.(Fr.).
(1)
A small bagpipe, especially one of aristocratic design which achieved
popularity in France in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The air supply to
the bag comes from a small bellows strapped under the arm. The earliest
discussion of its use appears in Mersenne (1636–7). During the 17th century the
instrument was used to play rustic dances, such as the bransles found in the
first treatise on the instrument, by Borjon de Scellery (Traité de la
musette, Lyons, 1672/R). The instrument described by Mersenne and
Borjon had a range of ten notes (f'–a'') and drones in F and B.
In the early 18th century a second chanter was added, giving the instrument a range to d''' and allowing the possibility of double stops. The drones in C and G were the most frequently used, and most music for these instruments is in those tonalities, although D and A tunings were also possible. This instrument and its technique are described methodically in Jacques Martin Hotteterre's Méthode pour la musette (Paris, 1737/R). The extension of the instrument coincided with its involvement with chamber music. Sonatas and suites for one or two musettes with or without continuo were published by Boismortier, Corrette, Lavigne, Aubert and others. By far the most prolific composers were the brothers Esprit-Philippe and Nicolas Chédeville; they also arranged works of Vivaldi, dall'Abaco and other Italians for the musette. Corrette wrote 22 concertos suitable for musette and strings. The instrument was assigned obbligato parts in cantatas by Montéclair, Corrette, Boismortier, Lemaire and Dupuits. It was used by Lully in stage works (among them Isis and Thesée), and later by Montéclair, Leclair, Rameau, Campra and others in operas and ballets. By 1760 the musette was in decline. For an account of the physical characteristics of this instrument see Bagpipe, §6.
(2) The ‘musette de Poitou’ of the 17th century was a simple bagpipe, and like the biniou of Brittany was accompanied by an Hautbois de Poitou (a bagless chanter), or by a consort of such instruments including a bass. The consort was described and illustrated by Mersenne (in Harmonicorum libri XII, book 5, proposition 34) and is repeatedly mentioned in documents relating to musicians of the Grande Ecurie du Roi, which included a group called ‘Les Musettes et Hautbois de Poitou’; among its members were Jean Hotteterre (1) and later the flautist Michel de La Barre (see Benoit). The ‘hautbois de Poitou’ had a wooden reed-cap, shown in the frontispiece of Borjon's Traité de la musette.
Many specimens of the ‘hautbois de Poitou’ in museum collections probably date from the 18th century, and it was following the same tradition that Paris woodwind makers began in the 1830s to produce the small oboe without reed-cap which has since been called ‘musette’. It supplied rural colour to the urban bal musette and was further popularized at concerts like those of Louis Jullien, who himself performed on it in England in imitation of the Scottish bagpipe. Pitched a 5th above the oboe and 31 to 36 cm in length, it is made in two joints and has seven finger-holes, a thumb-hole and two vents in the bell. The reed is shaped like that of an oboe, but is a little smaller. Later a simple keywork was added, and such models, usually made of blackwood, were still offered for sale in the 1930s for domestic amusement, along with similarly constructed flageolets. Another type with a wider bore, modelled on the Breton bombarde, was introduced about the middle of the 19th century by Frédéric Triébert: it was named in advertisements ‘hautbois pastorale’, and subsequently even fitted with a keywork of the Boehm system.
(3) A dance-like piece of pastoral character whose style is suggestive of the sound of the musette or bagpipe. The bass part generally has a drone (bourdon) on the tonic and the upper voice or voices consist of melodies in conjunct motion, sometimes but not always in quick note values. Various metric structures were used and the tempo is moderate.
The dance that bears the name and was performed to the music has a languid, fragile character. Three choreographies have survived in dance notation (see Little and Marsh, La Danse Noble: an Inventory of Dances and Sources, Williamstown, MA, 1992, nos.6160, 6140 and 2480). La muszette a deux is an entry for two ladies performed in Act 4 scene iii of Destouches’ Callirhoé (1712); La musette (1724) is a duet for a gentleman and a lady; and The Diana (1725), also a duet for a gentleman and a lady, is in slow triple metre. Musettes appear as early as Campra’s Les muses (1703), where the sound of the musette is imitated in a minuet of an entrée, La pastorale. Others occur in Campra’s Les âges (1718), Lalande and Destouches’ Les éléments (1721), Handel’s overture to Alcina (1735) and his Concerto grosso op.6, and Mozart composed one for Bastien und Bastienne (1768) to announce the arrival of the Sorcerer.
Musettes were also composed for keyboard, the execution of which, according to Türk (Clavierschule, 1789, p.401), should be ‘schmeichelnd und geschleift’ (‘coaxing and slurred’). Perhaps the most elegant examples are the Muséte de Choisi and Muséte de Taverni for two harpsichords by François Couperin (Pièces de clavecin, XVe ordre, 1722). These were written to be performed one after the other, and the imitative beginning of the Muséte de Taverni (ex.1) recalls the rustic sound of two bagpipes. J.S. Bach composed several pieces in musette style, including the ‘Gavotte ou la musette’ in the Third English Suite (bwv808) and the forlana of the Orchestral Suite in C major (bwv1066). In the 20th century the form has been used by Selim Palmgren in his Country Dance (Musette) (1922) and Schoenberg in the Suite for piano op.25 (1921–3).
(4) Two shawm-like double reed instruments used in some Swiss Protestant churches from about 1750 to 1810, called basse de musette and dessus de musette by later museum curators who found examples in their collections; See Hautbois d'église.
(5) The name by which the button chromatic Accordion is known in France (in Russia it is called bayan). ‘Musette tuning’ is where each key or button on an accordion is coupled to three reed banks; the middle one is tuned ‘pure’ and the outer ones are tuned respectively sharp and flat to the main note, producing a characteristic wide tremolo.
(6) A small Conservertoire-system oboe in F created by Marigaux for Heinz Holliger (see Oboe, §III, 6.)
MersenneHU
M. Mersenne: Harmonicorum instrumentorum libri IV (Paris, 1636); pubd with Harmonicorum libri (1635–6) as Harmonicorum libri XII (Paris, 1648, 2/1652/R)
J.G. Sulzer: Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, iii (Leipzig, 4/1792–9/R)
E. de Bricqueville: Les musettes (Paris, 1894)
C. Sachs: Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (Berlin, 1933; Eng. trans., 1937/R)
M. Benoit: Musiques du cour: chapelle, chambre, écurie, 1661–1733 (Paris, 1971)
R. Leppert: Arcadia at Versailles: Noble Amateur Musicians and their Musettes and Hurdy-Gurdies at the French Court (c1660–1789) (Amsterdam, 1978)
F.B. Lindemann: Pastoral Instruments in French Baroque Music: Musette and Vielle (diss., Columbia U., 1978)
J. Ralyea: Shepherd's Delight (Chicago, 1981)
B.R. Boydell: The Crumhorn and other Renaissance Windcap Instruments (Buren, 1982), 342ff
R. Hollinger: Les musiques à bourdons (Paris, 1982)
E.W. Wilzek: ‘Die Barock-Musette: vom Schäferinstrument zum Virtuosen instrument’, Tibia, xx (1995) 497–516
J.-C. Maillard: ‘La musette Lissieu du musée Morpeth et l'évolution des instruments à vent au XVIIe sièle’, Musique, images, instruments: revue française d'organologie et d'iconographie musicale, ii (1996), 222–6
ROBERT A. GREEN (1), ANTHONY C. BAINES/R (2), MEREDITH ELLIS LITTLE (3)