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Orchestra and Spectacle in the tragédie en musique 1673–1715: Oracle, sommeil and tempête

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1981

Caroline Wood
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Extract

This paper looks at some aspects of the expansion of the role of the orchestra in the early decades of French operatic history, especially after the death of Lully, and in particular at the orchestra's increasing involvement in, and enhancement of, the spectacular and the dramatic. It focuses on three types of scene, in each of which the orchestra plays a key role in the construction of the scene and in supplying its distinctive musical features. The paper is based on part of a thesis which, for reasons' of manageability, set a terminal date of 1715, but I have where appropriate stepped outside diis self-imposed limit

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 108 , 1981 , pp. 25 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Caroline Wood, Jean-Baptiste Lully and his Succesors: Music and Drama in the tragédie en musique 1673–1715 (diss., University of Hull, 1981).Google Scholar

2 The composers between Lully and Rameau mentioned in this article are as fallows; Marc-Antoine Charpentier (c. 1645–50–1704), Pascal Collasse (1649–1709), Joseph-François Salomon (1649–1732), Theobaldo di Gatti (c.1650–1727), Mario Marais (1656–1728), Jean-Baptiste Matho (c. 1660–1746), André Campra (1660–1744), Henri Desmarets (1661–1741), Louis Lully (1664–1734), Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (1667–1737), Charles-Hubert Gervais (1671–1744), Andre Cardinal Destouches (1672–1749), Louis de Lacoste (c. 1675-mid 1750s) and Thomas Bertin de la Doué (c. 1680–1745).Google Scholar

3 James Anthony, French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau (London, 1973), 103–16.Google Scholar

4 ‘VII: Once this new piece [i.e., the first production of the winter season] fails to produce [sufficient receipts] for two successive weeks, an old opera ‘du sieur Lully’ will be substituted, to be agreed on, and kept in readiness, if possible at the same time as the play which precedes it. However, if this first piece can be made to last until Lent (puisse être poussée jusqu' au Carême), the Lully opera is not to be played, so as not to waste it, and the third piece, to be discussed in article IX, will be given.Google Scholar

VIII: If the first piece of the winter cannot last beyond Easter, the summer season will begin on the day after the Sunday following Easter with a new tragédie or one by Lully, to be followed by a ballet.Google Scholar

IX: Apart from the four operas mentioned above, two each for winter and summer, a third piece is to be agreed on for each season, in case the others cannot furnish [the necessary revenue].'Google Scholar

The Réglement is printed in J.B. Durey de Noinville, Histoire du théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique a France (2nd edn., Paris, 1757, reprinted Geneva, 1972), i, 125—46. For details of the organization of the Academic's opera seasons, see Ducrot, Ariane, ‘Les Representations de l'Académie Royale de Musique à Paris au temps de Louis XIV (1671–1715)’, Recherches, x (1970), 19–55.Google Scholar

5 The following operas achieved three or more revivals: Collasse, Thétis et Pélée (1689); Louis Lully and Marais, Alcide (1693); Destouches, Amadis de Grèce (1699), Omphale (1701) and Callirhoé (1712); Campra, Hésione (1700), Tancrìde (1702) and Iphigénie en Tauride (1704), the last begun by Desmarets; Marais, Alcyone (1706); Salomon, Médée et Jason (1713); Bertin, Ajax (1716); Gervais, Hypermnestre (1716); Montéclair, Jepthé (1732).Google Scholar

6 The sources are as follows:Google Scholar

1704: contracts and letters patent reproduced and annotated in Jerôrne de la Gorce, ‘L'Académie Royale de Musique en 1704’, Revue de musicologie, lxv (1979), 160–91;Google Scholar

1712–13: Privilège for the Académie (see Jürgen Eppelsheim, Das Orchester in den Werken Jean-Baptiste Lullys (Tutzing, 1961), 150, 215) and the Etat appended to the Réglament of 1713 (see Durey de Noinville, Histoire, i, 118–22);Google Scholar

1719: Nicolas Boindin, Lettres historiques sur tous les spectacles de Paris (Paris, 1719), cited in Maurice Barthélemy, ‘L'Orchestre et l'orchestration de Campra’, Revue musicale, ccxxvi (1955), 97–104.Google Scholar

The last two lists are discussed and transcribed in Lois Rosow, Lully's Armide at the Paris Opéra: a Performance History (diss., Brandeis University, 1981), 274–78.Google Scholar

7 As Rosow points out (p. 278), the other woodwind instruments seem to have been omitted. The discrepancy between her count of four bassoons and Barthélemy's five arises from the ambiguous ‘Cheteville Hotter, le cadet’ which she interprets as one name, Barthélemy as two. The family trees of the Chédeville and Hotteterre families are inextric-abbly entwined, as their respective articles in The New Grove testify, and either interpretation seems possible. Lists of parts cited by Rosow (p. 279–80) suggest four as the usual number; if one player took over from another in the course of the year, the names of both are likely to appear on the payrolls for that year.Google Scholar

8 Das Orchester, 119.Google Scholar

9 Le Cerf de la Viéville, Comparaison de la musique italienne et de musique françrise (Brussels, 1704–6), i, 134–35.Google Scholar

10 A type of air in which the bass voice is doubled by the basse continue below two equal upper instrumental parts. Variously (and confusingly) ‘aria(s) with doubled continuo’ (Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era (London, 1948,) 158), ‘double continuo air’ (James Anthony, The Opera-Ballets of Andsé Campra (diss., University of Southern California, 1964), 145 and ‘continuo aria’ (Patricia Howard, The Operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully (diss., University of Surrey, 1974), 190.Google Scholar

11 Graham Sadler, ‘The Role of the Keyboard Continuo in French Opera, 1673–1776’, Early Music, viii (1980), 148–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Georg Muffat, preface to Florilegium Secundum (Passau, 1698) reprinted in Lully, Oeuvres complètes, Les Ballets, I, xxvii-xliii.Google Scholar

13 Discussed in Rosow, op. cit., 310–13.Google Scholar

14 Créuss: F-Po, A 81 a. Idoménés: F-Pa, Vm2 226.Google Scholar

15 See Wood, op. cit., 256.Google Scholar

16 They arc discussed in detail in Wood, op. cit., 395–404.Google Scholar

17 See Girdlestone, Cuthbert, ‘Idoménée … Idomeneo. Transformation d'un thème (1699–1781)’, Recherches, xii (1973), 102–32.Google Scholar

18 See James Anthony's article 'Sommeil, in The New Grove for further examples.Google Scholar

19 Music in the Baroque Era, 155. The trio appears in GMB, 248–49.Google Scholar

20 André Campra, Operatic Airs, ed. Graham Sadler, The Baroque Operatic Arias, ii (London, 1973), 1–13.Google Scholar

21 I am indebted to Graham Sadler for bringing this to my attention.Google Scholar

22 French Baroque Music, 119.Google Scholar

23 F-Pn Vm7 1107 (1762).Google Scholar

24 For the way in which the double bass was used in the orchestra, see Cyr, Mary, ‘Basses and basse continue in the Orchestra of the Paris Opéra, 1700–1764’, Early Music, x (1982), 155–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Sylvette Milliot, ‘Reflexions et recherches sur la viole de gambe et le violoncelle en France’, Recherches, iv (1964), 179–238, claims to have found evidence for its use in Campra's Tancrède, 1702. This hinges on a manuscript insertion into a score ‘qui a servi aux representations’ (226). Tancréde, however, was much revived, and this addition almost certainly pertains to one of these revivals. Cuts, insertions and handwritten instructions abound in such scores in F-Po and V.Google Scholar

26 Eppelsheim, Das Orchester, 93.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 46–48.Google Scholar