(Fr.).
A term used in the 17th-century ballet de cour in France to refer to a group of dances unified by subject, such as ‘entrée des Cyclopes’ or ‘entrée des Indiens’. Entrées divided the acts of a ballet into scenes. ‘Ballets are silent plays’, states the preface to the Ballet de la prospérité des armes de France (1641), ‘and must likewise be divided by acts and scenes. The récits separate the ballet into acts, and the entrées of dances separate the acts into scenes’. According to Saint-Hubert (La manière de composer et faire réussir les ballets, 1641/R), a ‘ballet royal’ ordinarily had 30 entrées grouped into several acts, a ‘beau ballet’ had at least 20 and a ‘petit ballet’ 10 or 12.
The unifying plot of earlier ballets de cour, such as La délivrance de Renaud (1617), gave way increasingly after 1620 to a choreographic spectacle of great variety in which each section composed of several entrées had its own subject matter. These sections related in a general way to the collective idea expressed in the ballet’s title, as in the Ballet des quatre monarchies chrestiennes (1635), where Italy, Spain, Germany and France constitute the work’s four sections. Occasionally an entire section took the name of entrée. This genre, now known as the ballet à entrées (see Ballet de cour), was the structural model for the late 17th- and 18th-century opéra-ballet, whose acts were normally called entrées.
‘Entrée’ had yet another meaning in the opéra-ballet and in the tragédie lyrique. It marked the beginning of the divertissement of dances and songs found in most acts. It could refer to the entrance of a single character (e.g. the ‘entrée de la Haine’ in Lully's Armide, 1686) or more commonly of a specific group of people, the ‘corps d'entrée’ (e.g. the ‘entrée pour les guerriers’ in Rameau's Dardanus, 1739).
Entrées to divertissements present a wide variety of musical styles. Some are march-like (e.g. ‘Les combattants’ in Lully's Alceste, 1674), while others characterize a certain group of people (e.g. the ‘entrée des Bohémiens’ in Rameau's La princesse de Navarre, 1745). Still others are pure fantasy (e.g. the ‘entrée des saisons et des arts’ in Rameau's Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour, 1747).
Lute intabulations of entrées from 17th-century ballets de cour are found in collections by Chancy, Bouvier, Jacques Gallot and others. Robert de Visée transcribed Lully's ‘entrée d'Apollon’ from Le triomphe de l'amour for guitar, and Rameau transcribed the ‘entrée des quatre nations’ from his Les Indes galantes for harpsichord. Independently composed entrées are found in harpsichord suites by Luc Marchand (1748) and Nicolas Siret (1710, 1719). Neither the nine ‘entrées de luth’ in Robert Ballard's first lutebook (1611) nor the entrées in Georg Muffat's orchestral suites published in the Florilegium primum and secondum are drawn from known ballet sources.
See also French overture, §2, and Intrada.
For bibliography see Ballet de cour.
JAMES R. ANTHONY