Bâton, Charles [le jeune]

(b Versailles, early 18th century; d Paris, after 1754). French composer and virtuoso on the hurdy-gurdy, son of Henri Bâton, who revolutionized the construction of the instrument. The jurist Antoine Terrasson, a contemporary of Bâton le jeune, an amateur player of the veille, and author of a history of the vielle, recounted his progress:

Mr Bâton … had laboured to make the most of his father's work, and having improved himself in performance on the hurdy-gurdy, as in the composition of music, he earned himself a reputation which procured for him the honour of instructing several princesses to play that instrument. Mr Bâton, after having for a long time performed with success music written for the musette and for the hurdy-gurdy, was the first to set about composing pieces expressly for the hurdy-gurdy – that is, pieces wrought in accordance with the hand positions and the characters befitting that instrument. It was in this style that Mr Bâton produced, to begin with, a first volume which he dedicated to the late Mademoiselle [the King's niece]; some years after that he produced a second one which he dedicated to Madame la Duchesse [of Orleans]; finally, he has just produced a third volume composed of six sonatas which suffice to show that the hurdy-gurdy is capable of all the beauty and of all the expression of the other instruments.

Bâton was considered, along with Danguy, one of the foremost players of his time. His music consists almost exclusively of suites and dance movements and character pieces. These works reveal refinement combined with virtuosity consisting of rapid scales and arpeggios easily executed on the hurdy-gurdy. Many articulation markings provide a useful source for the study of performing practice related to the instrument. The suites for two hurdy-gurdies are constructed on the basis of equality, and establish a dialogue and interchange between the two instruments. His sonatas, while by no means the most technically demanding works for the hurdy-gurdy, fully exploit the capabilities of the instrument. They reveal an awareness for the galant style in their harmonic rhythms and melodies. In these works, Bâton sometimes pushes the harmonic limits for the hurdy-gurdy: in the concluding movement of the second sonata, for example, he explores dissonance by introducing neapolitan harmonies (Ds) against the C–G drones.

Bâton continued the work of his father by searching for ways to improve the hurdy-gurdy to make it more acceptable as an instrument for chamber music. A detailed notice entitled ‘Trois touches augmentées à la vielle, & une autre changée de place’ appeared in the Mercure de France in September 1750. It described Bâton's new design for the hurdy-gurdy, executed by François Feury, which extended the instrument's range and offered a more convenient layout of its keyboard. A second, briefer notice in the Mercure de France, June 1752, headed ‘Vielle nouvelle’, and a lengthy essay entitled ‘Memoir sur la vielle en D-la-ré’ in the same journal (143–57) in October of that year, revealed that Bâton and Feury had created an instrument with a range of almost three octaves (d'–c''''). The introduction of a D–A tuning, as opposed to the standard C–G tuning, made possible the execution of many pieces written for flute or violin. Further, Bâton eliminated the trompette, the vibrating bridge which creates a sharp articulation at the beginning of each note, in favour of the articulation which results from the keys themselves when depressed by the fingers of the left hand, resulting in a more legato execution. In conclusion, he says that after Marie Leczynska, Louis XV's queen and an avid player of the hurdy-gurdy, had examined the essay, he gave her a demonstration at Compiègne on 20 July 1752, repeating the demonstration the next day for Madame la Dauphine (Marie-Josèphe) and that they were all pleased with the new instrument. In spite of this initial success the new instrument never received the public approbation for which Bâton had hoped.

In 1753 Bâton entered the Querelle des Bouffons with a pamphlet Examen de la ‘Lettre de M. Rousseau, sur la musique françois’ dans lequel on expose le plan d'une musique propre à notre langue (Paris, 1954). A reviewer wrote: ‘here is an adversary who limits himself to talking sense, a man who does not attack M Rousseau because his name is Jean-Jacques or because he was born in Geneva’ (Journal de trévoux). In his pamphlet Bâton agreed with Rousseau that the Italian language had advantages over the French for lyric poetry and singability, but disagreed that French music was largely worthless and strongly refuted Rousseau's notion that fugues, counterpoint and complex harmony were (in Rousseau's term) ‘une sottise’. Perhaps because the pamphlet was so well written, another disputant accused Diderot of having written it and Bâton of merely having posed as its author, but there is no evidence of that. Later French writers accused Bâton of having pretended to dispute with Rousseau only in order to agree with him; this unjust charge may have arisen from Bâton's reasonableness and his careful avoidance of the polemical tone and character assasination used so freely by many of Rousseau's opponents.

WORKS

all published in Paris

op.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BrenetC

FétisB

GerberL

[? A. Terrasson]: Dissertation historique sur la vielle (Paris, 1741/R, 2/1768)

M. Brenet: ‘La librairie musicale en France de 1653 à 1790’, SIMG, viii (1906–7), 401–66

E. de Bricqueville: Notice sur la vielle (Paris, 2/1911/R)

D. Launay, ed.: La Querelle des Bouffons (Geneva, 1973) [ a repr., with introduction and index, of 61 pamphlets pubd Paris, 1752–4]

P. Goldstein: ‘Charles Bâton's Memoir on the Hurdy-Gurdy in D-a-d’, A Modest Manual for the Hurdy-Gurdy, ed. J. Ralyea (Chicago, 1981), 17–34

R.A. Green: ‘Eighteenth-Century French Chamber Music for Vielle’, EMe, xv (1987), 469–79

R.A. Green: The Hurdy-Gurdy in Eighteenth-Century France (Bloomington, IN, 1995)

NEAL ZASLAW/ROBERT A. GREEN