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Lully and the ironic convention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Patricia Howard
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Extract

Three hundred years after his death in 1687 Jean-Baptiste Lully's reputation is entering a new phase. Only a minority of opera-goers today have had the opportunity of seeing one of Lully's operas performed in the theatre. French music, always a degree less accessible to a non-French public than the music of its Italian and Austro-German neighbours, remains the last corner of the seventeenth-century repertory to make a popular appeal to twentieth-century audiences. There are indications, however, in the appearance of a new collected edition, in the small output of new recordings, and in the greater volume of scholarly investigation associated with the tercentenary, that the distinctive sound of Lully's music will soon become at least as familiar as that of his contemporaries Purcell and Cavalli. And familiarity will surely engender popularity: the music needs no special pleading.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , July 1989 , pp. 139 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Raguenet, François, Parallèle des Italiens et des Français en ce qui regarde la musique et les opéras (Paris, 1702), trans. [?] Galliard, J. E. (London, 1709)Google Scholar, and printed in Strunk, Oliver, Source Readings in Music History (New York, 1950), 475.Google Scholar

2 See de Noinville, Jacques-Bernard Durey, Histoire du théâtre de l'Académie royale de musique en France, 2nd edn (Paris, 1757), 118–19.Google Scholar Further useful information is contained in Ducrot, Ariane, ‘Lully créateur de troupe’, XVIIe siècle, 98–99 (1973), 91–108Google Scholar; and Gorce, Jérôme de La, ‘L'Académie Royale de Musique en 1704’, Revue de musicologie, 65 (1979), 160–91.Google Scholar

3 For a discussion of this voice and its relationship with falsetto voice production, see Zaslaw, Neal, ‘The Enigma of the Haute Contre’, The Musical Times, 115 (1974), 939–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The distinction between haute-contre and taille is not always immediately obvious from the scores, which use two clefs, alto (C3) and tenor (C4), for the tenor roles. However, Clédière, an haute-contre, sang within the same compass whether his music was notated in the C4 clef (as in the roles of Admète and Thésée) or in the C3 clef (as for Bellerophon, and in the travesty role of the nurse in Cadmus). His voice was apparently lower than that of his successor as principal haute-contre, Dumesny (sometimes given as Dumesnil, Dumeni, etc.), whose roles, while covering the same overall range (e to b′), maintain a much higher average tessitura, and are written exclusively in the C3 clef (as Persée, Phaéton, Amadis, Médor and Renaud). The poorly-paid ordinary tenors feature only in minor roles: Gingant as Phérès in Alceste; and Desvoyes who sang Méduse in Persée and Artémidor in Armide. The range of these roles spans c to g′.

4 Lully's roles for the bass voice include both the basse-taille and the basse-contre. The bassetaille has the range of a modern baritone and is often, but by no means always, notated in the now obsolete baritone (F3) clef. The basse-contre corresponds to the modern bass voice and is always notated in the bass (F4) clef. The distinction made between haute-contre and taille operates between basse-taille and basse-contre: the higher voice takes the principal roles. The range of the basse-taille can be deduced from the music written for one of Lully's most famous soloists, Beaumavielle, who created the roles of Cadmus, Alcide, Egée, Phinée and Epaphus. These parts lie for the most part between c and e′, descending only infrequently to G. Beaumavielle's successor was Thévenard, who not only sang Roland in the revivals between 1705 and 1727, but also, in the course of his long career, created more than fifty major roles, including the thirteen title roles enumerated by Pitou (see n. 6). His voice appears to have had a very similar range and tessitura. The potential range of the true bass (basse-contre) is shown by the role of Arbas in Cadmus, which, exceptionally, uses the complete two octaves between D and d′.

5 For a discussion of the role of the castratos in court performances of Lully's music, see Sawkins, Lionel, ‘For and Against the Order of Nature’, Early Music, 15 (1987), 315–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The casting was subject to certain theoretical restraints. The bass voice was sometimes held to be of more limited dramatic use than the tenor: de Bacilly, Bénigne (Remarques curieuses sur l'art de bien chanter, 3rd edn [Paris, 1679], 45–6)Google Scholar suggested that while higher voices could express the full range of emotions, the bass voice was most appropriately reserved to portray anger. Spire Pitou asserts that: ‘It was not usual to encounter a bass cast in the title role of an opera […] He was ancillary to the action rather than a leading force influencing the unfolding of events.’ (The Paris Opéra 1671–7715 [Westport, Conn., 1983], 323).Google Scholar He is forced to qualify this statement with a string of exceptions, including thirteen heroic title roles created by the celebrated bass singer, Thévenard. La Borde, (Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne [Paris, 1780], II, 26)Google Scholar gives vocal ranges for six vocal types: for the male singers he differentiates between haute-contre, taille, concordat ou baryton, basse-taille and basse-contre. The roles in Lully's operas do not correspond precisely with any of these ranges.

7 Girdlestone, Cuthbert, La tragédie en musique (1673–1750) considérée comme genre littéraire (Geneva, 1972), 20.Google Scholar

8 It is convenient to refer to the author of the librettos as Quinault, notwithstanding the fact that Bellerophon was written by Thomas Corneille and others.

9 There is an ineradicable ambiguity over what constitutes an air in Lully's operas. In the discussion which follows I have only taken account of discrete airs. I have discounted ensembles, where the lowest voice very frequently doubles the continuo line, and also air-like passages in which the first phrase of a choral movement, or an episode within it, is delivered by a bass soloist.

10 Bukofzer, Manfred, Music in the Baroque Era (New York, 1947), 158.Google Scholar

11 In Cesti's Pomo d'oro (1666) the style is associated with Plutone, Bacco, Momo and Caronte. There is an instance in Cavalli's Giasone (1649) of its association with a jealous lover (Oreste's aria ‘Fiero amor l'alma tormenta’, Act I scene 6).

12 For example, Sicard, Jean, ‘Ne vous estonnez pas si mon creux est profond’, Airs à boire (Paris, 1666), Book 8.Google Scholar

13 The airs referred to in this paragraph can be found in the following locations. The references are to Schneider, Herbert, Chronologisch-Thematisches Verzeichnis Sämtlicher Werke von Jean-Baptiste Lully (Tutzing, 1981).Google ScholarLes plaisirs de l'isle enchantée LWV 22/12; Ballet de la naissance de Vénus LWV 27/2; Les amants magnifiques LWV 42/2, 14; Le bourgeois gentilhomme LWV 43/15, 16, 26, 31; Psyché LWV 45/22, 34; Cadmus LWV 49/24; Alceste LWV 50/26, 28, 36, 39, 67, 83; Thésée LWV 51/26, 71; Atys LWV 53/55, 59; Isis LWV 54/16, 18, 49; Bellerophon LWV 57/33, 50, 51; Proserpine LWV 58/75, 76; Le triomphe de l'Amour LWV 59/47, 48; Persée LWV 60/23, 24, 65; Phaëton LWV 61/23, 24; Roland LWV 65/30, 32, 48, 49, 50, 64; Le temple de la Paix LWV 69/38, 43; Armide LWV 71/57, 58.

14 Additionally in this category, as supernaturals: Argus in Isis, Ascalaphe in Proserpine, the Divinité infernale in Persée, L'Automne in Phaëton and Arcalaus in Amadis; and as ‘grotesques’: the old kings in Bellerophon, Persée, Phaëton and Armide, the gaoler in Amadis and the Homme désolé in Alceste.

15 For completeness we could well add the servants Arbas in Cadmus (LWV 49/17, 18, 37 and 41) and Arcas in Thésée (LWV 51/18 and 46) whose ultimate pairing is concealed, but whose prospects look unpromising!

16 See for example Anthony, James, French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, 2nd edn (London, 1978), 54Google Scholar; Wood, Caroline, ‘Orchestra and Spectacle in the tragédie en musique 1673–1715’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 108 (1981–1982), 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Parkinson, John A. (‘The Barbaric Unison’, The Musical Times, 114 [1973], 23–4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, writing about Baroque choral movements, argues that the association of unison voices with the continuo was widely understood to represent the barbaric. His thesis is clearly relevant to the unison airs for voice and continuo alone which are assigned to gods and grotesques throughout Italian Baroque opera and in Lully's early stage works. His argument is, however, less readily applicable to the airs associated with the ironic convention. Lully's abandoned lovers do not sing in a unison texture as such, but in unison with a weighty bass line, the total texture being softened by the accompaniment of two or four additional instrumental parts. The style of these airs makes reference to unison texture, but replaces it with something less straightforward.

18 Curiously enough, Handel's Polypheme in Acis and Galatea, 1718 (though not his Polifemo in Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, 1708), sings two doubled continuo arias, the famous ‘O ruddier than the cherry’ and ‘Cease to beauty to be suing’. That Handel's intentions were to characterise the giant as a grotesque can be confidently deduced from the comic use of recorders for the obbligato upper voices of the first aria.

19 Paris, 1705.