French Musicians of the 18th Century on the Interpretation of Compositions by Jean-Baptiste Lully

The French musical culture of the late Baroque and gallant Mannerism is a complex, closed, determinate dynamic system. The emphasis in this definition should be on the word “dynamic”. In particular, it applies to the principles of performance, which in France over the course of a century (until 1789) repeatedly and significantly changed in the process of the evolution of musical art and musical aesthetics. During the long 18th century, hundreds of treatises were published in France designed to various aspects of music theory and music pedagogy of the time. Among them are: manuals for teaching music to beginners, various vocal and instrumental methods, schools of composition, and so on. It is noteworthy that the authors of these works, illustrating their theoretical reasoning and specific performance recommendations, regularly refer to the opera work of the great French composer of the 17th century Jean Baptiste Lully (1632–1687). Lully’s operatic genres (including fragments from the operas “Phaeton”, “Roland”, “Armida”, etc.) are addressed to the reader by such authors as de Saint Lambert (“Principles of the harpsichord”, Paris, 1702), [Borin] (“Theoretical and practical music according to the natural order: new principles”, Paris, 1722), Michel Corrette (“Theoretical and practical school of teaching cello”, Paris, 1741), Henri-Louis Choquel (“ New system of easy music teaching”, Paris, 1759 and 1762) and many others. The authors of the article analyze the context in which Lully’s operatic compositions appear among French authors of the 18th century, and are interested whether they are adequate, from the point of the view of historical reality and the principles of historically informed performance, do they literally follow the performance instructions of French musicians of the 18th century in the process of interpreting, namely, the operas of J. B. Lully

Art · Art history · Baroque · Flute · Harpsichord · Linguistics · Literature · Musical · Opera · Piano · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy

• Les indications metronomiques laissees par les auteurs francais du XVIIIe siecle

  E Borrel•Revue de musicologie•1928

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