s withdrawn

Timbres-durées (1952) and Boulez’s two Études (1952) to highly polished
sound-worlds in Parmegiani’s De natura sonorum (1975) and Ferrari’s
‘anecdotal’ Hétérozygote (1964) – which contains sound issuing from
recognisable sources and thus has a documentary as well as a purely
aesthetic interest – as well as many works by Malec and François Bayle
(b. 1932). Towards the end of the 1960s it seemed as if electro-acoustic
music would enter the mainstream by dovetailing with pop-music
currents popular at the time: the tape manipulations of the Beatles’
‘Revolution 9’ from their eponymous 1968 double long-playing record
(the so-called ‘White Album’) seemed to announce an imminent
rock–electro-acoustic marriage; in France the most durable example of
such a fusion was Henry’s Messe pour le temps présent (1967), originally
produced as an accompaniment to a ballet by Maurice Béjart’s dance
company, which makes use of ‘groovy’ pop-rock arrangements by
Michel Colombier (1939–2004).

The example of Boulez

The imprecise ‘serialist’ moniker encompasses works constructed through
considerably varied means, by composers of sometimes strikingly differ-
ent aesthetic leanings. Consequently it might be more helpful to refer to
what Makis Solomos calls the ‘parametric’ tradition or what Jésus Aguila
calls ‘postwebernien’ music,38 which unites many composers born around
1925, including Claude Ballif, Nigg, Marius Constant, Barraqué, Jolas,
Xenakis, Michel Philippot and Michel Fano, as well as countless others.
Works from this era testify to a sustained preoccupation with the structur-
alist currents that dominated French intellectual life in the 1960s. This
generation of composers gleaned much from the aesthetic pronouncements
of one of their most prominent contemporaries: Boulez. It is therefore
instructive to follow the vicissitudes of Boulez’s aesthetic choices.39
Boulez’s influence owes as much to his formidable talents as a writer
and polemicist as to his gifts as a composer. His public pronouncements
had a decisive impact on various musical controversies, from his provo-
cative eulogy on the death of the godfather of twelve-tone music,
‘Schoenberg is dead’ (1951),40 to his foolhardy indictment as ‘useless’ of
any composer who had not felt the necessity of the twelve-tone language
(originally published in 1952).41 In early works like the Flute Sonatina
(1946) and the densely contrapuntal Piano Sonata No. 2 (1948), Boulez
demonstrated his ability to fuse Messiaen’s rhythm and Webern’s pitch
organisation. Far from defending a kind of musical rationalism, Boulez’s
188 Jonathan Goldman

aesthetic positions placed him squarely within the surrealist tradition. In a

1948 essay he proclaimed that music ‘should be collective hysteria and
magic, violently modern – along the lines of Antonin Artaud’.42 In his
major work from the 1950s and still his most famous, Le marteau sans
maître (1955), he created a convincing musical analogue of surrealist poetry
(Char’s). In Le marteau, the instrumentation, consciously chosen to evoke
the traditional musics of Japan, Bali and central Africa, and all occupying the
middle of the register of the guitar, marimba, viola, alto flute, vibraphone and
percussion, has some of the characteristics of what would become the typically
Boulezian sound-world, most notably resonating instruments for which the
musician relinquishes control over the sound once the note is attacked (this
applies to all of the Marteau instruments except the flute and the viola, not to
mention the voice).
During the brief but crucial period in which he explored ‘integral’ or
‘total’ serialism, alluded to above with reference to the frequently analysed
Structures Ia, Boulez explored the serialisation of parameters other than
pitch, a technique already anticipated across the Atlantic by Milton Babbitt
in his Three Compositions for Piano of 1947. Boulez originally gave
Structures Ia the telling title At the Limit of Fertile Ground, after a painting
by the Bauhaus artist Paul Klee, aware that, like many liminal phenomena, it
was not lacking in absurdity. Other colleagues embraced the integral series
at around the same time, as such pointillist works as Goeyvaerts’s Sonata for
Two Pianos (1951), Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel (1951), Barraqué’s Piano
Sonata (1952) and Fano’s Sonata for Two Pianos (1952) attest.43

Open forms
Like many of his contemporaries, Boulez also went on to explore various
degrees of openness or mobility in his works of the late 1950s and 1960s. This
phenomenon has a variety of sources: in 1957 Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI
was given its first performance. It is an open-ended work in which the
performer chooses a trajectory through the piece: there are ‘nineteen compo-
nents, and their order can be changed at random’.44 In the same year, Boulez
performed his Piano Sonata No. 3 at the Domaine Musical, a work of
‘directed improvisation’ composed of five mobile ‘formants’. Both of
these works in turn testified to the encounter with the anti-deterministic
Zen-inspired philosophies of John Cage, and to the mobile works of other
composers in Cage’s circle, in particular Earle Brown and Morton Feldman.
As for Cage, his ideas were communicated directly to Boulez, notably
through a lively transatlantic correspondence that the two composers
maintained between 1949 and 1954.45 Boulez propagated his ideas on
189 Cultural and generational querelles

openness (or ‘aleatoric’ works as he called them) in essays of the time such
as ‘Alea’ (1957) and ‘“Sonate, que me veux-tu?”’ (1960).46 Also decisive was
Boulez’s encounter with Mallarmé’s unfinished (and indeed unfinishable)
Livre, a book of free-form verse of infinitely mobile presentation, of which
‘Un coup de dés’ (‘A throw of the dice’), which invites variable readings
from multiple directions, was to be the prototype.47 The aesthetics of the
open work were disseminated by André Boucourechliev, the French com-
poser and writer of Bulgarian heritage who, as musical correspondent of the
important literary journal the Nouvelle revue française, had written about
Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata as early as 1958.
The theoretical underpinnings of indeterminacy and openness were
elaborated in 1962 by Umberto Eco in his Opera aperta (‘Open work’),
co-translated into French by Boucourechliev himself in 1965. Other
French composers began to write music in which the form is to greater
or lesser degrees left to the care of the players and then fixed in the instant
of performance. Boucourechliev put these ideas into practice in a series of
compositions entitled Archipels, composed for various instrumental
ensembles that were the subject of considerable attention at the time of
their publication. Musical figures are laid out in dense, island-like thickets
on large sheets of paper (hence the archipelagos of the title), which give
rise to a multiplicity of performance possibilities. For example, in Archipel
2, for string quartet, Boucourechliev’s score uses black and red ink. When
one of the musicians wishes to move to a passage printed in red, ‘His
intention is made known to his partners by a softly spoken rouge.’48
Many works from this period are also mobile in another sense: they make
unconventional use of space by having musicians change their positions
with respect to the audience. Countless French works around the 1960s
make use of this spatial parameter, including those of Xenakis, whose Duel
(1959) exploits two small orchestras; his Terretektorh (1966) disperses
members of the orchestra into the audience, which is arranged in a circle.
Examples by Boulez include Figures-Doubles-Prismes (1958, 1963, 1968)
and Domaines (1968) for a clarinettist who wanders through six spatially
separated instrumental groups. One final instance is Dutilleux’s Second
Symphony (‘Le double’, 1959), in which the orchestra is divided, with a
chamber ensemble of twelve musicians seated in front of the rest of the
orchestra.

Young composers in the 1960s

If the composers who were in their mid-twenties in 1950 were an outspoken
lot, elaborately theorising the role of the series, the status of the open work and
190 Jonathan Goldman

the possibilities offered by the electronic manipulation of sound, the younger

composers of the 1960s were more circumspect, generally accepting (if tacitly)
the new rails upon which their elders had dispatched the avant-garde. These
composers benefited from and supported the musical institutions established
by their older avant-garde mentors. Many of them, especially those born
around 1935, such as Gilbert Amy (b. 1936), Jean-Claude Éloy (b. 1938),
Bayle, Ton-That Tiêt (b. 1933), Alain Bancquart (b. 1934), François-Bernard
Mâche (b. 1935), Michel Decoust (b. 1936), Jean-Claude Risset (b. 1938) and
Roger Tessier (b. 1939), went on to assume important institutional roles in
French musical life in the 1970s and 1980s: Bancquart, a serialist composer
who also worked with microtonality, was inspector-general of music for the
French ministry of culture between 1977 and 1984; Decoust occupied the
same position as well as playing a crucial role in the establishment of a system
of subsidies which allowed the electronic music studios (centres de recherches
musicales) to thrive between 1975 and 1985;49 Constant co-founded Radio
France’s classical music radio station France-Musique; Risset held a
research position at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS) from 1969 to 1972 and became a director of research in 1985;50
Amy went on to take over the direction of the Domaine Musical from
Boulez’s departure until its dissolution in 1973 and became director of the
Lyons Conservatoire in 1984.51
In retrospect some of the musical creations of this generation – partic-
ularly in the 1960s and early 1970s – may seem derivative of earlier models:
Équivalences (1965) by Jean-Claude Eloy (b. 1938), for eighteen instruments,
dedicated to ‘my master Pierre Boulez, as an expression of gratitude and
friendship’, might recall one of the dense creations of his ‘master’, somewhere
between ‘Don’ (from Pli selon pli) and Éclat (1965). Amy’s Jeux (1970) for one
to four oboists contains loose-leaf material that the performer is required to
assemble: ‘The interpreter has at his disposal already realized material, mate-
rial to be realized, structures involving flexible ordering of sections, etc.’ With
its sections entitled ‘Trope’, ‘Variation’, ‘Répons’ and so on, it belongs to a
family of open works that by then could be construed as an autonomous
genre. The common musical and literary influences on composers of this
period (Webern, Debussy, Mallarmé, Char) sometimes result in works even
sharing titles, such as Bancquart’s Explosante-fixe (1972) for wind quintet and
harp, not to be confused with Boulez’s Stravinsky tribute . . . explosante-
fixe . . ., whose first version dates from the same year and which borrows its
title from the same André Breton poem. Ballif’s Un coup de dés (1979) sets the
Mallarmé poem which had partly inspired Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 3, this
time for chorus, six musicians and tape.
Inevitably, many of the young composers of the 1960s clearly side with
one or other of the dominant musical camps of the period, either as
191 Cultural and generational querelles

purveyors of what rancorous critics called the ‘Domaine Musical style’,52

presumably referring to certain stylistic tics such as wide registral leaps and
a preference for dissonant intervals, or as creators in the GRM manner,
devoted to the production of mostly tape music. In other words, their
musical output and aesthetic orientations were strongly determined by
the ideological assumptions of the institutions with which they were asso-
ciated. Inevitably in this ideologically charged environment, there were also
‘turncoats’ who crossed the aisle to join one or other of the opposing camps.
By the end of the 1960s Eloy, for example, had distanced himself from the
serialist manner and begun composing music with oriental influences, often
using taped sounds or synthesisers; Pierre Jansen (b. 1930), whose Concerto
audiovisuel was premiered at the Domaine in 1960, along with a cybernetic
sculpture baptised a ‘musiscope’ by the visual artist Nicolas Schöffer,53 went
on to become a non-serial, though occasionally atonal composer of film
music, most notably for many of Claude Chabrol’s films.54 Indeed, the birth
of pop music and the flourishing of a distinctive French cinema (the earthy,
literary, wilfully unpolished cinema of the French New Wave) had a decisive
impact on the musical careers of some key figures in French music at the
time: Michel Legrand (b. 1932), the impossibly versatile composer, song-
writer and jazz pianist, a former pupil of the Paris Conservatoire, composed
a score to Jacques Demi’s Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964) which, with its
sung dialogue, bridges the traditions of the Broadway-style musical and the
orchestral film score. Georges Delerue (1925–92), a student of Milhaud,
supplied the distinctive sound to a whole generation of French cineastes.
His lush ‘tapis’ (or ‘carpet’, as it is called) of strings becomes a cast-member
in its own right in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le mépris of 1963, where it is used
ironically, creating a kind of Brechtian defamiliarisation. Other musicians
skilfully navigated between the worlds of contemporary music and jazz,
most notably the clarinettist Michel Portal (b. 1935), who was instrumental
in the development of free jazz in France; at the same time he was a
prestigious performer of avant-garde music. The composer and jazz musi-
cian André Hodeir (1921–2011) also straddled these two worlds. Only with
the arrival in the early 1970s of a new generation of composers, who came to
be known as Spectralists, as comfortable in serial idioms as electro-acoustic
techniques, did a new aesthetic vision emerge that was able to confront and
rival the narratives of the 1925 generation.

L’Itinéraire and Spectralism

In January 1973, l’Itinéraire, a collective of composers and performers, was
created in Paris, for the most part from graduates of the Paris Conservatoire,
192 Jonathan Goldman

especially from Messiaen’s famous analysis class. It was founded by the

composers Murail, Levinas and Tessier, who were soon joined by Grisey,
Hugues Dufourt (b. 1943) and others.55 The group also included renowned
performers like the flautist Pierre-Yves Artaud. The composers who began
writing specifically for this ensemble often required the musicians to per-
form micro-intervals, which approximate the frequencies of the natural
overtone series. Thus they came to be grouped together as ‘spectral’ com-
posers, a term coined by Dufourt,56 the theoretician of the group, who, in
addition to being a composer, also later held a senior research position in
philosophy sponsored by the CNRS, the French research umbrella organ-
isation. Grisey famously declared: ‘We are musicians and our model is
sound and not literature, sound and not mathematics, sound and not
theatre, visual arts, quantum physics, geology, astrology, or acupuncture.’57
Thus begins a kind of 1968-inflected manifesto by Grisey, whose Partiels
(1975) for eighteen players, included in the cycle Les espaces acoustiques,
gave an eloquent demonstration of the ways in which the evolution of sound
could be used as the basis for a musical composition.58 In it, Grisey
imagined the ways the overtones theoretically contained in sound produced
by the low Es of the trombone and double bass at the beginning of the work
could be projected onto an instrumental canvas. Each instrument then
sounds one of the frequencies of these overtones, also imitating the stag-
gered manner in which these overtones ‘kick in’ (a slow-motion simulation,
since the ensemble performs in some ten seconds what nature accomplishes
in two-tenths of a second). In later works such as Transitoires (1980–1),
Grisey would go on to examine spectrograms (charts graphing frequency on
the vertical axis and time on the horizontal, which represent the relative
intensity of the overtones with lines of different hues), which he would then
project onto an instrumental ensemble, the instruments respecting the
pitch, degree of stability and relative intensity of the partials appearing in
the spectrogram.59 This technique was also used in such pioneering spectral
works as Murail’s Gondwana (1980), in which bell and trumpet sounds are
modelled.60 It is sometimes known as ‘instrumental synthesis’ and is but
one – albeit the most characteristic – of many techniques that Grisey and
several of his peers employed, either by transcribing properties of natural
sounds made visible through electronic tools or else by imitating, on
acoustic instruments, techniques of electronic sound manipulation such
as ring modulation and tape-feedback loops, as in Murail’s Mémoire/
Érosion (1976). More than Grisey, Murail often mixes electronic and
instrumental sounds to impressive effect, as in his seminal Désintégrations
(1982), for fifteen instruments and computer-generated tape, or in the
overtly spiritual Les septs paroles (2009–10) for choir, orchestra and elec-
tronics. For Spectralists like Grisey and Murail, the important point about
193 Cultural and generational querelles

instrumental synthesis is not the possibility of synthesising the sounds of

musical instruments, but rather the fact of creating a liminal experience: one
in which harmony and timbre become indistinguishable.
Spectral musical explorations were also part and parcel of the French
tradition of recherche musicale, an area of activity which, as we have seen,
straddles scientific and technological enquiry on the one hand and the
creation of musical works intended for a concert setting on the other, and
which has its roots in Schaeffer’s sound explorations at the GRM. Institutes
devoted to this kind of research, with acronyms like CERM, GMEB, CIRM,
GMEM, ACROE and CEMAMu, thrived throughout the 1970s and well
into the 1980s, notably during the music critic Maurice Fleuret’s tenure as
director of music and dance in the French ministry of culture (1981–6). The
lavish subsidies allotted to these institutions began to be the object of
considerable criticism in the mid-1980s, following the publication of the
sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger’s widely read book Le paradoxe du musi-
cien: le compositeur, le mélomane et 1’État dans la société contemporaine
(1983), which applied sociological principles partly inspired by Pierre
Bourdieu to the culture of contemporary music subsidies in France and
adopted a critical position with respect to these subsidies. Ironically, one of
the most prominent – or at least durable – of these research institutes
emerged in more or less explicit opposition to Schaeffer’s approach to the
electronic medium: IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination
Acoustique/Musique), inaugurated by Boulez in 1977, was devoted to
collaborations between scientists and musicians in the development of
electronic modes of sound production in music.
Following in the footsteps of Varèse’s Déserts, so-called ‘mixed’ works
(i.e. works for instruments and electronics) conceived at IRCAM and
other musical research institutions formed an increasingly important
part of French avant-garde musical production from the 1970s. For
example, in François-Bernard Mâche’s Maraé (1974), produced at GRM
and scored for amplified percussionists and tape, unadulterated sounds of
nature are incorporated into the pre-recorded tape part. It is difficult to
say whether French composers have a predilection for mixed works or
whether the establishment of these institutions encouraged composers to
compose such works through commissions and pedagogical ‘internships’
(such as IRCAM’s year-long ‘cursus’). In these research institutions,
composers work alongside ‘computer music producers’ (‘réalisateurs en
informatique musicale’, or RIM, is the most current term for this crucial
and relatively new métier) in the development of the electronic compo-
nents of their projects; these producers sometimes play a considerable role
in the outcome of the finished product (e.g. Andrew Gerszo for Boulez and
Gilbert Nouno for Jonathan Harvey).
194 Jonathan Goldman

In the 1990s, many composers aligned with the Spectral school began to
work both in IRCAM and the GRM; the period of ideological schism abated
and many young composers began to be as comfortable in a GRM studio of
musique concrète as they were writing pieces for instruments and live
electronics at IRCAM, or spectral pieces that imitate electro-acoustic tech-
niques through instrumental means. This generation includes Philippe
Leroux (b. 1959), acclaimed for his scintillating Voi(rex) for voice, six instru-
ments and electronics (2002) and Apocalypsis for voice, ensemble and
electronics (2005–6),61 Philippe Hurel (b. 1955), the Finnish-born Kaija
Saariaho (b. 1952) and Marc-André Dalbavie (b. 1961). Over and above the
use of this or that technology of electronic sound transformation, what all of
these composers have in common, and what qualifies them as in some sense
neo-spectral, is an approach that tends to blur the line between the con-
struction of timbre and the elaboration of harmony.

Circling outwards
Predictably, as we move closer to the present, the fault lines of aesthetic
rivalries become less clear, and no consensus prevails about which works
deserve our attention. With the passing on of the Spectral school (Grisey
died in 1998 and others, like Levinas, no longer define themselves as
spectral), the last ‘grand narrative’ to inform the history of contemporary
music in France, or in any case the last one to have any chance of rivalling
the way the series so enthralled adventurous musicians at its height in the
1950s, was put to rest. Like the immediate post-war period, the last two
decades of the twentieth century bore witness to a high degree of stylistic
pluralism. Politically, the 1980s were the Mitterrand years, which were
characterised by large-scale social projects, represented in the musical
world by the construction of the Bastille Opera House and by Jack Lang,
Mitterand’s minister of culture, who instituted an annual ‘fête de la
musique’, which favours inclusive and accessible public music-making.
Other anti-elitist measures had been put in place before this, in the spirit
of André Malraux’s determination in the 1960s to decentralise culture in
France. As director of music and dance from 1966 to 1975, Marcel
Landowski (1915–99) had already set up a system of regional conserva-
toires, which enable French musicians to receive professional musical
training outside the main centres of Paris and Lyons.
One of the corollaries of the popularising ambitions of French cultural
policy, beginning in the 1990s and continuing into the twenty-first cen-
tury, is a surprising resurgence of opera, a genre which is particularly apt
at bridging the gap between high and low art. A composer in tune with this
195 Cultural and generational querelles

period is surely the prolific Pascal Dusapin (b. 1955). A composer whose
music is performed regularly in France and abroad, he is also gifted at
articulating his thought in intellectual terms.62 His opera Passion (2008)
was premiered at the prestigious Festival d’Art Lyrique in Aix-en-Provence
and then produced at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. Other notable
operas from the end of the twentieth century have been composed by the
likes of Philippe Manoury (b. 1952), whose fifth opera, La nuit de Gutenberg,
was premiered at the Musica Festival in Strasbourg in 2011, Levinas, whose
opera Les nègres was premiered in Lyons in 2003, and Michèle Reverdy,
whose Médée (2001) was premiered by the Lyons opera in 2003. One of the
most adventurous and prolific composers for the voice, the Greek-born
Georges Aperghis (b. 1945), premiered his opera Avis de tempête in Lille in
2004.
Another current of the first decade of the new century whose lasting
influence is still to be confirmed is represented by the so-called ‘Satura-
tionnistes’ (distorsionists), graduates of IRCAM’s ‘cursus’ composition
programme including Franck Bedrossian (1971), Yann Robin (1974)
and Raphaël Cendo (1975), who follow in the footsteps of the Franco-
Italian rock-influenced neo-spectral composer Fausto Romitelli
(1963–2004) by composing complex and un-genteel music.63
Predictably, even strong musical personalities like the aforementioned
ones could never hope to elicit the eloquent querelles that characterised
musical life in the first two decades after the war. Beyond this proclivity for
fierce aesthetic ‘quarrelling’, other features of the musical landscape of the
second half of the twentieth century could strike an outside observer as
typically French: the preference for strong institutions and the capacity to
establish them; the passion for new sounds, rooted in a taste for the
imprévu or ‘unexpected’; an ability to absorb outside influences; and a
certain devotion to métier or craft – a professionalism that is not averse to
displays of virtuosity. Over and above this or that stylistic tendency, these
characteristics link certain features of post-war musical production – even
of the avant-garde variety – with many aspects of its past.

Notes
1 Yannick Simon, Composer sous Vichy
(Lyons: Symétrie, 2009), 32–5.
2 François Porcile, Les conflits de la musique
française, 1940–1965 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 60.
3 Julien Mathieu, ‘Transgressions
impossibles? L’avant-garde atonale et le champ
musical parisien en 1954’, Vingtième siècle:
revue d’histoire, 83 (2004), 40.
4 Danièle Pistone (ed.), Le théâtre lyrique français,
1945–1985 (Paris: Champion, 1987), 13.
5 Pierrette Mari, Henri Dutilleux,
Musiciens de Notre Temps (Paris: Hachette,
1973), 33–4.
6 Ibid., 48.
7 Fernand Ouellette, Edgard Varèse, trans.
Derek Coltman (New York: Orion Press,
1968), 183–8; see also Julien Mathieu, ‘Un
mythe fondateur de la musique
contemporaine: le “scandale” provoqué en
1954 par la création de Déserts d’Edgar
196 Jonathan Goldman
Varèse’, Revue d’histoire moderne et
contemporaine, 51 (2004), 129–52.
8 In response to a survey by
André Boucourechliev, ‘La musique sérielle
aujourd’hui’, Preuves, 177 (1965), quoted
in Porcile, Les conflits de la musique
française, 237.
9 Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française,
186–9.
10 See the title of Xenakis’s book Arts/
Sciences: Alloys: The Thesis Defense of
Iannis Xenakis before Olivier Messiaen, Michel
Ragon, Olivier Revault d’Allonnes, Michel
Serres, and Bernard Teyssèdre, trans.
Sharon Kanach (New York: Pendragon Press,
1985).
11 Iannis Xenakis, ‘La crise de la musique
sérielle’, Gravesaner Blätter, 6 (1955) repr. in
Iannis Xenakis, Kéleütha: écrits, ed.
Benoît Gibson (Paris: L’Arche, 1994), 39–43.
12 Jésus Aguila, Le domaine musical: Pierre
Boulez et vingt ans de création contemporaine
(Paris: Fayard, 1992), 30–1, 273; Anne-Sylvie
Barthel-Calvet has recently shown that
Xenakis’s position with respect to serialism
was in fact more ambiguous and nuanced than
the notorious title of his essay ‘The crisis of
serial music’ (1955) might suggest. See
‘MÉTASTASSIS-analyse: un texte inédit de
Iannis Xenakis sur Metastasis’, Revue de
musicologie, 89 (2003), 129–87.
13 Porcile, Les conflits de la musique
française, 252.
14 Ibid., 185.
15 See Pierre Souvtchinsky’s heady
announcement of the arrival of a musical
‘saviour’, the unnamed Pierre Boulez: Pierre
Souvtchinsky, ‘À propos d’un retard’, Cahiers
de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaude–Jean-
Louis Barrault, 2 (1954), 127.
16 Leslie Sprout, ‘Les commandes de Vichy:
aube d’une ère nouvelle’, in Myriam Chimènes
(ed.), La vie musicale sous Vichy (Bruxelles:
Éditions Complexe, 2001), 164–5. See the
discussion of the genesis and reception of this
work in Chapter 8 above.
17 Paul Griffiths, Olivier Messiaen and
the Music of Time (London: Faber, 1985),
112–13.
18 Antoine Goléa, Rencontres avec Olivier
Messiaen (Paris: Julliard, 1960), 78.
19 Trans. John Satterfield as The Technique of
my Musical Language (Paris: Leduc, 1956).
20 Jean Boivin, La classe de Messiaen (Paris: C.
Bourgois, 1995).
21 Pierre Boulez, ‘Éventuellement’, in Points
de repère, vol. I: Imaginer, ed. Jean-Jacques
Nattiez and Sophie Galaise (Paris: C. Bourgois,
1995), 289.
22 Sabine Meine, ‘Leibowitz, René’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
23 Antoine Goléa, Vingt ans de musique
contemporaine: de Messiaen à Boulez (Paris:
Seghers, 1962), 112.
24 Antoine Goléa, Schoenberg and his School:
The Contemporary Stage of the Language of
Music, trans. Dika Newlin (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1949).
25 Paris: L’Arche, 1950.
26 See M. J. Grant, reviews of Inge Kovács,
Wege zum musikalischen Strukturalismus,
Michael Custodis, Die soziale Isolation der
neuen Musik: Zum Kölner Musikleben nach
1945, and Sabine Meine (ed.), Reihe und
System: Signaturen des 20. Jahrhunderts, all in
Music and Letters, 87 (2006), 347.
27 Pierre Schaeffer, De la musique concrète à
la musique même (Paris: Mémoire du Livre,
2002), 112, quoted in Porcile, Les conflits de la
musique française, 105.
28 Porcile, Les conflits de la musique
française, 116.
29 Évelyne Gayou, Le GRM: Groupe de
Recherches Musicales: cinquante ans d’histoire
(Paris: Fayard, 2007), 75.
30 Serge Moreux, quoted in Gayou, Le GRM, 75.
31 Porcile, Les conflits de la musique
française, 106.
32 The institution was variously named
Radiodiffusion Française (RDF) until 1949,
then RTF until 1963, ORTF until 1974 and
Radio France from 1975 onwards. See www.
radiofrance.fr/l-entreprise/histoire-de-la-
radiodiffusion/archives-historiques-de-radio-
france (accessed 22 May 2014).
33 Francis Dhomont, ‘Schaeffer, Pierre’,
Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online
(accessed 22 May 2014).
34 Mathieu, ‘Transgressions impossibles?’, 42.
35 Anne Veitl, ‘Les musiques
électroacoustiques et la politique culturelle:
repères historiques’, in Sylvie Dallet and
Anne Veitl, Du sonore au musical: cinquante
années de recherches concrètes, 1948–1998
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 341.
36 Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966.
37 Veitl, ‘Les musiques électroacoustiques’,
342 n. 6.
38 Makis Solomos, ‘Les évolutions récentes de
la musique contemporaine en France’, Musik
und Ästhetik, 4 (2000), 80–9; Jésus Aguila, Le
Domaine Musical (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 273.
39 A more detailed account can be found in
Jonathan Goldman, The Musical Language of
Pierre Boulez: Writings and Compositions
(Cambridge University Press, 2011), 6–15.
40 The Score, 6 (1952), 18–22.
197 Cultural and generational querelles
41 Pierre Boulez, ‘Possibly . . .’, in Stocktakings
from an Apprenticeship (Oxford University
Press, 1991), 113.
42 Pierre Boulez, ‘Proposals’, in Stocktakings
from an Apprenticeship, 54.
43 See Richard Toop, ‘Messiaen/ Goeyvaerts,
Fano/ Stockhausen, Boulez’, Perspectives of
New Music, 13 (1974), 141–69.
44 Karlheinz Stockhausen in Jonathan Cott,
Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), 70.
45 Pierre Boulez and John Cage
Correspondence, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez,
trans. Robert Samuels (Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
46 Pierre Boulez, ‘Alea’, in Stocktakings from
an Apprenticeship, 26–38; ‘“Sonate, que me
veux-tu?”’, in Orientations: Collected Writings,
ed. Jean-Jacque Nattiez, trans. Martin Cooper
(London: Faber, 1986), 143–54.
47 The Livre had been reconstructed in
Stéphane Mallarmé, Le ‘Livre’ de Mallarmé:
premières recherches sur des documents
inédits, ed. Jacques Scherer (Paris:
Gallimard, 1957).
48 Instructions in score (Universal
Edition 15 639).
49 Veitl, ‘Les musiques électroacoustiques’,
350–3.
50 Adrian Moore, ‘Risset, Jean-Claude’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
51 Jeremy Thurlow, ‘Amy, Gilbert’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
52 Aguila, Le Domaine Musical, 403.
53 Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault
(eds), La musique et ses problèmes
contemporains, 1953–1963 (Paris: Julliard,
1963), 377; Porcile, Les conflits de la musique
française, 355.
54 Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française,
296–7.
55 Danielle Cohen-Lévinas, ‘Prélude’, Revue
musicale, 421–4 (1990), 11.
56 Hugues Dufourt, ‘Musique spectrale: pour
une pratique des formes de l’énergie’,
Bicéphale, 3 (1981), 85–9.
57 Gérard Grisey, ‘La musique: le devenir des
sons’, Darmstädter Beiträge zur neuen Musik,
19 (1984), 22.
58 On the political inspiration of Spectralist
discourse, see Eric Drott, ‘Spectralism, politics
and the post-industrial imagination’, in
Björn Heile (ed.), The Modernist Legacy: Essays
on New Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009),
39–60.
59 François-Xavier Féron’s research on
Grisey’s compositional sketches housed
at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel has
strongly suggested that, contrary to what is
claimed in Grisey’s writings, Partiels, unlike
later works by the composer, was probably
not inspired by the study of spectrograms.
See François-Xavier Féron, ‘Sur les traces
de la musique spectrale: analyse génétique
des modèles compositionnels dans Périodes
(1974) de Gérard Grisey’, Revue de
musicologie, 96 (2010), 411–43, especially
440–1.
60 Eric Humbertclaude, ‘Les modèles
perceptuels par simulation instrumentale dans
les œuvres de Tristan Murail’, Revue musicale,
421–4 (1990), 114–17.
61 See Nicolas Donin, ‘Genetic criticism and
cognitive anthropology: a reconstruction of
Philippe Leroux’s compositional process for
Voi(rex)’, in William Kinderman and Joseph
E. Jones (eds), Genetic Criticism and the
Creative Process: Essays from Music,
Literature, and Theater (University of
Rochester Press, 2009), 192–215.
62 Pascal Dusapin’s book Une musique en
train de se faire (Paris: Seuil, 2009) emerged
from lectures he gave at the Collège de
France as chaire de création artistique in
2006–7.
63 See Pierre Roullier (ed.), Franck
Bedrossian: de l’excès du son (Champigny sur
Marne: Ensemble 2e2m, 2008).
part ii

Opera
 10 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck
jacqueline waeber

Towards a truly French opera

The history of opera in France customarily opens with the political and
artistic oeuvre of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, ministre principal from 1643
until his death in 1661 (first during Anne of Austria’s regency, then during
Louis XIV’s reign). Mazarin was the first to attempt the assimilation of
Roman and Venetian opera at the French court. His motive was twofold:
politically to ensure a privileged entente among France, Italy and the
Roman papacy, and musically to perpetuate the artistic politics of his
predecessor, Cardinal Richelieu, who fruitfully campaigned for the estab-
lishment of French classic theatre.
Such a start influences the rest of the narrative: the history of French
opera is the history of a confrontation between French and Italian tradi-
tions. As shaped by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87) and the dramatist Jean-
Baptiste Quinault, the tragédie en musique was the official expression of
French opera serving a political remit, the grandeur of France and its king,
its existence predicated on the denial of other operatic traditions. During
the ancien régime the early exclusion of comedy also left what Catherine
Kintzler has aptly referred to as a ‘case vide’,1 a gap that would be filled at
various periods by other forms: opéras comiques, French adaptations of
Italian intermezzi comici and the opéra-ballet. Thus the history of French
opera is shaped by oppositions – French/Italian, tragic/comic – that would
challenge the status of the tragédie en musique in the mid-eighteenth
century without undermining it and would simultaneously facilitate the
rise of related genres.
French tragédie en musique was already prefigured by the French poet
Pierre Perrin, who, in collaboration with the composer Robert Cambert
(c. 1628–77), aimed at the integration of Italian opera within French theatrical
and musical traditions that were well established at the end of the seventeenth
century.2 These included the ballet de cour and the theatrical pièces à
machines popular since the 1630s, in which spectacular elements held a
distinctive position through the use of machinery. Also included was the
later comédie-ballet, largely represented by Molière, for whom Lully wrote
scores in which the complementarity of spoken dialogue, dance and music
[201] greatly helped Lully to hone his knowledge of dramatic music. Indeed,
202 Jacqueline Waeber

French models for a sung-throughout drama existed from the 1650s. Perrin
and Cambert’s Pastorale d’Issy and Ariane, ou Le mariage de Bacchus (both
from 1659, scores lost) were still drawing on the tradition of the ballet de
cour, but their mythological plots, intertwining of airs and récits, and
panegyrical prologues point towards tragédie en musique.3 In 1669 the
king granted Perrin lettres patentes for the establishment of an Académie
d’Opéra for the public performance of operas ‘in music and the French
language’.4 The two first operas performed under the patent were Perrin’s
pastorale Pomone (1671; Cambert’s score is mostly lost) and Gabriel
Gilbert’s pastorale heroïque, Les peines et les plaisirs de l’amour (1672),
again with Cambert’s music. In both works the imprint of Italian opera is
perceptible through the magnificence of the stage setting and machinery
(flying characters, storms, thunder and lightning). This era ended quickly
owing to Perrin’s imprisonment for debt in 1671. With the king’s protec-
tion, Lully acquired Perrin’s lettres patentes in 1672, updating the privilege
with the acquisition of a monopoly on opera performances in Paris. Lully
also tried as hard as he could to reduce the number of musicians employed
by other theatres. For instance, in 1673 he obtained a royal ordinance to
prevent the Comédiens François du Roy from using ‘more than two voices
and six violins’.5 Such changes secured Lully’s supremacy at the Académie
Royale de Musique (frequently referred to as ‘l’Opéra’), restricting the
repertoire of the Opéra to his own works.
Outside Paris, operatic life was also controlled by privileges: in 1684
Lully received a royal ordinance prohibiting the establishment of any
opera académies in France without the king’s permission. Nevertheless,
a financial arrangement with Lully permitted académies royales to appear
in France: the Académie Royale de Marseille was inaugurated in 1685 with
Lully’s Le temple de la paix, and the Académie Royale de Musique in Lyons in
1688 with Lully’s tragédie Phaëton.6 Other cities followed: Rouen in 1688 and
Lille with a privilege granted to the composer Pascal Collasse (1649–1709)
in 1690.
Cadmus et Hermione (Paris, 1673), Lully and Quinault’s first tragédie
en musique, exemplifies defining features of the new genre, notably libret-
tos based on classical mythology, in this case Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It
is the first of Lully’s thirteen tragédies en musique. Eleven were written
to Quinault’s librettos; the other two, Psyché (1678) and Bellérophon
(1679), set librettos by Thomas Corneille. In the first half of the eighteenth
century, the terms tragédie en musique and tragédie mise en musique
(‘tragedy set to music’) were used more frequently than the later
tragédie lyrique. Only after Lully’s death were librettos derived from
sources other than mythology and medieval romance; these included
Persian history for Rameau’s Zoroastre (1749) and Christian scripture
203 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck

for a rare opéra biblique, Jephté (1732) by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair

(1667–1737).
Rigorously observed throughout the eighteenth century, the five-act
division continued in most nineteenth-century grand operas. In Lully’s
time, the prologue preceding the first act was dramatically unrelated to the
main plot; it served as a laudatio to Louis XIV, who was frequently repre-
sented through allegorical disguises. Only after the king’s death in 1715 did
librettists abandon the panegyric tone, shifting the prologue’s focus to an
allegorical story related to the main plot. The prologue began to disappear
altogether in mid-century, for the first time in 1749 in Rameau’s Zoroastre.
A paradigmatic feature of the tragédie en musique is the divertissement
at the end of each act. Meaning ‘entertainment’, the divertissement is a
suspension of the plot, with the main actors usually in the position of
spectators watching new or secondary characters. Replete with airs, cho-
ruses and dances, the divertissement fuels expectation for the return of the
main action. The prominence of dance sets the Lullian tragédie en musique
apart from its Italian counterpart. As Kintzler puts it: ‘in French opera, the
presence of dance is compulsory; the problem is making it necessary’.7

The rise of early opéra comique and opéra-ballet

Hosting acrobats and rope dancers, singers, musicians and mimes, the Parisian
fair (Foire) theatres were a long-standing tradition from the Middle Ages.
At the end of the seventeenth century they were at the Foire Saint-Germain
(from 3 February to Palm Sunday) and the Foire Saint-Laurent (from 9 August
to 29 September). Music played an important role in their repertoire of
parades, animal and acrobatic shows (including tightrope dancers) and mario-
nette plays. In 1672, Lully’s newly acquired royal privilege prohibited the use of
instrumental and sung music at the fairs. In 1697, the Forains, or fair actors,
took advantage of the expulsion of the Comédiens Italiens du Roi, a profes-
sional Italian company supported by the king, by appropriating repertoire and
characters from the commedia dell’arte, a move that became possible after
several Italian actors joined the fair theatres.8 The combined use of speech,
singing, music and dance of the Italian repertoire quickly came to be seen as
a threat to the Comédie-Française and the Opéra. The early eighteenth
century brought a succession of bans on the fairs, of closings and reopen-
ings, of conciliatory arrangements and compromises with the Opéra, the
Comédie-Française and, from 1716, the newly reconstituted Comédie-
Italienne. These led in part to the early success of the pièces en écriteaux,
which arose when the fair theatres lost their permit (granted by the Opéra in
1708) to use speech, songs, dances and changes of scenery:9
204 Jacqueline Waeber

The Comédiens-Français prohibited the performances [at the fair theatres],

which were already attracting large audiences, and they successfully
campaigned to change the law so that the fair actors were prohibited from
performing spoken dramas. Forbidden to speak, the actors used placards
[écriteaux]: . . . each actor had his lines written . . . on a placard that was
visible to the audience. These lines were initially spoken. Then songs were
added, which were also played by the orchestra and sung by the audience.10

The practice led to pièces en vaudevilles: existing tunes (timbres) chosen by

the Forains were taken from tragédies en musique (Lully’s ‘Air des trem-
bleurs’ from Isis, 1677, was a popular timbre) and from popular song,
especially the vaudeville, a short song in couplets.11 While the audience
sang the newly written lyrics to the tune, accompanied by a small ensemble
of eight to ten musicians, the actors mimed the scene.
By the end of the seventeenth century, Lully’s monopoly had created an
artificial situation for the Opéra repertoire, and his successors were inevi-
tably compared with him after his death. Already established as a canonic
repertoire, his tragédies en musique were regularly performed at the Opéra
until 1779. Comparisons became a topos in eighteenth-century French
musical life, as exemplified by the Querelle des Lullistes et des Ramistes of
the 1730s and the critique of Armide’s monologue from Lully’s Armide
(1686) that Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) included in his Lettre sur la
musique française (1753). Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) com-
posed a new score to this same Armide, which was premiered at the
Académie in Paris in 1777.
The rise of the opéra-ballet and, by the 1740s, the acte de ballet offered
new possibilities. Drawing on the ballet de cour and tragédie en musique,
an opéra-ballet opens with an allegorical prologue, albeit much lighter
than that of the tragédie en musique and usually focused on the main
theme of the work. The opéra-ballet retained the ballet de cour’s division
into acts, usually three or four. André Campra’s L’Europe galante (1697),
the first generally recognised opéra-ballet, opens with an allegorical pro-
logue, a quarrel between Venus and Discord. The amorous galanterie
referred to in the title is developed in the ensuing acts: ‘La France’,
‘L’Espagne’, ‘L’Italie’ and ‘La Turquie’. In a radical departure from the
tragédie en musique, early opéra-ballet presented contemporary characters
so far unseen on the Opéra stage: petits-maîtres, amoureux galants and
characters from the commedia dell’arte, among others.12 By celebrating
pleasure and amusement, while simultaneously rejecting the merveilleux and
mythology, the use of machinery and the tragedy with its values of heroism,
sacrifice and honour, opéra-ballet played an important role in the progressive
introduction of comic elements on stage. Banned from the tragédie en
musique since Lully’s third opera, Thésée (1675), the comic was frequently
205 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck

invoked in opéra-ballet – albeit in an expurgated form far removed from the

comic elements of the early fair theatres. Les fêtes, ou Le triomphe de Thalie
(1714), by Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682–1738), caused a stir at the Opéra by
using its prologue to set Melpomene, muse of tragedy, in opposition to
Thalia, muse of comedy, with the latter winning.
The repertoire of tragédies en musique and opéras-ballets constituted
the main source for the Forains, who frequently parodied these works.
This indicates the nature of their audiences, as full enjoyment of these
parodies required knowledge of the original operas.13 From the 1700s to
the 1730s, the main authors writing for the Foire were Alain-René Lesage
and Jacques-Philippe d’Orneval; next was the playwright and librettist Louis
Fuzelier (1672–1752), author of numerous parodies including Arlequin
Persée (1722, a parody of Lully’s Persée).14
Police officers were regularly sent to ensure that the Forains did not
overstep their privilege. One report, dated 3 February 1710, writes of a parody
of Quinault and Lully’s Alceste (Versailles, 1674) at the Foire Saint-Germain.
The agent describes ‘several ranks of seats’ and ‘three ranks of boxes’ of a
‘decorated theatre’, with an orchestra of at least eight musicians . . . accom-
panying several actors in ‘a comic divertissement . . . parodying several airs
from the opera Alceste and other airs and dances alternatively’.15 The
number of musicians corresponded to the musical forces usually hired at
the Foire.16
After an annual payment of 35,000 livres to the Académie Royale de
Musique, the fair theatres were permitted to call themselves the Opéra-
Comique and to perform plays with musical accompaniment, dances
and songs:17 with the permission of the Opéra, ‘plays only in vaudevilles
were written, and the theatre took the name Opéra-Comique. Gradually
prose [for the spoken dialogues] came to be used with verses [for the
vaudevilles], so plays gradually became mixed.’18 The use of vaudevilles
no longer implied that all songs were based on existing tunes: the finale,
during which each main character returned to sing one verse of the vaude-
ville (frequently alternating with dances), gave opportunities for new tunes.
Early examples are those composed by Jean-Claude Gillier (1667–1737),
active at the Opéra-Comique from 1713 until 1735.
With the blossoming of the comédies en vaudevilles, characterised by
spoken dialogue and song, the Opéra-Comique became dangerously suc-
cessful competition for the two main royal theatres: for the opening of the
season of the new Opéra-Comique at the Foire Saint-Laurent on 25 July
1715, Le nouveau mercure galant reported that ‘the Comédie[-Française]
and Opéra were deserted’.
Another threat emerged in 1716, when the regent, Philippe d’Orléans,
brought Luigi Riccoboni’s Italian company to the Hôtel de Bourgogne,
206 Jacqueline Waeber

which had been deserted since the expulsion of the Comédiens Italiens in
1697. This ‘Nouveau Théâtre Italien’ or ‘Comédie-Italienne’ benefited from
royal subsidies. It quickly turned to the French language for its repertoire,
which included plays by Marivaux and pièces en vaudevilles, many of them
with divertissements by Mouret, the music director of the new company.
Thus began a long rivalry with the Opéra-Comique that ended in 1762 with
the merging of the two theatres. This was at the expense of the Opéra-
Comique, the Comédie-Italienne having obtained the privilege and reper-
toire of the former.
The popularity of the Opéra-Comique and the Comédie-Italienne inevi-
tably affected the repertoire of the Opéra. The climate of the Regency
favoured development of lighter and shorter forms characterised by a
more flexible treatment of musical and dramatic conventions. The most
remarkable instance of its similarity with the spirit of the early opéra-ballet
is Campra’s Le carnaval de Venise (1699), on a libretto by Jean-François
Regnard, the most successful writer of the Comédie-Italienne. Not a true
opéra-ballet, as it presents continuous action throughout, Le carnaval de
Venise anticipates Le carnaval et la Folie (1703) by André Cardinal
Destouches (1672–1749), defined as the first comédie lyrique. Italy became
a favoured place for the imagination of librettists and composers: the
foundation of the Comédie-Italienne in 1716 filled a void left by the
Comédiens Italiens since 1697. Appropriating the symbols of an imaginary
Italy, opéra-ballet and the related comédie lyrique permitted a form of
artistic and political escapism.19 Campra’s Le carnaval de Venise and his
opéra-ballet Les fêtes vénitiennes (1710) can also be read as a criticism of
French absolutism, as Georgia Cowart recently demonstrated.20
The end of the Regency marked a change in the aesthetics of opéra-
ballet, reaffirming the heroic and progressively reintroducing mytholog-
ical and allegorical characters.21 The opéra-ballet Les fêtes grecques et
romaines (1723) by François Colin (or Collin) de Blamont (1690–1760)
was defined by its librettist Fuzelier as a ballet héroïque. Subsequent opéras-
ballets also brought back heroic and mythological values, as in Destouches’s
Les stratagèmes de l’Amour (1726), Mouret’s Les amours des dieux (1727)
and Rameau’s Les fêtes d’Hébé, ou Les talents lyriques (1739).

Waiting for Rameau

After Lully’s death, the tragédie en musique inevitably went through
stylistic changes. The Italianism of Médée (1693) by Marc-Antoine
Charpentier (1643–1704) was seen as a threat by the Lullistes, who
identified the work with the typical excesses of transalpine music.22
207 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck

Chromaticism and dissonance are more frequent in Médée than in any of

Lully’s operas, and the vocal lines of its récits often break into brief arioso
sections. Early eighteenth-century tragédie en musique is also characterised
by an increase in the number of short airs within large recitative sections
composed in the declamatory style of the récit non mesuré.23 Vocal tech-
nique grew with the appearance of ariettes, which arose from the influence
of Italian vocal and instrumental music and cantata in France. The term
ariette could be applied to a song following the binary AABB form or to the
Italian da capo aria model. Ariettes are to be found in Campra’s Les fêtes
vénitiennes, a work hugely popular and frequently performed up to the mid-
eighteenth century.
The generous display of dances in opéra-ballet was echoed in tragédies
en musique. Also prominent were symphonies descriptives, with a predi-
lection for the description of natural phenomena, including sommeils
(‘slumbers’; an early example by Lully is in Atys, Act III, scene 4) and
earthquakes.24 The new generation of composers (Collasse, Campra and
Marin Marais, 1656–1728) developed the role of the orchestra with a refined
use of instrumental colour. Despite its modest size and relative simplicity,
the instrumental tempest in Act III, scene 4, of Marais’s tragédie Alcyone
(1706) was the most frequently cited example of symphonies descriptives
throughout the eighteenth century. Other examples include the earthquake
in Marais’s tragédie Sémélé (1709) and an earthquake with chorus in
Campra’s Tancrède (1702). The most impressive earthquake belongs to an
opéra-ballet by Rameau, ‘Les Incas du Pérou’ from Les Indes galantes (1735);
because of its difficult instrumental writing, the earthquake was left out of
the first performances. As for the ariette, it also made its way into the
tragédie en musique. Instrumentation echoed Italian cantatas and instru-
mental music: the ariette ‘Amour, régnez en paix’ from Marais’s Sémélé
(Act III, scene 4) requires two obbligato flutes.
‘My Lord, there is enough music in this opera to make ten of them’, was the
purported bon mot from Campra about Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), Rameau’s
first tragédie en musique.25 Indeed, with this work Rameau efficiently
absorbed contemporary trends and opened a new chapter in the history
of French opera. It also sparked off the Querelle des Lullistes et des Ramistes,
the famous eighteenth-century debate that perpetuated the Querelle des
anciens et des modernes. Denis Diderot’s libertine novel Les bijoux indis-
crets, set in the kingdom of Banza (a mocking allegory of France), offered
a spirited account in 1748 featuring ‘Utmiutsol’ and ‘Uremifasolasiututut’
as Banza’s most famous musicians, ‘the former starting to grow old’ and
the ‘latter just born’; ‘the ignorant and the old fogeys’ favoured Utmiutsol,
‘the young and the virtuosos’ favoured Uremifasolasiututut, and ‘the gens
de goût, whether young or old, mostly supported both of them’. While
208 Jacqueline Waeber

Utmiutsol, whose music is ‘simple, natural, even, sometimes too even’, is

Lully, Rameau is ‘the young Uremifasolasiututut’, whose music is ‘singular,
brilliant, made up, learned, sometimes too learned’: ‘Nature led Utmiutsol
on the path to melody; study and experience led Uremifasolasiututut to
discover the sources of harmony. Who has ever known how to declaim, and
who will ever recite like the old man? Who will write light ariettes for us,
voluptuous airs and characteristic symphonies as the younger?’26 Rameau
departed from Lullian tradition, still ‘believ[ing] himself part of the Lullian
tradition’.27 But his fondness for accompanied recitative, with its subtle
variations of metre and accentuation of words through syncopations, is a
novelty; the harmonic idiom is never short of dissonance; modulation and
seventh and ninth chords are abundant. Rameau’s music acquired an
expressive charge with an unprecedented evocative power which enhanced
the sung text with descriptive devices and instrumental colour.
Pygmalion’s ariette ‘Règne, Amour’ in Pigmalion (1748), an acte de
ballet, reveals the demanding vocal technique that Rameau’s ariettes had
reached from the 1740s onwards, culminating in ‘Un horizon serein’ from
his last, unfinished tragédie Les Boréades (1763). Rameau also expanded
the use of duets, vocal ensembles and choruses. This was not always
appreciated by his contemporaries: Hippolyte was severely pruned after
its premiere, especially the duets, which were criticised for their expression
of contradictory ideas in the two voices; and the second ‘Trio des Parques’,
famous for its use of enharmonics, was suppressed because it was too
difficult to sing and accompany.

The acte de ballet

Appearing in the 1740s, the acte de ballet was a one-act stage work, often
treated as a divertissement filled with dances, airs, ensembles and choruses.
The appearance of actes de ballet encouraged a vogue for spectacles de
fragments that paralleled the decline of the opéra-ballet, whose focus on a
unifying subject disappeared after the 1730s. The spectacle de fragments
consisted of putting acts together from different ballets. An example is the
fragments given on 20 November 1760, which started with the prologue of
Rameau’s three-act opera Platée, continued with Rousseau’s one-act opera
Le devin du village and concluded with Pigmalion, Rameau’s acte de ballet.
Rousseau, however, severely criticised the practice, echoing a growing
concern that the repertoire of the Académie Royale lacked imagination:
‘Only a man without taste could imagine such a jumble, and only a theatre
without standards could endure it.’28
209 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck

The function of dance in Rameau’s works echoed ideas that had

emerged before mid-century, especially the danse en action promoted by
Louis de Cahusac (1706–59). It was less decorative and more orientated
towards narration than the belle danse promoted by Louis Dupré, one of
the best dancers of the Opéra in the 1730s. Cahusac’s 1754 treatise La
danse ancienne et moderne offered the first thorough theoretical appraisal
of the danse en action.29
Such new conceptions of dance paved the way for Gaspare Angiolini
in the 1760s in Vienna and Jean-Georges Noverre in Stuttgart. These
were the main practitioners of the ballet en action, which eventually
supplanted opéra-ballet.30 The dancer Gaëtan Vestris from the Opéra,
one of Noverre’s disciples, filled the principal role on 26 January 1776 of
the first ballet en action ever performed at the Opéra, Médée et Jason (a
potpourri score).31

From Rameau to the Querelle des Bouffons

The characteristics of the comédie lyrique were perpetuated by, even
absorbed into, Rameau’s three-act opera Platée (1745). Most frequently
defined in contemporary sources as a ballet bouffon, Platée is an acerbic
parody of the conventions of the tragédie en musique, additionally mock-
ing the excesses of Italian virtuosity of La Folie’s Italianising air ‘Aux
langueurs d’Apollon’.32 Platée is a major adumbration of the comic issue
that was to be at the heart of the Querelle des Bouffons of 1752–4. In 1752,
the Opéra, competing against the Opéra-Comique and the Comédie-
Italienne, hired Eustachio Bambini’s Italian company to perform intermezzi
comici after revoking a contract made between Bambini and the Académie
Royale in Rouen. On 1 August 1752, the Bouffons performed Pergolesi’s La
serva padrona (1733). This was not the first time intermezzi comici were
performed in Paris: Orlandini’s Bacocco e Serpilla (Venice, 1718) had been
performed at the Opéra in 1729 (as Le mari joueur et la femme bigotte) and
parodied by Biancolelli and Romagnesi at the Comédie-Italienne;
Pergolesi’s La serva padrona had already been performed in 1746 at the
Comédie-Italienne in a ‘Frenchified’ form, with added divertissements and
spoken dialogue replacing Italian recitatives.
The role of La serva padrona in triggering the Querelle des Bouffons
must not be overemphasised, however: it was merely a welcome pretext for
igniting a debate that could not be avoided any longer. Carefully circum-
scribed in specific works since the early opéras-ballets and comédies
lyriques, comedy had been unexpectedly brought back by the Bouffons.
210 Jacqueline Waeber

The Opéra-Comique and Comédie-Italienne: Monnet

and Favart
Before the Querelle des Bouffons, the Opéra-Comique hosted two main
figures who were instrumental in the development of the genre: Jean
Monnet (1703–85) and Charles-Simon Favart (1710–92). Monnet’s
tenures at the Opéra-Comique (1743–4 and 1752–7) orientated that
institution towards a more elevated genre. In his Mémoires (1772),
Monnet tarnished his predecessor, Ponteau, by saying he had let the
Opéra-Comique ‘fall into a major state of disrepair’. Stressing that during
Ponteau’s tenure the domestic staff, who were recognisable by their livery
[or livrée], had taken over the parterre, Monnet suggests that he aimed to
elevate the social level of the audience. The orchestra, he continues, was
made up of musicians ‘who used to play at weddings and guinguettes’, and
the dancers were poorly dressed; in short, concludes Monnet, ‘nothing was
dirtier, more disgusting than the accessories of this theatre. Wishing to
bring decency and order . . . [he] obtained a royal ordonnance prohibiting
the entrance of domestic staff.’33
Monnet’s debut in 1743 was highlighted by major changes: a new
amphitheatre was built, redecorated and refurbished. Brilliant appoint-
ments included Favart as régisseur (in charge of supervising the rehear-
sals and performances) and author; the painter François Boucher for
costumes and decor; Dupré as maître de ballet with his pupil Jean Georges
Noverre; and as conductors the composers Joseph Bodin de Boismortier
(1743–5, at the Foire Saint-Laurent, then the Foire Saint-Germain) and
Adolphe-Benoît Blaise (d. 1772; at the Foire Saint-Germain in 1743 and the
Foire Saint-Laurent in 1744). By then the Opéra-Comique, which had
become one of the richest and most innovative theatres of Paris, boasted
an orchestra of as many as eighteen musicians. Feeling this threat, the Opéra
and the Comédie-Française had its privilege abolished, forcing the Opéra-
Comique to close between 1745 and 1751.
It fell to Favart, who became the new director of the Opéra-Comique in
1758, to bring to fruition the changes that had started in the 1740s. He
pursued the reform of the genre, aiming at moral elevation and departing
from the esprit gaulois that had characterised the repertoire at the begin-
ning of the century. ‘Favart [was] the first to drag opéra comique out of the
humble status that it had occupied for so long.’34 He defined his first work
as belonging to the genre galant et comique; it anticipates his later contri-
butions to the genre and the emergence of a Rousseauian sensibility,35
epitomised by Rousseau’s Le devin du village (Fontainebleau, 1752;
Académie Royale de Musique, 1753), a one-act intermède. The combined
influences of Favart’s early works and Le devin du village reshaped opéra
211 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck

comique from the 1750s onwards through a series of oppositions between

the rural and the urban and the exaltation of simplicity, the naturel, over the
artificiality of the aristocracy.

The Querelle des Bouffons and its aftermath

Le devin du village caused a sensation by introducing to the Opéra a new
sensibility with a moralising subtext that would become prevalent in
Favart’s later style. Based on the tale of that name in Marmontel’s
Contes moraux, Annette et Lubin, with music by Blaise (1762), was one
of Favart’s major successes. Its performance at court in 1762 testifies to the
level of decency and morality that was now attached to this repertoire,
though by the 1760s the encyclopédistes (a group of over a hundred writers
who contributed to the Encyclopédie, edited by Diderot and Jean le Rond
d’Alembert) grew more critical of a naivety in it that they found artificial.
Because of its novelty, Le devin du village was assimilated into the
category of intermezzi comici, whose comic quality was of a different stock
from Rousseau’s intermède. Favart’s parody of Le devin du village, Les
amours de Bastien et Bastienne (1753), in which Favart’s wife Marie-
Justine Du Ronceray caused a sensation by appearing on stage in a rustic
costume and clogs, greatly detracting from the magnificence of the
‘bergères d’Opéra’, became as successful and influential as Le devin du
village.36
Le devin du village also started the vogue for the vocal romance at the
Académie Royale: Colin’s ‘Dans ma cabane obscure’ is characterised by its
strophic form, archaic devices, simple accompaniment, modal harmonies
and absence of ornamentation, all enhancing a ‘sweet, natural, champêtre
melody’.37 The popularity of the romance became a major feature of opéra
comique in the 1760s, and it was widely used in the works of François-André
Danican Philidor (1726–95; Le sorcier, 1764) and Pierre-Alexandre de
Monsigny (1729–1817; Le roi et le fermier, 1762). It also matched the
sensibilité, if not the frank sentimentalisme, of the late eighteenth-century
opéra comique, embodying the topos of local colour and archaism. This is
seen in two works by André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741–1813),
Aucassin et Nicolette, ou Les moeurs du bon vieux temps (1779) and
Richard Coeur-de-Lion (1784), in which the romance ‘Une fièvre
brûlante’ is invested with an important structural role through its nine
occurrences in the work. A late opéra comique by Nicolas Dalayrac
(1753–1809), Léhéman, ou La tour de Neustadt (1801), also uses a
romance (‘Un voyageur s’est égaré’) as a recurring motif throughout
the work.
212 Jacqueline Waeber

A large portion of the debate during the Querelle des Bouffons con-
cerned the differences between French and Italian recitative. The most
extreme position was held by Rousseau, whose Lettre sur la musique
française (1753) dismissed the possibility of French music altogether,
arguing that the French language was unsuitable for setting to music.
Another important work, this one truly born of the Querelle, was Les
troqueurs (1753) by Antoine Dauvergne (1713–97), on a libretto by
Charles Vadé. Defined as both intermède and opéra bouffon, and sung
throughout in recitatives instead of spoken dialogue, the work was never-
theless assimilated into the repertoire of the opéra comique. Monnet had
carefully launched the publicity for the work, pretending to have commis-
sioned an Italian composer to write an opera with French words in order
to demonstrate the viability of writing French music to a French text.38
After the premiere, the Mercure de France judged Les troqueurs to be the
first intermède written in France ‘in a purely Italian manner’.39 The recita-
tive of Les troqueurs is fast and fluctuating, indeed à l’italienne, but it
maintains the metre appropriate to the récit non mesuré, with the changes
of time signature required by French prosody. Dauvergne created a French
recitative à l’italienne by sticking to traditional French musical declamation.
The 1750s saw the development of ariettes in opéras comiques (which
should not be confused with the ariettes that had been used in opéra-ballet
and tragédie en musique since early in the eighteenth century). Arias from
the intermezzi comici in 1752–4 provided new models for the ariettes in
opéras comiques, and were also frequently parodied from 1752 onwards,
with spoken dialogue instead of recitative. Favart adapted Orlandini’s
Serpilla e Baiocco (1715) as Baïocco et Serpilla (1753), and Rinaldo di
Capua’s La zingara (1753) was performed at the Comédie-Italienne in
1755 as La bohémienne.40
Similarly, all the ariettes in Michel Blavet’s Le jaloux corrigé (1752)
were parodies of arias from intermezzi performed by the Bouffons
since 1752 (La serva padrona, Il maestro di musica and Il giocatore).
The only original music in the entire score was Blavet’s recitative (Le
jaloux corrigé not being an opéra comique), supposedly ‘made in imi-
tation of the Italians’.41 Ariettes in opéra comique were not necessarily for
solo voice: Philidor wrote ariettes en duo at the beginning of Blaise le
savetier (1759) and in Sancho Pança dans son île (1762). Whereas ariettes
in the Opéra repertoire established a moment of dramatic stasis with
emphasis on vocal display, ariettes in opéras comiques were justified by
a dramatic and narrative purpose, hence their avoidance of strophic form.
The use of vocal ensembles also expanded, while maintaining their nar-
rative role: an early example is the ariette en quatuor ending Dauvergne’s
Les troqueurs – described by David Charlton as an ariette d’action.42 The
213 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck

most famous of such vocal ensembles remains the septet in Philidor’s Tom
Jones (1765).43
After the Querelle, Italian recitativo accompagnato made its way into
opéras comiques, often appearing between a passage of spoken dialogue
and an ariette. Philidor frequently used it with a parodic intention, as in
the magic scene of Le sorcier in which the technique enhances the mock-
solemnity of the invocation made by Julien, disguised as the sorcerer.
Downing A. Thomas has described how the development of opéra
comique from mid-century was connected with a change in audience
attitudes, permitting a stronger sense of identification between dramatic
characters and audience: opéra comique was ‘particularly well suited to
sympathy’.44 Because it was inextricably linked, both socially and politi-
cally, to its origins in royal power, the tragédie en musique came under
attack in the 1750s from the Enlightenment thought of the encyclopédistes,
which gave musical debates a political dimension. The Querelle des Bouffons
was also known as the Guerre des coins (‘War of the corners’), this name
referring to the royal boxes at the theatre. The coin du roi gathered the
partisans of French music, now all united behind Rameau, who embodied
the new ‘conservatism’; the coin de la reine gathered the encyclopédistes,
primarily Friedrich-Melchior Grimm and Diderot.
Another element of stylistic change in the mid-eighteenth century was
the rise of the théâtre larmoyant, which was inaugurated by Nivelle de La
Chaussée’s Mélanide (1741). Jean-Michel Sedaine’s libretto Le déserteur
(described by Sedaine as a drame), set to music by Monsigny (1769),
stretches verisimilitude for the benefit of the pathétique. It was an impor-
tant step towards the vogue for melodramatic aesthetics that would appear
in the 1770s and reach its peak during the Revolutionary period. The title
role of Dalayrac’s Nina, ou La folle par amour (1786) is the prototype of
the mad heroine popular in nineteenth-century opera. Dalayrac’s Nina
was the model for Paisiello’s Nina, o sia la pazza per amore (1789).45 Les
rigueurs du cloître (1790) and Le délire (1799) by Henri-Montan Berton
(1767–1844) drew on the type of melodramatic plots also found in the
works of the dramatist Nicolas Bouilly (to whom Sedaine gave the title poète
lachrymal). This trend in opéra comique found its finest achievements in the
1790s in the repertoire of the Théâtre Feydeau: the drames lyriques La
caverne (1793) and Paul et Virginie, ou Le triomphe de la vertu by Le
Sueur (1794); three by Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842), Lodoïska (1791),
Eliza, ou Le voyage au glacier du Mont Saint-Bernard (1794) and Médée
(1797); and the opéra comique Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal (1798) by
Pierre Gaveaux (1760–1825), the source of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
The seeds of the development of opéra comique during the Revolution
had been budding since the 1750s: Diderot’s statement ‘we speak too much
214 Jacqueline Waeber

in our dramas; as a consequence our actors don’t act enough’46 reflects the
search for expressive immediacy at the expense of verbal continuity. Thus
gesture, interjections and interfering with and interrupting the speech
(known by then as the style entrecoupé, with its eloquent silences and
gestures) are musically rendered by accompanied recitatives, which provide
greater variety in spoken dialogues. These are symptoms of an expanded
expressivity that goes straight to the heart of an audience and colludes with
it. Charlton points out this quality in a scene from Philidor’s Le sorcier, in
which Agate is unable to recognise the disguised Julien, whereas ‘We, the
audience, see him in both his roles . . . his words (sung as sorcerer) assert
Julien’s fidelity to Agate in the face of her apparent infidelity, while his
music tells us that this is also a love-declaration.’47

Waiting for Gluck: embracing the Italian faction

and ‘an absolute tolerance of all genres of music’
Under Favart’s tenure, the Opéra-Comique merged with the Comédie-
Italienne in 1762 and was relocated to the Hôtel de Bourgogne (in 1783
the theatre moved to the new Salle Favart). Despite the dominance of the
Opéra-Comique repertoire and indeed a royal edict of 1780 renaming the
company Opéra-Comique, the new theatre continued to be referred to as
the Comédie-Italienne or Théâtre-Italien.48 In the 1760s its repertoire
combined the new comédie mêlée d’ariettes with the opéras comiques en
vaudevilles. The inexorable progress of ariettes over vaudevilles and other
simple airs inherited from the Foire was the subject of much debate, as
illustrated by Le procès des ariettes et des vaudevilles, a one-act play by
Favart and Louis Anseaume first performed in 1760.
The issue of declamation and recitative was still a hot topic, being
treated in texts such as Diderot’s Le neveu de Rameau (written probably in
1761 or 1762):
But . . . isn’t it a really strange oddity that a foreigner, an Italian, a Duni
[Egidio Duni, 1708–75], comes to teach us how to give accent to our music,
to subject our way of singing to all tempi, meters, intervals, declamatory
passages, without hurting our prosody? . . . Anyone who has ever heard a
beggar asking for charity in the street, a man in the grip of rage, a jealous,
furious woman, a lover in despair, a flatterer – yes, a flatterer softening his
tone, drawling out his syllables, his voice like honey; in a word, a passion, no
matter what kind, provided that by its energy it deserved to serve as a model
for the musician, should have noticed two things: first, that syllables,
whether long or short, have no fixed duration, and are not even in any
necessary proportional relationship to each other; second, that passion can
215 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck

mould prosody more or less at will; it accommodates the very longest

intervals, and the man who cries out in deep despair: ‘Ah! Wretched that I
am!’ would raise his voice on the first exclamatory syllable to its highest,
sharpest pitch and sink down on the others to the gravest and lowest,
ranging over an octave or even a greater interval, and giving each sound the
quantity appropriate to the melody, without offending the ear or letting the
syllables, be they long or short, preserve the length or brevity of unemotional
speech. We’ve come a long way since the days when we would cite, as
miracles of musical expression, the parenthetical remark in [Lully’s] Armide:
‘Renaud’s conqueror (if any such exists)’, or ‘Let’s obey without hesitating!’
from [Rameau’s] Les Indes galantes. Now, those miracles make me shrug my
shoulders with pity. The rate at which the art is moving ahead, no one can
predict where it’ll get to.49

In 1757 Diderot had published Entretiens sur le fils naturel, a text in the form
of three dialogues (‘entretiens’) discussing his theoretical views on theatre as
exemplified in his own play Le fils naturel of that same year, and the new
poésie lyrique yet to come that he predicted has been often identified with
Gluck’s Parisian operas (1774–9). The prevalent notion that by the 1750s the
tragédie en musique had reached a dead end is essentially due to the indis-
putable fact that there was no composer able to build on Rameau’s oeuvre.
Philidor’s Ernelinde, princesse de Norvège (1767) completely abandons
the merveilleux. Poinsinet’s libretto adopted a three-act structure in its
first version (the 1773 version was in five acts). Philidor made larger
concessions to the Italian style of aria, without suppressing the ballet so
dear to the French. Ernelinde was praised by the encyclopédistes (above all
Diderot, who saw in it the nouveau stile).50
However, the fate of tragédie en musique before the Revolution fell into
the hands of Gluck, who settled in Paris in 1774. Paris needed him as much
as he needed Paris. Familiar with French musical aesthetics since his
Viennese stay, Gluck had already been composing original scores for
opéras comiques for the Viennese Burgtheater from 1758 under the tenure
of the Genoan Count Giacomo Durazzo, who indefatigably advocated
French music in Vienna. Gluck’s new concept of opera was shaped during
his collaboration with Calzabigi for his three Viennese ‘reform operas’
Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), Alceste (1767) and Paride ed Elena (1770). He set
it out clearly in the preface to Alceste: the rejection of vocal repetition
occasioned by da capo arias and gratuitous virtuosity, which impeded the
comprehension of the text; the avoidance of the alternation between
recitative and aria by a more frequent use of arioso sections and accom-
panied recitatives; and better dramatic integration of chorus and overture.
Gluck espoused the tragédie en musique because of its potential, espe-
cially in the flexible use of the récit, which offered subtler gradations than
216 Jacqueline Waeber

the traditional alternation between recitative and aria, and the chance to
shape large-scale structures within scenes. For the Académie Royale de
Musique he adapted two of his Italian reform operas (Orphée et Euridice,
1774; Alceste, 1776); he also wrote new ones: Iphigénie en Aulide (1774);
Armide (1777), which reset Quinault’s libretto for Lully and proved that
Gluck had carefully read Rousseau’s 1753 critique of Armide’s mono-
logue;51 and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779).
Iphigénie en Tauride best exemplifies Gluck’s Parisian manner. The
drama begins in medias res with what seems to be an innocuous overture,
a light minuet suddenly interrupted by a storm and leading to Iphigénie’s
entrance. Gluck’s masterful use of recitative culminates in Orestes’ arioso
(Act II), with another major Gluckian feature, the voice of the orchestra
superimposed on and contradicting the characters – here a restless viola
figure betrays Orestes’ inner torment. The integration of ballet and the
choeur dansé was another salient feature that recalled Gluck’s collabora-
tion with Angiolini for his ballets d’action in Vienna (Don Juan,
Sémiramis).52
Gluck’s Parisian stay was the last chapter of the tragédie en musique
before the Revolution. The Querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes,
which had started in 1777 and pitted Gluck against the Italian composer
Niccolò Piccinni, went back to the topical opposition of French versus
Italian.53 Piccinni, who had moved to Paris in 1777, was supported by the
large Italophile party. Among them was Marmontel, who was instrumental
in forging the aesthetic manifesto of the Piccinnistes, promoting musical
unity and periodic structure (périodisme) and adapting several of Quinault’s
librettos for Piccinni.54

The Querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes

‘Let’s study then, and encourage the genius, if we want it to hatch . . . Let’s
work tirelessly to make our Music triumph, but when gathering the
harvest, let’s not forget who gave us the seed.’55 In 1770, this statement
from Nicolas-Étienne Framery, exhorting French musicians to follow
Italian aesthetics, prefigured a central tenet of the Querelle des Gluckistes
et des Piccinnistes, which turned out to be the last manifestation of the long-
standing French–Italian confrontation. A perfect example was the fifteen-
month season of Italian operas presented in 1779–80 by the director of the
Opéra from 1778, Anne-Pierre-Jacques de Vismes du Valgay, who
appointed Piccinni as musical director for the season.56 Having wisely
learned the lessons of the former Italian intrusions in France, de Vismes
decided to counterattack by widening the repertoire of the Opéra,
217 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck

increasing the number of weekly performances from three to five and

offering a variety of genres, including opéras anciens and opéras nouveaux,
Italian opera buffa, ballets, pantomimes and concert music (to rival the
several institutions dedicated to instrumental music in the capital). Finally,
de Vismes managed to impose a series of drastic restrictions on the
Comédie-Italienne, the main one being the prohibition of performances
of Italian operas and parodies of Italian operas (with French lyrics), which
had been permitted at the Opéra.57 In so doing, he alienated those who
should have been his allies, including defenders of Italian opera like
Framery, who had already adapted several Italian works into French.58
From 1778, Framery was able to pursue his career by offering adaptations
of Italian operas to the Théâtre de Versailles, which evaded de Vismes’s
restrictions. Inaugurated in 1777, this theatre benefited from the clever
direction of the actress and theatre director Mademoiselle Montansier
(Marguerite Brunet) and from the protection of one of its most frequent
attenders, Queen Marie-Antoinette. As a result of de Vismes’s season, the
1780s saw the inexorable rise of Italian opera in France, first from the
Théâtre de Versailles, then from the Théâtre de Monsieur (1789–92),
which was dedicated to Italian opere buffe adapted for the French audience
with ‘substitution arias’ and new ensembles mostly composed by Cherubini,
who was recruited by Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824) and was estab-
lished in Paris from 1786.59 The period 1789–92 definitively secured the
ground for Italian opera in France.60
The consequences of de Vismes’s fruitful Italian season altered what
had seemed unalterable since Lully’s time. A profound breach had been
made in the repertoire of the Opéra, as expressed in this (unsigned) review
published in March 1779 in the Correspondance littéraire:
But what are the sources of [the Opéra’s] great prosperity? It must be
admitted: an absolute tolerance for all genres of music, for the old music
and for the new, for Gluck’s music and for Piccinni’s, for the grand opéra
and for the opéra bouffon, for the ballets with chaconnes and for the
ballets-pantomimes; no genre is proscribed, no talent is persecuted.61

In this new landscape, the Comédie-Italienne was defined by an adjective

that had lost its raison d’être, so a royal edict renamed it Opéra-Comique
in 1780. The core of its repertoire during the last decade of the ancien
régime was Grétry’s opéras comiques, followed by those of Dalayrac. It
was in this decade and under Grétry’s influence that opéra comique
acquired the decisive stylistic features that would secure the Romantic
development of the genre: the choice of plots, which now used historical
subjects with political subtexts, and the expansion of the orchestral and
choral forces.62
218 Jacqueline Waeber
Notes
1 Catherine Kintzler, Poétique de l’opéra
français de Corneille à Rousseau (Paris:
Minerve, 1991), 203.
2 On Perrin’s arguments for the establishment
of a truly French opera, see Louis E. Auld, The
Lyric Art of Pierre Perrin, Founder of French
Opera (Henryville, PA: Institute of Mediaeval
Music, 1986).
3 Louis E. Auld, ‘“Dealing in shepherds”: the
pastoral ploy in nascent French opera’, in
Georgia Cowart (ed.), French Musical Thought,
1600–1800 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research
Press, 1989), 53–79.
4 The full text of Louis XIV’s lettres patentes is
given in Jacques-Bernard Durey de Noinville,
Histoire du théâtre de l’Académie Royale de
Musique en France, 2 vols (1757; Geneva:
Minkoff, 1972), vol. I, 77–81.
5 Ordinance of 22 April 1673, Saint-Germain-
en-Laye; see Marcelle Benoit, Musiques de
cour: chapelle, chambre, écurie, 1661–1733
(Paris: Picard, 1971), 41.
6 Trois siècles d’opéra à Lyons de l’Académie
Royale de Musique à l’Opéra-Nouveau,
exhibition catalogue (Bibliothèque Municipale
de Lyons, 1982).
7 Catherine Kintzler, Théâtre et opéra à l’âge
classique: une familière étrangeté (Paris:
Fayard, 2004), 165.
8 They were expelled for announcing the play
La fausse prude, which targeted Madame de
Maintenon, Louis XIV’s morganatic spouse.
The repertoire of the Comédiens Italiens is
published in Marcello Spaziani (ed.), Il Théâtre
Italien di Gherardi (Rome: Edizioni
dell’Ateneo, 1966).
9 Paola Martinuzzi, Le ‘pièces par écriteaux’
nel teatro della Foire (1710–1715): modi di una
teatralità (Venice: Cafoscarina, 2007).
10 Jacques-Philippe d’Orneval, ‘Préface’, in
Alain-René Lesage, Théâtre de la Foire, 10 vols
(Paris: Pierre Gandouin, 1737), vol. I. This
practice is also described in Robert
M. Isherwood, ‘Popular musical entertainment
in eighteenth-century Paris’, International
Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music,
9 (1978), 305–6.
11 Clifford R. Barnes: ‘Vocal music at the
“Théâtres de la Foire” 1697–1762’, part 1,
Recherches sur la musique française classique,
8 (1968), 141–60.
12 A frequently cited predecessor to L’Europe
galante is Pascal Collasse’s Ballet des saisons
(1695). This ballet à entrées was one of the
first ballets to present a different plot for each
one of its entrées, ‘Spring’, ‘Summer’, ‘Autumn’
and ‘Winter’. Others were Henri Desmarets’s
Les amours de Momus (1695) and Les jeux à
l’honneur de la victoire by Élisabeth Jacquet de
La Guerre (1691, music lost). See Catherine
Cessac, ‘Les jeux à l’honneur de la victoire
d’Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: premier
opéra-ballet?’, Revue de musicologie, 81 (1995),
235–47.
13 The classic study remains Pierre Mélèse, Le
théâtre et le public à Paris sous Louis XIV,
1659–1715 (1934; repr. Geneva: Slatkine,
1976); see also John Lough, Paris Theatre
Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries (Oxford University Press, 1957).
14 Spaziani’s anthology provides a musical
appendix. See Marcello Spaziani, Il teatro della
‘Foire’: dieci commedie di Alard, Fuzelier,
Lesage, D’Orneval, La Font, Piron (Rome:
Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1965).
15 Émile Campardon, Les spectacles de la
Foire, 2 vols (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1877),
vol. I, 6–7.
16 Clifford R. Barnes, ‘Instruments and
instrumental music at the “Théâtres de la
Foire” (1697–1762)’, Recherches sur la musique
française classique, 5 (1965), 142–68.
17 Henceforth the term opéra comique will
refer to the genre, and ‘Opéra-Comique’ to the
institution. On the history of this institution in
the ancien régime and beyond, see
Philippe Vendrix (ed.), L’opéra-comique en
France au XVIIIe siècle (Liège: Mardaga, 1992);
and Nicole Wild and David Charlton (eds),
Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique Paris: répertoire
1762–1972 (Liège: Mardaga, 2005).
18 Orneval, ‘Préface’.
19 See Rebecca Harris-Warrick, ‘Staging
Venice’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 15 (2003),
297–316.
20 See Georgia Cowart, ‘Carnival in Venice or
protest in Paris? Louis XIV and the politics of
subversion at the Paris Opéra’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 54 (2001),
265–302.
21 The reintroduction of the heroic character
in Les fêtes grecques can be related to the recent
coronation of Louis XV at the age of thirteen.
See James R. Anthony, ‘The French opera-
ballet in the early 18th century: problems of
definition and classification’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 18 (1965),
197–206.
22 The topical opposition between Italian and
French music at the turn of the century is
illustrated by the pro-French François
Raguenet’s Paralèle des Italiens et des François,
en ce qui regarde la musique et les opéras
(1702; repr. Geneva: Minkoff, 1976); and the
219 Opera and ballet to the death of Gluck
response from the pro-Italian Jean-Laurent Le
Cerf de la Viéville, Comparaison de la musique
italienne et de la musique françoise, 3 vols
(1704–6; repr. Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), which
provoked the same Raguenet to his Défense du
parallèle des Italiens et des François en ce qui
regarde la musique et les opéra (1705; repr.
Geneva: Minkoff, 1976).
23 French vocal declamation established a
clear distinction between the récit (or récitatif)
non mesuré and récit (or récitatif) mesuré. In
the récitatif non mesuré the musical metre
follows the prosody of the text strictly, and is
thus subjected to continuous changes of time
signature. The récitatif mesuré is closer to a
fully sung style, with the use of a constant time
signature. Such treatment of vocal declamation
was viewed by foreign listeners as extremely
idiosyncratic and properly French when
compared with the treatment, in Italian opera,
of recitative and aria. Indeed, non-French
listeners were often at pains to distinguish
between the two types of French recitative. The
often-quoted anecdote told by the Italian
playwright Carlo Goldoni, while attending a
performance at the Académie Royale in 1763,
offers a case in point: ‘I waited for the arias . . .
The dancers appeared; I thought the act was
over, not an aria. I spoke of this to my neighbor
who scoffed at me and assured me that there
had been six arias in the different scenes which
I had just heard. How could this be, say I, I am
not deaf; instruments always accompany the
voice . . . but I took it all for recitative.’ Quoted
in James R. Anthony, French Baroque Music
from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, rev. edn
(Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1997), 111.
24 Caroline Wood, ‘Orchestra and spectacle
in the “tragédie en musique” 1673–1715:
oracle, “sommeil” and “tempête”’, Proceedings
of the Royal Musical Association, 108 (1981–2),
25–46.
25 Quoted in Cuthbert Girdlestone, Jean-
Philippe Rameau: His Life and Work (New
York: Dover, 1969), 191.
26 Denis Diderot, Les bijoux indiscrets, in
Diderot, Œuvres, ed. Laurent Versini, 5 vols
(Paris: Robert Laffont, 1994), vol. II, 52.
27 Charles Dill, Monstrous Opera: Rameau
and the Tragic Tradition (Princeton University
Press, 1998), 56.
28 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘Fragmens’, in
Dictionnaire de musique, ed. Jean-Jacques
Eigeldinger, in Ecrits sur la musique, la langue
et la théâtre (Paris: Gallimard, (1995), 831.
29 Louis de Cahusac, La danse ancienne et
moderne, ou Traité historique de la danse, ed.
Nathalie Lecomte, Laura Naudeix and Jean-
Noël Laurenti (Paris: Desjonquères, 2004).
30 Jean Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la danse
(Lyons: Aimé Delaroche, 1760); English trans.,
Letters on Dancing and Ballets, trans. Cyril
W. Beaumont (Brooklyn, NY: Dance Horizons,
1966). On Noverre and the ballet en action, see
Judith Chazin-Bennahum, ‘Jean-Georges
Noverre: dance and reform’, in Marion Kant
(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ballet
(Cambridge University Press, 2007), 87–97;
Edward Nye, ‘“Choreography” is narrative: the
programmes of the eighteenth-century “ballet
d’action”’, Journal of the Society for Dance
Research, 26 (2008), 42–59; Sophia Rosenfeld,
‘Les Philosophes and le savoir: words, gestures
and other signs in the era of Sedaine’, in
David Charlton and Mark Ledbury (eds),
Michel-Jean Sedaine (1719–1797): Theatre,
Opera and Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000),
39–51. On Angiolini, see Ingrid Brainard, ‘The
speaking body: Gasparo Angiolini’s rhétorique
muette and the ballet d’action in the eighteenth
century’, in John Knowles (ed.), Critica
Musica: Essays in Honor of Paul Brainard
(Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1996),
15–56.
31 Médée et Jason had been premiered at the
Hoftheater in Stuttgart in 1763, with
choreography by Noverre and a score by Jean-
Joseph Rodolphe. The Paris premiere did not
keep the original music, but instead used a
series of dances by La Borde; Gardel and
Vestris adapted Noverre’s choreography. See
Alexandre Dratwicki, ‘Gossec et les premiers
pas du ballet-pantomime français: autour du
succès de Mirza (1779)’, in Benoît Dratwicki
(ed.), François-Joseph Gossec, 1734–1829
(Versailles: Centre de Musique Baroque, 2002),
101–16.
32 Downing A. Thomas, ‘Rameau’s Platée
returns: a case of double identity in the
Querelle des Bouffons’, Cambridge Opera
Journal, 18 (2006), 1–19.
33 Jean Monnet, Mémoires de Jean Monnet,
directeur du Théâtre de la Foire (Paris: Louis
Michaud, 1909), 78–9.
34 Jean François de La Harpe, Lycée, ou Cours
de littérature ancienne et moderne, 16 vols
(Paris: Depelafol, 1825), vol. XII, 277.
35 Favart’s repertoire is given in Charles-
Simon Favart, Théâtre de Monsieur Favart, ou
recueil des comédies, parodies et opéra-
comiques qu’il a donnés jusqu’à ce jour, avec les
airs, rondes et vaudevilles notés dans chaque
pièce, 10 vols (1763–72; repr. Geneva: Slatkine,
1971).
36 See Mark Darlow, ‘Les parodies du Devin
du village de Rousseau et la sensibilité dans
l’opéra-comique français’, Revue de la Société
liégeoise de musicologie, 13–14 (1999), 123–41.
220 Jacqueline Waeber
37 Rousseau, ‘Romance’, in Dictionnaire de
musique, 1028–9; Daniel Heartz, ‘The
beginnings of the operatic romance: Rousseau,
Sedaine, and Monsigny’, Eighteenth-Century
Studies, 15 (1981–2), 149–78; David Charlton,
‘The romance and its cognates: narrative, irony
and vraisemblance in early opéra comique’, in
French Opera 1730–1830: Meaning and Media
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 43–92.
38 The whole episode is related in Jean
Monnet’s memoirs: Supplément au Roman
comique, ou Mémoires pour servir à la vie de
Jean Monnet, ci-devant directeur de l’Opéra-
Comique de Paris, de l’Opéra de Lyons, & d’une
Comédie Françoise à Londres. Écrits par lui-
même (Paris: Barbou, 1772), 63–73.
39 Mercure de France, September 1753, 173–9.
40 For a list of these parodies, see
Andrea Fabiano, Histoire de l’opéra italien en
France (1752–1815): héros et héroïnes d’un
roman théâtral (Paris: CNRS, 2006), 238.
41 ‘Avertissement’, in Michel Blavet, Le jaloux
corrigé, opéra bouffon (Paris: aux adresses
ordinaires et chez Mr Blavet, [1753]), [ii].
42 David Charlton, ‘Ariette’, Grove Music
Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed 22 May
2014).
43 Elisabeth Cook, Duet and Ensemble in the
Early Opéra-Comique (New York: Garland,
1995).
44 Downing A. Thomas, Aesthetics of Opera in
the Ancien Régime, 1647–1785 (Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 203.
45 The relations between both works is
explored in Stefano Castelvecchi, ‘From Nina
to Nina: psychodrama, absorption and
sentiment in the 1780s’, Cambridge Opera
Journal, 8 (1996), 91–112.
46 Denis Diderot, Deuxième Entretien sur le
Fils naturel (1757), in Œuvres esthétiques, ed.
Paul Vernière (Paris: Garnier, 1988), 100.
47 Charlton, ‘The romance and its cognates’,
87.
48 We will, however, use the name Opéra-
Comique when referring to the former
Comédie-Italienne from 1780 onwards.
49 Translation slightly emended from
Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew and First
Satire, trans. Margaret Mauldon (Oxford
University Press, 2006), 72.
50 Daniel Heartz, ‘Diderot et le Théâtre
lyrique: le “nouveau stile” proposé par Le
neveu de Rameau’, Revue de musicologie, 64
(1978), 229–52.
51 Hedy Law, ‘From Garrick’s dagger to
Gluck’s dagger: the dual concept of
pantomime in Gluck’s Paris operas’, in
Jacqueline Waeber (ed.), Musique et geste en
France de Lully à la Révolution: études sur la
musique, le théâtre et la danse (Berne: Peter
Lang, 2009), 55–92.
52 Thomas Betzwieser, ‘Musical setting and
scenic movement: chorus and chœur dansé in
eighteenth-century Parisian Opéra’,
Cambridge Opera Journal, 12 (2000), 1–28.
53 Texts published during this quarrel are
gathered in the anthology by François Lesure
(ed.), La Querelle des Gluckistes et des
Piccinnistes, 2 vols (Geneva: Minkoff, 1984).
54 See Julian Rushton, ‘The theory and
practice of Piccinnisme’, Proceedings of the
Royal Musical Association, 98 (1971–2), 31–46.
55 Nicolas-Étienne Framery, ‘Quelques
réflexions sur la musique moderne’, Journal de
musique, 5 (1770), 17–18.
56 For the list of works planned for the season
(by Piccinni), see Fabiano, Histoire de l’opéra
italien en France, 81.
57 Émile Campardon, Les comédiens du roi de
la troupe italienne pendant les deux derniers
siècles: documents inédits recueillis aux
Archives Nationales, 2 vols (1880; repr.
Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), vol. II, 350–8.
58 On Framery’s adaptations, as well as his
involvement in the Querelle des Gluckistes et
des Piccinnistes, see Mark Darlow, Nicolas-
Étienne Framery and Lyric Theatre in
Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Voltaire
Foundation, 2003).
59 For an overview of the consolidation and
dissemination of Italian opera in France, see
Fabiano, Histoire de l’opéra italien en France,
71–145.
60 See Michael McClellan, ‘Battling over the
lyric muse: expressions of revolution and
counterrevolution at the Théâtre Feydeau,
1789–1801’ (PhD thesis, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994).
61 Friedrich-Melchior von Grimm and
Denis Diderot, Correspondance littéraire,
philosophique et critique de Grimm et de
Diderot depuis 1753 jusqu’en 1790, ed.
Maurice Tourneux, 16 vols (Paris: Garnier
Frères, 1877–82), vol. XII, 231.
62 See David Charlton, Grétry and the Growth
of Opéra-Comique (Cambridge University
Press, 1986); Philippe Vendrix, Grétry et
l’Europe de l’opéra-comique (Brussels:
Mardaga, 1992).
 11 Opera and ballet after the Revolution
steven hu ebner

The road to the Opéra Bastille

The Bastille: not the bricks and mortar of a prison long destroyed, but an
urban space with symbolic resonance. Today, when left-wing political
groups want to demonstrate in France, the Place de la Bastille remains a
preferred destination. The idealistic juxtaposition of a bastion of elite art
with a site of popular protest came from François Mitterrand after the
historic Socialist victory of 1981, part of his ideologically marked grands
projets to etch architectural modernity on the face of the capital.1 An early
presidential communiqué about the new house promised that the Opéra
would appear ‘moderne et populaire’, allow a doubling of performances
while reducing costs and maintain the global leadership of Paris in the vocal
arts.2 The Opéra Bastille’s inauguration on 13 July 1989 magnificently
conflated international cachet with populist national overtones: it took
place before seven heads of state during an economic summit folded into
the bicentennial celebrations. But construction delays had hampered the
project. Symbolic convergence mattered so much to the regime that the first
performance actually occurred in an unfinished structure and was limited to
unstaged operatic excerpts sung by some of the leading artists of the day.
(The first production took place only the following spring when the build-
ing was finally finished: it was Berlioz’s Les Troyens, 1858, a work with its
own set of associations with French grandeur.3) Then, on the evening of
14 July itself (Bastille Day), the same world leaders watched an open-air
parade and spectacle, a ‘grand opéra-ballet’, entitled La Marseillaise, which
featured over 6,000 participants representing various cultures. Thus was
sustained the equilibrium between high art, popular culture and interna-
tionalism. The chosen genre evoked the ancien régime. The mass outdoor
setting looked back to festivals of the Revolution, but now the whole was
managed by that vital component of any capitalist enterprise, an advertising
guru (in the person of Jean-Paul Goude).4
The story of the Opéra Bastille, one arm of the Théâtre National de
l’Opéra (which also includes productions at the older Palais Garnier on the
Place de l’Opéra), suggests several important themes in French opera since
the Revolution: state control, modernity, access and audience, and inter-
national perspectives balanced against domestic ones. To consider the
[221]
222 Steven Huebner

gigantic repertoire of French ballet and opera after Gluck entirely

through the lens of the Opéra (under its various nomenclatures, e.g.
Académie Royale or Académie Impériale) would of course be too narrow.
Nonetheless, that venerable institution is a good point of reference
simply because of the centripetal character of French culture: Paris at
the hub, and the Opéra as its most prestigious venue. This is not to say
that the house always lived up to this billing. A historian preoccupied
with tracing musical progress might well say that it often fell short of
leadership and novelty, and there were times when it even lost some of
the lustre of social prestige. But when the Opéra flagged, there were
plenty of people to draw attention to its shortcomings.
The decades of the 1950s and 1960s are representative. In a post-war
period that saw a pronounced internationalisation of the opera business,
the Opéra, operating largely with an in-house (and mostly) French com-
pany, began to seem like something of a backwater. As one group of
French critics and historians noted: ‘in the 1950s and 1960s it would not
have occurred to any snob to go to the Opéra and pretend to be interested
in it, and the true music lover knew very well that he would find only
meagre offerings there’.5 From the perspective of the historian of style this
was not only a matter of productions and performance standards, but also
related to another important shift after the war. For contrary to its long-
standing practice of producing new works – thirty in the period 1919–39
under the much-respected director Jacques Rouché – Opéra world pre-
mieres slowed considerably; in the 1950s, for example, there were only three
new operas: Bolivar by Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) in 1950, Kerkeb by
Marcel Samuel-Rousseau (1882–1955) in 1951 and Numance by Henry
Barraud (1900–97) in 1955. There were only six ballets, most of which
were relatively short: André Jolivet’s L’inconnue (1950), Henry Barraud’s
L’astrologue dans le puits (1951), Louis Aubert’s Cinéma (1953), Raymond
Loucher’s Hop-frog (1953), Marcel Delannoy’s Les noces fantasques (1955)
and Georges Auric’s Chemin de lumière (1957).6 To be fair, one should also
note that the three-act blockbuster Dialogues des Carmélites by Francis
Poulenc (1899–1963) was produced in June 1957 after its world premiere
at La Scala earlier that year. It became one of the few French post-war operas
to enter the international repertoire. Inefficiencies in the administrative
structure called the Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux – a creation
of the Popular Front government in 1936 that brought the Opéra and
Opéra-Comique under a single umbrella – bore some of the blame for
stagnation and questionable quality.7 A complex decision-making structure
involving officials from both houses, a general director and government
paymasters made repertoire planning cumbersome and negotiations with
fractious unions difficult.
223 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

Moreover, after the war the paradigm of production had also suddenly
changed so that it was now regional opera houses and French summer
music festivals that premiered new operas, which then circulated nation-
ally and internationally (if they circulated at all). The lion’s share of works
by well-known opera composers such as Georges Aperghis (b. 1945),
Maurice Ohana (1913–92), Antoine Duhamel (b. 1925), Claude Prey
(1925–98) and Marcel Landowski (1915–99) certainly fall into this
category. After 1964, a new and efficient association of regional theatres
(the Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Municipaux de France) fostered the
sharing of resources, attracted funding from the centre and explicitly
prioritised the production of new operas. The group initially comprised
twelve members, including major houses in Lyons, Marseilles, Toulouse,
Strasbourg and Nancy. In characteristic French dirigiste fashion, the
number of personnel that was required in each department of an organ-
isation in order to qualify for membership in the group was carefully
codified (a minimum orchestra of fifty-five musicians, one lighting spe-
cialist and assistant, six electricians, one typist for the artistic director and
so forth). Also to emerge and compete for state funding independently of
opera houses were performing groups that explored the generic edges of
opera in more loosely conceived frameworks of music theatre and theat-
rical music, where speakers, singers, dancers and instrumentalists often
interacted.8 Aperghis’s Atelier Théâtre et Musique, founded in a Paris
suburb in 1976, became a particularly successful example. Certainly there
were prominent foreign models for this in works by Mauricio Kagel and
Luciano Berio, but the provocative salvo ‘Opera houses? – Blow them up!’
that Pierre Boulez (b. 1925) delivered to Der Spiegel magazine in 1967
undoubtedly had its role, at least insofar as the aesthetic position repre-
sented by this sensationalistic stance had a considerable following.9
(Sensationalism went awry many years later: the remark caused Boulez to
be detained for a few hours by Swiss police a few months after the 9/11
terrorist attacks in 2001.10) In yet another replaying of the perennial young
Turk against old guard – one run-in between Boulez and André Jolivet
(1905–74) at a Domaine Musical concert in 1958 became legendary11 –
Boulez made the case for an experimental, research-orientated approach to
composition. All operas written after Alban Berg’s Lulu (1935) were deriv-
ative, the ‘difference between stage music and concert music [had] disap-
peared’, and a new kind of music theatre would be ‘a structural mixture of
technique, aesthetics and theatrical art’, by which Boulez meant that it
would stage a self-consciousness of its own structural properties and present
itself in situ as a dynamic process of creation instead of a subliminal
replication of past formulas.12 Poulenc’s expression of indebtedness to
Mussorgsky, Monteverdi, Claude Debussy (1862–1918) and Verdi in the
224 Steven Huebner

dedication of Dialogues des Carmélites ten years before stands as an elegant

counterpoise.
Meanwhile, there was still the matter of prestige at the centre. Unlike
regional opera houses that were allotted substantial funds from munici-
palities, the Opéra and Opéra-Comique received and still receive sub-
ventions from national government, not the city of Paris. Faced with
fading public interest in both houses in the late 1960s and early 1970s –
indeed, the Opéra-Comique itself was formally closed in 197213 – the
ministry of culture snared the well-known Swiss composer and opera
manager Rolf Liebermann (1910–99) to reinvigorate the Opéra from 1972
to 1980. Ironically, Liebermann had been one of Boulez’s targets in Der
Spiegel (he, in turn, formally castigated the French composer not only for
his ‘Beckmesser-like judgements’, but also for his lack of compositional
productivity),14 and, not surprisingly, the new director made no secret of his
respect for Clio’s muse:
The Paris Opéra is a theatre with a royal lineage meant to enhance the
prestige of a city that has a global role. Housed in a famous building, the
company is visited by thousands of tourists every year. Even though it seeks
to be democratic in its organisation and the price of tickets, it must remain
‘royal’ in its artistic approach.15

The government subsidy spiked in Liebermann’s initial year. The Opéra

swallowed a huge proportion of ministry grants to opera and even to
music in general: by 1984 (after Liebermann’s tenure) this house garnered
76 per cent of all government support to opera in France and 22.5 per cent
of the entire music budget.16 Liebermann instituted auditions for every
position, modernised the mise-en-scène (renowned directors such as Jean-
Pierre Ponnelle, Patrice Chereau, Jorge Lavelli and Giorgio Strehler would
eventually come to work at the Opéra) and avidly courted international
conductors and singers. What was gained in quality was perhaps lost in the
sense of a local tradition; although répetiteurs and coaches continued to
transmit locally embedded practices for the French repertoire, recordings
produced by the company from earlier periods became ever more impor-
tant witnesses of performing practices on the wane, as was the French
repertoire itself at the Opéra. Administrative changes allowed Liebermann
a freer hand than previous directors, and in 1978 the Réunion des Théâtres
Lyriques Nationaux was disbanded. A clause in the 1978 statute even
articulated a policy of encouraging new works. It is hard to argue that this
was aggressively pursued in subsequent years, but one monument of late
twentieth-century opera did result: Liebermann’s commission of the mas-
sive Saint François d’Assise by Olivier Messiaen (1908–92, first performed
1983). The work commanded international interest as the summation of
225 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

technique and spiritual values (the two were entwined for Messiaen)
espoused by a towering figure in twentieth-century music: ‘It contains
virtually all the bird calls that I’ve noted down in the course of my life, all
the colours of my chords, all my harmonic procedures, and even some
surprising innovations.’17 More important, in a century of mass destruction
and rampant inauthenticity, Saint François d’Assise glows as an icon of
transcendent mystic joy, a sense of the divine even as human suffering is
represented on the stage.18
During Liebermann’s tenure, a ticket for the Palais Garnier became a
hot commodity. Aside from its ideological significance, then, the new
opera theatre financed by the Mitterrand regime responded to real market
interest. Some railed against the putative sterility of the new building, and
the Palais Garnier (intended to become an unshared venue for the Opéra’s
ballet company) began to see opera on its boards once again after 1993.
Demand overflowed to the Opéra-Comique, which once again opened its
doors as a separate company in 1990 with a mandate to perform French
classics from the Baroque (Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, 1993), the nine-
teenth century (Gounod’s Mireille, 1993) and opérette.19 Enthusiasm has
continued unabated since: after an uneven period in the early 1990s, the
directorship of Hugues Gall (1995–2004) established the Opéra as a very
well-managed and well-attended theatre of the highest international
standard.20

Institutions and genres

Not the least among the reasons adduced for Gall’s success was that the
ministry of culture allowed him to run the Opéra with a minimum of
bureaucratic oversight. State regulation of the Parisian opera industry has
waxed and waned over the years, but, given its historic role as a flag-bearer
of French culture, rarely with a self-effacing presence. Writing in 1862, the
music critic Pier Angelo Fiorentino voiced a familiar argument for close
state control of the institution, in a spirit not dissimilar from Liebermann’s
assessment over a hundred years later: ‘The Opéra is a theatre like no
other; in the eyes of people from the provinces and foreigners [it is] the
grandest of all Parisian marvels . . . charged with bearing witness to the
degree of civilisation, of well-being and of taste that our society prides
itself in having achieved.’21 Few since the Revolution have disputed this
goal: the question often became one of whether it was best achieved through
the work of free-market forces (‘managed’ to various degrees) or of rigid
rules, an issue often tied to the ideological proclivities of successive regimes.
Regulation was a matter not only of monitoring financial ledgers, but also of
226 Steven Huebner

controlling repertoires and the slippery business of defining genres – what

kind of works were allowed in this theatre, disallowed in that.22 Throughout
much of the nineteenth century, governments also exercised control of
content through censorship.
During the Revolution, however, the impulse was to throw off the fetters
of regulation altogether. A law of 13–19 January 1791 allowed any citizen to
set up a theatre for the performance of any kind of work:23 ‘The improve-
ment of art is necessarily linked to competition’ said the député Le Chapelier
who introduced the legislation.24 As it turned out, in the hothouse of rapidly
changing political alignments that ensued, authorities frequently moved to
close down productions. The continuing value of censorship as a preventive
tool thus became clear enough, and by 1797 politicians were also calling for
tighter control of a frenzied market that had driven many theatrical entre-
preneurs to their ruin. Napoleon, who took a great interest in theatrical life,
moved to regulate the entertainment industry even before he became
emperor by addressing the dire straits of opéra comique. The company
which gave the genre its name faced redoubtable competition in 1791 from
a group at the Théâtre Feydeau that also performed French opera with
spoken dialogue (which continued to be the primary distinguishing char-
acteristic of the genre, regardless of whether plots were comical or serious).
The two houses were able to coexist for a while because the Feydeau
performed new serious works during the period when the Opéra experi-
enced a deceleration of production. One of the best-remembered jewels of
its repertoire was Médée (1797) by Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842), with its
terrifying, knife-in-hand appearance of the heroine in the final act and its
virtuosic orchestral writing that so impressed Beethoven. Another
Beethoven connection was Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal (1798) by Pierre
Gaveaux (1760–1825), a forerunner to Fidelio. The Opéra-Comique at the
Salle Favart continued with somewhat lighter repertoire,25 but notwith-
standing this division of repertoire, the rival houses both went bankrupt in
1801. Under Napoleon’s auspices the two companies were conflated almost
immediately and took up residence under the name Opéra-Comique at the
Théâtre Feydeau.
Napoleon’s most important administrative change related to the theatre:
after he became emperor, a law of 29 July 1807 set up a regulated system that
in many of its essentials remained in effect until 1864. Paris theatres were
classified into two large categories: grands théâtres and théâtres sécondaires.
The first – the Académie Impériale de Musique (that is, the Opéra), the
Théâtre-Français (also known as the Comédie-Française), the Théâtre de
l’Opéra-Comique and the Théâtre de l’Impératrice (a house for Italian opera
buffa26) – were placed under the direct patronage of the emperor himself
and received a state subsidy. The second group, without subsidy, comprised
227 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

the Théâtre de Vaudeville, Théâtre des Variétés, Théâtre de la Gaîté and

Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique. Other companies were required to relin-
quish the word théâtre or face closure. The law spelled out genre and
repertoire, stipulating the exclusive jurisdiction of each house over its
historical repertoire and protecting the Opéra’s monopoly over French
works that were sung throughout. Like the Opéra-Comique, the Théâtre
de Vaudeville was authorised to present plays that combined spoken
dialogue and music, but only with music based on tunes, called timbres,
already known to the public. Ticket prices were higher at the grands
théâtres, and the clientele of more elevated social standing than at the
théâtres sécondaires.27 Within the group of grands théâtres, the level of
government subvention underlined the prestige accorded to the Opéra:
whereas just after the 1807 legislation it received 600,000 francs annually,
the Comédie-Française netted 200,000, the Opéra-Comique 96,000 and the
Théâtre de l’Impératrice (Odéon) 50,000.28 Amounts fluctuated with time,
though always preserving the Opéra’s substantial lead (the Opéra-Comique
was to see periods of more generous support).
Yet differences in legislated status and a policy of protectionism did not
mean that the theatres were aesthetically isolated from each other. For
example, although the presence of newly composed musical numbers
(including many elaborate ensembles that had already been de rigueur in
the genre for many years) elevated opéra comique in stature over vaude-
ville, in other respects at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the two
genres could be quite similar in tone, setting and dramatic organisation.29
Indeed, Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), who would become the period’s most
widely performed librettist for opéra comique (and grand opera), actually
cut his professional teeth in vaudeville, and brought many of the techniques
of the so-called ‘well-made play’ from théâtre sécondaire to grand théâtre.30
Much the same might be said of the spoken genre mélodrame, the main
exponent of which at the beginning of the nineteenth century was Guilbert
Pixérécourt (1773–1844). The title alone of Emilio Sala’s important mono-
graph on melodrama, L’opera senza canto (‘Opera without song’),31 speaks
volumes about fertile ground for composers and librettists, who savoured its
sharply defined distinctions between good and evil, trials faced by innocent
and virtuous heroines, noble fathers, mysterious protectors, skilful manip-
ulation of plot crises and contrasting scenes, wildly gesticulating actors and
general cultivation of astonishment and extravagance. The impact of
mélodrame on the explosion of Romantic spoken theatre and music in the
late 1820s was substantial, but cross-fertilisation among low and high
genres occurred before this.
The shadow of mélodrame falls across many of the period’s opéras
comiques: Le solitaire (1822) by Michele Carafa (1787–1882), with the
228 Steven Huebner

hero as an unknown outcast falsely accused of a crime; Léocadie (1824) by

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), with the seduction of an
innocent heroine by a dastardly nobleman; the very popular La dame
blanche by Adrien Boieldieu (1775–1834), with a stranger, ghostly appa-
rition and rapacious steward. Melodramatic themes in the latter harmon-
ised with Walter Scott novels well known to the Opéra-Comique public.
Portraying virtue oppressed and then triumphant, the melodramatic
impulse seems at least subliminally to have echoed Revolutionary senti-
ment. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the Opéra was slower to respond to
the boulevard theatres. The operas La vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez
(1809) by Gaspare Spontini (1774–1851) did well, as did Le triomphe de
Trajan by Louis-Luc Loiseau de Persuis (1769–1819), commissioned by
Napoleon to celebrate the battle of Jena in 1807. The emperor used
the institution as an extension of his own grandeur and, it has been argued,
as a way to reconcile returned émigrés and ex-revolutionaries by force
of opulence, a kind of brilliant aestheticisation of the new police state.32
But as the stock of mélodrame continued to rise in value during the
Restoration, the Opéra offered Gluck revivals as well as solemn and
stately – and commercially unsuccessful – new works on classical subjects
by figures such as Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) and Rodolphe Kreutzer
(1766–1831).33
Pressures soon began to be applied to Napoleon’s 1807 systemisation
of theatrical life. In the Restoration new ventures petitioned the govern-
ment for authorisation to call themselves theatres. One of them was the
Théâtre du Panorama-Dramatique, which flourished in the early 1820s
with a repertoire officially authorised as ‘scenes with [spoken] dialogue for
two people in order to provide a narrative context for silent characters that
form groups [i.e. tableaux vivants] and for pantomime’.34 In practice
‘pantomime’ was ballet-pantomime, the usual term for free-standing ballet
in this period: the Panorama-Dramatique reminds us that, far from having
an exclusive association with the Opéra, with which it is most famously
linked, French ballet was performed at many smaller theatres throughout
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – a practice little researched by
specialists today. By the early 1820s the Théâtre de l’Impératrice had
become the Odéon and its jurisdiction changed from Italian opera buffa
to spoken theatre linked to the Comédie-Française. In 1823 the director of
the Odéon, Claude Bernard, requested permission to add operas to this
repertoire. Approval came in a typically protectionist vein: he could stage
opéras comiques in the public domain (which meant those by composers
and librettists who had been dead for more than ten years) and foreign
works in translation. Despite the cost of maintaining troupes for both
spoken theatre and opera, Bernard’s initiative flourished for a few years.35
229 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

Through it French musicians and audiences became acquainted with some

of the latest German operas, including in 1824 Carl Maria von Weber’s Der
Freischütz, translated, slightly modified and geographically transplanted to
Yorkshire, England, at the end of the reign of Charles I as Robin des bois.36
Also popular on the Odéon stage were pasticcios (operas stitched together
with excerpts from several pre-existent works by, say, Rossini and Mozart),
a little-studied phenomenon given short shrift by historians undoubtedly
because criteria such as originality and close association between word,
character and music in the creative act have dominated narratives of
operatic history.

Grand opera
With refreshing artistic stimuli emerging from the Odéon to meld with the
continued popularity of boulevard theatres, the Opéra eventually embraced
change as well. The Parisian ambitions of the two leading composers for the
Italian stage – Rossini and Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) – were instru-
mental in encouraging new styles. Auber’s La muette de Portici (1827,
libretto by Scribe and Germain Delavigne), Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829,
libretto by Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte-Louis-Florent Bis) and
Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831, libretto by Scribe and Delavigne)
brought new models of dramaturgy and musical style to France’s first
stage – early examples of grand opera. Such works, always in four or five
acts, showcased carefully drawn historical contexts, individuals confronted
by political, epic and supernatural forces, sharp contrasts, choral writing,
long ensembles, orchestral colour, evocative musical atmospheres and vir-
tuoso singing – all with the continued cultivation of ballet and scenic
splendour fostered by Napoleon and previous rulers. Administrative reform
soon accompanied the aesthetic shift. Whereas during the Empire and
Restoration the Opéra had been managed as an arm of the civil service,
indeed directly from the emperor’s or king’s own court budget, the July
Monarchy turned the Opéra into a business, first run by the entrepreneur
Louis Véron, albeit with an outsize subsidy and loose supervision in the form
of a cahier des charges (contract) that laid ground rules for repertoire and
tone. An enlargement of the subscriber base became one of the first prior-
ities. Whereas no fewer than 502 people had free passes to attend the Opéra
before the regime change – a telling sign of its status as an appendage of the
court – Véron whittled that number down to just over a hundred.37 Some
interpretations of these developments have given preponderant weight to
political factors; in the words of one scholar: ‘The desire to popularize
the Opéra grew from a concern with public perceptions of political
230 Steven Huebner

legitimacy . . . It was hence incumbent on the state to prove that its symbol,
the Opéra, was . . . not a fossilized institution alienated from modern
France.’38 With only slight modification the statement might just as well
apply to the creation of the Opéra Bastille mentioned at the outset. Given its
history, politics were and continue to be woven into the very fabric of the
institution, but explanations that excessively reduce aesthetic phenomena to
political origins risk missing factors such as taste, fashion and sensibility
that are important markers of identity and of various social and class
groupings. As Frédéric Soulié noted at the time: ‘M. Véron’s great talent is
to have persuaded fashionable society that it was important to have an
opinion about the Opéra, its singers, its ballerinas, its orchestra.’39 ‘To have
an opinion’ was a mode of social discourse, a mark of ‘distinction’ as the
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would have said. From this perspective, politics
is only one factor among many in the formation and projection of identity –
an observation that might be transposed to the actual composition of new
works as well, where ‘identity’ in the previous formulation might be sub-
stituted by ‘aesthetic qualities’. Music in general, and grand opera in
particular, did of course interact with the real-life experiences of consumers.
In his ground-breaking study of French grand opera, Anselm Gerhard
suggested how the urban environment fostered changing aesthetic predis-
positions.40 Some of this is related to politics; grand opera, for example,
contains many compelling scenes of mass revolt obliquely redolent of the
Revolution on Parisian streets, but urban sensibilities go much further. Nor
can the impact of style history and the creative response of composers to
one another as music professionals – currently unfashionable methodolo-
gies in opera studies – be discounted in accounts of how grand opera was
forged.
Grand operas were popular at the Opéra, indeed throughout Europe,
during the July Monarchy and beyond. Meyerbeer delivered Les
Huguenots (1837), Le prophète (1849) and L’africaine (1865); Fromental
Halévy (1799–1862) scored a huge success with La juive; and Verdi
followed suit with Les vêpres siciliennes (1855) and Don Carlos (1867).
The number of foreign composers eager to work in Paris reflects the
international status of houses such as the Opéra; it was the kind of appeal
that harmonised with the wide European following of French theatrical
life generally. Ballets continued to form an important part of the reper-
toire. As incorporated into grand operas they were called divertissements, a
term loaded with both aesthetic and social implications. The generic
designation clearly signalled a different set of pleasures from the main
body of the opera, suggesting relief from plot and ideas that effectively
mirrored the escapist role that ballroom dancing assumed in real life.
Many of the ensemble numbers in operatic ballet at mid-century were
231 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

similar to the dance types composed for balls, and not much more difficult
choreographically than them.41 For important male subscribers, the hiatus
from quotidian pressures took the form of voyeurism, hobnobbing with
dancers backstage and taking them as mistresses. The type lives on in Irène
Némirovsky’s novel Suite française, which is set in Paris on the verge
of invasion in June 1940. She writes of the banker Monsieur Corbin: ‘All
his mistresses were dancers. He seemed not to be interested in women of
any other profession. Not one secretary, no matter how pretty or young,
had ever managed to lure him away from this particular penchant.’42
Independent ballets-pantomimes – of which the most successful at mid
century was Adolphe Adam’s Giselle (1841) – adopted many of the con-
ventions of opera, including instrumental recitative to accompany gestured
dialogue that echoed (in different ways) the music associated with mute
characters such as Fenella in La muette de Portici, the gestural language of
melodrama, the ballet d’action of the eighteenth century and instrumental
compositions such as the scène d’amour in Berlioz’s hybrid dramatic sym-
phony Roméo et Juliette.43 Cross-fertilisation between opera and dance
occurred in another way as well, as a fair number of lighter works in the
repertoire of the Opéra-Comique – for example, Auber’s Léocadie men-
tioned before – were converted into ballets.

Other theatres at mid-century

The Paris population expanded rapidly in the nineteenth century, dou-
bling in size from 1807 (580,609) to 1856 (1,174,346).44 Both the Théâtre-
Italien and Opéra-Comique accommodated the burgeoning demand. The
former cultivated a reputation of an expensive, high-status theatre espe-
cially appropriate to true music lovers – Soulié observed that whereas the
Opéra was about ‘fashion and taste’, the Théâtre-Italien was a ‘need’ and a
‘passion’45 – and the latter attracted large audiences, in part by virtue of
the fact that it put on performances almost every night of the year. Steering
a course between, on the one hand, low, bawdy and satirical humour
and, on the other, the self-conscious importance of grand opera, opéra
comique composers such as Auber, Ferdinand Hérold (1791–1833),
Ambroise Thomas (1811–96) and Adolphe Adam (1803–56) produced a
durable and variegated repertoire with an accent on sentimental comedy.
The Opéra-Comique was often the first stop on the career path of young
composers, a practice codified in a ministerial injunction of 1832 that
required its director to give special consideration to recent Prix de Rome
laureates.46 But growing demand caused a continuous stream of requests for
authorisation of new theatrical ventures. One such was the Théâtre de la
232 Steven Huebner

Renaissance in 1838–41, which, like the Odéon, provided a venue for

German and Italian opera in translation and, like the Opéra-Comique,
promised to look after young composers,47 as did the Opéra-National in
1847–8. The immediate successor of the latter, and with the same mandate,
was from 1851 to 1870 the much more important Théâtre Lyrique, whose
directors were also allowed to commission new works in French.48
Both the Opéra-National and the Théâtre-Lyrique responded to another
leitmotif of French operatic life after the Revolution that extended to the
Opéra Bastille: repeated calls to make opera accessible to a broader public.
This was accomplished through the creation of two large amphitheatres with
cheaper seats behind the second and third tiers of boxes.49 One should not
imagine, however, that many from the working class were disposed to
attend: opera is a matter of social practice as much as affordability. High
culture and mass culture have mixed in various ways over time. In the late
twentieth century the Opéra company performed Carmen in sports stadi-
ums, and its world premiere production of Berg’s completed Lulu (one of
Liebermann’s real coups) drew around 340,000 television viewers in the
summer (!) of 1979.50 In the nineteenth century it was arrangements of
operatic hits in park bandstands and the inclusion of collectors’ cards with
pictures of operatic tableaux or portraits of composers in boxes of biscuits –
difficult though it is to imagine the same practice today.
The Théâtre-Lyrique evolved in the Second Empire to compete with
the Opéra and Opéra-Comique in prestige. A good deal of this was due to
the effective management of Léon Carvalho (né Carvaille), an important
figure about whom we still know little. (As with Véron before and later
with the Opéra-Comique director Albert Carré, the Opéra director
Jacques Rouché and Gabriel Astruc, key Parisian impresarios deserve
more attention from historians than they have so far received.) Carvalho
astutely picked up works that the Opéra administration had dithered over.
To this we owe the premiere of Faust (1859) by Charles-François Gounod
(1818–93) – the most frequently performed French opera at the end of the
century – and Berlioz’s Les Troyens (1863), or at least the second part of
this mammoth work, which had to wait until the twentieth century to be
done justice. In the mean time, Faust, which began life with spoken
dialogue at the Théâtre-Lyrique, got transferred in 1869 to the Opéra,
where the recitative passages composed initially for foreign performances
were naturally included. Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet (1838–75)
would later undergo the same transformation, but would continue life
on the stage of the Opéra-Comique, which began increasingly to admit
works with continuous music towards the end of the century. Carvalho
also promoted the young Bizet by producing Les pêcheurs de perles
(1863). With the lifting of Napoleon’s protectionist approach to theatre
233 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

life in 1864 in favour of a more flexible (though not completely unregu-

lated) system – in line with the general liberalism of Louis-Napoleon’s
regime at this time – Carvalho also aggressively expanded his repertoire to
include more foreign works in French translation. The effects of dereg-
ulation were soon felt: in 1866 Parisians could attend no fewer than three
different productions of Don Giovanni – at the Opéra, Théâtre-Italien and
Théâtre-Lyrique – and the press seemed to agree that the last was the
strongest.51
The period of the Second Empire also witnessed the efflorescence of
opérette. Jacques Offenbach (1819–80) gave it a home at the Théâtre des
Bouffes Parisiens, created with very strict conditions at the end of 1855:
maximum of four characters, limit of five dancers, no chorus, restriction
(at first) to one-act works.52 Opérette, opéra bouffe, lighter examples of
opéras comiques and vaudeville all rub shoulders in the French repertoire.
Honour for creating the first exemplar of the genre should go to the
composer Hervé (real name Florimond Ronger, 1825–92). Approached by
a short and stout friend in 1847 to put on a show at a small theatre in
Montmartre, Hervé, very tall and thin himself, proposed they could play up
their physical differences for a laugh with a parody of Cervantes: thus was
born the Don Quichotte et Sancho Panza, a tableau grotesque for which
Hervé illegally wrote new music instead of arranging pre-existing tunes as
usual for vaudeville.53 The Opéra-National legitimised his effort by taking
up the piece the next year. Dozens of other comic works would flow from
Hervé’s pen, including a famous parody of Gounod’s opera called Le petit
Faust. But it was Offenbach’s opéras bouffes – such as Orphée aux enfers
(1858), La vie parisienne (1866) and La grande duchesse de Gérolstein
(1867) – that garnered greater international attention, in part for their
trenchant unmasking of the putative phoniness of Napoleon III’s Second
Empire regime.54

New directions and Wagner

Following the lead of musicians involved in the creation of the Société
Nationale in 1871, who sought to distance themselves from the discredited
Second Empire, French musical historiography has tended to see 1870 as a
sharp line of division, but for all Offenbach’s relevance to the Second Empire,
no fewer than twenty-two of his works were performed during the 1870s,
some with great success.55 At the Opéra, grand opera proved obstinately
tenacious – another element of continuity – and the Théâtre-Lyrique went
bankrupt. Even so, a break with the past did occur to the extent that success
in the opera house increasingly became less crucial to the establishment of a
234 Steven Huebner

career as a composer: operas do not form a significant part of the oeuvre of

César Franck (1822–90), Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) wrote only two
(Prométhée, 1900; Pénélope, 1913), and the two short pieces by Maurice
Ravel (1875–1937), L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges, were not
decisive to the advance of his career. It fell to the Opéra-Comique to
produce the most challenging new French operas. Spanish local colour,
fatalistic gypsies, soldiers and exotics, the death of a main character – all had
been seen on the stage of the Opéra-Comique before,56 but Bizet’s Carmen
nonetheless struck a new tone in the stark confrontation of a strong woman
with male hysteria. The dramatic parameters at the house had become very
wide indeed, as light chestnuts like Auber’s Fra Diavolo (1830) also
continued to find favour. Bizet’s early death that year left the arena free
for the ascendance of Jules Massenet (1842–1912) as the major composer
for the Opéra-Comique stage at the fin de siècle, much of the time under
the directorship of Carvalho, with works such as Manon (1884) and
Werther (1892). A virtuosic command of pastiche, unique melodic style
and elegant balance of progressive and conservative syntax assured
Massenet’s success, much envied by that other major composer of the
fin de siècle, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), whose operatic star did not
rise nearly so high. One can well imagine the frustrations of one whose
first opera Samson et Dalila (1877) did well, after a rocky start, but who
suffered through the lukewarm reception accorded twelve others. While
composers of opérette such as André Messager (1853–1929), Charles
Lecocq (1832–1918) and Claude Terrasse (1832–1923) continued to ply
their trade in a repertoire little known today, especially outside France,
others such as Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–94), Vincent d’Indy
(1851–1931) and Ernest Chausson (1855–99) debated and tested the
relevance of Wagnerian opera to the French stage. Because of the require-
ments and conventions of choreography, ballet remained more isolated
from Wagnerian influence. The great master at the beginning of the Third
Republic was Léo Delibes (1836–91), whose ballets Coppélia (1870) and
Sylvia (1876) were admired by Tchaikovsky and have indeed joined the
international repertoire to assume a place equal to that of Swan Lake and
Sleeping Beauty. But ballet was also inevitably to face the challenges of new
and extended tonal languages, as in Namouna (1882) by Édouard Lalo
(1823–92), but also those emerging from Russia as an alternative to
Wagner. With the stimulus of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, ballet music by
French composers (for example Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and Debussy’s
Jeux) joined the ranks of truly progressive art after the turn of the century, a
new focal point for high society and snob appeal. The ballet Le sacre du
printemps by the ex-patriot Russian Stravinsky, premiered as a stage work in
Paris in 1913 to an uproar in the hall and then very successfully resurrected
235 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

as a concert piece in 1914, marks the apex of French engagement with

musical modernism.
Because of the German nationalist bravado surrounding Wagner’s
career, performances of his operas in Paris became the hottest issue, tinged
as they were with politics in French operatic life at the fin de siècle. Strong
political overtones had resonated as early as the Tannhäuser debacle of
1861 when Wagner’s opera, adapted by the composer for the Opéra stage,
was cancelled after merely three performances. The imperial household
had supported the production and agitation against it was one way to
express disapproval of the regime.57 A production of Lohengrin at a
secondary theatre in 1887 had to be cancelled because of riots, this time
spurred by a diplomatic incident between France and Germany, and it was
only in the 1890s that Wagner’s operas settled in to the repertoire of the
Opéra, now finally displacing the older roster of grand operas. The young
Debussy was inevitably caught up in such debates as well, wavering between
admiration of Wagner and a desire to take French opera in new directions.
The result was Pelléas et Mélisande, premiered at Albert Carré’s Opéra-
Comique in 1902, a work that does not eschew leitmotivic recurrence
altogether but distributes such motifs sparsely in the context of declamation
that aims for understated nuance. Debussy’s masterpiece is another sign of
the house’s breadth of repertoire because of its lyric exploration of a bleak
existential dilemma with new musical syntax.

National thumbprints
The character of French opera and ballet has been shaped not only by
institutional imperatives but also by the interaction of local practice with
foreign repertoires, largely Italian and German. Spontini retained Gluck’s
solemn dignity, especially felt in ritualistic choruses and the style of accom-
panied recitative, and combined this with arias displaying a more Italianate
sensibility that fluently incorporated conjunct melismas into melodic lines
that he shaped with carefully calibrated peaks. In this he satisfied Napoleon’s
own taste for Italianate singing, an aesthetic taken even further during the
Restoration when Rossini was hired to manage the Théâtre-Italien during its
period of joint administration with the Opéra. The acquisition of florid
technique by French singers such as Laure Cinti-Damoreau in the 1820s
changed the physiognomy of works not only at the Opéra but also at the
Opéra-Comique, where the première chanteuse à roulades became a
popular voice-type.58 Musical-dramatic organisation also became trans-
formed. Spontini’s choral scenes were long and impressive, but his arias and
ensembles tended to be smaller. Under the influence of Rossini and
236 Steven Huebner

Meyerbeer, large Italianate multipartite forms would become the norm in

grand opera. These facilitated the inclusion of secondary characters and
choruses to urge the drama forward, the exploration of changing affects and
textures within a single large set piece and long tonic-prolongational coda
passages that allowed florid singing.59
In the 1820s composers paid increasing attention to ‘characteristic’
music particular to geographical, historical and social settings as they
moved away from the standard classical fare of the past. Orchestral colour
became an important resource. Weber’s example in Der Freischütz, and
the influence of German music in general on expanded orchestral writing,
has sometimes been cited as decisive. But it is also important to remember
that Paris had built an effective training system for orchestral musicians at
the Conservatoire which supplied orchestras in the capital, and the city
was also an important centre for the manufacture of musical instruments.
Auber worked a tarantella into the marketplace of Naples for La muette de
Portici, but the instrumental hues in this opera seem modest when com-
pared with Meyerbeer’s infernal colours on the brass instruments in
Robert le diable. The evocation of a voice from the past through the use
of two trumpets ‘coming from a distance’ as Robert reads a letter from his
mother – a technique right out of melodrama – earned praise from Berlioz,
who more generally held up Meyerbeer’s orchestration as a stick with
which to beat decadent Italian art.60 Rossini also adapted his style in his
splendid evocations of the alpine setting in Guillaume Tell. Passages of slow
harmonic rhythm and a concluding paean to liberty give some of the music
an elevated symphonic character. An analogy to Beethoven is not inappro-
priate, for just at this moment his symphonies – and the quasi-spiritual
claims they made – gained a large following in Paris.
Meyerbeer’s operas were understood as eclectic works at a time when
eclecticism was not a pejorative aesthetic quality – a leitmotif in French
music history since the Revolution that perhaps deserves more attention
from historians. The concept goes beyond German and Italian influence to
link up with the pastiche of a Massenet or a Saint-Saëns, the wide-ranging
musical references in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, the stylistic variety in
Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites and the postmodern tendencies of
recent operas by Antoine Duhamel – whose Gambara (1978) after
Honoré de Balzac centres on a composer of Meyerbeer’s period. Darius
Mil haud’s Christophe Colomb (1930, revised 1968, Paul Claudel) dwarfs
even the operas of Meyerbeer in epic scope with twenty-seven scenes and a
demanding choral part, range of styles and technological requirements
(including films projected on backstage screens). But what is perhaps
more difficult to discern in Meyerbeer than in these later composers
(except perhaps for Saint-Saëns) is a strongly marked personal sound.
237 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

For many contemporaries he wrote ‘learned’ music – a Germanic trait – a

tradition of criticism echoed in the late twentieth century by Sieghardt
Döhring and Sabine Henze-Döhring, who see Meyerbeer’s operas as
‘operas of ideas’, though these authors wisely avoid the older Teutonic
stereotypes.61 Indeed, it was only after the nineteenth century that French
critics themselves finally discarded the reductionist association of ‘idea
opera’ with German music. Marcel Landowski’s important Le fou (1957),
for example, deals with the paradox of spiritual yearning and innocence
juxtaposed with sophisticated science that allows apocalyptic destruction.
No critic of his day would have thought to attribute this philosophical bent
to Germanic taste. Le fou can also claim to share in a tradition of French
taste for experimentation with colour: it is the first opera ever written to
incorporate taped sounds.
Charles Rosen has suggested a different perspective on grand opera by
accentuating its populist and frankly sensationalist aspects, broadly
defined as ‘cheap melodrama dressed up as aristocratic tragedy’.62 Rosen
perhaps draws high/low aesthetic criteria and social markers too sharply
without recognising enough intermediate shades that are more flattering to
the Gallic muse. Olivier Bara, for example, has written an entire monograph
on Restoration opéra comique as a genre moyen without a pejorative hint.
For his part, Hervé Lacombe has understood Auber’s opéras comiques as
exhibiting a particularly French ‘esthétique de la conversation’: ‘nothing out
of measure, no overblown emphasis nor pedantry, but finesse, nuance,
restraint’.63 The aesthetic world of brilliant and witty conversation may
not explore the sublime, but affords its own pleasures that one would be
hard pressed to squeeze into a high/low binary. Heinrich Heine wrote of the
distrust of heroism exhibited by the nineteenth-century French bourgeois,64
an observation that might be extended to a privileging of the real over the
ideal. A strong national school of realism and then naturalism in literature
had reverberations on the operatic stage in a genre moyen with its ingénues,
thundering fathers and servants. In Carmen an older opéra comique cha-
racter type not only lives on in Micaëla but coexists with a much fuller
extension of the realist line away from the sublime in Carmen and Don José.
Small wonder that French opera composers became especially adept at local
colour (an extension of the ‘characteristic’ mode) and the exotic – as in
Carmen and Léo Delibes’s Lakmé (1883), where the dream-world bubble of
the Indian setting is punctured by the chattering European characters. As in
other national operatic traditions, the exotic – but often merely ornamen-
tal – couleur locale of the nineteenth century became the more thorough-
going syntactical challenge of world music in the twentieth century. The
opéra-ballet Padmâvâti (1923) incorporates the substantial ethnographic
knowledge of both its composer Albert Roussel (1869–1937) and its
238 Steven Huebner

librettist Louis Laloy (1874–1944) on the level of plot, rhythm, harmony,

melody and orchestration. Later, as an alternative to structuralism,
Ohana’s range was particularly cosmopolitan and – the word, once
again, does not seem inappropriate – eclectic.65 Japanese Noh play meets
Euripides in Syllabaire pour Phèdre (1968); Chinese opera informs the
music theatre piece Trois contes de l’honorable fleur (1978); multiple lan-
guages combine with microtones and influences of medieval music in his
largest work for the stage, La Célestine.66
Critics consistently identified opéra comique with a ‘national spirit’
throughout the nation-conscious nineteenth century. Albert Soubies
and Charles Malherbe concluded their mammoth study of the institution
that was home to the genre by writing of ‘a group of qualities that belong
to the real essence of our race – charm and finesse, wit and clarity’; all
very different, they go on to note, from Italian opera buffa and Viennese
operetta.67 Opéra comique as a genre remained much more resistant to
Italian formal types than grand opera. Overt Italianisms were frequently
scorned. At the turn of the century, the naturalist composer Alfred Bruneau
(1857–1934) was vociferous in distinguishing his brand of realism from
the veristi. Offenbach also thought that opéra comique at its best was
‘éminemment française’ – more refined than Italian counterparts. His
complaint in 1856 was that its pretensions had become too lofty; in setting
out the parameters for opérette he appealed to tried and true eighteenth-
century models.68 Yet perhaps a latent and perennial cause for anxiety was
that the French public had always flocked to the Italian repertoire. French
management would, after all, aggressively court Verdi and Puccini. A recent
opera by Philippe Hersant (b. 1948), Le château des Carpathes (1993; after
Jules Verne), seems a poignant testimony to this historical attraction: an
Italian lament sung by a famous opera star gets transformed into a voice-
object produced by an elaborate music box that lures the protagonist to his
destruction (somewhat redolent of the maternal voice at the end of Robert le
diable via Les contes d’Hoffmann).
Around Offenbach’s time Gounod sought to achieve a greater sense of
interiority in works such as Faust and Roméo et Juliette (1867). Again this
should not be confused with a quest for the sublime: a relatively quotidian
devil and philosopher inhabit Goethe’s premise. The new-found interior-
ity produced a responsive chromatic harmonic language, delicate part-
writing in the orchestra and, even more, attention to nuance of prosody
and melodic expression. The nationalist claim could, then, be applied here
as well, especially at a time of increasing internationalisation of opera.
Gounod pointed the way ahead to later French composers with regard to
the melodic suppleness that could be carved out of the French language
itself. The preoccupation remains germane today, though in the past,
239 Opera and ballet after the Revolution

suppleness sometimes became equated with effeminacy, particularly with

a later figure such as Massenet, where a languid style and supposedly low
intellectual level cast French music as a kind of ‘Other’ to Teutonic
repertoires. The influence of Wagner would exacerbate such tendencies.
After an initial generation of critics hostile to Wagner’s brand of the
sublime, myriad debates at the fin de siècle centred on how best to conflate
his achievement with the French spirit.69 For a figure like d’Indy it was
through the cultivation of Catholic transcendence, still manifest, though in
a much less self-conscious and confrontational way, in Messiaen’s Saint
François d’Assise. For Debussy it was through a Symbolist alchemy of
rationalism and suggestion. Boulez views the vocabulary of Pelléas as deeply
indebted to Parsifal,70 but the restraint and understatement of the score
lend themselves to French nationalist rhetoric. Wherever one wishes to put
the emphasis, it is difficult to deny that admiration for Debussy’s work has
been nearly unanimous from later French composers, its influence so rich
and wide-ranging that one might speak of this single work as a unifying
feature for the later French opera repertoire.

Notes
1 See Wayne Northcutt, ‘François Mitterrand
and the political use of symbols: the
construction of a centrist republic’, French
Historical Studies, 17 (1991), 141–58.
2 Frédérique Patureau, Le Palais Garnier dans
la société parisienne, 1875–1914 (Liège:
Mardaga, 1991), 455.
3 Hugh Macdonald, ‘La genèse des “Troyens”’,
L’avant-scène opéra, 128–9 (1990), 24.
4 Northcutt, ‘François Mitterrand’, 156.
5 Francis Claudon, Jean Mongrédien, Carl de
Nys and Karlheinz Roschitz, Histoire de l’opéra
en France (Paris: Nathan, 1984), 164.
6 For a survey of repertoire at the Opéra, see
Stéphane Wolff, L’Opéra au Palais Garnier,
1875–1962 (Paris: Journal Entracte, 1962);
Albert Soubies, Soixante-sept ans à l’Opéra en
une page: du ‘Siège de Corinthe’ à ‘La Walkyrie’,
1826–93 (Paris: Fischbacher, 1893); and a
website with extensive documentation: http://
chronopera.free.fr/ (accessed 14 May 2014).
7 The composer Henri Sauguet reviewed the
main grievances in La situation du théâtre-
lyrique en France (Paris: Institut de France,
1971). See also Bruno Brevan, ‘Politique
musicale et théâtre lyrique en France
(1945–1985)’, in Danièle Pistone (ed.), Le
théâtre lyrique français, 1945–1985 (Paris:
Champion, 1987), 43–50. A somewhat more
positive view of the period of the Réunion des
Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux is Jean Gourret,
Ces hommes qui ont fait l’opéra, 1669–1984
(Paris: Éditions Albatros, 1984), 171–84.
8 Michel Rostain, ‘Àbas le théâtre musical!’, in
Pistone (ed.), Le théâtre lyrique français, 171–8.
9 The interview is translated as ‘“Opera
houses? – Blow them up!”’, Opera, 19 (1968),
440–8.
10 James Coomarasamy, ‘Conductor held over
“terrorism” comment’, BBC News, 4 December
2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/
1692628.stm (accessed 14 May 2014).
11 François Porcile, Les conflits de la musique
française, 1940–1965 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 194–5.
12 Boulez, ‘“Opera houses? – Blow them up!”’,
444–5.
13 For a tabular review of the administrative
history of the Opéra-Comique, see
Raphaëlle Legrand and Nicole Wild, Regards
sur l’opéra-comique: trois siècles de vie
théâtrale (Paris: CNRS, 2002), 257–9.
14 ‘Rolf Liebermann replies’, Opera, 19
(1968), 448–50.
15 Liebermann’s personal communication to
Francis Claudon, in Claudon et al., Histoire de
l’opéra, 171.
16 Brevan, ‘Politique musicale’, 44.
17 Olivier Messiaen, Saint François d’Assise,
‘“It’s a secret of love”: an interview with Olivier
Messiaen’, in booklet for CD recording, Kent
Nagano and Hallé Orchestra, Deutsche
Grammophon 445176 (1999).
240 Steven Huebner
18 Further to this point of view, see
Richard Taruskin, ‘Sacred entertainments’,
Cambridge Opera Journal, 15 (2003), 109–26.
19 Legrand and Wild, Regards sur l’opéra-
comique, 252.
20 Philippe Agid and Jean-Claude Tarondeau,
L’Opéra de Paris: gouverner une grande
institution culturelle (Paris: Éditions Vuibert,
2006).
21 His feuilleton is anthologised in Pier
Angelo Fiorentino, Comédies et comédiens
(Paris: M. Lévy, 1866), 295.
22 For a methodological reflection about
genre as it relates to the French lyric theatre,
see Hervé Lacombe, ‘De la différenciation des
genres: réflexion sur la notion de genre lyrique
français au début du XIXe siècle’, Revue de
musicologie, 84 (1998), 247–62. See also his
‘Définitions des genres lyriques dans les
dictionnaires français du XIXe siècle’, in
Paul Prévost (ed.), Le théâtre lyrique en France
au XIXe siècle (Metz: Éditions Serpenoise,
1995), 297–334.
23 For an overview of legislation that
regulated Parisian theatres, see Nicole Wild,
Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens au XIXe
siècle: les théâtres et la musique (Paris: Aux
Amateurs de Livres, 1989), 9–19. Wild’s
dictionary has entries that provide basic
empirical information (including legislative
status, and primary- and secondary-source
references) for the hundreds of theatres
established in the capital over the course of the
century.
24 Raphaëlle Legrand and Patrick Taïeb,
‘L’Opéra Comique sous le consulat et l’empire’,
in Prévost (ed.), Le théâtre lyrique en France, 2.
25 As we have observed, in French theatre
history the convention frequently, though not
invariably, distinguishes the company from the
building where it performed, e.g. the Opéra
company at the Bastille and Palais Garnier.
26 From 1801 to 1815 the Théâtre de
l’Impératrice was housed at the Théâtre de
l’Odéon on the Left Bank and featured the
alternation of a troupe of actors with
performers of Italian opera buffa. See Wild,
Dictionnaire, 196.
27 For a comparative analysis of ticket prices,
see Dominique Leroy, Histoire des arts du
spectacle en France: aspects économiques,
politiques et esthétiques de la Renaissance à la
Première Guerre mondiale (Paris: Harmattan,
1990), 136–57. For an analysis of the opera-
going public of a slightly later period as well as
methodological problems associated with this
kind of study, see Steven Huebner, ‘Opera
audiences in Paris 1830–1870’, Music and
Letters, 70 (1989), 206–25.
28 Figures from Leroy, Histoire des arts du
spectacle, 109.
29 Olivier Bara, Le théâtre de l’Opéra-
Comique sous la restauration: enquête autour
d’un genre moyen (Hildesheim: Georg Olms,
2001), 374–81.
30 For an application of principles of the well-
made play to Scribe’s librettos, see
Karin Pendle, Eugène Scribe and French Opera
of the Nineteenth Century (Ann Arbor, MI:
UMI Research Press, 1979). See also
Herbert Schneider (ed.), Das Vaudeville:
Funktionen eines multimedialen Phänomens
(Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1996).
31 Emilio Sala, L’opera senza canto: il mélo
romantico e l’invenzione della colonna sonora
(Venice: Marsilio, 1995).
32 James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A
Cultural History (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995), 165–81.
33 For an overview of the Opéra repertoire in
this period, see Jean Mongrédien, La musique
en France des lumières au romantisme,
1789–1830 (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), 63–87.
34 Wild, Dictionnaire, 355–6.
35 The definitive study is Mark Everist, Music
Drama at the Paris Odéon, 1824–1828
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002).
36 Ibid., 258–62.
37 Figures from the Commission Supérieure de
l’Opéra to the minister of beaux-arts, 20 May
1831, Paris, Archives Nationales, AJ13 180. See
also Johnson, Listening in Paris, 239–56. On
business practices at the Opéra in this period,
see John D. Drysdale, Louis Véron and the
Finances of the Académie Royale de Musique
(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003).
38 Jane Fulcher, The Nation’s Image: French
Grand Opera as Politics and Politicized Art
(Cambridge University Press, 1987), 18.
39 Frédéric Soulié, Deux séjours: province et
Paris (Paris: Hippolyte Souverain, 1836), 211.
40 Anselm Gerhard, The Urbanization of
Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the
Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall
(University of Chicago Press, 1998).
41 Marian Smith, ‘Dance and dancers’, in
David Charlton (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Grand Opera (Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 103–4.
42 Irène Némirovsky, Suite française, trans.
Sandra Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2006), 25.
43 The major study is Marian Smith, Ballet
and Opera in the Age of Giselle (Princeton
University Press, 2000).
44 Figures from Demographia, ‘Paris
arrondissements: population & density:
241 Opera and ballet after the Revolution
pre-1860 definitions’, www.demographia.com/
db-paris-arrondpre1860.htm (accessed 14
May 2014).
45 Soulié, Deux séjours, 226. Social practices
in this period are well described in
Patrick Barbier, Opera in Paris, 1800–1850: A
Lively History, trans. Robert Luoma (Portland,
OR: Amadeus Press, 1995).
46 Wild, Dictionnaire, 330.
47 For an excellent case study around this house,
see Mark Everist, ‘Donizetti and Wagner: opéra de
genre at the Théâtre de la Renaissance’, in Giacomo
Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-
Century Paris (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 309–41.
48 The definitive study is T. J. Walsh, Second
Empire Opera: The Théâtre Lyrique, Paris,
1851–1870 (London: John Calder, 1981).
49 Ibid., 5–7.
50 Brevan, ‘Politique musicale’, 47–8.
51 Walsh, Second Empire Opera, 206–9.
52 The complete cahier des charges is
summarised in the most reliable and
complete biography of Offenbach, Jean-Claude
Yon, Jacques Offenbach (Paris: Gallimard,
2000), 155.
53 See Renée Cariven-Galharret and
Dominque Ghesquière, Hervé: un musicien
paradoxal, 1825–1892 (Paris: Éditions des
Cendres, 1992), 36–8.
54 The study most famously associated with
this point of view, owing to the intellectual
pedigree of its author, is Siegfried Kracauer,
Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of his Time,
trans. Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher
(New York: Zone Books, 2002). The most
detailed study of opérette remains
Florian Bruyas, Histoire de l’opérette en France,
1855–1965 (Lyons: Emmanuel Vitte, 1974).
55 For a critique of the traditional view of
1870 as a change of orientation, see
Delphine Mordey, ‘Auber’s horses: l’année
terrible and apocalyptic narratives’,
Nineteenth-Century Music, 30 (2007), 213–29.
56 James Parakilas, ‘The soldier and the
exotic: operatic variations on a theme of racial
encounter’, Opera Quarterly, 10/2 (1993),
33–56; 10/3 (1994), 43–69.
57 For an account, see Fulcher, The Nation’s
Image, 189–98.
58 Austin Caswell, ‘Mme Cinti-Damoreau
and the embellishment of Italian opera in
Paris: 1820–1845’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 28 (1975), 459–92.
59 For a case study, see Steven Huebner,
‘Italianate duets in Meyerbeer’s grand operas’,
Journal of Musicological Research, 8 (1989),
203–56.
60 For Berlioz’s review of Robert le diable and
commentary, see Joel-Marie Fauquet, ‘Les
délices de l’homme-orchestre’, L’avant-scène
opéra, 76 (1985), 70–5.
61 Sieghart Döhring and Sabine Henze-
Döhring, Oper und Musikdrama im 19.
Jahrhundert, Handbuch der musikalischen
Gattungen, 13 (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1997),
144–64. See also Jane Fulcher, ‘Meyerbeer and
the music of society’, Musical Quarterly, 67
(1981), 213–29.
62 Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1995), 607.
63 Lacombe, ‘Définitions des genres
lyriques’, 289.
64 Ibid., 295.
65 See Caroline Rae, ‘Maurice Ohana:
iconoclast or individualist’, Musical Times, 132
(1991), 69–74.
66 See Michel Pazdro (ed.), ‘Maurice Ohana:
Trois contes de l’Honorable Fleur, Syllabaire
pour Phèdre, La Célestine’, L’avant-scène
opéra; opéra aujourd’hui, hors série 3 (1991;
special issue devoted to Ohana).
67 Albert Soubies and Charles Malherbe,
Histoire de l’Opéra Comique: la seconde Salle
Favart, 1840–1887, 2 vols (Paris: Flammarion,
1893), vol. II, 446.
68 Yon, Jacques Offenbach, 179–80.
69 For an exploration of this, see
Steven Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de
Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style
(Oxford University Press, 1999).
70 See the discussion in Roger Nichols
and Richard Langham Smith, Claude
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande (Cambridge
University Press, 1989), 163–5. See
examples in Robin Holloway, Debussy
and Wagner (London: Eulenburg, 1979),
76–135.
part iii

Other musics
 12 Traditional music
and its ethnomusicological study
luc charles-dominique

Introduction
Oral musical traditions in France, vocal and instrumental, possess infinite
wealth and diversity, not least because France is a multicultural and
multilingual country. In several regions on the periphery – Brittany in
the north-west, a Flemish region in the north-east, Alsace in the east, a
southern region that is variously Mediterranean, Catalonia, Occitania,
Basque country and Corsica – people mostly did not speak French before
the twentieth century. Like languages and dialects, traditional music is
usually defined according to regions. This leads to extraordinary diversity
as, for example, in southern France, where thirteen different types of
bagpipe have been identified, six of them still in use. One should also
note that from the 1789 Revolution, France was committed to a major
unifying programme that affected all provinces and their cultures; part of
this involved the imposition of the universal use of the French language
and new republican culture. The intellectual and political centralism that
ensued for long decades eventually trumped the diversity and vitality of
traditional music, at least until the folk revival revitalised ancient practices
late in the twentieth century. This situation helps to explain why French
traditional music has been less highly prized than some of its European
and non-European counterparts, in spite of its current importance.
With an extensive national campaign of collecting in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, academic and institutional research under the
auspices of major museums and national organisations in the twentieth and
a major folk revival from the end of the 1960s, traditional music is now
strongly supported. Today it is easy to learn traditional music or dance
at associations and schools of music, to practise traditional dances at the
many traditional balls and to hear numerous traditional regional groups,
French and foreign, in concert halls and at national and international
festivals (e.g. the Festival Interceltique in Lorient, Brittany, and Rencontres
Internationales de Luthiers et Maîtres Sonneurs in Saint-Chartier, Indre).
Finally, new research, bibliographies and above all recordings now proliferate.
Long before folk music and instruments started to be collected, traces of
[245] popular music, especially rural, appear in French art. Many of Watteau’s
246 Luc Charles-Dominique

pastoral paintings depict traditional musical instruments played by aristo-

crats and mythical characters, notably shepherds. An instrument inspired
by traditional instruments enjoyed great popularity in the French court and
society at large in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the
bellows-blown musette – a sophisticated instrument lavishly finished in
wood and ivory that is thought to have been developed in the sixteenth
century. Literature (travelogues, novels, etc.) periodically describes tradi-
tional music-making, often with remarkable precision. In the nineteenth
century, in Les maîtres sonneurs (‘The master pipers’, 1853), George Sand
described the performance of Bourbonnais and Berry bagpipes by local
popular musicians. Finally, in a number of works of the Romantic or post-
Romantic period, it is possible to hear traditional tunes, as in Camille Saint-
Saëns’s Rhapsodie d’Auvergne (1884), Vincent d’Indy’s Symphonie sur un
chant montagnard français (Symphonie cévenole, 1886) and Joseph-Guy
Ropartz’s Dimanche breton (1893). These examples notwithstanding, fav-
oured sources of inspiration for French composers of the time tended to be
more exotic: they included Spanish and oriental influences.

Instrumental music
Overview
Apart from isolated cases, like the folklorist Félix Arnaudin (1844–1921) from
Gascony, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collectors were only mar-
ginally interested in musical instruments and repertoires. Song alone mat-
tered. Only in the 1910s did Ferdinand Brunot (1860–1938), a grammarian
and philologist, begin occasionally collecting the hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes
in the Berry region. These early collections were complemented some decades
later by Claudie Marcel-Dubois (1913–89) with much more systematic
research. However, she concentrated mainly on ritual instruments like the
crécelle (ratchet), the hautbois d’écorce (‘bark-oboe’) and the spinning friction
drum (toulouhou) from the central Pyrenees used for charivari (a mock
serenade also called ‘rough music’). It was the wave of collecting of the
1970s that brought to light an instrumentarium of previously unsuspected
richness, even though the results of this exhumation must be put in propor-
tion: the research in question was often conducted on dubious methodolog-
ical grounds, as certain areas were disregarded simply because they had never
previously been investigated. Similarly, for reasons pertaining to the process
of constructing regional cultural identities, some instruments were favoured
by the folk revival, to the detriment of others.
Traditional French instruments have a heterogeneous status with
respect to the separation of oral and written traditions. Whereas their
247 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

use and repertoires are found in the oral, predominantly rural sphere, the
Spanish part of Catalonia and then its French counterpart produced an
important written repertoire for its tenora and tible oboes, which were
essential components of the cobla, a traditional music ensemble of
Catalonia. Provence underwent an identical process with the galoubet-
tambourin, a pair of instruments played by one musician (one hand plays
a flute, the other a type of drum, the tambour-bourdon). What makes
this phenomenon stand out is the fact that it was documented both in
Provence and in Paris, with composers like Joseph-Noël Carbonel
(1741–1804) and Jean-Joseph Châteauminois (1744–1815). A new reper-
toire for the galoubet-tambourin was created, made up of specific types of
works (contredanses and menuets) and transcriptions (extracts from opera
and comic opera). This written tradition modified practice surrounding
this dual instrument profoundly, undermining its oral, vernacular usage.
Both developments affecting the Catalan cobla and galoubet in Provence
took place in an urban setting and involved the moneyed classes of those
societies (industrial bourgeoisie in Catalonia and urban aristocracy in
Provence).

Bagpipes
A brief inventory of the main instrumental traditions in France reveals
the important role played by bagpipes. In Brittany, apart from the great
Scottish bagpipes adopted only recently, the typical bagpipe is the
binioù-kozh (‘old bagpipe’), formed by a small, high-pitched chanter,
which plays an octave higher than the bombarde (oboe), and a cylindri-
cal, single-reed drone resting on the musician’s shoulder. The regions of
Nantes, Guérande and Vendée also have a version of the bagpipe
known as the veuze. Like the binioù-kozh it is made of a conical chanter
with a double reed and a cylindrical, single-reed drone, which rests on
the player’s shoulder.1 Other French bagpipes are to be found in
Bresse, Berry2 and Bourbonnais, where we find a large, pewter-encrusted,
superbly decorated instrument with a conical chanter, a parallel drone and a
larger drone placed on the shoulder.3 In the Limousin, mouth-blown
bagpipes called the chabreta (literally ‘small goat’) possess a conical chanter,
two cylindrical drones, one parallel to the chanter and the other transverse,
pressed to the player’s forearm.4 Its composition and appearance remind
one more of Baroque concert instruments than of French traditional
bagpipes.
The cabreta, a native of the Auvergne and Rouergue, has only a single
drone parallel to the chanter, but since the nineteenth century a bellows has
supplied the air. It is also noteworthy that in the Auvergne several bagpipes
named after their inventors (Béchonnet, Lardy, Chaput, Stormont) remained
248 Luc Charles-Dominique

Figure 12.1 Jeanty Benquet (1870–1957), boha player, in Bazas (Gironde, Gascony),
photographed in 1937

at the prototype stage or were manufactured in limited numbers; this was

nevertheless all it took to grant some of them the status of regional instru-
ments. Such was the fate of the Béchonnet bagpipes, of which fifty-nine copies
have been documented. In addition to a chanter they possess three drones of
unequal length and a bag supplied with air by means of a bellows. The
boha (from the verb ‘bohar’, to breathe), found in the Landes of Gascony,
is unique in Western Europe as it is composed of a chanter and drone
bored into a common rectangular body, which makes it similar to Eastern
European bagpipes (Figure 12.1).5 In Languedoc we find the voluminous
bodega made of an entire goat’s skin, with a long chanter and large drone
resting on the musician’s shoulder (Figure 12.2).

Oboes and clarinets

In regions where we find bagpipes, numerous oboe traditions also flour-
ished. The instrument, of varying shapes, can be made in one or two
sections, or three in the larger instruments. French oboes possess six to
seven finger holes, generally located on the front of the body, and are
without keys, except for the Breton bombarde and the Sète oboe (from
249 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

Figure 12.2 Pierre Aussenac (1878–1945), bodega player

Languedoc). As a general rule, these oboes are neither chromatic nor

tempered; their production seems to have been frozen in time, despite
two centuries of potential modernisation. The bombarde in Brittany
figures among the main traditional French oboes.6 It is sometimes
known locally as the talabard, which denotes a small oboe in two sections.
In its modern form it is chromatic with keys (Figure 12.3).7
In Bigorre, Gascony Pyrenees, the principal oboes are the clarin, a
small instrument in a single section (Figure 12.4), and the claron, a
250 Luc Charles-Dominique

Figure 12.3 Bombardes constructed by Jean-Pierre Jacob (1865–1919), a professional turner

from Lorient (Morbihan, Brittany). From left to right, the instruments are in A, B♭ and B

large, three-section instrument. In Couserans (Gascony Pyrenees) we

find the aboès, and in Languedoc the grailes,8 which, like the aboès, are
large, three-section instruments measuring around fifty centimetres,
devoid of keys.
Arnaudin describes the manufacture of a tchalemine or ‘crude oboe’ in the
Landes of Gascony. This instrument’s body, according to his account, com-
prised ‘a tube made of alder, willow, or old pinewood, slightly cone-shaped,
approximately 30 centimetres long’.9 Marcel-Dubois observed the hautbois
251 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

Figure 12.4 Marc Culouscou de Gèdre (High Pyrenees) plays the clarin

d’écorce (bark-oboe), made with chestnut bark rolled into the shape of a
cornet; it is native to Vendée (west of France) and Bas-Comminges
(Gascony), though it is also found in other French and European regions.
It is used either as a kind of signalling instrument or for ritual purposes
(in charivari and on Good Friday). Traditionally, on Good Friday there
are ‘tumults’, which Marcel-Dubois described as ‘ceremonial rackets’.10
Men or sometimes young boys play noisy instruments made of wood
(clapper board, ratchets, etc.) or strike metal objects (cans, stoves, pans,
watering cans, etc.) with all their might. This acoustic evocation of the
death of Christ is part of a noisy treatment of death in European societies
over the past centuries in both funeral rituals and symbolic representations
of death.
It was customary to make small clarinets out of oat, wheat, barley hay
and elder wood. They were generically called chalemies; animal horns were
added to them as bells, as in the case of the caremera in Gascony. In
addition to being played by children and shepherds, these instruments
could be used to teach music to people from humble social backgrounds.
One should add that the clarinet, particularly the thirteen-key version
found in the Breton musical tradition (where it is known as treujeun gaol,
252 Luc Charles-Dominique

the ‘cabbage’s foot’), and in some other regions, sometimes substituted for
the traditional oboe, as in Couserans.

Flutes
The most notable flute traditions are those of the fifer (pifre in Occitan) and
of flutes played with one hand, accompanied by a drum drone (membra-
nophone or chordophone), like the galoubet-tambourin. The fifer is a
small transverse flute with no keys (or with a single key called ‘de
Rippert’), which has been played in Western Europe since the end of the
fifteenth century. For a long time it was used by the military or paramilitary,
before being adopted by the urban and later rural male youth for conscrip-
tion rites and carnivals (like the boeuf-gras – ‘fattened ox’ – in Bazas,
Gascony). Today the fifer is to be found in French Flanders, Bazadais,
Quercy, Languedoc, Provence and the environs of Nice.
Flutes intended to be played with one hand are documented in three
regions. The first is the Basque country, with its txirula in the Soule
province and the txistu in the areas closer to the coast. The second region
is Provence, where the galoubet or flûtet has the status of a typical regional
instrument. It can have variable length and tuning, and is played with the
accompaniment of a long, cylindrical drum (see Figure 12.5). The third
region is Gascony, where this type of flute is known as flahuta, both in the
mountainous area (Béarn) and in the plains. It is tuned in A in Béarn and

Figure 12.5 Group of tambourinaires (galoubet-tambourin players) in Provence: one musician is

playing a pair of small drums attached to his belt
253 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

in C in the plains, and is accompanied by a stringed tamburin, the

so-called ttun-ttun (a zither with six strings, tuned to either the tonic or
the dominant of the flute).

Violins and hurdy-gurdies

France does not have a lute tradition, if one excludes Corsica and certain
traditions brought in by immigrants. Harps and lyres are absent too,
except for the ‘Celtic’ harp of Brittany, whose tradition was invented
recently. In the Vosges we find the épinette (a small zither played by
plucking the strings), and in Gascony the stringed tamburin, whose six
gut strings are struck with a cylindrical, leather-padded wooden stick.
Setting these exceptions aside, bowed string instruments feature above all
others in French musical traditions: they are the violin and the hurdy-
gurdy, whose strings are sounded via a revolving wooden wheel.
The violin enjoys a privileged position in Brittany, Poitou, Gascony,
Limousin, Auvergne and Dauphiné. It is sometimes made by the musician
himself, who uses local woods and often only rudimentary tools, ill
adapted to the purpose; paradoxically, the results are often masterpieces
of popular art. The hurdy-gurdy is, in a sense, a polyphonic instrument,
since its wheel can sound all its six strings at once. Four of these are
sounded as open strings (called gros bourdon, petit bourdon, mouche and
trompette), which allow the hurdy-gurdy to act as the main drone instru-
ment (along with bagpipes, with which it is often associated in central
France). It is found in a large variety of types and shapes: its body can be
rounded, like a lute’s, flat, or 8-shaped, like a guitar’s. The instruments
are often highly decorated with wooden inlays, painted decorations and
a sculpted head. In these examples, the makers are frequently famous
craftsmen of the nineteenth century, such as Pajot, Pimpard and Nigout
in Jenzat (Auvergne). But when the players make the instruments them-
selves they can also have an unrefined appearance. The hurdy-gurdy is
associated with the Savoy region (pedlars and chimney sweeps from
this region are often depicted with a hurdy-gurdy), the area south of the
Alps, all of central France (Limousin, Auvergne, Berry and Bourbonnais)
and Brittany and Gascony.

Drums
There are numerous percussion instruments, many of which are generic
in character and therefore not extensively studied. Some are worth
mentioning on account of their extensive use and distinctiveness. The
drum used universally in the accompaniment of fifre orchestras, oboes
and various open-air musical performances is the tambour, known as
254 Luc Charles-Dominique

bachas in Provence. No drum is struck with the naked hand in France:

all are played with one or two sticks. The use of the drum is documented
well before its employment in military music in the late eighteenth
century and nineteenth century. It was extensively employed in proces-
sional urban music of the seventeenth century, and it has sometimes been
used unaccompanied as a dance instrument, especially in rural areas.
Space dictates that the foregoing instrumental inventory omits many
instruments, including some that have played an essential role in certain
ritual and pastoral contexts, as well as in children’s music.

Ensembles
In the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a collec-
tive instrumental practice perpetuated by ménétriers (literally ‘minstrels’,
in fact early popular musicians), semi-professional instrumentalists in
rural areas and smaller towns and professionals in the larger ones, where
they were organised in guilds. As poly-instrumentalists, they formed
‘bands’ or wandering orchestras that varied according to circumstance.
They were made up of violins or oboes of different sizes and registers, and
were systematically polyphonic. This tradition was largely defunct by the
eighteenth century.11 Nevertheless, despite a decline in the status of this
kind of music during the nineteenth century, certain orchestra-type ensem-
bles have appeared in some regions.
In Brittany, the binioù-kozh (bagpipes) and bombarde (oboe) constitute
the most representative regional ensemble. Since the 1950s and 1960s
Brittany has also adopted the bagad, inspired by Irish and Scottish pipe
bands; it is made up of binioùs, bombardes and drums.12 In Paris, among
the community of Auvergne immigrants, the cabreta bagpipes united with
the accordion around 1905–6. This union is attributed to Antoine Bouscatel, a
famous player of the cabreta born in 1867, and Charles Peguri, a Frenchman
of Italian origin born in 1879. This encounter is said to have marked the birth
of the musette genre, one of the most significant in French popular dance
music of the twentieth century. In the Pyrenees and Gascony, oral statements,
old photographs, historical iconography and other evidence indicate that the
one-handed flute and a violin were another musical duo. In Bas-Languedoc,
the traditional oboe is played with the drum, either in small bands or as a duo.
This last configuration is found, for example, on the occasion of ‘nautical
jousting matches’, held along the coast of this region, particularly in Sète. Two
contestants placed at the rear of a large boat try to push their opponent into
the water, accompanied by an oboist and a drummer who play on the deck of
the boat. In the Bazas region (Gascony), in the Var département (Signes
inland, Fréjus and Saint-Tropez on the coast) and in the valleys around
Nice, the fifer is still played in bands alongside drums and bass drums.
255 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

The repertoires of instrumental music

The oral nature of the music-making and the lack of interest in musical
instruments among French collectors in the Romantic era explain the lack
of historical documentation of traditional instrumental repertoires.
Research undertaken in the twentieth century, especially since the folk
revival of the 1970s, tells us most about the nature of these repertoires.
Ethnomusicological investigations have produced evidence of numer-
ous regional dances, often very distinctive, which constitute the major
share of traditional instrumental repertoires. These include gavottes,
an-dro, hanter-dro, ronds and dañs tro in Brittany – some of which
could also be sung; maraîchines and avant-deux in Poitou; bourrées in
Limousin, Auvergne, Berry and Bourbonnais, with significant differences
in rhythm and the dance sequence between these regions; rondeaux in
Gascony; branles and sauts in Bearn; branles and farandoles in Languedoc
and Provence; rigaudons in Dauphine; and so on. In the nineteenth
century new partner dances appeared throughout Western Europe,
including waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and schottisches (a round dance)
which were imported into France. They generated local compositions
adapted to indigenous musical forms and instruments. Whether it was
the regional dance forms or more recent, standardised dances, these
repertoires were most often taken up by the bagpipers and violinists
early on, though in some regions the hurdy-gurdy and one-handed flute
have accompanied these dances. The diatonic accordion at first and later
its chromatic successor eventually became the leading instrument of
dance music. Dance performed at balls, village festivals, weddings and
banquets, on Sunday afternoons in cafes and at annual events like carnival
remains by far the main pretext for instrumental music. The exceptions to
dance music include laments comprising slow melodies, sometimes
dérythmées (without rhythm), played in diverse circumstances, such as
weddings in the Auvergne, where cabreta players produced sad, plaintive
melodies that were designed to render the bride tearful.
Finally, musical instruments were involved in many rituals such as
annual public holidays: carnival in winter, the Easter egg hunt, farm
holidays in summer, rituals connected with the grape harvest in autumn,
and Christmas. There was also music for weddings; for holidays related to
such rites of passage as conscription; for local political processes, includ-
ing the election of new mayors; and others. Finally there are religious
rituals such as pardons (a popular form of penitential pilgrimage) in
Breton-speaking parts of Brittany; religious processions, including one
where the chabreta played in processions of religious brotherhoods in
sixteenth-century Limousin; and midnight Mass at Christmas.
256 Luc Charles-Dominique

The ritual contexts having mostly disappeared by the time the folk
revival was under way in the 1970s, it was the dance music that remained
to be collected and played by today’s traditional musicians.

The voice in traditional music

In France vocal styles and timbres are very varied in character, but it is
possible to identify some constant elements in terms of techniques and
vocal colour. For example, the voice will be powerful in the context of
agricultural labour, as in the briolée (ploughing song) recorded in Nohant
(Berry) in 1913 by Ferdinand Brunot; here the singer interrupts his own
song with cries and exclamations, as well as holding notes over very long
breaths.13 In Mediterranean countries, and therefore also in southern
France, these powerful voices are high-pitched, which partly explains the
importance of the tenor voice in polyphonic music of the Pyrenees and
Alps. These high-pitched, powerful male voices, which are described in
France as ‘clear voice’ (voix claire), are found in varying degrees in the
Balearic Islands, Catalonia (especially in the cant d’estil), Malta and even
Romania, where singing in a very high chest voice constitutes a dangerous
physiological exercise.14 Historically opposed to the hoarse voice of the
devil and so adopted by Western Christian culture, the ‘clear voice’ became
the characteristic sound of Pyrenean and Alpine shepherds in southern
France. Enjoying a special status in traditional Christian societies, the
shepherd’s vocal style was highly valued, especially by folklorists of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; witness Jean Poueigh, who col-
lected Pyrenean songs.
Whereas ornamentation styles in traditional singing more or less
follow regional French traditions, the use of portamento is virtually
universal. This vocal technique connects various notes by rising and fall-
ing glissandos and emphasises the general outline of the melody; it also
allows both the stress and mitigation of significant intervals, such as the
fourth that starts many melodies sung in France. Singers frequently place
grace notes on the accented notes of a melody (see Example 12.1), which
strengthen the rhythmic aspect of their interpretation and personalise it.15
Another method of ornamentation is sometimes to interpolate ornamental
melismas, especially in longer songs with a relatively free rhythmic
structure.
All folklorists and researchers who have studied the songs in oral
traditions note the extremely stereotypical nature of their texts, which
consist of a succession of images and character types (the prince, the
shepherdess, the miller and so on). These songs are predominantly timeless
257 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

Example 12.1 Grace notes on the accented notes of a melody

and refer to stereotypical places that are not identified and localised (‘behind
me’, ‘the clear fountain’, etc.). In spite of the presence of some rare songs on
historical subjects in French regional directories, the impersonal and the
stereotypical dominate. In Britanny this makes the gwerzioù (plural of the
word gwerz) a notable exception, for these songs are substantial laments (or
ballads) about historical events, more often than not criminal, from the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their authenticity has been estab-
lished by a search in the Breton judicial archives of the ancien régime.16 In
Brittany, the corpus of gwerzioù known to date is considerable; it comprises
thousands of songs, many of which possess dozens of stanzas in the Breton
language. Some of these songs were printed on loose leaves at the time, but
many remained in the oral tradition, awaiting collection in recent times.
The tradition of the lament spread quite widely in France under the ancien
régime and in the nineteenth century. But unlike in Brittany, these laments
are few in number and almost never sung in local languages. Alongside the
songs in the oral tradition, urban as well as rural France knew to varying
degrees the art of the songwriters, who were more or less literate local poets.
They described the life of their times in texts of their own composition.
Unfortunately, this tradition did not arouse the curiosity of folklorists at
first or the later ethnomusicologists, at least not until recently.
It is of interest to focus on the linguistic status of songs in the oral
tradition in the regions where different forms of French are spoken. In
these regions most traditional songs are sung in the local language, but it
seems that some regional songs might be conceived entirely in French (as
in the Pyrenees) or bilingually. The study of bilingualism gives us valuable
insights into the status of regional languages versus French.
In France, many popular songs combine local texts (which have many
variants) with melodies in vogue at the time. The song then has the
inscription ‘sur l’air de . . . ’, and the melody is referred to by the incipit
of the original song, as in ‘on the air of “Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre”’.
This process is extremely interesting because it allows one to measure the
historical impact of some borrowed melodies away from their local con-
text. In addition, these melodies often originate in operas, vaudevilles and
258 Luc Charles-Dominique

operettas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – a remarkable

hybridisation between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.
Traditional songs have many functions: educational and recreational
for children, amorous, social, ritual, initiation and so on, for adults; they
were the subject of a homogeneous categorisation in important nine-
teenth- and twentieth-century anthologies. There are, however, two out-
standing functions, one universal, the other very common, that give rise to
specific vocal practices: funeral lamentations and dance-songs. The first
were still practised everywhere in France in the nineteenth century, as
witnessed by Arnold Van Gennep in his Le folklore français, where he
writes that they ‘moaned and cried’, and ‘emitted such shrill cries’ and
‘frightful howls . . . that one could hear them two kilometres away’.17 In
Corsica these lamentations have produced several literary genres, includ-
ing the voceri and lamenti, and are still in use in some localities where it is
not uncommon to hear women in charge of the ritual lamentation at
funerals.
From a stylistic point of view, these lamentations are close to actual
sobbing. They consist of long, monotonous litanies in which the virtues of
the deceased are shouted out in a very stylised manner. To turn to the
other category, dance-song has been in vogue in many French rural areas.
These songs are performed by specialised singers who are really ball
musicians, and could be taken up by the dancers in responsorial forms,
as in the Pays Vannetais (Brittany). It has often been suggested that dance-
song was performed in the absence of instrumentalists. I think that this
purely functionalist explanation is unsatisfactory. Singing to dancing
brings voice and body into a gestural unity, and also implies that the
dancers sometimes become their own musicians. This gives a special
energy to the dance and promotes social unity among the dancers. I had
occasion to encounter several dance-song singers in valleys of the small
region of Couserans (Gascony Pyrenees) in the late 1980s; they were then
very old and no longer sang, but they vividly remembered how it was done.
For Christmas, carnival, Easter and vigils at night in homes or cafes in
these villages, a singer au tralala (the custom of singing to dancing) stood
alone, away from the dance, and it was only the sound of his voice,
sometimes supported by clapping or striking a stick, that got everyone
dancing. The repertoire comprised ‘old’ dances (bourrées), sung by men
(only one woman was reported to me), whose voice was often very high-
pitched, very resonant and very noisy, sometimes mimicking certain
instrumental sonorities.
Imitation processes lie at the heart of popular, primarily instrumental
musical practices. One of the most popular instruments for imitation is
the violin, with traditional violinists imitating animals – the braying of a
259 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

donkey, birdsong – and other musical instruments (e.g. hurdy-gurdy and

bagpipes). The voice is also an imitator. In a village in Haut-Languedoc, Le
Mas-Cabardès, an old local bagpipe player (of the bodega), too old to play
at the time he was discovered, could sing and imitate the sound and
playing of his pipes, notably ornaments made with the thumb of the left
hand on the lower hole of the chanter. In Limousin one observes a strong
practice of dance-song among the violinists, who alternate sung and
instrumental verses in bourrées of their repertoire.
Song can be associated with the male or female voice according to
function. While domestic songs, especially for the education of children,
and funeral lamentations are usually reserved for women, dance and ritual
songs are the domain of men. Work songs are sexually divided depending
on the activity concerned. Songs not associated with a specific context
(historical and sentimental songs, for instance) may fall to either sex, even
though many women are nowadays among the leading figures of tradi-
tional singing in France.
Recordings of vocal music are mainly of solo song, so it is difficult to
classify the distinct vocal forms requiring two or more voices, except by
resorting to the general and vague concept of heterophony, the super-
position of different realisations of essentially the same melody, simulta-
neous variations of which create a form of polyphony. On the other hand,
the Breton form of responsorial song, the kan ha diskan, is very specific:
two voices answer each other, overlapping for a brief moment at the end of
phrases, following the process of tuilage, which denotes the overlapping
created when the second singer repeats the last syllable of the first singer,
thus making the song seamless.18 In addition, in Bigorre and Bearn in the
Gascony Pyrenees and in the southern Alps, there are forms of a cappella
tonal polyphony where two (more rarely three) voices sing in parallel thirds
over a bass. In these regions, major exponents of polyphonic singing in the
oral tradition have survived until recently or still exist, including Zéphirin
Castellon of Belvedere (Vallée de la Vésubie, département of Alpes-
Maritimes), singer, author and composer of polyphonic songs, fife player
and bell ringer. In the Pyrenees one encounters many male choirs in the folk
style, whose origin dates back to the nineteenth century and whose reper-
toire comprises choral classics, including hymns and excerpts from the
works of Halévy, Gounod, Meyerbeer and others, plus local songs in the
Occitan language, harmonised in a tonal manner.
This geographically distinct area of traditional tonal polyphony in
France, on the southern margins of the country, merges with a much
larger area (a large part of the Iberian peninsula, the Alps, Italy, etc.).
However, in a few exceptional regions of southern Europe, there are forms
of modal polyphony. Sardinia is a good example, as is Corsica, with its
260 Luc Charles-Dominique

tradition of paghjella. Especially evident in northern Corsica (the Casinca

and Castagniccia regions), this form of vocal polyphony is traditionally
male and most often involves three different voices entering in succession.
First, the main voice (a seconda) launches the song alone, setting the tone;
it is immediately joined by the bass (u bassu), which supports it; and then
by the highest voice (terza), which is essentially responsible for ornamen-
tation. In general, melodic motion is descending, and a major chord at the
end replaces the many minor chords we hear throughout the song. With
no predefined function, the paghjella’s subjects are generally secular (they
include lamentation, seduction, satire, etc.), but it may also take on
religious forms. Recorded by Félix Quilici on three field trips that he led
on the island between 1948 and 1963, the paghjella still plays a significant
role, especially for its visual spectacle and very specialised polyphonic
organisation. With the religious a concordu and secular a tenore poly-
phonies of Sardinia it forms an ensemble of modal polyphonies, unique
and highly localised. This explains why the paghjella has become a strong
symbol of cultural identity in Corsica. In 2009 it was added to UNESCO’s
list of the world’s intangible cultural heritage for urgent protection.

While vocal performance is still a viable subject of research, the last

traditional instrumentalists are almost all gone. In France, Patrice
Coirault (1875–1959) was the first to approach the study of the songs
in the oral tradition in a critical and scientific manner; he established an
analytical method for form, structure and other elements that made up
folksong, such as linguistic duality of regional versus the French lan-
guage, song subjects and phraseology (clichés, versification, metric and
strophic forms).

Melodic and rhythmic structures

Many melodies are not specific to a region or tradition, for they derive
from fairly recent and widely diffused repertoires, such as eighteenth-
century operas and operettas, military music, partner dances, nineteenth-
century country dances, amateur ‘popular’ choral music and so on. Other
melodies taken down in the nineteenth century or gathered recently have a
modal structure. So in Gascony, besides an essentially tonal instrumental
repertoire we find rondeaux in the Lydian mode. Sometimes melodies
display modal-tonal ambiguity: for example, the violinist Camille Roussin
(in Dauphine) plays a mazurka whose first phrase is in G major, whereas
the second phrase is Mixolydian. Furthermore, certain melodies in dance-
songs can be analysed as consisting of two phrases in different keys, such
261 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

as D and A. In certain cases musicians build instrumental suites, following

not only the type and rhythmic structure of the dance they are accom-
panying but also certain melodic modes (see Figure 12.6). We commonly
find songs, especially dance-songs, in which the range is limited to just a
third or a fourth, as in Example 12.2 from the Gascony Pyrenees.19
Vocal and instrumental repertoires not related to dance sometimes
display complex rhythms simply because of the flexibility shown by the
performers; notating them by means of a regular time signature becomes

Figure 12.6 Rondo suite from Gascony, constructed and written by the violinist Joseph Roméo
(1903–89), active 1920–30 in the area of Agen
262 Luc Charles-Dominique

Example 12.2 In this sung branle from the Pyrenees, the range of the melody is just a third

something of a challenge. For this reason, Jean Poueigh, a Pyrenean folk-

lorist of the beginning of the twentieth century, considered that the
rhythmic notation of the songs was problematic: ‘Apart from dances, for
which a firm structure is indispensable, popular melody is fluid and
shifting . . . Anyone who has tried to notate the old airs on a peasant’s
lips knows what problems they sometimes present. They are so undulat-
ing, and bar lines are so rigid.’20 Nineteenth-century folklorists, brought up
with metric phrasing, tried to erase these rhythmic ‘irregularities’ from their
anthologies and, as in the work of Frédéric Rivarès (1812–95), did not
hesitate to ‘constrain the rhythm, restore the bar, and thereby give regu-
larity to the air’.21 Dance music, generally regular, is in either simple or
compound time, though some rondos from Gascony display a degree of
ambivalence. Example 12.3 shows two rondos taken from the repertoire of
Léa Saint-Pé (1904–90), an accordion player from the region of Lombez
(Gers, Gascony). The B phrase is such that it could just as well have been
notated in 6/8. This accordion playing shifts between binary and triple time
(2/4 and 6/8).
Within the same instrumental tradition, ornamentation varies greatly
between regions, sometimes even between musicians. There is a tendency
to attack the openings of phrases by a fast leap of a fourth. Some instru-
mental styles exhibit ornamentation of amazing virtuosity. For instance,
in some bagpipe performance traditions, notably the cabreta in the
Auvergne, the tonic note is played between every other note by covering
all the holes of the chanter (the so-called piqué technique, which requires
very fast fingering).
Apart from a certain degree of variability between individual musi-
cians, ornamentation contributes to determining a regional style, as can be
verified if one compares the violin traditions of Gascony and central
France (Auvergne and Limousin). The impact of classically trained teach-
ers is significant too. After being largely self-taught, some traditional
Gascony violinists have been influenced by a local teacher with a classical
background. This influence is noticeable in an ‘academic’ posture (where
the instrument rests on the neck, not on the chest as in regional traditions)
263 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

Example 12.3 Two rondos taken from the repertoire of Léa Saint-Pé (1904–90), region of
Lombez (Gers, Gascony)

and handling of the bow at the heel, not two-thirds or half of the length up,
as sometimes occurs in the Auvergne, Limousin and Dauphine. Playing
techniques are also significantly marked by this phenomenon: in Gascony,
violin playing is often more sober and less ornamented, and makes more
use of vibrato; bowing is more detached, strong beats are emphasised, and
the violinist marks the strong beats in dance music, at the beginning of
either phrases or bars, with double stops or even quadruple stops when the
melody is in G major (sounding, in order of ascent, G–D–B–G).
Some violinists from Gascony know how to play in the instrument’s
high register (third or fifth position), which enables them to perform the
brilliant and highly technical mazurka, polka and schottische dances. In
contrast, in the Limousin region bowing is much more legato (one bar or
more per bow stroke) and the style is highly ornamented. This ornamen-
tation, which the ethnomusicologist Françoise Étay describes as ‘luxuri-
ant’, has several functions:22 to accentuate certain notes, to re-launch the
beginnings of new phrases, to tie two phrases together via a group of notes
and to accentuate the general dynamics of the melody. Here, variation
appears not just in the form of ornamentation; it also encompasses rhythm
by prolonging a beat at the expense of the next one, resulting in a synco-
pated effect.
Most pieces of dance music are made up of two, sometimes three,
phrases played twice; each is usually limited to four or eight bars. In this
static construction, the parts cannot be interchanged – a rigid structure
known as ‘mono-modular’. It is not a specifically French quality; it is
found in numerous instances of dance music throughout Europe. Despite
the musician’s creativity and personalisation of practice and style, this
type of construction does not allow for any improvisation. At best it
permits some variation.
264 Luc Charles-Dominique

Nineteenth and twentieth centuries: ethnomusicological

studies of French traditional music
Nineteenth-century Europe: a ‘pre-history’ of ethnomusicology
According to the few histories of ethnomusicology that have appeared to
date, the discipline was born at the end of the nineteenth century. But one
wonders how it is possible that the Eastern European school (created by
Béla Bartók and Constantin Brăiloiu), one of the three founding schools of
ethnomusicology, appeared ex nihilo. How could they have dispensed with
the precursory role played in the nineteenth century by Western Europe
and especially France? The link between European ethnomusicology at the
start of the twentieth century and the European Romantic collecting trend
of the nineteenth century is evident in the observations and recommen-
dations found in the methodological works of the two founders of the
Eastern European school.
In France, the collector movement had a peculiar history in that it was
conceived and organised as a centralising force, an initiative of the polit-
ical powers; and as it had perforce to adopt successive methodological
stances, it is no exaggeration to identify the early origins both of ethno-
musicological field research and of ethnographical empiricism in general
in this movement. The nineteenth century was studded with political
initiatives motivated by the will to preserve cultures that were thought to
be in decline; their aim was to promote and structure a national policy of
collecting ‘traditional’ songs. One example of these initiatives is
Emmanuel Crétet de Champmol, minister of the interior under
Napoleon I, who produced a document in which he suggested a ‘[gather-
ing of] the monuments of the Empire’s popular idioms’ in 1807.23 There is
also Narcisse-Achille de Salvandy, minister of instruction publique, who in
1845 created a Commission of French Religious and Historical Songs,
which had the task of gathering and publishing folksongs. Finally one
should add Hippolyte Fortoul, minister of instruction publique and cultes,
who on 13 September 1852 signed a famous decree ordering the publication
of a general inventory of French folk poems.24
This movement is inscribed in the long history of the awakening of a
European sensibility to exoticism and oral culture, but it is already appa-
rent in the sixteenth century’s numerous accounts of journeys and auto-
biographical texts of ethnographical character and, later, in the
publication of ‘exotic’ folksongs, which began around 1750. In order to
understand this history, it is necessary to place it in the much broader
context of the history of Western societies’ discovery of an ‘internal
exoticism’, which would later contribute to the development of the
human and social sciences.25 From 1790 onwards, this process of discovery
265 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

in France is marked by several specific initiatives: the investigation of

regional languages conducted by the abbot Grégoire; the creation of the
short-lived Société des Observateurs de l’Homme (1799–1804); the found-
ing in 1804 of the Académie Celtique (in 1812 it became the Société Royale
des Antiquaires de France, which lasted until 1830); the creation in 1839 of
the Société Ethnologique de Paris (to 1848), replaced in 1859 by the Société
d’Ethnographie de Paris; the launch by the minister of instruction publique
of the Monographies Communales (a series of monographs compiled by
local teachers, each on an individual town or village, which described its
history, culture, population, etc.) in 1887; and the emergence and structur-
ing of the notion of ‘heritage’ and concomitant policies on a national level, a
process which endured throughout the nineteenth century. Above all there
is the crucial achievement of the Statistique Départementale. Introduced in
1800 and placed under the authority of the newly instituted préfets (officials
assigned to a specific département), this inventorial undertaking is, among
other things, an immense ethnographical taxonomy in which ‘the arts,
customs and habits of the inhabitants of the départements – rural life and
popular traditions – are given significant weight’.26
Ethnographical research in nineteenth-century France was character-
ised by the significant social and cultural gap, particularly evident after
1852, between researchers and the population being researched; this tends
to reinforce the problematic dichotomies between ‘learned’ and ‘popular’
spheres, and thus between written and oral traditions. They are evident,
for example, in the case of the Comité de la Langue, de l’Histoire et des
Arts de la France instituted by Fortoul, where the ‘section for philology’,
responsible for a ‘collection of traditional poems’, was formed by twelve
members, all of whom came from the Académie Française, other academ-
ies, the École des Chartes and ministerial cabinets. This committee relied
on a national network of 212 regional correspondents, including members
of the clergy, functionaries and notables, lawyers, archivists, librarians and
occasionally composers. These researchers discovered the world of oral
traditions, whose existence had previously gone unnoticed, as well as the
unsuitability of their writing tools for any kind of faithful transcription of
these traditions. The Fortoul research generated numerous publications,
which are valuable sources for the ethnomusicology of French traditional
music.

The twentieth century: institutional and academic ethnomusicology

of French traditional music
Whatever the precursory role played by the nineteenth century in its birth,
ethnomusicology began its institutional history in France only in the first
decades of the twentieth. This history is a unique phenomenon in the
266 Luc Charles-Dominique

global history of ethnomusicology because of its bipolar development: on

the one hand investigations were conducted in France, and on the other,
researchers travelled to foreign territories.
The Musée d’Ethnographie, founded by Ernest Hamy in 1877 and
located in the Palais du Trocadéro from 1879, was directed by Paul Rivet
in 1928, with the collaboration of Georges-Henri Rivière (1897–1985).
Between them they transformed this museum of ethnography into the
Musée de l’Homme. Rivière appointed André Schaeffner to the section
dedicated to music. In 1929 Schaeffner created a Département d’Organologie
Musicale, which became the Département d’Ethnologie Musicale in 1932,
and has existed until recently under the name Département
d’Ethnomusicologie. As well as – and to some extent in opposition to –
this institution, which looked outside France, especially to traditions outside
Europe, Rivière created the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires
(MNATP) in 1937, first as part of the Musée de l’Homme, then as an
autonomous institution. It was explicitly bound to a ‘folkloristic ethnog-
raphy’ operating within the field of French cultures. Rivière entrusted the
ethnomusicological component of the new museum to Marcel-Dubois. She
subsequently founded the Département d’Ethnomusicologie de la France et
du Domaine Français in 1944. The institutional division between research on
foreign and French provinces was clear-cut and admitted no exceptions.
One of the characteristic traits of folkloristic collections in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before the large-scale institutional
campaigns was the predominance of the method of copying under dictation,
rather than recording the sources directly with a phonograph, the use of
which was only occasional. However, we know of a wax cylinder engraved
around 1890 by the abbot Privat from Mur-de-Barrez (Aveyron), which
presents an anonymous singer from Cros-de-Ronesque (Cantal).27 It con-
stitutes the oldest European evidence of this kind. In addition, the Breton
singer Marc’harid Fulup from Pluzunet (1837–1909) was recorded in 1900
by François Vallée. The first to make systematic use of recording was
Brunot, who created the Archives de la Parole in 1911, thanks to Pathé’s
donation of an experimental recording device. He organised three succes-
sive trips, to the Ardennes in 1913 and to Berry and Limousin in 1914. The
Archives de la Parole became the Musée de la Parole et du Geste in 1932,
then the Phonothèque Nationale in 1938; it is currently known as the
Département Audiovisuel of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Roger
Dévigne, its first director (1938), conducted several ‘phonographic field
trips’ in 1939 to the Alps, Provence and Niçoise regions; in 1941–2 to
Languedoc and Pyrenees; and in 1946 to Normandy and Vendée.
The MNATP carried out field trips in musical folklore after the Second
World War. These brought Marcel-Dubois to Lower Brittany (1939), the
267 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

Pyrenees (1947), the Landes (1965), Bayonne (1951), Aveyron (1964–6),

Haute-Loire (1946, 1959, 1962), Cantal (1959) and Aubrac (1963–5), in a
campaign conducted by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS) in which Jean-Michel Guilcher, Jean-Dominique Lajoux,
Francine Lancelot and Maguy Pichonnet-Andral also participated. The
resulting collections allow one to study vocal and instrumental styles, plus
their musical contexts, that have now disappeared. Until recently, one
could listen to them at the MuCEM (Musée des Civilisations d’Europe et
de la Méditerranée), which succeeded the MNATP (the recordings have
been given to the Archives Nationales).
Numerous other large-scale collections, not necessarily academic or
institutional, survive: Marc Leproux, a teacher, operated in Charente
Limousin between 1939 and 1946; Pierre Panis researched traditional
dances; Félix Quilici was active in Corsica within the framework of
CNRS and MNATP initatives; and Michel Valière conducted research in
Poitou from 1965 onwards for the University of Poitiers. Their collections
appeared at a time when it was possible to hear and witness repertoires and
musical styles, vocal and instrumental, alongside their dance sequences
before they disappeared or fundamentally changed.
In most French regions, in the late 1960s large-scale associations appeared
whose purpose was to collect material with a view to sustaining musical and
dance practice, instituting a form of education in support of these practices,
undertaking editorial projects and so on. In the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to
the initiative of the ministry of culture and revivalist musicians and collectors,
traditional music and dance collections started acquiring a certain structure,
at first on a national level with the creation of a Fédération des Associations
de Musiques et Danses Traditionelles in 1985, then on a regional level with
the appearance of regional centres for traditional music and dance. All these
structures are associated with the state. The result was impressive: in fifteen
years France saw more collections arising from ethnographical fieldwork
than the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had achieved.
These collections have allowed a census of the last living traditional
musicians and dancers. They have made it possible to film and record
them, to gather up a part of their repertoire and to record their stories.
They have also filmed traditional regional dances and studied instruments,
including bagpipes, oboes, flutes and hurdy-gurdies, which have since
become models for reproductions by skilful craftsmen.
Whereas the first revivalist collections were essentially utilitarian in
nature (one amassed musical material and tried to rehabilitate it in order
to save a threatened culture), a more scientific approach was gradually
introduced, typically because several researchers entered third-level
and doctoral programmes. A revivalist ethnomusicology concerned with
268 Luc Charles-Dominique

French fieldwork gradually came together and ended up finding a place in

schools of music and conservatoires thanks in part to the ministry of
culture.28

Methodological considerations
Following in the footsteps of the French Romantics, the research by or
for the national institutions (the Archives de la Parole, Phonothèque
Nationale, MNATP) is almost exclusively conducted within rural con-
texts, which perpetuated the tradition of Bartók and Brăiloiu. Brăiloiu had
a great influence on Marcel-Dubois. Like him, she worked intensively and
only chose subjects that were musically illiterate: the material thus col-
lected (6,000 documents between 1945 and 1959), thanks to the detailed
study of certain musical rituals, allowed her to shed light on ‘vestiges of a
musical proto-history’ of the French rural culture, ‘medieval, perhaps
ancient, or older’.29 In the 1970s, revivalists pursued their research entirely
in the rural dimension.
A reform of the objects, priorities, and places of interest has increas-
ingly led the ethnomusicology of France nowadays to study multicultural
types of music and dance (whether they belong to a given community or
not), which occur in broadly suburban or urban contexts. Because the
modern world is intercultural, a certain form of dynamic anthropology is
replacing the old models of classic anthropology (social, cultural, or
structural), thereby rearranging the set of questions that form the meth-
odological foundation of the discipline.
Europe, a society essentially based on written traditions, cannot, despite
the oral dimension that characterises the study of ethnomusicology, ignore
the history and contributions of written sources when dealing with the
discipline. This is the reason why I have conducted musico-anthropological
historical research into the role of minstrels (ménétriers), who would nowa-
days be classified as ‘traditional’ musicians, their social organisation, status,
the contexts within which they operated, their collective and multifarious
practices and their instruments.30 This first round of research was succeeded
by a second, more anthropological in nature, which aimed to clarify the
history of these musical practices through a structural analysis of their
distinctive forms in their evolution through time.31
This global research allowed us to reconstruct the history of this type of
traditional and popular music and to understand its progressive margin-
alisation from the eighteenth century onwards. It also allowed us to
decipher its present reality, updated through fifteen years of revivalist
ethnomusicological research. Thanks to the historical taxonomy of the
forms and functions of this music, which this research has helped to
determine, a credible explanation of the role played by traditional music
269 Traditional music and its ethnomusicological study

in establishing identity and of the musical choices adopted by the folk-

revival movement is now available to us.

The current situation

After two centuries of Romantic pre-history and scientific-institutional
history, both academic and revivalist, French ethnomusicology needs, at
present, to rethink its themes, goals, and methods of research, and to bring
researchers together. Modern issues grappled with by ethnomusicology in
France and in other industrialised countries constitute a wide and inex-
haustible terrain for research: urban music, regional identities or identities
of different communities, changes in aesthetics, modern cultural syncre-
tism, globalisation, women’s emancipation in musical practice, the emer-
gence of new practices, etc. The revivalist movement, already forty-five
years old, also constitutes fertile ground for an anthropological study of
the process of building or institutionalising a heritage.
Because of its historical depth, its protean nature and its permanent quest
for an identity, the ethnomusicology of France has always had to redefine its
scientific strategy, but this very need also occurs because of the disappearance
of most of its primary research material. Perhaps this experience can be its
contribution to global ethnomusicology, which is itself being forced to ques-
tion its methodology because it is universally confronted with the consequen-
ces of contemporary cultural life and globalisation.

Notes
1 Michel Colleu (ed.), Musique bretonne:
histoire des sonneurs de tradition (Douarnenez:
Le Chasse-Marée/ArMen, 1996), 328–57.
2 Sylvie Douce de La Salle, Marie-Barbara Le
Gonidec and Jean-Jacques Smith, Les
cornemuses de George Sand, autour de Jean
Sautivet, fabricant et joueur de musette dans le
Berry (1796–1867), exhibition catalogue
(Montluçon: Musée des Musiques Populaires
de Montluçon, 1996), 28–38.
3 Jean-François Chassaing, La tradition de
cornemuse en Basse-Auvergne et Sud-
Bourbonnais (Moulins: Éditions Ipomée,
1982).
4 Florence Gétreau and Eric Montbel (eds),
Souffler, c’est jouer: chabretaires et cornemuses
à miroirs en Limousin, exhibition catalogue
(Saint-Jouin-de-Milly: FAMDT, 1999).
5 Lothaire Mabru, La cornemuse des Landes de
Gascogne (Belin-Béliet: Centre Lapios, 1986).
6 Yves Defrance, ‘La bombarde, aux
commandes du couple traditionnel des
sonerien’, in Luc Charles-Dominique and
Pierre Laurence (eds), Les hautbois populaires:
anches doubles, enjeux multiples (Saint-Jouin-
de-Milly: Modal, 2002), 142–3; Jean-
Christophe Maillard, ‘Talabarderien mod koz:
le jeu et la technique de la bombarde chez les
sonneurs bretons de tradition’, in Charles-
Dominique and Laurence (eds), Les hautbois
populaires, 150–4.
7 Colleu (ed.), Musique bretonne, 343.
8 Pierre Laurence, ‘Variations sur un même
instrument: le hautbois en Bas-Languedoc du
XVIIIe au XXe siècles’, Le monde alpin et
rhodanien, 1–2 (1993), 85–126.
9 Félix Arnaudin, Chants populaires de la
Grande-Lande, ed. Jacques Boisgontier and
Lothaire Mabru, 2 vols (Paris, 1912; Bordeaux:
Éditions Confluences, 1995), vol. I, 397–9.
10 Claudie Marcel-Dubois, Fêtes villageoises et
vacarmes cérémoniels ou une musique et son
contraire (Paris: CNRS, 1975), 604. See also
Claudie Marcel-Dubois, ‘La paramusique dans
270 Luc Charles-Dominique
le charivari français contemporain’, in
Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt
(eds), Le charivari (Paris: École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales, 1981), 45–53.
11 Luc Charles-Dominique, ‘Les bandes
ménétrières ou l’institutionnalisation d’une
pratique collective de la musique
instrumentale, en France, sous l’Ancien
Régime’, in Xavier Vidal (ed.), Entre l’oral et
l’écrit: rencontre entre sociétés musicales et
musiques traditionnelles, conference
proceedings, Gourdon, 20 September 1997
(Toulouse: FAMDT, 1998), 71–4, 79–82.
12 Yves Defrance, ‘Le bagad, une invention
bretonne féconde’, in Charles-Dominique
and Laurence (eds), Les hautbois populaires,
135–6.
13 World Library of Folk and Primitive Music:
France, ed. Alan Lomax, Rounder Records
82161–1836–2 (2005).
14 Gilles Léothaud and Bernard Lortat-Jacob,
‘La voix méditerranéenne: une identité
problématique’, in Luc Charles-Dominique
and Jérôme Cler (eds), La vocalité dans les pays
d’Europe méridionale et dans le bassin
méditerranéen, conference proceedings, La
Napoule, 2000 (Saint-Jouin-de-Milly: Modal,
2002), 9–14; Jacques Bouët, ‘Une métaphore
sonore: chanter à tue-tête au pays de l’Oach
(Roumanie)’, in Charles-Dominique and
Cler (eds), La vocalité dans les pays d’Europe,
72–5.
15 Example 12.1 is from Jean Poueigh,
Chansons populaires des Pyrénées françaises
(Marseilles: Laffitte Reprints, 1998), 324.
16 Eva Guillorel, La complainte et la plainte:
chanson, justice, cultures en Bretagne,
XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Presses Universitaires de
Rennes, 2010), 175–202.
17 Arnold Van Gennep, Le folklore français,
vol. I: Du berceau à la tombe: cycles de
carnaval–carême et de Pâques (Paris: Laffont,
1998), 582–5.
18 Yves Defrance, ‘Le kan ha diskan: à propos
d’une technique vocale en Basse-Bretagne’,
Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles, 4 (1991),
137–8.
19 Example 12.2 is from Poueigh, Chansons
populaires des Pyrénées françaises, 223.
20 Defrance, ‘Le kan ha diskan’, 31.
21 Frédéric Rivarès, Chansons et airs
populaires du Béarn (Pau: Vignancour, 1844).
22 Françoise Étay, ‘De l’art de la broderie chez
les violoneux’, Modal, 5 (1986), 17.
23 Luc Charles-Dominique et Yves Defrance,
‘Réhabiliter, repenser, développer
l’ethnomusicologie de la France’, Musicologies
(Observatoire Musical Français), 4 (2007),
50–1.
24 Ibid., 51.
25 Luc Charles-Dominique, ‘L’apport de
l’histoire à l’ethnomusicologie de la France’, in
Luc Charles-Dominique and Yves Defrance
(eds), L’ethnomusicologie de la France: de
‘l’ancienne civilisation paysanne’ à la
globalisation, conference proceedings, Nice,
2006 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), 128–9.
26 Marie-Noëlle Bourguet, Déchiffrer la
France: la statistique départementale à l’époque
napoléonienne (Paris: Archives
Contemporaines, 1988).
27 Cantal: musiques traditionnelles, two audio
cassette tapes, ADMD 001–2, held at the
Agence des Musiques Traditionnelles
d’Auvergne.
28 Luc Charles-Dominique, ‘La dimension
culturelle et identitaire dans
l’ethnomusicologie actuelle du domaine
français’, Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles, 9
(1996), 280–2.
29 Claudie Marcel-Dubois,
‘Ethnomusicologie de la France 1945–1959’,
Acta musicologica, 32 (1960), 114.
30 Luc Charles-Dominique, Les ménétriers
français sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris:
Klincksieck, 1994).
31 Luc Charles-Dominique, Musiques
savantes, musiques populaires: les symboliques
du sonore en France, 1200–1750 (Paris: CNRS,
2006).
 13 Popular music
david looseley

Introduction
For the English speaker especially, understanding French popular music
means engaging with the problem of naming it. In French the term
populaire in la musique populaire or its plural les musiques populaires
has traditionally denoted not ‘popular’ in the sense of enjoyed by a large,
sociologically diverse audience, but ‘folk’: the untutored, unwritten, sup-
posedly spontaneous music of the rural and urban working classes. It is
only fairly recently, after urbanisation and industrialisation turned French
entertainments into commodities disseminated by the mass media, that
the English sense of the word has begun to contaminate the French,
though the two meanings still exist side by side. This chapter will use
‘popular’ in the English sense and will focus on the development of urban
music, in particular song, after very briefly sketching its folk roots.
For centuries, and especially since the Revolution of 1789, there has
been a common myth in France that it is not a musical nation. While the
present Companion might suggest that this is inaccurate, the myth does at
least highlight an inadequacy in French musical culture. While the repub-
lican education system set up in the 1880s privileged reason, science,
philosophy and the written word over the creative arts, conservatoires
were characterised by a deep-seated conservatism and an overemphasis on
theory until well after the Second World War.1 To this extent, then, the
myth contains a truth. French popular music, however, offers an essential
corrective to it, for it has arguably helped foster what has been called a
‘musicalisation’ of French culture.2 With illiteracy endemic in the early
nineteenth century, and still at 43.4 per cent of the over-twenties as late as
1872,3 in practice the written word counted for relatively little, whereas
singing or the untrained playing of instruments had been virtually universal
for untold centuries. It was only as peasants relocated to towns in the
nineteenth century that a separation evolved between producers of music
(composers, lyricists, singers, musicians, publishers, impresarios) and

I gratefully acknowledge the University of Leeds’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures and
Faculty of Arts for granting research leave for work on this chapter. I am also indebted to the late
David Whale, French teacher and lover of French chanson, whose magnificent archive of materials
collected over fifty years was donated to me by his widow Ann and has proved invaluable for
[271] completing this chapter.
272 David Looseley

consumers. It is with this specialisation that French popular music in the

modern English sense really begins, though again a different taxonomy has
developed in French, at the centre of which lies la chanson, a polysemic
category whose meanings are complex, having developed by accretion.

Inventing chanson: from amateur to auteur

The ancient roots of French song are discussed in more detail elsewhere.
Briefly, its story begins with the troubadours and trouvères of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who wrote for the aristocracy, and
with vernacular, itinerant street singers called jongleurs. According to
Calvet, the term chanson became mainly identified with the latter, that
is, with the street.4 Popular song in fact remained a largely anonymous,
collective form until the fifteenth century, which saw a burst of creativity in
the chanson populaire.5 By this time, the transcribing and anthologising of
songs (most famously in the manuscrit de Bayeux) had begun and their
forms had become established (lai, rondeau, ballade, etc.). Such works then
achieved greater permanence with the invention of printing, which allowed
popular lyrics sung to existing melodies (timbres) to be anthologised. This
means of circulation remained largely intact until the late nineteenth
century, when a number of social, institutional and technological changes
professionalised and commodified the chanson.
The Revolution of 1789 is a useful starting point for understanding
these changes. In its wake came a concern to foster national unity and
educate the people, with the result that the organic growth of popular
culture becomes entangled with its ideological manipulation by political
and cultural elites. The rediscovery of folk music and the encouragement
of amateur music-making throughout the nineteenth century by both
religious and secular authorities are cases in point. After the Revolution,
regional cultures were despised as repositories of particularism and igno-
rance. But the Romantic movement’s interest in a rural idyll produced an
intellectual and literary concern to preserve folksongs. After Napoleon III
seized power in December 1851, he furthered this endeavour by ordering
the ministry of instruction publique to survey and collect France’s ‘popular
poetry’. Since the songs collected were redrafted in standard grammar and
notation to remove all local colour and form a common treasury for
educational purposes, these initiatives began a process of transforming
an oral tradition into a homogenous written culture.6 One outcome was a
new consciousness of song’s place in national cultural memory.
Another important form of voluntarism in popular music was the
orphéons. Invented in the 1820s to educate, socialise and improve the
273 Popular music

morals of the people by offering them a musical apprenticeship and an

outlet for collective endeavour, orphéons were initially choral societies of
schoolchildren and workers; but increasingly from the mid nineteenth
century the term came to mean brass bands (fanfares) or wind bands
(harmonies). Although they were primarily individual initiatives by a
school, factory or ex-army musician, the orphéons were usually supported
by the local mayor, who would authorise outdoor public performances.
They were also facilitated from the 1850s by the setting up of outdoor
bandstands (kiosques).7 This public support can be explained by the per-
ceived civic and ideological benefits of the orphéons in politically turbulent
times. As the official organ of the movement, ‘L’Orphéon’, put it: ‘hearts
come very close to agreeing when voices have fraternised’.8
The orphéons were also seen as ramparts against the potentially sub-
versive pursuits that the ‘people’ traditionally engaged in when left to their
own devices. In the seventeenth century, the oldest bridge in Paris, the
Pont-Neuf, had become notorious for popular songs of sedition, but by the
Revolution such dissent was moving indoors. Middle-class singing clubs
(sociétés chantantes) had in fact been growing up in Parisian ‘cabarets’
(bars) and comfortable restaurants since the early eighteenth century,
being associated especially with topical satire. The first such venture in
Paris was Les Dîners du Caveau, set up around 1734. Modelled upon it,
caveaux (literally ‘vaults’, but in this context ‘clubs’) sprang up across
France, where groups of well-heeled songwriters (known at the time as
chansonniers) and other artists would meet to carouse and hear each
other’s compositions. These crafted, witty songs were usually more epi-
curean than subversive; but when the Napoleonic Empire fell and mon-
archy was restored in 1815, less exclusive, working-class counterparts to
the caveaux, known as goguettes, appeared. These were closed, even semi-
secret clubs whose members would meet weekly or monthly in a cabaret or
wine shop, paying a small subscription to drink heavily and sing their own
compositions or the songs of the moment. Although bawdy drinking
songs were probably more common there, some goguettes became centres
of political opposition, being associated initially with Bonapartism or
freemasonry and later with republicanism.9 Flourishing during the July
Monarchy (1830–48), over 480 such clubs existed in Paris by 1845.10
Two songwriters were strongly identified with caveaux and goguettes:
Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857), who was famous in both, and the
less renowned Émile Debraux (1796–1831), known as the ‘Béranger of the
rabble’.11 Both were imprisoned for the politically or morally subversive
content of their work.
This dissident, urban subculture was one among several factors in the
eventual emergence of a distinctive chanson tradition. In the short term,
274 David Looseley

however, with political tensions following the revolution of 1848 and the
start of the Second Empire (1851–70), censorship attempted to restrict the
ideas that urban workers had access to. A decree of November 1849
prohibited song performances in cafes without a visa from the ministry
of education; another, of March 1852, banned public meetings without
police authorisation. As a result, both caveaux and goguettes were effec-
tively closed down, which helped bring about a shift in French popular
music from amateur social engagement to professional entertainment.12
Professionalisation was triggered by a legal dispute over songs performed
without the composers’ consent in 1850 at the Café des Ambassadeurs near
the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The case led to the setting up of the
performing rights organisation, the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et
Éditeurs de Musique (SACEM), the following year. Henceforth, songwriters
could contemplate making a living from their work. Indeed, despite the
disappearance of the goguettes, demand for songs in cafes remained
high. One kind of institution that satisfied it were the intimate cabarets
on the outskirts of the city, notably Montmartre. The most illustrious of
the Montmartre cabarets was Le Chat Noir (1881), which was frequented
by artists, writers and inquisitive bourgeois.13 It was here that the singer-
songwriter Aristide Bruant (1851–1925), immortalised by Toulouse-
Lautrec, first made his name, before setting up his own establishment on
the same premises in 1885, Le Mirliton, when Le Chat moved elsewhere.14
With his characteristic Parisian accent and slang, working-class themes
and declamatory delivery (a necessity before the microphone if singers
were to be heard above the hubbub of the cabaret), Bruant developed
what has become known as the ‘realist song’ (chanson réaliste): a melo-
dramatic narrative of Parisian low life in keeping with the marginality of
Montmartre. Like their audiences, cabaret songs were generally more
literary than those of the goguettes. This, together with the Toulouse-
Lautrec poster and the existence of early recordings of Bruant’s voice on
cylinder from 1909, would transform him into a formative legend for
twentieth-century chanson.15
Another response to the demand for live music took chanson closer to
massification. Street singers, who had traditionally made their living by
passing the hat and selling simple sheet music (called petits formats) of the
songs they sang, had by the 1840s taken to working outside cafes to
maximise income. These establishments, called cafés chantants after a
formula dating back to the 1790s but banned under Napoleon, became
favourite places of entertainment during the summer months. In 1848, the
owner of the Café des Ambassadeurs (where the SACEM was shortly to be
conceived) took the arrangements a momentous step forward by hiring
singers and musicians, setting up outdoor and indoor stages for the
275 Popular music

purpose.16 This initiative gave birth to the cafés-concerts of the Second

Empire and the Belle Époque, a period of cultural extravagance running
from the last decades of the nineteenth century to 1914. Often rather sordid,
rowdy locations in the early days, where sailors drank and prostitutes plied
their trade,17 the cafés-concerts steadily became ‘the people’s opera house’.
Certainly, they were the main form of mass entertainment for urban work-
ers, artisans and petits-bourgeois before cinema.
The part played by the café-concert in the development and commerci-
alisation of French popular music and mass culture is hard to exaggerate.
In the goguettes the entertainment had been free of charge (aside from the
small membership fee), amateur and participative. But with the hiring of
singers and musicians by the cafés-concerts, followed in 1867 by the
legalisation of performance in costume in drinking houses, cafes became
venues, singing became spectacle, and the population became spectators.18
Commercialisation could only mean depoliticisation if proprietors were to
please audiences wanting easy entertainment and the censors at the
Inspection des Théâtres, who vetted all songs for performance.19 Jobbing
composers, now remunerated by the SACEM, began producing specific
repertoires for a range of stock characters, which had become a café-concert
convention: comiques-troupiers, diseuses, réalistes-pierreuses and others.20
These repertoires were designed to elicit two principal emotions: laugh-
ter and tears.21 Many of the soon-to-be iconic nightspots of Paris like
Le Moulin Rouge (1889) began life as cafés-concerts; and the evolution
there of public singing as a commodity would in turn give birth to the
highly paid national celebrity, starting with Thérésa (1837–1913) and
Paulus (1845–1908). Some of their successors would also become France’s
first international stars: Yvette Guilbert (1867–1944), another singer
immortalised by Toulouse-Lautrec; Mistinguett (1875–1956), whose song
‘Mon homme’ became the model for the American torch song ‘My Man’;
and Maurice Chevalier (1888–1972), Mistinguett’s lover on stage as in life
and later the professional Frenchman of Hollywood.
Another defining element in urban popular music at the start of the
twentieth century was the bal musette. Originally a village dance featur-
ing bagpipes known as a musette, in its modern form it allowed working-
class city-dwellers to gather in unsophisticated suburban venues and
dance in couples to the accordion. Hollywood was soon to latch onto
the accordion as a metonym of Frenchness, though it had in fact origi-
nated in Austria, Germany and England before being brought to Paris by
migrant Italian musicians. Its portability, its cheapness and the fact
that it was always in tune made it the ideal popular instrument for
dancing, although – ironically given the iconic status it was to acquire –
its arrival in France was resisted by both the church and folk purists, who
276 David Looseley

saw it as a barbarous import.22 But outside influences of far greater

magnitude were on the way.
Between approximately 1890 and 1914, the English-style music hall
took the France of the café-concert and the bal musette into the modern
age. By 1927 there were fifteen halls in Paris alone,23 including the Folies
Bergères, Moulin Rouge, Bobino and Olympia. Music hall dispensed with
the cafe setting, separated stage and audience, and demoted singers in
favour of more varied forms of visual entertainment, from circus to ballet
and the saucy, spectacular ‘revues’, which today have become a tourist
cliché. Hence the term spectacle de variétés (variety show), which dates
from this period and which, reduced to les variétés, has become a synonym
for lightweight, commercial forms of chanson.24
A further component in the music-hall mix consisted of exotic dance
musics. The tango reached France from South America shortly before
the First World War. The cakewalk had arrived at the turn of the century,
prefiguring the African-American jazz bands of the American
Expeditionary Force in 1917.25 Still absorbing the shock of jazz, French
audiences were even more astonished by the black dancer Josephine Baker,
who appeared at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in La revue nègre of 1925.
Virtually naked on stage, she exploited and subverted the perceived other-
ness of black America, simultaneously scandalising and arousing male
critics.26 Soon, however, she would shape-shift into a more conventional
chanson and revue artist, learning French and adopting the conventions of
white music hall. Jazz itself, in both its American and Gallicised forms, in
fact acquired a special status in France, as successive African-American
musicians worked and even settled there (most notably Sidney Bechet) and
white French singers and touring bands (Johnny Hess, Ray Ventura and his
Collégiens, Grégor and his Grégoriens) appropriated swing in the 1930s. An
association of jazz enthusiasts, Le Hot Club de France, was formed in 1932,
and its journal Jazz hot, launched in 1935 (and still published on the Web in
2014), became a forum for expert jazz criticism under Hugues Panassié and
Charles Delaunay. With their support, the celebrated Quintette du Hot
Club de France, featuring Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, also
evolved its own style of French jazz.27
With the music hall of the 1920s showcasing variétés, spectacle and
brashly cosmopolitan dance rhythms like jazz, some wondered whether
there was any place there for chanson in its accepted form.28 By the late
1930s, however, singers had largely supplanted revue as the main attraction
in the halls. As this suggests, a strategy of distinction was emerging which, in
opposition to ‘variety’ (variétés), forged an identity for chanson drawing on
the older, supposedly more authentically French culture of the goguettes,
cabarets and cafés-concerts. Pivotal in this evolution were two historic but
277 Popular music

very different singers, Édith Piaf and Charles Trenet. Both borrowed from
past conventions but, by example, helped shape the future of chanson and
indeed its myth: the myth of song as a popular art at which the French excel
and which thereby expresses an ineffable Frenchness; the myth in fact of la
chanson française.

Singers, songwriters and la chanson française

With a career extending from the 1930s to the 1960s, Piaf (1915–63) was
probably the most important product of the new age of mechanical repro-
duction, symbolising the seismic shift from the humble street singer of the
mid-nineteenth century to the superstar of the mid-twentieth. Her early
style had developed during a childhood spent working the streets with her
father, a circus contortionist, and it was already nostalgic by the mid-1930s.
It was a self-conscious throwback to the urban folklore of nineteenth-
century Paris: an intertextual composite of the ‘realism’ of Bruant, the
melodrama of La dame aux camélias and the ‘tears’ function of the café-
concert, later commercialised by Damia (Marie-Louise Damien,
1892–1978), Fréhel (1891–1951) and Marie Dubas (1894–1972) – all
Piaf’s models. Like them she sang of the hapless young girl or hard-nosed
streetwalker abandoned by a temporary lover and dragging herself fatalisti-
cally towards a sordid end. At first she deployed the familiar waltz time of
the bal musette, accompanied by an accordion or small band in a plaintive
voice, marked by the working-class Parisian accent already familiar as a
caricature from Chevalier and Mistinguett. Yet the ‘grain’ of her voice and
its immensity and depth, coupled with the crucial reflection in her songs of
the circumstances of her own young life, which her writers skilfully played
up, transcended these generic conventions and gave her work something
ineffable and triumphant. After the war, once her career took off in New
York, her repertoire moved closer to the lingua franca of the torch song,
losing much of its local specificity. The accompaniments too were more
orchestral, and the voice, which lost most of its youthful Parisian accent,
seemed stronger, more assertive, yet more tragic. Still hinging on female
suffering and dependency, and still autobiographical, her songs nevertheless
acquired an ‘I will survive’ quality, embodied in one of her last successes,
‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ (1960).29
The career of the second influential figure of the interwar period,
Trenet (1913–2001), composer of the international hits ‘Boum’ (1938)
and ‘La mer’ (1945), began in 1933 in a duo with Johnny Hess. A solo
singer-songwriter from 1937, Trenet reinvigorated and modernised
French popular song by coaxing it away from the realist tradition. As
278 David Looseley

nostalgic as Piaf for an older France (‘Douce France’, 1943; ‘Mes jeunes
années’, 1947), his stage persona was much less gloomy. His jovial body
language, battered straw hat and comically popping eyes were all nods to
the comic conventions of café-concert and earned him the nickname ‘the
Singing Fool’ (‘le Fou Chantant’). But he innovated far beyond what this
might suggest: musically by adapting the syncopation and orchestration of
American swing; lyrically by learning from French surrealism to invest the
lyric with stunning new imagery, onomatopoeia and word-play. As a
result, chanson artists from the Liberation to the present have cited him
as an inspiration.30
His main legacy in the immediate post-war period can be found in a
new generation of remarkably talented singer-songwriters (auteurs-
compositeurs-interprètes) who developed a ‘poetic’ sub-genre of chanson
from Trenet’s signposting of its literary possibilities. Even so, these per-
formers were different from him in a number of ways. Unlike him, they
accompanied themselves on guitar or piano, largely because of the phys-
ical constraints imposed by the intimate Left Bank cellar bars where their
careers began, home to the jazz scene and the smoke-wreathed philoso-
phising of the Existentialists. They also had a post-holocaust, post-
Hiroshima darkness or inwardness that Trenet lacked (at least on the
surface), and which was a long way from his beloved music hall (‘Moi,
j’aime le music-hall’, 1955). They are more auteur than entertainer.31
A constellation of singer-songwriters represent this Left Bank auteurist
model, including Francis Lemarque, Guy Béart, Jean Ferrat and Serge
Gainsbourg (to whom I shall return). But its three canonical figures are
Georges Brassens (1921–81), Jacques Brel (1929–78, a Belgian who made
his career in Paris) and Léo Ferré (1916–93). As this list suggests, the
singer-songwriter is an essentially male trope. Even though equally tal-
ented women emerged at the same time (Nicole Louvier, Marie-José
Neuville, Anne Sylvestre and – most accomplished of all – Barbara,
1930–97), variety’s conservatism could not yet accept women as more
than muse or interpreter of men, all the more so as many of the songs of
the big three were distinctly phallocentric.
Ferré, the eldest of the three, began performing in 1946, accompanying
himself on the piano in Saint-Germain-des-Prés cabarets. Brel and
Brassens followed in the early 1950s and, like many of this and subsequent
generations, preferred the guitar. Brassens never abandoned it, though
both Brel’s and Ferré’s later work was often lavishly orchestrated. Brel
stands out from the other two by the theatricality of his delivery, both
comic and tragic. Brassens, on the other hand, was the least comfortable
on stage, clutching his guitar for dear life with one foot on a chair as if
rooted to the spot. Ferré eventually moved out from behind his piano, but
279 Popular music

would stand virtually motionless at the microphone, spitting out his angry
diatribes, dressed in black with a mane of white hair surrounding his bald
pate, like a psychotic clown. His complex lyrics, surreal and violent,
mixing intense lyricism with the scatology of the street, were set to
minor chords and descending, liturgical cadences. He was also the most
experimental of the three musically and the only one to flirt with rock after
1968.32
Finally, it is the imagery, wit and intelligence of their lyrics – redolent
of a Béranger, Debraux or Bruant – that mark them out as a triumvirate.
They wrote polished songs of love and hate, tradition and iconoclasm,
laced with wry, sometimes ribald social observations and, in the case of
Brel and Ferré, personal emotion. All three liked to see themselves as
bohemians or anarchists. This was fashionable politics by the late 1960s,
and it allowed them to disguise a certain conservatism, especially regard-
ing gender. Brassens and to a lesser extent Ferré also fell foul of the censor
on grounds of morality and politics, which contributed usefully to their
iconoclastic self-image.
The post-war singer-songwriter paradigm condensed la chanson
française into the chanson d’auteur (author song) or chanson à texte (text
song). It is important, however, to avoid drawing too simple a distinction
between those singers who wrote and those who did not, between auteur and
entertainer. Piaf, for example, cannot be so easily disqualified as an auteur.
This is not simply because she too wrote lyrics and occasional melodies, but
because she employed gifted lyricists (Raymond Asso, Michel Emer, Charles
Aznavour, Michel Vaucaire) and composers (most consistently Marguerite
Monnot and Charles Dumont) who, as we have seen, helped her construct a
narrative of the indivisibility of her life and work, which brings her close to
the singer-songwriter mode. The Left Bank tradition similarly includes
singers – Juliette Gréco, Yves Montand, Mouloudji, Catherine Sauvage –
who did not write but nevertheless acquired a vicarious ‘auteurist’ prestige
by developing a repertoire generated by the new singer-songwriters or by
poets and novelists like Boris Vian, Raymond Queneau and Jacques Prévert.
Less classifiable still is the supercharged Gilbert Bécaud (1927–2001), who
wrote his own melodies (‘The Day the Rains Came’, ‘What Now My Love?’
and ‘Let It Be Me’ are all his) but turned to others (notably Pierre Delanoé)
for lyrics. More useful, then, as a historiographical principle for under-
standing chanson from around 1860 to 1960 is a different opposition: on
the one hand, a perception of song as ‘light entertainment’, looking back to
the element of spectacle and variety in the music hall; on the other, a more
specific, narrower though plural notion of la chanson française in which
song is valued nationally for its literariness and authenticity. These related
280 David Looseley

but conflicting conceptions developed and shifted after 1960 with the
burgeoning audiovisual media and the coming of rock’n’roll.

Records, media and pop

At the start of the twentieth century, despite the marketing of the gram-
ophone from the mid-1890s, the dominant figures in song production
were still the publisher and those remunerated by the SACEM. Until 1905
singers were not even credited on a record and received only a flat fee for
recorded work. However, once music hall turned singers into stars, this
hierarchy was reversed. Talking cinema, which took over from the waning
music hall in providing spectacle, reinforced the personalisation of the
singing star, since it was common for films to feature singers and songs,
and even lovingly to reproduce the sounds and atmosphere of the street-
music tradition (René Clair’s film of 1930, Sous les toits de Paris, is an early
instance). Petit-format and record sales were also boosted by film. Equally
transformative technologies were the radio and the microphone, both of
which domesticated the public’s relationship with song and singer, mak-
ing it more intimate. Developments in the record industry then took this
intimacy further.
Records were already being retailed in large numbers in the United
States well before the 1920s; by the 1940s, over 150 million were being sold
annually. The industry was much slower taking off in France, owing to the
First World War, overseas competition and the economic crisis that
caused France’s major record company Pathé to be taken over by
Columbia in 1929 and thence by EMI two years later.33 Even in the early
1950s, sales of petits formats were still the principal measure of success,
though not for much longer. The vinyl disc was more durable than its
shellac 78 rpm predecessor, had better sound quality and made the long-
playing album possible. On the consumption side, the portable record
player (notably the Teppaz in France, first produced in 1945) brought
recorded music into French homes on a mass scale, allowing for repeated
plays and a further individualisation of listening. The small transistor radio
and a number of music stations broadcasting from outside France had a
similar impact, especially the new Europe No. 1, launched in 1955. It was
young people who were most affected by these developments, particularly
when two jazz disc jockeys on Europe No. 1, Frank Ténot and Daniel
Filipacchi, created a new youth-music show in 1959 entitled ‘Salut les
copains’ (roughly translatable as ‘Hi you guys’). The youth market was in
fact the big discovery of the 1950s. In France the post-war baby-boom, the
consumer society, the raising of the school-leaving age to sixteen with effect
281 Popular music

from 1967 and the expansion of higher education all helped create the
teenager;34 and vinyl, the Teppaz and the transistor gave this new socio-
economic category a cultural identity based on music.
Youth-orientated rock’n’roll first reached France in 1956, though it
was not taken seriously by either parents or variétés moguls, who assumed
it was another imported dance craze like the tango or charleston. Yet by
1961, the wild, sexualised stage antics of Elvis impersonators like Johnny
Hallyday (b. 1943), along with the ‘Salut les copains’ phenomenon and a
few concerts where fans lost control, had revealed that a distinct youth
culture had evolved with radically different codes. In reality, by 1963
French rock’n’roll had already been diluted into an innocuous, derivative
form of pop called yéyé. The problem for the first French rock groups had
been that their rudimentary self-accompaniment on amplified guitars
broke with the French music-hall custom of having a house orchestra.35
Conformity with this practice had therefore to be swiftly restored by the
launch of solo teen stars like Claude François, Françoise Hardy and Sylvie
Vartan, who targeted a younger version of the standard variétés audience,
while the early rockers – Hallyday, Dick Rivers, Eddy Mitchell – also
switched to solo careers. The rock band therefore vanished virtually over-
night. French television played its part here by developing a style of vacuous
variety programme, updating the old music hall, where clean-cut young
yéyé stars mimed to their records.36
Home-made pop and rock therefore did not acquire the same socio-
cultural meanings in the early 1960s as in the United Kingdom and United
States.37 Discerning fans in search of a more authentic youth culture turned
inevitably to the Anglo-American originals as overseas records began to be
distributed in France and the Beatles and Bob Dylan appeared live in Paris
(in 1964 and 1966 respectively). In some cases, such fans would also look to
la chanson française, even though its stars were considerably older. Rather
than being sidelined by yéyé, the careers of Brel, Brassens and Ferré actually
blossomed in the 1960s. Neither Anglo-American acts nor French stars
singing in broken English could be readily understood by audiences
brought up on the lyric-centred chanson, whereas the singer-songwriter
offered literate, imaginative lyrics in their native tongue. During this period,
la chanson française thus began to be legitimised as a distinctively ‘French’
popular art, defined against Americanised pop. As in the nineteenth cen-
tury, the anthology became an instrument of this nationalisation. Ferré’s
lyrics were published without music in book form in the respected ‘Poets of
Today’ series, followed by those of Brassens, Brel, Aznavour, Trenet, Anne
Sylvestre and others. Brassens was also awarded the Académie Française’s
poetry prize in 1967, and Parisian arts establishments began to make room
for chanson in their programming.
282 David Looseley

In spite of this, the heyday of the pre-rock chanson française, sustained

by the collective memory of Bruant and the café-concert, the waltz and the
‘java’, and a vanishing Paris, was clearly over. The death of Piaf in 1963
aged only forty-seven symbolised this, and Chevalier’s in 1972 severed the
last ties with the nineteenth century. Brel gave up performing in 1967 and
died in 1978, also in his late forties; Brassens was not far behind (1981). In
their place came an ever more segmented supply of popular styles which,
in one form or another, was marked by the youth culture of the 1960s and,
in many cases, the student uprising of May 1968.

1968 and its aftermath: the age of fusions

Pop was of little interest to the New Left leaders of the May movement,
who dismissed mass culture as a weapon of capitalist hegemony. 1968
nevertheless began clearing the creative blockage that had afflicted early
French pop, even though the change did not properly bear fruit until a
decade later. Beneath the Leftist rhetoric, May was essentially about
personal liberation and the right to self-expression; and it was the music
of the United Kingdom and United States that seemed to articulate those
values for many young French. So, although the successive waves of pop,
rock, folk-rock and disco were viewed by French adults at the time as the
latest avatars of cultural Americanisation, by the 1980s they had helped
produce a cultural rebirthing akin to what the Beatles had triggered in
Britain two decades before. French pop music finally came of age and
entered the postmodern era, embracing a new, postcolonial playfulness
about French cultural identity.
One instance of this, dubbed ‘the new French song’ (la nouvelle chan-
son française), was represented by a cluster of young singer-songwriters
who had grown up under the combined influences of chanson and pop
and who saw no conflict between the two. This greater openness was
assisted by two revered precursors: Ferré, who had undertaken a short-
lived experiment with a jazz-rock band, Zoo; and Serge Gainsbourg
(1928–91), who more voraciously embraced yéyé in the mid-1960s. By
1965, Gainsbourg had acquired a modest reputation as a Left Bank singer-
songwriter, with songs like ‘Le poinçonneur des lilas’ (1958) and ‘La
javanaise’ (1963). But he began supplementing his income by composing
in the new yéyé idiom for the young France Gall, who won the Eurovision
Song Contest that year with his song ‘Poupée de cire, poupée de son’ (‘Wax
doll, rag doll’). From the late 1960s, he worked more substantially in the
pop idiom, both for himself and for others, including Brigitte Bardot, with
whom he first recorded ‘Je t’aime, moi non plus’ (literally, ‘I love you,
283 Popular music

neither do I’) before re-recording it with Jane Birkin, to worldwide

acclaim. His career was then characterised through the next two decades
by a series of innovative albums, which experimented with fusions of
witty, punning, often salacious lyrics with a range of pop styles, most
notably reggae. By his death in 1991, he had become an icon of a new
brand of ironic, politically incorrect Frenchness. He remains so today for
many French youths and adults, and even internationally.
Nouvelle chanson française stars – Renaud (b. 1952), Jean-Jacques
Goldman (b. 1951), Francis Cabrel (b. 1953), Alain Souchon (b. 1944),
Bernard Lavilliers (b. 1946), all still prominent today – echoed these
experiments, though less iconoclastically. In different ways, all of them
hybridised chanson by fusing winsome vocals, easy melodies and poetic
self-exploration or social commentary with electric instrumentation and
with blues, rock or folk rhythms and harmonies. Renaud is a particularly
interesting case because of the reflexivity with which he has used this
hybrid as a signifier of cultural malaise. Drawing as Piaf did on the
chanson réaliste repertoire, though at a remove, he began in the early
1970s as the kind of semi-ironic busker common in French tourist spots
today, dressed in the butcher’s boy cap and red spotted neckerchief of the
early twentieth-century Parisian urchin and accompanied by an accor-
dionist. He also started writing his own material. Inspired as much by Dylan
as by Bruant or Piaf, he knowingly and wittily fused American folk or
country (acoustic guitar, harmonica, Jew’s harp) with melodic, instrumental
and lyrical allusions to the marginal Paris of the Belle Époque, using this
bricolage to address serious topical themes of urban alienation. After his first
hit single, ‘Laisse béton’ (1978), he deftly added pastiche rock rhythms and
instrumentation, so that his combined chanson-pop arrangements parodied
each other ad infinitum. This allowed him to create a recurrent tragi-comic
protagonist with which to sympathetically depict disadvantaged youths in
the increasingly problematised suburbs of Paris, who were caught between a
French cultural identity that they rejected and an American mass culture
they barely understood. By the early 1980s he was a major chanson star and
he remains so today.
Like Renaud, all of these singer-songwriters and those who have come
after (Étienne Daho, Dominique A, Bénabar, etc.) have continued the
chanson tradition of the solo singer. But in the late 1970s the rock band
began a new trajectory founded on a punk aesthetic that was the antithesis
of the gentle sensitivity and hippy politics of la nouvelle chanson française.
The bands themselves were not often punk acts in the British sense, but
their punk credentials came from a do-it-yourself approach to music
production which had emerged from post-1968 libertarianism, disdain
for the major record companies and possibly even the self-sufficiency of
284 David Looseley

the singer-songwriter. Outside the established industry structures which,

as we have seen, had pushed new artists towards a containable variety
model of solo performance, independent studios sprang up and bands
began to produce their own work. Independent labels were also cobbled
together to support the new music, often in squats. Functioning as
cooperatives or voluntary associations, most made only a short-term
living through mail-order,38 though some, like Bondage and Boucherie
Productions, proved more enduring. At stake here was a reconfiguration of
French authenticity in both economic and musical terms. The do-it-
yourself ethos involved a new self-confidence, a reclaiming of national
independence after years of colonisation by Anglo-American models; and
it prompted bands to write and sing in French just as British punk had
legitimated regional accents. Some (Téléphone, Trust, Starshooter) pro-
duced what was called ‘un rock français’ modelled on the Rolling Stones
or Led Zeppelin; others saw themselves as ‘New Wave’ (Indochine, Taxi
Girl). More pioneering, however, is what has become imprecisely known as
‘alternative rock’: eclectic fusions of punk (thrashing guitars, accelerated
vocals), pop or rock with a much wider range of influences.39
At this juncture it becomes impossible to track these constant stylistic
changes and exchanges any further other than in the broadest of terms.
One strong agent of growth over the last thirty to forty years has been the
involvement of women since 1968: sometimes in ‘alternative’ bands
(Catherine Ringer of Rita Mitsouko, Muriel Moreno of Niagara, the all-
female line-up of Les Elles), but also as more mainstream solo singers and
singer-songwriters (Patricia Kaas, Mylène Farmer, Vanessa Paradis,
Axelle Red, Zazie, Carla Bruni and others). Another has been the absorp-
tion of rhythms from Latin America, the Caribbean and north and sub-
Saharan Africa (e.g. Kassav’, Khaled, Faudel, Youssou N’Dour). France
has in fact become a centre for world music, though multicultural hybrid
bands like Négresses Vertes and Mano Negra in the 1980s, and Zebda in
the 1990s, defy classification. The term chanson néo-réaliste is sometimes
used, albeit inadequately, to cover bands like Louise Attaque, Pigalle and
Les Têtes Raides, who variously combine chanson, musette and Parisian
slang (old and new) with rock, rap or ‘chorizo spirit’ as Manu Chao put
it.40 But ‘crossover’, or le métissage (cross-fertilisation), is probably the
closest one comes to a generic term designating such experiments.
Since 1968 there has also been a rediscovery of France’s own folk
heritage, though ‘crossover’ is again often the operative word. The Celtic
harpist Alain Stivell (b. 1946), for example, has blended Breton and Irish
folk tunes with electric rock, also discovering electronically generated
sounds in his later career. The Fabulous Trobadors, Occitan activists,
produce a form of rapping in their native southern accents. Such
285 Popular music

cross-fertilisation has gone hand in hand with a degree of decentralisation

in the music industry, particularly with the aid of home studios and digital
technologies. By the late 1980s, deejay-based hip-hop and reggae had
reached France, rap in particular becoming a hugely successful French
genre of the 1990s as inventive rap lyricists appeared (MC Solaar, IAM and
more recently the female rapper Diam’s), giving a new twist to the singer-
songwriter trope. Today, France has the second largest market for rap in
the world after the United States. The hip-hop explosion was soon fol-
lowed by electronic dance music, also produced by creative deejays, some
finding international success in the late 1990s (e.g. Laurent Garnier, Air,
Daft Punk).41
What characterises new French music since the 1980s, then, is above all
diversity and experiment. After a derivative first phase in the early 1960s,
what the coming of Anglo-American pop and rock seems ultimately to
have done for France is to release it from too exclusive a reliance on
variétés on the one hand and a national chanson tradition on the other.
The postmodern propensity to mix and match has encouraged a new
confidence, dynamism and openness. Some old stagers remain, of course,
though often they too have evolved. The ex-rocker Johnny Hallyday has
now metamorphosed into a chanson perennial as iconic as Piaf, his place
in the national pantheon guaranteed. Nouvelle chanson française artists
are now well into middle age but still best-sellers, especially Cabrel,
Goldman and a new Renaud. Reborn after marriage breakdown, alcohol-
ism and writer’s block in the 1990s, Renaud produced a comeback album
Boucan d’enfer in 2002, which sold over two million copies, and then
another, Rouge sang, in 2006. French variety, too, continues to thrive,
though the line between it and the chanson d’auteur is more porous than it
was. Young female solo artists (Lorie, Alizée, Jenifer, Nolwenn Leroy) and
the occasional boy band have also rejuvenated the variety model. But the
real force for change in variétés, as in other countries, has been reality TV,
especially the private channel TF1’s talent show, ‘Star Academy’, of which
both Jenifer and Nolwenn Leroy were winning contestants.42

‘Star Academy’ and popular music

in the twenty-first century
Completing its ninth series in 2013 on the channel NRJ 12, ‘Star Academy’
is in a sense a reflexive representation of French popular music as traced
throughout this chapter. First, it performs in celebratory mode the ‘music-
alisation’ of contemporary France, the new enthusiasm for music that
belies its persistent self-image as a non-musical nation. Second, the show
286 David Looseley

dramatises the French industry’s determination to transmute all popular

music into variety, since its explicit purpose is to allow us to witness, over
sixteen weeks of ‘training’ in a château, young people being taught to
translate whatever talent they have into the conventional idiom of the TV
spectacular. Third, this staging of an accelerated apprenticeship both
highlights and perpetuates the perennial inadequacy of formal musical
education in France. The ‘academy’, tricked out as an educational estab-
lishment with rigorous standards, uncompromising teachers, an exacting
curriculum and a firm head-teacher, is an industry-generated caricature of
the musical training that French young people still need.43
Today’s music industry is largely concentrated in five multinational major
record companies accounting for 80 per cent of turnover.44 Independent
labels tend to launch new creative artists only to have them snapped up by
majors once they are successful. Concentration similarly prevails in record
distribution and retail. There has been a sharp fall in the number of
independent record stores in response to competition not only from nation-
wide specialist chains like FNAC but also from supermarkets. The latter
alone accounted for almost half of all sales of singles in 2001, against the
independent stores’ 4 per cent; virtually a third of record sales take place in
only 2 per cent of outlets.45 More serious still is the explosion of down-
loading. The ministry of culture’s most recent nationwide survey of French
cultural practices (2009) shows that, while only 5 per cent of baby-boomers
(aged 55–64) had downloaded music in 2008, 48 per cent of people aged
20–4 and over half (56 per cent) of people aged 15–19 had done so.46 And
unlawful file-sharing in France is twenty times more common than legal
downloading.47
Against this background, one distinctively French feature of today’s
popular-music landscape is the part played by government policy. In 1973,
the ministry of culture’s first survey of cultural practices demonstrated the
importance that listening to popular music was assuming in French
people’s daily lives. Subsequent editions of the survey have shown this
growth to be exponential, amounting to what the surveys call a ‘music
boom’. Part of this boom was the result of the ministry of culture’s
‘Landowski Plan’, an ambitious ten-year programme for transforming
national music provision. Although popular music was not included, the
plan did help music in all its forms become a significant cultural activity
for the French, and a surge in popular-music practices was one of its
unintended outcomes. A more direct contribution was the ministry’s
subsequent music policy from 1981, with the coming of a Socialist govern-
ment under President Mitterrand. His dynamic new minister of culture,
Jack Lang, initiated a series of policies over the next twelve years that
responded to French popular music’s structural problems and helped it
287 Popular music

move from margin to mainstream. Independent radio was authorised for

the first time in 1981, leading to a plethora of new stations devoted to
popular music (NRJ, Skyrock, Fun, etc.). New live venues, large and small,
were created for youth music, independent labels were assisted, and
quotas of French music were imposed on radio stations in 1994.
Controversial though the quotas have been, they have engendered new
opportunities for French musicians and boosted their sales, despite the
fact that those who sing in English or whose work is instrumental feel
disadvantaged. State voluntarism, then, is generally thought to have created
a constructive environment in which the music boom can continue and
grow, though the 2009 Hadopi law regulating creative works on the Internet,
voted through under President Sarkozy, has proved controversial.

Conclusion
As this suggests, the musicalisation of French culture with which this
chapter began continues apace. In contrast with forty years ago, France’s
population now listens to the radio in order to hear music rather than
news bulletins;48 and of course music equipment is present in multiple
forms in the vast majority of homes. The peer-to-peer exchange of down-
loaded music files has also taken off in the last few years, to the consterna-
tion of policy makers, who have had difficulty designing appropriate
legislation to protect copyright. French popular music today is also much
more segmented, diverse and legitimate than in the past. One consequence
of its diversity that has not changed, however, is the difficulty that the
French language has in naming it. As indicated at the beginning of this
chapter, some observers are still not comfortable with the term musiques
populaires in the English sense, though the alternatives are no more widely
accepted. As we have seen, variétés, still common in record stores, is a
devalued term for dedicated music fans. Chanson is often still distin-
guished from le rock and le rap, even though the successive fusions are
making the distinction all but meaningless. Electronic dance music has
long been referred to confusingly as la techno. Meanwhile, policy makers
since 1981 have tried to find their own linguistic trails through the mine-
field of naming: ‘amplified musics’, ‘musics of today’ or ‘present-day
musics’, none of which is universally accepted.49
The problem of naming possibly indicates a lingering uncertainty in
the cultural establishment, including the music industry, about how to
respond to the paradox of imported Anglo-American music, which has
acted as a vital leaven while also undermining local traditions. Even so,
this uncertainty contrasts markedly with the metamorphoses that have
288 David Looseley

come about at grass-roots level in the production and consumption of the

music itself since the 1960s. These changes defy the outdated, ethnicised
caricatures of French popular music that are still common in English-
speaking countries. Indeed, some néo-réaliste bands, rappers and techno
artists actively appropriate and subvert such caricatures to produce further
innovations. French music is in fact much more creatively self-conscious
than in the 1960s, more aware of its cultural heritage, its multiple influences
and its international standing. Some bands performing in English or instru-
mentally are also building careers in English-speaking countries, in a few
cases signing to British labels. Although its sales are dropping,50 French rap
too continues to evolve new hybrids, while hip-hop generally, including
deejaying, graffiti art and dance, has largely been accepted into the legit-
imate visual arts and contemporary dance. The national and international
meanings of French popular music today are, then, constantly in the
making. This suggests that despite the usual products of unambitious
commercialism that characterise Western pop generally, popular music in
twenty-first-century France is one of its more dynamic and fertile cultures.

Notes
1 Mary Breatnach and Eric Sterenfeld, ‘From
Messiaen to MC Solaar: music in France in the
second half of the twentieth century’, in
William Kidd and Siân Reynolds (eds),
Contemporary French Cultural Studies
(London: Arnold, 2000), 247.
2 The term ‘musicalisation’ is borrowed from
Marc Touché. See David Looseley, Popular
Music in Contemporary France: Authenticity,
Politics, Debate (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 3, 205.
3 Jean-Yves Mollier, ‘Un parfum de la Belle
Époque’, in Jean Pierre Rioux and Jean-
François Sirinelli (eds), La culture de masse en
France de la Belle Époque à aujourd’hui (Paris:
Fayard, 2002), 77.
4 Louis Jean Calvet, Chanson et société (Paris:
Payot, 1981), 66.
5 Claude Duneton, Histoire de la chanson
française, 2 vols (Paris: Seuil, 1998), vol. I,
221–70.
6 Ibid., vol. II, 904–15.
7 Philippe Gumplowicz, ‘L’harmonie est-elle
municipale? Cliques, orphéons et fanfares dans
la ville du XIXe siècle’, in Philippe Poirrier and
Vincent Dubois (eds), Les collectivités locales et
la culture: les formes de l’institutionnalisation,
XIXe –XXe siècles (Paris: La Documentation
Française, 2002), 330–3; Gérôme Guibert, La
production de la culture: le cas des musiques
amplifiées: genèse, structurations, industries,
alternatives (Paris: IRMA, 2006), 60–2.
8 Gumplowicz, ‘L’harmonie est-elle
municipale?’, 328.
9 Duneton, Histoire, vol. II, 431, 436, 453.
10 Serge Dillaz, La chanson française de
contestation: de la Commune à mai 68 (Paris:
Seghers, 1973), 12.
11 Duneton, Histoire, vol. II, 521.
12 See Dillaz, La chanson française de
contestation, 11–17; Duneton, Histoire, vol. II,
399–479; and for a synthesis in English,
Looseley, Popular Music, 11–14.
13 Lionel Richard, Cabaret, cabarets: origines
et décadence (Paris: Plon, 1991), 63–87,
89–113.
14 For significant dates from the mid-
nineteenth century to the twenty-first century,
I refer the reader to the chronology included in
Looseley, Popular Music, 215–22.
15 On Bruant’s influence, see Peter Hawkins,
Chanson: The French Singer-Songwriter from
Aristide Bruant to the Present Day (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2000), particularly 67–73.
16 Duneton, Histoire, vol. II, 922–3.
17 Larry Portis, French Frenzies: A Social
History of Popular Music in France (College
Station, TX: Virtualbookworm, 2004), 22–3.
18 Serge Dillaz, La chanson sous la IIIe
République, 1870–1940 (Paris: Tallandier,
1991), 33.
19 Ibid., 36.
20 Ibid., 246.
289 Popular music
21 Georges Coulonges, La chanson en son
temps de Béranger au juke-box (Paris: Les
Éditeurs Français Réunis, 1969), 29–32.
22 Guibert, La production, 54–5, 60.
23 Ibid., 80.
24 See ‘variétés’ in Looseley, Popular Music,
index.
25 On the arrival and influence of jazz in
France, see Ludovic Tournès, New Orleans sur
Seine: histoire du jazz en France (Paris: Fayard,
1999); and in English: Jeffrey H. Jackson,
‘Making enemies: jazz in inter-war Paris’,
French Cultural Studies, 10 (1999), 179–99;
and Matthew F. Jordan, Le Jazz: Jazz and
French Cultural Identity (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2010).
26 Among the significant number of books on
Baker’s career in France, see Ean Wood, The
Josephine Baker Story (London: Sanctuary,
2000), 84–102; and Lynn Haney, Naked at the
Feast: A Biography of Josephine Baker (London:
Robson Books, 2002), 49–73.
27 Tournès, New Orleans sur Seine, 33–58;
Jordan, Le Jazz, 141–84.
28 Guibert, La production, 80–1.
29 There is a voluminous literature on Piaf, of
variable quality. For the most recent biography
in English, see Carolyn Burke, No Regrets: The
Life of Edith Piaf (London: Bloomsbury, 2011).
30 On Trenet’s influence, see Hawkins,
Chanson, 85–94.
31 See Hawkins, Chanson; and Looseley,
Popular Music, chapter 4, 63–86.
32 Hawkins, Chanson, 104–23.
33 Guibert, La production, 90–1.
34 Looseley, Popular Music, 23.
35 Guibert, La production, 100–1, 124–5.
36 Ibid., 124–7.
37 Breatnach and Sterenfeld, ‘From
Messiaen’, 251; Portis, French Frenzies, 123.
38 Guibert, La production, 153.
39 For a detailed analysis of the independent
movement and le rock alternatif, see
Barbara Lebrun, Protest Music in France:
Production, Identity and Audiences (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2009).
40 Benoît Sabatier, Nous sommes jeunes, nous
sommes fiers: la culture jeune d’Elvis à Myspace
(Paris: Hachette, 2007), 397. On chanson néo-
réaliste, see Lebrun, Protest Music, 41–63.
41 Looseley, Popular Music, 87–109, 183–202.
42 On ‘Star Academy’ and the chanson
tradition, see David Looseley, ‘Making history:
French popular music and the notion of the
popular’, in Barbara Lebrun and Jill Lovecy
(eds), Une et indivisible? Plural Identities in
Modern France (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010),
127–40.
43 Ibid., 136–8.
44 Guibert, La production, 45.
45 French Music Bureau, The British Music
Market in Comparison with the French Music
Industry (London: French Music Export
Office, 2003), 35; Guibert, La production, 45.
46 Olivier Donnat, Les pratiques culturelles
des Français à l’ère numérique: enquête 2008
(Paris: La Découverte, 2009), 127.
47 See David Looseley and Pierre-Alexis
Mével, ‘News from the Ministry of Culture’,
French Cultural Studies, 22 (2011), 173–4.
48 Breatnach and Sterenfeld, ‘From
Messiaen’, 251.
49 See Looseley, Popular Music, 208.
50 Sabatier, Nous sommes jeunes, 510.
part iv

Themes and topics

 14 Manuscript sources and calligraphy
john haines

The history of French medieval music is usually told as a history of written

rather than sounded music, one that moves from the earliest chant notations
to the mensural codes of late medieval polyphony. The present chapter on
manuscript sources and their notation will continue in this tradition by
revisiting some of the material from Chapters 1 and 2 with special attention
to music calligraphy and book production. The manuscripts that have come
down to us from the French Middle Ages are products of a particular process,
one that is not always directly related to musical performance. The music
scribe required a distinctive set of skills among which expert singing or playing
was not necessarily included. In the blunt words of one late fourteenth-
century writer, ‘not all notators are singers’.1 As emphasised in this chapter,
the main goal of book producers and scribes was to produce a beautiful
work of visual art. Next to this objective, whether or not a given book was to
be used for musical performance was sometimes a secondary concern.

Power and proportion

Writing in the Middle Ages expressed power.2 Music writing for reasons
other than the public dissemination of musical pieces may sound unusual
by the standards of printed and digital books, but it was not so in the ancient
and medieval world. In antiquity as in the Middle Ages, the supernatural
potency of written artefacts was important enough that liturgical books
were sometimes used in magic healing rituals.3 Few in medieval times could
read and write. Writing and books more often than not articulated the gap
between the educated elite and those to whom books were literally closed.
One historian has called medieval Christianity ‘religions of the book’.4 The
luxurious Gospel book that the celebrant held high during the procession at
Mass, for example, embodied his power and that of the church he repre-
sented. This was also true for later vernacular literature; collections of secular
songs commissioned by wealthy patrons reflected their prestige and individ-
ual interests.5 The single most important instance of this bookish power play

I would like to thank Karl Kügle, Barbara Menich, Randall Rosenfeld and the students in my ‘Music
Notation of the Middle Ages’ seminars for their collective insights. I drew all the figures of individual
[293] note shapes for this chapter using quills, parchment, wax and styluses.
294 John Haines

in the history of music notation is that of the Carolingians, whose music

books were used to lay imperial claims by means of the Christian liturgy and
its music, a blatant case of ‘music as political programme’, in Susan Rankin’s
words.6
In all of these instances, power lay in the possession of rare books and in
the ability to decipher their writing. Key to the maintenance of this power was
secrecy, a favourite medieval notion.7 Techniques of writing music were
passed on from master to student and were not usually made public, as
discussed below. Nowhere is this secrecy clearer in medieval music notation
than in the complex codes of the ars subtilior. Late medieval books such as
the Chantilly Codex (Château de Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 564) present
us with stunning specimens of music as a distinctly graphic phenomenon.
Only the initiate could decipher these codes, and an even smaller number
write them out capably. To a lesser extent the same applies to most other
medieval notations. Although written out to make some information public
in the modern ‘published’ sense, they were also designed to withhold a great
deal of other information, to save it for those few with the power to read.
Symbolism has always played an important part in the high art of
music writing.8 In the largely non-literate culture of the Middle Ages,
symbols were potent and pervasive. For medieval scribes, even their tools
possessed a symbolic and spiritual dimension. The quill, for example, could
represent the writer’s tongue or the Holy Spirit.9 Two examples of funda-
mental and universal symbols relevant to this chapter are the circle and the
square.10 The circle, symbol of divine perfection, can be found in the Wheel
of Fortune or the sacrament of the Host. The square, symbol of the material
world, is the basis for Gothic architecture drawn ‘on the square’ (ad quad-
ratum). The unlearned medieval majority could grasp the basic message of
such symbols without needing to understand the intricacies of their specific
contexts. For example, it was not necessary to know the multiple Christian
legends embedded in the colourful mosaic of a round Gothic stained-glass
window in order to grasp the fundamental message: divine perfection embed-
ded in a material world, symbolised by a circle within a square-shaped edifice.
Let us review the notational developments mentioned in Chapters 1
and 2 with an eye to symbolism.11 As seen in Chapter 1, France was home
to some of the earliest surviving notation in the West, and this begins with
the Palaeofrankish script. The fundamental grapheme in music notation is
called a punctus or point, the universal symbol for a creative source, which
symbolism is closely related to that of the circle.12 The punctus is the first
musical note or neuma, a word attested in the earliest description of musical
notes from the tenth century and commonly used thereafter.13 The word
neuma or pneuma, meaning ‘spirit’ or ‘Holy Spirit’, is an unsubtle allusion
to the divine status of notation, whose most famous icon is that of the Holy
295 Manuscript sources and calligraphy

Spirit whispering the sacred chants into Pope Gregory’s ear.14 If the punctus
is the elemental neuma of music (‘primum igitur, scilicet genus, tempus
est’), it is also the first and most basic shape of geometry (‘ut est in geo-
metricis punctum’), as the music writer Remy of Auxerre reminds his
reader.15 The eleventh-century composer Odorannus of Sens goes further
than this and writes that the geometrical punctus is ‘a centre around which a
larger circle revolves’.16 Odorannus is here referring to the combined symbol-
ism of the dot in the circle, the universal symbol for perfection within perfec-
tion.17 This very sign is picked up three centuries later in the ars nova graph
for perfect time and perfect prolation, a dot within a circle. In the words of
the treatise Ars nova, ‘the round shape is perfect’ and is thus perfectly fitted
to perfect time.18 To sum up, the symbolism of the point, circle and spirit
are pertinent to the elemental note of liturgical chant, the punctus.
From the foundational punctus flows a certain curviness characteristic of
early French neumes. Not all shapes are round, of course, the single-stroke
virga being a case in point, so to speak. But many compound neumes exhibit
especial roundedness. Such is the case for the liquescent Palaeofrankish
podatus with its upward swoop (Figure 14.1, far left), and the Norman clivis
in the shape of a curved crook (Figure 14.1, second from left). The most
striking case is the three-note torculus, whose sensuous S-shape comes out
clearly in the script from Nevers (Figure 14.1, middle), whereas it forms
hardly more than a half-circle in the Palaeofrankish rendering (Figure 41.1,
second from right). Curviness turns decidedly exultant in such compounds
as the playful Messine clivis-cum-pressus singled out by Marie-Noëlle
Colette (Figure 14.1, far right).19
The major graphic development in the seven centuries that span medi-
eval French notation is a move away from the roundedness just described to
an angularity or squareness. Progressive monastic orders such as the
Carthusians and Dominicans, the intellectual moderns (moderni) of their
day, are largely responsible for the shift in medieval music calligraphy from
circular shapes to square ones. It is important to stress that this change takes
place gradually. Indeed, square shapes are found in several of the earliest
regional neume styles, such as several versions of the punctus that tend more

Figure 14.1 Early neumes: podatus (far left), clivis (second from left), S-shape torculus (middle),
half-circle torculus (second from right), clivis-pressus (far right)
296 John Haines

Figure 14.2 Square notes: Breton climacus (left), two pedes from Chartres (middle and right)

towards a tiny square or rectangle than a small circle; Figure 14.2, left, shows
the Breton climacus, three somewhat angular punctus stacked together.
Certain early compound neumes exhibit a more angular character, such
as the pes from Chartres (Figure 14.2, middle).
It is only in the thirteenth century that such occasional quadrilateral
features spread to the entire graphic gamut, at which point one finds a full-
fledged square note with angular compounds. By the middle of the cen-
tury, both Dominicans and Franciscans decree the nota quadrata as the
standard for their music books; an unequivocal square punctus can be seen
in the Dominican master book from around 1260 (Figure 14.2, right).20
The choice of square notation coincides with broader late medieval trends,
such as Gothic script and a renewed interest in the natural world thanks to
the newly published works of Aristotle.21 When music writers first start
using the expression nota quadrata in the second half of the thirteenth
century, it seems to be with the understanding that the square represents the
material world. Franco of Cologne writes that the perfect long, a ‘square
shape’, is considered the ‘first and principal’ note of mensural notation since
it ‘contains all things and all things can be reduced to it’.22 With the shift
from point to square note the musical neuma can be said to have come
down to earth.
The key graphic element in this move away from curvature to angu-
larity is the concept of tying together notes in shapes called ‘ligatures’,
from the notes being tied together (ligata). Just as the general curviness of
neumes had flowed from the punctus, so do the ligatures of the new musica
mensurata emanate from the foundational square note. The old com-
pound neumes are revamped as connected squares. In his description of
the ligatures in French sources of his day, Anonymous IV sees the pes, for
example, as a ‘quadrangle [or square] lying upright above a quadrangle’
(see Figure 14.3, left).23 Anonymous IV emphasises the geometrical aspect
of these new notes by calling rhomboid shapes elmuahim and elmuarifa,
which is Euclidean jargon from newly translated Arabic sources. The old
climacus, for example, is now a square followed by ‘two, three or four
297 Manuscript sources and calligraphy

Figure 14.3 Square ligatures: pes (left), climacus (right)

elmuahim’ (Figure 14.3, right).24 That thirteenth-century music writers

speak often of the ‘properties’ (proprietates) of these ligatures is yet one
more nod to their double origin in the esoteric ‘properties’ of music and in a
new Aristotelian emphasis on the material world.25 These new notes are
‘material’ points, puncta materialia, in Anonymous IV’s expression.26
These important graphic developments in French medieval notation
probably would not have occurred without important alterations to page
layout in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Guido
d’Arezzo’s proposal for the stave in the eleventh century did impact on
book production, as is frequently stated; but it was only one phase in a
larger development. In the following centuries, certain French monastic
orders made equally important changes to how liturgical music was laid
out on the page.27 The impact on book culture of these groups – some of the
most innovative and powerful orders emerging in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries – reflects their aspirations for literary control and, in the case of
the Dominicans, political domination.
In the twelfth century the Carthusians were responsible for an impres-
sive production of books.28 Key to their signature layout for music books
was a pricking and ruling pattern that produced a special harmony between
music and text; the text line received a double prick and extra space, as seen
in Figure 14.4. The Carthusians also adopted the Aquitanian punctus, which
was more angular than that found in other regions.
These innovations in page layout were furthered in the following
century by the powerful Dominicans. Their music-book regulations
included not only the nota quadrata, as mentioned earlier, but also a
stave with four lines spaced ‘a little apart’ (debito modo).29 A page from
a copy of the Dominican master book of around 1260 makes clear their
298 John Haines

Figure 14.4 Pricking and ruling pattern in a Carthusian gradual

achievement (Figure 14.5). As in the intricately lined architectural plan of a

Gothic cathedral, lines and grids criss-cross the Dominican page, deftly
confining and defining areas of text and music in an elegant proportion – a
supreme achievement considering the small size of this particular book
(26.2 × 17.6 cm).30 Into this Gothic grid sits the new nota quadrata, the
square that ‘contains all things and [to which] all things can be reduced’, in
the words of Franco of Cologne cited earlier.

Extant and lost sources

Unfortunately, little has come down to us of the impressive music-writing
activity just described, in France as elsewhere in the Middle Ages. In the
299 Manuscript sources and calligraphy

Figure 14.5 Dominican master book from c. 1260

case of the Cistercians, only one twelfth-century source survives, in the

Bibliothèque Municipale de Dijon (MS 114). This sizable liturgical master
book (48 × 32 cm) has lost its main musical sections, with only a few scraps
of music notation found on fols 102v, 114v, 133–4 and 151r.31 In fact, these
few pages from the Cîteaux liturgical master book are, to my knowledge, the
only trace of Cistercian music writing in all of twelfth-century Europe that
remains today. Another group from the same century, the Carthusians,
300 John Haines

have fared considerably better. Yet even for the Carthusians’ main library at
the Grande Chartreuse, praised in the twelfth century as having ‘an ocean of
books’, only a handful of music sources survive from the 1100s.32 Extant
medieval manuscripts, then, represent only a fraction of the complete
number of books produced in the Middle Ages.
Adding to this loss of presentation-copy parchment books is the near-
total absence of the many modest or impermanent sources of which the
extant manuscripts are the final and most expensive products. Ancient
and medieval writing was a process that was typically divided into stages.
The Romans distinguished between taking notes (notare), making an
outline and draft (formare) and correcting the draft to produce the final
version (emendare).33 General medieval book production was similar. The
mostly high-grade manuscripts that have survived were often copied from
exemplars ranging from wax tablets to parchment booklets (libelli).34
Almost no specimens survive for the first stage of music writing, note-
taking, because notes were usually written on perishable surfaces, the most
common of which was the tablet. The ‘Middle Ages . . . was a wax-tablet
culture’, write Richard and Mary Rouse; Bernhard Bischoff states that
medieval ‘daily life cannot be imagined without them [i.e. wax tablets]’.35
Recent research has made clear that the perishable medium of wax tablets
was common in writing music, even though no medieval wax with musical
notes survives.36 The most famous proof of this is a tenth-century depiction
of a scribe, presumably Peter the Deacon, writing neumes on a large wax
tablet as St Gregory dictates.37 This image evokes a scenario that was ubiq-
uitous with that most common ancient and medieval shorthand system, the
Tironian notes: a scribe rapidly taking dictation on wax as an official speaks.38
Concerning the second and third stages of writing (formare and emen-
dare), the extant sources leave us some clues that increase in number as the
Middle Ages progress. By far the most abundant type of medieval music
book is that associated with the Christian church. The history of these
liturgical manuscripts can be succinctly described as a move towards large,
heterogeneous collections of previously separate libelli. The earliest full
books with music present selective chants, such as the tenth-century
southern French collection of tropes Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, lat. 1118, and the twelfth-century Norman cantatorium-troper-
tonary Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 10508.39 By the late
Middle Ages, such selective volumes had been subsumed into larger and
more compact collections, such as the gradual, antiphoner and breviary. A
late medieval missal, for example, typically contains the Kalendar, a small
libellus opening the book, followed by chants, prayers and readings for the
entire liturgical year, as well as various tropes and miscellaneous musical
pieces.40 There is every reason to believe that the page layout of these
301 Manuscript sources and calligraphy

complex hybrid sources often required a draft or two before the final
parchment version, as Andrew Hughes once suggested.41 We should not
forget certain books on the fringe of the French liturgy, such as the two early
thirteenth-century exemplars of the Feast of Fools, one from Sens
(Bibliothèque Municipale 46) and the other from Beauvais (London,
British Library, Egerton 2615). Both contain the same proper items for
the feast, but the Beauvais book adds four gatherings for polyphony and a
liturgical play (gatherings 11–14).42 Here as in the preceding cases, the
medieval process of collation and copying is clear, with each individual
liturgical source presenting a mixture of standard and unique elements.
The earliest complete sources of French polyphony are liturgical
manuscripts. The famous thirteenth-century Parisian collection of organa
complements such comprehensive liturgical books as the missal, for it
presents polyphonic music performed at certain points during selected
feasts. The precious report of Anonymous IV makes clear that a ‘great
book of organum’ was compiled over time from a variety of sources, from
parchment exemplars (pergameno exempla) to various ‘volumes’ and
‘books’ of organum that would eventually make up the famous ‘great
book’.43 He gives the contents of the great book in a list that reads like a
series of volumes. In the extant sources, pieces are ranked by number of
voices, opening with prestigious four-voice pieces, moving on to pieces in
three, then two voices, and ending with monophonic works. Extant sources
such as manuscript F (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut.
29.1), copied in Paris in the middle of the thirteenth century, confirm that
the great book was made of smaller libelli. The parts of the ‘great book of
organum’ identified by Anonymous IV correspond to individual groupings
of gatherings (see Table 14.1).

Table 14.1 Sources of Notre-Dame polyphony: Anonymous IV’s description

and corresponding contents in F

Anonymous IV’s description Corresponding contents in F

Quadrupla Cauda, tripla and four-voice conductus (gathering 1)

Tripla
Three-voice conductus with caudae
Two-voice conductus with caudae
Conductus without caudae
Two-voice organum
Mostly monophonic pieces
Tripla and three-voice clausulae (gatherings 2–4)
Three-voice conductus (gatherings 13–16)
Two-voice conductus (gatherings 17–23)
Conductus motets (gathering 24)
Latin motets (gathering 25)
Two-voice organum and clausulae (gatherings 5–12)
Mostly monophonic pieces (gatherings 26–9)

Sources: Edward H. Roesner (ed.), Le Magnus Liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris, vol. III: Les organa à
deux voix pour la Messe (de Noël à la fête de Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul) du manuscrit de Florence, Biblioteca
Medicea-Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1, ed. Mark Everist (Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, 2001), xxiii; and
Roesner (ed.), Le Magnus Liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris, vol. I: Les quadrupla et tripla de Paris
(Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, 1993).
302 John Haines

The process of copying and collating becomes even clearer with

authorial collections that first appear around the same time as the extant
Notre-Dame sources.44 Gautier de Coinci is the first known author and
editor of a major work to include music, Les miracles de Nostre Dame, and it
is telling that this new kind of author-centred work is in Old French rather
than Latin.45 Gautier composed his lengthy two-volume Miracles over
nearly two decades.46 The eighty-plus extant manuscripts of the Miracles
attest to a work written down in stages; only twelve have music notation and
only one of these has the full set of twenty-two songs with music notation
(Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, nouv. acqu. fr. 24541). Another of
the manuscripts of Gautier’s Miracles offers us a rare glimpse into the copying
process, for it shows Gautier sight-reading on the vielle from an open bifolium
of music, suggesting that smaller exemplars with just music were among those
used to compile the monumental Miracles (Figure 14.6).47
Gautier’s is the first of several authorial collections produced in the
thirteenth century. A few decades after Gautier, the noble trouvère Thibaut
de Champagne evidently supervised a book of his own songs called Les
chansons au roy de Navarre; it was written up around 1250 ‘in his hall at
Provins’, just south of where Gautier had copied his Miracles near Soissons.48

Figure 14.6 Gautier de Coinci sight-reading music for the vielle

303 Manuscript sources and calligraphy

Figure 14.7 Scribe of trouvère songs writing on a parchment roll

This collection and slightly later libelli of songs by the troubadour Guiraut
Riquier (who dated his compositions, sometimes down to the day49) and the
trouvère Adam de la Halle were eventually integrated into larger song
anthologies, and it is as booklets in these larger anthologies that the libelli
of Thibaut, Guiraut and Adam have survived. The chansonniers of the
trouvères are the result of an intense collating and copying activity of
vernacular songs during the period around 1300. One chansonnier features
several images of scribes writing on parchment rolls (Figure 14.7). One roll
of trouvère songs does survive, although regrettably without music.50 A
handful of the chansonniers (sigla KNPX) are so similar as to leave no doubt
that common exemplars of some sort were used. Others attest to a collating
process in that they present unique combinations such as troubadour and
trouvère songs with motets, or discrete libelli of songs by genre such as
pastourelle, lai or jeu-parti. Contemporary with the chansonniers and
related to Gautier’s Miracles are vernacular romances and other literary
works containing notated music.51 The most imposing of these is Renart le
nouvel (c. 1300) with its seventy-plus refrains, many of which were either
copied from or used to copy motet sources.52 The endpoint of this tradition
of romances with insertions is the famous manuscript of the Roman de
Fauvel copied in Paris by Chaillou de Pesstain around 1316 (Paris,
304 John Haines

Table 14.2 Comparison of the contents of Machaut manuscripts C and A

C (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de A (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France,

France, fr. 1586), 1350s
Behaigne, Remede (gatherings 1–8)
Alerion, Vergier, Lyon (gatherings 9–15)
Loange des dames and music (gatherings 16–28)
fr. 1584), 1370s
Prologue (gathering B)
Vergier, Behaigne, Navarre
Remede (with music), Lyon, Alerion (gatherings 1–16)
Confort, Fonteinne, Harpe
Loange, Marguerite, Complaintes (gatherings 17–28)
Voir dit (gatherings 29–39)
Prise, Rose, Vesci les biens (gatherings 40–6)
Music, including Mass and Hoquet (gatherings 47–62)

Source: Based on Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut: A Guide to Research (New York: Garland, 1995),
77–9, 87–9; Lawrence Earp, ‘Scribal practice, manuscript production and the transmission of music in late
medieval France: the manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut’ (PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1983),
88–9, 133.

Figure 14.8 Machaut reading a parchment roll

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 146), a heterogeneous collection par

excellence and something of a medieval musical summa with its stunning
specimens of chant, vernacular song and polyphony.53
The second half of the fourteenth century presents us with a composer
who combines the vernacular chansonnier and ‘great book of organum’
traditions. Guillaume de Machaut compiled his musical and poetic works
over several decades from around 1350 to his death in 1377. During this
process, Machaut’s works circulated in a variety of forms, from booklets to
small parchment swatches.54 One of Machaut’s lais, the Lay mortel, even
survives with its music on a parchment roll.55 And indeed, Machaut is
depicted more than once as writing on a parchment roll, a practice going
back to the trouvère seen earlier (Figure 14.8; cf. Figure 14.7).56 The extant
manuscripts of Machaut’s complete works testify to such an intricate
compilation, one involving ‘a small army of messengers and copyists’, in
Sarah Jane Williams’s words.57 A study of the extant manuscripts shows
that Machaut’s complete works were compiled even as he continued pro-
ducing new pieces. Manuscript C from the 1350s, for example, opens with
literary works such as the Remede de Fortune and ends with musical pieces
ranging from virelais to motets (see Table 14.2). Literary works are
305 Manuscript sources and calligraphy

prominent in this book; the Remede, for example, is a self-contained booklet

(gatherings 4–8), with four folios fleshing out the final quaternion and
making an independent libellus. The musical works are more like an after-
thought, beginning as they do in the middle of the nineteenth gathering near
the end of the book. Dating from two decades later, manuscript A has added
several more literary works such as the Prologue, as well as a significant
amount of music, here standing independently as a libellus within a larger
codex. Machaut’s music opens with gathering 47 as a separate section and
takes up fully a quarter of his complete works. It includes recently composed
independent pieces such as the Mass, as well as music inserted in the
Remede, none of which is found in manuscript C of two decades earlier.
Machaut’s manuscripts may well foreshadow the later printed authorial
collected works, as is sometimes pointed out, but more significantly they
arise out of a long-standing medieval tradition of book production and
music writing.

The calligraphy of medieval music

If only a small portion of the total music writing from medieval France has
survived, even less has come down to us concerning technical aspects of
music writing. There is no testimony prior to the twelfth century, despite
the fact that music scribes were often highly trained calligraphers. The few
statements found so far on their craft do not necessarily occur in literature
primarily devoted to music.58 This is partly because most medieval writers
on music were typically concerned with theory rather than practice. When
Boethius discusses the writing-out (scriptio) of musical notes (notulas), for
example, he makes an exhaustive list of the names for the Greek and Latin
letters used for music, but devotes not a word to the tools or techniques used
to draw these letters.59 The lack of first-hand information on music-writing
technique is also due to a general silence on most trades prior to the late
Middle Ages.60 This is probably because craft-making techniques were
usually passed on orally, being secrets of the trade jealously guarded by
competing practitioners. The eleventh-century music scribe Adémar de
Chabannes apparently has nothing to say about his skill, for example,
even though hundreds of folios with notation in his hand survive.61
Anonymous IV breaks this silence for music writing in the thirteenth
century, discussing various writing surfaces, stave types and notational
traditions and teachers; he goes on to describe with exactitude how seven-
teen note shapes should be drawn out.62
Beyond this, what can be known about the music-writing trade must
be extrapolated from general scribal culture in the Middle Ages. It is
306 John Haines

important to stress that France was a major production centre of medi-

eval books. The shift from round to square notes described at the begin-
ning of this chapter coincides with a transition from monastic to secular
writing centres.63 Before 1100, most manuscripts were copied in monas-
teries, usually in a room within the monastery reserved for this purpose, the
scriptorium. In larger scriptoria, the making of a manuscript was divided
into tasks, with one person ruling the parchment, another writing the text
and yet another, the notator, writing the music. In some cases, a certain
hierarchy obtained, with a head notator supervising less skilled notatores.64
With the Carthusians, each monk was a professional scribe, with his own
cell a private scriptorium equipped with all the necessary tools for writing.65
The monopoly of monastic scriptoria disappeared in the late Middle Ages
with the rise of secular writing ateliers for profit. The result was a dramatic
increase in the number and types of books produced, including some of the
vernacular manuscripts discussed earlier in this chapter. The picture for the
city of Paris in the thirteenth century is of ‘countless scribes’ – in the words
of Roger Bacon – competing for a clientele ranging from university students
to wealthy private patrons; many of them lived in their own neighbour-
hoods, such as the Rue des Écrivains.66 Scribal advertisement sheets featur-
ing musical notation have survived, showing that the skill of writing music
was vital in the late medieval book-selling industry.67 We get a glimpse of
scribal competitiveness from the same fourteenth-century writer cited at the
beginning of this chapter, who complains that ‘scribes leave too much space
between syllables, and notators fill up the space, caring only to make
money’.68
Anonymous IV’s description of how thirteenth-century notes are drawn
provides us with a small window into the calligraphic art of medieval
scribes. The order of pen strokes he relates is not always the most straight-
forward one from a modern point of view. For example, he describes a
three-note ligature as a series of four separate pen strokes that incorporates
the longa; ‘it should look like an oblong shield’, he adds (see Figure 14.9,
left).69 From a modern point of view, it would be quicker to draw this
ligature without lifting the pen by inverting steps 3 and 4 and making one
single, smooth motion. Nevertheless, manuscript evidence matches
Anonymous IV’s descriptions. A close-up look at the Dominican master
book discussed earlier (Figure 14.5) shows the porrectus drawn Anonymous
IV’s way, with protruding and slightly separated strokes betraying where
the pen has lifted (Figure 14.9, centre). If this way of doing things does not
seem the most logical by modern standards, we should remember that even
in today’s calligraphic practices, virtues such as tradition trump that of
speed. The Arabic letter kaaf (initial position), for example, is drawn in two
307 Manuscript sources and calligraphy

Figure 14.9 Two versions of the porrectus (left, middle), and the Arabic letter kaaf (right)

strokes even though it would be quicker, though less elegant, to draw it in

one step (Figure 14.9, right).
Anonymous IV’s report of thirteenth-century Parisian musical callig-
raphy does have the ring of traditional authenticity. Several of his descrip-
tions can be shown to originate in a much older calligraphic practice. For
example, implicit in his description of the longa – or virga as it was called
in earlier times – is a drawing in two strokes: ‘[a] square with a line
descending from its right side’ (Figure 14.10, far left).70 This way of drawing
the virga in a distinctive two-stroke sequence (punctus plus tail) can be
found in some of the earliest French musical calligraphy (Figure 14.10,
second from left).71 The virga appears to have been drawn in the order
implied by Anonymous IV, first the punctus and then the line crossing
through it. In another instance, Anonymous IV says the pes should be
drawn as ‘a square lying above a square . . . joined with one line on their
right side’ (Figure 14.10, centre). The two-stroke sequency implied in this
description is clear in certain earlier French renditions of the pes, such as
that from Fécamp in Normandy (Figure 14.10, second from right) or Saint-
Maur near Paris (Figure 14.10, far right).72 In both cases, the protrusion of
the vertical stroke shows that the pen was lifted rather than held in one
continuous motion. It seems, therefore, that certain French calligraphic
conventions for music had a long life, originating in the earliest phase and
enduring well into the square notation period.
The reason why the craft of medieval writing matters to music history
is that its media and tools at times played an important role in shaping
the graphic vocabulary of music. The musical stave, for example, was
nothing more than an elaboration of the basic dry ruling patterns found in
the earliest medieval books. It was common practice from early on to rule
the page with dry, horizontal lines first. It is easy to see how the sight
common to medieval scribes of a rectangular grid with horizontally ruled
lines on which sat black graphemes almost inevitably led to the musical
stave as we know it.73 As for the notes themselves, they bear features
308 John Haines

Figure 14.10 Two versions of the virga (left) and three of the pes (right)

Figure 14.11 Tironian notes and neumes in wax

specific to the tools that produced them. For example, the sinewy shaded
lines so characteristic of the early curvy neumes shown in Figure 14.1 are the
natural calligraphic product of a quill charged with black ink. The quill’s
flexible beak makes possible a subtly varied thickness of line that is used to
special effect in such neumes as the Norman clivis or the Messine elaborated
clivis.
The above are observations based on the extant books. But as suggested
throughout this chapter, lost musical graphic evidence should be taken into
account too, even if this involves a certain amount of hypothesising. In
conclusion, we may look briefly at the most common writing tools of
medieval daily life, the wax tablet and stylus. More so than with parchment
or paper, the wax surface requires an economy of movement; fewer strokes
are better. The stylus moves like a plough through the resistant wax, creating a
furrow bounded on either side with tiny mounds of excess wax (see
Figure 14.11). The ancient and medieval scribes of the famous Tironian
notes knew this first-hand and consequently developed an abbreviation code
requiring minimal motion over the wax surface. For example, the Tironian
abbreviation for absens is a point followed by a slanted stroke; that for essem, a
309 Manuscript sources and calligraphy

Figure 14.12 Neumes in wax

horizontal stroke over a point (Figure 14.11).74 These markings are easy to
make and to erase.
Such is also the case for the basic code of the earliest musical notes. As
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the basic building blocks of
music calligraphy are a point (punctus) and a stroke (virga). Like the
Tironian notes, these shapes are conveniently traced in wax and result in
a minimum of wax build-up around each mark (Figure 14.12, left). It is
significant that a compound neume such as the clivis, when drawn in wax,
bears an uncanny resemblance to the Tironian signs just mentioned
(Figure 14.12, right). It is not clear whether there existed a specific con-
nection between the earliest neumes and Tironian notation.75 But it is
certainly possible, given that scribes such as Adémar de Chabannes were
equally versed in music and Tironian notation.76 Indeed, for most bookish
persons in the Middle Ages, the word notae would have first conjured up
Tironian rather than musical notes.77 On this subject, as on many others
only briefly touched upon in this chapter, more research remains to be
done.
If, as I have suggested here, continuities from one scribal tradition to the
next can be observed throughout the high tradition of music writing in the
Middle Ages, such continuities are even more evident during the transition
from manuscript to print in the Renaissance. Little was to change: the layout
of the page, from the basic writing block to the look of the musical stave; the
shapes and colours of the stave and its notes; and the rhythmic interpretation
of these notes – all these aspects were carried over from medieval music books
to early printed ones in the late 1400s and the 1500s. Even today, over five
centuries after the first French printed books with music, the influence of
medieval music scribes and book producers is still felt. When we write
musical notes or input them on our computers, either single (simplices, in
the words of late medieval writers) or ‘ligated’, we continue a tradition that
310 John Haines
can be traced back to the earliest extant medieval manuscripts with music,
and even further back yet, to their lost ancestors.
Notes
1 Charles-Edmond-Henri de Coussemaker
(ed.), Scriptorum de musica medii aevi:
novam seriem a Gerbertina alteram, 4 vols
(1876; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1963),
vol. IV, 253.
2 Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power
of Writing, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane
(University of Chicago Press, 1994), 116–81.
3 Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and
Experimental Science during the First Thirteen
Centuries of our Era, 2 vols (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1923), vol. I, 759.
4 Martin, History and Power, 102–15.
5 Ibid., 154–65; John Haines, Eight Centuries of
Troubadours and Trouvères: The Changing
Identity of Medieval Music (Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 25.
6 Susan Rankin, ‘Carolingian music’, in
Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian
Culture: Emulation and Innovation
(Cambridge University Press, 1994), 275–6;
see Martin, History and Power, 124–9.
7 William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of
Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and
Early Modern Culture (Princeton University
Press, 1994).
8 Martin, History and Power, 4.
9 Joseph Goering and Randall Rosenfeld, ‘The
tongue is a pen: Robert Grosseteste’s Dictum
54 and scribal technology’, Journal of Medieval
Latin, 12 (2002), 119.
10 Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, A
Dictionary of Symbols, trans. John Buchanan-
Brown (London: Penguin, 1996), 195–200,
912–18.
11 Surveys of the different neume types
include Solange Corbin, Die Neumen
(Cologne: Arno Volk, 1977); David Hiley,
Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993), 346–56; and Marie-
Noëlle Colette, ‘Élaboration des notations
musicales, IXe–XIIe siècle’, in Marie-Noëlle
Colette, Marielle Popin and Philippe Vendrix
(eds), Histoire de la notation du Moyen Âge à la
Renaissance (Paris: Minerve, 2003), 11–89.
12 Chevalier and Gheerbrant, Dictionary of
Symbols, 305–6.
13 Michael Bernhard, ‘Die Überlieferung der
Neumennamen im lateinischen Mittelalter’, in
Michael Bernhard (ed.), Quellen und Studien
zur Musiktheorie des Mittelalters (Munich:
Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1997), vol. II, 14. As Bernhard’s catalogue
shows, the word punctus is more common in
the earliest descriptions of notes than the word
punctum, although they both mean the same
thing: ibid., 19–25, 54–60.
14 Corbin, Die Neumen, 1–2.
15 Martin Gerbert (ed.), Scriptores ecclesiastici
de musica sacra potissimum (1784; repr.
Hildesheim: Olms, 1963), 1, 81.
16 Odorannus de Sens, Opera omnia, ed.
Robert-Henri Bautier and Monique Gilles
(Paris: CNRS, 1972), 212.
17 René Guénon, Fundamental Symbols: The
Universal Language of Sacred Science, ed.
Michel Valsan, trans. Alvin Moore Jr
(Cambridge: Quinta Essentia, 1995), 46–7.
18 Philippi de Vitriaco Ars nova, ed.
Gilbert Reaney et al., Corpus Scriptorum de
Musica, 8 (Rome: American Institute of
Musicology, 1964), 24.
19 Colette, ‘Élaboration des notations
musicales’, 58.
20 Michel Huglo, ‘Règlement du XIIIe siècle
pour la transcription des livres notés’, in
Martin Ruhnke (ed.), Festschrift Bruno
Stäblein zum 70. Geburtstag (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1967), 124.
21 Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palæography:
Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí Ó
Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 173–6; John Haines,
‘Anonymous IV as an informant on the craft of
music writing’, Journal of Musicology, 23
(2006), 389–90, 397–400.
22 Franco of Cologne, Ars cantus
mensurabilis, ed. Gilbert Reaney and André
Gilles, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, 18
(Rome: American Institute of Musicology,
1974), 30.
23 Haines, ‘Anonymous IV’, 393.
24 Ibid., 395.
25 See John Haines, ‘Proprietas and perfectio
in thirteenth-century music writing’, Theoria,
15 (2008), 5–29; John Haines, ‘On ligaturae
and their properties: medieval music notation
as esoteric writing’, in John Haines (ed.), The
Calligraphy of Medieval Music (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2011), 203–22.
26 Haines, ‘Anonymous IV’, 389.
27 John Haines, ‘The origins of the musical
staff’, Musical Quarterly, 91 (2009), 327–78.
28 Dominique Mielle de Becdelièvre, Prêcher
en silence: enquête codicologique sur les
manuscrits du XIIe siècle provenant de la
311 Manuscript sources and calligraphy
Grande Chartreuse (Saint-Étienne: Université
Jean Monnet, 2004), 242.
29 Huglo, ‘Règlement’, 124.
30 Nicola Coldstream, Medieval Architecture
(Oxford University Press, 2002), 65–81.
31 For a description of MS 114, see
Yolanta Załuska, Manuscrits enluminés de Dijon
(Paris, 1991), 117–19. Jean de Cirey’s
fifteenth-century inventory of the books at
Cîteaux refers to several now-lost medieval
books with music, the problem being Jean’s
inconsistent specification of musical notes and
age of manuscripts; see Émile Molinier et al.,
Catalogue général des manuscrits des
bibliothèques publiques de France, vol. V: Dijon
(Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1880), 517–52, 925–1006.
32 Becdelièvre, Prêcher en silence, 242.
Carthusian music sources are discussed in
Haines, ‘The origins of the musical staff’.
33 Martin, History and Power, 71.
34 John Haines, ‘The musicography of the
Manuscrit du roi’ (PhD thesis, University of
Toronto, 1998), 87–92.
35 Richard Rouse and Mary Rouse,
Manuscripts and their makers: Commercial
Book Producers in Medieval Paris, 1200–1500
(Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2000), quoted in
Randall Rosenfeld, ‘Technologies for musical
drafts, twelfth century and later’, Plainsong
and Medieval Music, 11 (2002), 54; Bischoff,
Latin Palæography, 14.
36 The indispensable study on this topic is
Rosenfeld’s landmark essay cited earlier,
‘Technologies for musical drafts’; see also
Haines, ‘The musicography of the Manuscrit
du roi’, 89–90.
37 Andrea Budgey and Randall A. Rosenfeld,
‘The portrait of the music scribe in Hartker’s
Antiphoner’, in Michael Gullick (ed.), Pen in
Hand: Medieval Scribal Portraits, Colophons and
Tools (Walkern: Red Gull Press, 2006), 19–30.
38 On wax tablets and Tironian notes, see Louis-
Prosper Guénin and Eugène Guénin, Histoire de
la sténographie dans l’antiquité et au Moyen-Âge:
les notes tironiennes (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1908),
93–103, 233–5 n. 1. Generally on wax tablets, see
Elisabeth Lalou (ed.), Les tablettes à écrire de
l’antiquité à l’époque moderne: actes du colloque
international du Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, Paris, Institut de France, 10–11
octobre 1990, Bibliologia, 12 (Turnhout: Brepols,
1992). For the dictator-notator scenario in a late
medieval context, see John Haines, ‘Did John of
Tilbury write an Ars notaria?’, Scriptorium, 62
(2008), 46–73.
39 See Michel Huglo, Les livres de chant
liturgiques (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988). On lat.
10508, see Dolores Pesce, Guido d’Arezzo’s
Regule rithmice, Prologus in antiphonarium
and Epistola ad Michahelem: A Critical Text
and Translation (Ottawa: Institute of Medieval
Music, 1999), 175–6.
40 See Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts
for Mass and Office: A Guide to their
Organization and Terminology (University of
Toronto Press, 1982), 158.
41 Andrew Hughes, ‘The scribe and the late-
medieval liturgical manuscript: page layout
and order of work’, in Robert A. Taylor et al.
(eds), The Centre and its Compass: Studies in
Medieval Literature in Honor of Prof. John
Leyerle (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan
University, 1993), 151–224.
42 For this and related sources, see Hiley,
Western Plainchant, 39–42.
43 Haines, ‘Anonymous IV’, 384.
44 Ardis Butterfield, Poetry and Music in
Medieval France: From Jean Renart to
Guillaume de Machaut (Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 103–21, 306–7; Haines, Eight
Centuries, 20–2; and Kathy Krause and
Alison Stones (eds), Gautier de Coinci:
Miracles, Music and Manuscripts (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2006).
45 See Michel Zink, La subjectivité littéraire
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985).
46 Kathryn Duys, ‘Minstrel’s mantle and
monk’s hood: the authorial persona of Gautier
de Coinci in his poetry and illuminations’, in
Krause and Stones (eds), Gautier de Coinci, 40.
47 Ibid., 53, figure 1.
48 Haines, Eight Centuries, 35.
49 Michel-André Bossy, ‘Cyclical
composition in Guiraut Riquier’s book of
poems’, Speculum, 66 (1991), 277–93.
50 Haines, ‘The musicography of the
Manuscrit du roi’, 90–1.
51 See Butterfield, Poetry and Music.
52 Haines, Satire in the Songs of Renart le
nouvel (Geneva: Droz, 2010), 79–110.
53 Margaret Bent and Andrew Wathey (eds),
Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and
Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, MS Français 146 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1998).
54 Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut: A
Guide to Research (New York: Garland, 1995),
73–4.
55 Sarah Jane Williams, ‘An author’s role in
fourteenth-century book production:
Guillaume de Machaut’s “Livre ou je met
toutes choses”’, Romania, 90 (1969), 446.
56 Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, 152, 155, 156,
163, 173, 184, 186; cf. Kathleen Wilson Ruffo, ‘The
illustration of notated compendia of courtly
poetry in late thirteenth-century northern France’
(PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2000), vol. I,
166–7; vol. II, figures 109–10.
312 John Haines
57 Williams, ‘An author’s role’, 446.
58 Rosenfeld, ‘Technologies for musical
drafts’, 47–51.
59 Boethius, Traité de la musique, ed.
Christian Meyer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004),
236–43.
60 Cf. Thorndike, History of Magic, 760–74.
61 James Grier, The Musical World of a
Medieval Monk: Adémar de Chabannes in
Eleventh-Century Aquitaine (Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 37–96.
62 Haines, ‘Anonymous IV’, 381, 384–6, 391–7.
63 Christopher De Hamel, Scribes and
Illuminators (University of Toronto Press,
1992), 4–7.
64 Margot E. Fassler, ‘The office of the cantor
in early Western monastic rules and
customaries: a preliminary investigation’,
Early Music History, 5 (1985), 48–51.
65 Haines, ‘Anonymous IV’, 381, 385 n. 39.
66 Rouse and Rouse Manuscripts and their
Makers, 23–32.
67 De Hamel, Scribes and Illuminators, 40.
68 Coussemaker (ed.), Scriptorum, vol. IV, 253.
69 Haines, ‘Anonymous IV’, 395.
70 Ibid., 392.
71 Colette, ‘Élaboration des notations’, 27–8.
A clearer and earlier example is Paris,
Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 11958, fol. 14.
72 Corbin, Die Neumen, 104–6; Colette,
‘Élaboration des notations’, 27–8.
73 Haines, ‘The origins of the musical
staff’, 337.
74 Émile Chatelain, Introduction à la lecture
des notes tironiennes (1900; repr. New York:
Franklin, 1960), 4, 73.
75 The various theories on the origins of
musical notation are laid out in Hiley,
Western Plainchant, 361–73. On the Tironian
note hypothesis, see Théodule-Elzéar-
Xavier Normand and Aloys-Martin Kunc,
L’archéologie musicale et le vrai chant grégorien
(Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1890),
330–41.
76 Grier, Musical World, 281–2.
77 See Mary Carruthers, review of Leo Treitler,
With Voice and Pen, Journal of Plainsong and
Medieval Music, 14 (2005), 230–2.
 15 Church and state in the early medieval period
andrew tomasello

Introduction
The relationship of church and state in early France and the dynamic
exchanges within the early church involve areas of contention: urban
versus suburban, episcopal versus monastic, dictatorial versus conciliar
and local bishop versus Roman pope. Within these spheres, civilised and
orthodox Christian confronts rural pagan, cathedral practice encounters
monastic observance, the cathedral clergy conflict with collegiate chapters,
and the legitimacy of the appointed clashes with the rights of the elected;
furthermore, a wide array of local concerns chafe against what is touted as
a universal, Catholic heritage. In reality this period reveals an indisputable
liturgical dynamism, rather than an irrefutable, definitive Urliturgie or precise
repetition of a daily – or even annual – ceremony. Anyone who has periodi-
cally attended recurring religious or secular ceremonies recognises this
implicitly. For those who have not, Lizette Larson-Miller’s prudent statement
generally applies: ‘adjustments to the liturgy occur in every generation’.1

Roman Gaul
Within about a century of its defeat at the hands of Julius Caesar (58–50 BC),
all of Gaul was integrated into the Roman governmental system and
remained so for five hundred years. The region was divided into two major
cultural areas and four imperial provinces under Augustus: Narbonensis
(called Provincia nostra or simply Provincia), which had been part of the
empire since the second century BC, and Gallia Comata (‘Long-Haired
Gaul’), comprising Aquitania (in the west, south of the Loire), Celtica or
Lugdunensis (between the Loire and the Seine) and Belgica (between
the Seine and the Rhine). The ancient town of Lugdunum (Lyons) was the
centrally located administrative capital and trading hub and was largely
inhabited by people from Italy and further east. It had been a place for
religious assemblies from pre-Roman times, and by the early second century
ad the theologian St Irenaeus (d. c. 200) from Asia Minor was leading its
persecuted, Greek-speaking Christians. Although the indigenous peoples
adhered to paganism, Christianity was solidly entrenched in Lyons and its
[313] environs well before the arrival of the first Frankish tribes.2
314 Andrew Tomasello

The primary institution providing structure for the formation of

Christian tradition was episcopal: the urban diocese with its attendant
clerics subordinate to a bishop. The bishops were selected from a patri-
cian class, particularly from the southern parts of Gaul, whose members
had been schooled in the classical tradition. By the mid-third century,
the major organisational divisions of the church had been mapped out
over late imperial provinces and dioceses.3 Subsequent to the issuing of
the Imperial Edicts of the early fourth century, these urban sees functioned
not only as salvific bastions of Nicene Christianity but also as points of
civic stability, especially through the turbulent centuries to follow. Public
prayer and ritual were in large part under the supervision of a Gallo-Roman
episcopate that drew to the cities the intrinsic spiritual power of the
collected bones of the earliest saints.
The secondary institutions that held sway over the spiritual lives of the
faithful were monastic. In contrast to the urbane and aristocratic munici-
pal overseers stood the more-or-less ascetic and reformatory suburban
communities, of both men and women.4 At times, cathedral and convent
were at cross-purposes, as the former necessarily dealt with lives lived ‘in the
world’ and thus was often ‘of the world’. Nevertheless, a permeable wall
existed between the institutions, with monks being elected bishop, and
bishops often in full support of monasteries. Under the patronage of
Bishop Hilary of Poitiers (d. c. 368), the hermit Martin (d. 397) established
his monastery of Ligugé and began preaching locally. After becoming bishop
of Tours in 371 or 372, Martin set up the monastery of Marmoutier to be
independent of episcopal control. The strength of Martin’s regional influence
is evidenced in the two thousand monks and consecrated virgins said to have
been present at his funeral, by which time the area was already filled with
Christian organisations. One can only speculate about the earliest communal
practices, though it is definitively known that the holy places of the East and
cities where the Church Fathers walked offered liturgical inspiration. In the
Rhône valley, Egyptian-influenced monasticism was instituted by both
Honoratus of Arles (d. 429), who founded the abbey at Lérins (c. 410), and
by John Cassian (d. c. 430), who established Saint-Victor at Marseilles, which
mimicked the East with camel-hair shirts, Eastern herbs and desert practices.5
The rule at Lérins, which required the monks to meet periodically for prayer
at dawn and sunset as well as in the course of the day, may have been an
amalgam of several Eastern usages.6 Cassian’s Institutiones, for example,
sets out a model at Marseilles for the antiphonal chanting of the Office,
limiting the number of Vespers and Nocturns (Matins) psalms to twelve by
appealing to the usage in Alexandria from the generation of St Mark, despite
maintaining that the chanting of Prime was a contemporary practice
specifically translated from his personal monastic experience in the
315 Church and state in the early medieval period

environs of Bethlehem. The monasteries of Condat (at Saint-Claude, Jura)

and Lauconne (founded c. 435) were likewise initially modelled on hermetic
Egyptian communities.
During the fifth century, bishops subdivided their dioceses into par-
ishes, the better to serve the faithful and to convert the arriving waves of
Germanic tribes. The immigrant peoples adopted the Latin language,
without always accepting the prevailing creed or engaging in one style
of observance. Instead, Germanic practices as well as indigenous Celtic
beliefs tended to persist haphazardly throughout the rural pagi.7 Amid
these times of invasion and public calamity, the actions of Gallo-Roman
bishops, often as judges and courageous civic guardians, were prompted by
the prelates’ firmly held belief in their rights as regional magnates and
ecclesiastical landowners.8 This exercise of temporal supremacy was made
spiritually manifest in the bishops’ directing the liturgical structure and
forms of public prayer. To help ward off catastrophe, the aristocratic Bishop
Mamertus (d. c. 475) inaugurated the Rogations, or processional litanies,
around 460 in Vienne, which seem to have incorporated psalmody. This is
according to Sidonius Apollinaris (d. c. 480), who imported them to
Clermont. Gregory of Tours notes that the Rogations were introduced to
Clermont by the bishop St Gallus (d. c. 551), stating, ‘in the middle of Lent
he led a procession, singing psalms, on foot to the church of St Julian the
Martyr’. These apparently rival statements may indicate that each proces-
sion served a different function.9 His brother, theologian and phonascus
Claudianus laboured to put together readings appropriate to the season, and
he directed psalm singing in his brother’s church.10 In Marseilles, Bishop
Venerius (d. 452) requested that the priest Musaeus (d. c. 460) compile
readings and entire psalms to be sung responsorially, probably Mass
Propers, and at the bidding of the successor Bishop Eustachius, Musaeus
assembled a sacramentarium egregium et non parvum volumen, which
contained a series of chants and psalms.11 Whereas daily Mass seems to
have been a sporadic possibility everywhere in Gaul, the public celebration
of daily Offices was ordered by Caesarius of Arles (d. 542), who had been
schooled at the abbey of Lérins. To this end, he added Terce, Sext and Nones
to Matins and Vespers.12 Caesarius memorised scripture and encouraged
Bible reading by the literate and suggested that peasants commit to memory
texts heard in church, including selected antiphon and psalm texts, reason-
ing that they found it easy enough to memorise and sing ‘shameful and
diabolic love songs’.13 He formulised some of the earliest rituals surround-
ing death and recommended that the musical conventions of the church be
mimicked by the faithful, who ‘should chant in a high and modulated voice,
like clerics, some in Greek, some in Latin’.14 The rather disparate and
chaotic nature of liturgy in general and extant sources in particular dictates
316 Andrew Tomasello

that no assumptions be made about diocesan rites reflecting Eastern

monastic custom, notwithstanding the extent to which personnel and
practice at convents might have overlapped with those in nearby sees.
Anecdotes provide interesting snapshots of the historical landscape rather
than detailed topographical maps.15

The Merovingians
When Germanic tribes moved westward into this largely Romanised Gaul,
local bishops sometimes shared control with the invaders, Christian or
otherwise. The Visigoths and Burgundians had already adopted Arianism
before their relocation, though the Alemanni and Franks remained pagan.
During the first part of the fifth century, the group of Salian Franks who
had been settled along the Meuse advanced to the Somme. Their chief
Childeric (d. c. 481–2), son of the legendary Merovech, became the earliest
known king of Tournai. After his death, his son Clovis (Chlodovech,
d. 511) achieved dominion over some Frankish bishoprics and began to
move westward out of Austrasia into the newly conquered area roughly
between Soissons and the Loire. At the beginning of the sixth century,
he made Paris the capital of his kingdom and continued south into
Aquitania to unify all except south-east Gaul and Septimania (the more-
or-less coastal region between the Rhone and the Pyrenees), which was
in Visigothic hands. St Gregory of Tours (d. 594) alleges that Clovis, under
the influence of his wife Clotilda (d. 545) and St Remigius (d. 533), bishop
of Reims, converted to Catholic (Nicene) Christianity and, as late as 508,
was baptised at Reims in fulfilment of a vow taken before a military
campaign.16 The baptism gave Clovis the backing of the Catholic Gallo-
Roman hierarchy in manoeuvres against his heretical Burgundian and
Visigothic neighbours, thereby ensuring the triumph of a legitimate
Roman episcopate. After he became Theodoric the Great’s brother-in-law,
Clovis was sent a citharist, selected by the Ostrogothic monarch in con-
sultation with Boethius. Clovis seems to have first heard one while dining
with the king.17
Practical Christianity in its various forms, however, always remained a
haphazard affair. Residual idolatry was rampant throughout the country-
side, and the cult of the saints thrived as a form of syncretic polytheism.
Nonetheless, the bishops moved towards the promotion of a uniform
creed and liturgical discipline in the sixth century by means of an evolving
conciliar process.18 Whereas the Council of Agde, in which Iberian prelates
met with the bishops of south-west France in 506, permitted certain local
usages in Christian worship, the council held at Orleans in 511, supposedly
317 Church and state in the early medieval period

convened by Clovis, declared that newly erected parishes fall under the
juridical authority of bishops. Local practices were permitted only insofar as
the bishops allowed. For example, the Second Council of Vaison in 529
formally introduced the Kyrie and the Sanctus to the Gallican Rite.19 Thirty
years later, clerics appointed to serve in the private oratories of the emerging
landed gentry were likewise subjected to episcopal governance. Baptisms
were normally held at the cathedral complex, but waivers were sometimes
granted for the sacrament to be administered in these personal sanctuaries.
Upon Clovis’s death, his realm was partitioned and distributed among
his four male heirs, but Catholicisation continued: his son, Childebert,
King of Paris, banned paganism in 533 as part of a growing trend probably
prescribed in the other locales as well.20 Theuderic of Austrasia, the son
charged with the lands stretching north-west from Reims to beyond the
Rhine, arranged for trained singers to be brought into his realm, most
notably Gallus from Clermont, who was conscripted from a monastery to
serve the church of Trier.21 Early Merovingian bishops and abbots, because
of their wealth and power, had always been socially important figures, and
this fact was especially evident during the sixth and seventh centuries.
Strong personalities like the bishops Avitus of Vienne (d. 523), Remigius
of Reims and Gregory of Tours or monastic leaders like Irish missionary to
the Franks St Columbanus (d. 615) effectively set themselves up as inde-
pendent of the monarchy and helped to found a strong Franco-Roman
church.
Initially, Frankish sovereigns called on the classical nobility to labour
in their administration but, by the beginning of the seventh century, a new
elite class had arisen whose members possessed land and served the king.
Within civil jurisdictions, the Roman idea of the civitas continued to
develop as the principal administrative division of a province, with a
count installed to administer and sometimes a duke to preside over a
number of counts (comites) in a military fashion. Parallel to this arrange-
ment, which had been passed down from Roman times essentially
unchanged, the dioceses with cities at their centres comprised the eccle-
siastical province. Within the spiritual realm, an episcopal aristocracy
concomitantly developed, and both the possession of land and the execu-
tion of quasi-secular offices formed a significant part of its domain as well.
A bishop administered a diocese, and what came to be the archbishop in
the metropolitan provincial capital presided over a number of suffragan
bishops.22 The bishop lived in the domus ecclesia (or domus episcopalis),
sometimes with his clerical entourage, at the centre of the city, surrounded
by a baptistery and an agglomeration of churches. In times of crisis or
invasion, the city became the refuge of the folk. The organisation of the
court and the structure of taxation had been delivered to the bishops from
318 Andrew Tomasello

classical Rome, and the conquering Merovingians, appointing their comites

as their judicial and military officials in urban centres, inherited this
administrative system in turn from the bishops. As kings had the right to
appoint bishops and these prelates likewise had access to forms of power,
that is, to ‘liquid, landed, and spiritual resources’, bishops inevitably came
into occasional conflict with these counts.23
Although early bishops accrued influence by gathering the relics of the
martyrs to the cities, Roman law prior to the sixth century prohibited the
burial of the dead among the living. Consequently the early veneration of
the saints and their relics conjointly developed around tombs in the
suburban cemeteries. The resultant houses of worship constructed outside
the city gates naturally fell within the extended episcopal purview. These
places became secondary hubs of settlement, as the suburban cults’
emphasis on death, burial and saintly ancestors was integrated both
formally and informally into the devotional lives of its adjacent city.
Bishop Perpetuus (d. 490) arranged the ritual year at Tours in the latter
part of the fifth century into a calendar. The cycle, described by his successor
Gregory, included vigils for six feasts associated with Jesus, which were to be
celebrated in the cathedral, plus four to honour the apostles, two for
St Martin, two for St Symphorian of Autun (d. 178) and Hilary of Poitiers
and two for bishops Brice (d. 344) and Litorius (d. 371–2) of Tours.24
However, at least four suburban churches were enlisted for other celebra-
tions. Late sixth-century Auxerre similarly housed solemnities in eight
different urban and suburban churches. Moreover, the physical spaces
between these structures were always the domain of the church, and
hence processions invoking God’s protection took place outside the walls
of cities.25
Monastic spiritual sovereignty was intensely upheld, yet monasteries
concurrently relied on clerical sacramentaries to guide custom. As reli-
gious communities began to grow in size and number by the end of the
sixth century, the learned Columbanus superimposed a rule that insisted
on the celebration of the Office over earlier Gallic regulations. He
bypassed the prelates who maintained supremacy over the communities,
and he appealed directly to the papacy for his reformational authority.
This exacerbated a situation present from earliest times in which the
Gallo-Roman diocesan community was at odds with the private, individ-
ualised practices of the monks. While bishops continued training urban
clergy and encouraged lavish liturgies, rural monastic centres rose in
importance not only by continuing the traditions of classical education
but also by encouraging scriptorial activity.26
Over the next century, Francia, the kingdom of the Franks, underwent
various geographic expansions, contractions and divisions. As in much of
319 Church and state in the early medieval period

history, the players operated in two distinctly dissimilar, often contra-

dictory spheres: one of ruthlessness and political practicality and one
based on a sincere spirituality and devotion to the church, insofar as the
latter did nothing to obstruct the former. Foreign psalmists, perhaps
through both diplomatic delegations and political marriages, were
brought to Metz around 560 to sing at an important Frankish see where
the office of cantor was already part of the clerical establishment.
Impressive performance of the Gallican liturgy was in the interest of the
Merovingian kings and their bishops.27 Chlothar I (d. 561) killed the sons
of his brother Chlodomer in his accession to and preservation of the throne,
yet he and other early Merovingians actively founded monastic houses. His
second wife, St Radegunde (d. 586), established the convent of aristocratic
nuns of Notre-Dame de Poitiers and employed the poet Venantius
Fortunatus (d. c. 600) as her chaplain.28 Chlothar’s life of Radegunde relates
a tale of one of her nuns admitting to being a composer of worldly tunes, to
which the local folk boisterously carolled, accompanied by citharas.
Chlothar’s son Chilperic I (d. 584) composed ‘several hymns and masses’.29
The fame of Chlothar II (d. 629), King of Neustria, who reunited the
Frankish kingdom in 613, continued to reverberate in the veiled, oral
secular tradition. The ninth-century bishop of Meux, Hildergar, notes that
women danced a rustic circle, a dance publicly extolling this leader’s
political and martial victories with the acclamation, ‘Let’s sing about
Chlothar, the King of the Franks.’30 Chlothar’s son Dagobert I (d. 639)
contributed generously to the nearby church of St Denis, which was dedi-
cated to a saint to whom he was especially devoted and where both saint and
king were buried.31 Meanwhile, Pope Martin I (d. 653) sought to reinforce
Western Christianity by requesting that Frankish bishops be sent to accom-
pany the papal envoys to Constantinople.32

The Carolingians
During the seventh century, aristocratic leaders, called mayors of the
palace, held the real power in the kingdom, with the Merovingians degen-
erating into ceremonial rulers. One of these mayors, Charles Martel
(d. 741), the illegitimate son of Pépin II (d. 714), made his authority
known from one end of Gaul to the other: he stopped the forces of the
Umayyad caliphate between Tours and Poitiers (732), waged a campaign
against them a second time in Septimania, subjugated the duchy of
Aquitania and pressed eastward into Germany. Charles merely entitled
himself maior domus and princeps et dux Francorum, sustaining a
Merovingian figurehead to the extent that he left the throne vacant upon
320 Andrew Tomasello

the death of Theodoric IV (d. 737).33 However, he secured firm political

alliances not only by giving church lands to his circle of followers but also by
erecting dioceses in German territory through St Boniface (d. 754), an
apostle of unrelenting orthodoxy who was commissioned by Pope
Gregory II (d. 731). Charles simultaneously emerged as a champion of
the papacy. There is slim evidence of a diplomatic connection between
Charles and the Holy See until Gregory III (d. 741) reached out to the
Frankish leader for protection against the menacing Lombards. The fact
remains that the prestige of the pope in relation to the Eastern Emperor
had been waning over several centuries. However, the period from the late
seventh century to this early Carolingian era was a time of prodigious
invention, and it witnessed a flowering of the Roman schola cantorum and
an expansion of liturgical control through the formalisation of the Mass
temporale into the earliest Frankish booklets (libelli) – texts of chants that
would become Gregorian.34
Charles Martel’s two sons inherited his supremacy upon his passing,
but when one abdicated in 747, the other, Pépin III the Short (d. 768), was
elected King of the Franks. At the moment he re-established kingship,
Pépin directly requested the endorsement of Pope Zacharias (d. 752)
and subsequently effected his consecration at Soissons by Boniface. The
new king’s alliance with and obedience to Rome was unmistakable. An
age of reforms and Frankish synods commenced with the bishops of
Francia, led by Boniface, submitting to the absolute prerogative of Rome
in ecclesiastical matters. Pépin, concerned about aspects of liturgical
orthodoxy, posed questions relating to the musical participation of nuns
of Zacharias.35 In January 754, the new king had himself re-consecrated by
Pope Stephen II (r. 752–7) south-east of Reims at Ponthion, where the two
swore mutual oaths of fidelity. It is generally assumed that out of personal
liturgical necessity, the pontiff must have travelled in the company of at
least some of his schola cantorum. In July at Saint-Denis, the pope anointed
both Pépin and his two sons, Charles (Charlemagne, d. 814) and the toddler
Carloman (d. 771), endowed upon each of them the title patricius
Romanorum (‘noble of the Romans’) and gave official sanction to the
deposition of the Merovingian figurehead Childeric III (d. c. 754). As if
installing an apostolic cenotaph as a permanent guarantee of this reciprocal
bond of romanitas, Stephen dedicated an altar to St Peter and St Paul in
front of the tomb of St Denis.36
Merovingian kingship was hereditary and sacred, with the old Frankish
kings traditionally presented to their magnates for acclamation. Heretofore,
neither a biblically inspired unction nor quasi-religious sanctification of a
Frankish chief had arisen, even though Visigoths had already adopted this.37
A formal Christian rite of consecration now supported, from a spiritual
321 Church and state in the early medieval period

standpoint, both the moral legitimacy and the hallowed character of the
monarchy. At this moment, Pépin’s right to rule emanated from a God
whose grace had exalted him above all others, and any allegiance owed him
became, in effect, an expression of submission to divine will.
Pépin began deliberately copying Roman liturgy and, as a reflection of
the unity of God and crown, desired that the two be bound together in
both a single faith and ‘single chant’. Later attestation by Charlemagne
supports Pépin’s role in initiating this musico-liturgical connection.
Influence clearly flowed both ways, with Frankish musical additions and
adjustments applied to the Roman core.38 Pépin asked Stephen for clerics
to be directed to his court for this purpose, and Paul I (d. 767) sent him an
antiphoner and book of responsories around the year 760. Likewise, Pépin’s
half-brother Remigius, archbishop of Rouen from 755 to 762, introduced
Simeon, the secundus of the papal schola cantorum, into his diocese in 760.
Musicologists diffidently if not tacitly assume that these books of antiphons
and responsories and all liturgical texts were transmitted without neumes,
but some scholars have proposed this generation as creators of a primitive
musical notation.39 Pépin’s queen, Bertrada, housed scholares, including the
young Benedict of Aniane (d. 821), who was involved in liturgical reform,
and a chaplain, Gervoldus, who was focused on ‘the art of chanting’ and on
teaching ‘the best melodies of chant’.40 At approximately the same time,
Chrodegang (d. 766), bishop of Metz and court functionary to both Charles
Martel and Pépin, brought to his diocese instruction in legitimate, decorous
and sacred Roman rituals. The meridian in the old kingdom of Austrasia,
from Aachen down through the metropolitan of Trier to Metz, seems to
have been the axis of liturgical and musical rectitude, a correctness that
extended eastwards. The singers of the cathedral of Metz, musically impor-
tant from the time of Chlothar I, were the first outside Rome to be organised
into a schola cantorum. The town itself was symbolically connected to the
city on the Tiber and was replete with churches dedicated to St Peter and
other Roman saints; it was a capital of the Merovingians in Austrasia and
hence a bishopric of great historical significance to the Franks, perhaps even
considering itself a liturgical reflection of Rome.41 However, the ebb
and flow of liturgical ideas between Gaul and Rome persisted. Older
Frankish customs such as the recitation of the names of the dead during
the canon were practised in Gaul before being introduced to Rome, and the
Office of the Dead (ordo defunctorum) appeared in southern Gaul before it
was adopted by Rome in the sixth or seventh century. Conversely, in the
seventh and early eighth centuries Roman liturgy migrated throughout
Francia, Germania and even Italy, though it was no doubt randomly
combined with local material before the mid-eighth century.42 During the
Carolingian era this back and forth included the importation of liturgical
322 Andrew Tomasello

text and chant that, having undergone a metamorphosis, reveals Gallic style
superseding Roman style.43 Analogous to these exchanges, St Petronilla
(St Peter’s reputed daughter) became a venerated patron of the French royal
house at the Vatican basilica and a self-evident allegory of this familial
relationship between papa and ‘the eldest daughter of the church’. In return,
Pope Paul received an ‘altar-mensa’ donated by Pépin, which was trans-
ported into St Peter’s aula and placed before the tomb of St Peter in the
Confessio, as Rudolf Schieffer put it, ‘to the singing of the litaniae laudes –
probably Frankish royal Laudes that praise the military and imperial Christ
triumphant and his anointed on earth, which may then have been heard in
Rome for the first time’.44
All actions reinforced the clear and unmistakable links between the
Carolingians and the Holy See. Pépin donated certain tribal lands to the
pope and sent armies to suppress the Lombards, securing Rome’s suprem-
acy. Paul’s diplomatic manoeuvres to free the pope from imperial hegem-
ony included cautioning Pépin about the Greeks as both doctrinal deviants
and papal rivals. Pépin yet again secured this complex Franco-Roman
political alliance by promulgating missionary work to the north and east,
and by securing southern territories against the Muslims. For these acts,
the pope bestowed on Pépin the title of ‘orthodox king’ and defender of
the Catholic faith, appellations previously reserved for the emperor in
Constantinople.45
After Pépin’s death and the untimely passing of Carloman in 771,
Charlemagne reunited the Frankish kingdom and moved his political centre
to Aachen, where he commenced the construction of a Roman-style private
chapel near his palace.46 Over the years, he strengthened the communion
with Rome, consolidated his sovereignty beyond the borders of Gaul, took
possession of Pavia, where he was crowned King of the Lombards, and acted
in defence of Pope Hadrian I (d. 795), bolstering the ever-evolving concept
of the Papal States.47 By the end of his first decade of rule, Charlemagne
had initiated a revision in both learning and religious custom unprece-
dented in the West. His renown attracted minds from beyond Frankish
territories, individuals from Ireland, Italy and England, where robust tra-
ditions of classical antiquity were more persistent. Charlemagne brought a
group of scholars together in each diocese, gathering them into schools
located near churches and cloisters. At Aachen, educators like Alcuin
(d. 804) revived a pedagogy, handwriting and scribal technique in imitation
of classical Roman systems. Besides the fact that an emphasis on a greater
exactitude in the learning of chant emerged, a practice that was becoming
the norm, a renewed desire to align rituals with those of Rome arose at that
time. Charlemagne demanded that clerics of every monastery and cathedral
learn the psalms, the alphabet and chant. He placed two of his own singers
323 Church and state in the early medieval period

in the papal schola cantorum.48 These attitudes made his court the lynchpin
for the production of written histories, the collection of books in libraries
and the development of Romanesque architecture in both ecclesiastic and
secular spheres. About this time, the forging of the Donation of Constantine
reflected this robust Frankish-Roman interest both in the restoration of a
Western empire and also in making visual representation of incorporeal
concepts, manufacturing tactile evidence of things not seen (writing was
becoming important).49 Over the course of Hadrian’s reign, the pontiff
came to be the analogue of St Peter, and his spiritual domain regarded as
equivalent to ancient imperial Rome.50 Hadrian’s black marble tomb slab at
the Vatican indicates by its Carolingian lettering that the object was pro-
duced in Francia, metaphorically not only representing a daughter’s duty to
her deceased father but also embodying the mutual ideological and political
aspirations of a renovatio imperii.51 Charlemagne made four trips to Rome,
with the Liber pontificalis providing the protocol for the royal reception in
774; it again probably furnished the essentials in 781 and 787 when the
reigning pope saluted him on the steps of St Peter’s. When Leo III (d. 816)
met Charlemagne in 800, the pope further alienated the West from
Constantinople: he greeted the Frankish king with great honour at the
twelfth milestone outside the city, twice as far away as the location stipu-
lated for meeting the Greek emperor.52 Charlemagne’s final stay in Rome
lasted five months over 800–1, during which time he was crowned emperor
on Christmas Day. This conferral of a semi-sacerdotal honour in effect
deputised the sovereign to act as an agent of the church in the protection of
God’s people throughout his domain.
In pre-Carolingian times, church discipline was established via the
conciliar method, which had evolved in the sixth century. By the time of
the Carolingians, synods were in decline. Whereas Merovingian abbots
and bishops grew to become governors of a sort, both subject to and yet
immune from secular supervision, the Carolingians maintained the right
to nominate bishops, despite the participation of chapters of clergy.
When Frankish bishops asserted their rights to control clerics in their
dioceses, they did so over the objections of local nobility. However, the
bishops as Charlemagne’s surrogates were granted sufficient power to
resist the supremacy of the counts, which thereby created bastions of
centralised imperial influence independent of lesser temporal authorities.
As a result, Carolingian magnates were sometimes nominally supportive
of ecclesiastical independence, but in practice, church lands and the
income they generated were always subject to secular appropriation.53
During this time, bonds between Frankish bishops and Roman pontiff
naturally reinforced and paralleled connections between the crown and
the papacy.
324 Andrew Tomasello

Many abbots named their successors for political, economic and fam-
ilial reasons. Whereas the heads of the prevailing monastic houses wielded
a power that simultaneously buttressed and was subject to both ecclesias-
tical and feudal political structure, Fulrad (d. 784), the abbot of Saint-Denis
from around 750, was quite another creature still. A priest, not a monk, and
a member of this Carolingian administrative aristocracy, Fulrad either
collected under his protection or founded small monastic houses in eastern
Francia and beyond as his personal patrimony, bequeathing to his abbey the
property and income of his house.54 As Frankish ambassador, he was also
responsible in large part for arranging the relationship between the papacy
and the crown that led to the anointing of the royal lineage, a lineage that
had long ago placed itself under the protection of St Denis.55 Moreover,
Fulrad reaffirmed from Pope Stephen II a sustained independence from
episcopal control for his own community. His design for a new abbey
church was based on his personal knowledge of Old St Peter’s on the
Vatican Hill, and he intended this edifice to be a symbol of papal influence
and Petrine supremacy, and a mirror of Rome, the point of embarkation for
St Denis and his companions.56
Charlemagne’s efforts to regularise liturgical practice within Francia
were at the same time successful yet thwarted by the weight of its diversity.
Fundamental liturgical reform must have arrived in the cities from impe-
rially sanctioned centres in an instantaneous way as clerics were sent
eastwards into new territory but also south and west to venerable and
established sees. Thus Lyons received its tradition by hand from a singer
from Metz.57 Monastic custom maintained dissimilar purposes and con-
texts; hence it generally developed independently of cathedral usage.58 So
the models of a centralised rule and liturgy were antithetical to its very
being. However, Chrodegang of Metz instituted a Roman-influenced,
Benedictine-style practice for his canons and is given a great deal of credit
for the flourishing of Roman liturgy in the Frankish dominion of Pépin. The
apostolic work of St Boniface strengthened this Benedictine standard.
Throughout the Carolingian period, members of this order were critical
to the effective expansion of Catholic Christianity to the tribes in the east
and north. Additionally, the emperor and his only surviving son Louis I the
Pious (d. 840) further endeavoured to institute a uniformity of education
and ritual that had far-reaching effects among the populace. Benedict of
Aniane, now working under the protection of Louis in a monastic reform
that began in 814, combined Columban into what was generally a
Benedictine model.59 At the Synod of Aachen of 817, monastic discipline
was reinforced, and monks were compelled to keep close to their abbeys,
where the chanting of an expanded Office was imposed, as Benedictine
rule was ordained throughout Francia, though with varying success.60 But
325 Church and state in the early medieval period

any repertorial reform would be monastic and have little or no correspond-

ence in diocesan plainchant. Decades before, Pope Hadrian had sent
Charlemagne a sacramentary (the Hadrianum) designed for the use of the
pope himself on feast days and other solemnities. The Hadrianum was then
adapted to more common, local usage by Benedict around 810–15. The
programme of Pépin and Charlemagne was to embrace the contemporary
Roman convention, incorporating various traditions and usages insofar as
that liturgy was already Romano-Frankish.61 This synthesis serves as only
the latest example of medieval liturgy, being both ‘an indicator of ecclesi-
astical romanitas’ and a testament to ‘the strength of local innovation and
originality’.62 Strabo, writing around 840, felt that any adoption of what
was believed to be Roman usage was logically sound, since practice dis-
seminated ‘from the apostolic head’ was as close as one could get to being
‘free from every heretical taint’.63 Certainly this is what Amalarius was
seeking when, in search of a Roman antiphoner for Louis, he went first to
Rome and then to Corbie, where he found ‘a responsoriale bearing an
attribution to Hadrian’.64
The 816 coronation of the Louis the Pious as emperor – a secular
ceremony – was complemented by his anointing in Reims – a religious
ceremony – at which Stephen IV (d. 817) presided. Louis formally intro-
duced the act of consecration, which therefore made the pope an official
part of the ceremony. Emperors were henceforth compelled to act in
the interests of the papacy. The entire concept of the emanation of
power derived from religious principles set forth in the Donation of
Constantine. Louis saw the empire as a religious ideal to the extent that
when the Northmen threatened attack, Louis proposed the conversion of
Scandinavia as a solution. Even so, whatever Pépin’s desired ‘single chant’
had degenerated into at the end of the ninth century, the music of Rome
and the emperor had diverged as an older Roman repertoire was fed back
to the Eternal City through a Frankish filter.65

Francia occidentalis
The problem of imperial succession and division of the empire among
Louis’s three sons seemed to have been solved by the creation of separate
kingdoms within his domain. However, when Louis died in 840, chaos
reigned in light of the competing interests of his heirs. The Treaty of
Verdun (843) divided the disputed territories into three separate but equal
kingdoms: the east (Francia orientalis) went to Louis the German; the west
(Francia occidentalis) went to Charles the Bald; the central portion (Francia
media, or Lotharingia) was conferred upon Lothair (d. 855), who kept a
326 Andrew Tomasello

greatly diluted imperial title along with Aachen, Trier and Metz. Until 861,
the clergy attempted to maintain a kind of peace of brotherhood among the
three, but their efforts failed.
Paradoxically, the final work of Amalarius is closer to the books at
Lyons than to the books of Metz, and this takes us full circle back to the
origins of ecclesio-political history in Gaul. Perhaps Amalarius recognised
a deeper romanitas or an older, more authentic tradition in his experience.
But whereas scholarship has eschewed the broad generalisations and
perhaps oversimplified assertions of the chroniclers and early authors, it
remains true that the complexity and diversity of practice is a kind of
chaos theory of liturgical and stylistic fractals currently impenetrable to a
straightforward and comprehensible formulaic rendering. Though a
musico-graphic technique may have begun over a hundred years earlier,
by around 900 Frankish-Roman chant began to appear in neumes that in
broad gestures are relatively precise or must have been so at least to
experienced singers of the time. The increasing exactitude in graphic
representation was a consequence of Carolingian literacy, and it ultimately
emerged from conscientious education impelled by an idealistic imperial
fervour.66 A developing literacy perforce cultivates an evolving sense of
exactitude in both word and music.
Yet is ‘liturgical and musical stability’ an equivalent concept in the
ninth and the twenty-first centuries? The proper ordering of the cycle of
texts serves a didactic if not downright kerygmatic purpose for newly
evangelised congregations. The appropriateness of the scripture verse
proclaimed should take precedence over how that verse is proclaimed.
At least this seems true in a pre-Carolingian environment. Most telling in
this regard perhaps is the story of King Guntram of Burgundy (d. 592),
grandson of Clovis, who, after a banquet during a church council,
demanded that the best singer chosen by each bishop present his inter-
pretation of the (or a) responsorium. This challenge was surely not a call
for stylistic judging on a nuanced twenty-first-century level but rather an
opportunity for singers to exhibit their melodic and rhythmic inventive-
ness and creativity. Whether inspired by the Holy Spirit or by an unnamed
muse in modern-day terms, Guntram’s experiment seems more akin to
comparing versions of ‘Cross Road Blues’ than to juxtaposing renderings
of a Debussy prelude.67 Furthermore, if in our own time a carefully
educated child of immigrants can lose all knowledge of parental language
and culture, then a properly placed singer arriving from Metz or from Rome
with imperial or ecclesiastical endorsement, a cantorial pedigree and a few
books could radically transform the education of young men in a monas-
tery, cathedral chapter or patrician chapel. The force of tradition is power-
ful; the force of literacy is as powerful.
327 Church and state in the early medieval period
Notes
1 Lizette Larson-Miller, ‘The liturgical
inheritance of the late empire in the Middle
Ages’, in Ian Christopher Levy, Gary Macy and
Kristen Van Ausdall (eds), A Companion to the
Eucharist in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill,
2011), 13–14.
2 Though born in Asia Minor, Irenaeus was
allied with Rome and respected its influence.
See Robert M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons
(London: Routledge, 1997), 3–5, 32;
Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge
University Press, 2001), 3–7.
3 Isabel Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and
Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000),
49, 51, 68.
4 For the cultural and familial refinement of
these bishops, see Christopher Page, The
Christian West and its Singers: The First
Thousand Years (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2010), 176–80.
5 Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual
Authority, 39–40.
6 William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles:
The Making of a Christian Community in Late
Antique Gaul (Cambridge University Press,
1994), 20, 23–5.
7 Peter Brown, ‘Pagan’, in G. W. Bowersock,
Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar (eds), Late
Antiquity: A Guide to the Post-Classical World
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1999), 625.
8 A fact clearly stated in 441 by the Council of
Orange. See Susan Wood, The Proprietary
Church in the Medieval West (Oxford
University Press, 2006), 15–16.
9 Gregory of Tours, Life of the Fathers, trans.
Edward James, 2nd edn (Liverpool University
Press, 1991), 39; S. T. Loseby, ‘Gregory’s cities:
urban functions in sixth-century Gaul’, in
Ian Wood (ed.), Franks and Alamanni in the
Merovingian Period: An Ethnographic
Perspective (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
1998), 273.
10 Christopher Page speculates on the role
and status of Claudianus in The Christian
West, 183–8.
11 James McKinnon, The Advent Project: The
Later-Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman
Mass Proper (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000), 65.
12 Yitzhak Hen, Culture and Religion in
Merovingian Gaul, A.D. 481–751 (Leiden: Brill,
1995), 71–2.
13 Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles, 185–6.
14 From the Vita S. Caesarii Arelatensis a
discipulis scripta, I, ed. G. Morin, in S. Caesarii
Arelatensis opera omnia, vol. III (Maredsous,
1942), quoted in J. N. Hilgarth (ed.),
Christianity and Paganism, 350–750: The
Conversion of Western Europe (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 35;
Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death:
The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early
Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1990), 48–55.
15 For a survey of pre-Carolingian liturgical
issues, see Els Rose, ‘Liturgical
commemoration of the saints in the “Missale
Gothicum” (Vat.Reg.Lat. 317): new
approaches to the liturgy of early medieval
Gaul’, Vigiliae Christianae, 58 (2004), 75–97.
16 Danuta Shanzer, ‘Dating the baptism of
Clovis: the bishop of Vienne versus the bishop
of Tours’, Early Medieval Europe, 7 (1998),
29–57.
17 William M. Daly, ‘Clovis: how barbaric,
how pagan?’, Speculum, 69 (1994), 642.
18 Gregory I. Halfond, The Archaeology of
Frankish Church Councils, AD 511–768,
Medieval Law and its Practice, 6 (Leiden: Brill,
2010); Wood, The Proprietary Church, 18;
Page, The Christian West, 292–4.
19 Yitzhak Hen, The Royal Patronage of
Liturgy in Frankish Gaul to the Death of
Charles the Bald (877) (London: Henry
Bradshaw Society, 2001), 18.
20 Hen, Culture and Religion, 16.
21 Page, The Christian West, 189–92, 213.
22 S. G. Messmer, ‘Archbishop’, in Charles
G. Herbermann et al. (eds), The Catholic
Encyclopedia: An International Work of
Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine,
Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church
(New York: Appleton, 1907), 691.
23 Loseby, ‘Gregory’s cities’, 242, 245, 251–2.
24 Ibid., 252–3; Raymond Van Dam, Saints and
their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton
University Press, 1993), 12.
25 Loseby, ‘Gregory’s cities’, 254–5.
26 Andreas Schwarcz, ‘Current issues and
future directions in the study of Visigoths’, in
Peter Heather (ed.), The Visigoths from the
Migration Period to the Seventh Century: An
Ethnographic Perspective (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 1999), 518.
27 Page, The Christian West, 192–3, 213, 227,
230–2.
28 Marcelle Thiébaux, The Writings of
Medieval Women: An Anthology, 2nd edn
(New York: Garland, 1994), 85–7.
29 Hen, Culture and Religion, 55;
Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between
Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific
328 Andrew Tomasello
Theory (Princeton University Press, 2001),
112–13.
30 Janet Nelson, The Frankish World: 750–900
(London: Hambledon Press, 1996), xix.
31 See Anne Walters, ‘The reconstruction of
the abbey church at St-Denis (1231–81): the
interplay of music and ceremony with
architecture and politics’, Early Music History,
5 (1985), 226.
32 Paolo Delogu, ‘The papacy, Rome and the
wider world in the seventh and eighth
centuries’, in Julia M. H. Smith (ed.), Early
Medieval Rome and the Christian West:
Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough
(Leiden: Brill, 2000), 209–11.
33 A weakening Merovingian monarchy
permitted power to devolve to local lords,
including power to control churches and
monasteries. Archibald R. Lewis, ‘The dukes in
the Regnum Francorum, A.D. 550–751’,
Speculum, 51 (1976), 399–401, 406–7.
34 James McKinnon, ‘The eighth-century
Frankish-Roman communion cycle’, Journal of
the American Musicological Society, 45 (1992),
196–9.
35 Stephen Robson, ‘With the Spirit and
Power of Elijah’ (Lk 1,17): The Prophetic-
Reforming Spirituality of Bernard of Clairvaux
as Evidenced Particularly in his Letters (Rome:
Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2004), 54;
Halfond, The Archaeology of Frankish Church
Councils, 198 ff.; Gustav Schnürer, Church and
Culture in the Middle Ages, vol. I: 350–814,
trans. George J. Undreiner (Paterson, NJ: St
Anthony Guild, 1956), 402–9. For the musical
nuns, see Page, The Christian West, 282.
36 If 2 April 748 is taken as Charlemagne’s
birth date, he was six years old at the anointing.
Matthias Becher, Charlemagne, trans. David
S. Bachrach (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2003), 41; Judson J. Emerick, ‘Building
more romano in Francia during the third
quarter of the eighth century: the abbey church
of St Denis and its model’, in Claudia Bolgia,
Rosamond McKitterick and John Osborne
(eds), Rome across Time and Space: Cultural
Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas, c.
500–1400 (Cambridge University Press, 2011),
138. For a discussion of the ‘truth in fiction’
regarding the singers, see Page, The Christian
West, 288–9.
37 Susan Boynton, Silent Music: Medieval
Song and the Construction of History in
Eighteenth-Century Spain (Oxford University
Press, 2011), 41.
38 Herbert Schnieder, ‘Edition of fragments of
Amalarius’, in Smith (ed.), Early Medieval
Rome and the Christian West, 343;
Kenneth Levy, ‘Gregorian chant and the
Romans’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 56 (2003), 7–8, 35.
39 Kenneth Levy, Gregorian Chant and the
Carolingians (Princeton University Press,
1988), 31, 195–213; cf. Ian Wood, The
Merovingian Kingdoms: 450–751 (London:
Longman, 1994), 258–60. See also
Kenneth Levy, ‘Charlemagne’s archetype of
Gregorian chant’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 40 (1987), 1–2.
40 Page, The Christian West, 319–22.
41 M. A. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish
Church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula
canonicorum in the Eighth Century
(Cambridge University Press, 2004), 41; Levy,
Gregorian Chant, 214–15, 246–9;
Margot Fassler, ‘The cantatorium: from
Charlemagne to the fourteenth century’, in
Peter Jeffery (ed.), The Study of Medieval
Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West: In
Honor of Kenneth Levy (Woodbridge:
Boydell, 2001), 94–5; Page, The Christian West,
339, 341–3.
42 Giles Constable, ‘The commemoration of
the dead in the early Middle Ages’, in Smith
(ed.), Early Medieval Rome and the Christian
West, 179–80; Levy, Gregorian Chant, 31.
43 Levy dates the first attitudinal shift in
Frankish clerics’ wholesale acceptance of
Roman musical execution of accepted
liturgical texts to as early as Pépin’s reign, but
certainly by Charlemagne’s. See ‘Gregorian
chant’, 35.
44 Rudolf Schieffer, ‘Charlemagne and Rome’,
in Smtih (ed.), Early Medieval Rome and the
Christian West, 287–8; Ernst H. Kantorowicz,
Laudes regiae: A Study in Liturgical
Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
1958), 21–2, 64. See also Craig Wright, Music
and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris,
550–1550 (Cambridge University Press, 1989),
198 ff.
45 Delogu, ‘The papacy, Rome and the wider
world’, 216.
46 Allan Doig, Liturgy and Architecture from
the Early Church to the Middle Ages
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 124–8.
47 In 792, Charlemagne confessed not only a
unified faith with Rome but also a textual and
musical oneness in the ordo psallendi. Page,
The Christian West, 294.
48 Wright, Music and Ceremony, 60–1, 166.
49 Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine
and Constitutum Constantini: The
Misinterpretation of a Fiction and its Original
Meaning (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007).
50 Delogu, ‘The papacy, Rome and the wider
world’, 216–17.
329 Church and state in the early medieval period
51 Frances Andrews, ‘Introduction: Rome and
romanitas: aspects of transition’, in Smith
(ed.), Early Medieval Rome and the Christian
West, 17.
52 Schieffer discusses the visits to Rome and
the protocol in ‘Charlemagne and Rome’,
281–4.
53 Wood, The Proprietary Church, 26.
54 Ibid., 187–8.
55 Anne Walters Robertson, ‘St Denis’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
56 Emerick, ‘Building more romano in
Francia’, 143–4, 150.
57 See Page, The Christian West, 331–4,
336–9.
58 For information on conflicting liturgical
readings and the adaptation of homilaries at
the court of Charlemagne by Paul the Deacon
(d. c. 799), see Margot E. Fassler, ‘Sermons,
sacramentaries in early sources for the Office
in the West: the example of Advent’, in Margot
E. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer (eds), The
Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages:
Methodology and Source Studies, Regional
Developments, Hagiography (Oxford
University Press, 2000), 35–6.
59 Robson, ‘With the Spirit and Power of
Elijah’, 54–6.
60 Stephanus Hilpisch, ‘Benedict of Aniane,
St.’, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edn
(Detroit: Gale, 2003), 251–2; Richard
Corradini, ‘The rhetoric of crisis: computus
and liber annalis in early ninth-century Fulda’,
in Richard Corradini, Maximilian
Diesenberger and Helmut Reimitz (eds), The
Construction of Communities in the Early
Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artifacts
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 274–5.
61 Gerald Ellard, Master Alcuin, Liturgist: A
Partner of our Piety (Chicago: Loyola
University Press, 1956), 3, 18; Constable, ‘The
commemoration of the dead’, 192.
62 Andrews, ‘Introduction: Rome and
romanitas’, 17.
63 Walahfrid Strabo, Libellus de exordiis et
incrementis quarundam in observationibus
ecclesiasticis rerum, trans. Alice L. Harting-
Correa (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 128–9.
64 David Hiley, Western Plainchant: A Handbook
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 570.
65 Levy, ‘Gregorian Chant’, 5 ff.
66 Page, The Christian West, 396–7, 533;
James Grier, ‘Adémar de Chabannes,
Carolingian musical practices, and nota
romana’, Journal of the American
Musicological Society, 56 (2003), 43–98.
67 Page, The Christian West, 213–14.
 16 Music and the court of the ancien régime
jeanice brooks

The royal court was among the most powerful cultural institutions of early
modern France. As the political and social structures of absolutist monarchy
replaced those of feudalism, the size and significance of the court – the seat
of royal government and primary instrument for projecting the king’s
symbolic centrality – rapidly increased. Between the fifteenth and eight-
eenth centuries, it swelled from a small peripatetic entourage to the massive
installation at Versailles that was the model for courts all over Europe. With
expansion came formalisation. Facets of court practice that had been fairly
loosely organised in the late Middle Ages were regulated and ritualised, and
complex ceremonial became an increasingly important aspect of social life.
At the same time, the court was a changeable, treacherous and often highly
unruly place of faction and ambition, marked by incessant jockeying for
power and position, and efforts both to extend and to evade royal control.
Increasing centralisation of resources meant that in purely practical
terms the court was a major source of jobs and training for musicians, and
a magnet for talented performers and composers from all over Europe.
The concentration of highly skilled personnel, regular influx of regional
and foreign musicians and varied opportunities for musical events and
activities contributed to an environment conducive to innovation. And if
musicians relied on court patronage to further their careers, the court was
equally dependent upon their services: for in addition to its economic
function, the court was also a representational arena where music played a
vital role. The concepts of power, devotion and taste that informed courtly
ideologies were partly projected by music, which figured both in large-
scale demonstrations of magnificence and devotion, and in the cultivation
of connoisseurship and other more intimate manifestations of elite status.
Music was at once an essential feature of court life and a moyen de
parvenir – a way of gaining honour, status and wealth – for musicians
and for the courtiers who employed them.

The court of France

The core of the royal court was the monarch’s personal household, the
[330] hôtel du roi, which was organised into divisions according to function,
331 Music and the court of the ancien régime

such as the preparation of food and drink, the maintenance of clothing,

the organisation of hunting excursions and so on.1 Its basic structure was
established by the end of the thirteenth century, and in the succeeding
centuries different divisions were progressively reconfigured, added or cut
to accommodate changes in broader social practice or to reflect an individ-
ual monarch’s needs and tastes. A separate military household employed
the guards and archers who assured the monarch’s security. This combined
entourage, the maison du roi, followed the king’s movements between
various royal residences in Paris, the Île-de-France and the Loire valley,
and on the lengthier trips aimed at maintaining a presence throughout his
domain. All divisions of the king’s household followed the court wherever it
went, but not all of its members were present at once; household service was
organised in three-month periods (quartiers), with most office holders
required to serve for one or two quarters in any given year. While it is
clear that many musicians followed the court year-round whether or not
they were en quartier, or officially in service, others returned to look after
lands or businesses in their home regions during off-duty periods.
While Paris was notionally the capital and housed much of the royal
administrative machinery, the court rarely stayed in the city for long, even
after the medieval baronial entourage began to transform into the early
modern court. During the sixteenth century, the Valois kings still moved on
average once every ten days, and could be away from the capital for months
or even years at a time. When the court travelled, its arrival in major towns
was marked by lavish celebrations and royal entries, allowing the monarch
to reinforce ties with local and regional powers and providing the towns
with the means to demonstrate their wealth and importance to the crown.
Although François I (r. 1515–47) usually aimed to visit Paris once each year,
he did not always manage; his grandson Charles IX (r. 1560–74) began his
reign with a tour of the country that lasted for over two years, from January
1564 to May 1566.2 Later in the century, Henri III (r. 1574–89) made longer
sojourns in Paris, a pattern continued by his Bourbon successors. But
despite the emergence of more stable habits by the turn of the seventeenth
century, the French maintained the peripatetic tradition longer than any
comparable European court. Even under Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), the
court made major voyages for important treaties and events, and it was not
until the completion of the royal palace of Versailles in 1682 that it
definitively settled down.3 This means that for most of the ancien régime,
the court was defined less by location and physical surroundings than by its
personnel and social practices. Music, as a portable art, was one essential
tool in establishing its presence wherever the court happened to be.
Surviving records demonstrate that the central services of the hôtel du
roi underwent significant expansion in the sixteenth century. Between
332 Jeanice Brooks

1495 and 1535 it nearly doubled in size, from 366 to 622 members.4 Louis
XII’s marriage to Anne de Bretagne, a sovereign in her own right, was one
factor in the expansion of the royal household, and the combination of their
respective entourages also resulted in a new prominence for women at
court. While earlier queens had maintained relatively small groups of
personal attendants, Anne de Bretagne counted a large group of noble
ladies-in-waiting among her servants. From this period onwards the
queen’s household supplied a framework for mixed-gender activities, such
as conversation and dancing, which were crucial to contemporary ideals of
courtliness. The court experienced a second major wave of growth after
1550, and by 1584 the maison du roi numbered approximately 4,000.5 This
pattern of expansion was mirrored in the satellite households maintained
for other members of the royal family, such as those of the king’s siblings
and royal children. Household size varied according to the age, wealth and
status of the individual, and those who could draw on income from their
own lands could expand their retinues beyond what the king or his treas-
urers might be willing to support. The queen mother, Catherine de Médicis,
for example, twice regent of France during the second half of the sixteenth
century, maintained an entourage of around 800 members by 1585;
François d’Anjou, her youngest son and heir presumptive during most of
the reign of his brother Henri III, employed over 1,000 by 1578.6 Wealthy
nobles maintained households on the royal pattern, often rivalling those of
royal family members in size and creating a competitive market for the most
valuable servants. Members of the great households maintained smaller
households of their own whenever income allowed.
The court as a whole was thus a combination of interlocking house-
holds with the ruler’s entourage at its centre. Its numbers fluctuated
according to how many were present at one time, swelling during peace-
time and diminishing at times of epidemic, war and factional strife.
According to even the most conservative estimates, by the second half of
the sixteenth century the court could assemble over 10,000 members when
at its height, and was thus bigger than the vast majority of French towns.7
Like a city, the court brought together people from all social groups, from
the lowliest kitchen boy or washerwoman to the highest reaches of the court
nobility; it was not just the home of elites and elite social practice, even if it is
these individuals and their activities that tend to be the focus of scholarly
accounts. Musicians might begin a career in a subsidiary household, or in
the entourage of a noble who was regularly or occasionally at court, before
ability or connections allowed them to obtain a better post. Musicians
frequently held several positions at once, though this could be a dangerous
game. There were few better ways to alienate an important patron than to
fail in duties to one employer while off serving his rival. And although they
333 Music and the court of the ancien régime

often maintained ties to multiple patrons, most musicians aspired to obtain

a place (or even better, more than one place) in the king’s household, and
not only because these posts were the most secure or best remunerated.
Salaries often went unpaid in times of financial stress, and were often
inadequate to cover the considerable expense of following the court in
any case. More valuable was the proximity to power and to the range of
benefits that the monarch, his family members and influential advisors had
at their command. Among the most profitable of these were offices –
positions in the central or regional royal administration, which could be
bought and sold for profit – and ecclesiastical prebends, many of which
were under crown control in France. Other rewards available to musicians
were horses, clothes, jewellery and even lands and properties, as well as
special payments such as pensions and new year’s gifts.8
Most royal musicians were attached to one of three divisions of the
maison du roi: the chapel, which celebrated religious ceremonial; the
chamber, consisting of the king’s personal attendants; and the stables
(écurie), which grouped various services relating to horses, transportation
and the training of royal pages. Other musicians, mainly trumpeters and
drummers, were attached to the military household, and often had duties
well beyond the provision of musical services (trumpeters were regularly
used as royal messengers, for example). There were differences in social
level between the different groups. Instrumentalists of the stable were
considered humble servants, and were paid relatively little, wore livery
and (somewhat paradoxically) mainly travelled on foot. Chapel musicians,
in contrast, were normally well educated, often came from reasonably
affluent families, earned higher wages and employed servants of their own.
Some musicians who were particularly favoured, or courtiers from more
elevated backgrounds who possessed musical skills, could occupy higher
positions in the hierarchy, as the king’s valets de chambre (intimate
personal attendants, often of non-noble background) or gentilshommes
servants (noblemen attached to the king’s chamber, who were his closest
companions). Boys employed as singers in royal chapels and chambers
were normally educated at crown expense when their voices changed, and
often then returned to employment within the maison du roi as adults
(usually as musicians, but sometimes in other capacities). Although the
hôtel du roi and subsidiary households for royal princes were staffed
almost exclusively by men, the households of the queens and princesses
employed not only male performers, music teachers and dancing masters,
but also female musicians – often wives or daughters of male musicians
in the king’s household – as well as noble ladies-in-waiting chosen for
their musical abilities. Kinship was an influential factor in the appoint-
ment of musicians, as it was to the structure of the court as a whole.
334 Jeanice Brooks

Families maintained a grip on certain divisions of the royal household for

generations, and musical services were no exception. The Dugué–Edinton
dynasty of keyboard players and lutenists in the sixteenth century and
the Danican–Philidor family of wind players in the seventeenth are good
examples. Such families intermarried, acted as godparents for each other’s
children and collaborated on all manner of business and property
transactions.9
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the chapel was the only
formally organised, discrete musical group within the royal household.
Although its adult members were clerics or priests, the musical chapel was
distinct from the ‘ecclesiastical’ or ‘domestic’ chapel formed by the
almoners, confessors and clerks of the monarch’s household religious
establishment. The musical chapel’s origins dated back to the reign of
Charles VII at the latest, and by the Renaissance it had a well-established
structure and set of functions. The chapel’s size was substantially
increased in the late fifteenth century and again on the death of Anne de
Bretagne in 1514, when her personal chapel was merged with the Chapelle
Royale. François I inherited this expanded group, and early in his reign
introduced major organisational changes.10 The musical chapel was
reshaped into two separate ensembles: a chapelle de musique specialising
in the performance of polyphonic sacred music, and a plainchant chapel
(chapelle de plainchant) for use in less elaborate situations. A high-ranking
ecclesiastical figure was placed in overall charge of the polyphony chapel,
while musical direction was assured by a sous-maître. By the end of
François’s reign, there were two sous-maîtres, each in post for half of the
year. Although numbers fluctuated, his chapel normally employed around
twenty-four adult musicians, with six assigned to each part except for the
top voice. Upper lines were sung by four to six choirboys, assisted by one or
two adult singers; these may sometimes have been falsettists, although after
1550 they are often identified in court records as castratos. The quarter
system meant that between sixteen and twenty singers normally performed
together at any one time.
Sous-maîtres were often significant composers of sacred music – such as
Claudin de Sermisy (c. 1490–1562) under François I, Eustache Du Caurroy
(1549–1609) under the later Valois, and Michel-Richard de Lalande
(1657–1726) under Louis XIV – but from François’s reign onwards there
was often also a special post of compositeur de chapelle, which involved extra
payment and seems to have been awarded on a personal basis to specific
musicians. The chapelle de musique also employed a copyist, one or more
organists, a grammar master for the choirboys and several clerks as well as
servants in charge of the books and ornaments used for religious ritual.
The chapel’s basic structures and duties as established during the reign of
335 Music and the court of the ancien régime

François I continued through subsequent reigns with relatively minor

tinkering, despite some expansion in numbers. Accounts prepared in 1578
for Henri III include cornettists in the soprano group along with the four
castratos who sang with the boys, and the number of adult singers had
increased to thirty.11 The chapel’s size remained constant from the reign of
Henri III to the end of that of Louis XIII (r. 1610–43), and although there
was further augmentation under Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) – four sous-
maîtres instead of two, for example – the basic structure was retained.12
Henri III’s reign also saw attempts to codify the regular duties of Chapelle
Royale members: the 1578 chapel accounts specify that in addition to
singing a High Mass each day at the hour specified by the ruler, they were
to perform Matins and other canonical hours on special feasts such as
Christmas and Easter, and Vespers and Compline every Saturday and
Sunday as well as on the vigils of important feasts. (They were also admon-
ished to wear robes and surplices ‘in the manner of churchmen, as properly
as can be’, which suggests that their attire and demeanour was not always as
decorous as it might have been.) These documents probably do not repre-
sent new practices, but rather the formalisation of current practice; and
similar rules were regularly restated through the seventeenth century.13
A second major development of the Renaissance was the formation of a
discrete group of musicians within the royal chamber.14 At the beginning
of the period, only a contingent of fifes and tabors appeared among the
king’s household servants. A few chapel singers were also included among
the valets de chambre but were not identified as musicians. By 1533,
individuals specifically identified as singers appear in the records, and by
1540, a separate heading for chantres was created in the chamber accounts.
At the same time, the fifes and tabors gradually disappeared, being replaced
by viols moved over from the écurie and by other soft consort instruments,
particularly those such as lute, keyboard and harp, which were useful for
accompanying the voice. At least two cornettists regularly appear, often
players identified as doubling on the transverse flute or recorder. The
players were grouped under a new heading of joueurs d’instruments
(‘instrumental players’) in the chamber records. These changes were
accompanied by an increase in numbers. At the beginning of the reign
of François I, only sixteen musicians appear on the household accounts. A
big jump occurred under Henri II (r. 1547–59) – a monarch not usually
noted in historical literature as a lover of the arts – who nearly doubled the
number of chamber musicians in his household in the first full year of his
reign. Numbers reached a peak of over forty in 1580, midway through the
reign of Henri III. Henri III’s accounts also show a concern for balance in the
appointment of chamber musicians, with roughly equal numbers of keyboard
and plucked string instruments, soft winds and bowed strings. From this
336 Jeanice Brooks

period onwards, a division of chamber players became a permanent part of

the maison du roi, with specialisms changing in line with developments in
instrument technology. And while early in the period chamber singers were
often drawn from the chapel, by the end of the century chamber posts were
increasingly held by men such as Girard de Beaulieu and Pierre Guédron
(after 1564–c. 1620), who specialised in solo performance of secular reper-
toire, making the royal chamber music a significant site for experiments in
vocal practice that would characterise solo singing after 1600.
A final major development of the Renaissance was the formation of
royal violin bands, whose main purpose was to furnish music for the balls
that were a regular feature of French court life from the mid-sixteenth
century, as well as for entertainments such as cartels (staged battles, with
poetry and dance), ballets and masque-like divertissements. While some
violinists had become attached to the écurie by 1529, it was not until mid-
century that entire bands of violin-family instruments began to appear
regularly in French court accounts. Catherine de Médicis seems to have
been particularly influential, maintaining a group of Italian violin players
in her service from 1556 at the latest; subsequently violin bands were
regularly paid from the queen’s accounts, although a separate band was
also maintained for the king. Individual violinists also frequently appear in
the household accounts of queens and princesses, for whom they served as
dancing masters. The association of violinists with female members of the
royal family stems from the necessary presence of the queen and her
entourage for court balls; the increasing number of players testifies to
the growing importance of dance as a courtly activity, particularly in
France. Several generations of dance-mad kings – Henri III, Louis XIII
and most famously Louis XIV – ensured the continued growth of this part
of the court musical establishment.15 In the Renaissance, the violin groups
generally included six to eight players – often from the same families,
who were usually from the northern Italian regions where violins were
produced – and they were sometimes paid on the budget of the écurie,
and sometimes on household accounts. In 1614, early in Louis XIII’s reign,
the king’s violins were officially attached to the chamber; by 1626, the
ensemble had expanded to twenty-four players, known as the Vingt-
Quatre Violons du Roi or the Grande Bande, which survived in this form
until 1761. By the end of the sixteenth century most of the players were
French rather than Italian. Wind players from the écurie were organised
into a similar group of twelve players, the Grands Hautbois, which could be
combined with the violins when necessary. This group is generally consid-
ered to have been the first regular orchestra in Europe. The string group was
made up of five parts (the upper line or dessus, three inner parts – the haute-
contre, taille and quinte – and bass). From 1656, it existed along with
337 Music and the court of the ancien régime

another more select group of sixteen string players, formed by Lully, called
the Petits Violons or the Petite Bande.
Changes in court records are helpful as an indication of shifting prior-
ities, but were essentially administrative gestures. In practice, many musi-
cians followed the court without a paid position; when they did obtain one,
it was often in recompense for services rendered over previous years.
Others could occupy multiple posts. It was particularly common for
singers to have appointments in both chapel and chamber, for example.
Chamber musicians often performed sacred music; for example, chamber
singers performed table blessings and motets when the king dined in
public, from the reign of Henri III onwards. Court records frequently
separate groups of musicians who in practice regularly worked together,
frequently in ways that led to innovations in compositional practice. The
combination of the chapel with the smaller chamber vocal ensemble, for
example, was a significant factor in the genesis of the grand motet of the
1660s, whose main features include scoring for two choirs.16
The court musical establishment was a framework for assembling
people with a wide range of skills, and with increases in numbers from
the early sixteenth century onwards it became possible to stage lavish
multimedia events that brought together musicians from different
branches. For example, the famous Balet comique de la royne (1581),
performed during wedding festivities for the marriage of the queen’s sister,
employed virtually all the musicians from both the king’s and the queen’s
households. The event was organised by the Italian violinist Balthasar
de Beaujoyeux (or Beaujoyeulx), a valet de chambre in the household
of Catherine de Médicis and a chamber player in the king’s household.
The royal chamber singers Girard de Beaulieu and Jacques Salmon
(fl. 1571–86) composed the music, and vocal soloists also included several
singers from the chapel (such as the celebrated castrato Étienne Le Roy) as
well as from the queen’s household (such as Violante Doria, a virtuoso
soprano who was married to Beaulieu). While players from the chamber
and the écurie performed the instrumental dances and accompanied the
vocal ensemble sections of the piece, court poets wrote the texts, and court
painters designed scenery and costumes.17 Like earlier French court fêtes –
including those at Fontainebleau in 1564 and at the Louvre for the arrival of
the Polish ambassadors in 1573 – the Balet comique had much in common
with intermedi and later court operas in Italy, especially Florence, where
Medici festivities provided one important model for French events. But in
France this pattern continued long after the commercialisation of Italian
opera from the 1630s onwards. Lully was essentially a court employee like
Beaujoyeux (and their career trajectories were remarkably similar), and
the large performing forces used in his tragédies lyriques reflected the
338 Jeanice Brooks

availability of the various contingents of royal musicians and the continuing

connection with courtly magnificence and display. As in the case of theat-
rical divertissements, outdoor processions and festivals – from royal entries
into Paris or provincial cities to diplomatic meetings such as the Field of the
Cloth of Gold (1520) and to jousts and tourneys of various kinds – brought
court musicians together with other branches of the ruler’s establishment to
serve royal representational needs.
The careers of Beaujoyeux and Lully bring up the question of the
Frenchness of the royal court of France, for both musicians were Italian
by birth. It is clear that the court was the principal place for cultivation of
foreign music in France; there were more significant imports of all kinds
there than in the country at large, at least outside the major cities. Foreign
ambassadors, who began to be regularly established at the French court in
the sixteenth century, maintained large retinues brought from their home
countries, and French ambassadors sent home reports from abroad.
Ambassadors acted as the eyes and ears of their employers, encouraging
competition played out on cultural grounds between European courts
(and also rendering ambassadorial accounts some of the most important
historical sources for the period, since they are generally aimed at accurate
description rather than propaganda). Foreign brides brought their own
servants, including musicians; Elizabeth of Austria, for example, brought
Maddalena Casulana (c. 1544–after 1583) with her to France when she
married Charles IX in 1570, and also maintained ties with musicians at the
imperial and Bavarian courts, such as Philippe de Monte (1521–1603) and
Orlande de Lassus (c. 1532–94), whom she knew before becoming queen.
The Italian influence at the French court was particularly strong,
beginning with the failed military campaigns of early sixteenth-century
French kings in Italy itself, through the huge influence of Catherine de
Médicis and her Italian-speaking sons (François II, Charles IX and
Henri III), to Henri IV’s second marriage to Marie de Médicis and her
subsequent regency, and continuing through the period of Cardinal
Mazarin’s greatest influence during the minority of Louis XIV. These
political connections had major musical consequences. Italian cornettists,
violinists, dancing masters and singers were prominent members of the
permanent court musical establishment, and Italian musical virtuosos –
such as Alessandro Striggio in 1567 and Giulio Caccini with his daughters
in 1604 – were richly rewarded as temporary visitors to the French court.
Lovers of Italian music attempted to import not only individual perform-
ers and composers but also entire genres, as was most famously illustrated
by Mazarin’s attempts to establish Italian opera in France in the 1640s.
These efforts were often resisted, however; and the existence of strong
pro- and anti-Italian factions at the French court from the 1550s onwards
339 Music and the court of the ancien régime

brought music into a larger debate about French and Italian national
character, which often played out in highly polemic terms. The court
was thus not only a site for the importation of ideas and practices from
abroad; it was also the locus where comparisons became possible, allowing
for an increased examination of what it meant to be French. The musings
of Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) about the differences between French
and Italian singing styles, for example, were based on his hearings of
French court singers such as Henry Le Bailly (d. 1637), Antoine Boësset
(1586–1643) and Étienne Moulinié (c. 1600–after 1669), and also reflect
his knowledge of contemporary practices at the Medici court in Florence
that Caccini and others had demonstrated for French listeners.18
Mersenne also knew about Italian singing practices through print, for
not only had Caccini visited the French court, but also his song collection
Le nuove musiche had made its way into the Frenchman’s hands.
This underlines how print could serve as a mode of spreading courtly
repertoires and practices. Here we come to one of the most distinctively
French aspects of early modern musical culture: the relationship of the
principal music printers to the maison du roi. The printing pioneer Pierre
Attaingnant was granted the newly created post of royal printer for music
by François I on 18 June 1531, and his successors in the post – the firm of
Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard until 1598, followed by the later
members of the Ballard dynasty for nearly two centuries – enjoyed unpar-
alleled access to the royal musical establishment, and benefited from royal
privileges restricting the activities of potential competitors.19 The sym-
biotic relationship between the royal music printers and the royal household
made France very different from other European music publishing centres
such as Venice. For although all these printers were physically located in
Paris, their firms obtained most of their repertoire from the court, used royal
imagery and references on all their products (from the fleur-de-lis, the
corporate logo of early modern France, to the statements of royal licence
and identification of musicians as members of the court establishment that
regularly accompanied music prints), and more generally had to maintain
good relationships at court to retain the charge of imprimeur du roi with its
lucrative advantages. Printed music, then, became one means by which the
court and the symbolic purposes it served, as a projection of French mon-
archy, could be both reinforced at home and distributed far and wide.

Music and courtly ideologies: power, devotion and taste

The expansion of musical activity at the French royal court was partly
because of the increasing economic and symbolic centrality of the court as
340 Jeanice Brooks

a whole, but there was more to it than that. Music also had a distinctive
role in concepts of civility that became increasingly widely established
from the late fifteenth century onwards. These ideals were most famously
outlined in Baldassare Castiglione’s influential Il libro del cortegiano (‘The
book of the courtier’, 1528), a set of fictional conversations about the
attributes of the perfect courtier set at the tiny northern Italian court of
Urbino.20 The book enjoyed a Europe-wide dissemination; it was partic-
ularly enthusiastically received in France, and not only because Castiglione
provided a glowing portrait of the future monarch François I in its pages.
Many leading French courtiers owned copies in Italian, and three separate
translations of the book were published in twenty-three editions between
1537 and 1592.21 French descendants of Il libro del cortegiano included
Nicolas Faret’s L’honneste home, ou L’art de plaire à la cour (‘The gentle-
man, or the art of pleasing at court’), first published in 1630, which brought
together material from Castiglione with further precepts drawn from later
sixteenth-century treatises on manners and conversation.
Castiglione adopted a dialogue form, which allowed him to place
contrasting points of view in the mouths of his interlocutors, and to
stage the kind of sophisticated conversational game that he considered a
principal aspect of courtly life. Music is discussed at several points, allow-
ing the participants to evoke a range of classical tropes characteristic of
courtly neo-Platonism (for example, about the harmony of the spheres,
the ability of music to arouse or calm the passions and the individual’s
response to music as a gauge of personal worth), before offering more
practically orientated remarks on how music should figure in the lives of
male and female courtiers. When one speaker characterises music as an
ignoble activity, the others all pile in to assert that music – practised in the
right way and under the correct circumstances – is, on the contrary, an
essential attribute for the perfect courtier. He should be careful to sing and
play only among companions of his own rank, and to do so with sprezza-
tura, the studied nonchalance by which difficult things may be tossed off
with seemingly effortless grace. He should play only instruments such as
the lute or viol, not those that distort the face or mouth during perform-
ance or those associated with low-class minstrels. The best kind of music
for the courtier-performer is self-accompanied solo vocal music, which
places his accomplishments in the most flattering light. While playing and
singing in company is encouraged for young men, especially in mixed-
gender gatherings, older men should not make themselves ridiculous by
performing love songs and other music inappropriate to their age, though
they may continue to play and sing for private amusement and should
always be able to judge musical performances with sureness and taste.
Recommendations for the female courtier are similar, although she is
341 Music and the court of the ancien régime

admonished to exercise her musical skill with even more circumspection

and discretion.
The importance of such notions helps to contextualise the major
changes to the secular arm of the royal musical establishment in the
Renaissance. The absorption of courtly views on music into the structure
and routine of the court meant that by the end of the sixteenth century,
the chamber performers had formal duties roughly analogous to those of
the chapel musicians, whose activities were structured by the liturgy. The
chamber, in contrast, derived its ‘rules’ from concepts of civility that
informed courtly ideology. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the
highest-paid rank-and-file musicians were attached to the Chapelle
Royale; by the end, chamber musicians could rival chapel polyphonists
in wealth and prestige. Their activities formed a crucial field in which
courtiers could demonstrate knowledge and connoisseurship, showing
that they had received education commensurate with elite status and
demonstrating the inner personal worth that a love of music was thought
to demonstrate. The picture of ‘court society’ that has emerged from much
research in history and the social sciences, following the influential work
of Norbert Elias, has generally emphasised notions of psychological con-
straint; in Elias’s view, the emergence of modern civilisation is linked to
increasing restraint of the passions and control of natural urges and
impulses, as advocated in courtesy books from the sixteenth century
onwards with regard to table manners and bodily functions.22 However,
the ever-increasing value accorded to secular music in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries tends to support a picture in which cultivation of the
passions through courtly expressive culture becomes an equally significant
element of modernity.23
Another consequence of the importance of musical ability or knowl-
edge in elite social identity is the participation of aristocratic performers
side by side with professional musicians, and the often considerable
involvement of rulers in the minutiae of their musical establishments.
While professional musicians – musicians by métier – provided the nec-
essary nucleus of expertise, French monarchs and their courtiers contrib-
uted directly to courtly musical culture as well as paying the bills. Henri II
and Charles IX both reputedly sang with their professional chapel musi-
cians, leaving their private oratories to take tenor parts in polyphonic
sacred music. Charles IX was also heavily involved in the recruitment of
musicians, making particularly energetic attempts in the early 1570s to
lure his favourite composer, Orlande de Lassus, away from his post at the
court of Bavaria. A famous 1574 letter to Lassus from the royal music
printer Adrian Le Roy describes Charles’s passion for music, and tells the
composer about a session when royal chamber musicians performed
342 Jeanice Brooks

chromatic pieces by Lassus and the Italian composer Nicola Vicentino for
the king to compare.24 Castiglione’s exhortations for noble men to play and
sing were tempered in later treatises, with more emphasis on this type of
connoisseurship than on active participation, beyond rudimentary musical
instruction as part of early education. Yet many men continued to exercise
musical skills, and music continued to figure as essential training for a court
career: lute playing and dance were taught at military academies and by
music and dancing masters employed in noble households.25 Details of
Louis XIII’s childhood musical education are well known, thanks to the
daily entries kept by his doctor Jean Hérouard between 1601 and 1628, and
as an adult he was active as a composer of both songs and sacred music.26
Louis XIV had instruction in the lute, harpsichord and guitar in childhood,
and judged competitions for organist posts in his establishment.27 The need
to supply music for aristocratic performers helps to explain the prominence
in print culture of certain forms, such as the court song or air de cour, that
were especially appropriate for their use.
New notions of civility joined other attributes, such as liberality and
magnanimity, which had been important signs of elite status for centuries
in feudal France. The ability of a monarch to support large numbers of
retainers, and to stage impressive displays of wealth and power, remained
a crucial aspect of successful rule. And as the court became larger, access to
the king had to be more strictly controlled and his appearances more
carefully choreographed. Whereas the court of François I was known for
its relative familiarity and the ease with which courtiers might gain the
king’s ear, by the time of his grandsons, contact with the ruler started to
become highly ritualised. Henri III’s reign was marked in particular by
royal attempts to formalise his personal routine and his interaction with
courtiers and administrators, manifested in the promulgation of regula-
tions (in 1578, 1582 and 1585) specifying the schedule of court activities.
The regulations not only formalised the duties of the Chapelle Royale and
specified who should be present to listen to royal Masses and Vespers; they
also specified that the chamber musicians were to present themselves in
the royal antechambers each morning, waiting to be called into the
chamber for instructions once the rituals of the king’s official lever were
complete; they were also required to come to the chamber between 7.00
and 8.00 each evening, when they could be asked to provide music for
several hours. Performing forces for table blessings and dinner music were
specified, and royal musicians were admonished to place themselves so
that the monarch could hear them clearly and to ensure that his favourite
pieces were regularly performed. Balls were scheduled on Sundays,
Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the queen’s household and all the king’s
gentlemen were required to attend whether or not they participated in the
343 Music and the court of the ancien régime

dancing. Descriptions of these events by foreign visitors show that the

balls themselves unfurled according to a specific order: fifes and tabors
from the écurie sounded a pavane followed by an allemande as the king
and queen opened the dancing; the violin band then led more general
participation in a branle, a courante and a volta (Henri III’s favourite,
apparently), before concluding the sequence with a galliard.28
Portions of Henri III’s regulations were printed for distribution
throughout France and abroad, underlining the degree to which accounts
of courtly ritual and the ritual itself operated as representation of an
idealised order, often starkly at odds with reality on the ground. It is no
coincidence that Henri III’s repeated efforts to formalise court routine
happened when his authority was most severely challenged during the
religious wars by both Protestant and ultra-Catholic factions, and by
powerful court dynasties such as the Guises and Bourbons. In practice
there were often problems with the smooth implementation of royal
aspirations, but the importance of court ritual as a symbolic tool contin-
ued to grow. By the reign of Louis XIV, it had reached its zenith.

Conclusion
The French court’s multiple functions as social group and political entity
created unparalleled opportunities for musical performance and compo-
sition throughout the early modern period. When the court travelled
through France, it provided a crucial point of exchange for the spread of
musical repertoire and practices between and within the regions. The
constant presence of foreigners at court provided another mode of
exchange, and was also a way in which French concepts of court life and
the role of music in it could travel abroad. Courtly rituals were measured
out in music, which participated quite literally in the choreography of
early modern monarchy in France. Although musical language and per-
formance styles continued to change and develop, the place of music in
courtly ideals and ideologies as well as many elements of structural
organisation remained largely the same from the early sixteenth century
to the early eighteenth century. By this time, urban centres – and partic-
ularly Paris – were beginning successfully to challenge the court’s suprem-
acy as a practical and representational powerhouse. The court was
increasingly seen as hidebound, conservative and strangled by ceremony,
and its lavishness was attacked as a source of unjustifiable expense;
attempts to limit royal authority became increasingly common in the
half-century before the Revolution.29 However, nineteenth-century
Restoration and imperial courts often attempted to revive elements of
344 Jeanice Brooks
earlier practice – including musical aspects – in recognition of the symbolic
weight these traditions could still wield. And many courtly attitudes about
the elite cultivation of music remained almost completely intact, contribu-
ting to French musical discourse and musical practice for the subsequent
centuries even after the court itself had disappeared.
Notes
1 Jean-François Solnon, La cour de France
(Paris: Fayard, 1987), provides a detailed
history of the French court from 1500 to the
Revolution. For an excellent short overview in
English, see Olivier Chaline, ‘The Valois and
Bourbon courts c. 1515–1750’, in John
Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe:
Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien
Régime, 1500–1750 (London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1999), 67–93; see also John
Adamson’s introduction, ‘The Making of the
Ancien-Régime Court 1500–1700’, in
Adamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe,
7–41. On the court from the reigns of Louis XII
to Henri IV, see Robert J. Knecht, The French
Renaissance Court (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2008).
2 This tour is described in detail in Victor
E. Graham and William McAllister Johnson,
The Royal Tour of France by Charles IX and
Catherine de’ Medici: Festivals and Entries,
1564–6 (University of Toronto Press, 1979).
See also Jean Boutier, Alain Dewerpe and
Daniel Nordman, Un tour de France royal: le
voyage de Charles IX, 1564–1566 (Paris:
Aubier, 1984).
3 Chaline, ‘The Valois and Bourbon courts’,
83–4.
4 Solnon, La cour, 48.
5 Jacqueline Boucher, ‘L’évolution de la
maison du roi: des derniers Valois aux
premiers Bourbons’, XVIIe siècle, 137
(1982), 359–79. The figure includes the maison
militaire as well as the domestic household.
6 Mack P. Holt, ‘Patterns of clientèle and
economic opportunity at court during the
Wars of Religion: the household of François,
Duke of Anjou’, French Historical Studies, 13
(1984), 308.
7 Benvenuto Cellini reckoned the numbers at
c. 18,000, which was probably an exaggeration;
the Venetian ambassador’s estimate of 10,000
is probably nearer the mark. Only about
twenty-five towns in France in the years
around 1550 had larger populations: see
Robert J. Knecht, The Rise and Fall of
Renaissance France (London: Fontana,
1996), 184.
8 For details on the rewards musicians could
obtain, see Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late
Sixteenth-Century France (University of
Chicago Press, 2000), 72–116.
9 Something of the flavour of family relations
can be gleaned from the Parisian records
concerning court musicians indexed in
Jules Écorcheville, Actes d’état-civil de
musiciens insinués au Châtelet de Paris,
1539–1650 (Paris: Société Internationale de
Musique, 1907); Yolande de Brossard,
Musiciens de Paris 1535–1792: actes d’état civil
d’après le ficher Laborde de la Bibliothèque
Nationale (Paris: Picard, 1965).
10 On the chapel’s personnel and structure in
the early sixteenth century, see Christelle
Cazaux, La musique à la cour de François Ier
(Paris: École Nationale des Chartes/
Programme ‘Ricercar’, 2002), 69–106. For later
years, see Isabelle Handy, Musiciens au temps
des derniers Valois, 1547–1589 (Paris:
Champion, 2008), 209–40.
11 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Cinq cents Colbert 54, état de la chapelle (royal
chapel record), 1578; for a transcription see
Brooks, Courtly Song, 398–406. Cornettists are
still listed with the boys and castratos on the
soprano line in the chapel records of 1631.
12 For later chapel records, see Michel
Le Moël, ‘La chapelle de musique sous Henri
IV et Louis XIII’, Recherches sur la musique
française classique, 6 (1966), 5–26; and
Marcelle Benoit, Musiques de cour: chapelle,
chambre, écurie, 1661–1733 (Paris: Picard,
1971).
13 Peter Bennett, ‘Collaborations between the
Musique de la Chambre and the Musique de la
Chapelle at the court of Louis XIII: Nicolas
Formé’s Missa Æternae Henrici Magni (1638)
and the origins of the grand motet’, Early
Music, 38 (2010), 370–2.
14 Jeanice Brooks, ‘From minstrel to courtier:
the royal musique de chambre and courtly
ideals in sixteenth-century France’, Trossinger
Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, 1 (2001),
39–49. See also Cazaux, La musique, 127–60.
15 See Margaret M. McGowan, L’art du ballet
de cour en France, 1581–1643 (Paris: CNRS,
345 Music and the court of the ancien régime
1963), 29–47; Margaret McGowan, Dance in
the Renaissance: European Fashion, French
Obsession (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2008).
16 Bennett, ‘Collaborations’, 369–86.
17 Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, Le balet comique
de la royne (Paris: Le Roy & Ballard, 1582);
repr., facsimile with introduction by Margaret
M. McGowan (Binghamton, NY: Center for
Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies,
1982). On music in the wedding festivities, see
also Frances A. Yates, ‘Poésie et musique dans
les “Magnificences” au mariage du duc de
Joyeuse, Paris, 1581’, in Musique et poésie au
XVIe siècle: Paris, 30 juin–4 juillet 1953 (Paris:
CNRS, 1954), 241–65. On Beaulieu and Doria’s
roles, see Jeanice Brooks, ‘O quelle armonye:
dialogue singing in late Renaissance France’,
Early Music History, 22 (2003), 1–65.
18 Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle,
contenant la théorie et la pratique de la
musique, 3 vols (Paris: Cramoisy, 1636); repr.,
facsimile with introduction by François Lesure
(Paris: CNRS, 1963), vol. II, 356–8, 410–15.
19 Daniel Heartz, Pierre Attaingnant, Royal
Printer of Music: A Historical Study and
Bibliographical Catalogue (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1969);
François Lesure and Geneviève Thibault,
Bibliographie des éditions d’Adrian Le Roy et
Robert Ballard, 1551–1598 (Paris: Société
Française de Musicologie, 1955);
Laurent Guillo, Pierre I Ballard et Robert III
Ballard: imprimeurs du roy pour la musique
(1599–1673), 2 vols (Sprimont: Mardaga,
2003).
20 Il libro del cortegiano is set in 1507, and
portions of the text circulated in manuscript at
least a decade before its publication in 1528.
For a modern edition and English translation,
see Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the
Courtier, ed. Daniel Javitch, trans. Charles S.
Singleton (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002); on
Castiglione’s treatment of music, see
James Haar, ‘The courtier as musician:
Castiglione’s view of the science and art of
music’, in Robert W. Hanning and
David Rosand (eds), Castiglione: The Ideal and
the Real in Renaissance Culture (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 165–89.
21 Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier:
The European Reception of Castiglione’s
Cortegiano (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995),
63–4.
22 See Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process,
trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell,
1994). Elias’s work was first published in
German in 1939.
23 Olivier Chaline points out that Elias’s
‘tendency to conceptualize “civilization” in
psychological terms, as the control of the
passions, has led to neglect of that
efflorescence in literature and the arts’ that
characterised the early modern French court.
Chaline, ‘The Valois and Bourbon courts’, 89.
24 On the musical activities and abilities of
Henri II and Charles IX, see Brooks, Courtly
Song, 11–12.
25 On music-making and courtly masculinity
in the sixteenth century, see ibid., 117–90. On
musical instruction in military academies, see
Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in
Early Modern France (University of Chicago
Press, 2005), 37–62.
26 See the introduction to Georgie Durosoir
and Thomas Leconte (eds), Louis XIII musicien
et les musiciens de Louis XIII (Versailles:
Centre de Musique Baroque, 2003), 19–40.
27 François Lesure et al., ‘France’, Grove
Music Online, Oxford Music Online (accessed
22 May 2014).
28 David Potter and P. R. Roberts, ‘An
Englishman’s view of the court of Henri III,
1584–1585: Richard Cook’s “Description of the
court of France”’, French History, 2 (1988),
340–1.
29 See Chaline, ‘The Valois and Bourbon
courts’.
 17 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières
g e o r g i a co w a r t

Introduction
The term ‘aesthetics’ was derived from the Greek aesthetikos, sensation or
perception through the senses. It entered the sphere of philosophical
enquiry with Alexander Baumgarten’s treatise Aesthetica (1750), which
defined the term as the ability to perceive and judge beauty by means of the
senses, rather than through the intellect or reason. This formulation,
unthinkable a century earlier, owed its existence to a series of eighteenth-
century French debates over reason, the senses, taste and authority.
These were connected to changing epistemologies, most notably the
challenge of empirical experience, growing out of Newtonian science, to
René Descartes’s notion of a priori reason. The Enlightenment enterprise
is characterised by attempts to reconcile reason and the senses, to balance
the tensions between them and to find a synthesis that could encompass
both. During this period a multifaceted, overarching dialectic between
rationalist and empiricist thought embraced a series of subsidiary quer-
elles, including debates over imitation versus expression, ancient authority
versus modern, and universal versus individual taste. All of these held
profound importance for the field of music, which was simultaneously
being rocked by its own internal conflicts. Over the course of the century,
writers argued the relative merits of ancient versus modern music, tragedy
versus opera, French versus Italian music, melody versus harmony, and
the music of Lully versus Rameau, Pergolesi versus Rameau, and Gluck
versus Piccinni. The body of musical thought resulting from these debates
constitutes one of the most impressive accomplishments of the Siècle des
Lumières, and indeed of any historical period.
In the eighteenth century, French writers began to explain the aesthetic
response to music in subjective terms that could account for discrepancies
in individual taste. An intensely subjective musical style had emerged in
the madrigal, monody and opera in the early seventeenth century, and
moving the passions or affections constituted a primary aim of music in
early opera. Theorists, however, viewed the compositional process pri-
marily as a rational endeavour, based on the rules of composition and

The conception of this chapter owes a debt to Jacqueline Waeber, whose scholarship on Rousseau and
[346] on melodrama is cited below.
347 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières

principles of rhetoric, by means of which a composer or musical per-

former could manipulate the emotions of an audience.1 Around the turn of
the century writers began to account for the effects of music in more
subjective terms that allowed for an interior, personal and individualised
response. There is some truth to the over-generalisation that musical
aesthetics moved from the Aristotelian and Cartesian reason of the seven-
teenth century to an intense, emotional subjectivity bordering on the
Romantic with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78). More valid, however, is
an assessment of eighteenth-century musical aesthetics as a series of
attempts to balance reason and sense (in its two meanings as physical
sensation and later subjective emotion or sensibility).

Music, reason and the senses

The conservatives in the quarrels over sense and reason turned to two
principal authorities: Aristotle and Descartes. According to Aristotle, art
and music represented a direct imitation of nature, specifically human
nature. A central tenet of Aristotelian thought, seized upon by advocates
of rationalism, was ratio, the innate ability of human beings to reason.
Another was katharsis, the purging of emotions by the direct experience of
those emotions, mainly pity and fear, through tragedy. These, along with
Aristotle’s treatise on rhetoric, brought a new dimension to the perform-
ing arts: the possibility of catharsis through a direct imitation (mimesis) of
the emotions through speech, or through the sung speech of vocal music.
In seventeenth-century France, the Aristotelian doctrines of mimesis and
ratio took root and thrived in the local soil of Cartesian rationalism.
Descartes’s Discours de la méthode, based on an epistemology of innate
ideas and a priori knowledge, provided a method of deductive reasoning
by which one could arrive, through the act of thinking, at clear and self-
evident truths. His widely influential Traité des passions de l’âme provided
a rational, physiological and descriptive basis for understanding and
portraying the passions or affections. Descartes’s distrust of the senses
caused him to dismiss the idea of beauty, musical or otherwise, from his
philosophical system. Following Descartes, seventeenth-century thinkers
criticised music for addressing only the physical sense of hearing, and
consequently for failing to create a profound experience in the listener.2
Musical quarrels over sense and reason reach back to ancient times,
when the followers of Pythagoras and Aristoxenus vehemently debated
whether mathematics or the ear was the ultimate determinant of musical
temperament. Through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the ear tended
to be generally distrusted in favour of the mind. This distrust was
348 Georgia Cowart

reinforced by seventeenth-century rationalism. Beginning in the eight-

eenth century, however, French writers began to look to England, where
John Locke and Thomas Hobbes had developed epistemologies based on
perception. According to these writers, the mind can know only what it
perceives through the senses. In France, this belief found expression in
theories of sentiment or impression of the senses. Throughout the eight-
eenth century, French writers used various means of incorporating senti-
ment into a rational, imitation-based model.
Modern aesthetic theory arose out of the disputes over taste in the early
eighteenth century. According to the rationalists, taste was the result of
universal reason, which would remain forever codified by the rules of the
ancients. (Since ancient music was unknown, the ‘ancient’ music of Jean-
Baptiste Lully often served as an equivalent standard.) To advocates of the
senses, it was a more relative phenomenon that depended on sensory
impressions (sentiments) unique to each individual. In reality, most writ-
ers based their theories on varying permutations of these two positions.
The association of taste and sentiment can be traced back to Antoine
Gombaud, chevalier de Méré (1607–84), who defined bon goût (good
taste) as ‘judging well all that presents itself, by some sentiment that acts
more quickly and sometimes more directly than reflection’.3 A few years
later Pierre Nicole opposed this taste to knowledge of the rules: ‘This idea
and strong impression, which is called sentiment or goût, is completely
different from all the rules in the world.’4
Like so many of the contributions to an emerging aesthetics of music,
the first systematic discussion of the ‘beauties’ of music was provoked by a
musical querelle. It began with François Raguenet’s Paralèle des italiens et
des françois, en ce qui regarde la musique et les opéras (1702), an enco-
mium of the merits of contemporary Italian opera in comparison to the
French. The champion who rose to defend French music (primarily the
tragédie en musique of Lully and his followers), Le Cerf de la Viéville, was,
like Raguenet, a musical amateur. His Comparaison de la musique itali-
enne et de la musique françoise (1704–6), however, adumbrated the aes-
thetic issues that would be debated over the course of the century and, in
its comparative analysis, laid the basis for the beginnings of modern
musical criticism. Le Cerf admits an element of sense into his rationalistic
doctrine when he calls good taste ‘the most natural sentiment, corrected or
confirmed by the best rules’.5 Following contemporary theorists of liter-
ature and the theatre, he bases his argument on the Aristotelian ideal of the
imitation of nature. He insists that such imitation, the ultimate goal of all
the arts, is achieved through a proper combination of word and tone, and a
strict adherence to the rules of clarity, simplicity and expressiveness. In its
conformity or lack of conformity to these standards, music, like literature,
349 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières

can be judged by the mind. But music must also be judged through the
exercise of an inner aesthetic faculty based on the senses and feelings. This
sentiment intérieur, as Le Cerf calls it (probably following Méré, whom he
admired), can be determined by the simple process of asking if an air has
flattered one’s ear or moved one’s heart. Finally, since for Le Cerf the heart
can be moved only by the intellectual content of an affectively set text, the
feelings of sentiment end by being circumscribed by the rules of reason.6
Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750), a Swiss philosopher whose Traité
du beau appeared in Amsterdam in 1715, is known for applying Cartesian
principles and scientific tools (drawn chiefly from physics and geometry)
to the apprehension of beauty. Qualities stemming from geometry (‘beau-
ties of ideas’), such as unity, variety, order, proportion and regularity, are
universally perceived and admired. But this universal judgement is com-
plemented by a relative judgement more dependent on the physical senses
and feelings (‘beauties of sentiment’) that vary according to the individu-
al’s capacity. For Crousaz, the highest form of aesthetic judgement (bon
goût) depends on an equal partnership of reason and sentiment. Although
he assigns priority to reason, Crousaz also emphasises the relativity of
musical beauty, attributing it to the differences in humours among human
beings and the differences in the ways musical sounds interact with the
physical senses.7
The Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture of Jean-Baptiste
(abbé) Dubos (Paris, 1719) gives an unprecedented place to theories of
sentiment within an Aristotelian doctrine of imitation. Dubos sees senti-
ment as an immediate sense perception akin to seeing or tasting, and
assigns it a status more important than reason in the judgement of a work
of art: ‘Sentiment is a far better guide to whether a work touches us, and
makes the impression it is supposed to make, than all the dissertations
composed by critics to explain its merits and calculate its perfections and
faults.’8 Reason should intervene in the general judgement we make of a
poem or a painting only to support a decision of sentiment, and to explain
which faults prevent it from pleasing, and which are the pleasing aspects
that make it attractive. For Dubos, sentiment refers not only to the five
senses, but also to a ‘sixth sense’ located in the heart, an internal faculty that
perceives beauty through the external senses. This sense acts immediately,
unlike the intellect, which can only confirm its judgement.
Dubos discusses music and the other arts only after treating a more
general philosophy of the beautiful, and these sections represent more
conventional Aristotelian mimetic theories. The goal of art, according to
Dubos, is to produce pleasure by imitating objects that arouse our pas-
sions. For music, the imitative principle must be focused on the imitations
of feelings. He agrees with earlier rationalists that music set to a text is
350 Georgia Cowart

preferable to instrumental music, and he deplores music whose interest

depends on richness of harmony, which he compares with mere colour in
painting or rhyme in poetry. Nonetheless, in his theory of musical signs,
Dubos introduces an opening for the eventual elevation of music as an art
of feeling. As the painter imitates the forms and colours of nature, he
writes, the musician imitates the tones of the voice – its accents, sighs and
inflections. Dubos distinguishes these musical ‘signs’ of the passions
(signes naturels), which relate directly to nature, from spoken words
(signes de convention), which constitute more arbitrary ‘symbols’ of the
passions. Dubos’s theory of musical signs was developed by later writers,
most notably Rousseau.9
One of the most wide-ranging and intellectually rigorous treatments of
the concept of beauty, Yves-Marie (père) André’s Essai sur le beau (1741),
grew out of the second great musical querelle of the century, between the
conservative followers of Lully and the progressive followers of Rameau.
The quarrel erupted after the premiere of Rameau’s first opera, Hippolyte
et Aricie (1733), which the Lullistes accused of being confusing, devoid of
melody and generally ‘painful’. The dismay caused by this new style also
occasioned the first musical application of the term ‘baroque’, a word
occasionally used before this time to mean ‘bizarre’.10 It was amid this
controversy that treatises on good taste and beauty began to proliferate, and
the aesthetic implications of the quarrels over the new music and the old
began to find clarification. Of all the eighteenth-century theorists, André
displays the most thorough grasp of the aesthetic problem of reason versus
the senses. Beginning with the theories of Pythagoras and Aristoxenus, he
finds the most successful synthesis in the tragédie en musique of Lully. Like
other conservative writers dating back to Le Cerf, André admires the
domination of the text and therefore of rational meaning in Lully’s music.
He speaks out against the empiricists, for whom sentiment is the only judge
of harmony, the ear the only judge of beauty, and for whom no universal
rules of art exist. André, while acknowledging sensual pleasure and the
validity of individual taste and national styles, insists that universal reason
should guide the apprehension of true artistic beauty.11
The most influential theorist at mid-century, Charles Batteux (1713–80),
also maintains a rationalist foundation. In Les beaux arts réduits à un même
principe (1746), he argues for the imitation of nature and adherence to the
rules of art. Like the other theorists discussed here, however, he makes
room within his conservative system for a theory of sentiment, which he
equates with sensory perception. Music, through its imitation of passionate
vocal inflection, surpasses mere words in its ability to speak directly through
le sentiment to the heart. What Dubos calls the ‘sixth sense’ Batteux calls
taste – the ability to sense (sentir) the good, bad and mediocre in art. Batteux
351 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières

posits good taste as rational and universal. It is to the arts what intelligence
is to the sciences: a means of discerning the good and the beautiful, as in
science intelligence is a means of discerning the true. This bon goût
regulates all the arts through its immutable laws, the first of which is the
imitation of la belle nature. Finally, though, even Batteux (perhaps the
most conservative of these writers) finds a place within his hierarchy for
the concept of individual tastes, which he calls goûts en particulières.
Tastes can be different, then, while still true to nature and thus good.
The richness of nature and the infinite possibilities of using its materials
are compared to the many different perspectives from which an artist may
depict his model; each aspect will be different, and yet the model remains
the same.
Gradually the term sentiment began to take on connotations of feeling,
in the beginning only as it resulted from sensory impression and strong
opinion. By degrees an emotional element made its way into the standard
dictionaries. By the mid-eighteenth century the term was being applied
to the more gentle emotions, such as love and esteem, and often figured in
such phrases as sentiments tendres and sentiments délicats. Early eighteenth-
century writers refer to music as expressing les sentiments et les passions;
here sentiments refers to ‘feelings’ as opposed to strong emotions. Dubos, for
example, uses the term in a dual manner: in the singular, it refers to the
internal sense that apprehends artistic beauty; in the plural, it refers to the
feelings in nature that music is supposed to imitate (l’imitation des senti-
ments). As sentiment continued to take on more emotional meaning, its
sister-term sensibilité was becoming the focus of expanded meaning and a
new vogue in French moeurs. Originally, while sentiment had signified
sensory perception, sensibilité had signified the capacity of animals (in
contrast to plants) to have this ability. Gradually it acquired the meaning
of ‘disposed toward the sentiments of tenderness and love’.12 This term’s
vogue reached its height with the novels of Madame de Tencin, Nivelle de la
Chaussée and Rousseau. Rousseau’s novel Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse
(1761) created a fashion for sensibilité that – corresponding to the senti-
mental novel in England and the empfindsamer Stil in Germany – domi-
nated much late eighteenth-century literature. Not surprisingly, sensibilité
would constitute a cornerstone of Rousseau’s musical aesthetics. By the end
of the century, the terms sentiment and sensibilité were used interchange-
ably, but their meanings vary according to context. In the field of music
few writers went as far as Rousseau in the direction of a proto-Romantic
association with pure feeling.
In the continuing dialectic between reason and the senses, writers in
the second half of the eighteenth century remained as diverse in their
approach as in the first. Significantly, a few theorists began to turn from a
352 Georgia Cowart

rationalistic approach altogether. Some fell under the influence of Étienne

Bonnot (abbé) de Condillac (1715–80), a follower of Locke, and the
more radical acceptance of sense perception found in his Traité des
sensations (1754). One of these was an author named Boyé, who wrote a
treatise entitled L’expression musicale, mise au rang des chimères (1779).
Dispensing with the doctrine of imitation altogether, Boyé advocates
instead the physical beauty of music and harmony.
The binary opposition of reason and senses, an artificial construction
at best, was complicated by a wide range of issues, especially as the century
progressed. For one thing, the idea of a rationalist aesthetic or even a
wholly rationalist philosophy had always been something of a contra-
diction in terms; as Thomas Christensen has pointed out, all rationalist
theories must eventually intersect with empirical evidence. At mid-
century, some thinkers began to foreground these kinds of intersections.
As Christensen puts it, it was easy to reconcile Descartes’s mechanistic
metaphysics with newer theories of sensation ‘simply by stripping away
the former of innate ideas and God’.13 At the same time, the vehemently
anti-rationalist Rousseau, radically progressive in his rejection of French
music and in his advocacy of a feelings-based subjectivity, could still clothe
his theory in the tenets of Aristotelian mimesis. Likewise, certain medical
writers, addressing the role of music in healing, combined mimetic theory
with ideas of sympathy and sensibility.14 These developments reflect both
the ferment of the period and an increasing sophistication in the handling of
aesthetic complexity. They also reflect the Enlightenment propensity for the
forging of intellectual synthesis in the fire of polemical debate.
The incorporation of the senses into doctrines of reason meant that the
individual as a sensing being could now make decisions on the basis of
inner feelings rather than outward authority, be it church, state or acad-
emy. It also meant that music, whose primary function was formerly seen
as moving the emotions according to the principles of rhetoric and
oratory, was now viewed as a means of personal pleasure, and of under-
standing humanity and the self.15 The move away from intellectual models
and a growing acceptance of a subjective approach to music, however, were
balanced by a widespread belief in the universality of the musical experi-
ence. This balance, manifested in a variety of ways, distinguished the
musical thought of the Enlightenment from that of the later Romantic era.

The philosophes and Rameau

Most of the major contributors to French musical thought during the late
eighteenth century were self-styled philosophes – public intellectuals (not
353 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières

necessarily philosophers) who addressed a wide variety of topics with the

mission of disseminating knowledge while critiquing and correcting error.
Many also contributed to the vast Enlightenment project known as the
Encyclopédie. Though the philosophes rarely saw eye to eye, they shared a
common critical outlook and search for underlying principles, and these
principles served as the basis for their writings on music. In 1748 the chief
editor of the Encyclopédie, Denis Diderot, commissioned Rousseau to
write the articles on music, which Rousseau completed over the space of
only a few months in 1749. He later collected these in his Dictionnaire de
musique (1768). The expanded Dictionnaire summarised a philosophy
arising not only from Rousseau’s contributions to the Encyclopédie, but
also from a new series of fiery debates on the relative merits of French and
Italian music and on the nature of musical expression. These had begun as
part of the Querelle des Bouffons (1752–4), the third great musical querelle
of the century, which had been provoked by the performance of several
intermezzi comici, including Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s La serva
padrona, by a comic Italian troupe (the Bouffons) from August 1752.
The Querelle became a vehement debate over the relative merits of modern
Italian opera versus the operas of Rameau, which the progressivists now
considered outdated. As in the earlier querelles, new ways of thinking
about music arose out of the polemics of the debate.16
Rousseau had himself composed an opera, Le devin du village, which
intended, in its recitative at least, to emulate the Italian style.17 It was
enthusiastically received in 1752. It is not surprising, then, that Rousseau
entered the fray as spokesman for Italian music. His Lettre sur la musique
française (1753), peremptory in its dismissal of French music, nonetheless
brought a philosophical spirit to the quarrel, and a new perspective, largely
linguistic-based, to earlier discussions of the nature and meaning of music.
In it Rousseau sets out his theory of the primacy of language and melody,
according to which the viability of a national musical style (both vocal and
instrumental) is ultimately derived from the innate musicality of the lan-
guage that informs it. According to Rousseau, musicality and rationality are
mutually exclusive, and nations with languages that had developed as a
means of rational discourse, such as France, cannot hope to have a national
music. As proof of his theory, he analyses Lully’s famous monologue from
Armide, showing how the defects of the French language result in the
impossibility of a successful musical setting. The ideas set forth in the
Lettre were considerably influenced by Rousseau’s theories on the origins
of language, which he was developing at this time; these would be published
in his Essai sur l’origine des langues (1781). Already in the Lettre, however,
Rousseau proclaimed his central theory of ‘unity of melody’ (unité de
mélodie), which denounced counterpoint in favour of a single melodic
354 Georgia Cowart

line. (As Jacqueline Waeber has shown, Rousseau’s abhorrence of musical

complexity may have arisen as the result of a hearing defect.18)
Rousseau’s Lettre was answered by Rameau himself, whose Observations
sur notre instinct pour la musique et sur son principe (1754) offered a bar-by-
bar defence of Lully’s recitative and the French style. Rameau also used this
opportunity to summarise essential elements of his musical philosophy. In
contrast to Rousseau, who based his aesthetics on melody and language,
Rameau bases his own system on the foundation of harmony and the corps
sonore, the overtone series whose discovery had been announced by Joseph
Sauveur in 1701. By the time of the Observations, Rameau had become a
firm adherent of sensation in music, an epistemology grounded in and
dependent on the natural phenomenon of the corps sonore. At the same
time, he continued to frame these beliefs with a Cartesian adherence to
universal formal principles, deductive reasoning and self-evident mathe-
matical truths.19
In 1755, Rameau once again attacked Rousseau, especially his advocacy
of melodic unity, in his Erreurs sur la musique dans l’Encyclopédie. In this
exchange as in their later writings, both Rameau and Rousseau reveal a
mixture of progressive and traditional views. Despite the vehemence
of their debate, both adhere to the belief in the imitation and expression
of the passions. Rousseau, however, dismisses Rameau’s extreme view of
music as physical sensation and with it the primacy of harmony and
instrumental music. Instead, he roots his theory of music (like his views
on language and society more generally) in the equally radical ground of
feeling (sensibilité). In Rameau’s debate with Rousseau, we see a growing
divide between the advocates of sentiment as physical sensation and those
of sensibilité as feeling, and a nascent split between the advocates of music
as a formalist discipline rooted in mathematics and science, and as a
humanistic discipline rooted in language.
With the notable exception of Rousseau, many of the philosophes
were strongly attracted to, and influenced by, Newtonian experimental
science. Its tenets of scientific observation and empirical evidence
tended to further weaken the hold of rationalistic epistemologies, or, as
in the case of Rameau, to coexist with them. Jean le Rond d’Alembert
(1717–83), co-editor of the Encyclopédie, vociferously championed
Newton and denounced Descartes in the ‘Discours préliminaire’ to the
first volume of the Encyclopédie (1751). D’Alembert is also known for
popularising Rameau’s theories and for his conciliatory role in the
quarrels over French and Italian music. His De la liberté de la musique
(1759), written at some years’ remove from the heat of the Querelle des
Bouffons, advised composers to take what was best from both the French
and Italian styles.20
355 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières

Denis Diderot (1713–84), like d’Alembert, sought to mediate and

synthesise opposing views, though his sympathies, like those of the other
philosophes, lay with Italian music. His early writings, such as the
Mémoires and the article ‘Beau’ in the Encyclopédie, embraced the theories
of Rameau and, like the writings of Rameau, rested on a rationalist
foundation of proportional relationships. Unlike the composer, however,
who believed that harmonic proportions grounded in nature assured a
uniform, universal response, Diderot admitted differences based on the
sensory perception of the individual. Over time Diderot grew disen-
chanted with Rameau, whose advocacy of the corps sonore had begun to
verge on metaphysical obsession. In the late 1750s, the period of Diderot’s
sentimental plays Le fils naturel and Le père de famille, he turned from the
abstraction of mathematical proportions to an emotional sensibility
approaching Rousseau’s. Le neveu de Rameau, a satire dating probably
from 1761 or 1762, critiques Rameau through the caricature of Rameau’s
actual nephew, a musician living in Paris. A multivalent and complex
work, it has received widely varying interpretations. Cynthia Verba, fol-
lowing Otis Fellows, makes a convincing case that the novel represents an
intermediary phase in Diderot’s transition from a position of sensibilité to
one of reflection, restraint and conscious artistic control.21 The ‘Moi’ of
Diderot’s narrative represents the latter position, while the Nephew (‘Lui’)
represents creative furore taken to the point of madness. Yet the ravings of
Lui, an early portrait of the modern ‘genius’, are not devoid of validity. The
exchange between Lui and Moi may ultimately be seen as the tension
between subjectivity and objectivity in the aesthetic experience, a dialectic
representing the extremes that Diderot, like other Enlightenment philoso-
phers, sought to recognise if not to reconcile.

Staging the arts of a new era

An important result of the eighteenth-century querelles was the emergence
of a respect for the arts as the beacon and embodiment of a new society
based on the Enlightenment ideals of love, peace and sensuous (and
sensual) beauty. This assessment of the arts directly opposed the old
Horatian doctrine of ‘Ut pictura (musica) poesis’, a corollary to the theory
of Aristotelian mimesis, which had seen all the arts as different forms of
imitation adhering to the same rules as poetry. It was natural for writers to
assign mimetic values to the fine arts, for the stories, histories and allego-
ries signified in painting could easily be ‘read’. But the Aristotelian theory
that art imitates nature (more specifically, human emotions) was more
difficult to apply to music because of the elusive nature of musical
356 Georgia Cowart

meaning. In the seventeenth century, the art of music had suffered in

comparison to literary genres; if opera was found lacking, instrumental
music tended to be dismissed or ignored. Bernard Le Bovier de
Fontenelle’s frequently quoted bon mot, ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu?’, sum-
marised the conservative view of instrumental music predominating until
at least 1750. This view was increasingly challenged in the later part of the
century. A growing emphasis on the senses, without the need for recourse
to a verbal text, encouraged an unprecedented rise in prestige for music in
general, and for instrumental music in particular. In 1765 François-Jean
Chastellux claimed that the ‘inarticulate’ sound of instrumental music,
instead of weakening its effect, actually made it the preferred language of
the passions. Michel-Paul Guy de Chabanon’s Observations sur la musique
(1779) uses instrumental music – along with the non-verbal response of
animals, babies and savages – as the basis of his attack on reason and
imitation. Like Boyé, Chabanon insists that music pleases independently
of imitation, and acts immediately on the feelings. Robert Neubauer
discusses these developments as an ‘emancipation’ of music from lan-
guage, though as Downing A. Thomas points out the term may be a
misnomer, since this development can more appropriately be viewed as
a synthesis in which music is regarded as an equal partner.
Since sensuous beauty was a quality more associated with women than
with men, the verbal or intellectual content (in semiotic terms, the
signified) of a musical work tended to be seen as masculine, its physical
quality (the signifier) as feminine. An increasing emphasis on the artistic
signifier alarmed those who privileged the mind over the ear. Both
painters and musicians were warned against the ‘seductive’ charms of
colour and musical sound, just as a young man would be warned against
the charms of prostitutes. In music and literature, these charms were
associated with Italy. Le Cerf characterises French music as an innocent
virgin, Italian music as a brash hussy. Such language would intensify
throughout the century. One writer calls Italian music a coquette who
only knows three or four words, which she repeats ‘mincingly’.22 Another
compares Boccherini’s sonatas for keyboard and violin, Op. 5, to a woman
who, instead of maintaining a consistent affection, ‘demands and uses
sweetness and reproach one after another’.23 The language of Boyé in his
L’expression musicale mise au rang des chimères, an all-out defence of
musical sensation, becomes positively orgasmic:
How old are you, Messieurs, to look upon physical pleasures with disdain?
Have you always thought like that? If you had consulted pretty women and
even ugly ones, surely you would have cancelled these words [that the art of
sonority should be considered only from the point of view of physics]. For
357 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières

myself, when certain musical effects spread to all parts of my being, this
voluptuous shudder that we vulgarly call goose bumps, I prefer this precious
thrill to all the tempests of cool observers.24

In the ancien régime, women led a movement away from the expert and
towards the amateur, and away from the intellect and towards the more
delicate feelings and sensations. Trained in the less intellectual atmos-
phere of the salon rather than in the humanistic disciplines of the schools
and academies, they were more apt to appreciate the sensuous qualities of
colour and sound than intellectual content. As a strict, humanistic uni-
versity training gave way to a less rigidly educated class of scholars in the
eighteenth century, a common body of knowledge began to break down.
The separation and rise of the artistic signifier, that is, the appreciation of
music qua music and painting qua painting, parallels this disintegration of
humanistic knowledge. It also seems to parallel a disintegration of political
authority, for when there is a political message to be conveyed, whether
within the institution of church or state, a high level of verbal or intellec-
tual content is demanded. Louis XIV, like the Catholic church, expected
from his court painters and musicians a discursive art that would prop-
agandise the historical and allegorical symbols of his authority. In the
eighteenth century, artists such as Couperin and Watteau, and later
Rameau and Boucher, did not work under such rigid political constraints,
and their art reflects a move away from the intellectual ‘message’ of music
to its sensuous surface.25
A feminine salon culture had a direct impact on eighteenth-century
aesthetics through a cult of love dating back to the salons of Catherine de
Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, and Madeleine de Scudéry. A fasci-
nation with ‘the little things’, including flirtatious games and conversa-
tion, and with utopian dreams of societies based on salon ideals, emerged
as an alternative to the neoclassical ideals of tragic heroism and the
arts of the absolutist state. The study of subtle emotional nuance
likewise became an ideal allowing salon women an introspective under-
standing of the self, independent of the patriarchal domain of state and
family. Concomitantly, the concept of honnêteté, given definition by the
chevalier de Méré and other salon theorists, began to emphasise the pleasing
rather than the edifying goals of musical rhetoric.26 After Lully’s death these
ideals merged with the aims of a progressive group of artists at the Paris
Opéra, including André Campra, Antoine Danchet, Antoine Houdar de La
Motte and Michel de La Barre. The genre of the opéra-ballet, emerging
around 1700, became a manifesto for love versus militarism, sense versus
reason, and libertine pleasure versus stultified academicism. With the
mythological figures of Venus, Cupid and Folly (la Folie, the female fool
358 Georgia Cowart

and goddess of comic madness) as its icons, this genre emphasised a

spectacular element and the voluptuous pleasures of music and dance at
the expense of complex plots and heroic posturing (see Chapter 4).27
Opposing the aesthetic and ideology of the tragédie en musique and
court ballet, a series of opéras-ballets actually satirised a group of older
court ballets with similar titles. For example, Le triomphe des arts (1700),
by La Barre and La Motte, may be seen as a satire and ideological reversal
of Louis XIV’s court ballet Le ballet des arts of 1663 (music by Lully, livret
by Isaac de Benserade), and a self-reflexive celebration of the progressive
arts of the public sphere. The court ballet, an exhibition of the liberal arts
in the service of Athena, goddess of war, had celebrated the arts in the
service of Louis XIV as a symbol of the peace obtained through his military
victories. Le triomphe des arts updates the symbolism of the court ballet by
presenting the arts as leading the way to a new, peaceful society under the
direct inspiration of Venus. In the prologue, the goddess of love challenges
the monarchical figure Apollo by successfully dedicating a rival temple to
Cupid, and in succeeding entrées she serves as patron to a series of
artists who use their art to establish the values of love and beauty in the
service of humanity. In the final entry, Venus effects the transformation of
Pygmalion’s statue into a living woman, symbolic of a new society based
on love and sensual beauty rather than absolutist glory. The livret confirms
that the living sculpture of Pygmalion’s statue can be understood as the
dance itself, literally bringing to life the utopian qualities suggested in the
ballet. The final dialogue of the allegorical characters Music and Dance,
complementing the succession of previous entrées, points to the larger
genre of the opéra-ballet as the site of the confluence of the arts of love and
peace.
Serving as the climax of Le triomphe des arts, Ovid’s tale of Pygmalion
later became the subject of a series of musical stage works representing
successive eighteenth-century aesthetic theories.28 As such they reflect the
philosophical developments discussed above, including a preoccupation
with the nature of the senses and subjectivity. In 1734, the dancer Marie
Sallé danced her own choreography of this story (probably to music by
Jean-Joseph Mouret), creating a prototype of the genre known as the
ballet d’action. This genre dispensed with the stylised costumes, masks
and wigs, along with the symmetrical dances of the earlier ballet. Sallé,
creating a scandal of international proportions as the animated statue,
was the first to trade the customary corseted costume for a flowing tunic
and to incorporate pantomime, at that time known only in the popular
context of the fairs and street theatre. At a climactic moment, the
animation of the statue is followed by a series of dances by means of
which the sculptor teaches her to dance. Like Le triomphe des arts, Sallé’s
359 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières

Pygmalion represents a meta-celebration of dance and of the new genre it

represents.29
If Sallé’s Pygmalion represents the art of dance, Rameau’s Pygmalion of
1748 claims superiority for music. Much of the livret of this work, by Ballot
de Sovot, is drawn from Le triomphe des arts. As Leanne Dodge suggests,
however, Rameau uses the work as a platform for his theory of music as the
animating force behind all other forms of sensation and knowledge, and
his advocacy for the supremacy of sound in sensory and intellectual
development. Tellingly, the moment of the statue’s animation is accom-
panied by the diegetic presence of the corps sonore, the fundamental
generative force of Rameau’s aesthetic theory, and it is the statue’s sensi-
bility to music that leads to her transformation as a fully human self.
Dodge believes that Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances
humaines (1746), written just two years before, had a profound influence
on Rameau’s Pygmalion. Likewise, Condillac’s famous use in his Traité des
sensations (1754) of an awakening statue to illustrate the awakening senses
may have been influenced in turn by Rameau’s acte de ballet.30
Rousseau’s Pygmalion, written in 1762 and first performed in 1770,
was a staged (spoken) monologue interspersed with twenty-six musical
passages, mostly by the composer Horace Coignet. It represented at once
a demonstration of Rousseau’s aesthetic theory and an introduction of a
new genre, the melodrama. In L’essai sur l’origine des langues (1781),
Rousseau elaborated on his theory of the anthropological origins of
music, according to which music, language and gesture had originally
been fused, allowing a full expression of the passions of the heart. With
civilisation and the passage of time that fusion had been ruptured, and the
communicative nature of music lost. Given the utter failure of French
opera to communicate in the language of the passions, in Pygmalion
Rousseau offered a recombination of music, language and gesture (pan-
tomime) that could once again speak to the human heart. Like earlier
settings of the Pygmalion story, Rousseau’s Pygmalion represents a meta-
celebration of a new musical genre, in this case the melodrama.31
More overtly than the other settings of the Pygmalion story, Rousseau’s
represents a meditation on the relationship between the artist and his
work, and on the complicated play of consciousness and subjectivity that
defines that relationship. Pygmalion and his sculpture share a common
self: as Galathée awakens she points to herself while uttering, ‘Moi’, then to
the sculptor while uttering, ‘Encore moi’. The work ends with Pygmalion’s
declaration that he has given ‘all of his being’ to the statue and exists only
through her. In the end, as Shierry Weber puts it, Pygmalion is about the
nature of art as the product of the self. Despite Rousseau’s lip service to
imitation, then, in Pygmalion he replaces mimetic notions with an
360 Georgia Cowart

exploration of the nature and role of subjectivity in the artistic process. It

is, however, important not to oversimplify this interpretation: in Weber’s
analysis, the multiple subjectivities of sculptor and art work derive from
Rousseau’s notion of the reflective, discontinuous nature of the self.32
The Pygmalion story was presented as an allegory not only for different
composers’ and librettists’ artistic theories, but also for the nascent field of
aesthetics itself. It reflected a newly found interest in how art is created
(the relationship of art and artist) and how art is perceived and received
(the relationship of art and audience). Subjective and inter-subjective
experience is central to both of these. Pygmalion, alone in his studio,
uses his art to bring to life a part of himself, and then to witness the
process and effect of that transformation. The statue also represents an
audience, learning to appreciate the senses and the sensuous beauty of the
arts. Pygmalion’s statue, then, represents a new manner of creating and
perceiving the arts, and each of these musical settings celebrates in its own
way a form of art for a society learning to know itself in a new way.

Notes
1 On musical rhetoric in seventeenth-century
France, see Jonathan Gibson, ‘Le naturel et
l’éloquence: the aesthetics of music and
rhetoric in France, 1650–1715’ (PhD thesis,
Duke University, 2003); and
Catherine Gordon-Seifert, Music and the
Language of Love: Seventeenth-Century French
Airs (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2011), 40–57, 138–84, 275–80.
2 Georgia Cowart, ‘Introduction’, in
Georgia Cowart (ed.), French Musical Thought
(Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press,
1989),1–2. On Descartes and his influence on
early eighteenth-century theorists, see Charles
Dill, ‘Music, beauty, and the paradox of
rationalism’, in Cowart (ed.), French Musical
Thought, 197–210. I am also grateful for
excerpts and insights from Dill’s book in
progress, ‘Entretiens musicals: music and
language in early modern France’.
3 Antoine Gombaud, chevalier de Méré,
Oeuvres complètes, ed. Charles-H. Boudhors, 3
vols (Paris: Fernand Roches, 1930), vol. I, 55;
Georgia Cowart, ‘Sense and sensibility in
eighteenth-century musical thought’, Acta
musicologica, 56 (1984), 252–3.
4 Pierre Nicole, preface to Recueil de poésies
chrétiennes et diverses (1671), formerly
attributed to Jean de La Fontaine. The passage
quoted is from La Fontaine, Oeuvres diverses,
ed. Pierre Clarac (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 782.
5 Jean-Laurent Le Cerf de la Viéville,
Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la
musique françoise, 3 vols (1704–6; repr.
Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), vol. II, 284.
6 On seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
quarrels over French and Italian music in the
context of aesthetics and criticism, see
Georgia Cowart, The Origins of Modern
Musical Criticism: French and Italian Music,
1600–1750 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research
Press, 1981).
7 On Crousaz, see Dill, ‘Music, beauty’.
8 Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Réflexions critiques sur
la poésie et sur la peinture (Paris: J. Mariette,
1719; 6th edn, 1755), vol. II, 340.
9 On Dubos, see Rosalie Sadowsky, ‘Jean-
Baptiste Abbé DuBos: the influence of
Cartesian and neo-Aristotelian ideas on music
theory and practice’ (PhD thesis, Yale
University, 1959).
10 See Claude V. Palisca, ‘“Baroque” as a
music-critical term’, in Cowart (ed.),
French Musical Thought, 7–21; and
Charles Dill, Monstrous Opera: Rameau and
the Tragic Tradition (Princeton University
Press, 1998).
11 Cowart, The Origins of Modern Musical
Criticism, 99–100.
12 Arthur M. Wilson, ‘Sensibility in
France in the eighteenth century: a study
in word history’, French Quarterly, 13
(1931), 44.
13 Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical
Thought in the Enlightenment (Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 215.
361 Musical aesthetics of the Siècle des Lumières
14 Downing A. Thomas, Aesthetics of Opera in
the Ancien Régime, 1647–1785 (Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 199–200.
15 The rhetorical principle faded slowly, and
in the later eighteenth century was applied to
instrumental music. See Elaine
Rochelle Sisman, Haydn and the Classical
Variation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993); and Mark Evan Bonds,
Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the
Metaphor of the Oration (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1991).
16 On the philosophes and music, see
Cynthia Verba, Music and the French
Enlightenment: Reconstruction of a Dialogue,
1750–1764 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993);
and Cowart, The Origins of Modern Musical
Criticism, 87–113.
17 See Daniel Heartz, ‘Italian by intention,
French of necessity: Rousseau’s Le devin du
village’, in Marie-Claire Mussat,
Jean Mongrédien and Jean-Michel Nectoux
(eds), Échos de France et d’Italie: liber
amicorum Yves Gérard (Paris: Buchet Chastel,
1997), 31–46.
18 Jacqueline Waeber, ‘Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s “unité de mélodie”’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 62 (2009),
79–143.
19 On Rameau as a theorist and aesthetician,
see Christensen, Rameau and Musical
Thought.
20 Robert M. Isherwood, ‘The conciliatory
partisan of musical liberty: Jean le Rond
d’Alembert, 1717–1783’, in Cowart (ed.),
French Musical Thought, 95–119.
21 Verba, Music and the French
Enlightenment, 91; see also John T. Hamilton,
Music, Madness, and the Unworking of
Language (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2008), 23–32.
22 C. R. Brijon, Réflexions sur la musique et la
vraie manière de l’exécuter sur le violon (Paris:
l’auteur, 1763), 5.
23 Claude Philibert Coquéau, Entretiens sur
l’état actuel de l’Opéra de Paris (Paris: Chez
Esprit, 1779), quoted in Hugo Goldschmidt,
Die Musikästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts
and ihre Beziehungen zu seinem
Kunstschaffen (Zurich, 1890, 1915; repr.
Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968), 239–40.
(Goldschmidt attributes this work to a
pamphleteer named Ginguiné.)
24 Boyé, L’expression musicale mise au rang
des chimères (Paris, 1779; facsimile Geneva:
Minkoff, 1973), 26.
25 Georgia Cowart, ‘Inventing the arts:
changing critical language in the Ancien
Régime’, in Cowart (ed.), French Musical
Thought, 228–9. On the disintegration of
humanistic thought, see Antoine Adam,
Grandeur and Illusion: French Literature and
Society, 1600–1715, trans. Herbert Tint
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972),
142–8.
26 On the rhetoric and aesthetics of honnêteté,
see Don Fader, ‘The honnête homme as music
critic: taste, rhetoric, and politesse in the
17th-century French reception of Italian
music’, Journal of Musicology, 20 (2003), 3–44.
27 Georgia Cowart, The Triumph of Pleasure:
Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle
(University of Chicago Press, 2008), 161–252.
28 My discussion of settings of the Pygmalion
story is indebted to conversations with Devin
Burke, a PhD candidate at Case Western
Reserve University, who is writing a
dissertation on Pygmalion in the context of
animated statues on the French musical stage,
1650–1770.
29 Susan Leigh Foster, ‘Dancing the body
politic: manner and mimesis in eighteenth-
century ballet’, in Sara E. Melzer and
Kathryn Norberg (eds), From the Royal to the
Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998), 162–81.
30 Leanne Dodge, ‘The sensible listener on
stage: hearing the operas of Jean-Philippe
Rameau through Enlightenment aesthetics’
(PhD thesis, Yale University, 2011), 230–301.
On Rameau’s use of the corps sonore at the
moment of transformation, see Christensen,
Rameau and Musical Thought, 228–31.
31 On Rousseau and the melodrama, see
Jacqueline Waeber, En musique dans le texte: le
melodrame, de Rousseau à Schoenberg (Paris:
Van Dieren, 2005), 17–50.
32 Shierry M. Weber, ‘The aesthetics of
Rousseau’s Pygmalion’, Modern Language
Notes, 83 (1968), 900–18.
 18 Paris and the regions from the Revolution
to the First World War
katharine ellis

In a ubiquitous nineteenth-century image of France, Paris is the brain,

head or heart of a living organism.1 It is France’s mindset, or its emotional
core, or its lifeblood. The analogy is so ingrained that it has become easy, in
dealing with post-Revolutionary France, to equate Paris with the nation in
the sense either that everything else was a pale reflection of the capital or
that nowhere else really mattered. This chapter argues for a more differ-
entiated view of France, greater sensitivity to change over time and an
acknowledgement that Paris was not always the model of choice. That
said, no discussion of relationships between Paris and the regions – whether
concerning education, government or the arts – can avoid confronting
France’s degree of centralisation, which considerably exceeded that of
established nations such as Britain, and which in terms of the artistic culture
it fostered stood uneasy comparison during the long nineteenth century
with emerging and young nation states such as Italy and Germany.
In some ways the regions did indeed mirror Paris. Progressively, they
had either set up or been granted their own versions of Parisian musical
institutions, practices and repertoires. From the Napoleonic period to
1864, national legislation had governed theatre (and therefore opera) in
an attempt to ensure coverage countrywide; the first regional branches of
the Paris Conservatoire, those in Lille and Toulouse, dated from 1826. As
organised music-making became more and more prized, quartet societies,
orchestral societies and choral societies spread, often (though not always)
in emulation of Parisian models.
Nevertheless, by 1914 Paris had been living for over thirty years
through unprecedentedly high levels of discontent about its power to set
France’s agenda, even though debates about ‘decentralisation’ – meaning
everything from regional regeneration, to regional emancipation, to dev-
olution and even to federalism – had rumbled through the century from
the 1830s. At the fin de siècle the crucial difference rested in arguments
about relative power becoming overlaid with calls for cultural ‘regionalism’ –
a celebration of ancient forms of diversity rooted in language, dialect,
history and terroir, which brought accepted hegemonies into question.
Musically, the 1890s were especially important in both respects: where the
[362] late 1880s had seen a second attempt at a ‘national’ opera house in the
363 Paris and the regions

provinces (in Rouen),2 the following decade offered a unique kind of open-
air opera festival in a Roman amphitheatre (Provence); a sudden rise in
the number of regional premieres of French opera (especially in Lyons,
Bordeaux, Rouen and Toulouse);3 the founding of a regional composers’
society (the Société des Compositeurs Normands in Rouen, 1892);4
and the self-conscious ‘sharing’ of a modern-day premiere between the
Opéra-Comique and the birthplace of its troubadour composer, Adam
de la Halle (Le jeu de Robin et de Marion, Arras, 1896). In the background,
the collection of folksongs – encouraged by the French state since the
Second Empire – took on a new urgency as ‘regional’ musics gained
enhanced status as compositional raw material within the philosophy of
the Schola Cantorum.
Musically, the French regions rarely get a good press. And unless we
guard against it, the traditions of caricature and polemic can lead to two
methodological dead ends. The first involves quality-testing local stand-
ards of performance against musical experience in the capital; the second
mistakenly conflates décentralisation and régionalisme by requiring
that regional composers display (usually folkloric) antagonism towards
Parisian norms. While work on the historiography of regional music must
perforce address these questions hermeneutically, in this chapter my aim
is more directly historical: to point towards the changing musical relation-
ships between French musical centres, Paris among them. This is not as
easy as it might appear. Research on regional France is so young that it
does not lend itself easily to attempts at synthesis. It remains dispersed,
necessarily positivistic and, for the most part, characterised by minute
attention to a single town, a single institution, a narrowly chronological
period or a single musical society. It is also true that treating metropolitan
centres alone, which constraints of space enforce here, sidelines both folk
musics per se and the vibrant though often seasonal activity of France’s
coastal resorts and spa towns.5 With such caveats in mind, but also as a way
of telling the story of music in nineteenth-century France from a new
perspective, it seems appropriate to begin not with the musicologically
‘normal’ subject of opera but with an examination of a category of music
experienced by French citizens of all social strata, in both urban and rural
contexts: the music of the Catholic church. Tellingly, it immediately
presents us with challenges to centralist musical narratives.

Catholic church music

Church musicians experienced agonising levels of institutional rupture
between the Revolution and Napoleon I’s concordat of 1801.6 Moreover,
364 Katharine Ellis

their music would be fought over by competing reformist camps and

according to the ideals of different governments for the next century or
more. Revolutionary fervour had resulted in the burning of choirbooks, the
destruction of church organs and the disbanding of a national network of
(admittedly small-scale) choirs and choir schools (maîtrises). Napoleon
reinstated the Chapelle Royale as a chapelle impériale in 1806, but it
remained in service only until 1830, the beginning of the July Monarchy;
moreover, Notre-Dame had no more musical authority than any other
cathedral. In short, French church music lacked an obvious Parisian centre
to act as a model for either normal daily or festive regional practice.
That said, Paris was not entirely out of the liturgical-music picture.
It sporadically provided a different kind of hub for sacred music. In
particular, while individual maîtrises around the country struggled to
re-establish themselves in the first half of the century, educational initia-
tives were an obvious target for centralising zeal. We normally associate
the centralisation of French music education with the Paris Conservatoire
(founded as a school for military music in 1792 and as a school for civic
music more generally in 1793–5), but the Conservatoire’s roots were
firmly republican, and beyond its organ class it never played an institu-
tional role in the country’s church music. But the two most important, and
state-funded, schools of church music of the nineteenth century were also
Parisian, and were led by musicians whose love of church music dovetailed
with a love of early music. The first was opened by Alexandre-Étienne
Choron in 1817 as an école primaire de chant, became formalised as a
specialist church music school in 1825 under the title Institution Royale de
Musique Religieuse, and closed in 1834 amid the July Monarchy’s cooling-
off of support for religious institutions. Choral music – Palestrina,
Victoria and Handel especially – reigned supreme here. The second, set
up as the École de Musique Religieuse in 1853, was longer-lived and
affectionately referred to as the École Niedermeyer in honour of its first
director Louis Niedermeyer. In the anti-clerical ferment of the 1880s it was
forcibly rendered a general music school. Up to that point, each of these
schools was intended as a state training ground for the nation’s maîtres de
chapelle. Each contributed to attempts to remove the operatic from church
music in favour of a classic repertoire based on a cappella polyphonic
techniques; the École Niedermeyer’s curriculum added Bach for organists
and plainchant studies for all. In 1894 the privately funded Schola
Cantorum was established by a Bach specialist on the organ (Alexandre
Guilmant) and a maître de chapelle renowned for his ‘Sistine Chapel’
services at Saint-Gervais in Holy Week (Charles Bordes), with the young
composer Vincent d’Indy in tow. When it became a school, in 1896, two-
thirds of the Niedermeyer pattern was repeated. Finally, once the Schola
365 Paris and the regions

established a relationship with Dom André Mocquereau and the monks of

Saint-Pierre de Solesmes for the teaching of plainchant, the triptych was
complete.
It might seem that rural and small parish churches, with their serpents
accompanying plainchant and their local compositional traditions, lie a
long way from such concerns; yet the centralist drive is detectable in
various ways. Hard-line supporters of plainchant convened a conference
in Paris in 1860 and voted to regulate all regional French church music as a
way of purging secular influence and enforcing plainchant reform nation-
ally.7 In addition, the three main schools for sacred music were each
predicated on the notion that Paris provided either a hub or, in more
decentralist mode, a model ripe for regional emulation and adaptation.
The École Niedermeyer’s centralism had the most impact during the period:
between 1853 and 1907 it placed at least 295 church organists and forty-one
maîtres de chapelle across the country.8
Cathedrals had always featured local composers writing music in situ,
their libraries becoming more or less living museums of local musical
tradition. Such tradition could be deeply organic, via dynasties such as the
Wackenthaler family in Alsace, six of whom composed and improvised
their way through church careers in Strasbourg, Sélestat and Haguenau
from around 1800 to well beyond German annexation. Performance in
church could lay such composers open to the charge that they were not
good enough to risk criticism (no applause, no reviews); but liturgical and
ceremonial works undoubtedly contributed to a sense of local repertoire
and culture. Nevertheless, such localism diminished especially in the
second half of the century, as an international repertoire of classic and
modern music progressively established itself through periodicals and
specialist publishers alike.
Chant was interestingly different. Paris had its own, but it was
actually less important than versions in use from Digne, Dijon, Malines
(Mechelen, Belgium), Reims and Cambrai, and Rennes; finally, in the
1890s and 1900s there came an influential raft of publications from the
Benedictine congregation of Solesmes. Nomenclature did not map onto
geographical usage here: while the nineteenth century saw protracted
attempts at Rouen and Toulouse to hold on to local traditions, the Digne,
Rennes and Reims–Cambrai chant books were used all over the country,
and the same would indirectly become true of Solesmes itself.9
Within Catholic church music a different kind of centralisation devel-
oped by which non-Parisian influences became progressively more impor-
tant during the century. Where the musical aesthetics of liturgical practice
were concerned, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican more generally and the
abbey of Solesmes gradually became the ‘centres’ to be reckoned with. For
366 Katharine Ellis

Romantics and for moderate Ultramontanes (French Catholics who put

obedience to the authority of Rome before obedience to the French
state),10 the Sistine Chapel Holy Week model, in which Allegri’s Miserere,
Victoria and the Ingegneri Responsories (then attributed to Palestrina) held
sway, represented both a radical and a reverent break from more or less
operatic compositions, or operatic contrafacta, in liturgical choral practice.
Cathedral choir schools specialising in Sistine Chapel repertoire (and new
compositions emulating its style) increased to the point where, in the
1880s, the capacity to sing this repertoire with grace and ease became,
alongside plainchant performance, a defining feature of a ‘model’ cathe-
dral choir school deemed worthy of state funding even amid rampant
government anti-clericalism. Interestingly, few such schools were in
major metropolitan centres: Strasbourg was the largest of them; Rouen
and Dijon were smallish towns; Langres, Moulins and Autun were even
smaller. As for the congregation of Solesmes, the story of its increasingly
dominant role in plainchant reform challenges all assumptions about
Parisian or even urban power, revolving as it does around centralisation
overseen by the Vatican.
None of this implies that the French state did not itself try to impose
order on regional cathedrals. In particular, from 1872 it put in place
inspection systems and grants to improve sacred music nationally via
the maîtrise system. Archival records suggest that many high-ranking
clergy, including those from Beauvais, Besançon, Montauban, Nancy,
Toul, Nevers, Nîmes, Poitiers and Reims, welcomed the move as a benign,
even promising, indication of support. Most requested inspections (in the
hope of grants). However, by contrast, the bishop of Bayeux responded to
the 1870s government initiative with suspicion; on learning that Charles
Vervoitte, the government inspector, was to visit his cathedral’s maîtrise,
he wrote: ‘This inspection is something new. What is the government’s
intention? What authority does your inspector enjoy, and what are his
rights? . . . I cannot imagine that the government is considering taking
control of plainchant, which is only one aspect of Christian worship.’11
Where maîtrises were concerned, he was right to suggest that he had
detected the thin end of a wedge: by 1885 a chilly anti-clericalism had
ensured that only six mâitrises retained government support; they were
kept afloat as much as heritage sites for plainchant and polyphony as on
account of their liturgical value.12 Further problems for maîtrises arose in
1901, when clerics were banned from teaching the general primary school
curriculum within their Christian schools. In fact the French government
was already moving closer to cutting off all engagement, political and
financial, with the church: the separation of church and state took place
in 1905.
367 Paris and the regions

Secular education
In terms of its size and scope, although not always in terms of the quality of
its teaching, the Paris Conservatoire dominated secular music education
throughout the entire nineteenth century. Thereafter, effective opposition
from d’Indy and an increasingly secularised Schola Cantorum from 1900
gave Paris a system in which, despite the reforms of Gabriel Fauré at the
Conservatoire from 1905, philosophies focused on training the musical
professional (at the Conservatoire) and educating the complete musician
(at the Schola Cantorum) operated simultaneously. Reasonably enough
given its origins, the Conservatoire’s training of musicians at state
expense had always been somewhat utilitarian: it existed primarily to
provide the capital with opera singers and orchestral musicians, and
operated from 1795 according to the implicit recognition that the
piano, taught by and to both sexes, was central to music teaching and
practice. Expectations of over-supply would mean that the regions bene-
fited too. But could a single institution serve a nation the size of France?
The debate was joined early.
The idea of setting up regional music schools on a Parisian model went as
far back as 1798, when the Paris Conservatoire’s first director Bernard
Sarrette responded to criticisms that his institution was of purely local import,
took stock of the maîtrises lost to the Revolution, and formulated a project to
replace them with secular schools in three tiers.13 Until the Napoleonic
period, when the minister of the interior, Jean-Antoine Chaptal, tried to
set up six regional conservatoires as part of a new law on public education,
there was no central government appetite for such provision: Paris was
indeed to serve the entire nation.14 The same held during the Restoration, as
strikingly illustrated by Choron’s trips across France, during which he
hunted out potential students who would be whisked away by government
diktat from the humblest of rural homes to begin a new life as the next
generation of Parisian musicians, sacred and secular. Here was central-
isation in action, ironically counterpointed by Choron’s advocating a
regional network of municipal and state schools and, as he put it, ‘trying
to start a musical insurrection’ to that end wherever he went.15
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the regions had similar ideas. As early as 1793,
the composer Adrien Boieldieu (1775–1834) had campaigned for a con-
servatoire in his home town of Rouen; music education in Lille was
available via its concert society, called Le Grand Concert, from 1801,
and its académie, some of whose singers Choron wished to train at his
Paris school, opened in 1816;16 in 1805, Toulousains began suggesting that
the council open a conservatoire, succeeding after a petition of 1820;17
Marseilles opened a municipal music school in 1821; Strasbourg opened
368 Katharine Ellis

one in 1827, by which time the conservatoires at Lille and Toulouse had
become nationalised as official branches (succursales) of the Paris operation.
Questions of regional difference surface immediately when one con-
siders how and why such conservatoires – all of which started life inde-
pendently of Paris and none of which had the range of classes found
there – were formed. Unity of purpose with Paris lies only in a predom-
inant utilitarianism: Strasbourg needed violinists of a quality to serve the
municipal theatre, and initially targeted strings; Marseilles needed male
opera singers, but was also committed to the group teaching of the work-
ing classes in the name of liberalism and moral improvement; Toulouse,
another town within the famed Midi catchment area for male voices,
started with singing only, and was wedded to Italianate traditions of
repertoire and practice. It is hardly surprising, then, to find closer regu-
latory contact with Paris causing tensions such that the story of the six
regional conservatoires nationalised by the mid-1840s (those of Lille and
Toulouse in 1826; Metz and Marseilles, 1841; Dijon, 1845; and Nantes,
1846) features iterated games of cat and mouse. Paris tried to subordinate
its branches through the imposition of Paris-centric directors, inspection,
target-setting and curriculum reform, together with threats to withdraw
funding, ‘national’ status or both; and regional individuals and councils
attempted to maintain local traditions. Most importantly, however,
nationalised regional conservatoires were always preparatory schools
either unfunded by the state (Metz, Marseilles to 1852) or funded only
marginally. Ironically, the prize of ‘national’ status or recognised ‘feeder
school’ came at the highest cost to individual town councils.
However, being a ‘feeder school’ for Paris was not the only regional
option. In a phenomenon that stretched well into the twentieth century,
several towns, among them Lyons (1840) and Bordeaux (1843), developed
private music schools out of more general music and social clubs variously
entitled cercles or sociétés philharmoniques. Bordeaux extended this idea to
popular forms of musical practice in 1880, when the Harmonie de
Bordeaux, founded in 1860, opened a music school.18 The most extreme
case evident thus far is that of Rouen, where failure to persuade the town
council to support a conservatoire (excepting a short-lived singing school,
1844–9) extended over more than a century from Boieldieu’s initial call in
1793. The deadlock was broken only in 1904 when the Musique Municipale
(developed from local pre-1870 military bands) set up an associated insti-
tution, and this was closely followed by a similar venture, for brass players
only, under the aegis of the Harmonie de Rouen-Saint-Sever in 1911.19 Back
in Paris, the determination to widen access to secular music education had
already taken a striking turn with the founding in 1902 of the Conservatoire
Mimi Pinson – a music school for working-class girls.
369 Paris and the regions

Both François Lesure and Emmanuel Hondré have reflected on the

extent to which the educational ventures of the long nineteenth century
represent decentralising or centralising tendencies. As Lesure notes, once
the 1790s attempt at a national network failed, French central govern-
ments of whatever stripe lacked the will and authority to enforce anything
more than piecemeal adherence to Parisian régimes; and not once did
Paris create a regional branch as part of a national plan.20 Arguably, this
latter situation changed in the 1880s, when a new raft of succursales was
created (Avignon, Nancy, Rennes, Le Havre: all 1884) amid increased
professionalisation of the regional schools and new demands that they
adhere to the Paris curriculum.21 But the swift annulment of national status
in Avignon (1889) and Le Havre (1891) suggests continuing levels of
instability. Conversely, the most decentralising effect of the far-flung con-
servatoires, like Marseilles, was to create secondary centres; despite strug-
gles to retain some semblance of regional identity, subordination to and
dependence on Paris remained a constant.22
The Paris Schola Cantorum model was intentionally different. In
essence it combined the cercle and conservatoire models in a liberal
approach to educating the ‘whole’ musician; and crucially, where unity
in the guise of uniformity was a classically republican and centralist goal at
the Paris Conservatoire, the Schola became famous for celebrating a pre-
Revolutionary France of contrasting regions whose cultural individuality
was ripe for nurturing – especially the Latinism of the south.23 By 1902,
Avignon and Marseilles had ‘Scholae’; Lyons established one in 1902–3;
Bordeaux and Nantes were to follow soon after; and what turned out to be
the flagship school, at Montpellier, was opened in 1905. The Schola’s
influence here and elsewhere is complex: new regional branches, such as
those in Avignon and Marseilles, Lyons and Montpellier, were diverse
(mostly choirs, not schools), adopting selectively from the Paris Schola’s
praxis, where alongside regionalism we also find centralising and decentral-
ising behaviours. It contributed, for example, to a growing official respect
for French stage music of the Baroque and Rococo eras, but decentralised it
by mounting regional performances. Otherwise its educational centralism
took non-Parisian forms: instrumental composition in post-Beethovenian
styles, and the study and performance of Vatican-approved sacred reper-
toires (Gregorian chant and Palestrinian polyphony). In addition, across
France, Schola and Conservatoire philosophies were not total opposites; in
the pre- and post-war periods, the personal networks of Guy Ropartz at
Nancy and Strasbourg, conservatoire and Antoine Mariotte at Orleans,
enabled these two institutions to reconcile otherwise antagonistic
principles.24
370 Katharine Ellis

Music for the stage

It was probably in relation to stage music that the loudest pro- and anti-
decentralisation voices were heard. It was also in relation to stage music that
France’s greatest and most rehearsed musical crises arose. Under dereg-
ulation (the liberté des théâtres, 1791–1806), state licensing (1806–64) and
deregulation again (1864 onwards), the conundrum of how to organise
French theatre, and with it French opera, endured. In addition, after 1864
the rise of cheap genres, with operetta at their head, seemed unstoppable,
and the vitality of café-concert traditions – occasionally in local dialects and
with their own regional hierarchies – was ever-increasing.
Paris never had enough national stages to absorb all the high-genre
works written by debutant and young composers. Moreover, several
aspects of the bureaucratic system militated against flexibility and oppor-
tunity. Neither the Opéra (presenting grand or recitative opera in French,
and ballet) nor the Opéra-Comique (staging number or dialogue opera in
French until the early 1870s) nor the Théâtre-Italien (presenting opera in
Italian) could easily take on a work written with one of the other theatres
in mind; the Théâtre-Lyrique of 1851–70, designed as a solution to the
problem, provided only temporary and partial respite.25 The regions could
help only in theory. For most of the period, composers intent on an
international career knew that a regional premiere would gain them little
national attention; Paris managers of the national theatres, which were still
licensed even after 1864, were contractually obliged to provide a certain
number of brand new works. They cross-subsidised them with classics;
taking on the second-hand was usually wasted effort in contractual and
potentially financial terms. A regional premiere, then, could bury a work for
ever, and constant battles against insolvency among regional theatre man-
agers suggested that production standards would not be high.26 Increased
commitment to decentralisation in the 1890s – raising the profile of selected
regional stages in order to mitigate any sense of a ‘wasted’ premiere –
continued in the following decade but also tended to leap-frog the regions
in worrying ways.27 Jules Massenet’s output was especially telling: although
some of his works played in the regions before they reached the capital,
those premiered outside Paris were premiered abroad: in London, Brussels,
Vienna and (in the case of six of his nine premieres between 1902 and 1914)
Monte Carlo. The story of the attempt to turn the Théâtre des Arts in Rouen
into a regional théâtre-lyrique (i.e. a ‘debutant’s stage’) perhaps suggests
why. Specialising in young unknowns with no ballast from their more
established French rivals risked marginalising a regional théâtre-lyrique
from the outset. It is no wonder that its first ‘national’ success, in 1890,
was a work by an established composer that happened to have languished
371 Paris and the regions

unperformed in France since its Weimar premiere in 1877: Saint-Saëns’s

Samson et Dalila (1890).
Such dilemmas represented one of the last pre-war phases of a century-
old inequality between Paris and the regions, where neither a dedicated
Napoleonic system (with towns hierarchically arranged in arrondisse-
ments served by a mixture of resident and touring companies) nor an
ostensibly level playing field (the 1864 free market, with optional munic-
ipal subsidy) yielded stability. Setting aside the more obvious victims of
Napoleonic centralisation, such as the German theatre in Strasbourg
(forcibly closed in 1808), the core problem was grand opera, about
which we hear the first anguished regional voices within four years of
the premiere of Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable.28 The central problem was
not, as caricature suggests, suspicion of the new, but realism about what
provincial theatres could afford. Moreover, as the salaries of star singers
escalated, rendering the actors in provincial companies second-class citi-
zens, grand opera rapidly became viewed as something of a pariah – a
situation that the ‘one genre per theatre’ structure of theatrical management
in Paris prevented. When bankruptcies occurred it was invariably the opera
company that took down the rest of the operation. Regional debate on how
(or whether) to fund grand opera via the public purse was accordingly
impassioned: including it in a manager’s contract could threaten everyone’s
theatrical diet and the entire company’s livelihood.
If, for the vast majority of the period, regional theatres in France
depended on Paris for their core repertoires, change is apparent from the
1880s onwards. The rise of Brussels and Monte Carlo as ‘French’ operatic
centres, and continuing hostility to putting Wagner on a national stage in
Paris, opened up new possibilities. Paris had seen an infamous Tannhäuser
at the Opéra in 1861 and a creditable thirty-eight-show run of Rienzi at
the Théâtre-Lyrique in 1869; but the composer’s post-1870 diatribes meant
that mounting his works on a state-funded stage was anathema in a capital
where opera was still symbolic of national pride. In the wake of the riot-
inducing Lohengrin at the (private) Eden-Théâtre in 1887, decentralist races
to stage Wagner in French meant that Der fliegende Holländer (Lyons, 1893),
Die Walküre (Nantes, 1893), Die Meistersinger (Lyons, 1896), Tristan (Aix-
les-Bains, 1897) and Siegfried (Rouen, 1900) all preceded Paris. The first
complete French Ring took place in Lyons in 1904.
Specifically regionalist initiative, however, was best illustrated by the
phenomenon of the open-air opera arena. Here the Midi produced a new
type of spectacle rooted in its regional environment such that attempts to
stage it elsewhere required both recomposition and compromise. To
experience the real thing, it was the Parisians who were obliged to travel –
as indeed they did. In 1890s Provence, the coalescence of an established
372 Katharine Ellis

and language-based regionalism centring on the work of the writer

Frédéric Mistral with his Félibrige (a celebration of Latinité that distin-
guished the south from the Parisian ‘north’) and the historic vestiges of
Roman life all contributed to the building of a distinctive tradition that
took quasi-operatic spectacle to new heights and required performing
forces of a type and number (typically a double symphony orchestra or
military band) that recalled the great fêtes of post-Revolutionary and
Napoleonic France. It also cemented regional difference by sharing
arena space with the bullfighting fraternity. In Paris, the circus rings that
Jules Pasdeloup and Charles Lamoureux customarily used as concert
venues could seat up to 7,000; the neo-Roman arena at Béziers could
hold 10,000 more. Saint-Saëns in particular seemed to appreciate the
unique environment of these arenas: after he had been commissioned to
write incidental music for the spectacular Déjanire (1898), open-air pre-
sentation inspired two more of his works. Adapted for Paris where neces-
sary, Les barbares (1901), Parysatis (1902) and Déjanire created a crucial
inheritance for the more ardently regionalist Déodat de Séverac, whose
Héliogabale, written for Béziers in 1910, was set to a text by the Félibrige
poet Émile Sicard and scored in part for the Catalan cobla ensemble with
its distinctive type of oboe.29

Professionals and amateurs

A distinctive feature of the Provençal arena spectacular was its mix of
amateurs and professionals – a mix that, where concert life was concerned,
characterised music-making much more widely across France. Both Paris
and the regions had amateur societies (who often performed for charity
and whose mission tended to involve musical regeneration) and, from the
1840s especially, networks of orphéons and fanfares (which performed
competitively and whose mission was rooted in thoughts of social, rather
than musical, regeneration; see Chapter 13 above). Differences between
Parisian and regional practice were, in this context, primarily differences
of degree, affecting levels of interpenetration between the two spheres.
From the time of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (1828–1967)
and extending to the humblest theatre band, Paris orchestras were highly
professionalised; by contrast, until a few ventures such as those in Lyons
and Angers took off during the Third Republic, regional orchestras,
including theatrical ones, were not. And while Paris audiences were used
to mixed-repertoire professional programmes and the combination of a
professional orchestra and an amateur choir, they would surely have
rebelled at the generic mix that awaited audiences in Lille in 1849, when
373 Paris and the regions

chamber music (a Haydn quartet and a Beethoven cello sonata) and male-
voice choruses (sung by the Orphéon Lillois) shared a single concert
programme.30 Certainly, nothing of the sort occurred in Paris chamber
circles, even during Lamoureux’s so-called Séances Populaires de Musique
de Chambre, founded in 1863.
Nationally, the orphéon and fanfare movements had modest beginnings
as outgrowths of post-Revolutionary musiques militaires or German
Liedertafeln, with their choral branch taking wing from 1819 in Paris,
when the potential of massed singing became clear as a result of the
primary-school activities of Guillaume-Louis Bocquillon-Wilhem.31 The
movement’s expansion continued to involve children but quickly shifted
its emphasis to the moral improvement of working men (not women).
Male-voice choirs covered the country, with the exception of small pockets
including Corsica and the Lozère, by 1870.32 With a largely dedicated three-
and four-voice repertoire for choirs, and operatic arrangements aplenty for
bands, gargantuan competitive festivals characterised the movement from
the 1850s. National and international meetings in Paris (1859) and London
(1860) brought new levels of attention. Nevertheless, all attempts at creating
a national federation of orphéons, with a head office in Paris, failed: the
movement grew rapidly, informally (although always under police surveil-
lance) and in line with commercial imperatives in ways belied by the
bureaucratic orderliness of competition reports in the specialist press.
One date, however, became an orphéon fixture nationwide: with St Cecilia
as its adopted patron saint, each 22 November saw celebratory Masses,
processions and concerts in towns and villages across France, often involv-
ing a wide spectrum of the local community.
Mixed amateur choral music, which was established more quickly in
Protestant circles than in Catholic ones, currently offers a less distinct
picture. Choral festivals emerged on the west coast (the Association
Musicale de l’Ouest, 1835, centring on Niort, La Rochelle and Poitiers)
under the inspiration of Désiré Martin-Beaulieu; Lille hosted a ‘Festival du
Nord’ with large-scale choral repertoire in 1829, 1838 and 1851; Strasbourg,
true to its Germanic-leaning traditions, mounted Haydn’s Creation in the
same year as Paris (1801), and during the second half of the century (before
annexation) became a centre for choral music extending from Bach to
Berlioz, who conducted his L’enfance du Christ there in 1863.

Concerts
Where the state took a lively regulatory interest in both opera (until the
1864 legislation) and the orphéon, concerts were, for much of the period,
374 Katharine Ellis

the business of private individuals and groups. Beyond the national Poor
Tax levy on ticket sales, whether organised as independent events by
touring virtuosos or conductors, as subscription series by local chamber
groups or cercles, or as part of larger concerns, even Parisian concerts
attracted little state interest and, still less, state subsidy, until well into the
Third Republic. Their histories are thus often difficult to unearth, which
leads to the familiar risk that early historical narratives are over-
determined by the shape of those records that most readily reach the
public domain, either in official archives or in print. Although newspaper
reviews reveal much about repertoire and taste, our institutional knowl-
edge of the main Paris concert societies of the turn of the nineteenth
century – the Haydn-centric Concert des Amateurs de la Rue de Cléry
(1799–1805), for instance – is still very much a work in progress;33 and the
task of following early concert virtuosos around regional France is largely
dependent on the collection of ephemera that are only now becoming
valued.34 Such elusive informality means that questions of centralisation
and decentralisation have less regulatory purchase in concert life than in
many other types of French music-making; and the patterns that are
becoming increasingly perceptible as research progresses are often attrib-
utable to other causes: perceptions of aesthetic value and what we would
now call cultural capital, bourgeois projects to educate and civilise, and
more general ideologies of regeneration.35
In Paris, professional traditions in concert activity ranged widely.
Benefit concerts organised as one-offs by freelance individuals and their
professional colleagues gave priority to operatic extracts and virtuoso
showpieces, in a tradition closely bound up with the availability of
piano-makers’ concert halls such as those of Érard and Pleyel, and with
a focus on novelty. In contrast, seasonal mini-series such as the Holy Week
Concerts Spirituels (revived 1805‒31) favoured the presentation of estab-
lished favourites, both sacred and secular, with a focus on German and
Italian music that reached back to Pergolesi’s evergreen Stabat mater and
forward to Mozart, Beethoven and the Italian Ferdinando Paer
(1771–1839). More homogeneous performance traditions of the sonata-
based repertoire that became known as la musique sérieuse started a little
later, spearheaded by the Quatuor Baillot (1814‒40), led by Pierre Baillot.
They created loyal followers who prized reverent silence in the concert hall,
and, once outside it, proselytised loudly for an emerging canon of ‘greats’.36
The founding of the celebrated Société des Concerts du Conservatoire is
best seen as an orchestral response to such developments.
This density and regularity of concert activity was impossible in regional
France of the same period. Nevertheless, new research on late eighteenth-
century Bordeaux reveals tantalising comparisons with Parisian tastes and
375 Paris and the regions

practices.37 In addition, traditional narratives of Parisian dominance, such

as François-Antoine Habeneck’s single-handed introduction of the French
to Beethoven symphonies between 1807 and 1814 (with the Société des
Concerts from 1828), are at the very least nuanced by information from
northern France, which witnessed the national premieres of Beethoven’s
Second Symphony in Douai in 1812 and the ‘Pastoral’ in 1823; in the south,
Marseilles had heard all the symphonies in concert by 1829.38
In the latter part of the period, one especially prominent strand of
decentralisation deserves attention: the rise of the ‘democratising’ orches-
tral concert. The numerous ‘promenade’-type concerts of orchestral and
dance music put on by figures such as Philippe Musard had been geared
towards entertainment; other potentially educational performances in
informal settings, such as those by bands in parks, or even those brought
by musicians from the Far East or north Africa to the later Expositions
Universelles, were also sources of diversion, distraction and, in the case of
the latter, curiosity.39 By contrast, the democratising orchestral concert was
a ‘worthy’, almost didactic, event. The trailblazer was Pasdeloup, who
created the ‘Concerts Populaires’ tradition in 1861. More famous conduc-
tors such as Charles Lamoureux or Édouard Colonne followed in the 1870s,
eventually crushing Pasdeloup’s venture on account of their higher per-
formance standards, but apart from the introduction of a chorus to do
large-scale choral repertoire they left the basic recipe untouched: play the
orchestral classics, with a few solo items for light relief, in a hall large
enough to bring a substantial number of tickets within reach of a new,
lower-class, audience.40 Across the city, circus rings were pressed into
service; a later and striking example of a non-standard venue aimed at
attracting new concert audiences was the 1893 Palais d’Hiver built within
the Jardin Zoologique d’Acclimatation (the Paris Zoo).41 Since re-educating
public taste potentially opened doors to local funding, this was a winning
formula. Toulouse founded its series in the same year as Pasdeloup’s series;
in 1866 Bordeaux followed (with a Sunday-afternoon offshoot of the con-
certs of the Société Philharmonique de Sainte-Cécile), and in 1868 Rennes;
in the 1870s, Marseilles (1870), Lyons (1873) and Rouen (1875) joined the
trend; and in the following decade the Nantes Société Philharmonique
renamed itself the Société des Concerts Populaires and, with 6,000 francs
of new subsidy, inaugurated a series focused on large-scale works with
chorus.42 In general, Parisian filiation was at once resented and required.
The orchestras of Charles Lamoureux and Édouard Colonne received a
hostile reception in Lille in 1884 and 1906 respectively from knots of loyal
subscribers, on grounds of unfair competition with the local orchestra;43
conversely, the briefest glance at the vice-présidents d’honneur of another
concerts populaires organisation, the Association Artistique d’Angers
376 Katharine Ellis

(founded in 1877), reveals dependence on those same Parisian conductors,

plus Guilmant, Pasdeloup and Saint-Saëns, not to mention a host of
Parisian honorary founding members, and Charles Gounod as président
d’honneur.44

Considerable research is necessary before the tentative arguments put for-

ward here can be synthesised into anything resembling a confident analysis
of inter-urban musical relationships in France during the long nineteenth
century. Yet already the picture is more complex than that of a hegemonic
Paris towering over a France as obscure as it is profonde. The reasons for
such complexity are already beginning to emerge, with border territories,
folkloric traditions, French anti-clericalism, the centralising power of the
Catholic church and pre-Napoleonic inheritances among them. And while
Parisian musicians and government agents were always likely to attempt
centralisation (or decentralisation controlled from the centre), it is by
pushing on the pressure points of their failures that we shall come to a
fuller understanding of French musical self-determination. In so doing we
shall perhaps rediscover for French music of the post-Revolutionary period
something of what today’s Parisians scent as the annual July exodus beck-
ons: the richness of experience, lying beyond Haussmann’s unified facades,
which makes France diverse and Frenchness plural.

Notes
1 See, for example, Émile Mathieu de Monter in
Revue et gazette musicale, 42–3 (1875), 338;
Paul Scudo, Critique et littérature musicales (Paris:
Hachette, 1856), 270–1. Variants include the idea
of Paris as the boiler of a central heating system: see
Gustave Bénédit, Discours sur la décentralisation
artistique (Marseilles: Barlatier-Feissat, 1850); or,
more loosely, as a light source: Léon Escudier, La
France musicale, 23 (1 May 1859), 178.
2 See Clair Rowden, ‘Decentralisation and
regeneration at the Théâtre des Arts, Rouen,
1889–1891’, Revue de musicologie, 94 (2008),
139–80. The first attempt was in Lyons,
1865–1872.
3 Paul-Marie Masson (ed.), Rapport sur la
musique française contemporaine (Rome:
Armani & Stein, 1913), 51.
4 Such societies, however, were not 1890s
inventions. Douai, for instance, had a Société
d’Émulation to foster regional composition
from 1832. See Guy Gosselin, ‘Douai’, in Joël-
Marie Fauquet (ed.), Dictionnaire de la
musique en France au XIXe siècle (Paris:
Fayard, 2003), 399.
5 On the latter, see especially François Lesure,
‘La villégiature lyrique ou la musique dans les
casinos au XIXe siècle’, in Jean Gribenski,
Marie-Claire Mussat and Herbert Schneider
(eds), D’un opéra l’autre: hommage à Jean
Mongrédien (Paris: Université de Paris IV-
Sorbonne, 1996), 389–98.
6 For a compelling example, see Marie-Claire
Le Moigne-Mussat, Musique et société à Rennes
aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (Geneva: Minkoff,
1988), 115–21.
7 As its proponents acknowledged, the
infrastructure to implement such a system was
inadequate. See Ikuno Sako, ‘The importance
of Louis Niedermeyer in the reform of
nineteenth-century church music in France’
(PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2007),
136–9.
8 See Sako on Niedermeyer graduates: ‘The
importance of Louis Niedermeyer’, 158,
210–49.
9 For Rouen, see Joël-Marie Fauquet and Kurt
Lueders, ‘Vervoitte, Charles’, in Fauquet (ed.),
Dictionnaire, 1274; for Besançon, see
François Lesure, Dictionnaire musical des villes
de province (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999), 91.
10 In opposition to Gallicans, whose high
levels of independence from Rome had been
377 Paris and the regions
enshrined in France since Louis XIV’s time.
For a succinct account, see Benjamin Van Wye,
‘Organ music in the Mass of the Parisian rite to
1850 with emphasis on the contributions of
Boëly’, in Lawrence Archbold and William
J. Peterson (eds), French Organ Music from the
Revolution to Franck and Widor (University of
Rochester Press, 1995), 19–20.
11 Paris, Archives Nationales, F19 3948, folder
‘Bayeux’.
12 See Katharine Ellis, Interpreting the
Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-
Century France (Oxford University Press,
2005), 199.
13 François Lesure, ‘Une polémique post-
révolutionnaire: le rétablissement des maîtrises’, in
Marie-Claire Mussat, Jean Mongrédien and Jean-
Michel Nectoux (eds), Échos de France et d’Italie:
liber amicorum Yves Gérard (Paris: Buchet
Chastel, 1997), 85.
14 On Chaptal, see Jean-Yves Rauline, Les
sociétés musicales en Haute-Normandie,
1792–1914: contribution à une histoire sociale
de la musique (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses
Universitaires du Septentrion, 2001), 540. On
earlier Parisian inertia, see François Lesure, ‘La
musique dans le Midi vue de Paris’, in
François Lesure (ed.), La musique dans le Midi
de la France: XIXe siècle (Paris: Klincksieck,
1996), 7.
15 Gabriel Vauthier, ‘Un chorège moderne’,
part 3, Revue musicale, 8 (1 December
1908), 617. Vauthier cites a Choron letter of
1 August 1819, recipient unidentified.
16 Guy Gosselin, ‘Lille’, in Fauquet (ed.),
Dictionnnaire, 695. See Vauthier, ‘Un chorège
moderne’, part 2, Revue musicale, 8 (1 May
1908), 438–9.
17 J. Gachet, ‘Toulouse’, in Fauquet (ed.),
Dictionnaire, 1225.
18 J. Aizic, ‘Bordeaux’, in Fauquet (ed.),
Dictionnnaire, 163.
19 Rauline, Les sociétés musicales en Haute-
Normandie, 545.
20 Lesure, Dictionnaire, 36.
21 This was the main condition for enhanced
subsidy in 1885. See Caroline Leo and Georgina
Moscovitch (eds), Conservatoire de Nantes: 150e
anniversaire (Nantes: CNR, 1996), 62.
22 Emmanuel Hondré, ‘L’école de musique de
Marseille ou les enjeux d’une nationalisation
(1821–1841)’, in Lesure (ed.), La musique dans
le Midi de la France, 105.
23 Andrea Musk, ‘Aspects of regionalism in
French music during the Third Republic: the
Schola Cantorum, d’Indy, Séverac and
Canteloube’ (PhD thesis, University of Oxford,
1999), 18.
24 Ibid., 49–50.
25 See Katharine Ellis, ‘Systems failure in
operatic Paris: the acid test of the Théâtre-
Lyrique’, in Mark Everist and Annegret Fauser
(eds), Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer:
Paris, 1830–1914 (University of Chicago Press,
2009), 49–71.
26 See Rowden, ‘Decentralisation and
regeneration’ for a succinct account of this
long-standing problem.
27 Paul-Marie Masson (ed.), Rapport sur la
musique française contemporaine (Rome:
Armani & Stein, 1913), 54–5.
28 In La France départementale (1835),
excerpted and critiqued by François-Joseph
Fétis in Revue musicale, 9 (28 June 1835),
201–4.
29 Discussed in detail in Musk, ‘Aspects of
regionalism’, 150–1. See also Robert
Waters, Déodat de Séverac: Musical Identity
in fin de siècle France (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2008).
30 Guy Gosselin, ‘Jalons pour une étude de la
musique de chambre à Lille au XIXe siècle’, in
Damien Colas, Florence Gétreau and
Malou Haine (eds), Musique, esthétique et
société au XIXe siècle (Collines de Wavre:
Mardaga, 2007), 65.
31 Paul Gerbod, ‘Vox populi’, in Joseph Marc
Bailbé (ed.), La musique en France à l’époque
romantique, 1830–1870 (Paris: Flammarion,
1991), 232.
32 Ibid., 233.
33 For an insight into the revival of this series
during a single year, see Patrick Taïeb, ‘Le
Concert des Amateurs de la rue de Cléry en l’an
VIII (1799‒1800), ou la résurgence d’un
établissement “dont la France s’honorait avant
la Révolution”’, in Hans Erich Bödeker and
Patrice Veit (eds), Les sociétés de musique en
Europe 1700‒1920: structures, pratiques
musicales, sociabilités (Berlin: Berliner
Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2007), 81‒99.
34 See Patrick Taïeb, Natalie Morel-Borotra
and Jean Gribenski (eds.), ‘Avant-propos’,
in Le musée de Bordeaux et la musique,
1783–1793 (Mont Saint-Aignan:
Publications des Universités de Rouen et du
Havre, 2005), 8.
35 Current research includes the collaborative
project on concert history from its beginnings to
1914, ‘Répertoire des programmes de concert en
France’. A searchable database is located at Centre
de Musique Baroque de Versailles, www.cmbv.
com (accessed 22 May 2014).
36 See William Weber, The Great
Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert
Programming from Haydn to Brahms
(Cambridge University Press, 2008); and
Olivier Morand, ‘Les derniers feux des concerts
378 Katharine Ellis
spirituels parisiens, 1816‒1831’ (PhD thesis,
École des Chartes, 2002).
37 See Weber, The Great Transformation, 50‒1.
38 See Guy Gosselin, ‘Douai’, in Fauquet (ed.),
Dictionnaire, 399; on Marseilles, ‘R . . .’ in
Revue musicale, 5/6 (March 1829), 126; and
Bernadette Lespinard, ‘Le répertoire choral à la
Schola et autour de la Schola (1903–1953)’, in
Isabelle Bretaudeau (ed.), Le mouvement
scholiste de Paris à Lyons: un exemple de
décentralisation musicale avec Georges Martin
Witkowski (Lyons: Symétrie, 2004), 97.
39 The most extended discussion, of one
particular fair, is Annegret Fauser, Musical
Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair
(University of Rochester Press, 2005).
40 See Yannick Simon, Jules Pasdeloup et les
origines du concert populaire (Lyons: Symétrie,
2011), and Jann Pasler’s discussions of
Pasdeloup in ‘Democracy, ethics, and
commerce: the concerts populaires movement
in late 19th-century France’, in Bödeker and
Veit (eds), Les sociétés de musique en Europe
1700‒1920, 455‒65.
41 See Jann Pasler, ‘Material culture and
postmodern positivism: rethinking the
“popular” in late nineteenth-century French
music’, in Writing through Music: Essays on
Music, Culture, and Politics (Oxford
University Press, 2008), 440.
42 These dates, which derive from preliminary
newspaper and archive research, should be
regarded as provisional and an invitation to
future work, not least because they differ
slightly from those provided by Pasler in
‘Democracy, ethics, and commerce’, 459.
43 Lesure, Dictionnaire, 42–3.
44 Yannick Simon, L’association artistique
d’Angers (1877–1893): histoire d’une société de
concerts populaires, suivie du répertoire des
programmes des concerts (Paris: Société
Française de Musicologie, 2006), 190–1.
 Select bibliography

The books and articles listed here are recommended for further reading. As they are
listed by chapter, items may be repeated.

Chapter 1
Aubrey, Elizabeth, The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1996)
Everist, Mark (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music (Cambridge
University Press, 2011)
Fassler, Margot E., Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in
Twelfth-Century Paris (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
The Virgin of Chartres: Making History through Liturgy and the Arts (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010)
Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade
in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008)
Grier, James, The Musical World of a Medieval Monk: Adémar de Chabannes in
Eleventh-Century Aquitaine (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Levy, Kenneth, ‘Toledo, Rome and the Legacy of Gaul’, Early Music History, 4
(1984), 49–99
O’Neill, Mary, Courtly Love Songs of Medieval France: Transmission and Style in
the Trouvère Repertoire (Oxford University Press, 2006)
Page, Christopher, The Christian West and its Singers: The First Thousand Years
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010)
The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France, 1100–1300
(London: Dent, 1989)
Rankin, Susan, ‘Carolingian music’, in Rosamund McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian
Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge University Press, 1994),
274–316
Robertson, Anne Walters, The Service-Books of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis:
Images of Ritual and Music in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)
Wright, Craig, Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1550 (Cambridge
University Press, 1989)

Chapter 2
Bent, Margaret, and Andrew Wathey (eds), Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle,
Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)
Butterfield, Ardis, Poetry and Music in Medieval France: From Jean Renart to
Guillaume de Machaut (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Fallows, David, Dufay, rev. edn (London: Dent, 1987)
Huot, Sylvia, Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet: The Sacred and the Profane
[379] in Thirteenth-Century Polyphony (Stanford University Press, 1997)
380 Select bibliography

McGrady, Deborah, and Jennifer Bain (eds), A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut

(Leiden: Brill, 2012)
Page, Christopher, Discarding Images: Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval
France (Oxford University Press, 1993)
The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France, 1100–1300
(London: Dent, 1989)
Plumley, Yolanda, The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of
Machaut (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Plumley, Yolanda, and Anne Stone (eds), A Late Medieval Songbook and its Context:
New Perspectives on the Chantilly Codex (Bibliothèque du Château de Chantilly,
Ms. 564) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009)
Roesner, Edward H., François Avril and Nancy Freeman Regalado (eds), Le roman de
Fauvel in the Edition of Mesire Chaillou de Pesstain: A Reproduction in Facsimile
of the Complete Manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français 146
(New York: Broude Brothers, 1990)
Strohm, Reinhard, The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 (Cambridge University
Press, 1993)
Strunk, Oliver (ed.), Source Readings in Music History, rev. edn (New York:
Norton, 1998)
Wright, Craig, The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and
Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)
Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1550 (Cambridge University
Press, 1989)

Chapter 3
Alden, Jane, Songs, Scribes, and Society: The History and Reception of the Loire Valley
Chansonniers (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Boynton, Susan, and Eric Rice (ed.), Young Choristers, 650–1700 (Woodbridge:
Boydell and Brewer, 2008)
Brooks, Jeanice, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France (University of
Chicago Press, 2000)
Brown, Howard Mayer, Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–1550 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1963)
Cazaux, Christelle, La musique à la cour de François Ier (Paris: École Nationale des
Chartes, 2002)
Dobbins, Frank, Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford University Press, 1992)
Dumitrescu, Theodor, ‘Who was “Prioris”? A royal composer recovered’, Journal of
the American Musicological Society, 65 (2012), 5–65
Fitch, Fabrice, ‘‘‘Who cares who is speaking?” An essay in style-criticism’, Acta
musicologica, 82 (2010), 49–70
Freedman, Richard, The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso and their Protestant Listeners:
Music, Piety, and Print in Sixteenth-Century France (University of Rochester
Press, 2001)
Higgins, Paula (ed.), Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning, and Context in Late
Medieval Music (Oxford University Press, 1999)
381 Select bibliography

Kirkman, Andrew, ‘Johannes Sohier dit Fede and St Omer: a story of pragmatic
sanctions’, in Fabrice Fitch and Jacobijn Kiel (eds), Essays on Renaissance Music in
Honour of David Fallows: Bon jour, bon mois et bonne estrenne (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 2011), 68–79
‘La musique à la collégiale à la fin du moyen âge’, in Nicolette Delanne-Logié
and Yves-Marie Hilaire (eds), La cathédrale de Saint-Omer: 800 ans de mémoire
vive (Paris: CNRS, 2000), 133–8
Lesure, François, Musicians and Poets of the French Renaissance (New York, Merlin
Press, 1955)
Marie-Alexis, Colin, ‘Une source peu connue pour l’histoire du motet en France au
XVIe siècle: les Moduli, vulgo Moteta dicti, quatuor, quinque, & sex vocum. Liber
primus de Pierre Certon (Paris, Adrian Le Roy et Robert Ballard en 1555)’, in
Christine Ballman and Valérie Dufour (eds), ‘La la la . . . Maistre Henri’: mélanges
de musicologie offerts à Henri Vanhulst (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 109–25
Roche, Jerome, Lassus (Oxford University Press, 1982)
Van Orden, Kate, ‘Children’s voices: singing and literacy in sixteenth-century
France’, Early Music History, 25 (2006), 209–56
Vendrix, Philippe, La musique à la Renaissance (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1999)
Vendrix, Philippe (ed.), Johannes Ockeghem: actes du XLe Colloque international
d’études humanistes (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998)
Wegman, Rob C., ‘Fremin Caron at Amiens: new documents’, in Fabrice Fitch and
Jacobijn Kiel (eds), Essays on Renaissance Music in Honour of David Fallows:
Bon jour, bon mois et bonne estrenne (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), 2–32

Chapter 4
Anthony, James R., French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, rev. and
expanded edn (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1997)
Barthélemy, Maurice, André Campra, 1660–1744: étude biographique et musicologi-
que (Arles: Actes Sud, 1995)
Bennett, Peter, ‘Antoine Boësset’s sacred music for the Royal Abbey of Montmartre:
newly identified polyphony and plain-chant musical from the “Deslauriers”
manuscript (F-Pn Vma ms. rés. 571)’, Revue de musicologie, 91 (2005), 321–67
Burke, Peter, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1992)
Cowart, Georgia, The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle
(University of Chicago Press, 2008)
Cowart, Georgia (ed.), French Musical Thought, 1600–1800 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press, 1989)
Durosoir, Georgie, L’air de cour en France, 1571–1655 (Liège: Mardaga, 1991)
Heyer, John Hajdu (ed.), Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Music of the French Baroque:
Essays in Honor of James R. Anthony (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Lully Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Isherwood, Robert M., Music in the Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth
Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973)
382 Select bibliography

Launay, Denise, La musique réligieuse en France du Concile de Trente à 1804

(Paris: Société Française de Musicologie, 1993)
Massip, Catherine, L’art de bien chanter: Michel Lambert, 1610–1696 (Paris: Société
Française de Musicologie, 1999)
Powell, John S., Music and Theatre in France, 1600–1680 (Oxford University Press,
2000)
Tunley, David, Couperin (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1982)
Van Orden, Kate, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (University
of Chicago Press, 2005)

Chapter 5
Anthony, James R., French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, rev. edn
(New York: Norton, 1978)
Baumont, Olivier, La musique à Versailles (Versailles: Centre de Musique Baroque
de Versailles, 2007)
Brook, Barry S., La symphonie française dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle
(University of Paris, 1962)
Cabrini, Michele, ‘Expressive polarity: the aesthetics of tempête and sommeil in the
French Baroque cantata’ (PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2005)
Duron, Jean (ed.), Regards sur la musique au temps de Louis XV (Wavre: Mardaga,
2007)
Gustafson, Bruce, and David Fuller, A Catalogue of French Harpsichord Music,
1699–1780 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
Hennebelle, David, ‘Nobles, musique et musiciens à Paris à la fin de l’Ancien
Régime: les transformations d’un patronage séculaire (1760–1780)’, Revue de
musicologie, 87 (2001), 395–417
Leppert, Richard, Arcadia at Versailles (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1978)
Montagnier, Jean-Paul C., ‘Catholic church music in France’, in Simon P. Keefe (ed.),
The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music (Cambridge University
Press, 2009), 113–26
Pierre, Constant, Histoire du Concert Spirituel, 1725–1790 (Paris: Société Française de
Musicologie, 1975)
Spitzer, John, and Neal Zaslaw, The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution,
1650–1815 (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Tunley, David, The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
Viano, Richard, ‘By invitation only: private concerts in France during the second
half of the eighteenth century’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, 27
(1991), 131–62

Chapter 6
Bloom, Peter (ed.), Music in Paris in the Eighteen-Thirties (Stuyvesant, NY:
Pendragon Press, 1987)
Boyd, Malcolm (ed.), Music and the French Revolution (Cambridge University
Press, 1992)
Cairns, David, Berlioz, vol. I: The Making of an Artist 1803–1832 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2000)
383 Select bibliography

Berlioz, vol. II: Servitude and Greatness, 1832–1869 (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1999)
Charlton, D. G. (ed.), The French Romantics, 2 vols (Cambridge University Press, 1984)
Ellis, Katharine, Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century
France (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Johnson, James H., Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995)
Locke, Arthur, ‘The background of the Romantic movement in French music’,
Musical Quarterly, 6 (1920), 257–71
Locke, Ralph P., ‘Paris: centre of intellectual ferment’, in Alexander Ringer (ed.),
The Early Romantic Era: Between Revolutions: 1789 and 1848 (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 32–83
Mason, Laura, Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics, 1787–1799
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996)
Metzner, Paul, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris
during the Age of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
Mongrédien, Jean, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism,
1789–1830, trans. Sylvain Frémaux (Portland, OR: Amadeus, 1996)
Parker, Roger, and Mary Ann Smart (eds), Reading Critics Reading: Opera and
Ballet Criticism in France from the Revolution to 1848 (Oxford University Press,
2001)
Pierre, Constant (ed.), Musique des fêtes et cérémonies de la Révolution française
(Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1899)
Schwarz, Boris, French Instrumental Music between the Revolutions, 1789–1830
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1987)

Chapter 7
Duchesneau, Michel, L’avant-garde musicale et ses sociétés à Paris de 1871 à 1939
(Sprimont: Mardaga, 1997)
Fauquet, Joël-Marie, ‘Chamber music in France from Cherubini to Debussy’, in
Stephen E. Hefling (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music (New York:
Schirmer, 1998), 287–314
Fauser, Annegret, Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair (University of
Rochester Press, 2005)
Hart, Brian, ‘The French symphony’, in A. Peter Brown and Brian Hart (eds), The
Symphonic Repertoire, vol. IIIB: The European Symphony from ca. 1800 to ca.
1930: Great Britain, Russia, and France (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2008), 527–755
Holoman, D. Kern, The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828–1967
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)
Nectoux, Jean-Michel, Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life, trans. Roger Nichols
(Cambridge University Press, 1991)
Parks, Richard S., The Music of Claude Debussy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1989)
Samson, Jim (ed.), The Late Romantic Era: From the Mid-19th Century to World
War I (London: Macmillan, 1991)
384 Select bibliography

Smith, Richard Langham, and Caroline Potter (eds), French Music since Berlioz
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)
Studd, Stephen, Saint-Saëns: A Critical Biography (London: Cygnus Arts, 1999)
Trezise, Simon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Debussy (Cambridge University
Press, 2003)

Chapter 8
Caron, Sylvain, François de Médicis and Michel Duchesneau (eds), Musique et
modernité en France, 1900–1945 (Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2006)
Chimènes, Myriam (ed.), La vie musicale sous Vichy (Brussels: Complexe, 2001)
Duchesneau, Michel, L’avant-garde musicale et ses sociétés à Paris de 1871 à 1939
(Sprimont: Mardaga, 1997)
Fulcher, Jane, The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France, 1914–1940
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Kelly, Barbara L., Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus,
1913–1939 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013)
Kelly, Barbara L. (ed.), French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939
(University of Rochester Press, 2008)
Nichols, Roger, The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris, 1917–1929 (London: Thames
and Hudson, 2002)
Perloff, Nancy, Art and the Everyday: Popular Entertainment and the Circle of Erik
Satie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)
Smith, Richard Langham, and Caroline Potter (eds), French Music since Berlioz
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)
Sprout, Leslie, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2013)
Watkins, Glenn, Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky
to the Postmodernists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994)

Chapter 9
Aguila, Jésus, Le Domaine Musical: Pierre Boulez et vingt ans de création
contemporaine (Paris: Fayard, 1992)
Boivin, Jean, La classe de Messiaen (Paris: Bourgois, 1995)
Born, Georgina, Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization
of the Musical Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
Chimènes, Myriam (ed.), La vie musicale sous Vichy (Brussels: Complexe, 2001)
Cohen-Levinas, Danielle (ed.), Vingt-cinq ans de création musicale contemporaine:
l’Itinéraire en temps réel (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998)
Dallet, Sylvie, and Anne Veitl, Du sonore au musical: cinquante années de recherches
concrètes, 1948–1998 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001)
Gavoty, Bernard, and Daniel Lesur (eds), Pour ou contre la musique moderne?
(Paris: Flammarion, 1957)
Gayou, Evelyne, Le GRM: Groupe de Recherches Musicales: cinquante ans d’histoire
(Paris: Fayard, 2007)
Goléa, Antoine, Vingt ans de musique contemporaine: de Messiaen à Boulez (Paris:
Seghers, 1962)
385 Select bibliography

Mathieu, Julien, ‘Un mythe fondateur de la musique contemporaine: le “scandale”

provoqué en 1954 par la création de Déserts d’Edgar Varèse’, Revue d’histoire
moderne et contemporaine, 51 (2004), 129–52
Menger, Pierre-Michel, Le paradoxe du musicien: le compositeur, le mélomane et l’État
dans la société contemporaine (Paris: Flammarion, 1983)
Pistone, Danièle (ed.), Le théâtre lyrique français, 1945–1985 (Paris: Champion, 1987)
Poirier, Alain, André Boucourechliev (Paris: Fayard, 2002)
Porcile, François, Les conflits de la musique française, 1940–1965 (Paris: Fayard, 2001)
Potter, Caroline, Henri Dutilleux: His Life and Works (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997)
Schaeffer, Pierre, La musique concrète (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967)
Simeone, Nigel, ‘Messiaen in 1942: a working musician in occupied Paris’, in
Robert Sholl (ed.), Messiaen Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–33
Solomos, Makis, ‘Les évolutions récentes de la musique contemporaine en France’,
Musik und Äesthetik, 4 (2000), 80–9

Chapter 10
Anthony, James R., ‘The French opera-ballet in the early 18th century: problems of
definition and classification’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 18
(1965), 197–206
Auld, Louis E., The Lyric Art of Pierre Perrin, Founder of French Opera (Henryville,
PA: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1986)
Charlton, David, French Opera 1730–1830: Meaning and Media (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2000)
Grétry and the Growth of Opéra-Comique (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
Chazin-Bennahum, Judith, ‘Jean-Georges Noverre: dance and reform’, in
Marion Kant (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ballet (Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 87–97
Cook, Elisabeth, Duet and Ensemble in the Early Opéra-Comique (New York:
Garland, 1995)
Dill, Charles, Monstrous Opera: Rameau and the Tragic Tradition (Princeton
University Press, 1998)
Girdlestone, Cuthbert, Jean-Philippe Rameau: His Life and Work (New York:
Dover, 1969)
Kintzler, Catherine, Poétique de l’opéra français de Corneille à Rousseau (Paris:
Minerve, 1991)
Théâtre et opéra à l’âge classique: une familière étrangeté (Paris: Fayard, 2004)
McClellan, Michael, ‘Battling over the lyric muse: expressions of revolution and
counterrevolution at the Théâtre Feydeau, 1789–1801’ (PhD thesis, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994)
Rushton, Julian, ‘The theory and practice of Piccinnisme’, Proceedings of the Royal
Musical Association, 98 (1971–2), 31–46
Thomas, Downing A., Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647–1785
(Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Vendrix, Philippe, Grétry et l’Europe de l’opéra-comique (Brussels: Mardaga, 1992)
Vendrix, Philippe (ed.), L’opéra-comique en France au XVIIIe siècle (Liège: Mardaga,
1992)
386 Select bibliography

Waeber, Jacqueline (ed.), Musique et geste en France de Lully à la Révolution:

études sur la musique, le théâtre et la danse (Berne: Peter Lang, 2009)
Wild, Nicole, and David Charlton (eds), Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique Paris:
répertoire 1762–1972 (Liège: Mardaga, 2005)

Chapter 11
Bara, Olivier, Le théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique sous la Restauration: enquête autour
d’un genre moyen (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2001)
Everist, Mark, Music Drama at the Paris Odéon, 1824–1828 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2002)
Gerhard, Anselm, The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the
Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
Huebner, Steven, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and
Style (Oxford University Press, 1999)
Lacombe, Hervé, The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century, trans.
Edward Schneider (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)
Pistone, Danièle (ed.), Le théâtre lyrique français, 1945–1985 (Paris: Champion, 1987)
Smith, Marian, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle (Princeton University Press, 2000)
Wild, Nicole, Dictionnaire des théâtres parisiens au XIXe siècle: les théâtres et la
musique (Paris: Aux Amateurs des Livres, 1989)

Chapter 12
‘Chants et danses de tradition’, Le monde alpin et rhodanien, 1–2 (1984)
Charles-Dominique, Luc, Musique populaire en Pays d’Oc (Toulouse: Loubatières, 1987)
Charles-Dominique, Luc, and Jérôme Cler (eds), La vocalité dans les pays d’Europe
méridionale et dans le bassin méditerranéen, conference proceedings, La Napoule,
2000 (Saint-Jouin-de-Milly: Modal, 2002)
Charles-Dominique, Luc, and Yves Defrance (eds), L’ethnomusicologie de la France:
de ‘l’ancienne civilisation paysanne’ à la globalisation, conference proceedings,
Nice, 2006 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008)
Charles-Dominique, Luc, and Pierre Laurence (eds), Les hautbois populaires:
anches doubles, enjeux multiples (Saint-Jouin-de-Milly: Modal, 2002)
Defrance, Yves, L’archipel des musiques bretonnes (Paris and Arles: Cité de la
Musique/Actes Sud, 2000)
Durif, Olivier, Musiques des monts d’Auvergne et du Limousin (Paris and Arles:
Cité de la Musique/Actes Sud, 1998)
Guilcher, Jean-Michel, La chanson folklorique de langue française: la notion et son
histoire (Créteil: Atelier de Danse Populaire, 1985)
Guilcher, Yves, La danse traditionnelle en France: d’une ancienne civilisation pay-
sanne à un loisir revivaliste (Saint-Jouin-de-Milly: FAMDT, 1998)
Mabru, Lothaire, Musique, musiques . . . pratiques musicales en milieu rural
(XIXe–XXe siècle): l’exemple des Landes de Gascogne (Belin-Beliet: Centre
Lapios, 1988)
Marcel-Dubois, Claudie, and Marie-Marguerite Pichonnet-Andral, L’instrument de
musique populaire, usages et symboles, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Réunion des
Musées Nationaux, 1980)
387 Select bibliography

Vrod, Jean-François (ed.), Violon populaire: le caméléon merveilleux (Saint-Jouin-

de-Milly: Modal, 2003)

Chapter 13
Dauncey, Hugh, and Philippe Le Guern (eds), Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the
Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain (Farnham: Ashgate,
2011)
Dillaz, Serge, Vivre et chanter en France, vol. I: 1945–1980 (Paris: Fayard/Chorus, 2005)
Drott, Eric, Music and the Elusive Revolution: Cultural Politics and Political Culture
in France, 1968–1981 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011)
Green, Stuart, and Isabelle Marc, ‘European popular musics: a polycentric dialogue’,
special issue, Journal of European Popular Culture (2013)
Haworth, Rachel, ‘The stuff of legend: examining media representations of the
Brassens-Brel-Ferré myths’, Contemporary French Civilization, 36 (2011), 19–32
Lebrun, Barbara (ed.), Chanson et performance: mise en scène du corps dans la
chanson française et francophone (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012)
Looseley, David, ‘Authenticity and appropriation: a discursive history of French pop-
ular music’, in Diana Holmes and David Looseley (eds), Imagining the Popular in
Contemporary French Culture (Manchester University Press, 2013), 47–84
Looseley, David (ed.), ‘Popular music in France’, special issue, French Cultural
Studies, 16/2 (2005)
Robine, Marc, Anthologie de la chanson française: des trouvères aux grands auteurs du
XIXe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995)
Il était une fois la chanson française: des trouvères à nos jours (Paris: Fayard/Chorus,
2004)
Tinker, Chris, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel: Personal and Social Narratives in
Post-War Chanson (Liverpool University Press, 2005)
Volume! La revue des musiques populaires. This academic journal covers a wide range
of popular styles. Articles are mostly in French, though some appear in English.

Chapter 14
Everist, Mark (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music (Cambridge
University Press, 2011)
The Cambridge History of Medieval Music (Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming)
Haines, John, ‘The origins of the musical staff’, Musical Quarterly, 91 (2009), 327–78
Haines, John (ed.), The Calligraphy of Medieval Music (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011)
Hiley, David, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)

Chapter 15
Grier, James, ‘Adémar de Chabannes, Carolingian musical practices, and nota
romana’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 56 (2003), 43–98
Hen, Yitzhak, The Royal Patronage of Liturgy in Frankish Gaul to the Death of Charles
the Bald (877) (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2001)
Levy, Kenneth, Gregorian Chant and the Carolingians (Princeton University Press,
1988)
388 Select bibliography

‘Gregorian chant and the Romans’, Journal of the American Musicological Society,
56 (2003), 5–41
Loseby, S. T., ‘Gregory’s cities: urban functions in sixth-century Gaul’, in Ian Wood
(ed.), Franks and Alamanni in the Merovingian Period: An Ethnographic
Perspective (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 239–84
McKinnon, James, The Advent Project: The Later-Seventh-Century Creation of the
Roman Mass Proper (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)
Moreira, Isabel, Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000)
Page, Christopher, The Christian West and its Singers: The First Thousand Years
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010)
Smith, Julia M. H. (ed.), Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in
Honour of Donald A. Bullough (Leiden: Brill, 2000)
Wood, Susan, The Proprietary Church in the Medieval West (Oxford University
Press, 2006)

Chapter 16
Adamson, John (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under
the Ancien Régime, 1500–1750 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999)
Benoit, Marcelle, Musiques de cour: chapelle, chambre, écurie, 1661–1733 (Paris:
Picard, 1971)
Brooks, Jeanice, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France (University of
Chicago Press, 2000)
‘From minstrel to courtier: the royal musique de chambre and courtly ideals in
sixteenth-century France’, Trossinger Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, 1 (2001),
39–49
Burke, Peter, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s
Cortegiano (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995)
Cazaux, Christelle, La musique à la cour de François Ier (Paris: École Nationale des
Chartes, 2002)
Chaline, Olivier, ‘The Valois and Bourbon courts c. 1515–1750’, in John Adamson
(ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under the
Ancien Régime, 1500–1750 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 67–94
Durosoir, Georgie, and Thomas Leconte (eds), Louis XIII musicien et les musiciens
de Louis XIII (Versailles: Centre de Musique Baroque, 2003)
Graham, Victor E., and William McAllister Johnson, The Royal Tour of France by
Charles IX and Catherine de’ Medici: Festivals and Entries 1564–6 (University
of Toronto Press, 1979)
Guillo, Laurent, Pierre I Ballard et Robert III Ballard: imprimeurs du roy pour la
musique (1599–1673), 2 vols (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2003)
Haar, James, ‘The courtier as musician: Castiglione’s view of the science and art of
music’, in Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (eds), Castiglione: The Ideal
and the Real in Renaissance Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1983), 165–89
Handy, Isabelle, Musiciens au temps des derniers Valois, 1547–1589 (Paris: Champion,
2008)
389 Select bibliography

Heartz, Daniel, Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music: A Historical Study and
Bibliographical Catalogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969)
Knecht, Robert J., The French Renaissance Court (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2008)
Le Moël, Michel, ‘La chapelle de musique sous Henri IV et Louis XIII’, Recherches sur
la musique française classique, 6 (1966), 5–26
Lesure, François, and Geneviève Thibault, Bibliographie des éditions d’Adrian Le Roy
et Robert Ballard, 1551–1598 (Paris: Société Française de Musicologie, 1955)
McGowan, Margaret M., Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French
Obsession (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008)
Solnon, Jean-François, La cour de France (Paris: Fayard, 1987)

Chapter 17
Cannone, Belinda, Philosophies de la musique, 1752–1789 (Paris: Aux Amateurs des
Livres, 1990)
Christensen, Thomas, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment
(Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Cowart, Georgia, The Origins of Modern Musical Criticism: French and Italian Music,
1600–1750 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981)
‘Sense and sensibility in eighteenth-century musical thought’, Acta musicologica,
56 (1984), 251–66
Cowart, Georgia (ed.), French Musical Thought, 1600–1800 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press, 1989)
Didier, Béatrice, La musique des Lumières: Diderot, l’Encyclopédie, Rousseau (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1985)
Dill, Charles, Monstrous Opera: Rameau and the Tragic Tradition (Princeton
University Press, 1998)
‘Music, beauty, and the paradox of rationalism’, in Georgia Cowart (ed.), French
Musical Thought, 1600–1800 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989),
197–210
Dodge, Leanne, ‘The sensible listener on stage: hearing the operas of Jean-Philippe
Rameau through Enlightenment aesthetics’ (PhD thesis, Yale University, 2011)
Goldschmidt, Hugo, Die Musikästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts und ihre Beziehungen zu
seinem Kunstschaffen (Zurich, 1890, 1915; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968)
Haeringer, Étienne, L’esthétique de l’opéra en France au temps de Jean-Philippe
Rameau (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1990)
Kintzler, Catherine, Poétique de l’opéra français de Corneille à Rousseau (Paris:
Minerve, 1991)
Neubauer, John, The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis
in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986)
Thomas, Downing A., Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647–1785
(Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Music and the Origins of Language: Theories from the French Enlightenment
(Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Verba, Cynthia, Music and the French Enlightenment: Reconstruction of a Dialogue,
1750–1764 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
390 Select bibliography

Waeber, Jacqueline, ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “unité de mélodie”’, Journal of the

American Musicological Society, 62 (2009), 79–143
Waeber, Jacqueline (ed.), ‘Rousseau in 2013: afterthoughts on a tercentenary’, Journal
of the American Musicological Society, 66 (2013), 251–95

Chapter 18
Cooper, Jeffrey, The Rise of Instrumental Music and Concert Series in Paris,
1828–1871 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983)
Duchesneau, Michel, L’avant-garde musicale et ses sociétés à Paris de 1871 à 1939
(Sprimont: Mardaga, 1997)
Fauquet, Joël-Marie (ed.), Dictionnaire de la musique en France au XIXe siècle (Paris:
Fayard, 2003)
Fauser, Annegret, Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair (University of
Rochester Press, 2005)
Gerhard, Anselm, The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the
Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
Johnson, James H., Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995)
Kelly, Barbara L. (ed.), French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939
(University of Rochester Press, 2008)
Lacombe, Hervé, The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century, trans.
Edward Schneider (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)
Lesure, François, Dictionnaire musical des villes de province (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999)
Pasler, Jann, ‘Paris: conflicting notions of progress’, in Jim Samson (ed.), The Late
Romantic Era: From the Mid-19th Century to World War I (London: Macmillan,
1991), 389–416
Walton, Benjamin, Rossini in Restoration Paris: The Sound of Modern Life
(Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Weber, William, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming
from Haydn to Brahms (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
 Index

Because Paris is referred to extensively, the city is not indexed separately, but its institutions are
(e.g. Paris Conservatoire).

Aachen, 322, 326 Alizée, 285

Charlemagne’s court chapel, 5, 322 Allegri, Gregorio, Miserere, 366
Abelard, Peter, 11, 13 Amalarius, 325, 326
Dolorum solatium, 13 amateur music making, 372–3
Académie Celtique, 265 Amédée VIII de Savoie, 41
Académie de Lille, 367 Amy, Gilbert, 190
Académie de Poésie et de Musique, 55, 58, 70 Jeux, 190
Académie d’Opéra, 202 ancien régime, 89, 112, 116, 118, 133, 201, 217,
Académie Française, 84, 265 221, 257, 331, 357
poetry prize, 281 André, Yves Marie, Essai sur le beau, 350
Académie Impériale de Musique, 226 Angers, 51, 372
Académie Royale, Rouen, 209 Angiolini, Gaspare, 209, 216
Académie Royale de Danse, 84 Anne de Bretagne, 51, 332, 334
Académie Royale de Musique, 83, 92, 202, 204, Anne of Austria, 77, 201
205, 208, 211, 216 Anonymous IV, 11, 21, 22, 23, 296, 297, 301, 305,
known as l’Opéra, 202, 222 306, 307
see also Opéra Apaches, Les, 168
Académie Royale de Musique, Lyons, 202 Aperghis, Georges, 223
Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, 84 Avis de tempête, 195
accordion, 255, 262, 275, 277 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 162, 164
acte de ballet, 208–9, 359 Apollinaris, Sidonius, 315
Adam, Adolphe, Giselle, 231 Arbeau, Thoinot, Orchésographie, 60
Adam, canon, 11 Arcadelt, Jacques, 59, 66
Adam de la Halle, 16, 31, 32, 303 Archives de la Parole, 266, 268
Le jeu de Robin et de Marion, 17, 26, 27, 363 Arianism, 316
Adémar de Chabannes, 305, 309 Aristotle, 86, 296, 347, 352
Affaire Ravel, see Ravel, Maurice logic, 11
Agricola, Alexander, 51, 57, 64 Aristoxenus, 347, 350
Aguila, Jésus, 187 Arnaudin, Félix, 246, 250
‘Ah, ça ira’ (Ladré), 114 ars nova, 28, 29, 33, 37, 295
Air (electronic music duo), 285 ars subtilior, 38–9, 42, 294
air de cour, 59, 60, 69, 73, 74, 75–7, 85, 342 ‘En attendant’ series, 38
airs à boire, 60, 105 Artaud, Antonin, 188
Airs de différents autheurs mis en tablature de Artaud, Pierre-Yves, 192
luth, 75 Asso, Raymond, 279
airs mesurés, 55 Association Artistique d’Angers, 375
airs sérieux, 70, 79, 105 Association Musicale de l’Ouest, 373
Akoka, Henri, 174 Astruc, Gabriel, 232
Alcuin, 7, 18, 322 Atelier Théâtre et Musique, 223
aleatory music, 188–9 Attaingnant, Pierre, 54, 57, 339
Alembert, Jean le Rond d’, 101, 211, 354, 355 Auber, Daniel-François-Esprit, 231, 236
De la liberté de la musique, 354 Fra Diavolo, 234
[391] ‘Discours préliminaire’ to the Encyclopédie, 354 Léocadie, 228, 231
392 Index

Auber, Daniel-François-Esprit (cont.) Balzac, Honoré de, 236

La muette de Portici, 229, 231, 236 Illusions perdues, 127
opéras comiques, 237 Bambini, Eustachio, 209
Aubert, Jacques, 98 Bancquart, Alain, 190
Aubert, Louis, Cinéma, 222 Explosante-fixe, 190
Aubin, Tony, 180 Bara, Olivier, 237
Aubrey, Elizabeth, 16 Barbara, 278
Auget, Paul, 71 Bardot, Brigitte, 282
Augustus, Caesar, 313 baroque, first musical application of term, 350
Auletta, P., Il maestro di musica, 212 Baroque period, 69, 159, 225, 369
Auric, Georges, 163, 165, 173, 176, 177 Barraqué, Jean, 186, 187
Chemin de lumière, 222 Piano Sonata, 188
Austin, William, 153 Barraud, Henri, L’astrologue dans le puits, 222
Avignon, 36, 37 Numance, 181, 222
Conservatoire, 369 Barrault, Jean-Louis, 182
Schola Cantorum, 369 Barrière, Étienne-Bernard-Joseph, 102
Avitus of Vienne, 317 Bartók, Béla, 264, 268
Aznavour, Charles, 279, 281 basse-continue, see basso continuo
basso continuo, 77, 81, 82, 83
Babbitt, Milton, Three Compositions for Piano, 188
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 169, 364, 373 earliest use in France, 74
revival, 147 Bastille, 111, 113
Bastille Opera House, see Opéra Bastille
Bacilly, Bénigne de, 79
Bacon, Roger, 306 Bataille, Gabriel, 75, 77
bagad, 254 Batteux, Charles, 350, 351
Bagge, baron de, 95, 96, 97 Les beaux arts réduits à un même principe,
350
bagpipe, 245, 246, 247–8, 255, 259, 262, 267, 275
Béchonnet, 248 Baudrier, Yves, 173, 177, 181
binioù-kozh, 247, 254 Baumgarten, Alexander, Aesthetica, 346
bodega, 248, 259 Bavaria, 341
Bayeux, bishop of, 366
boha, 248
cabreta, 247, 254, 255, 262 ‘Bayeux’ chansonnier (manuscrit de Bayeux),
Scottish, 247 57, 272
Baïf, Jean-Antoine de, 55, 58, 59 Bayle, François, 187, 190
Béart, Guy, 278
Baillot, Pierre, 118, 119, 125
Baker, Josephine, 276 Beatles, The, 245, 281, 282
bal musette, 275, 276, 277 ‘Revolution 9’, 187
Beauchamps, Pierre, 79
Balbastre, Claude, 99, 106, 107
organ concertos, 107 Beaujoyeux, Balthasar de, 53, 337, 338
balet comique de la royne, Le (1581), 337 tragédies lyriques, 337
ballade, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38, 272 Beaulieu, Girard de, 55, 336, 337
Le balet comique de la royne (with Jacques
Ballard, Pierre, 71
Ballard, Robert, 54, 339 Salmon), 53, 337
successors, 339 beauty, concept of, 350
Ballard publishing house, 71, 75, 110 Beauvais, cathedral school, 17
Beauvilliers, Abbess Marie de, 74
ballet, 11, 53, 79, 81, 216, 230–1, 336
ballet bouffon, 209 Bécaud, Gilbert, 279
ballet d’action, 209, 216, 231, 358 ‘The Day the Rains Came’, 279
‘Let It Be Me’, 279
ballet de cour, 70, 71, 78, 79, 201, 202, 204, 358
Ballet de la déliverance de Renaud, 70 ‘What Now My Love?’, 279
ballet des muses, Le, 84 Bechet, Sidney, 276
ballet en action, see ballet d’action Bedrossian, Franck, 195
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 118, 119, 122, 123, 133,
ballet héroïque, 206
ballet-pantomine, 217, 228, 231 137, 151, 161, 236, 373, 374
ballet réaliste, 162 Fidelio, 213, 226
Ballets Russes, 161, 165, 166, 168, 170, 234 Piano Concerto No. 5 ‘Emperor’, 140
Piano Sonata in E, Op. 14 No. 1, 121
Ballets Suédois, 165
Ballif, Claude, 187 scherzos, 144
Un coup de dés, 190 string quartets, Op. 18, 126
393 Index
symphonies in Marseilles, 375
Symphony No. 2, 375
Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’, 118, 146
Symphony No. 6 ‘Pastoral’, 119, 375
Béjart, Maurice, 187
Belle Époque, 275, 283
Bénabar, 283
Benedict XII, Pope, 36
Benedict of Aniane, 321, 324, 325
Benjamin, George, 184
Benoist, François, 139, 140
Benserade, Isaac de, 79
Béranger, Pierre-Jean de, 273, 279
Berg, Alban, 182, 184
Lulu, 223, 232
bergerette, see virelai
Berio, Luciano, 186, 223
Berlin, Irving, ‘That Mysterious Rag’, 162
Berlioz, Hector, 113, 118, 122–3, 129, 136,
167, 236
La damnation de Faust, 137
early works, 120
L’enfance du Christ, 373
Grande messe des morts, 116
Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale,
123
Harold en Italie, 122, 123
Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie, 122
Mémoires, 118
Les nuits d’été, 155
Roméo et Juliette, 123, 231
Symphonie fantastique, 120, 122
Te Deum, 116
Les Troyens, 221, 232
Bernac, Pierre, 175
Bernard, Claude, 228
Bernier, Nicolas, 81, 89, 93
Berton, Henri-Montan
Le délire, 213
Les rigeurs du cloître, 213
Bertrand, Antoine de, Airs spirituels, 61
Besozzi, Gaetoni, 91
Béziers, neo-Roman arena, 372
Bibliothèque Municipale de Dijon, 299
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département
Audiovisuel, 266
bilingualism, 257
Binchois, Gilles, 36, 41
Filles a marier, 38
Birkin, Jane, 283
Bis, Hippolyte-Louis-Florent, 229
Bischoff, Bernhard, 300
Bizet, Georges, 136, 234
Carmen, 134, 232, 234, 237
Les pêcheurs de perles, 232
Symphony in C major, 151
Blaise, Adolphe-Benoît, 210
Annette et Lubin, 211
Blamont, François Colin de, 89, 93, 103
Les fêtes grecques et romaines, 206
Blavet, Michel, 94, 106
Le jaloux corrigé, 212
Recueil de pieces, petits airs, brunettes,
menuets, etc., 106
Blaze, François-Henri-Joseph
(Castil-Blaze), 128
Bloch, André, 175
Bobino, 276
Boccherini, Luigi, 96, 97, 102, 126
sonatas for keyboard with violin
accompaniment, Op. 5, 96, 356
Bocquillon-Wilhem, Guillaume-Louis, 373
Boësset, Antoine, 71, 74, 76–7, 82, 339
N’esperez plus mes yeux, 77
Boësset, Jean-Baptiste, 79
Boethius, 54
Consolatio philosophiae, 8
treatise on music, 6, 305
boeuf-gras, 252
Boieldieu, Adrien, 367, 368
La dame blanche, 228
Boismortier, Joseph Bodin de, 210
Balets de village, 107
concertos, Opp. 21, 24, 30, 97
Fugit nox, 92, 93
Noels en concerto à 4 parties, Op. 68, 98
bon goût, 348, 349, 351
Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon,
see Napoleon III
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 111, 112, 115, 124, 125,
228, 229, 264, 274, 364
Concordat of 100, 363
empire, see Napoleonic Empire
interest in theatre, 226, 232
reorganisation of theatre after 1807, 226–7,
228
Bondage and Boucherie Productions, 284
Boniface, 320, 324
Bonne, John of Luxembourg’s daughter, 31
Bononcini, Giovanni Battista, 95
book production, 293, 300–1, 305
page layout, 297
Bordeaux, 119, 368, 374, 375
Schola Cantorum, 369
Bordes, Charles, 135, 364
Börlin, Jean, 165
Boston Symphony Orchestra, 172, 184
Boucher, François, 107, 210, 357
Boucourechliev, André, 189
Archipel 2, 189
Archipels, 189
Bouffons, Les, 209, 212, 353
Bougault-Ducoudray, Louis-Albert, 135
Bouilly, Nicolas, 213
Boulaire, Jean le, 174
Boulanger, Nadia, 182
394 Index

Boulez, Pierre, 176, 177, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186, Buffardin, Pierre-Gabriel, 94
187–9, 190, 193, 224, 239 Burgtheater (Vienna), 215
‘Alea’, 189 Burgundians, 316
At the Limit of Fertile Ground, see Boulez, burial of the dead, 318
Pierre: Structures Ia Busnoys, Antoine, 51, 56, 61, 63, 64
on Debussy, 153 Missa L’homme armé, 61, 64
and Domaine Musical, 182 songs, 61
Domaines, 189 Bussine, Romaine, 137
Doubles, 189 Byrd, William, 66
Éclat, 190 Byron, George Gordon, 112
Études, 187
. . . explosante-fixe . . ., 190 cabaret, 162, 273, 274, 276
Flute Sonatina, 187 Cabrel, Francis, 283, 285
and IRCAM, 193 Cabrini, Michele, 103
Le marteau sans maître, 188 Caccini, Giulio, 338, 339
Notations, 180 Caesar, Julius, 313
on opera houses, 223–4 Caesarius of Arles, 315
Piano Sonata No. 2, 187 café chantant, 274
Piano Sonata No. 3, 188, 189, 190 café-concert, 275, 276, 277, 278, 282, 370
Pli selon pli, 190 Café des Ambassadeurs, 274
‘Schoenberg is dead’, 187 Cage, John, 188
‘Sonate, que me veux-tu?’, 189 circle of, 188
sound-world, 188 Cahusac, Louis de, 209
Structures Ia, 184, 188 La danse ancienne et moderne, 209
as writer and polemicist, 187 calligraphy
Boulogne, Joseph, 100 art of medieval scribes, 306–7
Bourdieu, Pierre, 193, 230 continuities with the medieval period, 309–10
Bourgeois, Louis, 55 Gothic script, 296
Bourges, Maurice, 128 medieval music, 293, 295
Bourgoing, François, 74 medieval technique of, 305–8
Bouscatel, Antoine, 254 writing tools, 308
Bouvard, François, 105 Calvet, Louis-Jean, 272
Bouzignac, Guillaume, 74 Calvin, John, 50, 55
Boyé, 352 Calzabigi, Ranieri de’, 215
L’expression musicale, mise au rang des Cambert, Robert, 201, 202
chimères, 352, 356 Ariane, ou Le mariage de Bacchus, 202
Brahms, Johannes, 125 Pastorale d’Issy, 202
Academic Festival Overture, 152 Les peines et les plaisirs de l’amour, 202
Piano Concerto No. 2, 152 Pomone, 202
Brăiloiu, Constantin, 264, 268 Cambini, Giuseppe Maria, 102, 124
Brassens, Georges, 278, 279, 281, 282 quartets, Op. 1, 102
Brasseur, Romain de, 107 Symphonie concertante in D major, 124
Brel, Jacques, 278, 279, 281, 282 Cambrai, 43
Breton language, 257 Cathedral, 18, 40, 41, 42
Bréval, Jean-Baptiste-Sébastien, 102 choir school, 65
Symphonie concertante in F, Campistron, Jean de, 84
Op. 38, 124 Campra, André, 82, 84, 85, 93, 207, 357
Brown, Earle, 188 cantates (first book), 81
Bruant, Aristide, 274, 277, 279, 282, 283 cantates (second and third books), 81
cylinder recordings of, 274 Le carnaval de Venise, 206
Brulé, Gace, 14, 15 L’Europe galante, 204
Desconfortez, plain de dolor et d’ire, 14 Les fêtes vénitiennes, 84, 206, 207
Brumel, Antoine, 51 Lauda Jerusalem, 93
Bruneau, Alfred, 238 Les muses, 84
Bruni, Carla, 284 Notus in Judea Deus, 93
Brunot, Ferdinand, 246, 256, 266 Tancrède, 207
Brussels, 371 canon, 65, 67
Conservatoire, 128 cant d’estil, 256
395 Index

cantata, 81–2, 102–4 Chaminade, Cécile, 151

borrowing from Italian forms, 103 Champ de Mars, 113
compared with opera, 104 Champmol, Emmanuel Crétet de, 264
symphonies, 103 chanson, 30–1, 34, 57
cantatille, 104 fixed form, 32, 40, 49, 56–7
Capetians, 8–9 Parisian, 50, 65
Capperan, Gabriel, 99 popular, 272, 274, 276, 278, 281, 282, 283, 284,
Capua, Rinaldo di, La zingara (La bohémienne), 285, 287
212 chanson à texte, 279
Carafa, Michele, 227 chanson d’auteur, 279, 285
Carbonel, Joseph-Noël, 247 chanson française, 277, 279, 281, 282
Carignan, prince de, 94, 95 chanson néo-réaliste, 284, 288
Carloman, 320, 322 chanson réaliste, 274, 283
Carmagnole, La, 114 emergence of tradition, 273
carnival, 255 nouvelle chanson française, 282,
Carolingian period, 3, 324 283, 285
chant, 21 post-war development, 279–80
minuscule, 4 and variété, 276
music books, 294 chanson, la, see chanson: popular
reforms, 4, 5 Chansons nouvelles, 57
renaissance, 4 chansonnier, 273, 303
Carolingians, 321, 323, 326 chant, 7, 11, 15, 365, 366
Caron, Firmin, 56, 64 books, 365
Corps contre corps, 56 Frankish-Roman chant appears in neumes,
Missa L’homme armé, 64 326
Carré, Albert, 232 Gallican, 4
and Opéra-Comique, 235 Gregorian, 4, 5, 6, 18, 27, 28, 74, 116, 117, 135,
cartel, 336 154
Carthusians, 295, 297, 299, 306 melismatic embellishments, 8
Carvalho, Léon, 232, 234 Roman, 8
Caserta, Philipoctus de, 37 chanteuse à roulades, 235
Cassian, John, 314 Chantilly Codex, 294
Institutiones, 314 Chanzoni franciose a quatro sopra doi, 65
Castellon, Zéphirin, 259 Chao, Manu, 284
Castérède, Jacques, 180 chapelle de musique, 334
Castiglione, Baldassare, 340–1, 342 chapelle de plainchant, 334
Il libro del cortegiano, 340 Chapelle Impériale, 25, 364
Castil-Blaze, see Blaze, François-Henri-Joseph Chapelle Royale, 11, 51, 52, 62, 65, 66, 71,
Castillon, Alexis de, 143 73, 82, 83, 88, 90, 92, 112, 116,
String Quartet, Op. 3 No. 1, 143 341, 364
String Quartet, Op. 3 No. 2, 143 early organisation, 334–5
Casulana, Maddalena, 338 merged with musique de la chambre, 91
Catel, Charles-Simon, 114 singer-chaplains, 51–2
Cavaillé-Coll, Aristide, 147 Chaptal, Antoine, 367
caveaux, 273, 274 Char, René, 182, 188, 190
Cendo, Raphaël, 195 character piece, 106
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique charivari, 246, 251
(CNRS), 190, 192, 267 Charlemagne, 4, 6, 7, 12, 18, 320, 321, 322, 323,
cercle, 368, 369 325
Cercle Musicale, 163 regularisation of liturgical practice, 324
Certon, Pierre, 51 Charles V, 31, 35
Cervantes, Miguel de, 233 Charles V, Emperor, 50
Chabannes, Adémar de, 8, 305, 309 Charles VI, 34, 35
Chabanon, Michel-Paul Guy de, 356 Charles VII, 35, 51, 334
Chabrier, Emmanuel, 149, 169, 234 Charles VIII, 50, 51, 52
Pièces pittoresques, 149 Charles IX, 52, 55, 331, 338, 341
Chabrol, Claude, 191 Charles X, 111, 112
Chambonnières, Jacques Champion de, 80 Charles the Bald, 7, 325
396 Index

Charles the Bold, Duke, 50, 53 Ciboure, 141

Charles the Simple, 7, 185 Cicero, 4
charleston, 281 Ciconia, Johannes, 34, 37
Charlton, David, 120, 121, 122, 212, 214 Sus un’ fontayne, 37
Charpentier, Gustave, 160 Cinti-Damoreau, Laure, 235
Charpentier, Marc-Antoine, 89, 93 circle, as symbol, 294
grands motets, 83 Cirque d’Hiver, 136
Le malade imaginaire, 79 Cirque Napoléon, 136
Médée, 206, 207 Cistercians, 7, 299
Chartres, 6, 296 Cîteaux liturgical master book, 299
Cathedral, 9 Clair, Réné, Sous les toits de Paris, 280
Chastellux, François-Jean, 356 clarinet, 251–2
Chateaubriand, François-René de, 112 caremera, 251
Châteauminois, Jean-Joseph, 247 chalemie, 251
Chaussée, Nivelle de La, 351 treujeun gaol, 251
Mélanide, 213 Claudianus, 315
Chausson, Ernest, 137, 234 Claudin, see Sermisy, Claudin de
Poème de l’amour et de la mer, 139 clausula, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
Symphony in B[b] major, 152 clavecinistes, 106
Chaynes, Charles, Erzsebet, 181 Clemens (non Papa), Jacobus, 58
Chédeville, Nicolas, 107 Clement VII, Pope, 38
Amusements champêtres, 107 Clérambault, Louis-Nicolas, 103
Il pastor fido, 107 cantates, 81
Le printems, ou Les saisons amusantes, 107 Cliquet, Henri, 165
Chen, Qigang, 184 Clovis, King, 3, 316, 317, 326
Chereau, Patrice, 224 Cluny, abbey of, 7
Cherubini, Luigi, 114, 115–16, 118, 125, 126, 217 CNRS, see Centre National de la Recherche
coronation Masses, 116 Scientifique
Eliza, ou Le voyage au glacier du Mont cobla, 247, 372
Saint-Bernard, 213 Cocteau, Jean, 161, 163, 164–5, 167, 176,
Lodoïska, 213 177, 182
Médée, 213, 226 La belle et la bête, 176, 177
overtures, 120 Le coq et l’arlequin, 164, 176, 177
Requiem in C minor, 115, 116 Le sang d’un poète, 176
Chevalier, Maurice, 275, 277, 282 scenario for Les Six’s Les mariés de la tour
Chevalier de Méré, 348, 357 Eiffel, 164
Childebert, King, 317 scenario for Satie’s Parade, 161
Childeric, 316 Coignet, Horace, 359
Childeric III, 320 Coirault, Patrice, 260
Chilperic I, 319 Colette, Marie-Noëlle, 295
chimney sweeps, 253 Collasse, Pascal, 84, 202, 207
Chion, Michel, 186 Collet, Henri, 163
Chlothar I, 319, 321 Colombier, Michel, 187
choeur dansé, 216 Colonne, Édouard, 375
choir schools, 53, 65, 364, 366 Columbanus, 317, 318
Chopin, Frédéric, 113, 127, 133, 148 Columbia, 280
ballades, 127 comédie-ballet, 79, 201
études, 127 Comédie-Francaise, 203, 204, 210, 226,
Nocturne in F, Op. 15 No. 2, 148 227, 228
Piano Concerto No. 1, 120 Comédie-Italienne, 203, 206, 209, 212,
Piano Sonata No. 2, 127 214, 217
Piano Sonata No. 3, 127 merger with Opéra-Comique, 206, 214, 217
scherzos, 127 comédie lyrique, 206, 209
variations, 127 comédie mêlée d’ariettes, 214
on ‘La ci darem’, 120 Comédiens François du Roy, 202
Choron, Alexandre-Étienne, 117, 364, 367 Comédiens Italiens du Roi, 203, 206
Christensen, Thomas, 352 comédies en vaudevilles, 205
Chrodegang, 321, 324 comique-troupier, 275
397 Index

Comité de la Langue, de l’Histoire et des Arts de Corrette, Michel

la France, 265 Concertos comiques, 97
commedia dell’arte, 203, 204 ‘L’allure’ and ‘Margoton’, 97
Commission of French Religious and Historical Laudate Dominum, 93
Songs, 264 Cosset, François, 82
Committee of Public Safety, 111 Costeley, Guillaume, 55, 58
Compère, Loyset, 51, 57 Council of Agde, 316
Nous sommes de l’ordre de Saint Babouin, 57 Council of Basel, 39
compositeur de chapelle, 334 Council of Constance, 39
comtessa de Dia, 13 Council of Pisa, 39
Concert de la Loge Olympique, Le, 101, 118 Council of Trent, 55, 73
Concert de l’École Graduite de Dessein, 101 Couperin, François, 70, 81, 83, 85, 106, 146, 357
Concert des Amateurs, 99, 100, 101, 102, 374 Concert instrumental sous le titre d’Apothéose
Concert des Amis, 101 composé à la mémoire immortelle de
Concert des Associés, 101 l’incomparable Monsieur de Lully, 81
Concert Français, 103 Concerts royaux, 81
Concert Italien, 91, 96 Les goûts réunis, 81
Concert Spirituel, 88, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, Lamentations, 83
103, 106, 112, 116, 374 Les nations, 81
performance en simphonie, 98 Le Parnasse, ou L’apothéose de Corelli, 81
piano debut, 107 Couperin, Louis, 80
instrumentarium, 94 court ballet, see ballet de cour
concerto, 97–8, 124–5 courtly love (fin’amors), 13, 18, 26
Romantic, 154 courtly protocol, 339–41, 342–3
types, 81 courtly rituals, 343
concerts Courville, Joachim Thibault de, 55
chamber and instrumental, 120 Cowart, Georgia, 206
orchestral, 117–19, 136–7 crécelle, 246
popularisation of orchestral concert, 375–6 Créquillon, Thomas, 50, 58
private, 80, 88–91, 95–6 Crousaz, Jean-Pierre de, 86, 349
public, 91–3 Traité du beau, 349
Concerts Colonne, 137, 160, 181 Crozat, Antoine, 91, 95, 97
Concerts de la Rue de Cléry, 118, 374 Cult of Reason, 112, 113
Concerts Lamoureux, 137, 160, 181, 375 Cult of the Supreme Being, 113
Concerts Pasdeloup, 181 Cuyler, Louise, 156
Concerts Populaires de Musique Classique, 136, Cuzzoni, Francesca, 95
375 cyclic form, 152
Condé, prince de, 100
Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de, 352 Daft Punk, 285
Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines, Dagobert I, 319
359 Dahlhaus, Carl, 156
Traité des sensations, 352 Daho, Étienne, 283
conductus, 11, 13, 23, 24 Dalayrac, Nicolas, 217
Cone, Edward T., 122 Léhéman, ou La tour de Neustadt, 211
Conservatoire Mimi Pinson, 368 Nina, ou La folle par amour, 213
Conservatoire National Supérieur de Dalbavie, Marc-André, 194
Musique, see Paris Conservatoire Damia, 277
conservatoires, regional, 367–9 Damien, Marie-Louise, see Damia
Constance, 39, 41 dance, 79, 81
Constant, Marius, 187, 190 books, 60
contes musicaux, 128 cakewalk, 276
Conti, prince de, 96, 100 dance song, see song: traditional
contrafactum, 61 danse en action, 209
Cooper, Martin, 140, 156 mazurka, 260–1, 263
Corbie, monastery of, 4 monophonic, 18
Corelli, Arcangelo, 81, 97 bal musette, 275
violin sonatas, Op. 5, 98, 102 music, electronic, 285, 287
Corneille, Thomas, 202 techno, 288
398 Index

dance (cont.) ‘Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du

polka, 263 soir’ (Préludes Book 1), 150
suite, 81 String Quartet, 143
traditional Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, 156
an-dro, 255 Violin Sonata, 146
avant-deux, 255 ‘. . . Voiles’ (Préludes Book 1), 150
bourrée, 255, 258, 259 Decoust, Michel, 190
branle, 255 Delahaye, Jean, 56
dañs tro, 255 Delannoy, Marcel, Les noces fantasques, 222
farandole, 255 Delanoé, Pierre, 279
formal structure, 263 Delaunay, Charles, 276
gavotte, 255 Delavigne, Germain, 229
hanter-dro, 255 Deldevez, Edmé, 136
maraîchine, 255 Delerue, Georges, 191
rigaudon, 255 Delibes, Léo, 133, 234
rond, 255 Coppélia, 234
rondeau, 255, 260 Lakmé, 237
saut, 255 Sylvia, 234
schottische, 263 Demi, Jacques, Les parapluies de Cherbourg, 191
types, 80 Denis, St, 319, 324
Danchet, Antoine, 84, 357 Département d’Ethnologie Musicale, 266
D’Anglebert, Jean-Henri, 80 Département d’Ethnomusicologie, 266
Daniel-Lesur, Jean-Yves, 173, 181 Département d’Ethnomusicologie de la France et
Daquin, Louis-Claude, 103, 106 du Domaine Français, 266
Darmstadt International Summer Courses for Département d’Organologie Musicale, 266
New Music, 184 Descartes, René, 346, 347, 352, 354
Dauvergne, Antoine, 92 Discours de la méthode, 347
Concerts de simphonies, 99 Traité des passions de l’âme, 86, 347
Les troqueurs, 212 Désormière, Roger, 165, 173
Davaux, Jean-Baptiste, 100, 102 Destouches, André Cardinal, 89
David, Félicien, Le désert, 123 Le carnaval et la folie, 206
Debraux, Émile, 273, 279 Les stratagèmes de l’Amour, 206
Debussy, Claude, 134, 136, 141, 142–3, 145, 146, Dévigne, Roger, 266
148, 149, 150, 155–6, 161, 168, 176, 177, Diaghilev, Serge, 153, 166
190, 235, 239 Diam, 285
Cello Sonata, 142, 146 Diderot, Denis, 211, 213, 215, 353, 355
‘C’est l’extase’ (Ariettes oubliées), 155 ‘Beau’ (Encyclopédie), 355
Children’s Corner, 150 Les bijoux indiscrets, 207
‘Clair de lune’ (Suite bergamasque), 149 Entretiens, 215
Cocteau’s critique of, 164 Le fils naturel, 355
Études, 150 Mémoires, 355
and Exposition Universelle, 138 Le neveu de Rameau, 214, 355
‘Gigues’ (Images for orchestra), 143, 154 Le père de famille, 355
Images for piano, 150 Dies irae, 152
Jeux, 147, 153, 234 Dijon, Conservatoire, 368
‘Mandoline’, 155 Diners du Caveau Les, 317
La mer, 137, 153, 169 diocese, 317–18
orchestrations of Satie’s Gymnopédies, 163 Directory, 111
‘Pagodes’ (Éstampes), 138 disco, 282
Pelléas et Mélisande, 142, 235, 239 diseuse, 275
Petite suite, 142 divertissement, 79, 103, 203, 205–6, 208, 209, 230, 336
Pour le piano, 148 Divitis, Antonius, 65
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, 142, 153 Dobbins, Frank, 49, 57
Préludes, 150 Dodge, Leanne, 359
and ragtime, 162 Döhring, Sieghardt, 237
‘Recueillement’ (Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire), Domaine Musical, 182–3, 188, 190, 191
143 concerts, 182, 183, 184, 223
Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, 146–7 ‘Domaine Musical style’, 191
399 Index

Dominicans, 7, 295, 297 Durastanti, Margherita, 95

Dominique A, 283 Durazzo, Giacomo, 215
Donation of Constantine, 323, 325 Durey, Louis, 163, 164, 165
Doria, Violante, 337 Duruflé, Maurice, 171, 181
Dowland, John, Ayres, 59 Dusapin, Pascal, 195
downloading of music, 286 Passion, 195
drame lyrique, 213 Dutilleux, Henri, 181
drum, 253–4 Métaboles, 181
bachas, 253 Symphony No. 2 ‘Le double’, 181, 189
galoubet-tambourin, 247, 252 Dyer, Joseph, 11
tambour, 253 Dylan, Bob, 281, 283
tambour-bourdon, 247
Du Caurroy, Eustache, 66, 73, 334 Eco, Umberto, Opera aperta, 189
fantasias, 75 École d’Arcueil, 165
Preces ecclesiasticae, 66 École de Musique Religieuse, see École
Requiem, 52, 55 Niedermeyer
Du Chemin, Nicolas, 54 École des Chartes, 265
Du Fay, Guillaume, 18, 34, 37, 40–4, 56, 63 École Niedermeyer, 117, 135, 141, 364, 365
Ave regina celorum, 43 École Normale de Musique, 185
Mass output, 63 École Primaire de Chant, 364
Missa Ave regina celorum, 40 École Royale de Chant, 100
Missa Ecce ancilla, 63 Écurie, Musique de la Grande (écurie), 52, 53, 71,
Missa L’homme armé, 43 72, 90, 333, 335, 336, 337, 343
Missa Se la face ay pale, 42, 43, 63 Eden-Théâtre, 371
Nuper rosarum flores, 41 Egredimini filiae Sion, 73
Resvelliés vous, 39, 42 Eiffel Tower, 138
Vergina bella, 42 Eimert, Herbert, 153
Du Mont, Henri, 82, 83 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 16
appointment to Chapelle Royale, 83 electro-acoustic music, 186–7
Cantica sacra, 82 Elias, Norbert, 341
and grand motet, 83 Elles, Les, 284
Dubas, Marie, 277 Éloy, Jean-Claude, 190, 191
Dubois, Théodore, 133, 349–51 Équivalences, 190
Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, abbé, 86, 350 Elvis, 281
Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la Emer, Michel, 279
peinture, 349 EMI, 280
Dufay, see Du Fay, Guillaume empfindsamer Stil, 351
Dufourt, Hugues, 192 Encyclopédie, see encyclopédistes
Duhamel, Antoine, 223, 236 encyclopédistes, 56, 211, 213, 215, 353, 354
Gambara, 236 Enlightenment, 108, 112, 213, 346, 352, 353, 355
Dukas, Paul, 148, 168, 176, 177 ensemble, traditional, 254
Piano Sonata, 148 entrées, 53, 70, 71, 72, 78
Symphony in C, 152 Erard, 107, 120, 374
Dumas, Alexandre, La dame aux Escaich, Thierry, 181
camélias, 277 ethnomusicology
Dumesnil, René, La musique en France entre les Eastern European school, 264–9
deux guerres, 159 use of recording, 266–7
Dumont, Charles, 279 Europe No. 1 (radio station), 280
Dunsby, Jonathan, 156 ‘Salut les copains’, 280, 281
Dunstable (Dunstaple), John, 41, 63 Eurovision Song Contest, 282
Duparc, Henri, 137, 139, 155 existentialism, 278
Duphly, Jacques, 106 Expo 58 (or Brussels World’s Fair), 183
Duport, Jean-Louis, 94 Exposition Universelle, 137, 375
Duport, Jean-Pierre, 94, 96
Dupré, Louis, 209, 210 Fabulous Trobadours, 284
Dupré, Marcel, 171 fair theatres, 97, 203, 205, 214
Dupuis, Hilaire, 80 fanfare (brass band), 273, 372
Dupuits, Jean-Baptiste, 107 movement, 373
400 Index

Fano, Michel, 187 Florence Codex, 22, 23

Sonata for Two Pianos, 188 flute, 252–3
Faret, Nicolas, L’honneste home, ou L’art de ‘de Rippert’, 252
plaire à la cour, 340 fifer (pifre), 252, 254
Farmer, Mylène, 284 fifer orchestra, 253
Faudel, 284 flahuta, 252
Fauré, Gabriel, 134, 137, 140–1, 146, 147, 148–9, flûtet, 252
156, 160, 161, 168, 175, 234, 367 galoubet, 252
Cantique de Jean Racine, 141 one-handed, 255
‘C’est l’extase’ (Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’), txirula, 252
155, 156 txistu, 252
La chanson d’Ève, 156 FNAC (Fédération Nationale d’Achats des
L’horizon chimérique, 156 Cadres), 286
Le jardin clos, 156 Foire, see fair theatres
‘Lydia’, 155 Foire Saint-Germain, 203, 205, 210
Mirages, 156 Foire Saint-Laurent, 203, 205, 210
Nocturne in B[b], Op. 37, 148 Folies Bergères, 276
Nocturne No. 6, Op. 63, 148 folk poems, inventory of, 264
Nocturne No. 11, Op. 104, 149 folk revival, 245, 246, 255–6, 285
Pelléas et Mélisande, 141 folk-rock, see rock
Pénélope, 234 folksongs, collection of, 363
piano music, 148–9 Fontainebleau, 59, 337
Prométhée, 234 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de, 356
Requiem, 141 Forains, 203, 204, 205
songs, 155–6 Formé, Nicolas, 66
Violin Sonata No. 1, 144–5 Magnificats, 73
fauxbourdon, 72, 74, 90 Missa Aeternae Henrici Magni . . ., 73
Favart, Charles-Simon, 210–11, 212, 214 Forqueray, Antoine, 81
Les amours de Bastien et Bastienne, 211 forte-piano, see piano
Baïocco et Serpilla, 212 Fortoul, Hippolyte, 264, 265
Fébus, Gaston, 35, 38 Fortunatus, Venantius, 319
Féderation des Associations de Musiques et Framery, Nicolas-Étienne, 216, 217
Danses Traditionelles, 267 France-Musique (Radio France), 190
Feldman, Morton, 188 Franciscans, 7, 296
Fellows, Otis, 355 Franck, César, 123, 134, 137, 139–40, 141, 143,
Ferrari, Luc, 186 152, 156, 171, 172, 234
Hétérozygote, 187 Les béatitudes, 140
Ferrat, Jean, 278 Le chasseur maudit, 139, 153
Ferré, Léo, 278, 279, 281, 282 Les Éolides, 139
lyrics, 281 Hulda, 140
Festival d’Art Lyrique, 195 organ music, 147
Festival du Nord, 373 Piano Quintet, 139, 145
Festival Interceltique, 245 Prélude, aria et final, 148
Fétis, François-Joseph, 117, 122, 128, 129 Prélude, choral et fugue, 148
Févin, Antoine de, 52, 64 Rédemption, 139
Field of the Cloth of Gold, 338 Ruth, 139
fife, 335, 343 String Quartet, 140, 143
Figaro, Le, 138 Symphony, 139, 152, 156
Filipacchi, Daniel, 280 Trios concertants, 139
Fiorentino, Pier Angelo, 225 Trois chorals, 147
First Consul, 115 Variations symphoniques, 139
First Republic, 111 Violin Sonata, 140
Flèches, Les, 176 Franco-Prussian War, 133, 137, 138
Flemish manner, 65 Franco of Cologne, 27, 296, 298
Fleuret, Maurice, 193 Francoeur, François, 89
Florence, 53, 337, 339 François I, 50, 51, 52, 58, 331, 334, 335, 339,
Cathedral, 41 340, 342
Medici court, 339 establishes écurie, 52
401 Index

François II, 338 Giroust, François, 92

François, Claude, 281 Globokar, Vinko, 185
François, duc d’Alençon, 52 glosses, 6
François d’Anjou, 332 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 91, 99, 112, 215–16,
Fréhel, 277 217, 222, 235, 346
Frémart, Henri, 74 Alceste, 215, 216
French overture, see overture preface, 215
French Romanticism, 112–13, 125, 127, 129 Armide, 204, 216
French violin school, 94, 125 Don Juan, 216
Frenchness, 3, 49–50, 62–3, 70, 103, 138–9, 140, Iphigénie en Tauride, 91, 216
159, 177, 195, 275, 338–9, 354 Orfeo ed Euridice, 215, 216
versus Flemish style, 64–5 Paride ed Elena, 215
Saint-Saëns’s concept of, 145 Parisian operas, 215
Fronde, 82 recitative, 216
Fulbert, Bishop, 9, 10 Sémiramis, 216
Fulrad, Abbot, 324 tragédies en musique, 112
Fulup, Marc’harid, 266 Godard, Benjamin, 151
Fun (radio station), 287 Symphonie gothique, 151
Futurism, 186 Godard, Jean-Luc, Le mépris, 191
Fuzelier, Louis, 205, 206 Goddesses of Liberty, 114
Arlequin Persée, 205 Godefroy, 73
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 238
Gainsbourg, Serge, 278, 282 Goeyvaerts, Karel, 184
‘La javanaise’, 282 Sonata for Two Pianos, 188
‘Le poinçonneur des lilas’, 282 goguettes, 273, 274, 275, 276
galanterie, 85–6, 204 Golden Section, 142
Gall, France, 282–3 Goldman, Jean-Jacques, 283, 285
‘Je t’aime, moi non plus’, 282 Goldoni, Carlo, 219
‘Poupée de cire, poupée de son’, 282 Gombaud, Antoine, 348, 357
Gall, Hugues, 225 Gombert, Nicolas, 50, 58
Gallot, Jacques, 80 La chasse au lièvre, 58
Gallus, Bishop, 315 Le chant des oyseaulx, 58
Gambaro, J. B., 126 Gorlier, Simon, 60
Garde, Pierre de la, 104 Gossec, François-Joseph, 96, 97, 99, 100–1, 112,
Garnier, Laurent, 285 113, 121
Gautier, Théophile, 128 symphonies, Op. 3, 99
Gautier de Coinci, 301–4, 302 Te Deum pour la fête de la Fédération, 113
Les miracles de Nostre-Dame, 302, 303 Gothic architecture, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 294, 298
Gaveau, Pierre, Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal, Goude, Jean-Paul, 221
213, 226 Goudimel, Claude, 50, 61
Gavignès, Pierre, 94, 100 Goulart, Simon, 61, 62
Gazette musicale de Paris, 128 Gounod, Charles-François, 123, 133, 136, 151,
Gédalge, André, 141 155, 238, 259, 376
Geminiani, Francesco, 98 Faust, 133, 232, 238
concerti grossi, Op. 4, 98 Mireille, 225
Gennep, Arnold Van, 258 Roméo et Juliette, 238
Manuel de folklore français contemporain, symphonies, 151
1937–1958, 258 goûts réunis, 70, 93, 95, 97, 98, 103, 107
Geoffroy, Julien-Louis, 127, 128 Gouvy, Louis-Théodore, 136
Gerhard, Anselm, 230 gramophone, 280
Gershwin, George, 169 Grand Dauphin, see Louis, Dauphin of France
Gerszo, Andrew, 193 grand motet, see motet
Gervais, Charles-Hubert, 89 grand opera, 170, 203, 229–31, 233, 236, 237,
Gervoldus, 321 238, 371
Ghiselin, Johannes, 52 divertissement (ballet), 230
Gilbert, Gabriel, 202 Grande Bande, see Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi
Gilles, Jean, 93 grande chanson courtoise, 14, 16
Gillier, Jean-Claude, 205 Grande Chartreuse, 300
402 Index

Grande Mademoiselle, La, 78, 80 Hadrianum, 325

Grands Hautbois, 336 Halévy, Fromental, 140, 259
Granjon, Robert, 54 La juive, 230
Grappelli, Stéphane, 276 Hall, Charles J., 133
Great Schism, 34, 37 Hallyday, Johnny, 281, 285
Gréco, Juliette, 279 Hamy, Ernest, 266
Grégoire, Henri, Abbot, 265 Handel, George Frideric, 95, 116, 364
Grégor and his Grégoriens, 276 Hardy, Françoise, 281
Gregorian repertoire, 7, 9 harmonie (wind band), 273
Gregory I, Pope, 5, 295 Harmonie de Bordeaux, 368
Gregory II, Pope, 320 Harmonie de Rouen-Saint-Sever, 368
Gregory III, Pope, 320 harp, 35, 253, 335
Gregory of Tours, 315, 316, 317, 318 ‘Celtic’ harp tradition in Brittany, 253
Grétry, André-Erneste-Modeste, 96, 99 pedal harp, 94
Aucassin et Nicolette, ou Les moeurs du bon harpsichord, 80, 106–7
vieux temps, 211 builders, 110
Les mariages samnites, 96 Harvey, Jonathan, 193
opéras comiques, 217 Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, 376
Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 211 Haydn, Joseph, 99, 101, 102, 112, 115, 118, 121,
Zémire et Azor, 91 126, 133, 373
Grieg, Edvard, 137 The Creation, 373
Grimaud, Yvette, 180 String Quartet in C major, Op. 33 No. 3, 126
Grimm, Friedrich-Melchior, 95, 101, 213 string quartets, Op. 76, 119
Grisey, Gérard, 184, 192–3, 194, 197 symphonies, 121, 126
Partiels (Les espaces acoustiques), 192 Heine, Heinrich, 237
Transitoires, 192 Helgaud of Fleury, life of Robert the Pious, 9
Grocheio, Johannes, 27 Henri II, 52, 54, 335, 341
Gross, Valentine, 163 Henri III, 52, 331, 332, 335, 336, 337, 338, 342,
Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), 186, 343
191, 193, 194 Henri IV, 50, 52, 53, 70, 338
Groupe des Six, see Six, Les Henry V, 35
Guédron, Pierre, 52, 59, 71, 75–6, 77, 336 Henry, Pierre, 186
‘patchwork’ approach, 77 Messe pour le temps présent, 187
Guéranger, Dom Prosper, 117 Symphonie pour un homme seul, see Schaeffer,
Guerre des Bouffons, see Querelle des Bouffons Pierre
Guerre des coins, 213 Variations pour une porte et un soupir, 186
Guido, Or voit tout en aventure, 38 Henze, Hans Werner, 185
Guido, Giovanni Antonio, 95 Henze-Döhring, Sabine, 237
Guido of Arezzo, 297 Hérold, Ferdinand, 231
Guignon, Jean-Pierre, 94 Hersant, Philippe, Le château des Carpathes, 238
Guilbert, Yvette, 275 Hervé Florimond Ronger, 233
Guilcher, Jean-Michel, 267 Don Quichotte et Sancho Panza, 233
Guillaume IX, duc d’Aquitaine, 13, 16 Le petit Faust, 233
Guillemain, Louis-Gabriel, 94 Hess, Johnny, 276, 277
Premier livre de simphonies dans le goût italien heterophony, 259
en trio, 99 Hilary of Poitiers, 314
Quatuors, ou Conversations galantes, 101 Hildergar, 319
Guilmant, Alexandre, 135, 148, 364, 376 Hill, Peter, 173
Guiraud, Ernest, 134 hip-hop, 285, 288
Guiraut de Calanso, 302 explosion, 285
guitar, 60, 77, 105, 278 Hobbes, Thomas, 86, 348
Guntram of Burgundy, King, 326 hocket, 33, 38, 43
Hodeir, André, 191
Habeneck, François-Antoine, 118, 136 Hollywood, 275
introduces Beethoven symphonies, 375 Holmès, Augusta, 151
Hadopi law, 287 Hondré, Emmanuel, 369
Hadrian I, Pope, 322, 323, 325 Honegger, Arthur, 159, 163, 165, 171, 173, 176,
tomb slab of, 323 177, 180
403 Index

Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, 172 Janin, Jules, 128

Judith, 171, 172 Jansen, Pierre, 191
Pacific 231, 159, 171 Concerto audiovisuel, 102
Le roi David, 172 Jardin de plaisance, 57
Skating Rink, 165 Jardin Zoologique d’Acclimation, 375
Honoratus of Arles, 314 Jarre, Maurice, Ruiselle, 181
Horace, 355 jazz, 164, 165, 168, 169, 191, 276, 278
Hörspiel, 186 Jazz hot, 276
Hot Club de France, Le, 276 Jeanne de Bologne, 38
Hôtel de Bourgogne, 205, 214 Jeanneret-Gris, Charles-Édouard, see Le Corbusier
Hôtel des Invalides, 116 Jenifer, 285
hôtel du roi, 330, 331, 333 Jesse tree, 9, 10
Hotteterre, Jacques, 107 Jeune France, La, 173, 181
Airs et brunettes, 105 manifesto, 173
Hucbald, 6 Joan of Arc, 35
Hugh Capet, 7, 9 Johannis de Muris, 28
Hughes, Andrew, 301 John, duc de Berry, 37, 38
Hugo, Victor, 112 John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, 31
Ernani, 113 Jolas, Betsy, 183, 187
Huguenots, 50, 54, 55, 69, 72 Jolivet, André, 172–3, 175, 177, 181, 223
Hundred Years War, 35, 50 Cinq danses rituelles, 173
hurdy-gurdy, 89, 97, 107, 246, 253, 255 Cinq incantations, 173
Hurel, Philippe, 194 Danse incantatoire, 173
Hymne à la liberté, see Lisle, Rouget de L’inconnue, 222
Mana, 172
IAM, 285 Trois complaintes du soldat, 175
idée fixe, 122, 123 jongleurs, 17, 272
imprimeur du roi, 339 Josquin des Prez, Illibata virgo nutrix, 64
independent labels, 284, 286 Missa L’homme armé super voces
independent studios, 284 musicales, 64
Indochine, 284 Nymphes des bois, 57
Indy, Vincent d’, 135, 137, 138, 140, 160, 163, Journal des débats, 127, 128
168, 234, 239, 364, 367, 369 journalism, 127–9
Cours de composition musical, 140 Jouy, Anne-Louise Boyvin d’Hardancourt
La légende de Saint Christophe, 170 Brillon de, 96
Symphonie cévenole, 152, 246 Jouy, Étienne de, 229
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 151 July Monarchy, 116, 133, 229, 230, 273, 364
Innocent I, Pope, 3
Inspection des Théâtres, 275 Kaas, Patricia, 284
Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Kagel, Mauricio, 223
Acoustique/Musique, see IRCAM Kassav’, 284
Institut National de Musique, 114 Kelly, Barbara, 168
Institution Royale de Musique Classique et Khaled, 284
Religieuse, 117, 364 Kintzler, Catherine, 201, 203
intermède, 210, 212, 337 kiosque, 273
intermezzo comico, 201, 209, 211, 212, 353 Klee, Paul, 188
introit, Ad te levavi, 5 Koechlin, Charles, 165, 168
IRCAM, 193, 194, 195 Koussevitzky, Serge, 172
isorhythm, 33–4 Kreutzer, Rodolphe, 91, 228

Jacob, Maxime, 165 La Barre, Michel de, 357

Jadin, Louis-Emmanuel, 114
Janequin, Clément, 51, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61
La bataille, 58
Le caquet des femmes, 58
Le chant des oyseaulx, 58
La chasse, 58
Ung jour Colin, 58
Le triomphe des arts (with Antoine Houdar de
La Motte), 358, 359
La Grotte, Nicholas de, 59
La Guerre, Élisabeth Jacquet de, 80
Le sommeil d’Ulisse, 103
La Motte, Antoine Houdar de, 84, 357
La Scala, 222
404 Index

La Trinité (church), 171 Livre d’airs de cour, 75

Lacombe, Hervé, 237 Le Roy, Étienne, 337
Lajoux, Jean-Dominique, 267 Le Sueur, Jean-François, 114, 115, 116
Lalande, Michel-Richard de, 83, 92, 93, 334 La caverne, 213
De profundis, 93 Paul et Virginie, ou Le triomphe de la vertu,
O filii et filiae, 92 213
Pange lingua, 92 Symphonic Ode, 116
Sacris solemniis, 92 Lebègue, Nicolas, 83
Lalo, Édouard, 133 Leclair, Jean-Marie, 94, 98, 106
Cello Concerto, 154 concertos, 98
Namouna, 234 Leclerc publishing house, 110
Rapsodie norvégienne, 154 Lecocq, Charles, 133, 234
Symphonie espagnole, 154 Led Zeppelin, 284
Symphony in G minor, 152 Leduc, Simon, 100
Laloy, Louis, 238 Lefèvre, Xavier, 124
Lambert, Michel, 79–80 Left Bank tradition, 279
lament, traditional, 255 Léger, Fernand, 165
lamenti, 258 Legrand, Michel, 191
Lamoureux, Charles, 137, 372, 373, 375 Leibowitz, René, 185, 186
Lancelot, Francine, 267 L’artiste et sa conscience: esquisse d’une
Landormy, Paul, La musique française après dialectique de la conscience artistique,
Debussy, 159 185
Landowski, Marcel, 194, 223, 237 Schoenberg et son école, 185
Le fou, 237 Lejeune, Claude, 184
Lang, Jack, 194, 286 Lemarque, Francis, 278
Langlais, Jean, 181 Leo III, pope, 323
Lasserre, Pierre, L’esprit de la musique française Leonin, 21, 22
(de Rameau à l’invasion wagnérienne), Nativitas, 25
138 Leproux, Marc, 267
Lassus, Orlande de, 50, 52, 55, 59, 66, 338, 341, Lérins abbey, 314, 315
342 Leroux, Philippe, 194
Bonjour mon coeur, 59 Apocalypsis, 194
Lavelli, Jorge, 224 Vor(rex), 194
Lavilliers, Bernard, 283 Lesage, Alain-René, 205
Lazzari, Sylvio, 143 L’Estocart, Paschal de, 61
La Poupliniêre, Alexandre Le Riche de, 95, 96, Octonaires de la vanité du monde, 61
97, 100 Lesueur, Jean-François, see Le Sueur, Jean-
Le Bailly, Henry, 71, 77, 339 François
Le Bœuf sur le Toit, 164 Lesure, François, 369
Le Camus, Sébastien, 79 Levinas, Michaël, 184, 192, 194
Le Cerf de la Viéville, 77, 348, 349, 350, 356 Les nègres, 195
Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la Levy, Janet, 126
musique françoise, 82, 348 liberté des théâtres, 370
Le Chantre, Mademoiselle, 107 libertins érudits, 86
Le Chapelier, 226 Liberty Trees, 114
Le Chat Noir, 162, 274 Liebermann, Rolf, 224, 225, 232
Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris), Ligue pour la Défense de la Musique Française,
183 160
Le Grand Concert, 367 Ligugé monastery, 314
Le Havre, Conservatoire, 369 Lille, 36, 119, 362, 367, 372, 373, 375
Le Jeune, Claude, 58 Conservatoire, 368
fantasias, 75 Lisle, Leconte de, 155
preface to Printemps, 69 Lisle, J. Rouget de, 204
Le Maire, Louis, 103 Hymne à la liberté (La Marseillaise), 114, 124,
Le Mirliton, 274 161, 221
Le Roux, Maurice, 184 Liszt, Franz, 113, 120, 122, 127, 139, 151
Le Roy, Adrian, 54, 59, 60, 339, 341 symphonic poems, 141
Est-ce pas mort quand un corps froid, 59 Litolff, Henry, 123, 154
405 Index

liturgy Isis, 204

Gallican, 3, 5, 73, 319 last opera, 84
Gregorian, 4 legacy, 204
Roman, 5, 8, 321 lettres patentes acquired from Perrin, 202, 203
Locatelli, Pietro, 98 Lullian tradition, 208
Locke, John, 86, 348, 352 Phaëton, 202
Lockspeiser, Edward, 146, 153, 156 Psyché, 202
Loire valley, 50, 51, 56, 331 Le temple de la paix, 202
Lombards, 320, 322 Thésée, 204
London, 95, 125 tragédie en musique, 84, 202, 204, 207, 348, 350
Long, Marguerite, 168 use of dance sets in, 203
Loret, Jean, Muze historique, 80 lute, 52, 54, 75, 80, 253, 335
Lorie, 285 influence on harpsichord composers, 80
Lothair, 325 Luther, Martin, 50
Loucher, Raymond, Hop-Frog, 222 Lyon, 51, 54, 60, 119, 313, 324, 326, 368,
Louis, Dauphin of France, 85 372, 375
Louis I, duc d’Anjou, 38 Conservatoire, 190
Louis VI, 7, 8 Schola Cantorum, 369
Louis IX, 9, 11, 12 lyre, 253
Louis XI, 50
Louis XII, 51, 52, 332 Machaut, Guillaume de, 30, 31–3, 304–5
Louis XIII, 52, 69, 70, 75, 77, 82, 85, 335, 336, 342 Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient, 32
and the air de cour, 75 Douce, viare, 31
centralisation of music, 70–1 Honte, paour, 31
ceremonial music for, 72–3 Lay mortel, 304
and Chapelle Royale, 73 Mass, 40, 305
Tridentine reforms, 73 Remede de Fortune, 32–3, 304, 305
Louis XIV, 25, 52, 69, 71, 72, 73, 77–8, 81, 84, 85, Rose, lis, 31
90, 103, 201, 203, 331, 334, 335, 336, 338, Mâche, François-Bernard, 186, 190
342, 343, 357, 358 Maraé, 193
nationalist music, 88 Madeleine, church, 141
twilight years, 84, 88, 93 Madin, Henri, 90
withdrawal from social life, 85 Traité de contrepoint simple ou chant sur le
Louis XV, 88, 89, 90 livre, 90
musical establishment, 90–1, 94 madrigal, 57, 66, 346
Louis XVI, 91, 111, 115 Maeterlinck, Maurice, Pelléas et Mélisande, 142
Louis XVIII, 111 Magnard, Albéric, 152
Louis-Philippe I, 111, 116, 133 String Quartet 144
Louis the German, 325 Mahaut, Antoine, 94, 106
Louis the Pious, 7, 324, 325 maison du roi, 331, 332, 333, 336, 339
Louise Attaque, 284 Malec, Ivo, 186, 187
Louvier, Nicole, 278 Malherbe, Charles, 238
Louvre, 50, 74, 337 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 138, 190
Chapelle de Notre-Dame de la Paix, 82 Un coup de dés, 190
Museum, 112 Livre, 189
Lully, Jean-Baptiste, 70, 78–9, 83, 84, 85, 103, Malraux, André, 194
201, 207, 208, 217, 337, 338, 346, 348, Mamertus, Bishop, 315
350, 354, 357 Manchicourt, Pierre de, 58
Achilles et Polixène, 84 Manfredi, Filippo, 96
Acis et Galathée, 84 Mannheim school, 98
Alceste, 205 Manoury, Philippe, La nuit de Gutenberg, 195
Armide, 215, 216, 353 Mano Negra, 284
Ballet d’Alcidiane, 79 manuscrit de Bayeux, see ‘Bayeux’
Le ballet des arts, 25, 358 chansonnier
Bellérophon, 202, 203 Marais, Marin, 81, 207
Cadmus et Hermione, 202 Alcyone, 207
disgrace, 84, 85 Sémélé, 207
domination of Opéra, 202 Marcel-Dubois, Claudie, 246, 266, 268
406 Index

Maré, Rolf de, 165 Mersenne, Marin, 66, 77, 339

Marguerite Boulc’h, see Fréhel Le nuove musiche, 339
Marie-Antoinette, 91, 217 Messager, André, 141, 234
Hameau de la Reine, 107 Messiaen, Olivier, 143, 159, 171, 172, 173, 174–6,
Marie Leszczinska, Queen, 89 177, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 225
Mariotte, Antoine, 369 Catholic faith, 172
Marivaux, Pierre de, 206 Les corps glorieux, 183
Marmontel, Jean-François, 216 Diptique, 174
Contes moraux, 211 Fêtes de la lumière, 174
Marmoutier monastery, 314 Fêtes des belles eaux, 174
Marot, Clément, 55 ‘Mode de valeurs et d’intensités’ (Quatre
Marseillaise, La, see Lisle, J. Rouget de études de rythme), 176, 184
Marseilles, 119, 314, 367, 368, 375 modes of limited transposition, 176, 184
Conservatoire, 186, 368, 369 musical language, 176
Schola Cantorum, 369 Quatuor pour la fin du temps, 159, 174–5,
Martel, Charles, 319, 320, 321 176, 183
Martin I, Pope, 319 Saint François d’Assise, 181, 224, 225, 239
Martin-Beaulieu, Désiré, 373 teaching at Paris Conservatoire, 184, 192
Martin Le Franc, Champion des dames, 41 Technique de mon langage musical, 176, 184
Martin of Tours, 314 Timbres durées, 187
Martinet, Jean-Louis, 184 Trois petites liturgies, 183
Martini, Jean-Paul-Gilles, 115 Turangalîla-symphonie, 184
Martinon, Jean, Stalag IX, ou Musique d’exil, 175 Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus, 183
Mascitti, Michele, 95 Métru, Nicolas, 71, 75
Mass, 23, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 61, 63, 65, 90 Metz, 319, 324, 326
Missa Caput, 42 Cathedral, 321
organ Mass, 83 Conservatoire, 368
tenor Mass, 40 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 229, 235, 236, 269
Mass temporale, 320 L’Africaine, 230
Massenet, Jules, 136, 177, 234, 236, 239, 370 Le prophète, 230
Manon, 234 Les Huguenots, 230
Werther, 234 Robert le diable, 229, 236, 238, 371
Massine, Léonide, 161 Mignon, Jean, 82
Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal, 69, 77, 201, 338 Milhaud, Darius, 163, 165, 169, 170, 171, 180, 191
MC Solaar, 285 L’abandon d’Ariane, 170
McClellan, Michael, 111 Le boeuf sur le toit, 159
Médée et Jason, 209 Bolivar, 180, 222
Médicis, Catherine de, 52, 53, 332, 336, 337, 338 chamber symphonies, 170
Médicis, Marie de, 70, 74, 338 Christophe Colomb, 170, 236
Méhul, Étienne-Nicolas, 114, 121, 125 La création du monde, 165
Le chant du départ, 114 David, 180
Symphony No. 4, 121 La délivrance de Thésée, 170
symphonies, 120 L’enlèvement d’Europe, 170
mélodie, 155–6 L’homme et son désir, 165
mélodie dérythmée, 255 orchestral symphonies, 170
mélodrame, 227–8 string quartets, 170
Mendelssohn, Felix, 120, 135, 136, 144 Mille regretz, 57
Menger, Pierre-Michel, Le paradoxe du mimesis, 355
musician: le compositeur, le mélomane et ministry of culture, 190, 193, 224, 225,
l’État dans la société contemporaine, 193 267, 286
mensural notation, 27, 293, 296 ‘Landowski Plan’, 286
Mercure de France, Le, 94, 103, 104, 212 ministry of education, 274
Mercure galant, Le, 80 minstrels, 17, 35, 36, 38, 53, 60, 253, 268, 340
Méré, chevalier de, see Gombaud, Antoine Mistinguett, 275, 277
Merovingian period ‘Mon homme’, 275
abbots and bishops, 317, 323 Mistral, Frédéric, 372
kings, 3–4, 319, 320 Mitchell, Eddy, 281
Merovingians, 318, 319, 321 Mitterrand, François, 183, 194, 221, 225, 286
407 Index

MNATP, see Musée National des Arts et Mouret, Jean-Joseph, 103, 206, 358
Traditions Populaires cantatilles, 104
Mocquereau, André, 365 Les fêtes ou Le triomphe de Thalie, 205
modes, system of, 5–6 Mouton, Jean, 52, 57, 65
modes of limited transposition, see Messiaen, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 96, 115,
Olivier 121, 125, 126, 133, 167, 169, 182,
Molière, 79, 201 184, 374
Le bourgeois gentilhomme, 95 Clarinet Quintet, 169
Les fâcheux, 79 concerto form, 124
Molins, Pierre des, De ce que fols pense, 37 Don Giovanni, 233
monasteries, role of, 7–8 Prussian Quartets, 126
Mondonville, Joseph Cassanea de, 92, 99 Requiem, 115
Concert à trois choeurs, 98 Sonates pour le clavecin qui peuvent se jouer
Concerto de violon avec chant, 98 avec l’accompagnement de violon, K. 8
Dominus regnavit, 93 and 9, 89
Pièces de clavecin en sonates avec symphonies, 121
accompagnement de violon, Op. 3, 98 Symphony No. 41 ‘Jupiter’, 140
Titon et l’Aurore, 105 Murail, Tristan, 184, 192
Mongrédien, Jean, 118, 121, 125 Désintégrations, 192
Monnais, Édouard, 128 Gondwana, 192
Monnet, Jean, 210, 212 Mémoire/Érosion, 192
Mémoires, 210 Les septs paroles, 192
Monnot, Marguerite, 279 Mur-de-Barrez, Privat (abbot), 266
monody, 346 Muris Johannis des, 28
Monographies Communales, 265 Musaeus, 315
monophony, 18 Musard, Philippe, 375
Monsigny, Pierre-Alexandre, 105 Musée de la Parole et du Geste, 266
Le déserteur, 213 Musée de l’Homme, 266
Le roi et le fermier, 91, 211 Musée des Civilisations d’Europe et de la
Montand, Yves, 279 Méditerranée, 267
Montansier, Mademoiselle, 217 Musée d’Ethnographie, 266
Monte, Philippe de, 50, 338 Musée National des Arts et Traditions
Monte Carlo, 170, 371 Populaires (MNATP), 266, 267, 268
Montéclair, Michel Pignolet de musette, 89, 97, 107, 246, 254, 275, 284
Brunètes anciènes et modernes, 105 music hall, 276, 277–9
Jephté, 203 music publishing, 54, 70–1, 89, 339
Montesson, Madame de, 102 musica mensurata, see mensural notation
Montmartre, 233 musical signs (Dubos), 350
cabarets, 162, 274 musiciens de chambre, 52
royal Benedictine abbey of, 74, 82 musique concrète, 185, 186, 194
Montpellier, Schola Cantorum, 369 musique de la chambre, 53, 71, 72, 73, 75, 78, 82,
Moore, Rachel, 161 83, 89, 90, 335–6
Moréas, Jean, manifesto in Le Figaro, 138 merged with Chapelle Royale, 91
Moreno, Muriel, 284 musique mesurée, 69, 74, 75, 77
Morin, Jean-Baptiste, 81, 103 Musique Municipale, 368
motet, 23–8, 30, 33–4, 39, 40, 44, 54, 65, 93, musiques militaires, 373
303, 304 ‘My Man’ (American torch song), 275
cantilena motet, 39 Myers, Rollo, 149
creation of, 25
grand motet, 83, 90, 92, 93, 112, 116, 337 Nancy, Conservatoire, 369
Mout me fu grief / Robin m’aime / Portare, 27 Nantes
petit motet, 83, 90 Conservatoire, 368
social context, 26–7 Schola Cantorum, 369
vernacular texts, use of, 26 Société Philharmonique, 375
Moulin Rouge, Le, 275, 276 Napoleon III, 133, 233, 235, 272
Moulinié, Étienne, 339 Napoleonic Empire, 111, 229, 273
Mouloudji, 279 Naudot, Jacques-Christophe, Fêtes
Moulu, Pierre, Missa Alma redemptoris mater, 62 rustiques, 107
408 Index

nautical jousting matches, 254 talabard, 249

N’Dour, Youssou, 284 tchalemine, 250
Négresses Vertes, 284 tenora and tible, 247
Némirovsky, Irène, Suite française, 231 Obrecht, Jacob, 64
neo-classicism, 142, 166, 167, 182 Occitan (Provençal) language, 13, 259
Neo-Gallican movement, 83 Ockeghem, Johannes, 50–1, 56, 57, 61, 62–5
Neuville, Marie-José, 278 In hydraulis, 64
New Wave, 191, 284 Ma bouche rit, 56, 61
Newton, Isaac, 354 Missa Cuiusvis toni, 62, 63
Nicole, Pierre, 348 Missa Ecce ancilla, 63
Niedermeyer, Louis, 117, 135, 364 Missa Prolationum, 62, 63
Nigg, Serge, 184, 187 Prenez sur moy, 62
L’étrange aventure de Gulliver à Lilliput, 181 Presque trainsi, 56
Nigout, Gilbert, 253 ode-symphonie, 123
Nivers, Guillaume-Gabriel, 83 Odéon, theatre, 227, 228, 229, 232
Nolwenn, 285 Odorannus of Sens, 295
Nono, Luigi, 182 Offenbach, Jacques, 133, 233, 238
notation, 5 can-can (Orphée aux enfers), 140
climacus, 296 Les contes d’Hoffmann, 134, 238
clivis, 295, 308, 309 La grande duchesse de Gérolstein, 233
early example, 321 Orphée aux enfers, 233
elmuahim, 296 La vie parisienne, 233
elmuarifa, 296 Ohana, Maurice, 181, 223, 238
ligata, 296 La Célestine, 238
longa, 306, 307 Histoire véridique de Jacotin, 181
Messine clivis-cum-pressus, 295 Syllabaire pour Phèdre, 238
neuma, 294, 295, 296 Trois contes de l’honorable Fleur, 238
nota quadrata, 296, 297, 298 Olympia, 276
pes, 296, 307 O’Neill, Mary, 16
podatus, 295 Onslow, George, 126, 144
proprietates, 297 Piano Trio in F minor, 144
puncta materialia, 297 opera (genre), 69, 78–9, 121, 126, 128, 133–4,
punctus, 294, 295, 296, 297, 307, 309 170, 247, 257, 260, 337–8, 346, 353,
rhythmic, 25, 27, 28 362–3, 370–1
torculus, 295 airs, 70
virga, 295, 307, 309 audience demographic, 240
Notker, 8 coloratura technique in, 235–6
Notre-Dame, Paris, 8, 10, 11, 21, 22, 74, 82, 364 open-air arena, 371
choir school, 65 post-war new opera, 181
polyphony, 8, 11, 21, 23, 26 regional premieres, 363
relations with crown, 51 rise of, 70
school of composers, 21–3 Roman, 201
sources of music, 302 romance, 211
Notre-Dame de Poitiers, convent, 319 state regulation of Parisian opera industry, 225
Nouno, Gilbert, 193 ticket prices, 240
Nouveaux Jeunes, Les, 163 use of local colour, 237–8
Nouvelle revue française, 189 Venetian, 201
Noverre, Jean-Georges, 209, 210 Opéra Paris (theatre), 79, 85, 90, 91, 92, 100, 103,
NRJ, 285, 287 118, 170, 203, 205, 209, 210, 211, 216,
217, 222, 224, 225, 228, 229, 230, 232,
oboe, 99, 102, 120, 248–52, 253–4 233, 235, 357, 370
aboè, 250 in 1914–18, 160
bombarde, 247, 248, 249, 254 in 1950s and 1960s, 222
clarin, 249 ballet company, 225
Sête, 248 dancers, 98
claron, 249 free passes, 229
graile, 250 Gall’s directorship, 225–6
hautbois d’écorce, 246, 250–1 after Gluck, 222
409 Index

Gluck revivals, 228 orphéon, 272, 273, 372

and grand opera, 230 movement, 373
Liebermann’s directorship, 224–5 Orphéon, L’, 273
Lully’s directorship, 84 Orphéon Lillois, 373
monopoly, 227 Ortigue, Joseph d’, 128
becomes Opéra Bastille, 221 overture, 79, 81, 106
at Palais Garnier, 181 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 29, 202
premieres 1918–39, 222
public subsidy, 224, 227 Packer, Dorothy, 106
repertoire, 204, 206, 216, 226 Paer, Ferdinando, 374
and sacred music, 93 Paganini, Nicolò, 119, 120
opéra-ballet, 78–9, 84, 201, 204–5, 206, 207, 209, Page, Christopher, 17
357–8 paghjella, 260
ariette, 212 Paisiello, Giovanni, 115
La Marseillaise, 221 Nina, o si La pazza per amore, 213
Opéra Bastille, 194, 221, 230, 232 Pajot, 253
opéra biblique, 203 Palais d’Hiver (Jardin Zoologique
opéra bouffon, 212, 217 d’Acclimation), 375
opera buffa, 217, 226, 228 Palais Garnier, 170, 180, 221, 225
opéra comique, 104, 106, 133, 201, 210, 211, 212, 213, Palais Royal, 89, 118
215, 217, 226, 227, 228, 231, 233, 237, 238 Palaeofrankish script, 294
air, 214 Palaestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 61, 66, 117, 364
ariette, 212–13, 214 revival of music, 117, 135
compared with vaudeville, 227 Panassié, Hugues, 276
opéra comique en vaudeville, 214 Panis, Pierre, 267
stylistic development from mid-eighteenth Paradis, Vanessa, 284
century, 213–14 parchment book, 300
vaudeville, 205, 214, 233 Paris, University of, 11
Opéra-Comique, 105, 118, 170, 180, 205, 206, Paris Conservatoire, 94, 114, 118, 122, 124, 128,
209, 210, 214, 222, 226, 228, 231, 232, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 175,
234, 235, 363, 370 176, 184, 191, 236, 362, 364, 367, 369
closure (1745–51), 210 Debussy attends, 142
closure (1972), 224 Milhaud teaches at, 180
fair theatres (Foire) renamed as, 205 Ravel attends, 141
merger with Comédie-Italienne, 206, 214, 217 Satie attends, 162
orchestra, 210 Paris Opéra, see Opéra
public subsidy, 224, 227 Paris World’s Fair (1937), 174
reopening (1990), 225 Paris Zoo, see Jardin Zoologique d’Acclimation
repertoire, 227, 231 parishes, creation of, 315, 316
at Théâtre Feydeau, 226 Parmegiani, Bernard, 186
opérette, 225, 233, 234, 238 De natura sonorum, 187
organ, 36, 99, 113, 115, 147–8, 151, 364, 365 Pasdeloup, Jules-Étienne, 136, 372, 375, 376
composers, 171–2, 181 Pasquier, Étienne, 174
organ Mass, see Mass Passy, 96–7
organum, 21–2, 23, 24, 25, 301 pasticcio, 229
Orlandini, Giuseppe Maria Pathé, 266, 280
Bacocco e Serpilla (Le mari joueur et la femme Paul I, Pope, 321, 322
bigotte), 209, 212 Paulus, 275
Il giocatore, 212 Payne, Thomas, 25
Orleans Pays Vannetais, 258
Cathedral, 54 Pechon, André, 74
Conservatoire, 369 pedlars, 253
University, 54 peer-to-peer (P2P), 287
Orledge, Robert, 144 Peguri, Charles, 254
ornamentation, 77, 85, 103, 211 Pépin II, 319
in traditional instrumental music, 262–3 Pépin III, 4, 7, 320, 321, 322, 324, 325
in traditional singing, 256–9 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 166, 346
Orneval, Jacques-Philippe d’, 205 La serva padrona, 209, 212, 353
410 Index

Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista (cont.) String Quartet in C major, Ben, 126

Stabat mater, 99, 374 Pleyel et Cie, 120, 374
Perotin, 11, 21, 22–3, 25 Poets of Today (book series), 281
Beata viscera (with Philip the Chancellor), 23 Poinsinet, Antoine-Alexandre-Henri, 215
Ex semine, 25, 26 Poitiers University, 267
Nativitas, 23 polyphony, 6, 8, 11, 15, 18, 31, 34, 35–8, 39, 41,
Sederunt, 23, 25 42, 44, 52–6, 62, 66, 69, 82, 117, 143, 259,
Viderunt, 23, 25, 358 260, 293, 301, 304, 334, 366, 369
Perpetuus, Bishop, 318 distinction between organum purum and
Perrin, Pierre, 84, 201, 202 discant, 22–3
Persuis, Louis-Luc Loiseau de, Le triomphe de Pompadour, marquise de, 89, 94
Trajan, 228 Pompidou, Georges, 183
Pesstain, Chaillou de, 303 Ponnelle, Jean-Pierre, 224
Peter of Blois, 11 Pont Neuf, Paris, 60
Peter the Deacon, 300 Ponteau, 210
petit-format, 274 pop music, 187, 191
Petite Bande, see Petits Violons American, 281, 282
Petits Violons (Petite Bande), 78, 337 French, 282–4
Philidor, Anne-Danican, 92, 103 Pople, Anthony, 176
Philidor, François-André Danican, 105, 213, 215 Porcile, François, 183
Blaise le savetier, 212 Portal, Michel, 191
Ernelinde, princesse de Norvège, 215 Poueigh, Jean, 256, 262
Quatuors de l’art de la modulation, 101 Poulenc, Francis, 156, 159, 163, 165, 173, 176, 180
Sancho Pança dans son île, 212 Concerto for Two Pianos, 170
Le sorcier, 211, 213, 214 Dialogues des Carmélites, 172, 222, 231–4, 236
Tom Jones, 213 Gloria, 172
Philip VI, 31 Litanies à la Vierge noire, 172
Philip Augustus, 9, 10 Mass in G major, 172
Philip the Bold, 36 Stabat mater, 172
Philip the Chancellor, 11, 23, 24, 25 Power, Leonel, 63
Ex semine Abrahe, 25 prelude, unmeasured, 80
Philip the Good, Duke, 36, 41 Prévert, Jacques, 279
Philippe, duc d’Orléans, regent, 88, 89, 95, 205 Prey, Claude, 223
Philippot, Michel, 187 Prie, marquise de, 91
philosophes, 352, 353–5 Prioris, Dionisius, 52
Phonothèque Nationale, 266, 268 Prix de Rome, 122, 134, 135, 142, 180, 231
phoney war, 174 envois, 136
Piaf, Édith, 276, 277, 278, 279, 282, 283, 285 Procès des ariettes et des vaudevilles, Le, 214
Non, je ne megrette rich, 277 Provence, open-air opera festival, 363, 371
piano, 107, 120, 126–7, 135, 148–50, 278, 367, 374 Prover, Filippo, 96
forte-piano, 106 psalm singing, 50, 55, 61, 315
Picasso, Pablo, 161 Puccini, Giacomo, 238
Piccinni, Niccolò, 216, 346 punk, 283, 284
Le dormeur éveillé, 91, 217 in United Kingdom, 284
Pichonnet-Andral, Maguy, 267 Puy d’Evreux, 55
pièces à machines, 201 Pygmalion story, 358–60
pièces en écriteaux, 203 Pythagoras, 347, 350
pièces en vaudevilles, 204, 206
Pigalle, 284 Quatuor Baillot, 374
Pimpard, 253 quatuor brillant, 126
Pinel, Julie, Le printems, 104 quatuor concertant, 102, 126
Pius VII, Pope, 115 Quatre, Les, 173
Pixérécourt, Guilbert, 227 Queneau, Raymond, 279
plain-chant musical, 74 Querelle des anciens et des modernes, 207
planctus, 12 Querelle des Bouffons, 209, 210, 212, 213, 353, 354
Play of Daniel, 17 Guerelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes, 216
Pleyel, see Pleyel et Cie Querelle des Lullistes et des Ramistes, 204,
Pleyel, Ignace-Joseph, 126 216–17, 350
411 Index

Quilici, Félix, 260, 267 Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, 142

Quinault, Jean-Baptiste, 201, 202, 216 La valse, 169
Quinault, Philippe, 84 Violin Sonata, 169
Quintette du Hot Club de France, 276 Ray Ventura and his Collégiens, 276
réaliste-pierreuse, 275
Radegunde, 319 reason versus senses, 350–352
Radigue, Eliane, 186 Rebel, François, 89
radio, 180, 287 Rebel, Jean-Féry, 106
quotas of French music imposed, 287 Les élémens, 98
transistor radio, 280 recherche musicale, 186, 193
Radio France, 181, 182 récit (mesuré), see recitative
Service des Illustrations Musicales, 181 récit non mesuré, 75, 207, 219
Radiodiffusion Française (RDF), 186 recitative, 103, 206, 207, 212, 214–15, 219, 232,
Raguenet, François, 348 235, 353, 370
Paralèle des italiens et des françois, en ce qui recitativo accompagnato, 213, 215
regarde la musique et les opéras, 82, 348 record industry, 280–1
Raison, André, 83 record sales, 280, 286
Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 93, 95, 97, 100, 103, 106, in supermarkets, 286
112, 208, 215, 346, 350, 353, 354, 355, Red, Axelle, 284
357, 359 Reformation, 61–2
advocacy of corps sonora, 355 reggae, 285
attacks Rousseau, 354 regions (of France)
Les Boréades, 208 Regnard, Jean-François, 206
dance, function of, 209 Reicha, Antoine, 126, 139, 228
Erreurs sur la musique dans l’Encyclopédie, 354 Reign of Terror, 111
Les fêtes d’Hébé, on Les talents lyriques, 206 Reims Cathedral, 40, 72, 325
Hippolyte et Aricie, 96, 103, 207–9, 350 Reinhardt, Django, 276
Les Indes galantes, 106, 207, 215, 225 Remigius, Bishop, 316, 317
Observations sur notre instinct pour la Remy of Auxerre, 295
musique et sur son principe, 354 Renart, Jean, Roman de la rose, 26
Pigmalion, 208 Renart le nouvel, 303
Platée, 208, 209 Renaud, 283, 285
tragédies lyriques, 112 Boucan d’enfer, 285
Zoroastre, 202, 203 ‘Laisse Béton’, 283
Rankin, Susan, 5, 294 Rouge sang, 285
rap, 284, 285, 287, 288 Renaud, Madeleine, 182
French, 288 Renaud, Séchan, see Renaud
Ravel, Maurice, 134, 136, 141–2, 145, 146–7, Rencontres Internationales de Luthiers et
148, 149, 156, 159, 161, 168–70, 173, 177, Maîtres Sonneurs, 245
262 Rennes, 375
Affaire Ravel, 134 Réôme, Aurelian of, Musica disciplina, 6
Daphnis et Chloë, 141, 142, 169, 234 responsorium, 326
L’enfant et les sortilèges, 169, 170, 234, 236 responsory
Gaspard de la nuit, 150 Stirps Jesse, 10
L’heure espagnole, 234 Rex regum regis filio, 12
Jeux d’eau, 150 Restoration, Bourbon, 115, 228, 229, 235, 367
Ma mère l’oye, 176 Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Municipaux de
Miroirs, 150 France, 223
Pavane pour une infante défunte, 169 Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux, 222,
performs Satie, 163 224
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, 168, 169 Reverdy, Michèle, 184
Piano Concerto in G major, 141, 168, 169 Médée, 195
Piano Trio, 141, 145–6 Revolution of 1789, 101, 108, 111, 112, 113, 117,
Shéhérazade (orchestral songs), 154 121, 124, 133, 215, 216, 221, 225, 230,
Shéhérazade (overture), 154 232, 236, 245, 271, 272, 273, 343, 363, 367
Sonatine, 150 outdoor festivals, 114, 221, 372
String Quartet, 141, 144 state regulation of opera, 226
Le tombeau de Couperin, 141, 148 Revolution of 1830, 111, 116
412 Index

revue, 276 Pygmalion, 359–60

Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 128 on unity of melody, 353
Revue musicale, 128 Roussel, Albert, 135, 148, 153, 156, 163, 168
Revue Wagnérienne, 138 Padmâvatî, 170, 237
Riccoboni, Luigi, 205 Roussin, Camille, 260
Richard I (Lionheart), 16 royal chapel, see Chapelle Royale
Richelieu, Cardinal, 69, 201 Royer, Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace, 99, 106
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, 167 Pièces de clavecin, 89, 106
Ringer, Catherine, 284 Pyrrhus, le pouvoir de l’amour, 106
Rippe, Albert de, 52, 53, 60 Zaide, 106
Riquier, Guiraut, 303 Rushton, Julian, 123
Risset, Jean-Claude, 190
rite Saariaho, Kaija, 194
Gallican, 4, 317 Sacchini, Antonio, Dardanus, 91
Roman, 4 SACEM, see Society of Music Authors,
Rivarès, Frédéric, 262 Composers and Publishers
Rivers, Dick, 281 Saint-Amand, royal abbey of, 6
Rivet, Paul, 266 Saint-Benoit, abbey of, 17
Rivière, Georges Henri, 266 Saint-Denis, royal abbey of, 4, 7, 8, 319,
Robespierre, Maximilien de, 112, 113, 124 320, 324
Robin, Yann, 195 Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, 171
rock, 279, 280–3, 285 Saint-Gall, monastery of, 7, 8
alternative rock, 284 Saint-George, chevalier de, 100, 102
folk-rock, 282 Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, church of, 74, 82
rock’n’ roll, 280, 281 Saint-Gervais, church of, 135, 364
Rode, Pierre, 125 Saint-Martial, abbey of, 8, 12, 17
Violin Concerto No. 6, 125 Saint-Martin of Tours, abbey of, 7, 51
Rogations, 315 Saint-Pé, Léa, 262
Roger-Ducasse, Jean, 163, 168 Saint-Riquier, 6
Roland-Manuel, Alexis, 163 Saint-Saëns, Camille, 123, 133, 135, 136, 137, 140,
Rolling Stones, 284 141, 144, 145, 147, 151, 153, 154, 156, 160,
Roman de Fauvel, 28–30, 303 164, 168, 169, 234, 236, 376
Romanesque architecture, 323 Les barbares, 372
Rome, 34, 37, 39, 61, 73, 83, 136, 318, 320, Berceuse, Op. 105, 149
321–5, 326 Le carnaval des animaux, 140
Romitelli, Fausto, 195 cello concertos, 154
rondeau, 30, 31, 32 Chanson triste, 155
Ronger, Florimond, see Hervé Le chasseur maudit, 153
Ronsard, Pierre de, La nuit froide et sombre, 59, Danse macabre, 153
66 Déjanire, 372
Ropartz, Joseph-Guy, 246, 369 Germanophilie, 161
Rosen, Charles, 156, 237 Guitares et mandolines, 155
Rossini, Gioachino, 119, 126, 229, 235, 236 La jeunesse d’Hercule, 153
Guillaume Tell, 229 open-air opera arena, 372
Rouché, Jacques, 170, 222, 232 organ rhapsodies, Op. 7, 133
Rouen, 7, 202, 363, 365, 366, 367, 368, 375 Parysatis, 372
opera house, 362 Piano Concerto No. 2, 140
Rouse, Richard and Mary, 300 Piano Concerto No. 3, 154
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 101, 112, 114, 127, 347, Piano Concerto No. 4, 151
351, 352, 353–4 piano concertos, 154
Le devin du village, 105, 208, 210, 211, 353 piano music, 148, 149
Dictionnaire de musique, 353 Piano Quartet in B[♭], 148
Essai sur l’origine des langues, 353, 359 Piano Trio No. 1, 144
fragments, criticism of, 208 Rhapsodie d’Auvergne, 246
Julie, ou La nouvelle Héloïse, 351 Le rouet d’Omphale, 136
Lettre sur la musique francaise, 204, 212, 216, Samson et Dalila, 234, 371
353, 354 Six études, Op. 52, 149
Lettre sur les spectacles, 114 soirées, 144
413 Index

songs, 155 Schaeffner, André, 266

Suite algérienne, 154 Scherchen, Hermann, 182
Suite in F, 148 Schlesinger, Maurice, 128
Symphony in A major, 140 Schmitt, Florent, 168
Symphony No. 2, 151 Schobert, Johann, 96
Symphony No. 3, 151–2, 156 Schoenberg, Arnold, 182
Trois préludes et fugues, 147 Pierrot lunaire, 142
Trois rapsodies sur des cantiques Bretons, 147 twelve-tone method, 185
Valse canariote, 149 Schöffer, Nicolas, 191
violin concertos, 154 Schola Cantorum, 117, 135, 139, 163, 171, 173,
Violin Sonata No. 1, 151 363, 364, 367
Saint-Sulpice, 171 regional model, 369
Saint-Victor, abbey of, 11, 216, 315 schola cantorum
Saint-Victor, university of, 11 outside Rome, 321
Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, 12, 18, 22, 51, 74, 83 papal, 8, 320, 323
choir school, 65 Schumann, Robert, 136
Sainte-Clotilde, church of, 139, 171 Scott, Walter, 228
Sainte-Colombe, Jean de, 80, 81 scribe, 293, 294
Sala, Emilio, L’opera senza canto, 227 Scribe, Eugène, 227, 229
Sales, François de, 73 scriptorium, 306
Sallé, Marie, 358 Scudéry, Madeleine de, 80, 357
Pygmalion, 358, 359 Séances Populaires de Musique de
Salle Favart, 214 Chambre, 373
Salmon, Jacques, Balet comique de la royne (with Second Empire, 133, 232, 233, 274, 275, 363
Girard de Beaulieu), 53, 337 Second Republic, 112, 133
salons, 77, 80, 88, 89, 91, 97, 98, 102, 120, 124, Second Viennese School, 150, 172
127, 134, 141 Sedaine, Jean-Michel, 213
feminine salon culture, 357–8 Senleches, Jaquemin de, 35
salon theorists, 357 Senlecque, Jacques, 71
Salvandy, Narcisse-Achille de, 264 sensibilité, 351, 354, 355
Samuel-Rousseau, Marcel, Kerkeb, 222 sentiment, 348, 349, 350, 351, 354
Sand, George, 112, 127 sentiments délicats, 351
Les maîtres sonneurs, 246 sentiments tendres, 351
Sarkozy, Nicolas, 287 sequence, 6, 8, 11, 12
Sarrette, Bernard, 367 Quem quaeritis, 12
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 185 serialism, 166, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 191
Satie, Eric, 162–3, 164, 165, 168 crisis of, 182
and École d’Arcueil, 173 total serialism, 182, 185, 188
influence, 163 Sermisy, Claudin de, 51, 52, 57–8, 59, 61, 65, 334
Mercure, 163 Hau, hau je bois, 57
Parade, 161–2, 163 Je n’ay poinct plus d’affection, 57
Pièces froides, 163 Je ne menge point de porc, 58
Relâche, 163, 165 La, la, Maistre Pierre, 57
Socrate, 163 serpent, 365
Sports et divertissements, 163 Servin, Jean, 61
Trois gnossiennes, 163 Sévérac, Déodat de
Trois morceaux en forme de poire, 163 Héliogabale, 372
Saturationnistes, 195 Sévigny, Madame, 80
Sauguet, Henri, 165 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 112
Sauvage, Catherine, 279 Shroud of Turin, 42
Schaeffer, Pierre, 185–6, 193 Sicard, Émile, 372
Étude aux allures, 186 Siècle des Lumières, see Enlightenment
Étude aux chemins de fer, 185, 186 signes de convention (Dubos), 350
Étude No. 2 imposée, 185 signes naturels (Dubos), 350
Symphonie pour un homme seul (with Pierre Simeone, Nigel, 171, 173
Henry), 185, 186 singer-songwriters/auteurs-compositeurs-
Traité des objets musicaux: essai interprètes, 277–9, 281–4
interdisciplines, 186 Sistine Chapel, 363, 365, 366
414 Index

Six, Les, 160, 162, 163–5, 167, 172, 173, 176, 180, briolée, 256
181, 182 dance song, 258, 261
Album des six, 164 functions, 258
Les mariés de la tour Eiffel, 164, 165 funeral lamentation, 258
Skyrock, 287 gender association, 259
Smithson, Harriet, 122 gwerz, 257
société chantante, 273 kan ha diskan, 259
Société des Compositeurs Normands, 363 responsorial, 259
Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 118, 119, subjects, 260
123, 136, 137, 160, 181, 372, 374, 375 tuilage, 259
Société des Concerts Populaires (formally work song, 259
Nantes Société Philharmonique), 375 Soubies, Albert, 238
Société des Jeunes Artistes du Conservatoire, Souchon, Alain, 283
123, 136 Soulié, Frédéric, 230, 231
Société des Observateurs de l’Homme, 265 Sovot, Ballot de, 359
Société d’Ethnographie de Paris, 265 spectacle de variétés, 276
Société du Concert d’Émulation, 101 spectacles de fragments, 208
Société Ethnologique de Paris, 265 Spectralism, 191–4
Société Musicale Indépendante, 145, 160, 163 Spiegel, Der, 223, 224
Société Nationale de Musique, 137, 141, 142, 144, Spirale, La, 173
145, 160, 183, 233 Spontini, Gaspare, 235
société philharmonique, 368 Fernand Cortez, 228
Société Philharmonique de Sainte-Cécile, 375 La vestale, 228
Société Royale des Antiquaires de France, 265 Sprout, Leslie, 174, 175
Society of Music Authors, Composers and square, as symbol, 294, 296
Publishers (SACEM), 274, 275, 280 St Bartholomew’s Day, 50
Solesmes abbey, 116, 117, 365, 366 Saint-Pierre, Bernadin de, 112
Solomos, Makis, 187 Stalag VIIIA (Görlitz, Silesia), 183
Somis, Giovanni Battista, 94, 98 Stamitz, Johann, 96, 97, 100, 112
sommeil, 207 Star Academy, 285–6
sonata, 70, 89 Starshooter, 284
solo, 81 Statistique Départementale, 265
trio, 81 Stephen II, Pope, 4, 8, 320, 321, 324
song, 56 Stephen IV, 325
au tralala singing, 258 Stivell, Alain, 284
books, 60 stochasticism, 182
brunette, 89, 105–6 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 182, 184, 186
and Carmen, 12 Klavierstück XI, 188
in eighteenth century, 105–6 Kreuzspiel, 188
jeu-parti, 16, 303 Strabo, 325
lai, 272, 303 Strasbourg, 365, 366, 368, 371, 373
lament, 257 Conservatoire, 367
Latin, 8, 12 Stravinsky, Igor, 142, 159, 166–7, 168, 169,
monophonic, 11, 18 184, 190
parodies, 106, 205 Capriccio, 170
pastourelle, 16, 303 Concerto for Piano and Winds, 167, 170
popular, 56 Mavra, 167, 168, 170
ritmus, 12 Les noces, 167
romance, 105, 155, 211 Octet, 166, 167
rondeau, 272 Oedipus rex, 167
Romantic, see mélodie L’oiseau de feu, 166
strophic, 56 Pulcinella, 166–7
timbres, 272 Le sacre du printemps, 134, 161, 165, 167, 169,
updating of, 89 181, 233
vaudeville, 89, 106, 110, 204, 205, 233 Sonata for Piano, 167
versus, 12 Symphonie de psaumes, 159, 172
torch song, 277 street singer, 272, 274, 277
traditional Strehler, Giorgio, 224
415 Index

Striggio, Alessandro, 338 Tézenas, Suzanne, 120, 182, 183

string quartet, 88–102, 126, 143–4 Thalberg, Sigismond, 127
Strohm, Reinhard, 40 théâtre, grand, 226, 227
Stuck, Baptiste, 81 Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique, 227
Stuck, Battistin, 103 Théâtre de la Gaité, 227
student uprising of May 1968, 282 Théâtre de la Monnaie, 195
Studio d’Essai, 186 Théâtre de la Renaissance, 231
style entrecoupé, 214 Théâtre de l’Impératrice, 226, 227
style galant, 85 becomes the Odéon, 228
see also galanterie Théâtre de Monsieur, 217
stylus, 308 Théâtre de Vaudeville, 227
succursales, 368, 369 Théâtre de Versailles, 217
Suetonius, 4 Théâtre des Arts, Rouen, attempted conversion
Suger, Abbott, 7, 8 to théâtre-lyrique, 370
surrealism, 188, 278 Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, 233
swing, 276, 278 Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, 165, 181, 184, 276
Sylvestre, Anne, 278, 281 La revue nègre (1925), 276
symbolism, 138, 358 Theâtre des Variétés, 227
of instruments, 110 Théâtre du Châtelet, 137, 161
of music writing, 294, 295 Théâtre du Panorama-Dramatique, 228
symphonic concerto, 154 Théâtre du Petit-Marigny, 182
symphonic poem, 136, 151, 153 Théâtre Feydeau, 226
symphonie choréographique, 142 orchestra, 118
symphonie concertante, 99, 100, 124 repertoire, 213, 226
symphonie descriptive, 207 Théâtre-Français, 226, 227, 228
symphonie dramatique, 123 Théâtre-Italien, 206, 214, 231, 233, 235, 370
symphony, 98–100, 121–3 théâtre larmoyan, 213
precursors, 98 Théâtre-Lyrique, 232, 233, 370, 371
Romantic, 151–3 Théâtre National de l’Opéra, 221
Synod of Aachen (817), 324 théâtre sécondaire, 226, 227
theatres, regional, 223, 370–2
tabor, 335, 343 Theodoric IV, 320
Tacitus, 4 theorbo, 80
Tailleferre, Germaine, 163, 165 Thérésa, 275
Ballade for piano and orchestra, 173 Thermidorian Reaction, 111
Marchand d’oiseaux, 165 Theuderic of Austrasia, 317
talking cinema, 280 Thibaut de Champagne, 302, 303
tango, 276, 281 Les chansons au roy de Navarre, 302
Tapray, Jean-François, symphonies concertantes, 107 Thibaut de Navarre, 16
Tartini, Giuseppe, 94, 97 Third Republic, 111, 133, 234, 372, 374
Taruskin, Richard, 156, 166, 167 Thirty Years War, 69
Taxi Girl, 284 Tholoze, Michel de, 60
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il’yich, 146, 182, 234 Thomas, Ambroise, 133, 134, 231
Sleeping Beauty, 234 Thomas, Downing A., 213, 356
Swan Lake, 234 Tiepolo, Pasqualino, 95
Telemann, Georg Philipp, Paris Quartets, 101 Tiêt, Ton-That, 190
Téléphone (band), 284 Tinctoris, Johannes, 41, 54
television, 232, 281 Tironian notation, 300, 308–9
reality TV, 285 Titelouze, Jehan, Hymnes de l’église pour toucher
Tencin, Claudine Guérin de, 351 sur l’orgue, 71
Ténot, Frank, 280 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 112
Tenroc, Charles, 160 total serialism, see serialism
Têtes Raides, Les, 284 toulouhou, 246
Teppaz, 280, 281 Toulouse, 17, 362, 365, 367, 368, 375
Terrasse, Claude, 234 Conservatoire, 368
Tessier, Charles, 52 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 274, 275
Chansons et airs de court, 59 Tournemire, Charles, 171
Tessier, Roger, 190, 192 Tours, 51, 318, 319
416 Index

traditional musical instruments, 246 Vatican, 322, 323, 324, 365, 366, 369
traditional musicians, 256, 267, 268 Vaucaire, Michel, 279
tragédie en musique, 78, 79, 84, 104, 112, 201–3, vaudeville, see song: vaudeville
204, 205, 207, 215, 216, 223, 358 Veillot, Jean, 82
ariette, 207, 212 Alleluia, o filii, 82
clarification of terms, 202 Sacris solemnis, 82
divertissement, 203 Vendôme, duc de, 84
five-act division of, 203 Venerius, 315
and Gluck, 215 Veni, sponsa mea, 74
after Lully, 206–8 Venice, 339
origins in royal power, 213 Ventadorn, Bernard de, 13, 14
parody of, 209 Vérard, Antoine, 57
tragédie mise en musique, clarification of terms, Verba, Cynthia, 355
202–5 Verdelot, Philippe, 66
Treaty of Verdun, 7, 325 Verdi, Giuseppe, 133, 167, 223, 238
Trenet, Charles, 277–8 Don Carlos, 230
‘Boum’, 277 Les vêpres siciliennes, 230
‘Douce France’, 278 Verlaine, Paul, 155
‘La mer’, 277 Verne, Jules, 238
‘Mes jeunes années’, 278 Véron, Louis, 229, 230, 232
‘Moi, j’aime le music-hall’, 278 Versailles, 69, 78, 81, 83, 88, 107, 330, 331
Trocadéro, 266 decline, 88, 91
Trier, 317, 321, 326 Low Mass, 72
trope, 6, 8, 17, 24, 300 during the Regency, 89–91
Let us rejoice today (Gaudeamus omnes), 6 Vestris, Gaeton, 209
troubadour, 13–16, 17, 49, 272, 363 Vian, Boris, 279
Crusade songs, 13 Viardot, Pauline, 133, 134, 140
laments, 13 Vichy, 175
love songs, 13 Vichy regime, 174, 175
pastourelle, 16 Statut des juifs, 175
satirical songs, 13 Victoria, Tomás Luis de, 61, 66, 364, 366
sources, 15–16 Vidal, Raimon, 17
trouvère, 14, 15, 16, 256, 272, 303, 304 vielle à roue, see hurdy-gurdy
genres, 26 Vierne, Louis, 148, 171
songs, form and style, 16 Viking raids, 7
trumpet, 35, 39, 71, 73, 85, 333 Vicentino, Nicola, 342
Trust, 284 Viñes, Ricardo, 173
Tuileries palace, 89, 99, 103, 115 Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi (Grande Bande),
Tuotilo, 8 53, 71, 78, 83, 336
twelve-tone music, see serialism disbanded, 91
vinyl disc, 280, 281
Umayyad caliphate, 319 viol, 80, 81, 335, 340
UNESCO, 260 violin, 53, 81, 94, 125, 253, 254, 255, 258, 259,
Urbino, 340 336, 343, 368
traditional performance styles, 256, 262–3, 267
Vachon, Pierre, 96, 102 violin bands, royal, 336–7
Vadé, Charles, 212 see also Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi
Vaillant, Jean de (Jehan), violons du roi, see Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi
Der mai mit lieber zal, 39 Viotti, Giovanni Battista, 119, 217
Par maintes foys, 37, 38, 39 Violin Concerto No. 22, 125
Vaison, Second Council of (529), 317 violin concertos, 125
Valière, Michel, 267 virelai, 30, 32, 35, 37, 56, 304
Vallée, François, 266 bergerette, 56
Valois dukes of Burgundy, 35 Contre le temps et la sason jolye / He! Mari,
Varèse, Edgard, 135, 172, 182 mari!, 38
Déserts, 182, 184, 193 virtuosity, 65, 70, 77, 81, 94, 106, 119–20, 126–7,
variété, 276, 278, 279, 281, 285, 286, 287 128, 144, 152, 154, 169, 195, 209, 215,
Vartan, Sylvie, 281 229, 262, 374
417 Index

Visconti, Bernabò, 38 Wars of Religion, 50, 69, 343

Visigoths, 316, 320 Watteau, Antoine, 107, 245, 357
Vismes du Valgay, Anne-Pierre-Jacques de, wax cylinder, 266
216, 217 wax tablet, 300, 308–9
Vitry, Philippe de, 29–30, 33, 34 Weber, Carl Maria von, Der Freischütz, 236
Garrit Gallus / In nova fert / Neuma, 29, 33 adapted as Robin des bois, 229
Ida capillorum / Portio nature / [Ante Weber, Shierry, 359
tronum], 33 Webern, Anton, 182, 190
O canenda vulgo / Rex quem metrorum / Rex pitch organisation, 187
regum, 33 Weimar, 371
Vivaldi, Antonio, 94, 98, 107 Wendling, Johann Baptist, 96
Four Seasons, 107 Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), 181
‘Spring’, 93, 97 Whale, David, 288
Vivonne, Catherine de, 357 Widor, Charles-Marie, 147, 168, 171
vocal declamation, 219 Symphony No. 5, 147
voceri, 258 William the Pious, duc d’Aquitaine, 7
Vogel, Lucien, 163 Williams, Sarah Jane, 304
voix claire, 256 Wittgenstein, Paul, 168
Wolkenstein, Oswald von, 39
W1, 23, 25 World War I, 138, 160, 177
Wackenthaler family, 365 World War II, 171, 174–6, 180
Waeber, Jacqueline, 354 Wright, Craig, 22
Wagner, Richard, 122, 123, 137, 138–9, 141, 152,
161, 164, 166, 234, 239, 371 Xenakis, Iannis, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187
Der fliegende Höllander, 371 attitude to serialism, 196
Lohengrin, 235, 371 Duel, 189
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 371 Herma, 183
Parsifal, 239 Metastaseis, 182
performance, 235 Philips Pavilion at Expo 58, 183
race to stage his works, 371 Terretektorh, 189
Rienzi, 371
Der Ring des Nibelungen, 371 yéyé, 281, 282
Siegfried, 371
Tannhäuser, 235, 371 Zacharias, Pope, 320
Tristan und Isolde, 139, 145, 371 Zazie, 284
‘Une visite à Beethoven’, 129 Zebda, 284
Wagnerian opera, 234 zither
Die Walküre, 371 épinette, 253
Wall Street Crash, 171 tamburin, 253
wandering orchestra, 254 ttun-ttun, 253
War of Spanish Succession, 69 Zoo (band), 282