(Fr.: ‘tomb’, ‘tombstone’).
An instrumental piece or group of pieces, in the character of a lament, commemorating the death of some person, usually real but occasionally imaginary. The term was originally a literary one; in the 16th and early 17th centuries it was applied in France to short poems, or to collections of poems by several authors, commemorating the death of such people of distinction as François I and Marguerite of Navarre, or great poets like Ronsard. It was adopted about the middle of the 17th century by musicians: French music of that time was indebted to literature in many ways. It appeared first in a tombeau by Ennemond Gaultier for the lutenist Mesangeau (d 1638), and there are a number of examples for lute by various members of the Gaultier family, most of which follow the tradition of the earlier Déploration in which musicians often commemorated their teachers or other notable musicians.
The lute tombeau reached its peak in the 1680s, with numerous fine examples by Jacques Gallot and Charles Mouton, who were in turn commemorated in lute tombeaux by Robert de Visée. It usually took the form of an allemande grave, or sometimes a pavane. Many include a motif of four descending notes, a metaphor for grief given influential expression by John Dowland in his Lachrimae (1604). These genres offered many suitable expressive characteristics: the suspirans figure (a three-note upbeat), dotted rhythms, particularly in repeated notes, and slow-moving harmonies in the minor mode whose gravity is heightened by a tendency to settle on pedal points. Later examples also tend to use chromatic progressions related to the lamento bass. The few courante tombeaux exploit the same rhythmic features in triple metre.
From the lute the tombeau spread to other instrumental repertories. Froberger's tombeau for the lutenist Charles Fleury (Blancrocher) (d 1652) brought a new dimension of expressivity to the harpsichord. It uses such lute mannerisms as low sans chanterelle tessitura and the campanella effect, but also more extrovert Italian features such as the tirata, the dramatic sospiro and the fall. Froberger explored this compelling blend of idioms in a number of pieces (entitled ‘Lamento’, ‘Lamentation’ or ‘Plainte’) which, though conventionally notated, are marked to be played ‘lentement avec discretion’. Their richly decorated style and strange, poignant modulations demand a freedom of performance akin to that of the Prélude non mesuré. Of three harpsichord tombeaux by French composers, two are highly original pieces in the major mode. Louis Couperin's tombeau for Fleury is in the manner of a funeral oration, characteristically ranging from the dramatic récit of the viol to the sensitive style brisé of the lute, and appears to have some rhetorical programme. A contemporary programme for a tombeau-like piece is described in Mary Burwell's lute tutor for Gaultier's allemande The Loss of the Golden Rose Lute. D'Anglebert's tombeau for Chambonnières (1689) is cast as a Gaillarde, an unusual genre in this repertory and one to which he contributed several very expressive examples. Its triple metre adds an extra degree of sophistication to the figurative language of the pavane.
Bass viol tombeaux carry programmatic and rhetorical elements yet further. Sainte-Colombe's tombeau Les regrets, from the Concerts for two viols (F-Pn; written in the 1680s), is in a series of short sections entitled ‘Les regrets’, ‘Qarillon’, ‘Apel de Charon’, ‘Les pleurs’, ‘Joye des Elizées’, ‘Les Elizées’. This structure foreshadows that of François Couperin (ii)'s Apothéoses for Corelli (1724) and Lully (1725). The tombeaux of Marin Marais are the most original and expressive examples for viol. Using the manner of the fantaisie, they progress from imitative openings to powerfully rhetorical récits, and include a great variety of special instrumental effects. The tombeau for Sainte-Colombe (1701) exploits a number of plaintive technical effects, culminating in a long series of specially bowed chords over a descending chromatic bass. The two last contributions to this tradition are Marais's tombeau for his son (1725) and Charles Dollé's tombeau for Marais himself (1737).
Leclair's C minor Violin Sonata op.5 no.6 (1734) acquired the nickname ‘Le tombeau’ during his lifetime, and was performed at his funeral (1764) in an orchestral arrangement by his pupil G.-P. Dupont. Later in the 18th century the term appeared only rarely, for example in Lemière's Le tombeau de Mirabeau le patriote (c1791); it was hardly used by composers outside the French orbit. Its features nonetheless remained into the 19th century in genres associated with the expression of grief, such as the symphonic funeral march.
A
further use of the term tombeau is for a type of scene in late 17th- and
18th-century French opera. The earliest example is the ‘Tombeau de Climène’
(now lost) in Cambert's Les peines et les plaisirs de l'amour (1672) in
which Apollo laments at the tomb of Climène. Similar scenes feature the
appearance of oracles or spirits of the departed (oracles or ombres;
for example in Cesti's La Dori, 1657, and Lully's Amadis, 1684).
They are marked by low-pitch scoring, recurring rhythmic motifs and monotones
in voice and accompaniment, and contributed to the development of accompanied
recitative. Lully used what was for him the highly coloured key of C minor;
later composers more often used F minor or B
minor. The frisson of the supernatural may be
heightened by features of the instrumental tombeau such as dramatic tirate
and dissonant leaps, as in the Symphonie that introduces the words ‘Operuit
montes umbra ejus’ in François Couperin (ii)'s Quatre versets d'un motet
chanté à Versailles (1703). Features of the oracle scene remained in
later 18th-century opera (including Mozart's Idomeneo, 1781), and a late
example is found in the third act of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades
(1890).
Some 20th-century French composers, concerned with their musical past and wishing to establish a stronger identity for French music, revived the term. Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin (1914–17) was followed by pieces similarly commemorating composers of the French classical period, by Georges Migot (tombeaux for Dufaut and Grigny) and Dupré (a tombeau for Titelouze). The Tombeau de Debussy (1920) was a collection of pieces to which Dukas, Roussel, Malipiero, Goossens, Bartók, Schmitt, Stravinsky, Ravel, Falla and Satie all contributed. It revived the concept of the 16th-century literary tombeau of collective authorship, as did similar works commemorating Jules Ecorcheville (1916), Ronsard (1924) and Paul Dukas (1935). Boulez's setting of Mallarmé's tombeau for Verlaine in Pli selon pli (1957–62) expresses the idea of a tombstone in block-like sonorities.
M. Brenet: ‘ Les tombeaux en musique’, RHCM, iii (1903), 568–75, 631–8
W. Mellers: François Couperin and the French Classical Tradition (London, 1950/R)
M. Rollin: ‘ Le tombeau chez les luthistes Denys Gautier, Jacques Gallot, Charles Mouton’, XVIIe siècle, nos.21–2 (1954), 463–79
M. Rollin: ‘ Les tombeaux de Robert de Visée’, XVIIe siècle, no.34 (1957), 73–8
R.T. Dart: ‘ Miss Mary Burwell's Instruction Book for the Lute’, GSJ, xi (1958), 33–69
C. van den Borren: ‘Esquisse d'une histoire des “tombeaux” musicaux’, Académie royale de Belgique: bulletin de la classe des beaux-arts, xliii (1961); abridged in SMw, xxv (1962), 56–67
C. Wood: ‘Orchestra and Spectacle in the tragédie en musique, 1673–1715: Oracle, sommeil and tempête’, PRMA, cviii (1981–2), 25–46
D. Ledbetter: Harpsichord and Lute Music in Seventeenth-Century France (diss., U. of Oxford, 1985)
C. Goldberg: Stilisierung als kunstvermittelnder Prozess: die französischen Tombeau-Stücke im 17. Jahrhundert (Laaber, 1987)
P. Vendrix: ‘Le tombeau en musique en France à l'époque baroque’, RMFC, xxv (1987), 105–38
MICHAEL TILMOUTH/DAVID LEDBETTER