Listening in Paris STUDIES ON THE HISTbRY OF SOCIETY AND CULTURE Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, Editors 1. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, by Lynn Hunt 2. The People ofParis: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century, by Daniel Roche 3. Pont-St-Pierre, 1398-1789: Lordship, Community, and Capitalism in Early Modern France, by Jonathan Dewald 4. The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania, by Gail Kligman 5. Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia, by Samuel D. Kass ow 6. The New Cultural History, edited by Lynn Hunt 7. Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siecle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style, by Debora L. Silverman 8. Histories ofa Plague Year: The Social and the Imaginary in Baroque Florence, by Giulia Calvi 9. Culture ofthe Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, by Lynn Mally 10. Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921, by Lars T. Lih 11. Territories ofGrace: Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century Diocese of Grenoble, by Keith P. Luria 12. Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810, by Carla Hesse 13. Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England, by Sonya 0. Rose 14. Moral Communities: The Culture of Class Relations in the Russian Printing Industry, 1867-1907, by Mark Steinberg 15. Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920, by James von Geldern 16. 'l&nice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City, by John Martin 17. Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria, by Philip M. Soergel 18. Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Celebres ofPre­ Revolutionary France, by Sarah Maza 19. Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in Saint Petersburg, 1900-1914, by Joan Neuberger 20. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, by Paula Findlen 21. Listening in Paris: A Cultural History, by James H. Johnson 22. The Fabrication ofLabor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914, by Richard Biernacki 23. The Struggle far the Breeches: Gender and the Making ofthe British Working Class, by Anna Clark 24. Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France, by Leora Auslander Listening in Paris A Cultural History James H. Johnson UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley I Los Angeles I London University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1995 by The Regents of the University of California Johnson, James H., 1960- Listening in Paris : a cultural history/ James H. Johnson. p. cm.-(Studies on the history of society and culture; 21) Based on author's dissertation (doctoral)-UniversityofChicago, 1988. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-08564-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-520-20648-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Music-France-History and criticism. 2. Music and society. 3. Music appreciation. I. Title. II. Series. ML270.J64 1995 780' .944-dc20 94-6492 CIP MN Portions of this work have previously appeared in the following articles: "Musical Experience and the Formation of a French Musical Public," Journal ofModern History64 (1992): 191-226 (© 1992 by the University of Chicago); "Revolutionary Audiences and the Impossible Imperatives of Fraternity," in Re-Creating Authority in Revolutionary France, ed. Bryant T. Ragan, Jr., and Elizabeth A. Williams (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992); "Beethoven and the Birth of Romantic Musical Experience in France," 19th-Century Music 15 (1991): 23-35. Printed in the United States of America 987654321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. For Robert A. Nye Contents LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XJ LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES XllJ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE: THE RENDEZVOUS OF THE RICH 7 1 Opera as Social Duty 9 2 Expression as Imitation 35 PART TWO: A SENSITIVE PUBLIC 51 3 Tears and the New Attentiveness 53 4 Concerts in the Old Regime 71 5 Harmony's Passions and the Public 81 vm CONTENTS PART THREE: THE EXALTATION OF THE MASSES 97 6 Entertainment and the Revolution 99 7 Musical Experience of the Terror 116 8 Musical Expression and Jacobin Ideology 137 Epilogue Thermidor and the Return of Entertainment 155 PART FOUR: RESPECTABILITY AND THE BOURGEOISIE 163 9 Napoleon's Show 165 10 The Theatre Italien and Its Elites 182 11 The Birth of Public Concerts 197 12 In Search of Harmony's Sentiments 206 13 The Social Roots of Silence 228 PART FIVE: THE MUSICAL EXPERIENCE OF ROMANTICISM 237 14 Operatic Rebirth and the Return of Grandeur 239 15 Beethoven Triumphant 257 16 The Musical Experience of Romanticism 270 CONTENTS i:x AFTERWORD 281 NOTES 287 BIBLIOGRAPHY 349 INDEX 379 Illustrations PART-OPENING ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, cc.Armide, )) represente au Palais Royal 7 2. Moreau le Jeune, Les Adieux 51 3. Charles Monnet, Federation generate des franfais au Champ de Mars, le 14 juillet 1790 97 4. Henry Erny, Une Loge aux Italiens 163 5. Honore Daumier, Le Banc des amateurs: Vue prise a FOpera 237 FIGURES 1. Layout of the Palais Royal 12 2. Floor plans of major eighteenth-century opera houses 14 3. Moreau le Jeune, La Petite loge 25 4. Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin 58 5. Michel Barthelemy Ollivier, Le The a Fanglaise au Temple dans le salon des Quatre Glaces chez le prince de Conti 77 6. Augustin de Saint-Aubin, Le Concert 79 7. Duquevauviller, L)Assembtee au concert 79 8. Theatre des Arts 101 9. Hymn ending the fifth act of La Reunion du dix aout 118 xi xii ILLUSTRATIONS 10. Pacte federative des franfais le J 4e juillet 1790 127 11. J. P. Houel, Les Elephants representes dans Pinstant de premieres caresses qu)ils se sont faites apres qu)on leur a fait entendre de la musique 132 12. Gustave Dore, L)Opera Italien 189 13. Theatre Favart 190 14. Eugene Lami, Interieur du Theatre Italien (Ovation d)un acteur) 191 15. Les Dilettanti a POpera Buffa 193 16. Montand, Un Concert a la chausee d)Antin 234 17. Honore Daumier, Une Victime de la politesse 235 18. Bertrand Ferdinand, L)Opera avant Fincendie 243 19. Gustave Dore, La Fosse aux lions 246 20. Une Seance de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire 260 21. Eugene Lami, La Premiere audition de la Septieme Symphonic de Beethoven 263 Musical Examples 1. Word painting from Alceste, Jean-Baptiste Lully 44 2. Nightingales from Hippolyte et Aricie, Jean- Philippe Rameau 47 3. Rameau's depiction of a volcano erupting, from Les Indesgalantes 48 4. Excerpt from Symphony No. 31, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 80 5. Alcestis' opening aria from Alceste, Christophe Willibald Gluck 89 6. The chorus of shades from Gluck's Alceste 91 7. Melidore's monologue from Melidore et Phrosine, Etienne-Nicolas Mehul 146 8. Ensemble from Mehul's Euphrosine, Ott le tyran corrige 149 9. Four-part polyphony from Lodoiska, Luigi Cherubini 151 10. Homophonic choral singing from the finale of Mehul's Horatius Cocles 153 11. "Vom tiefsten Meeresgrund walzet sich Leviathan," from The Creation, Franz Joseph Haydn 209 12. Duet between Amazily and Telasco from Fernand Cortez, Gaspare Spontini 214 13. "Scandinavian Death Song" from Ossian, ou les bardes, Jean-Franc;ois Le Sueur 217 Xlll xiv MUSICAL EXAMPLES 14. Excerpt from the Finale to Act I of L)italiana in Algeri, Gioacchino Rossini 221 15. Excerpt from "Pensa alla patria" from Rossini's L)italiana in Algeri 223 Acknowledgments Without the generous help of friends and colleagues this book could never have appeared. May these thanks stand as a small ex­ pression of my appreciation. For their wise guidance of my doctoral dissertation, I thank Keith Michael Baker, Jan Goldstein, and Ellen T. Harris; I was fortunate to have such extraordinary models ofprofession­ alism in scholarship. For support in dissertation and post-dissertation research, I am grateful to the Hays-Fulbright Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John M. Olin Program for the History of Political Culture at the University of Chicago. I am grateful as well for research support provided by the Kahn Award for junior fac­ ulty at Boston University, with special appreciation to Esther Kahn. Among those whose insights have changed my thinking for the better over the course of this project are James Smith Allen, Steven Englund, Brian Jorgensen, and William Weber. I am grateful to William W. Kunze and James T. Dutton, whose computer expertise saved me from doing any further damage in certain desperate moments. Thanks also to Dore Brown of the University of California Press, who oversaw the production of this book with efficiency, grace, and good humor. Finally, my heartfelt thanks to two friends whose learning and dedi­ cation are a constant inspiration: to Jim Whitman, who first proposed the idea for this project in the dingy congeniality of Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap on Fifty-fifth Street in Chicago and who can be relied upon for xv xvi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS sound advice on just about everything; and to Bob Nye, whose immense gifts as a teacher and scholar, sustained always by his unfailing humanity, still inspire in me the same admiration I felt listening to his lectures as a college sophomore. This book is for Bob, in gratitude for his having enriched my life in so many ways. Every student should be so lucky. Introduction The theater is neither a school nor a portrait of manners, but it can be considered their mirror in the sense that it is the place where they are concentrated and reflected. There you see the play ofpassions, prejudices and public opinion most clearly. The choice of1vorks to be performed most often, the manner in which one listens, the type ofpleasure or discomfort that the mass ofspectators feels most readily, the lines most vigorously applauded, the silliness mocked, the moods one shows at the theater, the behavior one assumes, the people with whom one goes: all of these are so many observations to be collected-observations according to which, without the slightest knowledge ofevents or incidents, one could form a complete picture of national habits.