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The French Time Devices Revisited beverly jerold The French Time Devices Revisited Much disparity exists among the metronome marks derived from the tempo numbers for early eighteenth-century French time devices. While some are reasonable, others are implausibly rapid. A newly discovered source, which offers both Raoul Auger Feuillet’s numbers for various forms and a drawing of the pendulum device for which they were intended, solves the mystery of the conflicting numbers. Because only a clockwork mechanism can measure fractions of seconds, his numbers had to measure pendulum lengths (the simpler and most frequent form of measurement). A comparison of his numbers with those for the same dance forms from the two sources with consistently extreme tempos indicates an almost exact correlation when all are measured according to pendulum length, instead of the presumed sixtieths of a second. For some eighty years, the tempo numbers for French dance music and certain vocal pieces, derived from time-measuring devices and presented principally in a few French writings from 1696 to 1762, have been a topic of lively discussion.1 When converted into metronome marks, many of these numbers for the same form are significantly inconsistent. Although the very rapid tempos have often been considered valid, the conflict between these and the other much slower tempos for the same forms has not been explained adequately. Why are the numbers attributed to Joseph Sauveur’s clockwork measurement system (1701) by Michel L’Affilard (1705) and Louis-Léon Pajot, comte d’Onzembray (1732) completely out of range from the one tempo number that Sauveur himself supplied and also from those of Étienne Loulié (1696)? Why do Jacques-Alexandre de La Chapelle (1737) and Henri-Louis Choquel (1762) provide some numbers of very modest speed, but others that are extraordinarily rapid? Because all of these writers’ numbers are readily available in the modern literature (note 1), they will not be repeated again, except when relevant to material in a recently discovered source that illustrates and describes the pendulum designed by the Paris dancing master Raoul Auger Feuillet (d.1710). His numbers for various dance forms provide the most accurate and plausible large body of information to date about tempo of the period. At this time, two principal forms of measurement existed: one based on pendulum length in inches (pouces) and the other on sixtieths of a second (tierces). The latter, however, requires a complex clockwork mechanism. It was the confusion between these two measurement systems that produced unusually rapid tempos in two sources. The disparities in the other two sets of numbers can be attributed to other factors. Throughout this article, the term ‘metronome’, identified by an ‘M’, refers only to the modern device, whose mechanism bears no relation to its forerunners. 1 See, for example, Eugène Borrel, ‘Les indications métronomiques laissées par les auteurs français du XVIIIe siècle’, Revue de musicologie 9 (1928), 149-153; Ralph Kirkpatrick, ‘Eighteenth-Century Metronomic Indications’, Papers of the American Musicological Society (1938), 30-50; Hellmuth Christian Wolff, ‘Das Metronom des Louis- Léon Pajot 1735’, in: Nils Schiørring, Henrik Glahn, and Carsten E. Hafling (eds), Festskrift Jens Peter Larsen, Copenhagen: Wilhelm Hansen, 1972, 205-217; Willem Retze Talsma, Wiedergeburt der Klassiker: Anleitung zur Entmechanisierung der Musik, Innsbruck: Wort und Welt Verlag, 1980; Rebecca Harris-Warrick, ‘Interpreting Pendulum Markings for French Baroque Dance’, Historical Performance 6 (Spring 1993), 9-22; and Klaus Miehling, Das Tempo in der Musik von Barock und Vorklassik, second edn, Wilhelmshaven: F. Noetzel, 2003. dutch journal of music theory, volume 15, number 3 (2010) 169 TvM_15_#3_nov_2010_7.indd 169 15-11-2010 12:27:51 the french time devices revisited Figure 1 Loulié, Chronomètre. Measurement by Pendulum Length Loulié’s chronomètre (Figure 1), a simple pendulum, stood over six feet high. As Loulié specifies, the measurement is according to the pied universel – 33.12 cm. with a pouce (royal French inch) of 27.6 mm. Thus the pendulum length for one second of time is just slightly over 36 pouces, equivalent to the English 39.1 inches. The formula for a metronome mark 360 is number of pouces . Despite the device’s lack of graduated scaling, three of his numbers for four incipits of pieces from sonatas by an unknown composer (Example 1) produce plausible metronome derivations.2 An exception is Example 1b, whose pendulum length of 8 pouces has vibrations too rapid for the eye to measure accurately with ease, and may be a misprint. The shortest length for a piece using Feuillet’s pendulum, to be discussed below, is 24 pouces. After visiting Paris in 1715-1716, the German architect, librettist, and intellectual Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach returned to Frankfurt with a Feuillet chronomètre (Figure 2), which had tempo numbers for seventeen French dances and Entrées (Figure 3) affixed to the bottom of its post. As the journal of his travel experiences states: ‘Eine Maschine den Tact in der Musik anzugeben, von der Erfindung des Hr Feuillets zu Paris.’3 In 1728, Uffenbach gave a presentation about this device (included in his papers) to a learned society in Frankfurt.4 According to his text, Feuillet invented the chronomètre at the behest of King Louis XIV because he could not hear any harmony (‘Stimmen’) among the instruments in music performances, particularly in operas, and could not bear disharmony or disorder. Because there was perpetual strife between the dancers and the opera orchestra concerning whether a ballet entrée or other song was played quickly or slowly enough, the inventor constructed a small device by which the beat or tempo could always be the same, and thus guide both the orchestra and the dancers on stage. It consists of a 2-inch square post that is 5½ feet long and marked with a scale of unevenly spaced sections (thus an improvement over Loulié’s device, which did not use graduated scaling). When the bob moves in front of the circular mirror on the post, it casts a shadow that enables the eye to grasp the beat more precisely. Uffenbach’s drawing in Figure 2 shows front and side views of a simple pendulum with graduated 2 Étienne Loulié, Éléments ou principes de la musique, Paris: Ballard, 1696; facsim. edn, Geneva: Minkoff, 1971, 86ff. The note value placed above the pendulum length in pouces designates the beat unit. 3 Jürgen Kroemer, ‘“Le Cronomètre de Monsieur Feuillet”: Absolute Tempoangaben eines barocken Tanzmeisters’, Österreichische Musikzeitung 56/7 (2001), 23-28. 4 D-Gs, Cod. Ms. Uffenbach 13/II, 249-254. Figures 2 and 3 from this manuscript are reproduced with the kind permission of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. Uffenbach’s handwriting is in old German script, a transcription of which is in the Appendix at the end of this article. 170 TvM_15_#3_nov_2010_7.indd 170 15-11-2010 12:27:52 dutch journal of music theory Example 1 Loulié, Sonata incipits. a. c. b. d. Incipit Time signature Beats/ bar Loulié’s number Metronome mark a. Two beats lents C-barré 2 40 57 b. Four beats légèrs C 4 8 127 c. Très lents 3/2 3 30 66 d. A final movement 6/4 2 16 90 scaling. Therefore, the tempo numbers cannot be in the tierce (sixtieths of a second) time measurement proposed today5 because this requires a clockwork mechanism. Quoting from the French text included with the chronomètre, Uffenbach’s commentary explains the crescents surrounding the number for each dance form in Figure 3. Except for one omission, the beat unit corresponds to the system described by Michel L’Affilard (1705):6 • No crescents = one beat/bar • A crescent above = two beats/bar • A crescent on the left = three beats/bar • Crescents above and below = four beats/bar • Crescents on both sides = six beats/bar (in L’Affilard only) Without a clockwork mechanism, Feuillet’s numbers must be interpreted as pendulum lengths instead of tierces. Those in Figure 3 produce reasonable metronome derivations (Table 1). Corresponding almost exactly to Feuillet’s numbers in Table 1 are the six for dances in an early eighteenth-century manuscript of choreographies in Feuillet notation, which likewise utilize crescents to indicate the beat unit (Table 2).7 The numbers appear to be contemporaneous with the manuscript and may be from the same hand as the dances. 5 Kroemer, ‘Le Cronomètre’, 25f. and Miehling, Das Tempo, 59. 6 Michel L’Affilard, Principes très-faciles pour bien apprendre la musique, fifth edn, Paris: Christophe Ballard, 1705; facsim. edn, Geneva: Minkoff, 1971. Directions for interpreting the beat units are on folding plate II (inserted by p.55). His instructions are also reprinted in Rosamond E. M. Harding, Origins of Musical Time and Expression, London: Oxford University Press, 1938, plate 10. 7 F-Po ms. 817. See Harris-Warrick, ‘Interpreting pendulum markings’, 21f. For Feuillet’s Sarabande, the number is uncertain. Of the four possibilities, 38 duplicates that specified in Figure 3 for this dance. This manuscript is described by Meredith Ellis Little and Carol G. Marsh, La Danse Noble: An Inventory of Dances and Sources, Williamstown, Mass.: Broude Brothers, 1992, 132f. 171 TvM_15_#3_nov_2010_7.indd 171 15-11-2010 12:27:52 the french time devices revisited Figure 2 Figure 3 Uffenbach’s drawing of Feuillet’s chronomètre. Feuillet’s tempo numbers. Since the highest number of the chronomètre described by Uffenbach is 60, it cannot be an exact replica of Feuillet’s, for his numbers extend to 90. Nevertheless, its form had to be similar. Uffenbach probably purchased it from the Atelier ‘chez Feuillet’, continued by Jacques Dezais after Feuillet’s death, which would have found a more ready market for a device of less imposing dimensions than the one Feuillet needed for his own use with dancers.
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