CASTIL-BLAZE, DE L'opéra EN FRANCE and the FEUILLETONS of the JOURNAL DES DÉBA TS ( 1820-1832)
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CASTIL-BLAZE, DE L'OPÉRA EN FRANCE and the FEUILLETONS of the JOURNAL DES DÉBA TS ( 1820-1832) by DONALD GARTH GÎSLASON B.A., The University of Manitoba, 1974 B.Mus., The University of British Columbia, 1982 M.A., The University of British Columbia, 1985 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Musicology [Historical Studies]) in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (School of Music) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August 1992 © Donald Garth Gislason, 1992 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives, it is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT François-Henri-Joseph Blaze (1784-1857), who published under the pseudonym Castil- Blaze, was an important figure in French musical life during the period of the Bourbon Restoration (1815-1830). In his historical monographs, he was the first writer to address the wider French public to explain to them the history and practical functioning of their major musical institutions. As France's first professional music critic and the author of some 340 articles in the prestigious Journal des débatshetween 1820 and 1832, he created a place for literate writing about music on the front pages of the most respected daily news• paper in France, providing the French public for the first time with a regular account of Parisian musical activities written from a musician's point of view. The present study examines his views on opera as expressed in his articles in the Journal des débats and in the work which launched his career. De J'Opéra en France (1820). Chap• ter 1 reviews the centrality of opera in French musical life from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, concentrating upon the literary outlook which conditioned its development and upon the parallel development of French music criticism during this period. EHscussed as well are the founding of the Journal des débats at the end of the eighteenth century and the work of its first important critic, Julien-Louis Geoffroy, at the beginning of the nineteenth. Chapter 2 describes the early career of Castil-Blaze before his arrival in Paris and analyses both the new direction which De l'Opéra en /ra/îce represented in French writing about music and the contrast evident between Castil-Blaze and his predecessor Geoffroy. Chapter 3 outlines Castil-Blaze's views on the nature of music criticism as a specialty discipline and details the ways in which his own work attempted to put these views into practice. Chapter 4 discusses the crucial importance of the libretto, in Castil-Blaze's view, to the ultimate effec• tiveness of opera, both at the large-scale level of its dramatic structure and at the small-scale level of its verse prosody. Chapter 5 deals with the issues affecting the opera composer's score: the theoretical basis of Castil-Blaze's musical aesthetics, his practical concerns with the traditional French system for distributing voice roles, and his opinions on text-music set• ting and the nature of dramatic expression in music. Chapter 6 deals with Castil-Blaze's ex• pectations of the opera singer, both as a vehicle for the composer's written intentions and as an important contributor of dramatic expression and improvised ornamentation in perfor• mance. A concluding chapter outlines unifying themes in his writings as a whole and dis• cusses their impact upon later developments in French opera. m TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF FIGURES vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii PREFACE 1 CHAPTER 1: FRENCH OPERA AND MUSIC CRITICISM BEFORE CASTIL-BLAZE 12 Opera in French Musical Life 12 The French View of Opera as Literature 15 Critical Writing about Music before 1800 20 The Journal des débats, the Feuilleton, and Geoffroy 27 New Conditions of Musical Life in Restoration Paris 35 CHAPTER 2: CASTIL-BLAZE'S DÉBUT IN PARIS AND DEL OPÉRA EN FRANCE 42 Castil-Blaze's Background 42 De l'Opéra en France 46 Castil-Blaze and Geoffroy 54 CHAPTER 3: CASTIL-BLAZE AND SPECIALIZED MUSIC CRITICISM 57 Castil-Blaze's Innovation 57 Music Criticism as a Specialized Discipline 60 Qualities of the Music Critic 65 Objectivity and Practicality in Castil-Blaze's Feuilletons 82 Range of Subject Matter 86 Table of Contents CHAPTER 4: THE OPERA LIBRETTO 90 Setting and Dramatic Interest 100 Distribution of Roles and Music 109 Division into Acts and Scenes 118 Operatic Prosody 124 CHAPTERS: THE DRAMATIC SCORE 140 Castil-Blaze's Aesthetics 140 The Système vocal of French Opera 146 Text-Music Setting and Dramatic Expression 154 CHAPTER 6: THE SINGER'S ART 168 The Singer as the Composer's Vehicle 174 Ornamentation and the Singer's Taste 187 CONCLUSION 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY 209 APPENDIX: The /feu^/efô/75of Castil-Blaze in the Journal des débats iUlO-mi) 220 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: De l'Opéra, II, Planches, p. 1 51 Figure 2: De l'Opéra, II, Planches, pp. 22-23 163 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous support in the early stages of my doctoral programme. I wish as well to thank Dr. J. Evan Kreider and Dr. John Roeder for their careful reading of my work and for the depth of interest which they displayed in a subject area at some remove from their own. Dr. Gregory Butler and Dr. Sylvia L'Écuyer have occupied a special place in my labours. The warmth of their encouragement and the model of their scholarship have sustained and in• spired me throughout my research work. I am no less grateful to my research supervisor, Dr. Vera Micznik, whose perceptive insight into my strengths and quiet faith in my abilities more than once surpassed my own. I wish finally to thank my mother and father, my sister Kathryn, and most specially my brother Gordon for their emotional and material support, their concern and their wise counsel, and for their unfailing good hiunour during the long pe• riod leading to the completion of this dissertation. PREFACE Historiens de l'avenir, méfiez-vous de Castil-Blaze! ^ It is a notion commonly held that the great figures of history tend to transcend their time while lesser figures tend to typify the age in which they live. The historical figure treated in this dissertation will find neither a unique nor a imiversally agreed upon place in such a scheme, however, for as both a pioneer and a popularizer he would appear to lay ahnost equal claim to the titles of leader and follower of the French public to whom he directed his work. François-Henri-Joseph Blaze (1784-1857), known by his pseudonym "Castil-Blaze," was a learned, articulate, enterprising and ultimately controversial musical personality whose activities as a writer on music and as a translator and adaptor of foreign works for the lyric stage made him an important figure in French musical life during the 1820s and 1830s. His principal contribution, in writings which comprise both historical monographs and a major corpus of articles in the press, was to stimulate public interest in the serious study of music as an art and to raise standards for writing about music in general. In his historical monographs, some of which are still consulted by modem scholars, he was the first writer to address the wider French public to explain to them the history and practi• cal functioning of their major musical institutions.^ As France's first professional music 1. Attributed to Arthur Pougin in Herbert Weinstock, Rossini: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 441. 2. His major historical works, all published in Paris, are as follows: De l'Opéra en France ( 1820), Dictionnaire de musique moderne {V?,2\.), Chapelle musique des rois de France {1^2)2), La Danse et les Ballets depuis Bacchus jusqu 'à Mlle Taglioni ( 1832), Piano ( 1840), Physiologie du musicien (1844), Mémorial du Grand Opéra (1847), Molière musicien (1852), L Académie impériale de musique de 1645à 1855{\%SS), L'Opéra italien de 1548 à 7*5^(1856), Surl'Opéra français: vérités dures mais utiles (IS56), L'Art des vers lyriques {\%5%). Remaining unpublished at his death were the following projected volumes: Histoire de l'Opéra-Comique : 1753-1856; Le Livre des pianistes, histoire du clavecin, du piano, des clavecinistes, des pianistes, des pièces écrites pour ces instruments; Musidana, salade légèrement assaisonnée; and Curiosités musicales et galantes sur le Grand Opéra. critic and the author of some 340 articles in the prestigious Journal des débats between 1820 and 1832, he created a place for literate writing about music on the front pages of the most respected daily newspaper in France, providing the French public for the first time with a regular account of Parisian musical activities written from a musician's point of view. In so doing, he set new standards for French music criticism and in his journalistic writings he gained a wide audience for the serious discussion of French musical culture conceived in its broadest terms.^ Yet as pioneering and progressive a figure as Castil-Blaze may appear to be, he was also undeniably a man whose interests and ambitions were typical of the age in which he lived.