MUSC1050 Music in Society 1 – 2012

The French Baroque

Jean-Baptiste Lully & music at the court of Louis XIV: spectacle as propaganda

The French . . . aim at the soft, the easy, the flowing and coherent; the whole air is of the same tone, or,
if sometimes they venture to vary it, they do it with so many preparations, they so qualify it, that still the
air seems to be as natural and consistent as if they had attempted no change at all; there is nothing bold
and adventurous in it; it’s all equal and of a piece.
François Raguenet, Parallèle des Italiens et des Français . . ., 1702

[The French] . . . to know how to use with judgement beautiful decorations and appropriate ornaments
which light up the piece, as it were, like precious stones.
Georg Muffat, describing proper performance of the French style, Florilegium secundum, 1698

François Couperin (1668–1733)

Mus. ex. Concert instrumental sous le titre d’Apothéose composé à la mémoire immortelle de l’incomparable Monsieur de
Lully (The Apotheosis of Lully, Paris, 1725), Remerciment de Lulli à Apollon

I am always surprised, after the pains that I have taken to indicate the ornaments appropriate to my
pieces . . . to hear people who have learnt them without heeding my instructions. Such carelessness is
unpardonable, all the more as it is no arbitrary matter to put in such ornaments as one wishes.
Therefore I declare that all my pieces must be performed just as I have written them and that they will
never make much of an impression on people of genuine taste unless all my markings are observed to
the letter.
François Couperin, Preface to 3rd Book of Harpsichord pieces, 1722

Notes inégales
. . . [groups of quavers/semiquavers] are, when used successively, not played each equal to the next as
they are written: for that would have something of the sluggish, the crude, and the dull. But they are
altered in the French style, by lengthening each odd-numbered note the value of a dot, rendering the
following note shorter to the same extent.
Georg Muffat, Florilegium secundum, 1698

Background to the development of the French baroque style

Rulers of France: King Louis XIII (d.1643), Anne of Austria
Cardinal Richelieu (fl. 1624–42) and Cardinal Mazarin (fl.1642–61)
King Louis XIV (reigned from 1661–1715), aka the ‘Sun King’, main palace at Versailles

The King’s Music

Musique de la Chambre
Musique de la Chapelle
included 24 Violons du Roi (24 Violins of the King)
Musique de la Grande Écurie

Mus. ex. J.-B. Lully, Prelude from Les Airs de Trompettes, Timbales et Hautbois pour Le Carrousel de Monseigneur
(1686)

Louis XIV and music

Académie Royale de Danse (1661); Académie Royale de Musique (1670)

The Dance
Pierre Beauchamps (1631–1705), dancing master
Raoul Feuillet (c.1659/60–1710), dancing master and author of Chorégraphie (Paris, 1700)
Dance types: included the minuet, bourrée, gavotte, sarabande, gigue, passepied, loure, rigaudon,
chaconne, passacaille, forlane, canarie, pavane, galliard, hornpipe, courante, allemande
Dance steps: including élevés and jettés

The ballet de cour

Main elements: récits—vers (both sung); entrées—grand ballet (both danced)
livrets (librettos)
ballet royale; petit ballet
Ballet de la Nuit (Ballet of the Night, 1653), Louis XIV as Apollo, the Sun god

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687)

Louis XIV’s cousin Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, 1646
1653: appointed Compositeur de la musique instrumentale (Composer of the Instrumental Music)
1656: founded Les petit violons (the little violins), a subset of the 24 Violons du Roi
The ‘Rule of the Down Bow’

The French ouverture

tirades
basse de violon (French bass violin)
Mus. ex. Lully, Ouverture from the comédie-ballet, Le bourgeois gentilhomme (The would-be gentleman, 1670)

The comédie-ballet, 1663–72

librettos by Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673)

The tragédie lyrique or tragédie en musique ( = opera)

Henry Desmarets
Insrumental music: the grand choeur (24 violins, sometimes oboes, bassoons, recorders, kettledrum)
and the petit choeur
Philippe Quinault (1635–1688) – librettist
fête or divertissement
Mus. ex. Persée (Paris, 1682)

1683: Louis XIV married Madame de Maintenon; Te Deum

Later French baroque composers

André Campra (1660-1744)
André-Cardinal Destouches (1672-1749)
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

Further Reading (in addition to the set reading from Burkholder in course profile)
Anthony, James R. French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau. Portland: Amadeus, 1997.
Isherwood, Robert. Music in the Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth Century. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1973.
Mather, Betty B. Dance Rhythms of the French Baroque. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c1987.
Tunley, David. François Couperin and the Perfection of Music. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.