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Visuality and Pictorialism in French Baroque Music A

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Visuality and Pictorialism in French Baroque Music A VISUALITY AND PICTORIALISM IN FRENCH BAROQUE MUSIC A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Mathieu Marc Leon Langlois August 2015 © 2015 Mathieu Marc Leon Langlois VISUALITY AND PICTORIALISM IN FRENCH BAROQUE MUSIC Mathieu Marc Leon Langlois, Ph. D. Cornell University 2015 Taking character pieces and operatic symphonies as its focus, this dissertation proposes that visuality constituted a central mode through which musical readers and listeners experienced music in early eighteenth-century France. It explores Enlightenment fascination with the interaction of the visual and aural, and the bearing this preoccupation had on the question of whether music without words was capable of conveying meaning. “Depictive” or “pictorial” music in the eighteenth century has traditionally been thought of as having marginal aesthetic status and historical importance. Part I seeks to recuperate a sense of representational music’s significance through a close reading of French treatises of the early eighteenth century, especially those of the Abbé Dubos and Charles Batteux. Part II then turns to the musical product itself, situating early eighteenth- century French musical publications within the context of the book and engraved print cultures of the time. These findings are brought to bear on selections from the Baussen reprints of Lully’s operatic works, with special attention to the ways in which the extensive illustrations of these editions relate to the musical content of Lully’s operatic symphonies. Based on historical sources, I then extend these ideas into the realm of French character pieces, as another forum in which the musical amateur would regularly have come into contact with depictive music. After exploring the many potential pitfalls of interpreting titled instrumental works, I trace moments of convergence between the character-piece repertory and the development of the rococo frontispiece and title-page. Chapter Four then offers a case-study of the most fruitful of these visual intersections, proposing a spectrum of ways in which the elaborate title- pages to François Dandrieu’s Premier, Second, and Troisième livres de pièces de clavecin relate to their musical contents, while describing a long-term shift in the nature of these relationships from the literal to the metaphorical. Visual culture emerges in these contexts as a critical lens through which the musical consumer made sense of the printed and sonic musical product, particularly in the absence of text or lyrics. The understanding and interpretation of music was thus mediated by multiple levels of visuality, manifest within the composition itself and its physical packaging as a printed product. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1980, Mat Langlois received his Bachelor of Music in flute performance from the University of Western Ontario in 2002. He went on to complete a Master of Arts in Musicology at the same institution in 2004, under the guidance of Richard Semmens and Sandra Mangsen. In 2008, Langlois earned a Bachelor of Early Music from the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag, after studying baroque and renaissance flutes with Wilbert Hazelzet and Kate Clark. Langlois began doctoral studies at Cornell in 2008, where he worked with Annette Richards, Neal Zaslaw, and Judith Peraino. His research interests include historical performance practices, intersections between music and the visual arts, and the history of indie rock. v For my parents vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to my advisors, each of whom provided invaluable support during my time at Cornell. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the Chair of my Special Committee, Annette Richards, for her critical insights, for encouraging me to connect ideas in creative and adventurous ways, and for guiding me through the many years of this degree. My deep thanks go to Neal Zaslaw, for his support and mentorship in directing the Early Music Ensemble, and to Judith Peraino, for always pushing my own critical faculties. I am extremely grateful to Richard Leppert for the time and energy he has dedicated to my development as a scholar, and for producing the kind of work that initially inspired me to undertake an investigation of this nature. I must also thank Rebecca Harris-Warrick for reading and listening to my work, and for guiding me through the long and complex process of mounting a musical production. And my sincere thanks go to Rick Semmens, for setting me on this path in the first place, and to Sandra Mangsen, for ensuring that I completed it. I have been fortunate to have had many wonderful peers during this time, among them Ellen Lockhart and Katherine Walker, who offered sure- footed guidance through my early years as a graduate student. My thanks vii also go to those who read this material and offered their insights throughout the sometimes arduous writing process, including Evan Cortens, Amanda Lalonde, Adem Birson, and Mike Lee. And special thanks goes to Monica Eason Roundy, who could always be counted on to lend a sympathetic ear and her well-grounded judgment through the most challenging parts of this degree. Thank you to Pat for her kindness and humanity, and to the community of people on South Hill who turned Ithaca into a home. I am also deeply grateful to my parents and Erin, for their encouragement, generosity, and unending patience. Finally, thank you to Eva, for teaching me about happiness, and for giving me the strength to complete this project. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch v Dedication vi Acknowledgments vii List of Musical Examples xii List of Illustrations xv Introduction: Musical “Depictions” Framed 1 Treatments of Visuality in Eighteenth-Century Music 18 Treatments of Meaning in Instrumental Music, 31 Mimesis, and Tone-Painting Other Sub-Literatures 50 Disciplinary Intersections 61 Part I: Visuality and the Challenges of Imitation; 65 or, “Putting the Eye in the Ear” Chapter 1: The Early Eighteenth Century 66 A Beginner’s Guide to “Painting”: Techniques of Musical 73 Depiction Imitation in French Musical Writings: 1700-1720 90 The Abbé Dubos 103 Chapter 2 : The Mid-Eighteenth Century 126 ix The 1720s and ‘30s 126 The 1740s 139 The Abbé Batteux 150 The Philosophes 163 The 1770s 176 Part I Conclusions 192 Part II : Visuality and the Musical Product 199 Chapter 3: Monumentalizing Lully: A Case-Study 200 History of the Book and Significances of the Engraved 210 Print Parisian Musical Publishers and the Second Editions 222 of Lully’s Operas Visual Conventions of the Baussen Editions 242 Chapter 4: Visuality and the Instrumental pièce de caractère 305 Aesthetics of Instrumental Music Outside the Operatic 306 Context Character Pieces The Complexity of Titles, Caractère, 314 and Musical Painting Title-Pages in Printed Volumes of Character Pieces: 332 An Overview Chapter 5: Dandrieu’s Pièces de clavecin: A Case-Study 374 Functions of the Musical Title-Page 383 x Dandrieu’s Premier livre 388 The Second livre 413 The Troisième livre 428 Part II Conclusions 439 Bibliography 448 xi LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES 1.1: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata” (1746), mm. 1-11 76 1.2a: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata,” mm. 21-23 77 1.2b: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata,” mm. 26-27 77 1.3a: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata,” mm. 18-21 78 1.3b: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata,” mm. 69-73 78 1.4: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata,” mm. 87-97 80 1.5: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata,” mm. 55-57 81 1.6: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata,” mm. 98-105 82 1.7: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata,” mm. 39-46 82 1.8: Swift/Echlin, “A Cantata” (1746), full score 86 1.9: Marin Marais, Alcyone (1706), Act IV, scene iv, mm. 1-6 116 1.10: Marin Marais, Alcyone, Act IV, scene iv, mm. 16-20 118 1.11: Marin Marais, Alcyone, Act IV, scene iv, mm. 9-10 119 3.1: Act V, scene v of Lully's Phaëton, ed. H. de Baussen, 264 pp. 203-204 3.2: "Les Vents," from Act I, scene viii of Lully's Alceste, 271 ed. H. de Baussen, pp. 59-60 3.3: Act I, scene ix from Lully's Alceste, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 62 272 3.4a: Act III, scenes iv and v from Lully's Alceste, ed. H. de Baussen, 276 p. 121 xii 3.4b: Act III, scene v from Lully's Alceste, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 127 277 3.5a: Act IV, scene i from Lully's Alceste, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 136 280 3.5b: Act IV, scene i from Lully's Alceste, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 138 281 3.6: Act IV, scene iv from Lully's Alceste (Bibliothèque Nationale 283 RES VMA MS-1440) 3.7: Act III, scene ii from Lully's Persée, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 140 288 3.8: Act III, scene iv from Lully's Persée, ed. H. de Baussen, 289 pp. 145-146 3.9: Act III, scene v from Lully's Persée, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 151 292 3.10: Act IV, scene ii from Lully's Persée, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 159 295 3.11: Act IV, scene ii from Lully's Persée, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 161 297 3.12: Act IV, scene vi from Lully's Persée, ed. H. de Baussen, 299 pp. 183-184 3.13: Act IV, scene vi from Lully's Persée, ed. H. de Baussen, p. 189 301 4.1: Michel Corrette, II. Divertissement: “Combat Naval d’une Fregate 365 contre plusieurs Corsaires Ennemis,” p. 10 5.1: Dandrieu, “La Charge," from Premier Livre (1724), p. 12 394 5.2: Dandrieu, “La Charge," from Premier Livre (1724), p.
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