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The Composer's Eye: Focalizing Judith in the Cantatas by Jacquet de La Guerre and Brossard
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2012
Abstract
With its intense drama and marked eroticism, the story of Judith's slaying of Holofernes was often represented in baroque visual art and music. The overwhelming majority of musical representations are found in oratorios, with only three cantatas known to have been devoted to the subject. The oratorio's dramatic framework was suited for emphasizing Judith's multifaceted figure through character depiction, contrast and conflict, while the cantata's epic nature and lack of direct character intervention made staging conflict in that genre more difficult. Yet precisely because of these limitations, the cantata constitutes a revealing case study for exploring the strategies composers employed to give agency to Judith.
This article focuses on the baroque cantata settings of the Judith story by Sébastien de Brossard and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (both from about 1708, both based on a text by La Motte). To illustrate their differing perspectives on Judith, I employ the concept of focalization – used in literary theory to mean point of view or filtered perspective – as a theoretical framework. The well-known Judith paintings by Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi (the so-called Uffizi Judith) provide a lucid example of focalization through the differing perspectives of the two maidservants and offer a valuable methodological tool for understanding the two differing compositional approaches. Whereas Brossard follows La Motte's narrative dutifully by emphasizing swiftness of action at the expense of character depiction, Jacquet de La Guerre bypasses it through instrumental accompaniments and independent symphonies that give voice to Judith, despite a text that downplays her character.
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References
1 Judith 13:4–8. Cited in The Book of Judith: Greek Text with an English Translation, Commentary and Critical Notes, ed. Enslin, Morton S. and Zeitlin, Solomon (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 153Google Scholar.
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4 Judith 8:8, as cited in the Introduction to The Anchor Bible Judith, ed. Moore, , 61Google Scholar. In several sections of the Apocrypha she is described as leading a saintly life: after the death of her husband, Judith devotes herself to prayer and fasting (Judith 8:4–6), lives simply (12:4) and remains celibate until her death (16:22).
5 Ciletti, Elena and Lähnemann, Henrike, ‘Judith in the Christian Tradition’, in The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies across the Disciplines, ed. Brine, Kevin R., Ciletti, Elena and Lähnemann, Henrike (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2010), 42Google Scholar.
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12 Exceptions are: lament cantatas, where the singing character laments his or her own fate directly without the mediation of the narrator, and duet cantatas, in which the characters also speak directly (with or without narratorial intervention). Eighteenth-century French cantata composers were aware of such genre distinctions: at the top of his duo Pyrâme et Thisbé from his second book of cantatas (1717), for example, Michel Pignolet de Montéclair writes that ‘It is half epic, half dramatic. The epic part is sung by a bass who acts as the narrator, while the dramatic part must be sung by a soprano and tenor who represent the characters.’ Cited in Tunley, David, The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 15Google Scholar. The same type of concern about the epic and dramatic qualities of the cantata can be found in the eighteenth-century German writings of Mattheson, Scheibe and Krause. For a good discussion of these see Timms, Colin, ‘The Dramatic in Vivaldi's Cantatas’, in Antonio Vivaldi: teatro musicale, cultura e società, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo and Morelli, Giovanni (Florence: Olschki, 1982), 97–130Google Scholar. On lament cantatas see the excellent article by Guaita, Carlo, ‘Le cantate-lamento della seconda metà del diciassettesimo secolo’, I quaderni della civica scuola di musica 17 (1989), 40–57Google Scholar. See also Murata, Margaret, ‘Image and Eloquence: Secular Song’, in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music, ed. Carter, Tim and Butt, John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 378–425CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Rosand, Ellen, ‘Barbara Strozzi, virtuosissima cantatrice: The Composer's Voice’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 31/2 (1978), 241–281CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which discusses Strozzi's lament cantatas.
13 They are: two Judith cantata settings (both from around 1708), by Jacquet de La Guerre and Brossard, both based on the text by Antoine Houdar de la Motte, and a cantata setting by Réné Drouard de Bousset (1739) based on an anonymous text. Modern editions of these cantatas are available in de La Guerre, Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet, The Collected Works, ed. Cyr, Mary, volume 3 (New York: The Broude Trust, 2005)Google Scholar, and de Brossard, Sébastien, Cantates françaises et italiennes, ed. Dorival, Jérôme (Versailles: Éditions du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 1997)Google Scholar. A modern edition of Bousset's cantata is available in Smith, Felicity S., ‘The Music of René Drouard de Bousset (1703–1760): A Source Study and Stylistic Survey, with Emphasis on His Sacred Output’ (MMus thesis, New Zealand School of Music, 2008)Google Scholar. It is available in electronic format for consultation at <http://hdl.handle.net/10179/1114> or <http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/1114> (11 July 2011). Mangini, Giancarlo, ‘“Betulia liberata” e “La morte d'Oloferne” Momenti di drammaturgia musicale nella tradizione dei “Trionfi di Giuditta”’, in Mozart, Padova e la Betulia liberata, ed. Pinamonti, , 145, note 1Google Scholar, counts 220 oratorio librettos devoted to the Judith story published between 1621 and 1934. Sartori lists fifty-seven oratorios with Judith in the title, sixty-two with Bethulia in the title and five with Holofernes in the title. See Sartori, Claudio, I libretti Italiani a stampa dalle origini al 1800 (Cuneo: Bertola & Locatelli, 1990), volume 1, 426–431; volume 3, 336–340, 384; volume 4, 291Google Scholar.
14 The only exception is Cessac, Catherine, ‘Les relations d'Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre et de Sébastien de Brossard’, in Sébastien de Brossard musicien, ed. Duron, Jean (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998), 43–57Google Scholar, which presents a cursory comparison of the two settings (55–56) within a broad discussion of the professional relations between the two composers. Green, Brooke, ‘Codifying the Heroine: Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre's Judith’, in Musics and Feminisms, ed. Macarthur, Sally and Poynton, Cate (Sydney: Australian Music Centre, 1999), 47–56Google Scholar, provides a feminist reading of the end portion of Jacquet de La Guerre's cantata, without engaging in a comparison with Brossard's setting.
15 Jacquet de La Guerre's Judith appeared in her first book of sacred cantatas, published in 1708 by Ballard, whereas Brossard's six sacred cantatas were never published during his lifetime. Duron, Jean, L'oeuvre de Sébastien de Brossard (1655–1730): Catalogue thématique (Versailles: Éditions du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles and Paris: Klincksieck, 1995), 135–145Google Scholar, places the date of Brossard's cantatas between 1703 and 1708. See also Duron, Introduction to L'oeuvre de Sébastien de Brossard, xxi, lxxvii–lxxviii, xci–xcii, ciii. Cessac, ‘Les relations d'Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre et de Sébastien de Brossard’, 43–57, speculates that Brossard's cantata may have been composed around 1704–1705 and explores the professional exchanges between the two composers. In 1695 Jacquet de La Guerre loaned a manuscript of her violin sonatas to Brossard, who promptly copied it and judged the sonatas to be ‘delightful’. Brossard shows constant admiration for her in several notes made in the Catalogue des livres de musique, théorique et prattique, vocalle et instrumentalle (1724) that he kept of his collection, in which he always addresses her with superlatives. For example, in his catalogue entry devoted to his own cantatas, Brossard notes that the Judith cantata has also been ‘set to music and printed … [by] the renowned Mademoiselle de la Guerre’. Regrettably, the late date (1724) of his statement does not allow us to discover which setting came first. Brossard also arranged and performed a concert version of the Prologue from Jacquet de La Guerre's opera Céphale et Procris in Strasbourg in 1696. See Cessac, ‘Les relations d'Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre et de Sébastien de Brossard’, 43, 44–46, 48–49, 55.
16 On these aspects see Kintzler, Catherine, Poétique de l'opéra français de Corneille à Rousseau (Paris: Minerve, 1991)Google Scholar. In the eighteenth century the French querelle over the merits of French and Italian music constitutes yet another level of expression of the French concern about keeping the expressive power of music in check. The writings by Raguenet and Lecerf de la Viéville are particularly eloquent on this matter. See Cowart, Georgia, The Origins of Modern Musical Criticism: French and Italian Music 1600–1750 (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1981), 49–85Google Scholar.
17 Several such prefaces can be found in English translation in Vollen, Gene E., The French Cantata: A Survey and Thematic Catalog (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1982), 11–14Google Scholar, and in Tunley, The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata, 47, 88, 101. On the réunion des goûts see Tunley, David, François Couperin and ‘the Perfection of Music’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)Google Scholar. Cantatas were commonly published as stand-alone texts in the Mercure de France; in its entry on the French cantata, Diderot's Encyclopédie devotes twice as much attention to the text as to the music. On these aspects see Tunley, The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata, 16, 263–267. Jérôme Dorival even suggests that cantata texts may have been read aloud in literary cafés such as the Café Laurent, which La Motte frequented on a daily basis. See Dorival, Jérôme's Introduction to Sébastien de Brossard, Cantate Françaises et Italiennes, ed. Dorival, Jérôme, trans. Criswick, Mary (Versailles: Éditions du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 1997), xxixGoogle Scholar, and de La Motte, Antoine Houdar, Textes critiques. Les raisons du sentiment: Édition critique avec introduction et notes, ed. Gevrey, Françoise and Guion, Béatrice (Paris: Champion, 2002), 33–34Google Scholar. See also Couvreur, Manuel, ‘Marie de Louvencourt, librettiste des Cantates françoises de Bourgeois et de Clérambault’, Revue belge de musicologie 44 (1990), 25–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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19 See Cyr, Mary, ‘Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: Myth or Marvel? Seeking the Composer's Individuality’, The Musical Times 149 (Winter 2008), 79–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Representing Jacquet de La Guerre on Disc: Scoring and Basse Continue Practices, and a New Painting of the Composer’, Early Music 32/4 (2004), 549–567CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Cessac, Catherine, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Une femme compositeur sous le règne de Louis XIV (Arles: Actes Sud, 1995)Google Scholar, and Bates, Carol Henry, ‘Elizabeth Jacquet de La Guerre's Trio Sonatas: An Analysis and Appraisal’, Orbis musicae 12 (1998), 26–48Google Scholar, and ‘Elizabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: A New Source of Seventeenth-Century French Harpsichord Music’, Recherches sur la musique française classique 22 (1984), 7–49Google Scholar. On Jacquet de La Guerre's secular cantatas see Rose, Adrian, ‘Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre and the Secular cantate françoise’, Early Music 13/4 (1985), 529–541CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘A Newly Discovered Source of Vocal Chamber Music by Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre and René Drouard de Bousset’, Early Music 36/2 (2008), 245–264CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Jacquet de La Guerre's operatic output see Griffiths, Wanda R., ‘Jacquet de La Guerre's Céphale et Procris: Style and Drama’, in Music in Performance and Society: Essays in Honor of Roland Jackson, ed. Cole, Malcolm S. and Koegel, John (Warren: Harmonie Park, 1997), 251–268Google Scholar, and Cessac, Catherine, ‘Les Jeux à l'honneur de la victoire d'Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Premier opéra-ballet?’, Revue de musicologie 81/2 (1995), 235–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Schulze, Hendrik, ‘Narration, Mimesis and the Question of Genre: Dramatic Approaches in Giovanni Legrenzi's Solo Cantatas, Opp. 12 and 14’, in Aspects of the Secular Cantata in Late Baroque Italy, ed. Talbot, Michael (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 55–77Google Scholar.
21 Murata, Margaret, ‘Image and Eloquence: Secular Song’, 378–425, and ‘Singing About Singing, or, The Power of Music Sixty Years After’, in In cantu et in sermone: For Nino Pirrotta on His 80th Birthday, ed. Piperno, Franco and Seta, Fabrizio Della (Florence: Olschki, 1989), 363–384Google Scholar, and Burrows, David L., ‘Antonio Cesti on Music’, The Musical Quarterly 51/3 (1965), 518–529CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Cabrini, Michele, ‘Upstaging the Voice: Diegetic Sound and Instrumental Interventions in the French Baroque Cantata’, Early Music 38/1 (2010), 73–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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24 While several musicologists, including Lawrence Kramer, Susan McClary, Patrick McCreless, Fred Everett Maus, Anthony Newcomb and Carolyn Abbate, have dealt with the question of narrative in music from different angles, none to my knowledge has engaged with the theory of focalization specifically. For an excellent in-depth account of this literature and its related bibliography see the review article by Pederson, Sanna, ‘The Methods of Musical Narratology’, Semiotica 110/1 and 2 (1996), 179–196Google Scholar. The exception is the forthcoming book by Calcagno, Mauro, From Madrigal to Opera: Monteverdi's Staging of the Self (Berkeley: University of California Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which newly applies the theory of focalization to baroque music. I am indebted to Mauro Calcagno for pointing me towards focalization as a model for analytical pursuit, and would like to thank him for allowing me to read his manuscript prior to its publication. See also the works by Meelberg, Vincent, ‘A Telling View on Musical Sounds: A Musical Translation of the Theory of Narrative’, in Narrative Theory: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, ed. Bal, Mieke (New York: Routledge, 2004), 287–316Google Scholar, and ‘Sounds Like a Story: Narrative Travelling from Literature to Music and Beyond’, in Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Research, ed. Heinen, Sandra and Sommer, Roy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 244–260CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 The figure of the maidservant is also common in several baroque oratorios, employed as a dramatic foil to or as alter ego of Judith. See Mangini, ‘“Betulia liberata” e “La morte d'Oloferne”’, 148–149, and Dubowy, ‘Le due “Giuditte” di Alessandro Scarlatti’, 263–275. It must be added that Caravaggio's painting influenced the artistic production of the Judith subject in France. The best-known French baroque paintings are two works by Simon Vouet, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (first half of the seventeenth century), housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and another Judith with the Head of Holofernes (also from the first half of the seventeenth century), housed in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich; two paintings by Valentin de Boulogne, Judith Carrying the Head of Holofernes (c1628–1630), housed in the Musée des Augustins, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse, and Judith Beheading Holofernes (c1624), housed in The National Museum of Fine Arts, La Valletta, which strongly recalls the disposition of the figures in Caravaggio's painting. For brief catalogue entries on and photographic reproductions of the Vouet paintings see Crelly, William, The Painting of Simon Vouet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 180, 221Google Scholar. For an analysis and photographic reproductions of the two paintings by Valentin de Boulogne see Mojana, Marina, Valentin de Boulogne (Milan: Eikonos Edizioni, 1989), 26, 32, 92, 164Google Scholar.
26 See Green, ‘Codifying the Heroine: Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre's Judith’, 47–56.
27 Gentileschi's innovation in her use of the youthful maidservant has been noted by Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 310, in a discussion of the Naples Judith, which equally pertains to the Uffizi Judith. Garrard traces the idea of the young maidservant to Gentileschi's father, Orazio, who also painted a youthful maidservant in his Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes (1610–1612). Garrard goes further, arguing that in the revised Uffizi version Artemisia reverses the traditional roles of the ‘the innocent heroine and the wizened crone maidservant’, proposing instead the maidservant as a balancing, even rectifying, figure that justifies ‘Judith's devious and slanted behavior’. Representing ‘divine justice’ as the true ancilla Dei, the maidservant embodies Judith's humble side as God's agent, while Judith herself is the more sinister figure, the ‘nether-heroine’ that stands for ‘human vengeance’. See Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 324–326. R. Ward Bissell understands many of the key features of Gentileschi's interpretations of the Judith story – the mature Judith, the youthful maidservant, their deliberate closeness and their ‘joint psychic involvement’ – within the context of a ‘wider movement at the time to redefine the relationship between Judith and her maidservant’. He considers the drama by Federico Della Valle, Iudit (1627), as marking the ‘attitudinal change’, noting also that earlier interpretations of the Judith story by Mantegna and Jacopo Palma il Giovane treated the two women in a similar vein of joint solidarity. See Bissell, , Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 124Google Scholar. For an account of Della Valle's play and its position on women see Pietropaolo, Domenico, ‘Iudit, femme fatale of the Baroque Stage’, in Donna: Women in Italian Culture, ed. Testaferri, Ada (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989), 273–283Google Scholar.
28 Hibbard, Howard, Caravaggio (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 66–67Google Scholar, understands the representation of the old hag as a foil to emphasize Judith's beauty as Caravaggio's awareness of contrapposto, a poetic and rhetorical device to emphasize differences of age, type and social condition. On this aspect see Summers, David, ‘Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art’, The Art Bulletin 59 (1977), 336–361CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The notion of contrapposto is clearly articulated in the 1591 Milanese treatise by Comanini, Gregorio, The Figino, or, On the Purpose of Painting: Art Theory in the Late Renaissance, ed. and trans. Anderson, Anne-Doyle and Maiorino, Giancarlo (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 97–98Google Scholar, in which the author recommends that painters juxtapose figures of different age, sex and social status (Comanini does, however, warn about the overuse of such technique as mannered). Citing Wind, Barry, ‘Pitture Ridicole: Some Late-Cinquecento Comic Genre Paintings’, Storia dell'Arte 20 (1974), 25–35Google Scholar, Gregori, Mina (ed.), in The Age of Caravaggio (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), 257Google Scholar, notes that the use of the aged woman ‘frequently associated with repugnant and despicable characters’ can be traced to a cinquencento theatre and painting tradition. Both Gregori, and Cinotti, Mia, Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio: Tutte le opere (Bergamo: Poligrafiche Bolis, 1983), 516Google Scholar, note that Eduard Šafařík traces the style of Caravaggio's old maidservant to Leonardo's grotesque types as well as sixteenth-century Flemish paintings and caricature prints of the same period. For Šafařík's original catalogue entry see Faldi, Italo and Šafařík, Eduard, Acquisti 1970–1972: Roma, Palazzo Barberini, ottobre-novembre 1972 (Rome: La Galleria, 1972), 23–34Google Scholar. Italian art historian Roberto Longhi is the only scholar to have perceived the ‘stone-like fierceness’ (‘accanimento impietrito’) of the maidservant as a type of commentary on Judith's action. Longhi, , ‘La “Giuditta” nel percorso del Caravaggio’, Paragone 2/19 (1951), 10Google Scholar.
29 See Judith 13:2–3 and 9–10. Cited in The Book of Judith, ed. Enslin and Zeitlin, 151, 153.
30 The most complete catalogue entry on this painting can be found in Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art, 213–216. An earlier version (c1611–1612) of the same painting housed at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples goes by the same title; see the catalogue entry in Bissell, 191–198. For an excellent analysis detailing the differences between the two see Ciletti, Elena, ‘“Gran Macchina è bellezza”: Looking at the Gentileschi Judiths’, in The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People, ed. Bal, Mieke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), particularly 66–86Google Scholar; see also Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 307–313, 321–327, and Salomon, Nanette, ‘Judging Artemisia: A Baroque Woman in Modern Art History’, in The Artemisia Files, ed. Bal, , particularly 48–58Google Scholar. Ciletti argues that in the later painting Artemisia accentuated the age and societal differences between the maidservant and Judith and emphasized the theatrical qualities of the scene ‘with far more attention to monumental formality and luxurious effects’. Indeed, Judith ‘is more coiffed or bewigged and therefore more formal a presence than she is in the Naples work, not to mention older and more explicit in the frowning set of her features’. Ciletti, ‘“Gran Macchina è bellezza”’, 78, 86. Garrard finds that in the Uffizi work Artemisia gives Judith a new seductive dimension by clearly defining her ‘as a sexually developed woman’. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 323.
31 Bal, Mieke, Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (New York: Routledge, 1996), 299Google Scholar.
32 Bal, Double Exposures, 299. The cold, business-like execution in Gentileschi's painting has also been noted by Garrard, who reads in it a deliberate withholding of conventional moral clues. See Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 321, 323.
33 A most exhaustive catalogue entry on this painting, which includes a comprehensive review of the bibliography, can be found in Mia Cinotti, Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio, 515–517. A good catalogue entry in English can be found in The Age of Caravaggio, ed. Gregori, 256–262.
34 Nanette Salomon, ‘Judging Artemisia’, 53. Bettina Baumgärtel uses the term ‘active partner’ for Gentileschi's maidservant; see Die Galerie der starken Frauen: Die Heldin in der französischen und italienischen Kunst des 17. Jahrhunderts, ed. Bettina Baumgärtel, Silvia Neysters and others (Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1995), 244–247, as cited in Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, ed. Christiansen, Keith and Mann, Judith W. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 311Google Scholar.
35 Bissel, Artemisia and the Authority of Art, 123–124. See also Ciletti, ‘“Gran Macchina è bellezza”’, 76, Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 21, 312, and Wachenfeld, Christa and Barthes, Roland, Die Vergewaltigung der Artemisia: Der Prozess (Freiburg: Kore Verlag, 1992), 34Google Scholar. Any discussion of Gentileschi's Uffizi Judith (or the earlier Naples version) inevitably evokes the infamous incident of the artist's rape by her teacher Agostino Tassi, which resulted in a court trial in 1612 (an English translation of the trial documents is available in Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 403–487). Mary Garrard's 1989 monograph offered the first compelling scholarly case for interpreting the Naples and Uffizi Judiths as Artemisia's sublimated expression of revenge against both Agostino Tassi and the patriarchal tradition in which she operated, and art historians have capitalized on this connection ever since, to the point that ‘… it [now] seems irresistible to talk about Artemisia's rape in connection with it, even if only to say that the painting cannot be directly related to the rape. This compulsive biographism immediately sexualizes the subject and the artist to a degree that no longer allows us to see the painting as a work of “art” in canonical terms’ (Salomon, ‘Judging Artemisia’, 54). The most comprehensive review of the literature on the rape is to be found in a masterly essay by Spear, Richard, ‘Artemisia Gentileschi: Ten Years of Facts and Fiction’, The Art Bulletin 82 (2000), 568–579CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in addition to the excellent volume edited by Bal, The Artemisia Files, and the article by Elizabeth Cropper, ‘Life on the Edge: Artemisia Gentileschi, Famous Woman Painter’, in Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, ed. Christiansen and Mann, 263–281. Here the author pleads for finding ‘a better way to come to terms with [Artemisia's] critical fortune’, suggesting that ‘Not to submit Artemisia Gentileschi to a constant rehearsal of her rape … means not to view her work … as primarily expressing her conscious or unconscious reaction to that rape’ (263, 265).
36 Alberti, Leon Battista, On Painting, revised edition, trans. Spencer, John R. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 78Google Scholar. Istoria is a term for which there is no modern translation. Alberti intended it as a rough definition of ‘affective humanist painting’: the way in which every figure in the painting must relate to the whole, express the main subject of the painting and express its focal emotion; see Spencer, Introduction to Alberti, On Painting, 25. I am indebted to Ayana Smith for pointing out to me the existence of this passage. There are three different versions of this treatise: Volgare-vernacular, Latin and Italian, which are published side by side in the critical edition Il nuovo De pictura di Leon Battista Alberti, ed. and trans. Sinisgalli, Rocco (Rome: Kappa, 2006)Google Scholar. The vernacular (original version), from which Spencer translates, reads: ‘E piacemi sia nella storia chi ammonisca e insegni a noi quello che ivi si facci, o chiami con la mano a vedere, o con viso cruccioso e con gli occhi turbati minacci che niuno verso loro vada, o dimostri qualche pericolo o cosa ivi maravigliosa, o te inviti a piagnere con loro insieme o a ridere. E così qualunque cosa fra loro o teco facciano dipinti, tutto apartenga a ornare o a insegnarti la storia.’ See Sinisgalli, ed., Il nuovo De pictura, 212.
37 Spencer, Introduction to Alberti, On Painting, 26.
38 Jahn, Mandred, ‘Focalization’, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Literary Theory, ed. Herman, David, Jahn, Manfred and Ryan, Marie-Laure (New York: Routledge, 2005), 173Google Scholar.
39 Genette, Gérard, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Lewin, Jane E. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 186Google Scholar. Genette changed his original ‘who sees?’ to ‘who perceives?’, deeming his original formulation too narrow. See Genette, Gérard, Narrative Discourse Revisited, trans. Lewin, Jane E. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 64 (original italics)Google Scholar. For a basic introduction to focalization see Jahn, Manfred, ‘Focalization’, in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, ed. Herman, David (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 94–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a comprehensive introduction on Genette's work and on narration and focalization in general see also Bal, Mieke, A Mieke Bal Reader (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 3–39Google Scholar. I am indebted to Guido Baldi of the Università di Torino, whose introductory chapter to his Narratologia e critica: teoria ed esperimenti di lettura da Manzoni a Gadda (Naples: Liguori, 2003), 3–36Google Scholar, helped me to navigate my way through the maze of literature on this topic.
40 Nelles, William, ‘Getting Focalization into Focus’, Poetics Today 11/2 (1990), 368CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 This is Mieke Bal's model. Bal has criticized aspects of Genette's original three-pronged approach to focalization, which includes zero-focalization, in which events are seen from an unrestricted or omniscient (also known as panoramic) viewpoint; internal focalization, in which events are seen through the lens of an internal reflector-character inside the story; and external focalization, in which events appear as though they are observed from outside the story. She has subsumed Genette's categories of zero- and external focalization under her single category of ‘external focalization’, arguing that anyone, even an omniscient third-person narrator, will have a perspective, and that the events are not seen from the outside but are actually imagined by the narrator, who is external to the story. She thus opposes the narrator's perspective (external to the story) to the reflector-character's perspective (internal to the story). For views on post-Genettian focalization theory see Jahn, ‘Focalization’, 97–99 and 100–105. See also Bal, Mieke, Narratology: An Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, third edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 147–153Google Scholar. I am indebted to Calcagno, From Madrigal to Opera (chapter 6), for the concept of ‘overshadowing’.
42 Cone, Edward T., The Composer's Voice, paperback edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 19Google Scholar. Cone's work has been criticized by Carolyn Abbate, who cautions against his image of the composer as a single, hegemonic mastermind behind the musical work, subsuming vocal utterance, instrumental accompaniment and text under his ‘monologic’ aegis (intended in the ‘Bahktinian sense’). See Abbate, , Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Bachelier, Jean, Preface to Recueil de cantates (The Hague: Alberts & Vander Kloot, 1728; reprinted Geneva: Minkoff, 1992), fols 4r–vGoogle Scholar.
44 Jahn, ‘Focalization’, 175.
45 Genette, Narrative Discourse, 191.
46 Block, Elizabeth, ‘The Narrator Speaks: Apostrophe in Homer and Vergil’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 112 (1982), 9Google Scholar.
47 Block, ‘The Narrator Speaks’, 9.
48 See Richard Morton, Examining Changes in the Eighteenth-Century French Translations of Homer's Iliad by Anne Dacier and Houdar de La Motte (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2003), 1–2. The hostility towards La Motte is particularly evident in the reaction of Anne Dacier, a well-known and respected classicist whose definitive translation of the Iliad, also published in 1714, had set the scholarly standard. The literary quarrel between Dacier and La Motte should also be understood within the larger context of the quarrel between the ancients (Dacier took their side) and the moderns (of whom La Motte was an advocate).
49 Morton, Examining Changes, 53.
50 Morton, Examining Changes, 74. The following translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.
51 de La Motte, Antoine Houdar, L'Iliade, poëme avec un discours sur Homère, second edition (Paris: Prault, 1754)Google Scholar, as reproduced in La Motte, Textes critiques, ed. Gevrey and Guion, 185–186. A similar attitude can be observed in La Motte's activity as a librettist. Most of his tragédies en musique reveal a certain simplicity of structure with a typically ‘linear advancement [of plot] without intrigue or [sudden] twists and turns’. See Girdlestone, Cuthbert, La tragédie en musique considérée comme genre littéraire (Geneva: Droz, 1972), 189Google Scholar.
52 La Motte, Textes critiques, ed. Gevrey and Guion, 234.
53 La Motte, Textes critiques, ed. Gevrey and Guion, 189. For example, he removes Homer's description of the bodies of the dead warriors as food for dogs and all kinds of birds at the beginning of Book 1, and omits the catalogue of the ships and the listing of the Trojan allies in Book 2. See Morton, Examining Changes, 24–27, 33–34.
54 Morton, Examining Changes, 72–74.
55 See La Motte, Textes critiques, ed. Gevrey and Guion, 187–188, 191, 232–233.
56 See Nielsen, ‘Les grands oratorios bibliques de Marc-Antoine Charpentier’, 35. H. Wiley Hitchcock, in ‘The Latin Oratorios of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’, 57–59, notes that Charpentier's oratorios are ‘strongly unified by a principle of tonal stability’ that exhibits the composer's understanding of an oratorio as a type of motet in a Zarlinian conception of the term, in which a predetermined mode should predominate. A modern score of Charpentier's Judith sive Bethulia liberata is available in Charpentier, Marc-Antoine, Histoires Sacrées, ed. Duron, Jean, volume 4 (Versailles: Éditions du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 2005)Google Scholar. Mozart's oratorio La Betulia liberata (1771) also progresses from D minor to D major over the course of the piece. See Biancamaria Brumana, ‘“Betulia” a confronto: Jommelli e Mozart’, in Mozart, Padova e la Betulia liberata, ed. Pinamonti, 115.
57 I am indebted to Kelley Harness for pointing out to me that Brossard's teleological harmonic structure points to the thereafter, thereby bypassing the murder as a necessary civic duty to achieve an end. On the concept of civic duty in connection with seventeenth-century Italian librettos on the Judith story see Kelley Harness, ‘Judith, Music, and Female Patrons in Early Modern Italy’, in The Sword of Judith, ed. Brine, Ciletti and Lähnemann, 371–383.
58 Sébastien de Brossard, ‘Dissertation sur cette espèce de concert qu'on nomme cantate’, no date, MS autograph ms fr na 5269, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fols 75–77v, as cited in Brossard, Cantates françaises et italiennes, ed. Dorival, trans. Criswick, xxiii, xliii.
59 See Manuel Couvreur, ‘Le goût littéraire de Sébastien de Brossard’, in Sébastien de Brossard musicien, ed. Duron, 168–171. See also Duron, Introduction to L'oeuvre de Sébastien de Brossard (1655–1730), lix–lxi, xc–xci. Indeed, the combination of religious principles and endorsement of the moderns (through Brossard's general support for the Italian style) that Couvreur finds in Brossard's religious cantatas not only reflects the taste of the authors of their texts, La Motte and Brossard's nephew André de Mézenge, but also shows Brossard's blending of ancient and modern sensibilities. See Couvreur, ‘Le goût littéraire de Sébastien de Brossard’, 179.
60 Jacquet de La Guerre's use of key as a structural device can also be found in her other sacred cantatas. See Cabrini, Michele, ‘Breaking Form through Sound: Instrumental Aesthetics, Tempête, and Temporality in the French Baroque Cantata’, Journal of Musicology 26/3 (2009), 361–362CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other French cantata composers also employed key as a structural device. See Garden, Greer, ‘A Link Between Opera and Cantata in France: Tonal Design in the Music of André Campra’, Early Music 21/3 (1993), 397–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 Craven, Toni, ‘Artistry and Faith in the Book of Judith’, Semeia 8 (1977), 88Google Scholar.
62 Brossard's activity circled round the French provinces of Strasbourg and Meaux, away from both Paris and Versailles. See de Brossard, Yolande, Sébastien de Brossard (Paris: Editions Picard, 1987)Google Scholar. In a letter to the abbé Bignon dated 1726, Brossard openly said: ‘I must confess it, the court is a land whose ways and detours I know so little that if someone did not show the kindness to serve me as guide, I would run the great risk of losing my way.’ Cited in Cessac, ‘Les relations d'Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre et de Sébastien de Brossard’, 55, note 66.
63 See Cessac, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. See also Borroff, Edith, An Introduction to Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (Brooklyn: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1966)Google Scholar.
64 Cessac, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, 24–25. The various words of praise throughout the composer's career from the Mercure galant and other journals of the time can be found in Cessac, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and in English translation in Borroff, An Introduction to Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre.
65 These can be found in Cessac, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and in English translation in Borroff, An Introduction to Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre. Particularly eloquent in this regard is her dedication to Louis XIV in her ballet Les Jeux à l'honneur de la victoire of 1691 (music lost), in which she proudly trumpets the fact that although it was not uncommon for women to write poetry during and before her own time, ‘until now, none has tried to set a whole opera to music; and I take this advantage from my enterprise: that the more extraordinary it is, the more it is worthy of you, Sire, and the more it justifies the liberty that I take in offering you this work’. Translation adapted from Borroff, An Introduction to Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, 13.
66 Cyr, Introduction to The Collected Works, volume 3, xvi–xvii.
67 See Cyr, Introduction to The Collected Works, volume 3, xxi–xxii.
68 See, for example, the bass-line rhythmic ostinato in ‘Non, dit l'Héroïne’, a récitatif mesuré from Susanne, which depicts Susanna's obdurate refusal to be blackmailed by the lecherous voyeurs, or the dramatic use of the bass and of silence to depict Esther's shifting emotions, from fear and hesitation to resolution, in approaching her husband in Esther. For a discussion see Cessac, Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, 145–147. The composer's cantatas are characterized by ‘unique approaches to formal design and text-setting’, which include experimentation with or manipulation of the recitative–aria design, the dramatic use of the bass line for purposes of text depiction and musical characterization, changes of tempo, insertions of instrumental music within textual strophes and dramatic uses of silence. See Cyr, ‘Myth or Marvel?’, 82–85, and Cessac, Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, 142–153.
69 On the literary tradition supporting the notion of femmes fortes see Maclean, Ian, Women Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature 1610–1652 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977)Google Scholar. Several writings on women emerged in the sixteenth century, among which the following are representative: Antoine Dufour, ‘Les Vies des femmes célèbres’ (manuscript, Nantes, Musée Dobrée, MS 17, c1504, available in an edition by Cassagnes-Brouquet, Sophie, Un manuscrit d'Anne de Bretagne: Les “Vies des femmes célèbres” d'Antoine Dufour (Rennes: Editions Ouest-France, 2007)Google Scholar); de Marconville, Jean, De la Bonté et mauvaistié des femmes (Paris: Dallier, 1564)Google Scholar; du Bartas, Guillaume Salluste, La Judith (Paris: L'Angelier, 1582)Google Scholar; Agrippa, Henri Corneille, Traité de l'excellence de la femme (Paris: J. Poupy, 1578)Google Scholar; Heyns, Peeter, Le miroir des vefves. Tragédie sacrée d'Holoferne & Judith. Représentant, parmi les troubles de ce monde, la piété d'une vraye vefve, et la curiosité d'une follastre (Amsterdam: Z. Heyns, 1596)Google Scholar.
70 For a complete list and discussion see Blanc, André, ‘Les Malheurs de Judith et le bonheur d'Esther’, in Poésie et Bible de la Renaissance à l'âge classique, ed. Blum, Pascale and Mantero, Anne (Paris: Champion, 1999), 83–101Google Scholar.
71 They are: Gabrielle de Coignard, Imitation de la victoire de Judich, published among her Oeuvres chrestiennes (Tournon: pour J. Faure libraire en Avignon, 1595)Google Scholar, and Marie de Pech, dame de Calages, , Judith, ou La Délivrance de Béthulie (Toulouse: A. Colomiez, 1660)Google Scholar. See Blanc, ‘Les Malheurs de Judith’, 83, note 1. For a scholarly English edition of Coignard's poem see Winn, Colette H. and McDowell, Robert H., ‘Gabrielle de Coignard: Imitation de la victoire de Judich (1594)’, in Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women, ed. Larsen, Anne R. and Winn, Colette H. (New York: Garland, 2000), 171–211Google Scholar.
72 Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas, La Judit, dedicated to Jeanne, Queen of Navarre, was quickly translated and read throughout Europe. Using the biblical story as a metaphor for the Huguenots' fight against the French monarchy, ‘Du Bartas's poem became the most important single catalyst of Judith's symbolic centrality of Protestantism’ (Stocker, Judith Sexual Warrior, 56). Marie de Pech's Judith, ou la Délivrance de Béthulie was dedicated to Marie-Thérèse, Queen, and d'Amboise, Adrien's Holoferne: tragédie sacrée extraite de l'histoire de Judith (Paris: L'Angelier, 1580)Google Scholar was dedicated to Madame de Broos, daughter of a Marshal of France and Governor of Metz. See Blanc, ‘Les Malheurs de Judith’, 83, note 1, and 89.
73 See Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 157–159. For a detailed description of the Vouet cycle see Crelly, The Painting of Simon Vouet, 110. On Marie de' Medici as an art patron see Marrow, Deborah, The Art Patronage of Maria de' Medici (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1982), particularly 65–72Google Scholar.
74 That modulation and choice of key were deemed essential in the proper setting of a recitative is amply shown by Rameau's analysis of Lully's recitative ‘Enfin, il est à ma puissance’ from Armide (1686). This is discussed in Verba, Cynthia, Music and the French Enlightenment: Reconstruction of a Dialogue 1750–1764 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 20–30Google Scholar, and ‘The Development of Rameau's Thoughts on Modulation and Chromatics’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 26/1 (1973), 69–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Dill, Charles, ‘Rameau Reading Lully: Meaning and System in Rameau's Recitative Tradition’, Cambridge Opera Journal 6/1 (1994), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
75 The lack of a natural sign above the E in the continuo at the final cadence (bar 9) should not surprise us: one of the compositional signatures of Jacquet de La Guerre is the free alternation of parallel major and minor keys for the sake of variety and dramatic contrast. This is the same harmonic thinking displayed by Michel de Saint Lambert, for whom ton was ‘a tonic upon which one could build a piece that was in either the major or the minor mode’, as Greer Garden has shown. See Garden, ‘A Link Between Opera and Cantata in France’, 398–399. For the original see de Saint Lambert, Michel, A New Treatise on Accompaniment, ed. and trans. Powell, John S. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 47–49Google Scholar, originally published as Nouveau traité de l'accompagnement du clavecin (Paris: Ballard, 1707)Google Scholar.
76 Cessac, ‘Les relations d'Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre et de Sébastien de Brossard’, 56.
77 On narrative tempo in general and narrative pause in particular see Genette, Narrative Discouse, 93–95, 99–106. Composers can achieve interesting effects of narrative tempo through instrumental music. Charpentier, for example, employs an instrumental prelude labelled nuit between parts one and two of his oratorio Judith sive Bethulia liberata to represent ‘the passage of time between Judith's departure from the Israelite camp and her arrival at the headquarters of Holofernes’; see H. Wiley Hitchcock, ‘The Latin Oratorios of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’, 327. This is an effect Genette calls ellipsis, or a ‘leap forward’ in time (Genette, Narrative Discourse, 43).
78 Even though this kind of compensatory move might be regarded as universal in music, its persistent occurrence in this cantata makes it particularly striking.
79 See Burgess, Geoffrey Vernon, ‘Ritual in the Tragédie en musique from Lully's Cadmus et Hermione (1673) to Rameau's Zoroastre (1749)’ (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1998), 224–234Google Scholar.
80 A modern edition is available in de La Guerre, Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet, Cephale et Procris, ed. Griffiths, Wanda (Madison: A-R Editions, 1998)Google Scholar. For an analysis of the scene see Cyr, ‘Myth or Marvel?’, 83–84, and Cessac, Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, 73–74.
81 Ciletti, ‘“Gran Macchina è bellezza”’, 77; compare Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 326–327, with Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art, 104–105. Note also the jewellery that Judith wears – a bracelet scholars interpret as representing either the goddess Diana or Roman gods Ares/Mars and a dancing Bacchante, all symbols of war or destruction.
82 Green, ‘Codifying the Heroine’, 51–52.
83 Green, ‘Codifying the Heroine’, 52.
84 Green, ‘Codifying the Heroine’, 50–55.
85 Green, ‘Codifying the Heroine’, 51–52.
86 Green, ‘Codifying the Heroine’, 51–52.
87 Green, ‘Codifying the Heroine’, 52.
88 The 3/4 appears in the original 1708 publication. Green rightly notes that although the opening phrase could be sung in 3/4, its rhythmic feeling would conflict with the continuo, which is clearly in 6/8. If performers tried to infuse an overall feeling of 3/4, it might well cause the piece to fall apart. Green sees the symbolism of the Holy Trinity behind the choice of 3/4 and its association with the figure of the king. See Green, ‘Codifying the Heroine’, 52, 54.
89 Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, 279.
90 I borrow the term ‘plurifunctional’ from Dubowy, ‘Le due “Giuditte” di Alessandro Scarlatti’, 266.
91 Le Cerf de la Viéville, Jean Laurent, Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique française (Brussel: Fr. Foppens, 1705; reprinted Geneva: Minkoff, 1972)Google Scholar, as cited in a translation by Murata, Margaret and Strunk, Oliver, Source Readings in Music History (New York: Norton, 1998), volume 4, 173Google Scholar.
92 For an informative introduction to these aspects see Cuillé, Tili Boon, Preface to Narrative Interludes: Musical Tableaux in Eighteenth-Century French Texts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), xi–xxiGoogle Scholar. See also Neubauer, The Emancipation of Music from Language, and Verba, Music and the French Enlightenment. For an excellent introduction to Dubos see Guyer, Paul, ‘The Origins of Modern Aesthetics: 1711–35’, in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics, ed. Kivy, Peter (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 25–44Google Scholar. The seeds of this increasing emphasis on the senses can already be seen in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century writings on painting by Roger de Piles, which emphasize colour over line. See Cowart, Georgia, ‘Inventing the Arts: Changing Critical Language in the Ancien Régime’, in French Musical Thought, 1600–1800, ed. Cowart, (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1989), 211–238Google Scholar.
93 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Oeuvres complètes de J.-J. Rousseau (Paris: J. Bry aîné, 1858), volume 9, 242Google Scholar, trans. in Cuillé, Narrative Interludes, 1.
94 Fried, Michael, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980)Google Scholar, and Cuillé, Narrative Interludes, 5–6.
95 Cuillé, Narrative Interludes, 4.