Breaking Form Through Sound

Breaking Form through Sound: Instrumental Aesthetics, Tempête , and Temporality in the French Baroque Cantata Author(s): Michele Cabrini Source: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Summer 2009), pp. 327-378 Published by: University of California Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2009.26.3.327 . . Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2009.26.3.327 Accessed: 28/07/2015 04:22 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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Breaking Form through Sound: Instrumental Aesthetics, Tempête , and Temporality in the French Baroque Cantata MICHELE CABRINI It would be dangerous . . . if painting had the same force to move our passions as music; excellent painters would be able to produce considerable disorder.� Félibien

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n a passage from his fifth Entretien fifth Entretien , seventeenthcentury art historian André Félibien (��–��) provides a vivid description of Nicolas Poussin’s L’orage (fig. (fig. �), one of two pendants commissioned by This work was supported (in part) by a grant from The City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program. Previous versions of this essay were presented at the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, La Jolla, California (��), and at the Eleventh Conference of the Dutch-Flemish Society for Music Theory, Leuven, Belgium (��). I am grateful to Professor Wendy Heller and Professor Maria Purciello for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the essay; to the anonymous readnal of Musi Musicolo cology gy for ers of the Jour the Journal for their observations and suggestions; to my wife Dr. Marie Louise von Glinski for reading several drafts; and to Octavio Vázquez for his help with the music examples. � André

Félibien, Entretien Félibien, Entretienss sur les vies et sur sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres peintres anciens anciens (London: Mortier, ��), �:��. Trans. Thomas Puttfarken, Roger de Piles’s Theory et modernes (London: (New Haven: Yale University Press, ��), ��. of Art (New The Journal of Musicology, Vol. ��, Issue �, pp. ��–��, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © �� by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: ��.��/ jm.��.��.�.��.

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�� 1. Nicolas Poussin (��–��), Landscape with a Tree Hit by (��), Oil on Canvas, �� × �� cm (Musée des Lightning (��), Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France). Photograph: Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, NY. NY.

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the Parisian merchant Jean Pointel, and painted, according to Félibien, in ��:� We were occupied with these observations We obser vations when we heard a loud noise from the direction of the château, as if something had rolled down from the mountain. One could not have imagined that such a noise came from the air, since the sky was quite serene, and there were no signs of bad weather. However, once the same noise started again more forcefully after a while, we judged that it came from elsewhere than the road, and looked everywhere to discover its cause. Having approached � There

is an extensive bibliography on these two paintings. See Clovis Whitfield, “Nicolas Poussin’s ‘Orage’ and ‘Temps Calme,’” The Burlington Magazine �� (��): �–��; Denise Allen and David Jaffé, “Poussin’s A Calm and and A Storm ,” ,” Apollo �� (��): ��–��. See also Jan Bialostocki, “Une idée de Léonard réalisée par Poussin,” Revue des Arts � � (��): ��–��; Louis Marin, Sublime Poussin , trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ��), ��–��, ��–��; Oskar Bätschmann, Nicolas Poussin: Dialectics of Painting , trans. Marko Daniel (London: Reaktion Books, ��); and Sheila McTighe, Nicolas Poussin’s Landscape Allegories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��).

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�� the large terrace that is almost at the river’s edge, we spotted from the direction of Meudon a very thick cloud, which, spreading like a black sail, was approaching us; and with its shape and darkness it threatened us with a storm that was not far away. Indeed, having advanced so as to better judge which side it was on, we saw that lightning flashes were already coming from the large cloud, and that the rain was beginning to fall in some distant corners; the air was so dark that it was impossible to see anything else. As we were watching the cloud burst open on one side, admiring the various effects that the lightning flashes made visible in the part of the earth that was covered in darkness, and the way bodies are lit in such moments, we saw that the sky changed suddenly and that—the clouds gathering from all sides—it became overcast in an instant.�

Félibien and his interlocutor Pymandre are surprised by a sudden storm after a lengthy discussion of aesthetics and techniques of painting. � Félibien’s timing of the passage is chosen carefully, and the sequence of events feels much like a dramatic scena . After opening the scenario with the description of a leisurely walk through a bucolic landscape, then continuing with a pedantic lesson between master and pupil about technical aspects of painting, Félibien takes advantage of the storm’s dramatic weight and transforms Poussin’s painting into a powerful ekphrasis , making the painting visible to the reader through vivid language. � Much of Félibien’s discourse aims at capturing the storm’s sudden and disruptive force. Yet there are two basic temporal dimensions at play in Félibien’s ekphrasis : on the one hand the storm’s violent abruptness, which shocks and grabs the attention of our characters, on the other the unfolding of the numerous events in time. These two temporal aspects are particularly apparent in Félibien’s syntax. Immediately after portraying the thunderclap that begins the storm sequence, Félibien continues by describing the various visual elements of the tempest one by one: the lightning flashes, the clouds, the rain drops beginning to

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� Félibien, Entretiens Félibien, Entretiens , �:��–��. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. � Ibid., �:�–��. � Ekphrasis has has been defined by W. J. T. Mitchell, “Ekphrasis and the Other,” South

Atlantic Quarterly �� (��): ��, as “the verbal representation of visual representation.” James A. W. Heffernan, “Ekphrasis and Representation,” New Literary History �� (��): ��, calls it “the verbal representation of graphic representation.” Concerning painting, Ruth Webb defines ekphrasis as “an extended description of a rhetorical nature.” She continues: “An ekphrasis generally attempted to convey the visual impression and the emotional responses evoked by the painting or building, not to leave a detailed, factual account. In an ekphrasis of a painting the author did not confine himself to the specific moment represented but was free to discuss the general narrative context, referring both forwards and backwards in time.” Ruth Webb, “Ekphrasis,” in Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online , http://www http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subsc .oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/ar riber/article/grove/art/T�� t/T�� (accessed December �, ��).

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�� fall in the distance and the progressive darkening of the sky. Then, in a deliberately long sentence, he attempts to capture the temporal simultaneity of all the effects of the storm, creating a remarkably pictorial moment. “While we were watching, the clouds . . . the lightning . . . the darkness,” says Félibien, “in an instant . . . the clouds gathering from all sides—it became overcast.” As Louis Marin nicely puts it, Félibien’s tempest is both “a sudden instant and . . . a process, an ‘all at once’ and the duration of a change.”� The storm then marches on as Félibien’s discourse shifts to describe its most chilling and destructive effects, which escalate, much like a symphonic crescendo of sound, to the extent that master and pupil decide to seek shelter. Our characters’ final decision marks the end of the storm sequence: A furious wind blew at the same time, stirring up whirlwinds of dust and so disturbing the air that one could scarcely see neither the sky nor the earth. In this darkness, one could only perceive the river with its white foam, as if intent on shielding itself against the winds that agitated its waters. The tallest trees yielded to the violence of the squall, their tops leaning to the ground; and one could hear those trees that resisted the most cracking and shattering loudly. Such an abrupt change in the air forced us to retire promptly in the château. When we arrived there, we went to the windows in order to observe more comfortably the rain that was then dropping with extraordinary violence and to notice at the same time the disorder that such a furious tempest caused in the trees and in the landscape. The thunder rumbled continuously around us, and every so often it caused the air to echo with terrifying sounds.�

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Félibien’s ekphrastic prose captures both the synchronic and the diachronic aspects of the event—the uncannily vivid depiction of the details on the one hand and their carefully calibrated sequence on the other. Félibien begins the sequence with a single event, the sound of thunder, then proceeds to describe the visual details of the storm—the conditions of the sky, the lightning, the menacing clouds, the effects of light on the bodies; subsequently, he describes the storm’s most palpable effects, its frightening sounds—the cracking sound of the trees, the howling of the wind, the sound of thunder and the crashing of the rain. The switch from sight to sound intensifies the event greatly; at this juncture, Félibien’s decision to seek shelter is an effective stratagem that puts a lid on the storm, as it were, de facto marking the end of the dramatic scena . Indeed, only through the window of the castle can the storm be watched in relative safety, controlled and reduced to a framed � Marin, Sublime Poussin , ��. � Félibien, Entretie ns , �:��. Félibien, Entretiens

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�� view—a live painting. Only in the intimacy of the castle, with the sound of the storm safely cast away in the distance as if muffled, can Félibien and Pymandre begin their leisurely discussion of the lives of famous painters.� During the same time that Félibien’s Entretien was receiving much attention, as evidenced by numerous new eighteenth-century editions, � French composers were experimenting with the tempest topos . Music, much like literary prose, moves through time. Just as Félibien captured the storm’s seemingly unstoppable momentum through a sequence of events that feels breathlessly continuous, composers likewise negotiated the storm’s temporal process by representing its sudden eruption and build-up over time to the extent of breaking traditional formal frames. Several examples of storms can be found in the French repertory of the tragédie en musique beginning in the late seventeenth century and continuing through much of the eighteenth, during which time the tem- pête became one of the audience’s favorite instrumental topoi .�� French composers employed parameters such as the preservation of a single key and the continuity of thematic material from one movement to the next to create an unbroken sequence of events. Much of this need for continuity and coherence derived from the French love for and adherence to the laws of verisimilitude above all else, according to which the storm needed to be treated as a real event, and to be represented with its characteristic momentum. Storms provided the opportunity for the

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� Ibid., �:��–��. � Félibien’s Entretiens was first published in

ten volumes between �� and �� and later translated into English (��), German (��), and Italian (��). New French editions appeared in �� and ��. See Alexandra Skliar-Piguet, “Félibien, André,” in Grove Art Online , Oxford Art Online , http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/ grove/art/T�� (accessed December �, ��). �� The literature on the tempête in French opera is extensive. See Caroline Wood, “Orchestra and Spectacle in the tragédie en musique ��–��: Oracle, sommeil and tempête ,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association �� (��–��): ��–��; idem, Music and Drama in the Tragédie en Musique (New York: Garland, ��); Jérôme de la Gorce, “Tempêtes et tremblements de terre dans l’opéra français sous le règne de Louis XIV,” in Le mouvement en musique à l’époque baroque , ed. Hervé Lacombe (Metz: Éditions Serpenoise, ��), ��–��; Edmond Lemaître, “Le premier opéra-ballet et la première tempête: deux originalités de l’oeuvre de Pascal Colasse,” Dix-Septième Siècle �� (��): ��–��; Sylvie Bouissou, “Le Phénomène de la catastrophe naturelle dans l’opéra français,” Re- vista de Musicologia �� (��): ��–��; idem, “Mécanismes dramatiques de la tempête et de l’orage dans l’opéra français à l’âge baroque,” in D’un opéra l’autre: Hommage à Jean Mongrédien , ed. Jean Gribenski, Marie-Claire Mussat, and Herbert Schneider (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, ��), ��–��; idem, “L’impact social de la catastrophe naturelle dans l’opéra français,” in Sillages musicologiques: Hommage à Yves Gérard , ed. Philippe Blay and Raphaëlle Legrand (Paris: Editions du Conservatoire Nationale Supérieur de Musique de Paris, ��), ��–��. See also Sylvie Bouissou, Jean-Philippe Rameau: Les Boréades ou la tragédie oubliée (Paris: Klincksieck, ��), ��–��, in which she discusses Rameaus’s dramaturgical strategy for the storm in this opera.

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�� orchestra to play a leading role in representing the varying stages of the event—its inception, its momentous build-up, and its abatement.�� This was a profoundly different solution from the Italian aria di tempesta , in which the storm was treated as a poetic simile or a metaphor for the inner turbulence of the singing character rather than as a true event, and was thus contained within the explosively virtuosic boundaries of the aria. Compared to the aria di tempesta , where the virtuosic competition between the voice and the orchestra was the key to the creation of the overall topos , in France it was the orchestra alone that was both responsible for the creation of the same and for guiding the dramatic trajectory of the events, subordinating the voices to its powerful sound rather than creating opportunities for interaction.�� A renowned passage by Charles de Brosses, a Frenchman traveling in Italy at the end of the ��s, reveals the conceptual differences between the French and the Italians regarding the tempest topos . De Brosses points out the faults of verisimilitude of opera seria concerning the dramatic legitimacy of the aria di tempesta , while at the same time condoning them on account of the astounding quality of Italian music: The Italians wish to have arias of all possible kinds, offering all the different images which music can represent. They have very noisy ones, full of music and harmony, meant for brilliant voices . . . Arias of [this] kind present images of a turbulent sea, an impetuous wind, an overflowing river, flashing lightning . . . etc. These figures, so well suited to music, do not fit naturally into the tragedy. They must therefore be introduced by comparisons based on the relationship that may exist between the physical images and the state of mind in which the poet has placed his character. I know that such comparisons are quite out of place coming from a man who is agitated by passion and who therefore should express himself in a lively yet natural manner; but music, which plays the leading role, decrees it must be so. A simpler manner would probably give the character but two words and no image; and

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��

On the increasing dramatic importance of the orchestra in the tragédie en musique of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth century, see Leslie Ellen Brown, “Departures from Lullian Convention in the tragédie lyrique of the préramiste Era,” Recherches sur la musique française classique �� (��): ��–��. See also Edmond Lemaître, “L’orchestre dans le théâtre lyrique français chez les continuateurs de Lully (��–��),” parts �–�, Recher- ches sur la musique française classique �� (��): ��–��; �� (��): ��–��. �� On the use of the tempest topos by Italian composers, see the excellent article by Cesare Fertonani, “‘Vo solcando un mar crudele’: Per una tipologia dell’ aria di tempesta nella prima metà del settecento,” Musica e storia � (��): ��–��. Significantly, the only example mentioned by Fertonani (p. ��) that includes an actual storm—the aria “D’innalzar i flutti al ciel,” in Act III, scene � of Ottone, re di Germania (��) by HaymHandel—is not by an Italian composer. See also Luca Zoppelli, “Tempeste e stravaganze: Fattori estetici e ricettivi in margine alla datazione dei concerti ‘a programma,’” Nuovi studi vivaldiani: Edizione e cronologia critica delle opere , ed. Antonio Fanna and Giovanni Morelli (Florence: Olschki, ��), ��–��.

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�� this music is so beautiful, so astonishing, it paints objects with such art and truth, that one willingly forgives it even graver faults, such as keeping a character onstage to have him sing a very long aria at the very moment when danger is pressing upon him to flee. Display arias of this kind are almost always accompanied by wind instruments (oboes, trumpets, and horns), which have a splendid effect, especially in airs depicting tempests at sea; a hundred string and wind instruments together could accompany without harming the vocal part.��

At the end of the passage, de Brosses reveals his French fondness for instrumental effects by emphasizing the importance of the orchestra. By around ��, composer and music collector Sébastien de Brossard noted that the tempest topos in France had migrated to the cantata and the motet, demonstrating that other types of vocal genres could no longer remain immune to its popularity.�� The dramaturgical aspects of the tempest topos in the tragédie en musique have been thoroughly examined by Sylvie Bouissou;�� yet the dramaturgical challenges composers negotiated when transferring the tempest to non-operatic genres, particularly the French baroque cantata, have not received the attention they deserve.�� The cantata posed a unique dramatic challenge to the type of temporal continuity elicited by storm scenes. Imported from Italy to France at the turn of the eighteenth-century, �� the cantata employed a dramatic mold typical of the opera seria —alternating between recitatives and da capo arias—which, unlike the supple French operatic

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�� Frédéric

d’Agay, ed., Lettres d’Italie du Président de Brosses , � vols. (Paris: Mercure de France, ��) �: ��–��. Trans. Piero Weiss, Opera: A History in Documents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ��), ��–��. �� Sébastien de Brossard, Catalogue des livres de musique théorique et pratique . . . qui sont dans le cabinet de sieur Séb. de Brossard (��), Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. rés. Vm� ��, ��, as cited in James R. Anthony, French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Ram- eau , rev. edn. (Portland: Amadeus Press, ��), ��. �� See Bouissou, “Mécanismes dramatiques de la tempête,” ��–��, and idem, Les Boréades , ��–��. �� On this aspect see Michele Cabrini, “Expressive Polarity: The Aesthetics of tempête and sommeil in the French Baroque Cantata” (PhD diss., Princeton University, ��). �� On the origins of the French cantata and the Parisian social scene in which it burgeoned, see David Tunley, The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata , �nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ��), �–��, and Gene E. Vollen, The French Cantata: A Survey and Thematic Catalog (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, ��), ��–��. For a list of Philidor’s Concerts français that include cantata performances see Tunley, Eighteenth-Century French Cantata , ��–��. On the Concert Spirituel , which also featured cantata performances, see Daniel Heartz, “The Concert Spirituel in the Tuileries Palace,” Early Music �� (��): ��–��, and Constant Pierre, Histoire du Concert Spirituel ��–�� (Paris: Société Française de Musicologie, ��). On the literary aspects of the French cantata, see David Tunley, “’An Embarkment for Cythera’: Literary and Social Aspects of the French Cantata,” Recherches sur la musique française classique � (��): ��–��; Jérôme Dorival, La cantate française au xviiie siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, ��), ��–��; and Vollen, French Can- tata , ��–��.

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��

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model, tended to separate the flow of time into distinct units. Whereas the recitative featured the elapsing of dramatic time, arias featured circular time at a virtual standstill, resulting in an alternation between forward action and static, drawn-out emotional outbursts. Cantata composers challenged this design by creating continuity through the use of two primary means—key and thematic material in instrumental passages—as a way to bind the entire storm into a continuous scene and to blur the distinction between recitatives and arias. Much like storm scenes in tragédies en musique , in the French cantata, too, the expression of the storm’s dramatic trajectory—its inception, forward momentum, and abatement—becomes the guiding principle. �� Yet given the cantata’s deep-rooted recitative-aria design, the principle is striking. It shows that composers adapted the dramatic mold inherited from the Italians to fit a French aesthetic that favored continuity under the influence of the tragédie en musique ’s supple organization.�� By presenting an event whose duration transcends the boundary between recitative and aria, composers suggest that the reverberating force of the tempest could not be contained by traditional formal means. The desire to break away from the cantata’s normative design points to a profound difference in poetic conception of the tempest topos between the French and the Italians. Italian poets employed the storm as a metaphor for the character’s inner turmoil, an abstract image, which, I contend, was a type of poetic conceit that fit within the societal parlor game of “wit and ingenuity” recently proposed by Roger Freitas as the artistic milieu of the Italian cantata.�� In the wake of the arie di tempesta from opera seria , Italian cantata composers chose to contain the power of the storm within the confines of the aria, highlighting single key words—tempesta , nocchiero , procelle , onde , mare , porto and so on—with expressive virtuosity, and establishing the mood with ��

There are five cantatas with tempests in which composers blur the boundaries of recitative and aria by means of instrumental music for the sake of dramatic continuity: Nicolas Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (Book III, ��), Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Jonas (Book I, ��), Jean-Baptiste Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (Book III, ��), Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, L’enlèvement d’Orithie (Book II, ��), and François Brou, Orithie (��). �� The deliberate blurring of formal frames as a means to create the illusion of continuity had been at the heart of Lullian aesthetics already for decades. One of the best explanations of the tragédie en musique ’s supple design, musical language, and dramatic organization can be found in Lois Rosow, “Lully,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera , ed. Stanley Sadie, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online , http://www.oxfordmusiconline. com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O��pg� (accessed December �, ��). See also idem, “Lully’s Musical Architecture: Act IV of Persée,” Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music �� (��), in particular par. �.�, http://www.sscm-jscm.org/v��/no�/rosow.html; and idem, “The Articulation of Lully’s Dramatic Dialogue,” in Lully Studies , ed. John Hajdu Heyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��–��. �� See Roger Freitas, “Singing and Playing: the Italian Cantata and the Rage for Wit,” Music and Letters �� (��): ��–��.

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�� an equally virtuosic instrumental accompaniment.�� Conversely, French cantata composers took interest in developing the dramatic situation itself—the scene—by representing the storm as a real event with its typical driving thrust even within the confines of a genre that was not bound by the laws of verisimilitude as opera. This concern for dramatic unity and coherence reflects the plan that Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, the poetic inventor of the French cantata, had in mind when he first began experimenting with the genre at the turn of the eighteenth century: As I had no other model than the Italians, to whom it often occurs, as well as to us Frenchmen, to sacrifice reason to accommodate the musicians, I perceived, after having made some of them . . . that I produced nothing of value so long as I would content myself with piling up some poetic phrases without plan or liaison. It was this that made the thought come to me of giving a form to these small poems, to reduce them to an exact allegory, whose recitatives made the body, and whose airs the soul or the application.��

For others, it was the French cantata’s unity and coherence that distinguished it from the poetic inconsistencies of the Italians. Writing in �� and no longer sharing Rousseau’s diplomacy, Desfontaines voiced his preference explicitly:

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What a difference between an Italian cantata and a French cantata! In the former, there is no common sense, no esprit, no wit: it is nothing but an assemblage of harmonious words. The latter is a small, well-ordered poem, its reading so pleasing that the best opera appears insipid and �� Poetic

images of storm or sea can be found in several Italian cantatas, although none of them feature an actual storm. This is confirmed in Robert Holzer, “Music and Poetry in Seventeenth-Century Rome: Settings of the Canzonetta and Cantata Texts of Francesco Balducci, Domenico Benigni, Francesco Melosio, and Antonio Abati” (PhD diss.: University of Pennsylvania, ��), esp. pp. ��–��, ��–��, ��–��, ��–��, ��–��, ��–�, ��–��, ��–��, ��–��. Storm metaphors and poetic similes are so common in the Italian cantata of this period that they scarcely call for separate mention, and an extensive list would be beyond the scope of this study. There are approximately forty examples in Carolyn Gianturco, ed., The Italian Cantata in the Seventeenth Century: Facsimiles of Manuscripts and Prints of Works by Leading Composers Including an Edition of the Poetic Texts , �� vols. (New York and London: Garland, ��). Gianfranco Folena, “La cantata e Vivaldi,” in Antonio Vivaldi: Teatro musicale cultura e società (Florence: Olschki, ��), ��, also notices that Vivaldi sets the image of the tempest with obsessive frequency in his cantatas, the texts of which can be found in ibid., ��–��. See also Michael Talbot, The Chamber Cantatas of Antonio Vivaldi (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, ��), esp. pp. ��, ��–��, ��–��. See also Juliane Riepe and Carlo Vitali, “Aspetti della cantata veneziana intorno al ��,” I Quaderni della civica scuola di musica ��–�� (��): ��–��, ��. For storm images in Handel’s cantatas, see Ellen T. Harris, Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ��), ��–��. �� Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, preface to L’oeuvres de S.r Rousseau (Rotterdam, ��), �–�, translation adapted from Vollen, French Cantata , ��. Rousseau’s preface is also reproduced in J. Bachelier, preface to Recueil de cantates (��; reprint, Geneva: Minkoff, ��), �r-v.

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�� tedious, and where the musician can employ all the resources of his art, and reunite the serious, the touching, and the animated through the recitative, the airs, and the ariettes .��

Twenty years later, the Jesuit priest Joseph de la Porte confirmed this French fixation with unity by going as far as equating the unity of action in cantatas with that of the theater: “It [the cantata] is a sort of action, as in the tragedies, the unity of which infinitely satisfies the mind [esprit ].”��

Operatic Storms, Du Bos, and the Changing Views on Instrumental Music

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From the death of Jean-Baptiste Lully (��) until Jean-Philippe Rameau’s operatic debut with Hippolyte et Aricie (��), composers of tragédie en musique began to experiment with sound by greatly expanding the orchestra’s capacity for dramatic effects and including it more fully in the drama.�� Tempests, sleep scenes, earthquakes, battles, infernal furies, oracle scenes, and other orchestral topoi began to per vade the operatic stage.�� Within this wide panorama of topoi , the tempest constitutes one of the most remarkable and spectacular examples: arguably one of the most violent scenarios, the tempest typically occurs as the result of divine rage, featuring Neptune or other divinities seeking vengeance against a specific character. Operatic tempests not only afforded opportunities for musical depictions and instrumental effects that displayed the increasing virtuosity of the orchestra, but they also played an important role in the dramatic structure of an opera. Storms fell under the dramatic rubric of natural catastrophes and could be employed as the perfect coup de théâtre to create a sudden reversal of fortune.�� Their shocking unexpectedness and their extravagant ��

[Pierre-François Guyot Desfontaines et al.], Jugemens sur quelques ouvrages nouveaux (Avignon: P. Girou, ��–��; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, ��), �: ��. I thank Professor Jérôme Dorival for pointing me to the source of this quotation. �� [Joseph de La Porte], Ecole de littérature, tirée de nos meilleurs écrivains (Paris: Babuty, ��–��), �:��–��. �� On this aspect see Brown, “Departures from Lullian Convention,” and Lemaître, “L’orchestre dans le théâtre lyrique.” �� See Wood, “Orchestra and Spectacle” and la Gorce, “Tempêtes et tremblements de terre.” �� On this aspect see the several valuable articles by Sylvie Bouissou, “Mécanismes dramatiques de la tempête,” ��–��; idem, “L’impact social de la catastrophe naturelle,” ��–��; and idem, “Le Phénomène de la catastrophe naturelle,” ��–��. Basing her work on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dramatic definitions of catastrophe , which are synonymous with sudden reversals of situation and tragic denouements, Bouissou finds three basic manifestations of the tempest topos in the tragédie en musique : a simple manifestation, in which the appearance of the tempest is brief and accidental without any

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�� lavishness, both acoustic and visual, fueled the very ingredient that French audiences found so enthralling about opera—le merveilleux .�� In tempest scenes, it was the initial shocking sound of instrumental music portraying the storm that warranted the attention of the audience. Chief among several eighteenth-century tempests is that from Marin Marais’s Alcyone , premiered in ��, whose overwhelming sound became widely known and revered, and which contributed to the popularity of the topos throughout much of the eighteenth century. Marais’s tempest had indeed become so famous that the February �� issue of the Mercure galant mentions a particular performance of the tempête alone,�� and Louis XIV, who apparently had not heard it at the opera, requested it as an overture to a ball after dinner on February ��, ��.�� Caroline Wood informs us that somebody even copied the three-part version of the partition réduite in a manuscript collection of trio sonatas by Corelli and of viol pieces by Marais himself.�� Its acoustic magnitude and sheer length—almost one hundred measures of instrumental music, punctuated now and then by choral interventions— inspired historian Titon du Tillet to make an unusually detailed remark: One cannot help speaking of the tempest in this opera, so vaunted by all the Connoisseurs and which has such an astounding effect. Marais planned to have the bass performed not only by bassoons and ordinary basses de violon , but also by loosely strung drums that rolled continually, forming a muffled, lugubrious sound, which joined with the

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notable consequence; a dramatic manifestation, in which the amplitude of the tempest is expressed through several movements, but without long term consequence on the characters; and, finally, a dramaturgical manifestation, in which the tempest and its consequent development bears direct consequence on the final destiny of the characters. �� In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French discourse about opera, the merveilleux features prominently as the key ingredient that distinguished opera from spoken tragedy. Cahusac labeled the merveilleux as “the essence of French opera.” Louis de Cahusac, “Enchantement,” in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers , ed. Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (Paris: Briasson, David, Le Breton, Durand, ��–��), ��. Elsewhere, he called it “the cornerstone of the edifice.” Louis de Cahusac, La Danse ancienne et moderne , � vols. (The Hague: Chez Jean Neaulme, ��), �:��, trans. Caroline Wood and Graham Sadler, eds., French Baroque Opera: A Reader (Aldershot: Ashgate, ��), ��. On the history of the concept of merveilleux and its fundamental importance in French opera, see Catherine Kintzler, Poétique de l’Opéra français de Corneille à Rousseau (Paris: Minerve, ��). The unexpected nature of catastrophes such as the tempest was particularly suited to introduce what Kintzler calls “poeticized horror.” See Kintzler, Poétique de l’Opéra français , ��–��. On the merveilleux , see also Jérôme de La Gorce, “L’opéra sous le règne de Louis XIV: le merveilleux ou les puissances surnaturelles, ��–��” (PhD diss., University of Paris IV, ��). �� Cited in Wood, “Orchestra and Spectacle,” ��. �� Norbert Dufourcq, ed., La musique à la cour de Louis XIV et de Louis XV d’après les Mémoirs de Sourches et Luynes ��–�� (Paris: Picard, ��), ��. �� The manuscript is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Vm � �� (��). Cited in Wood, “Orchestra and Spectacle,” ��.

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�� high pitched, piercing notes coming from the high part of the top string of the violins and from the oboes, together made one feel all the fury and all the horror of a rough sea.��

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His description is evocative: the striking use of nouns and adjectives— “horror,” “fury,” “rough,” “astounding,” “muffled,” “lugubrious,” “piercing”— captures the shock, almost re-creating the sound of Marais’s orchestra. To the informed reader—one who had heard and seen Marais’s tempest at the opera—Du Tillet’s description would have rekindled the experience; to the neophyte, it would have sounded sufficiently suggestive to evoke the intended effect. The kind of visceral reaction described by Du Tillet to the sound of the orchestra coincides with a new aesthetic reappraisal of instrumental music in France. Though the proverbially sceptical attitude of the French toward instrumental music, elegantly summed up by Fontenelle’s celebrated witticism “sonate, que me veux-tu?” still echoed strongly at the beginning of the eighteenth century,�� new ideas were slowly beginning to take hold. Jean-Baptiste Du Bos, critic and aesthetician, was a particularly strong partisan of and an important contributor to the reevaluation of instrumental music as an expressive medium. In his Réflexions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture (first published in ��), one of the most influential aesthetic treatises of the eighteenth century, Du Bos discusses the role of instrumental music in opera, citing the celebrated tempest scene by Marais. While still adhering to a sacrosanct French tenet—the notion of instrumental music legitimized as mimesis —Du Bos advances the idea that symphonies suitable to the subject have the power to affect our moods almost as powerfully as the verses of Corneille or Racine,�� Evrard

Titon du Tillet, Le Parnasse françois (Paris: Coignard, ��), ��, trans. Anthony, French Baroque Music , ��. �� For aspects on the notion of imitation and the attitude of the French toward instrumental music, see Maria Rika Maniates, “ ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu? ’: The Enigma of French Musical Aesthetics in the ��th Century,” Current Musicology � (��): ��–��, and Edward Higginbottom, “ ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu? ’: Classical French Music and the Theory of Imitation,” in French Music and the Fitzwilliam , ed. Christopher Hogwood (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, ��), ��–��. See also John Neubauer, The Emancipation of Mu- sic from Language: Departure from Mimesis in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics (New Haven: Yale University Press, ��), and Georges Snyders, Le goût musical en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Vrin, ��). Jules Ecorcheville, De Lully à Rameau, ��–��: l’esthétique musicale (��; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, ��) is dated but still useful. �� Jean-Baptiste (l’Abbé) Du Bos, Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting and Music , trans. Thomas Nugent (London: Nourse, ��), �:��; originally published as Réflexions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture (��; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, ��). On Du Bos, see the excellent study by Camille Guyon-Lecoq, La vertu des passions: l’esthétique et la morale au miroir de la tragédie lyrique (��–��) (Paris: Champion, ��), particularly pp. ��–��; Enrico Fubini, Empirismo e classicismo: saggio sul Dubos (Turin: Giappichelli, ��); and Rosalie Sadowsky, “Jean-Baptiste Abbé Dubos: the Influence of Cartesian and neo-Aristotelian Ideas on Music Theory and Practice” (PhD diss., Yale Univerisity, ��).

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�� and that such pieces “contribute vastly to engage us to the action of the opera, in which we may say they act a part.” In discussing Marais’s tempest, Du Bos argues: the imitation of the noise of a tempest, which is just going to sink a personage in whose favor the poet has deeply engaged us, affects us exactly as we should be moved with the blustering of a tempest just ready to plunge into the waves a person for whom we had a sincere affection, were this a real tempest, and we near enough to hear it.��

Although Du Bos himself admits the limitations of the imitation theory,�� he nonetheless expresses greater confidence in the instrumental medium than his French contemporaries. �� He recognizes the expressive power of instrumental music to engage the imagination, strengthen verisimilitude, and move the audience independently from vocal music, and he does not favor the latter over the former.��

The French Quest for Instrumental Color to Dispel Boredom The French cantata was not immune to the growing interest in instrumental music. Indeed, more so than their Italian counterparts, French composers were fond of adopting several instrumental topoi for dramatic verisimilitude or effect. As in the tragédie en musique , composers employed instrumental music to represent tempests, slumber scenes, earthquakes, battles, oracle scenes, pastoral musettes , birdcalls, and other topoi , even within the cantata’s inherently condensed orchestral resources.�� Whereas most French cantatas require either voice and continuo, or voice, obbligato instruments, and continuo, several are �� Du Bos, Critical Reflections , �:�� and ��. �� “[T]he impression arising from an imitation

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is much weaker than that of the

thing imitated.” Ibid., ��. �� On the dominant French aesthetic position on instrumental music, see Maniates, “The Enigma of French Musical Aesthetics,” Higginbottom, “‘Sonate, que me veux-tu? ’ ” and Neubauer, The Emancipation of Music from Language . �� See Du Bos, Critical Reflections , �:��–��. Paul Guyer, “The Origins of Modern Aesthetics: ��–��,” in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics , ed. Peter Kivy (Oxford: Blackwell, ��), ��, rightly notes that “Dubos does not reject purely instrumental music in favor of vocal music on the ground that only the latter but not the former can represent human passions; instead he argues that non-verbal music or the non-verbal aspects of music imitate the inarticulate expressions of human emotion rather than the verbal expressions of human emotion; but in both cases, whether it imitates natural signs or artificial signs, music works by engaging the imagination and arousing the represented passions in its audience.” �� For a treatment of the tempête and the sommeil topoi in the French cantata, see Cabrini, “Expressive Polarity.” For a taxonomy of dramatic interactions between the voice and the instrumental accompaniment in the French cantata repertory, see idem, “Upstaging the Voice: Diegetic Sound and Instrumental Interventions in the French Baroque Cantata,” Early Music �� (forthcoming).

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��

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for a large group of instrumentalists. Indeed, Graham Sadler has recently called attention to the instrumental nature of the French cantata by discussing a group of pieces he labels “orchestral,” arguing persuasively for their performance with large forces, and suggesting that the current categorization of the genre as either with instruments (avec symphonie ) or with continuo only (sans symphonie ) is overly simple.�� His study sheds light on a fundamentally distinguishing aspect of the French cantata—instrumentation and instrumental color as a powerful means of expression and dramatic display, understood as the extension of orchestral practices in use at the Paris Opéra to the intimate realm of the chamber concert. Sadler’s findings about instrumental color are not only confined to those larger pieces he terms “orchestral” but can also be found in several cantatas that employ specific instrumental topoi for a chamber ensemble. Julie Anne Sadie, for example, points out eight examples of tempest scenes in French cantatas published between �� and ��, all calling for two distinct bass parts. Tempests often called for extra bass parts even beyond those specified by the composer, as suggested by “cantata partbooks copied for one of the queen’s concerts in ��,” which included “four basses continues ”; sometimes they also called for the addition of a double bass or a bassoon to enhance the overall effect. Sadie contends that textural contrast characterizes much of the French cantata repertory, as suggested by the great variety of instrumental combinations found in this music.�� Composers might have employed instrumental topoi within a quintessentially vocal genre with a double purpose. First, accounts by Brossard, Jacquet de la Guerre, and Bachelier, which argue for brevity, variety, and vivid imagery in the French cantata, suggest that composers may have employed instrumental topoi like the tempest to provide the variety and appeal necessary to maintain the audience’s attention. Bachelier argued that the successful cantata needed to be “brief, taut, vivid, ��

See Graham Sadler, “The Orchestral French cantata (��–��): Performance, Edition and Classification of a Neglected Repertory,” in Aspects of the Secular Cantata in Late Baroque Italy , ed. Michael Talbot (Aldershot: Ashgate, in press). I am grateful to Professor Sadler for allowing me to read his article prior to its publication. �� See Julie Anne Sadie, The Bass Viol in French Baroque Chamber Music (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, ��), ��–�� and ��–��. The cantatas including two separate bass parts are: Anonymous, La France (n.d.), Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (��), Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (��), Clérambault, Léandre et Héro (��) and his La Muse de l’Opéra (��), Le Maire, L’Eté (��), Bouvard, Léandre et Héro (��), and Cappus, Sémélé ou la naissance de Bacchus (��). See also Mary Cyr, “Basses and basse continue in the Orchestra of the Paris Opéra ��–��,” Early Music �� (��): ��–��; and Sylvette Milliot, “ Réflexions et recherches sur la viole de gambe et le violoncelle en France,” Recherches sur la musique française classique � (��): ��–��.

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�� and full of sense, [altogether] in a few words.” �� Jacquet de la Guerre hoped that the variety between items, including symphonies appropriate to the subject, might help prevent boredom in some of her unusually long cantatas.�� For Brossard, it was a combination of concision, variety of expression, appeal to the imagination, relative ease of execution, and absence of operatic frills and expenses that contributed to the cantata’s success and dissemination “in the past twelve to fifteen years . . . in all the concerts in Paris and the Provinces.” �� According to Brossard, the cantata was perfectly suited for French audiences: It would be difficult to find anything that appeals more to the natural French spirit. For it must be frankly admitted that the French are �� See

Lettre anonyme, à Mr. de la Grange, sur son Recueil d’Oeuvres mêlées , cited in Bachelier, preface to Recueil de cantates , ��v. He also argues that certain works, such as those by Mr. de la Grange, were shunned for their “eternal length,” and that the public in The Hague was so bored by the length of one of Bourgeois’s cantatas that it was interrupted before the end of the last aria. Ibid., ��r-v. �� She argues: “As the cantatas that I present to the public are a little long, I thought I would limit myself to three. I have accompanied them with symphonies appropriate to the subject, and I hope the manner in which one will find them varied will prevent them from causing boredom.” Jacquet de la Guerre, Avertissement to her book of secular cantatas, as cited in David Tunley, ed., The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata: A Seventeen-Volume Facsim- ile Set of the Most Widely Cultivated and Performed Music in Early Eighteenth-Century France , vol. �� (New York: Garland, ��), ��. Significantly, in this group of cantatas, the symphonie presents typical French operatic topoi —tempests, slumber scenes, various types of ominous bruits , and pastoral sounds such as the musette and bird calls. For more on Jacquet de la Guerre’s secular cantatas, see Adrian Rose, “Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre and the Secular cantate françoise ,” Early Music �� (��): ��–��. Similarly, Montéclair felt the need to excuse the extreme length of his cantata Pyrame et Thisbé , hoping that the musical variety and the lack or repetition would offset its size. See Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, Cantates à une et à deux voix, vol. � (Paris: Foucault, ��), ��, trans. James R. Anthony and Diran Akmajian, preface to Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, Cantatas for One and Two Voices , (Madison, Wisconsin: A-R editions, ��), xii. �� Sébastien de Brossard, “Dissertation sur cette espèce de concert qu’on nomme cantate,” n.d., MS autograph ms fr na ��, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fols. ��– ��v, as cited in Sébastien de Brossard, Cantates françaises et italiennes , ed. Jérôme Dorival, trans. Mary Criswick (Versailles: Editions du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, ��), xliii. The presumable dating of Brossard’s “Dissertation” around �� or �� (see Jean Duron, L’oeuvre de Sébastien de Brossard: catalogue thématique [Versailles: Editions de Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, ��], ��, and Dorival, introduction to Cantates françaises et italiennes , by Brossard, v]) places the success and dissemination of the cantata in France at about the turn of the eighteenth century, perhaps already beginning in the ��s. The cantata’s popularity is confirmed by the myriad of cantata books published at the beginning of the eighteenth century. See Tunley, Eighteenth-Century French Cantata ,�–��; and Vollen, French Cantata , ��–��. Brossard would have come into contact with the French cantata through circulating publications of cantata books, which were particularly popular during the first thirty years of the eighteenth century. After living in Caen, Brossard was in Paris between �� and �� and was then active in two provincial cities—Strasbourg and Meaux—between �� and his death in ��. He thus experienced the musical life of the French provinces personally. See Yolande de Brossard, Sébas- tien de Brossard: Théoricien et compositeur, encyclopédiste et maître de chapelle, �� –�� (Paris: Picard, ��).

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�� naturally impatient and find it hard to concentrate for any length of time on a single object, and they extend this air of freedom which distinguishes them from other nationalities to their pleasures. The least difficulty suffices to discourage them, and any entertainment that disturbs or confuses them, or even that entails too great an expenditure, is more likely to cause aversion rather than pleasure. Cantatas, on the other hand, usually last no longer than is necessary to provide entertainment without boredom. There is a certain freedom, which dominates the words as much as the music of cantatas, and which tickles our nation’s fancy. The variety of expressions and movements, which constitutes its soul and essence, by guiding the imagination, in a manner of speaking, through a succession of different subjects and in different ways, does not fail to please and never disappoints.��

This concern for maintaining the audience’s attention through brevity and liveliness squares with Du Bos’s similar concern for ennui .�� For Du Bos, the hurry and agitation, in which our passions keep us, even in solitude, is of so brisk a nature that any other situation is languid and heavy, when compared to this motion. Thus we are led by instinct, in pursuit of objects capable of exciting our passions, notwithstanding those objects make impressions on us, which are frequently attended by nights and days of pain and calamity: but man in general would be exposed to greater misery, were he exempt from passions, than the very passions themselves can make him suffer.��

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Du Bos lists all sorts of “frightful spectacles,” including public executions, combats with gladiators, and bullfights, arguing that they have the power to lure crowds determined to pursue excitement and avoid tedium and indolence at all costs. Not surprisingly, Du Bos mentions the tempest as one of the favorite crowd-pleasing “frightful spectacles,” and his engaged description of the storm from Marais’s Alcyone �� confirms that he viewed the tempest topos as one of the awe-inspiring means to escape ennui within the safe confines of the theatre. The second purpose behind the profusion of instrumental topoi in the cantata may be connected with the sharp criticism of the cantata in the earlier part of the century, in particular that of the Mercure galant , the official journal sanctioned by the court, which grouped the cantata ��

Brossard, “Dissertation,” fols. ��–��v, translation adapted from Mary Criswick, in Brossard, Cantates françaises et italiennes , xliii. �� Guyer, “Origins of Modern Aesthetics,” ��. �� Du Bos, Critical Reflections , �:�. �� Ibid., �:��–��, �:��, and �:��.

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�� together with the unwelcome wave of transalpine instrumental music. “Cantatas and sonatas,” said the Mercure galant in ��, spring up under our very feet, a musician no longer arrives without a sonata or cantata in his pocket, and there are none who do not wish to write a work and have it engraved and beat the Italians at their own game; poets can scarcely keep pace with them, and indeed there are even some texts that have suffered more than once the torture of Italianate music, so that here we are suffocated by cantatas.��

The following year, the same journal argued similarly in a letter that re veals the public’s initial inability to contend with the unstoppable craze for Italian music, in which the cantata played a major role: To what, Madame, can this peculiarity [bisarretie ] be attributed, if not to the change of taste, and to what can this change of taste be attributed if not to this same Italy which has caused the downfall of the Théâtre François ? This arrogant rival [Italy] was not content that we had relinquished to her the glory of the epic poem, she still envied us the glory of succeeding better than she with the dramatic poem, an advantage that we have over all the nations; and by her cantatas and sonatas, with which she has inundated all of Paris, she has made us weary of that rich simplicity which is the true character of our language and of our genius.��

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Continuing this trend, the Dictionnaire de Trévoux called the cantata “a foreign [genre] fanciful and capricious [ fantasque et capricieuse ] that will find it difficult to become naturalized [and] obtain a long sojourn among us”;�� and Serré de Rieux confirmed the initial resistance of Parisian audiences by describing Jean-Baptiste Morin’s attempt this way: “He dared to be the first to demonstrate the cantata. What a formidable task! What temerity! At this novelty Paris was scandalized.” ��

L.T.M. de (La Tour), “Dissertation sur le bon goût et la musique italienne et de la musique françoise, et sur ses operas,” Mercure galant , November ��, �–��, trans. Tunley, Eighteenth-Century French Cantata , ��. �� “Lettre de Mademoiselle xx à une Dame de ses amies, sur le goust d’à présent,” Mercure galant , November ��, ��–��, translation adapted from Vollen, French Can- tata , �. The text is also cited in Catherine Cessac, “La cantate: avatar de l’opéra?,” in De la rhétorique des passions à l’expression du sentiment: actes du colloque des ��, �� et �� mai �� , ed. Frédéric Dassas and Barthélémy Jobert (Paris: Cité de la musique, ��), ��. �� Dictionnaire universel françois et latin [commonly called Dictionnaire de Trévoux ] (Paris: Chez Delaulne, ��), �:��. �� Jean de Serré de Rieux, Les Dons des enfans de Latone: la Musique et la Chasse du cerf, poèmes dédiés au Roy (Paris: Prault, ��), ��–��, trans. Tunley, Eighteenth-Century French Cantata , ��. Tunley sees this criticism as part of the general discontent about the betrayal of the cause of French rhetoric as the ultimate means of expression. He cites Grimarest’s concern for the same, which, appearing in ��, could very well have been aimed at

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��

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“Cantate, que me veux-tu? ” could very well have been the new motto in the early part of the eighteenth century. Considering such animosity toward a genre initially perceived as foreign, the profusion of instrumental topoi may be understood as a strategy by cantata composers to assert their French stylistic identity by way of incorporating the orchestral practices of the Opéra, while still working within an Italian framework;�� and to rekindle the audience’s experience of the best orchestral moments of the tragédie en musique within the intimate venue of the private concert. This is particularly evident in large-scale cantatas that can be understood as celebrations of the tragédie en musique through a distillation of its most celebrated orchestral topoi . This is the case in Louis-Nicolas Clérambault’s La Muse de l’Opéra (��), in which the narrator, much like a beholder walking through a painting gallery, presents an uninterrupted parade of operatic tableaux, including a bruit de chasse , a bruit infernal , bird calls, a tempête , and a sommeil ; or Antoine Dornel’s Les caractères de la musique (��), which alternates similarly between pastoral topoi and disruptive bruits .�� Yet even in smallscale cantatas, instrumental topoi were widely used, particularly in works based on mythological subjects drawn from French operatic libretti that had found wide public approval: Dido, Medea, Circe, Cephalus and Procris, Ulysses, Semele, Hippolytus and Aricie, Andromeda, and Ariadne, among others.�� It would take some historical distance before literary critics would eventually praise the cantata as well as the importance of the composers’ role: only in the second half of the eighteenth century, by which time the genre had not only passed its peak of popularity but had also fallen out of fashion in France, can one find testimonies such as those by Jean-Baptiste Gossart and Joseph de la Porte.�� Echoing Brossard’s cantata composers: “I do not understand how some composers, and gifted ones at that, have taken in recent times a fancy to composing Italian music to French words, rolling the syllables without reason and without feeling. This is the way to banish from our vocal music that expression which alone enables one to touch the heart.” Grimarest argues that these composers were “only concerned with introducing diversity into their music,” at the expense of true expression. Jean-Léonor de Grimarest, Traité du récitatif (Paris: Ribou, ��), ��, trans. Tunley, Eighteenth-Century French Cantata , ��. �� This is yet another manifestation of the so-called réunion des goûts , the stylistic union of French and Italian music that cantata composers invoked to justify their artistic freedom in an effort to please the public and boost sales. See the prefaces by Stuck, Morin, and Campra, among others, which can be found in translation in Vollen, French Cantata , ��–��, and in Tunley, Eighteenth-Century French Cantata , ��, ��, ��. �� For a discussion of these pieces, see Cabrini, “Expressive Polarity,” ��–��. �� On this aspect, see Cessac, “La cantate: avatar de l’opéra?,” ��–��. For a list of titles, which include the most common myths, see the Appendix. �� The possible reasons for the cantata’s decline in France—its lack of visual elements, chorus, dance, and other spectacular effects so dear to the French operagoer; the increased use of operatic scenes in public concerts documented by Jean-Jacques

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�� earlier intuition regarding the cantata’s ability to strike the imagination within a condensed span of time, Gossart wrote in ��: This poem . . . in a very short space, brings together the qualities of all genres, the supernatural of epic, the favorite passions of tragedy, the enthusiasm of Pindaric ode, the graciousness of Anacreontic ode, and the harmony of music. It speaks in turn to the imagination and to the heart: to the imagination in recitatives, to the heart in arias in which they [the recitatives] are intermingled.��

And a few years later (��) Joseph de la Porte conceded that “the charm that our most excellent musicians have conferred to this type of poetry [the cantata] further enhances its merit [en relevent encore le prix ].”��

The Domino Effect In operatic storm scenes, composers and librettists often chose complex, large-scale scenarios comprising several movements and scenes; this strategy effectively portrayed the storm’s relentless momentum.�� Through this plan, they could legitimize the role of instrumental music as essential in imitating the storm’s irreversible dynamism,

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Rousseau; and the rise of the middle class, who demanded more spectacular shows in lieu of the wit and elegance of courtly music—are discussed in Tunley, Eighteenth-Century French Cantata , ��–��, ��–��; Vollen, French Cantata , ��–��; and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris: Chez la Veuve Duchesne, ��), ��. See also Cessac, “La cantate: avatar de l’opéra?” ��–��. �� [Jean-Baptiste Gossart], Discours sur la poésie lyrique (Paris: Brocas, ��), xii, as cited in Dorival, La cantate française , ��. Translation adapted from Jean-Paul C. Montagnier, “Charles-Hubert Gervais’s Psiché burlesque and the Birth of the Comic Cantate fran- caise ,” Journal of Musicology �� (��): ��–��. �� [La Porte], École de littérature , �:��. �� Bouissou distinguishes between two types of structure in the tempest topos —a simple structure, in which the tempest is anecdotal or without development, and a complex one, in which the storm is developed through several movements (symphonie , chorus, air, etc). She argues that the latter “conforms better to storms and tempests, which, on account of their amplitude, require a development.” See Bouissou, “Mécanismes dramatiques de la tempête,” ��. See also Wood, “Orchestra and Spectacle,” ��–��. This type of structure can be seen in Lully, Alceste (��), act �, scene �; Collasse, Thetis et Pélée (��), act �, scenes �–�; Gervais, Meduse (��), act �, scenes �–� (for a discussion see Jean-Paul C. Montagnier, Charles-Hubert Gervais: Un musicien au service du Régent et de Louis XIV [Paris: CNRS, ��], ��–��, ��); Campra, Hésione (��), act �, scene �; Marais, Alcyone (��), act �, scenes �–�; Toussaint Bertin de la Doué, Diomède (��), act �, scene �; Campra, Idomenée (��), act �, scenes �–�; Matho, Arion (��) act �, scene �; Salomon, Théonoé , (��), act �, scene �; Rameau, Hippolyte et Aricie (��), act �, scene �; Rameau, Platée (��), act �, scenes �–�; Rameau, Zaïs (��), act �, scene �; Rameau, Les Boréades (��), act �, scene �; entr’acte; act �, scenes �–�. See also Bouissou, “Phénomène de la catastrophe naturelle”; and idem, “L’impact social de la catastrophe naturelle,” ��–�.

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��

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thereby rendering the scenario both verisimilar and merveilleux . In these scenes, the initial symphony imitating the onset of the storm functions as an acoustic shock, both for the characters involved (who can actually hear it) and by extension for the audience. Often, such music caused a strong emotional reaction in the character, as in act �, scene � from Marais’s Alcyone , where the protagonist experiences a sudden storm during a brutal nightmare. This precipitates a dramatic outcome: Alcyone, visibly perturbed, breaks into a monologue that concludes the act. The visceral reaction to storm music described by Titon du Tillet is achieved through a signature texture that portrays the sonic fury of these types of cataclysmic events�� through the low register of the orchestra—two separate bass lines playing repeated notes in distinct rhythmic layers (eighths and sixteenths)—jerky rhythms, and rapid scales in the upper parts notated in extremely short rhythmic values, referred to as tirades .�� The occasional use of woodwinds playing in unusually high ranges together with the sound of a low drum added to the overall effect. This concern for a musical language that relies primarily on rhythmic energy, melodic activity, and timbre—a French baroque version of Monteverdi’s concitato , as it were—squares with what the French believed with regard to rhythm, tempo, and meter (what they labeled mouvement ) as quintessential parameters in the expression of the emotions.�� Even Jean-Philippe Rameau, a profound believer in harmony as the ultimate expressive feature, conceded that “meter [mesure ] is so powerful in music that it suffices to excite in us all the different passions we have just attributed to the other elements of this art.” Rameau found in it a primal quality of immediacy absent in harmony. “Meter,” he said, “comes naturally to everyone: it forces us, as if against our will, to follow its movement.”�� In his Erreurs sur la musique dans l’Encyclopédie , Rameau argued that meter “is also the first effect that strikes us in music . . . and it is only after a certain number of years . . . of listening to music more or less frequently and paying more or less attention to it, that harmony finally begins to gain the upper hand.” �� Elsewhere, ��

Much of the same musical language was used to portray similarly disruptive events—storms, earthquakes, thunders, infernal noises and so on. See la Gorce, “Tempêtes et tremblements de terre,” ��. �� For an in-depth discussion, see Wood, Music and Drama , ��–��, or the same author’s “Orchestra and Spectacle,” ��–��. See also Lemaître, “Le premier opéra,” ��–��. �� On this aspect, see Cabrini “Expressive Polarity,” ��–��. �� Jean Philippe Rameau, Treatise on Harmony , trans. Philip Gossett (New York: Do ver, ��), ��. �� Jean-Philippe Rameau, “Erreurs sur la musique dans l’Encyclopédie” (��), in Complete Theoretical Writings , ed. Erwin Jacobi (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, ��), �:��.

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�� Rameau applied this notion more specifically to physical phenomena such as tempests: “The expression of physical phenomena lies in meter and tempo, while that of the pathetic, on the contrary, lies in harmony and in [vocal] inflections,”�� a position he restates in a letter to the Abbé François Arnaud: It must be admitted that . . . the expression of sentiments demands a changing of key, while the [musical] painting of images, and the imitation of the different noises does not need it, and that [in the latter] the sole melody assisted by the tempo and by the actor is enough.��

Du Bos also valued rhythm as an expressive parameter, arguing that it gives “life, as it were, to a musical composition” and “throws a new likeness into the imitation.”�� Indeed, for Du Bos it was the greater understanding of the French of rhythm as an expressive or imitative vehicle that made their music superior to that of the Italians: Foreigners seem to agree, that we understand the movement and measure better than the Italians, and consequently that we succeed better in that part of music which by the ancients was called rhythmus . In fact, the ablest violins in Italy would execute but poorly one of Lully’s gavottes, much less any of his characterized symphonies. Tho’ the Italians make a very great study of measure, yet, methinks, they do not understand the rhythmus as well as we, so as to employ it justly in the expression, or to adapt it properly to the subject of imitation.��

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The rhythmic energy produced by storm music typically needs several movements to dissipate, creating in the process what I call the “domino effect”: the initial storm causes a reaction that takes its course over several movements, in which the storm continues, while the chorus and the characters react to the situation. One great example can be seen in Collasse’s Thetis et Pélée (��), in which the tempest continues over five different numbers and three scenes: ��

�� Jean-Philippe

Rameau, preface to “Observations sur notre instinct pour la musique” (��), in Complete Theoretical Writings , ed. Erwin Jacobi (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, ��), �:��. �� Letter to Abbé François Arnaud (undated, ca. end of �� or beginning of ��). The letter is reproduced in Complete Theoretical Writings , ed. Erwin Jacobi (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, ��), �:��. �� Du Bos, Critical Reflections , �:��–��. �� Ibid., �:��–��. �� See Lemaître, “Le premier opéra-ballet,” ��–��.

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�� Act �, scene � Descriptive sym- �� mm. phony (Tempête ) Chorus of �� mm. People, “Quel bruit soudain” Act �, scene � Accompanied �� mm. recitative, “De quels chants odieux” Act �, scene � Instrumental Prelude Accompanied recitative, “Me croit-il donc soumis”

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Five-part orchestra

C major

Four-part choir plus six-part orchestra including two bass parts

C major

Dialogue between Neptune and Jupiter; repeated sixteenths, mostly in the continuo; occasional orchestral interventions with rapid scales in the violins

C major

� mm.

five-part orchestra

�� mm.

Dialogue between Neptune and Mercury; repeated sixteenths in the continuo with occasional orchestral punctuations; towards the end, the orchestral punctuations disappear, and the texture shifts to throbbing eighths in the continuo to signal that the storm abates

C minor àG minor G minor

The key structure—Collasse maintains C as a tonal center throughout most of the scene—and the intensity of the rhythmic texture, which includes the typical signature of tempêtes , square with Rameau’s explanation of this type of scene, according to which a slow harmonic rhythm combined with the frenzied activity of the instrumental parts was enough to achieve the desired effect. The domino effect can be observed in several French cantatas in which composers blur the boundaries of recitative and aria by means of instrumental music for the sake of dramatic continuity.�� The dramaturgical strategies composers employed to represent a storm scene are remarkably similar to those found in the operatic repertory, reinforcing the notion that storm scenes from the tragédie en musique did influence those in the French cantata.�� Typically, either the storm �� Bernier,

Hipolite et Aricie (Book III, ��), Jacquet de la Guerre, Jonas (Book I, ��), Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (Book III, ��), Montéclair, L’enlèvement d’Orithie (Book II, ��), and Brou, Orithie (��). For a full list of French cantatas that feature a storm, see the Appendix. �� See Bouissou, “Mécanismes dramatiques de la tempête,” ��–��.

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�� occurs unexpectedly,�� or it is prepared by some sort of invocation by a divinity.�� Once the storm has been set into motion, it either loses momentum by abating,�� or, much more often, it is appeased by a movement that counteracts its momentum: a slumber scene, a dance, or other type of soothing music—the calm after the storm, as it were.�� Only in one cantata does a storm arise after a soothing slumber,�� and in the majority of cases the storm movement stands alone without precipitating any reaction.�� While adopting the tempest topos from the stage, cantata composers re-contextualize it within the exclusively aural milieu of the cantata. Cantata texts operate much like stage directions in aural form, affording the necessary visual clues for the listeners to imagine the scenario, and shaping the way in which they perceive the function of the instrumental music.�� Rather than merely intensifying the action visible on the stage, as in opera, in the cantata the instrumental music becomes the accomplice of the narrator in helping the listener recreate the coordinates of the action.�� Indeed, as we shall see in the following examples, instrumental music is as responsible as the ��

This occurs in cantatas �, �, �, �, �, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, and �� listed in the Appendix. �� This occurs in cantatas ��, ��, ��, and ��. Because of the concise size of the cantata, sometimes the invocation constitutes the tempest movement itself, without actually unleashing a real storm: see cantatas �, �, ��, ��, ��, and ��. �� Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (Book III, ��). �� This is the case in cantatas �, �, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, ��, and ��. �� Courbois, Ariane (��). �� This use of the tempest can be found in the majority of the pieces listed in the Appendix, except those noted above, in which the tempest creates a domino effect. �� In contrast to operatic libretti, cantata texts narrate much of the details that would otherwise be apparent to the operatic audience from the action on stage and the stage directions. The descriptive emphasis and attention to detail of cantata poetry verges, in some cases, on the rhetorical figure of the hypotyposis , which Du Marsais, a French authority on rhetorical ornaments of style, describes as “a Greek word which means image, picture . It is when in descriptions one depicts the things of which one speaks, as if what one is telling were at the present time before one’s eyes; one exhibits, so to speak, what one is merely relating.” Du Marsais finds a fitting example of hypotyposis in the famous récit of Théramene from Act V, scene � of Jean Racine’s Phèdre (��), in which she describes the death of Hippolytus by the monster in vivid detail over seventy-two verses. See César Chesneau Du Marsais, Des tropes ou des différens sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un même mot dans une même langue (Paris: chez la Veuve de Jean-Batiste Brocas, ��), ��–��, trans. Dene Barnett, The Art of Gesture: The Practices and Principles of ��th Century Acting (Heidelberg: Winter, ��), ��–��. For more on the descriptive emphasis of the cantata’s text, see Cabrini, “Expressive Polarity,” ��–��. �� On this aspect, see Cabrini, “Expressive Polarity,” �–�. Dorival also notes that “the cantata presupposes a complicity between listener and singer, and the latter makes visible through the ear the images chiselled by the composer; he calls the listener to witness, he trains him to refine his own senses, to make him feel the coherence of a musical discourse tied to a narrative and its amorous or tragic glosses.” Dorival, La cantate française , ��.

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voice for what Sébastien de Brossard considered the cantata’s essence— guiding the listener’s imagination through a succession of different moments in the narrative. Three prominent French cantata composers who employ the “domino effect”—Nicolas Bernier (��–��), Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (��–��), and Jean-Baptiste Morin (��–��)—used various compositional strategies to achieve the same goal of temporal continuity.�� Bernier and Jacquet de la Guerre treat the temporary stasis of the aria as the inner storm of the character, whereas Morin manipulates time by varying the degrees of narrative distance of the narrator through his rapport with the instrumental accompaniment. Moreover, Bernier demonstrates a penchant for an Italianate style, whereas Jacquet de la Guerre reveals a keen allegiance to the French style. What emerges is a shared aesthetic and compositional strategy employed to portray an event whose relentless power transcends the temporal boundaries between recitative and aria. Despite their stylistic differences, they all achieve continuity through an effective technique: the use of similar or identical instrumental music that runs continuously throughout arias and recitatives to represent the storm’s inescapable impetus. Let us begin with Nicolas Bernier’s Hipolite et Aricie (��), with a text by an anonymous poet, composed for high voice, violin, bass viol, and continuo, which represents the earliest known example of a French cantata with an extended tempest. The work shows Bernier’s Italian training under the aegis of Caldara through a penchant for Italianate features, particularly vocal virtuosity and a goal-oriented use of keys.�� Hipolite et Aricie features a compression of the classical legend ��

On Campra see Maurice Barthélemy, André Campra (��–��): Étude bio- graphique et musicologique , revised ed. (Arles: Actes Sud, ��). On Bernier see Philip Nelson, “Nicolas Bernier: a Résumé of his Works,” Recherches sur la musique française classique � (��): ��–��, and idem, “Nicolas Bernier (��–��): A Bibliographic Study,” in Studies in Musicology: Essays in the History, Style, and Bibliography of Music in Memory of Glen Haydon , ed. James Pruett (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ��), ��–��. On Jacquet de la Guerre, see Catherine Cessac, Élizabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, une femme compositeur sous le règne de Louis XIV (Arles: Actes Sud, ��), and Edith Borroff, An Introduction to Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (New York: Institute of Mediaeval Studies, ��). For information on Montéclair, see Anthony and Akmajian, preface to Montéclair, Cantatas for One or Two Voices ; Sylvette Milliot, “Le testament de Michel Pignolet de Montéclair,” Recherches sur la musique française classique � (��): ��–��; and Julie Anne Sadie, “Montéclair, the Viol Player’s Composer,” Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America �� (��): ��–��. On Jean-Baptiste Morin, see Marion Austin Hall, “The Solo Cantatas of Jean Baptiste Morin” (DMA diss., University of Illinois, ��); and François Turellier, “Le compositeur orléanais Jean-Baptiste Morin,” Bulletin de la Sociéte Archéologique et Historique de l’Orléanais �� (��): �–��. �� Bernier studied in Italy with Antonio Caldara. See Philip Nelson, “Nicolas Bernier,” Recherches sur la musique française classique �� (��): ��–��, and idem, “Nicolas

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�� that narrates the ill-fated love between Aricie and Hippolytus, son of the Athenian king Theseus and object of the incestuous desires of his stepmother Phaedra, Theseus’s spouse.�� The cantata focuses on the incident of Hippolytus’s death, in which a violent tempest erupts and a dreadful monster arises from the sea to kill Hippolytus, leaving Aricie bereft. The layout of Hipolite et Aricie betrays the dramatic linearity of this storm scene (bracketed in fig. �a): Bernier unfolds the sequence of events over the course of three numbers: the onset of the storm, its build-up and duration through Aricie’s aria, and, ultimately, the monster’s appearance and the consequent death of Hippolytus. The poetic layout facilitates the plan: the narrator introduces and concludes the main action, while Aricie speaks in the first person and experiences the entire storm sequence directly. Bernier emphasizes this layout through the use of specific keys. He highlights the narrator’s intervention as bookends to the main action using A minor and E minor in a palindrome-like arrangement—A-E; E-A. Conversely, he marks each event in the storm sequence with a specific key area: he charges the tension in the instrumental storm through a long-range dominant-to-tonic modulation (G to C), loading the gun for the C major of the following aria; then he marks the appearance of the monster and Hippolytus’s death with F major and D minor respectively. Indeed, from a formalist perspective, Bernier’s choice of keys does embody the type of goal-oriented aesthetic so typical of Italian music of this period.�� Yet in the true spirit of les gouts réunis , Bernier’s choice of keys also reflects French theoretical thought with regard to affect: according to Charpentier, C major was “gay and militant” and F major “furious and quick-tempered,” whereas for Rameau F major was suitable to represent “tempests and furies”; �� and for Jean Rousseau, Charpentier and Charles Masson alike, D minor was deemed appropriate to represent serious subjects owing to its gravity.�� Another factor demonstrates Bernier’s concern for dramaturgy: text manipulation. The storm scene begins by the seashore, near a sacred temple erected to the Queen of the Heavens, where Aricie, who

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Bernier (��–��): A Bibliographic Study,” ��–��. See also Metro J. Voloshin, “The Secular Cantatas of Nicholas Bernier” (PhD diss., University of Kentucky, ��). �� Most likely, the seventeenth-century French source that Bernier would have been aware of is Jean Racine’s Phèdre (��), which is a re-elaboration of this classical myth after Euripides and Seneca. �� See Susan McClary, “What was Tonality?” chap. � in Conventional Wisdom: The Con- tent of Musical Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, ��), ��–��. �� See Rita Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries , �nd ed. (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, ��), ��. �� Ibid.

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�� yearns for Hippolytus, is awaiting the return of her lover. Bernier re verses the order of the events as presented by Bachelier in his Recueil des cantates ,�� the most important eighteenth-century anthology of cantata texts, and opens up the scenario on a tranquil seashore (absent in Bachelier), against which the disruptive uproar of the storm can be juxtaposed dramatically: Appearance of the storm in Bachelier’s Recueil Recitative (Aricie) Mais, que vois-je? Qu’entends-je? & Quel[s] affreux orage[s] Troublent les airs et soulèvent les flots. Ses superbes coursiers ennemis du repos, Annoncent l’objet qui m’engage.

But , what do I see? What do I hear? And what horrible thunderstorm[s] Trouble the skies and lift the waves? His superb chargers, enemies of repose, Deliver the object of my desire.

Appearance of the storm in Bernier’s score Recitative (Aricie) Ô spectacle enchanteur! Déjà sur le rivage, Des superbes coursiers ennemis du repos, Amènent l’objet qui m’engage. [tempest music begins] Mais, que vois-je? Qu’entends-je? & Quel terrible orage Trouble les airs et soulève les flots?

O enchanting spectacle! Already on the shore, Superb chargers, enemies of repose, Deliver the object of my desire.

353

But what do I see? What do I hear? And what horrible thunderstorm Troubles the skies and lifts the waves?

Bernier’s sequence of events is dramatically more effective, and his arrangement recalls Félibien’s opening passage in which a sudden storm catches the main character by surprise, bursting in forcefully into what seemed at first a calm scenario. Also, Bernier’s choice to place Aricie’s rhetorical questions—“But what do I see? What do I hear?”—towards the end of the recitative allows him to delay the storm to the end of the scene, setting it up as the dramatic catapult for the sequence of events that follows. Much of the musical material that binds the storm scene together into a continuous whole consists of instrumental music. Bernier paints �� See

Bachelier, Recueil des cantates , ��.

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��

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the initial storm through the typical signature of operatic tempêtes, a texture created by repeated eighths and sixteenths played by two separate bass lines, and rapid scales in the violins (mvt. �, ex. �a). The acoustic illusion of the storm’s momentum then continues into the next two numbers relying primarily on instrumental music. This is perhaps most evident in the aria that follows the instrumental storm, “Quel bruit, quels éclats,” much of whose sixteenth-note material derives from the instrumental storm and keeps propelling the action forward (mvt. �, ex. �d). The choice of a motto-aria beginning, which calls attention to Aricie’s immediate reaction, together with the connection of the end of the storm to the beginning of the aria in the same key—C major—set the movements in apposition as cause and effect, providing a sense of forward thrust. To confirm this principle, the domino effect continues beyond the aria into the next recitative, where a sea monster appears and kills Hippolytus. Once again, instrumental music provides the means through which the tempestuous events continue: fast rapid scales in the violin and an incessant repeated-note motive in the continuo, both of which derive from and echo the original storm in its seemingly irreversible dynamism (mvt. �, ex. �e). Finally, the storm concludes with yet another instrumental gesture—throbbing eighth notes (marked “très lentement” in the score) to signal its abatement, a technique borrowed from contemporary French opera (mvt. �, ex. �f, mm. ��-��).�� And yet, in spite of the continuous thread provided by the instrumental music, time runs at different speeds throughout the storm scene. The sixteen measures of agitated music that paint the storm, for example—modulating steadily in a rising sequential motion traveling from G to C major (dominant to tonic)—serve as the catalyst for overturning Aricie’s illusory picture of a happy future together with Hippolytus and cause a reaction shown by the transformation of her vocal behavior. Indeed, after clearly enouncing her rhetorical questions, “Mais, que vois-je?” “qu’entends-je?” and reaching a high G on “airs,” Aricie eventually surrenders to a disorderly melisma on “soulève” (mvt. �, ex. �b). Then Bernier delivers “a virtual slam-dunk into the tonic cadence,” ending the movement with the orchestra (mvt. �, ex. �c). ��

This texture was often used to portray the abatement of a storm, an act typically performed by divine intervention. In act �, scene � of Thetis et Pélée (��), for example, Pascal Collasse uses throbbing eighth-notes to portray Neptune calling off the tempest. André Campra also used the same procedure in act �, scene � of Idoménée (��), where Neptune once again brings a storm to an end. �� I borrow this expression from McClary, “What was Tonality?” ��. McClary employs it for the conclusion of Griselda’s aria “Figlio! Tiranno!” from Alessandro Scarlatti’s Griselda (��), which, though not a storm per se, shows the same type of instrumental language employed by Bernier (rapid sweeping scales and repeated sixteenths) to portray Griselda’s inner turmoil.

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

Mesuré vite Notes égales

                                    Violon

ge

Mesuré vite Notes égales

Viole

         

 

Mesuré

7

Clavecin



6

5

7

(7)

                                                 

 









6

7







6

355

                                                                    (8)

6

                           (9)

 







6

JM2603_02.indd 355

9/18/09 10:57:08 AM


�� 1b. Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (��), mvt. �, mm. ��–��

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            13

Mais,

que vois

je?

qu’en

-

6

6

5

(14)

tends

356

-

je?

Et

quel

terri - ble

O

ble

les

-

(15)

ra

-

ge

trou

-

6

(16)

Airs

et sou -

le

-

ve les (flots)

6

JM2603_02.indd 356

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�� 1c. Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (��), mvt. �, mm. ��–��

                  ( )                                                                                                       21

6

4

22

+

6

5

6 5

4

3

357

This creates the necessary forward thrust to jump-start Aricie’s fullfledged reaction, her aria “Quel bruit, quels éclats” (mvt. �, ex.�d): Quel bruit, quels éclats de tonnerre! Le ciel verse à la fois les Ondes et les feux, Les vents qui se livrent à la guerre Font redire aux échos leurs sifflements affreux.

What noise, what roar of thunder! The sky overturns at once the waves and the fires, The winds, engaging in a battle, Let the echoes repeat their dreadful whistling.

Once she begins her aria, however, time assumes a different quality. Compared to the analogous reaction to the storm in a tragédie lyrique , typically embodied by the public utterance of the chorus, the aria “Quel bruit, quels éclats” is a private and introspective reaction designed to unveil the emotions of the singing character. This is reflected in the unfolding of Aricie’s aria, which involves a drastic change of temporal gear, turning time into a circular experience through repetition—both musical and textual—and the da capo form, which evokes a sense of frozen time. Much of the behavior of Aricie’s voice in “Quel bruit, quels éclats” is consistent with these parameters. The musical and textual repetitions she performs as she describes the same scene over and over

JM2603_02.indd 357

9/18/09 10:57:11 AM


�� 1d. Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (��), mvt. �, mm. �–��

  84                               4   Air       8 Vif     4      8                                                                                                                        Violon

+

Quel

bruit quels é - clats

de ton - ner

-

-

-

re!

Basse Continue

5

358

6

6

+

9

6

Reprise

Reprise

Quel

4

3

bruit quels é - clats

Reprise

de ton - (ner - re!)

6

again evoke a sense of landscape that lies motionless within her internal experience, as if she were contemplating the events through the control of a framed view. Indeed, Aricie’s experience of the storm recalls that of the characters from Félibien’s scenario, in which they escape the wrath of the storm by watching it through a window and reducing it to a framed Sturm im Glas .�� Aricie’s storm at this point is internal rather than external: her dazzling virtuosity and musical repetitions— both Italian traits scorned by French critics owing to their presumed ��

I am borrowing the expression Sturm im Glas from Riepe and Vitali, “Aspetti della cantata veneziana,” ��.

JM2603_02.indd 358

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�� 1e. Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (��), mvt. �, mm.�–�

                           

    

Violon



                                                         

 

Mesuré Gravement

Sou - ve - rain

de

la

Mer

quel cou - pa

-

ble t’ir -



Gravement Notes égales

6

Basse Continue

3

+

ri

4

pire

5

+

mis!

-

6

7

te?

Il

sort

de



ton

Em -

                                                                                  6

359

+

un

mons - tre

fu - ri

-

eux,

Je

fre

-

6

+

il

a - vance,

il

me - nace

Hi

po -

(li - te)

6

JM2603_02.indd 359

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�� 1f. Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (��), mvt. �, mm. ��–��

                                                   13

+

+

(rou - )

 15

360

 

le

au fonds

Hi - po - li

6



6

-

des fo - rets.

te

tu

meurs

                         

 

Très lentement

  

Très lentement

ton

â

-

me

5

   

fu - gi - (ti - ve)

nonsense��—account for her reaction to a personal and traumatic experience. Her voice turns to behaving like a virtuosic instrument, and Bernier expresses her seemingly endless and out-of-control response through the very style—Italian virtuosity—that the French perceived as most irrational, disorderly, and excessive.�� So motionless is the sense ��

There are several examples showing the condescending attitude of the French to wards this aspect of Italian music. One occurs in Le Cerf de la Viéville’s Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique françoise, vol. � (��), where the countess admits that she is “tired of hearing them [the Italians] repeat the same words so many times, composing an air ‘as long as a tale’ on four short lines.” Later, the chevalier replies: “when they [the Italians] have repeated the last two lines of the air once or twice, you believe it is finished. But you are mistaken. On the last syllable of the last word, which often adds nothing to the sense, but where there will be some a or o sound appropriate for their playful passages, they put in an ornament of five or six measures, taking advantage of it by repeating the last line three or four times with new energy. There is enough for another quarter of an hour.” As cited in Mary B. Ellison, “The Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique françoise of Le Cerf de La Viéville: An Annotated Translation of the First Four Dialogues” (PhD diss., University of Miami, ��), ��–��. �� For aspects of French reception of Italian music during this period, see Georgia Cowart, “Of Women, Sex and Folly: Opera under the Old Regime,” Cambridge Opera Journal � (��): ��–��. For a more complete account see Georgia Cowart, The Origins of Modern Musical Criticism: French and Italian Music �� –�� (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, ��). To French music critics Italian music signified sensuality, irrationality, voluptuousness, complexity and skill; conversely, French music signified just the opposite—rationality, intellect, simplicity and naturalness.

JM2603_02.indd 360

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�� of time in her aria that the following number, a measured recitative in which the monster slays Hippolytus, provides the needed shock to catapult Aricie (and the listener) back into dramatic time through a sudden key change (F major) and a return to the bass activity of tempêtes (mvt. �, ex. �e). Another approach to preserving the storm’s linear trajectory was to maintain the same key and the same instrumental accompaniment throughout several numbers. In Jonas , published in �� for high voice, violins, and continuo, and based on the Old Testament story of Jonah and the whale, Jacquet de la Guerre treats keys and instrumental music with an unprecedented degree of cohesion. She organizes Jonas according to a harmonic aesthetic often employed by Lully as a large-scale unifying principle: the alternation of parallel major and minor keys for the sake of variety and dramatic contrast.�� She sets up the three movements that constitute the storm proper—the instrumental tempest, the aria, and the accompanied recitative with Jonah’s plea (bracketed in fig. �b)—in the key of A major; conversely, she sets most other numbers in A minor. In contrast to Bernier’s goal-oriented harmonic approach, Jacquet de la Guerre demonstrates a strong allegiance to a French aesthetic, one that favors continuity through unity of key.�� Her choice also

361

�� Greer

Garden has shown that the tragédie en musique had a profound impact on the way composers shaped the large-scale tonal design of their cantatas. Garden points out that Michel de Saint Lambert was among the first continental theorists to clearly explain the difference between key—what he calls ton —and mode. According to SaintLambert, ton was “a tonic upon which one could build a piece that was in either the major or the minor mode,” and this is exactly the type of harmonic thinking displayed in several cantatas by André Campra, Jean-Baptiste Morin, and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. See Michel de Saint Lambert, A New Treatise on Accompaniment , trans. John S. Powell (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ��), ��–��; originally published as Nouveau traité de l’accompagnement du clavecin (Paris: Ballard, ��). See Greer Garden, “A Link Between Opera and Cantata in France: Tonal Design in the Music of André Campra,” Early Music (��): ��–��. See also Walter Atcherson, “Key and Mode in Seventeenth-Century Music Theory Books,” Journal of Music Theory �� (��): ��–��; and Gregory Barnett, “Tonal Organization in Seventeenth-Century Music Theory,” in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory , ed. Thomas Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��–��. �� In his Comparaison Le Cerf noted that: “Italians cannot write two bars of song without changing key, yet Lully writes the whole scene without doing so. When I see those beautiful scenes in Armide or Thésée roll on wonderfully with an air of fullness and ease in the same key, I cannot help exclaiming: how could that single key contain so many lovely things? There goes a genius who works miracles; from a single key he’d extract enough to write the whole Opera.” Jean Laurent Le Cerf de La Viéville, Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique française (��–�; repr., Geneva: Minkoff, ��), �:��, trans. Garden, “A Link,” ��. Although Le Cerf’s argument must be understood in the context of his scathing views against Italian music and Italianism in France, on the whole he was not completely incorrect about Lully. Lully did indeed construct whole operatic scenes around one tonal center, and in his music key changes are usually so brief that they seem barely perceptible within the whole. Le Cerf’s most despised opponent, Francois Raguenet, whose public siding with Italian music and mockery for the French inspired

JM2603_02.indd 361

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��

362

reflects the poetic layout of Jonas , which, unlike Hipolite et Aricie , is characterized by an ever-present narrator who impersonates the different characters as opposed to allowing them to speak directly. By alternating parallel major and minor keys, Jacquet de la Guerre highlights the onesidedness of the story as told by a single character. Together with unity of key, the instrumental music provides the other thread that keeps the storm scene unified, pushing dramatic time forward with relentless momentum. Jacquet de la Guerre goes a step further than Bernier in ensuring continuity by employing the same instrumental music throughout the three storm numbers (compare mvts. �, �, and �, exs. �a, �b, and �c). She encapsulates the two most prominent gestures typical of tempest music—fast scalar runs and repeated notes—within a single melodic line, showing a keen sense of economy of means that eschews the instrumental color of Bernier’s separate bass lines. The choice of maintaining this music essentially unchanged throughout several movements recalls similar techniques found in French operatic storms such as the one in Thétis et Pelée , where instrumental music creates the acoustic illusion of continuity. The connection to French opera is also apparent in Jacquet de la Guerre’s use of instrumental texture. In Thétis et Pélée, Collasse decreases the instrumental forces from the full, five-part French orchestra of the opening storm and the following chorus to a single continuo texture with occasional orchestral interjections for the two recitatives involving only Neptune, Jupiter, and Mercury. Similarly, Jacquet de la Guerre reduces the instrumental accompaniment from the treble-and-bass texture of the opening storm (mvt. �, ex. �a) and the aria (mvt. �, ex. �b) to the single continuo line of Jonah’s plea (mvt. �, ex. �c). In Jonas , however, this reduction of the instrumental forces stands metaphorically for an imaginary reduction of the vocal ones—a chorus giving way to Jonah’s single utterance—replacing with instrumental means alone what would otherwise be impossible to achieve by a single voice. Yet Jacquet de la Guerre goes even further than key unity and instrumental homogeneity to smooth out the disparity between the aria and Jonah’s accompanied recitative. Considering that text fragmentation and repetition accounts for much of the perceived difference in the temporal flow between an aria and a recitative, Jacquet de la Guerre Le Cerf’s Comparaison , considered this very aspect as a signature of French music. In describing a typical French air, Raguenet said that “In the airs they compose the French always look for what is sweet, easy and flowing, and what follows on readily; everything is in the same key, or if they change it sometimes, they do it with preparations and softenings which render the air as natural and as continuous as if there were no change at all.” François Raguenet, Parallèle des Italiens et des Français en ce qui regarde la musique et les opéras (��; repr., Genève: Minkoff, ��), ��–��, trans. Garden, “A Link,” ��.

JM2603_02.indd 362

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�� 2a. Jacquet de la Guerre, Jonas (��), mvt. �, mm. �–�

                                                    Tempête

6

6

                                                             3

3

3

6

6

                                        

                                                                                                        5

3

6

6

363

5

7

6

6

6





4



here levels their dramatic identity by favoring a sober, syllabic vocal style that is unusually similar in both numbers, resulting in textual intelligibility over vocal virtuosity.�� Other composers took temporality to a new level by calling attention to the narrative process itself, highlighting the experience of the narrator as he recalls a story in the past and brings it before the eyes of the audience in the present. This is the case in Jean-Baptiste Morin’s ��

See for example the choruses that follow the tempest in act �, scenes �, � and � of Pascal Collasse, Thetis et Pelée (��); in act �, scene � of Marin Marais, Alcyone (��); in act �, scene � of André Campra, Idomenée (��); and in act �, scene � of Jean-Philippe Rameau, Hippolyte et Aricie (��), among several others.

JM2603_02.indd 363

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�� 2b. Jacquet de la Guerre, Jonas (��), mvt. �, mm. �–�

Air

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Vivement

Violons

6

Basse Continue

6

6

6

3

Accompagnement

L’Air

364

6

6 5

3

6

5

4

7

de.

Les Vents

s’al -

6

5

+

lu

-

me,

la Fou - dre

6

gron

5

-

3

6

7

+

lut

5

+

-

-

- tent con-tre les

6

Flots;

Quel

(trou - ble)

6 5

JM2603_02.indd 364

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�� 2c. Jacquet de la Guerre, Jonas (��), mvt. �, mm. �–�

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Piqué

Basse Continue 5

6

6

6 5

4

3

3

Vous

por - tez,

5

5

dit

Jo

6

5

-

nas,

la

pei

-

ne de

mon

5

6

+

cri - me,

Que

je pe- ris - se

6

seul,

6

Que

je pe- ris - se

6

6 5

365

7

seul

pour

le

6

6

com - mun

re - pos.

4

6

6

9

Dans ces g ouf

-

fres

ou - (verts)

5

Le naufrage d’Ulisse (��), which tells the tale of Ulysses’s shipwreck and opens with a storm. In it, the composer employs a refined dramatic interaction between the singer and the instrumental music to highlight the varying levels of narrative distance in the narrator’s voice—the extent to which he plays a part in the story. This is what Gérard Genette, the father of narratology, labeled as either heterodiegetic (when the

JM2603_02.indd 365

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�� 3a. Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (��), mvt. �, mm �–�

  24          2    4      2      4 Fort

Vite

Fort

Basse de Viole, ou de Violon

                       6

            

           

 

   

6

6 5

6

               

 

   

  

366 narrator is situated outside the narration) or homodiegetic (when the narrator is situated inside the narrative world). �� Still upholding an aesthetic of continuity achieved by unity of key (see fig. �c), rapid tempi, and thematic material, Jean-Baptiste Morin nevertheless treats the storm topos in a radically different way from Bernier and Jacquet de la Guerre. Morin opens the cantata with a prelude (mvt. �, ex. �a), then allows the same music to interrupt the narrator’s statements in the opening recitative (ex. �b). This treatment is unsettling because it challenges the acoustic boundary between opening prelude and opening recitative. Morin manipulates this boundary for dramatic effect: he juxtaposes the disparity in timbre and volume between bare vocal moments and explosive interjections of the storm music, whose instrumentation—a violin line and two separate bass parts, including a bass viol—conjures up the ominous sound of an operatic tempête . Morin’s juxtaposition of instrumental music and recitative fragments highlights the temporal process of narrative. As far as I am aware, �� See

H. Porter Abbott, “Story, Plot, and Narration,” in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative , ed. David Herman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��. See also H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni versity Press, ��), ��.

JM2603_02.indd 366

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�� 3b. Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (��), mvt. �, mm.��–��

   24                                             2    4       2           4                                                ( )                                                      42                       2      4        2       4                                                                         13

+

6

6

6 5

16

+

Ce Hé- ros

en - tou - ré

d’u - ne onde me - na - çan- te, (

6 5

6

19

+

cher;

+

6

+

Tan - dis que ses Guer - riers

d’u-ne voix

6

22

Pa-rais-sait un fer - me Ro-

gé-mis -

san - te,

Im-por-tu

-

367

nent le

6 5

+

Ciel

6

qu’ils

6 5

ne peu - vent

tou

-

cher.

6

4

25

6

JM2603_02.indd 367

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�� this is the only such instance in a French cantata that opens with a storm.�� Similar examples found in the contemporary French operatic repertory—the opéra-ballets by Campra in particular—show that the short instrumental fragments between recitatives were normally woven together into a full-fledged instrumental piece, typically a dance, a march, or some other kind of divertissement music.�� What makes Morin’s example unique is that the exact opposite occurs: first he displays the event through the storm music, then he breaks the same music into fragments that appear in the narrator’s recitative, a process that reverses the logical temporal progression. Yet the technique here reflects the narrative process, which typically reconstitutes a past event in the present: [Prelude: Storm]

368

Sur un vaisseau brisé qu’un effroyable orage Emportait à travers de mille écueils affreux, Le sage roi d’Ithaque opposait son courage Au funeste courroux du Destin rigoureux.

On a shattered ship that a horrible storm Swept away through a thousand dreadful reefs, The wise King of Ithaca set his courage Against the fatal wrath of his harsh destiny.

[Storm fragment resumes]

Ce Héros entouré d’une onde menaçante Paraissait un ferme Rocher; Tandis que ses Guerriers d’une voix gémissante, Importunent le Ciel qu’ils ne peuvent toucher.

This hero, surrounded by a threatening wave, Seemed like a firm rock; While his warriors in a whimpering voice Begged the Heavens, which could not be touched.

[Storm fragment ends recitative]

�� The

other two French cantatas that open with a violent storm are Enée et Didon (Book II, ��) by André Campra, and Didon (Book I, ��) by François Colin de Blamont. In both cases, the composers choose to wait until the end of the storm music to allow the narrator to begin the story. Morin’s technique of alternating the opening prelude with the narrator’s utterances can also be found in three cantatas by Bernier: Le triomphe de l’Amour (Book I, ��), where the opening prelude imitates a choir punctuating the narrator’s utterances as he describes a multitude of voices praising Cupid; L’enlèvement de Proserpine (Book II, ��), where the opening prelude alternates with the narrator’s utterances as he describes the world quaking while the Titans try to escape the underworld in vain; and Medée (Book IV, ��), where the music of the opening prelude punctuates the opening recitative to evoke Medea’s capricious moods, and where, later in the piece, rapid scales in the violins punctuate Medea’s furious speech. �� See James R. Anthony, “Thematic Repetition in the Opera-Ballets of André Campra,” Musical Quarterly �� (��): ��.

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�� Instrumental music and recitative never overlap in the opening of Le naufrage d’Ulisse : never does the storm actually become present, because it lives only within the narrator’s experiential realm. This recalls operatic techniques found in recitatifs accompagnés entailing past narratives in which the symphonie frames the narrative as a “temporally distinct event.” Similarly to its operatic counterparts, the instrumental music here is heard before it is given a verbal description, thus emulating the narrative process, in which “the thoughts lie within the narrator’s experiential perception before they are translated into language.” �� Yet from a theatrical standpoint, the delay between the onset of the opening storm and the narrator’s first verbal appearance achieves a profound effect, intensifying the drama by manipulating the audience’s perception of the scenario. This recalls a practice in French opera uncovered by Antonia Banducci in prompt notes controlling the entrance of a character or action during instrumental preludes or ritour- nelles .�� Indeed, Morin’s choice to delay the first utterance of the narrator until the end of the thirty-five-measure prelude recalls act �, scene � of Campra’s Tancrède, where a prompt note delays the entrance of the crusaders until the end of the victory music, postponing the revelation of the battle’s outcome to princess Herminie, who had been waiting anxiously for it.�� Likewise, Morin’s opening storm music keeps the audience speculating about the action until the entrance of the narrator, whose words then shape the meaning and the function of this music retrospectively. In the final number of the storm sequence, Morin employs instrumental sound to manipulate the narrator’s involvement in the story. The narrator returns in an accompanied recitative to tell the audience that the plea for forgiveness by Ulysses’s warriors (heard in an aria) was in vain and that the storm is causing their shipwreck. Here Morin reverts to juxtaposing the storm music with the narrator’s utterance, but shifts between meters and tempi to paint a neat separation of dramatic spaces—the dynamic mimesis of the storm by the propelling force of the �� marked vite (mvt. �, ex. �c) on the one hand, and on the other, the narrator’s “framed view” of the storm, as if he were witnessing the drama from relative safety (which recalls Félibien’s retreat in the castle), by a cautious C marked lentement (ex. �d). Unlike the

369

�� See

Geoffrey Vernon Burgess, “Ritual in the Tragédie en musique from Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione (��) to Rameau’s Zoroastre (��)” (PhD diss., Cornell University, ��), �:�� and �:��. �� See Antonia Banducci, “Staging a Tragédie en Musique : A �� Promptbook of Campra’s ‘Tancrède ,’” Early Music �� (��): ��–��, and idem, “Staging and its Dramatic Effect in French Baroque Opera: Evidence From Prompt Notes,” Eighteenth-Century Music � (��): �–��. �� Banducci, “Staging a Tragédie en Musique ,” ��.

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�� 3c. Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (��), mvt. �, mm. �–�

  68                   6    8  Vite

6 5

                       

                                 ( )    6 5

4

6

�� 3d. Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (��), mvt. �, mm. ��–�� 370

                                                            13

Lentement

Mais

+

in - u - ti

-

Lentement

les

voeux!

Vivement

dé - jà

les vents

et

Fort

6 5

15

+

l’on

-

de

ont vain

(eu)

6

opening storm sequence, the sound of the cataclysm here lurks more vividly in his imagination as suggested by the sixteenths accompanying his voice: the recollection of the action becomes more vivid in his mind, and his dramatic role changes from detached storyteller to emotional participant, as confirmed by his newly acquired virtuosity on the word “foudre” (thunderbolt) (ex. �e). This is a remarkable narrative moment, the kind that classicist Philip Hardie calls a transgression of “the boundary between the world of the viewer and the world of the

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�� 3e. Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (��), mvt. �, mm. ��–��

                                                           24

Fort

Au

bruit

de la Fou

6

-

-

dre

qui

gron

6 5

-

de

6

artwork,”�� resulting in “a union of realities between beholder and image.”�� Much like Félibien’s passage describing Poussin, Morin here creates an ekphrasis through which the listener can enter the scene vicariously through the narrator’s eyes.

Outlook and Conclusions In conclusion, I would like to open up our ekphrastic window and offer a brief outlook into the ways in which French aesthetic influenced later composers. The urge to transcend formal boundaries in the tempest topos is the most conspicuous element of influence, as shown in several eighteenth-century operatic examples by both French and Francophile composers alike. In his late opera Les Boréades (��), Rameau produces a storm of gigantic dimension whose force breaks the strongest of formal boundaries—the division between acts. Rameau connects all the distinct phases of the storm, which runs uninterruptedly from act �, scene � through an entr’acte into act �, scene �, by alternating parallel major and minor keys (C major/C minor) and by maintaining similar thematic material in the instrumental music.�� The storm scene in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (��) likewise runs through several numbers all linked to the instrumental storm at the beginning of the opera;�� similarly, the storm from Niccolò Piccinni’s Iphigénie en Tauride (��) arises at the end of act � and continues without break

�� Philip

371

Hardie, Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

��), ��. �� The phrase is that of Ja´s Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: the Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��. �� For a detailed analysis of the tempest, see Bouissou, Les Boréades , ��–��. �� For a description of the scene, see Jeremy Hayes, “Iphigénie en Tauride (i),” in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera , ed. Stanley Sadie, Grove Music Online , Oxford Music Online , http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O�� (accessed December ��, ��).

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�� into the beginning of act �.�� Mozart, too, subscribed to this type of dramaturgy. In the storm scene from act �, scenes �–� from his Frenchinspired Idomeneo (��), Mozart links Electra’s aria “Tutte nel cor vi sento” to the ensuing storm by modulating unexpectedly at measure �� from D minor (the key of the aria) to C minor (the key of the storm) and by continuing directly into the storm movement without interruption.�� Likewise, in the second storm scene at the end of act �, Mozart’s concern for linking Idomeneo’s vocal utterance (“Eccoti in me, barbaro Nume, il reo!” nestled between nos. �� and ��) to the surrounding tempest resulted in his choice of an accompanied recitative for the sake of dramatic continuity and verisimilitude, as outlined in a letter to his father: In the last scene of Act � Idomeneo has an aria or rather a sort of cavatina between the choruses. Here it will be better to have a mere recitative, well supported by the instruments. For in this scene which will be the finest in the whole opera . . . there will be so much noise and confusion on the stage that an aria at this particular point would cut a poor figure—and moreover there is the thunderstorm, which is not likely to subside during Herr Raaff’s aria, is it?��

372

�� For

a description of the scene, see Mary Hunter, “Iphigénie en Tauride (ii),” in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera , ed. Stanley Sadie, Grove Music Online , Oxford Music Online , http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O�� (accessed December ��, ��). �� The libretto of Idomeneo is based on Antoine Danchet’s Idomenée , written for Campra’s opera. See Julian Rushton, “Idomeneo, re di Creta,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera , ed. Stanley Sadie, Grove Music Online , Oxford Music Online , http://www.oxfordmusiconline. com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O�� (accessed December ��, ��), and Julian Rushton, ed., W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��. For a detailed analysis of this scene, see Craig Ayrey, “Elettra’s First Aria and the Storm Scene,” chap. �� in W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo , ed. Julian Rushton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��–��. �� Mozart to his father, Munich, �� November ��, cited in Cliff Eisen et al., “Mozart,” in Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online , http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ subscriber/article/grove/music/��pg� (accessed November ��, ��). For a discussion of this scene, see Rushton, ed., W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo , ��–��. If one is willing to take a more daring historical leap, one could consider Berlioz’s Les Troyens (��, acts �–� performed as Les Troyens à Carthage ; ��, complete) as the last monument of the French tempête tradition. Though the storm is concentrated in a single movement (act �, Chasse royale et orage ), two elements connect it to the French storm tradition: a) “the prominent role of the orchestra in establishing imagery,” (D. Kern Holoman, “Troyens, Les,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera , ed. Stanley Sadie, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music On- line , http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O�� [accessed March ��, ��]); b) the structure of the movement, whose utter freedom reflects its fully romantic milieu, “a seamless whole with a riding momentum,” as Ian Kemp aptly puts it, in which “in perpetually new ways textures gather substance and thin out, become dense and then airy, sharp-edged and contoured, arresting and relaxing, all the time controlling the weight of those accumulating waves of the movement which are the real shape of the piece.” Ian Kemp, “Commentary and Analysis: (a) Chasse royale et orage (No.

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�� The composers’ quest for dramaturgical continuity as well as their interest in inscribing storm scenes within a dramatic narrative transcended the boundaries of genre. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects is how easily the tempest topos migrated to instrumental music. Steven Zohn has called attention to the influence of French music on Telemann, as well as his indebtedness to French aesthetic views concerning instrumental music.�� Echoing Du Bos, Telemann argued that “the pleasure we feel from the most moving sounds of instrumental music arises in part from certain ideas that we attach to the same, from emotion, and from our imagination, through which these sounds are expressed.”�� Zohn demonstrates that several tempests and similar topoi —underworld furies, combats, and other tempestuous divinities— found in his characteristic overture-suites are indebted to “ préramiste storm scenes in tragedies such as Pascal Collasse’s Thétis et Pélée (��) and, especially, Marin Marais’s Alcyone .”�� The language employed by Telemann is similar to that found in French tempest scenes, as Zohn observes: “tremolos and rapid note values, sweeping scalar gestures, powerful unisons, and other musical effects calculated to deliver maximum visceral excitement.”�� Moreover, the tempête found in Telemann’s Wasser-Ouverture TVWV ��:C�, which introduced the serenata Unschätz- barer Vorwurf erkenntlicher Sinnen , TVWV ��:�, is inserted within a type of dramatic narrative that recalls operatic dramaturgy, as described by a contemporary commentator:

373

Represented first in the ouverture to the serenata was the calm, surging, and agitation of the sea. Following were (�) sleeping Thetis in a sarabande, (�) waking Thetis in a bourée, (�) amorous Neptune in a loure, (�) playful Naiads in a gavotte, (�) joking Tritons in a harlequinade, (�) storming Aeolus in a tempête , (�) pleasant Zephyr in a menuet altern[ativement], (�) tides [ Ebbe und Fluht ] in a gigue, [and] (�) merry mariners in a canarie.��

The overture here functions much like an instrumental synopsis of the entire serenata by presenting the sea in a progressively rising motion— from calm to agitation. As such, it provides clues to the audience about ��),” in Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens , ed. Ian Kemp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��. �� Steven Zohn, Music for a Mixed Taste: Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemann’s Instru- mental Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ��). �� Georg Philipp Telemann, preface to his opera Calypso , TVWV ��:�� (��), as cited in ibid., ��. �� Zohn, Music for a Mixed Taste , ��. �� Ibid., ��. �� Staats- und Belehrte Zeitung des hollsteinischen Correspondenten , �� April ��, as cited in ibid., ��.

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��

374

the ensuing story, which sees Aeolus disrupting the peaceful maritime idyll with his tempest. Latent in Telemann’s overture is a paradigm of linear temporal progression that can also be found in late-eighteenth-century instrumental music depicting storms, from the concerto to the characteristic symphony. In “Summer” from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (op. �, ��), the notion of storm governs much of the concerto’s linear trajectory; Vivaldi creates a remarkably dramatic scenario by enticing the listener with a deceiving sense of calm, stirring up the tension in the first two movements only to unleash the storm’s full force in the last. Paul Everett puts it eloquently: “The finale’s unprecedented representation of destructive power is made all the more effective by what precedes it: an immense tightening of tension throughout the first movement that the weary lyricism of the slow movement cannot dissipate.”�� Everett contends that Vivaldi’s high degree of motivic integration among its movements—in particular the recurrence of the tremolo four-note motive (the storm’s ominous voice) and key rapid figurations throughout all the movements, coupled with the use of the same tonal center throughout (G minor) and the use of triple meter in the outer movements (indicative of cause and effect)—strongly suggests “a relentless progression across its three movements from anticipation to realization of a single event.”�� Characteristic symphonies depicting storms behaved in much the same way. Richard Will notes that scenes of disruption in this repertory employed similar musical language, including rapid scales and arpeggios and unpredictable accents, together with a general quickening of tempo and of the speed at which events take place. Regarding temporal linearity, Will notes that scenes of disruption . . . occasion the largest numbers of unconventional forms . . . [and] suggest a dramatic linearity seemingly impossible to capture in a form with repeat signs or recapitulation, such that it is in battles, hunts, and storms, that characteristic symphonies come �� Paul

Everett, Vivaldi: The Four Seasons and Other Concertos, Op. � (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��. �� Everett, Vivaldi , ��–��. Other elements in the first movement help brew the tension and build anticipation, loading the gun for the explosiveness of the last: the unusual opening ritornello, characterized by “a set of disarmingly ‘slow’ gestures, metrically dislocated,” which in its final appearance gets displaced by the tutti picturing the winds’ battle (m. ��), in what Everett calls “progressive ritornello form,” which shows the lasting effects of the storm and its relentless progression; the voices of the cuckoo and other birds, which sound like the “a premonition of disaster”; the sound of the augmented second; and the descending chromatic lines of the “pianto del villanello.” Ibid., ��–��. See also Cesare Fertonani, Antonio Vivaldi: La simbologia musicale nei concerti a programma (Pordenone: Edizioni Studio Tesi, ��), ��–��.

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�� closest to the image of a “program music” governed by the narrative order of its subject rather than formal convention.��

Such scenes can be found in storm symphonies of the late eighteenthand early nineteenth century, such as Anton Wranitzky’s Aphrodite (��), Louis Massonneau’s La Tempête et la calme (��), and Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (“Pastoral,” ��), which typically exhibit violent and formally unusual storms alongside festive or pastoral movements in rondo or sonata form. Indeed, the elements that render the storm particularly effective in Beethoven’s “Pastoral” have to do with linear temporality superseding conventional symphonic form: the formal ambiguity of the storm, which is neither a slow introduction dependent on a movement, nor a truly independent movement itself; the fact that its harmonic status quo depends on what precedes it and what follows it; and the way in which the run-ons between the last three movements that constitute the storm sequence—the country dance, the storm, and the final celebration—affect the unfolding of dramatic time, creating “a single, unbroken narrative” that stands in stark contrast to the first two, where no such considerations play any role. �� The linear treatment of the tempest topos by French cantata composers shows that even a small chamber genre characterized by a dramatically discontinuous framework was not immune to a compositional aesthetic that favored continuity above all. Such treatment places the French cantata within this tradition, and confirms the universality of the tempest topos and its transferability between several types of genre ranging from vocal to instrumental music.

375

Hunter College

�� See

Richard Will, The Characteristic Symphony in the Age of Haydn and Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ��), ��–��. See also pp. ��–��. �� Ibid., ��, ��, ��–��, and ��.

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�� APPENDIX: FRENCH CANTATAS WITH TEMPÊTES Works available in David Tunley, ed., The Eighteenth-Century French Can- tata: A Seventeen-Volume Facsimile Set of the Most Widely Cultivated and Per- formed Music in Early Eighteenth-Century France , �� vols. (New York: Garland, ��) are marked with a dagger. Cantatas marked with an asterisk include a tempest that is the expression of the main character’s rage rather than a real meteorological event. Shorter cantatilles have not been included in this list. For a list of print and manuscript sources, see Gene E. Vollen, The French Cantata: A Survey and Thematic Catalog (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, ��).

376

�. Nicolas Bernier, Hipolite et Aricie (Book III, ��)† �. Thomas-Louis Bourgeois, Borée (Book I, ��)*† �. André Campra, Les Femmes (Book I, ��)*† �. André Campra, Didon (Book I, ��)*† �. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Jonas (Book I, ��)† �. Jean-Baptiste Stuck, Sur la prise de Lérida (Book II, ��)† �. Philippe Courbois, Ariane (��)*† �. Jean-Baptiste Stuck, Héraclite et Démocrite (Book III, ��)*† �. Charles-Hubert Gervais, Télémaque (Book I, ��) ��. Jean-Baptiste Morin, Le naufrage d’Ulisse (Book III, ��)† ��. Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, Léandre et Héro (Book II, ��)† ��. André Campra, Enée et Didon (Book II, ��)† ��. Thomas-Louis Bourgeois, Zéphire et Flore (Book II, ��)† ��. Thomas-Louis Bourgeois, Phèdre et Hypolitte (Book II, ��)† ��. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Le sommeil d’Ulisse (after ��)† ��. Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, La Muse de l’Opéra ou les caractères liriques (��)† ��. André Cardinal Destouches, Oenone (��)*† ��. Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, L’Amour vangé (Book II, ��)† ��. Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, L’enlèvement d’Orithie (Book II, ��)† ��. Jean-Joseph Mouret, Andromède et Persée (Book I, ��)† ��. Jean-Philippe Rameau, Thétis , (ca. ��–July ��)�� . Nicolas Racot de Grandval, L’impatient (Book I, ��) ��. François Colin de Blamont, Circé (Book I, ��)*† ��. François Colin de Blamont, Didon (Book I, ��)† ��. Honoré-Claude Guédon de Presles, Calipso (Book I, ��)* ��. Louis Lemaire, L’Été (Book I, ��) ��. Alexandre Villeneuve, Le Voyage de Cythère (��)* ��

Available in Jean-Philippe Rameau, Cantates, canons, airs , Opera Omnia, �rd ser., vol. � (Kassel: Bärenreiter, ��).

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�� . François Bouvard, L’Amour aveuglé par la Folie (��)* ��. André Campra, Les caprices de l’Amour (Book III, ��)*† ��. Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, Ariane et Bacchus (Book III, ��)† ��. François Colin de Blamont, Circé (Book III, ��)*† ��. François Bouvard, Léandre et Héro (��) ��. Jean-Baptiste Cappus, Sémélé (��) ��. René Drouard de Bousset, Le Naufrage de Pharaon (��) ��. François Brou, Orithie (��) ��. René de Béarn Brassac, L’Hiver (Book I, ��) ��. René de Béarn Brassac, L’Amour Vainqueur des Parques (Book I, ��) ��. Pierre de La Garde, Enée et Didon (ca. ��) ��. Nicolas Racot de Grandval, Rien du Tout (��, posthumous)*† ��. Nicolas Racot de Grandval, Léandre et Héro (��, posthumous)† ��. Anonymous, Sappho (n.d.) ��. Louis Marchand, Alcione (n.d.) ��. François Rébel, L’Amour et Psyché (n.d.)

ABSTRACT

377

Between Lully’s death (��) and Rameau’s operatic debut (��), composers of the tragédie en musique experimented with instrumental effects, greatly expanding the dramatic role of the orchestra. The profusion of these effects coincides with a new aesthetic reappraisal of instrumental music in France, as can be observed in the writings of Du Bos. The tempête constitutes one of the most remarkable examples. Its sonic violence was too strong to end with the instrumental movement that depicted it; indeed, composers often prolonged the storm scene into a series of movements all connected by thematic material and key to produce a verisimilar effect of the storm’s momentum, thereby creating what I term “the domino effect.” By the early eighteenth century, the tempête had become such a well established and popular topos that it began migrating to non-staged genres like the cantata. The transference of the tempest topos from the tragédie lyrique to the French baroque cantata entailed the breaking of formal frames. Unlike the supple dramatic structure of French opera, the cantata adopted the more rigid mold of the Italian opera seria —the recitative-aria unit— which separated the flow of time into active and static moments. Three case studies—Bernier’s Hipolite et Aricie (��), Jacquet de la Guerre’s Jonas (��), and Morin’s Le naufrage d’Ulisse (��)—demonstrate how composers manipulated this mold to satisfy a French aesthetic that valued temporal continuity for the sake of verisimilitude. All three composers employ key and instrumental music to portray the storm’s

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