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What recitatives owe to the airs: a look at the dialogue scene, Act I scene 2 of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie – version with airs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
Extract
The oft-cited observations of Italian librettist Carlo Goldoni as he described his first visit to the Académie Royale de Musique in 1763 are usually presented with an emphasis on what Goldoni missed. Accustomed as he was to eighteenth-century Italian opera, he could not hear a single aria in the French opera: “I waited for the aria … 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? I am not deaf; the voice was always accompanied by instruments … but I assumed it was all recitative.”
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References
1 Méemoires, III, 1787, 38;Google Scholar cited in Anthony, James R., French Baroque Music, From Beaujoyeulx to Rameau (New York, 1974), 82.Google Scholar
2 The author, James H. Johnson, vividly depicts the social setting and the need for polished listening skills: “To manage the needed insouciance of casual visits and pleasant talk while also knowing which airs to praise required the prodigious skills of observation the nobility had learned to perfect”. See Johnson, James H., Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1992), 34.Google Scholar Johnson also indicates that recognizing an air and judging it was not a private matter; he stresses the visible social hierarchy in the theater and the function of the nobility as arbiters of taste. The author also notes that tastes and fashions underwent change and that indifference to the operatic drama reached its peak around the 1750s: “There is ample evidence that French taste in the middle years of the eighteenth century increasingly favored display over dramatic intensity” (p. 26). For a detailed discussion of audience behavior in this period, as well as the cultural and musical factors that contribute to this behavior, see in particuar pp. 9–50. These changes and their impact on Rameau's operas are also dealt with extensively in Dill, Charles, Monstrous Opera: Rameau and the Tragic Tradition (Princeton, 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 The ability of contemporary French audiences to recognize and experience the airs in an intuitive fashion points to a close link between genre and culture. It reflects an implicit understanding between composer and audience as to the nature of French tragédie and the nature of its settings. This broader view of genre, originally proposed by Jeffrey Kallberg, is strongly endorsed in Dill, Monstrous Opera. See in particular, Chapter 1, where Dill presents an insightful discussion of the issue of genre in terms of Jeffrey Kallberg's concept of a socially contingent agreement between a community of artists and listeners versus the more traditional search for shared stylistic attributes. Dill makes a powerful case for the importance of social contingency in shaping Rameau's struggles with issues concerning the trage´die en musique as a genre.
4 Despite the growing preference for “display” and musical entertainment, French taste evidendy sustained its support for the kind of text-oriented airs within the dramatic dialogue scenes of the tragédie en musique that caused disappointment for Goldoni. This contrasted with the cultural climate in Italy which led to the evolution from simple dialogue airs to full-blown arias. Rosand, Ellen, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1991)Google Scholar, cites commercial factors, including the growing influence of singers, as significant in this development.
5 Johnson suggests a reason for this inattentiveness. His central argument is that Parisian audiences at this time focused on “outer” meaning — mainly word painting — which helps to explain why they were so noisy and inattentive: “Convinced that music dazzled the senses with its flourishes and occupied the mind with its images, spectators found that they could divide their attention between the stage and the hall without compromising the experience” (Listening in Paris [see. n. 2], 49). He also argues that in the reception of Rameau this was an obstacle for a full appreciation of his particular expressive powers: “initially resisted, gradually assimilated, and at last embraced as the voice of French opera — and all for artistic reasons Rameau himself considered secondary” (p. 45).
6 Masson, Paul-Marie, L'Opera de Rameau (Paris, 1930; rpt. New York, 1972), 202.Google Scholar
7 The present study, then, is also written in a revisionist spirit, specifically in relation to my article, “The Development of Rameau's Thoughts on Modulation and Chromatics”, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26 (1973), 69–91Google Scholar, which examines the evolution of Rameau's harmonic views concerning text setting. Much of that article revolves around Rameau's series continued from previous page of discussions of Lully's famous recitative monologue, “Enfin, il est en ma puissance”, from Armide. I would now insist more strongly on a clear recognition that Rameau's example is a recitative, and above all that many of the harmonic procedures in the example are representative of that genre (although that does not preclude some overlap with aria procedures).
8 A vivid illustration of this tendency to equate die two appears in Rameau's discussion of the similarities between Lully's expressive use of chromatics in “Enfin, il est en ma puissance,” and Rameau's own use of chromatics in an ABA monologue aria, “Tristes appréts”, from Castor et Pollux (discussed on pp. 86–9 of Verba, “The Development of Rameau's Thoughts” [see n. 7]). As a theorist, Rameau must have found it natural to express his views on these settings in universal terms, transcending the separate requirements of different genres. A more recent article on this topic, Dill's, Charles “Rameau Reading Lully: Meaning and System in Rameau's Recitative Tradition”, this journal, 6 (1994), 1–18Google Scholar, illustrates die same tendency; it focuses on recitative, but conveys a sense that the findings concern Rameau's overall approach to text setting.
9 James Anthony emphasizes the “remarkable tenacity” of Lully's tragédies en musique, and explains it in the following terms: “It is clear that the pleasure-loving Regency audience was not in itself powerful enough to overthrow the aesthetic dogmas of a glorious past age” (Anthony, French Baroque Music, 115). Similarly, Charles Dill refers to the special “ideological status” conferred upon the tragédie en musique, especially those works associated with Lully. (See Dill, Charles William, “The Reception of Rameau's ‘Castor et Pollux’ in 1737 and 1754”, Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University (1989) 7–11.Google Scholar For a more complete description of the basic elements of the tragédie en musique and their evolution between Lully and Rameau, see Anthony, French Baroque Music (see n. 1).
10 This expansion began with the préramiste composers, but continued with Rameau. James Anthony [see n. 1] documents this process of expansion in a Table (p. 124) that compares the number of dances in Lully's Amadis (1684), Campra's Tancréde (1702), and Rameau's Dardanus (revival of 1744), showing the following totals, respectively: 13, 23, and 30. Charles Dill emphasizes that this expansion was of great concern to Rameau's more traditionalist contemporaries, especially since Rameau radically altered the balance between recitative and divertissement: “Lully was the proper foil for Rameau [in the critiques of the traditionalists] because Rameau challenged the Lullian model of the tragédie: he did so not by simply raising the musical stakes, but by inverting the definitive balance between music and text. Attention was focused on the divertissements, those sections of his tragédies that most resembled the opéra-ballet” (Dill, “The Reception of Rameau's ‘Castor’” [see n. 9], 72).
11 Rameau, Jean-Philippe, Observations sur notre instinct pour la musique (Paris, 1754), xii.Google ScholarBrian Hyer offers a semiotic explanation for the harmonic relationship between tonic, dominant and subdominant in “‘Sighing Branches’: Prosopopoeia in Rameau's Pigmalion” Music Analysis, 13 (1994), 7–50, esp. pp. 32–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hyer views the dominant, as well as the subdominant, as signifiers of the tonic — with dissonance as the mechanism that creates a need or desire for tonic resolution. Hyer's main point — of particular relevance for the present study — is that these harmonic relationships also have expressive or representational significance: We imagine these relationships in metaphorical terms (as does Rameau himself), and tend to personify the music, attributing “human attitudes and inclinations” to harmonic tendencies.
12 Interestingly, although Rameau derives these contrasting expressive families from the harmonic principle of the resonating string, the whole notion of contrast between the sharp and the flat keys can also be found in traditional modal theory, and especially the system of hexachords, which involved the distinction between the presence or absence of flats or sharps. For a discussion of how this traditional directional distinction eventually became merged with the major-minor distinction (with dur and mol at one stage having a dual meaning), see Chafe, Eric, Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1984), 65–89.Google ScholarAlthough Chafe is focusing on German theory in Bach's time and on the associations that tonal elements may have had for Bach, the following observation about Bach's broader approach to the expressive use of keys would also apply to the music of Rameau: “although keys may have many inherited and perhaps even intrinsic meanings, many others can be sought out and, by extension, created in the work itself” (p. 89).Google Scholar
13 Rameau's further refinements served him well in defending Lully's “Enfin, il est en ma puissance” against Rousseau's attacks in his Lettre sur la musique franfaise. For a comparison of Rameau's analysis of the Lully monologue in the Observations with an earlier one in the Nouveau systéme, see Verba, “The Development of Rameau's Thoughts on Modulation and Chromatics” (see n. 7). As noted above, the principle of the two contrasting expressive families was not yet present in the earlier treatise.
14 The distinction proposed here between the two types of settings, based essentially on the presence or absence of a clearly defined harmonic structure with a clearly asserted tonic, is also implied by Masson in his following comment on the status of a passage that has the widely used repetition pattern with first and second ending, with the first statement ending on the dominant and the second ending on the tonic: “The passage thus forms a small binary air in miniature, absolutely complete and autonomous.” He then adds: “It suffices to apply this process, or other analogous ones [he cites, for example, the use of rounded binary], to slighdy more extended couplets which would result in true airs” (L'Opera de Rameau [see n. 6], 199). As a further sign of Masson's emphasis on clear tonal articulation as part of the definition of an air, he specifically objects to Rameau's designation “air” for a passage ending on the dominant. (The passage cited — twice indeed — by Masson is from Les Indes galantes, Act 1 scene 3; see Masson, pp. 194 and 204.) I would agree with Masson that a passage that stops with an articulation on the dominant, rather than forming a complete harmonic binary structure through a return to the tonic, is just a fragment or an “embryonic” air. Masson sums it all up by saying, “It's the structure which reveals the presence of an air” (p. 203).
15 See Dill, Charles, “The Reception of Rameau's ‘Castor’” [see n. 9], 161–3Google Scholar
16 Dill's position is presented in considerable detail, pp. 148–294, in “The Reception ofRameau's ‘Casto’” [see n. 9]. It is also an important theme in his recent book, Monstrous Opera [see n. 2].
17 Rameau, , Observations sur notre instinct pour la musique (see n. 11), 105.Google Scholar
18 To date, almost all of our efforts at understanding Rameau's systematic approach have been devoted to his theoretical writings. Given the close relationship between theory and practice, it is time now to consider the practice.
19 The musical example is from the piano-vocal edition, prepared by D'Indy, Vincent, which in turn is based on the Oêuvres completès (henceforth OC), gen. ed. Saint-Saens, Camille, 18 vols. (Paris, 1896–1924);Google ScholarVol. VI, Hippolyte et Aricie, ed. D'Indy, Vincent, with an introduction and critical notes by Charles Malherbes (1900). In the critical notes Malherbes explains that the eighteenth-century printed sources for Hippolyte present a number of different versions of the work, since Rameau made revisions during its initial season, after its premiére performance on 1 October 1733, as well as for the subsequent revivals of 1742 and 1757. For the present study, recognizing that OC has taken extensive liberties with the scoring and inner part writing as presented in the original sources, I have also consulted the 1742 edition in order to verify that the harmonies and scoring discussed in this study are not affected by these liberties. For a discussion of the OC's extensive “improvements”Google Scholarsee Sadler, Graham, “Vincent d'Indy and the Rameau Oêuvrès completes: a case of forgery?” Early Music, 21 (August, 1993), 415–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The 1742 edition (Document C in the critical notes of the OC: Bibliothèque Nationale Vm2 317) is almost identical to the original edition of 1733, published by De Gland and L'Auteur — the same exterior appearance, the same tide page and number of pages — but with seven newly printed pages inserted in the appropriate locations to incorporate the revisions. Graham Sadler prefers to consider this score a “variant state” of the original 1733 engraved score, rather than a second edition, given its closeness to the original state. See Sadler, Graham, “Rameau, Pellegrin and the Opéra: The Revisions of ‘Hippolyte et Aricie’ during Its First Season”, The Musical Times, 124 (September 1983), 533–37; see in particular p. 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 The plot of Hippolyte et Aricie in the libretto by Pellegrin is based on Racine's tragedy, Phèdre, which in turn goes back to models by Euripides and Seneca. See Girdlestone, Cuthbert, Jean-Philippe Rameau: His Life and Work, 2nd edn (London, 1969), 127–30Google Scholar, for a comparison of the different versions of the plot as presented by Euripides, Seneca, Racine and Pellegrin. Girdlestone notes that Pellegrin makes an important departure from Racine by de-emphasizing Phèdre's internal conflict over her forbidden love for her step-son Hippolyte, and is mainly concerned with the love between Hippolyte and Aricie, which eventually triumphs over the jealous intrigues of Phèdre. Norman, Buford, “Remaking a Cultural Icon: Phèdre and the Operatic Stage”, this journal, 10 (1998), 225–45Google Scholar, emphasizes that Hippolyte is not a remake of the Racine tragedy, but rather a version of a classic myth that borrows from Racine “when his words — but rarely the situation, the characterization, and the multiple meanings that lie behind them — are suitable for the lyric stage.” For a more detailed comparison between the versions of Racine and Pellegrin, see OC, pp. xxxvi–xxxix.
21 See Solie, Ruth, “Whose life? The Gendered Self in Schumann's Frauenliebe Songs”, in Music and Text Critical Inquiries, ed. Scher, Steven Paul (Cambridge, 1992), 219–40; see in particular p. 227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 All the text moves freely between eight-syllable verses and twelve-syllable Alexandrines, using occasional verses of six and ten syllables as well. Rosow, Lois, “Structure and Expression in the Scenes of Hippolyte et Aricie”, this journal, 10 (1998), 259–87, argues persuasively that despite the freedom and flexibility afforded to the composer by the vers libres, Pellegrin nevertheless employs certain structural means that elicit a structural musical response from Rameau.Google Scholar
23 The notion of “justified song, justified by emotional necessity” is developed in Rosand, Ellen, “Operatic Ambiguities and the Power of Music”, this journal, 4 (1992), 75–80Google Scholar; see in particular pp. 78–9. While the author cites examples from Monteverdi's L'incoronasjone di Poppea, which she refers to as “song-like things”, her description apdy applies to Aricie's airs in this dialogue scene: The characters sing “only when they feel like it, when their emotions cannot be contained within the bounds of speech” (p. 78). Whereas in Italian opera the ambiguity surrounding these “song-like things” has to do with their relationship to truer arias, the ambiguity in French opera reverses direction and, as already noted, arises in relation to recitative. I agree with Rosand that ambiguity, especially in the service of verisimilitude, raises the importance of genre distinctions.
24 As with many of Rameau's revisions, it is difficult to know precisely when Rameau wrote the revised version of this scene. It appears in the engraved score referred to by Sadler as a “variant state” of the original engraved score of 1733. The revisions for this scene appear on the new pages 4, 5, and triple pagination 6–7–8. Sadler believes that in having these new plates engraved Rameau was in effect saying that this was the version he wished connoisseurs to judge. (Sadler, “Rameau, Pellegrin and the Opéra” [see n. 19], 536.) The original version of the scene is presented in the Supplement of OC, 430–3. The forthcoming new critical edition of this opera, edited by Gérard Billandot, uses the original version as its main text; it is also the version used in the performance by Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie and directed by Jean-Marie Villégier, available on compact disc (Erato, 0630–15517–2, 1997). There are two recordings that present the 1742 version with the airs: an old recording on modern instruments, by Sir Anthony Lewis (L'Oiseau-Lyre SOL286/7/8, 1966); and the more recent performance directed by Marc Minkowski, with Les Musiciens du Louvre (Archiv Production, Deutsche Grammophon, 445 853–2, 1995). The revised version with the airs was well received by Rameau's contemporaries, according to the Mercure of 1742: “The second scene of Act I was revised; it was generally applauded.” Quoted in OC, lxi, w.
25 In the Traite de I'harmonie (Paris, 1722), Rameau includes a chapter “On the Properties of Modes and Keys” which describes B minor as “suitable for sweetness and tenderness” — along with the keys of D, G and E minor (Chapter XXIV, p. 157). Rita Steblin notes that the notion of assigning “properties” to certain keys was influenced by the practices of contemporary tuning which involved unequally tempered tuning systems in common use, which would help to explain why individual keys were perceived as having their own distinct affects. Steblin also recognizes the subjective element in assigning affects to keys; there was relatively little conformity from one theorist to the next. See Steblin, Rita, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, 1983), 31–41.Google Scholar
26 Dill, Monstrous Opera (see n. 2), also argues that the first version is missing the expressive modulations found in the second version (pp. 76–7). I would agree, even while noting that the first version has more striking departures from the tonic of B minor — including not only the moves already cited to the flat keys of D minor and F major, but to a tonicized B major, none of which exists in the second version. What I hope to show in this study is that the effectiveness of the modulations in the second version stems in large part from the overall structure of the scene, and especially from the harmonic interaction between the recitative passages and the newly inserted airs.
27 Rosow, Lois, “Structure and Expression” (see. n. 22), notes that although Rameau dispenses with the typical Lullian use of a prelude to mark Hippolyte's entrance at the start of this scene, he nevertheless makes it “a musically dramatic event” through the immediate switch from the preceding D major of Aricie's monologue to B minor.Google Scholar
28 Rosow, Lois, “Lully's ‘Armide’ at the Paris Opera: A Performance History: 1686–1766”, Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University (1981), 400–3Google Scholar, comments that Lallemand's insertion of the label “air” in revisions of Lully's Armide, particularly during the 1745–8 production, suggests that he wanted“ to be quite certain that the singer would not be caught unaware”. As further assurance, Lallemand also wrote “mesure” in the margin.
29 A similar contrast in the use o f the label “air” occurs in Act II scene 2 where Thésée has two dialogue airs: “Sous les drapeaux” and “Pour prix d'un projet téméraire”. The second air, with its more irregular poetic structure and rhyme scheme, is identified by a label, while the first air, which is less ambiguous, is not.
30 Girdlestone describes this descent as “a perfect example of a melody whose beauty consists in its admirable fitness to its text. The lovely downward line is but an idealization of the intonation of the spoken sentence” (Cuthbert Girdlestone, Rameau [see n. 20], 134).
31 In Rosand's terms: “Only the control of music responds to their need [the need of operatic characters at such moments]. Now it is the ordering power of the composer that enables expression.” See “Operatic Ambiguities” (see n. 23), 79.
32 In an article by Lewin, David, “Women's Voices and the Fundamental Bass”, The Journal of Muskolog) 10 (1992), 464–82Google Scholar, the author calJs our attention to the gender implications contained within Rameau's principle of the fundamental bass: “harmony is characterized by the referencing of what women might sing, in upper registers, to what men can sing in lower registers”. Carrying this thought still further, Lewin is more explicit about male privileging through the concept of the fundamental bass: “Not only, according to Rameau, are women's voices to be referred to the idealized male voice of the fundamental bass for their musical meaning; the idealized male voice actually engenders the women's voices” (pp. 475–6). It is important to note that although in this case the instrumentation is strongly identified with Aricie, it is not reserved exclusively for her. We find it in the Prologue in an air sung by Diane, as well as one by Amour, and in Act I scene 3 for a portion of the air of the Grand Priestess. Nevertheless, this transfer of the continuo bass function to the vocal line was not a common practice for the composer.
33 It appears in mm. 10–15 of the opening prelude, the corresponding passage in section A of the aria, mm. 30–5, and the opening measures of section B, mm. 41–8.
34 The musical structure in this piece does not perfectly coincide with poetic structure. The text is a quatrain with an aabb rhyme scheme. Rameau ends the first binary section with line 3, and begins the second section with line 4. In terms of the rounded binary, or ABA' form, the middle section sets line 4, with harmonies leading back to the tonic, while section A“ consists of line 1 and a repeat of line 4, now with a second ending to provide a strong tonic closure for the air. It is not uncommon for Rameau to give higher priority to concerns of musical structure than to the structural requirements of the poetic text.
35 It should be noted that Rameau's use of a set piece with a clear articulation of a single “reigning” tonic does not always preclude the use of modulatory passages for expressive purposes. In the extremely moving monologue aria, “Tristes apprêts”, from Castor et Pollux, Act I scene 3, he introduces a series of passing tonics within section A of an ABA form without undermining as the “reigning” tonic of section A, or of the aria as a whole. Rameau avoids the suggestion of a change of key through the use of systematic procedures for distinguishing between passing tonics and the more structural tonic of the aria as a whole — using cadential distinctions as a principal means.
36 This more sustained and indirect form of representation or expression, creating a sense of tension or unrest through the postponement of dominant resolution until almost the end of the air, captures far less attention than the more obvious local pictorialism attached to the suspended high F for the words “sans cesse”. The melisma towards the end of the first section, on the word “revoler” (to fly back), is another example of word painting that becomes more than a local gesture, closely paralleling the evolving emotions in the text. While the melisma specifically evokes the image of Aricie's heart flying back to Hippolyte, mm. 61–4, and is virtually a required pictorial treatment in the French tradition for a whole group of such words, it also provides further accentuation of her feelings, since it gives rise to dissonant clashes between the active melodic line and the more static accompaniment. Brian Hyer describes this reliance on harmonic relationships for a less direct pictorial effect as “a non-mimetic substratum of musical representation”. “Sighing Branches” (see n. 11), 36.
37 I am grateful to Dill, Charles for the reminder (personal communication) that the duo behaves exacdy like many duos of this time in its switch from sweet simple homophony in the first section to a more elaborate imitative texture in the second section. This is one example of many where Rameau puts conventions to good use in the service of text setting.Google Scholar
38 The concept of “multivalence” developed by James Webster aptly applies to the construction of this scene, as does his preference for the concept of “coherence” rather than “unity” to characterize the tonal procedures in a scene where multivalence is involved. See Webster, James, “Mozart's Operas and the Myth of Musical Unity”, this journal, 2 (1990), 197–218.Google Scholar
39 As it turns out, however, this is only a temporary calm. Shortly after the love scene, with the entry of Phèdre and her nurse Oenone, there is a dramatic turn to the darker emotions as Phèdre's incestuous feelings towards Hippolyte are revealed. At the point of Phèdre's entry there is a striking tonal shift, from a sustained use of the sharp keys in the preceding scenes within the act, to a fairly consistent use of the flat keys for most of the remainder of the act.