FRANÇOIS LESURE (I), CLAUDIE MARCEL-DUBOIS/DENIS LABORDE (II)
3. The 17th and 18th centuries.
At the end of the 9th century, after the decline of Gallican chant, France was divided both linguistically and on the question of musical notation: the area in which the langue d’Oc was spoken used Aquitanian notation, while further north the notations of Brittany and Lorraine were employed (see Notation, §III, 1). So a Romanized liturgy was imposed, with the aim of standardizing the heterogeneous usages of Provence, Aquitaine and Burgundy. Based at the cathedrals, clerics and scholares united under the same rule to ensure the provision of singers for the Offices of the church and liturgical chant; choir schools were attached to these centres. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the focal point of the Carolingian renaissance shifted from Tours to Reims, together with the Capetian kings who regarded themselves as heirs to the Empire. Aquitaine resisted this pressure: south of the Loire there was unwillingness to accept Carolingian dominance, the episcopal schools and the merging of spiritual and temporal influences: and something of its regional character, and of the courtly art cultivated there, persisted in this area (see also Troubadours, trouvères). Territorial unity would stem from the Ile-de-France, where the monarchy, the episcopal schools and the University gradually imposed their cultural model on the whole country.
The origin of these choir schools (also known as psallettes) remains rather obscure. Initially young clerics received their training in the episcopal schools, where they were educated not only in chant and the liturgy but also in the liberal arts, including sacred and secular literature. They then took minor orders, eventually becoming priests and canons. During the 11th and 12th centuries groups specifically concerned with the performance of chant became progressively more distinct as the repertory itself grew richer; these groups were the responsibility of the chapters of cathedrals or collegiate churches. The two oldest institutions that seem to have acquired autonomy in this way, with one of two specialist maîtres directing them, are Chartres Cathedral in 1119 (by a papal bull of Calixtus II) and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1127. However, there is some doubt about the exact nature of these foundations, especially as the establishment of maîtrises in France, in the form they were to retain until the Revolution, did not begin before the 14th century. According to recent research, the foundation of maîtrises is shown by the records as follows:
The immediately striking feature of this distribution is the almost total absence of choir schools in the south of the country. The number of choirboys varied from four to eight, depending on the chapter’s resources, and they would live in a community under the control of a master appointed by the chapter. The foundation of a maîtrise was almost always made possible by the allocation or assignment of prebends of canonries by the pope or the king. The appointment of not only a maître de musique but also a maître de grammaire, thus ensuring that the boys received a general education, varied from place to place (as did the organization of the maîtrises and their role in the wider community). At Chartres, for instance, the maître de grammaire was in charge of the maîtrise until the 16th century, when the maître de musique took over responsibility for the management of the school. A group of trained adult choristers, who had often taken minor orders, assisted the choirboys in providing music for the office. Certain benefices were reserved for these choristers, and depending on the area they might be described as clercs de matines (Notre Dame, Paris), petits and grands vicaires (Cambrai), chapelains-chantres (Langres), heuriers-matiniers (Chartres), or cantoreaux (Toulouse). While the maîtres de musique were always clerics at this period, organists enjoyed a more independent position in the maîtrises.
In addition to the cathedral and collegiate churches the saintes-chapelles enjoyed a special standing. They were exempt from ecclesiastical jurisdiction and were under the direct protection of the king or one of the great princes, but their choir schools were organized in exactly the same way as those of the cathedrals or collegiate churches. They comprised the Ste-Chapelle du Palais in Paris, founded by St Louis, which had six choirboys in 1305 and was directed by a cantor from 1319; the Ste-Chapelle of Bourges founded by Jean, Duke of Berry in 1405, also with six choirboys, in which composers such as Grenon, Basiron and Fedé held the post of maître; and the Ste-Chapelle of Dijon founded by Philippe ‘the Good’ (1396–1467) in 1425 with four choirboys.
These maîtrises soon constituted a network extending over the whole country. They not only provided music for the liturgical offices but also encouraged the teaching of plainchant, and subsequently of polyphony and composition. A musician’s compositional talents became a major factor in his appointment as a maître; it was his task to compose original works for solemn feasts and other important occasions. Some maîtrises acquired a special reputation for composition, including Cambrai, with Guillaume Du Fay as master, and Chartres (with Mureau, Antoine Brumel and Fresneau), Orléans (Johannes Tinctoris) and Laon (Grenon). There were many exchanges with the chapels of the princely courts; the best cantors of Philippe ‘the Good’, Duke of Burgundy, came from the Ste-Chapelle and Notre-Dame in Paris as well as Cambrai. The maîtrises also took part in mystery and morality plays (see Medieval drama) and even (outside the liturgical context) in farces, despite repeated prohibitions issued by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In 1465, for instance, the synod of Troyes banned the Feast of Fools, which was actually held inside churches at Epiphany and gave the choirboys a chance to let off steam. However, it continued to be held in many places well beyond the Middle Ages.
Until the 14th century the kings and princes who controlled French territory engaged minstrels and instrumentalists to provide music for official ceremonies and for entertainments. After the reign of Philippe Auguste, however, a kind of royal liturgy began to emerge. A two-part Conductus, Ver pacis aperit, seems to have been composed for Philippe Auguste’s coronation in Reims in 1179. The conductus Gaude felix Francia has also been preserved, and was apparently composed for the coronation of Louis IX in 1226. In any case, the royal prayer Domine salvum fac regem was sung at the coronations of the kings of France from the 13th century onwards. In the 14th century Paris began to emerge as the political and administrative capital of France, but it ceased to be the king’s residence while it was entangled in the conflicts of the Hundred Years War. Charles VII had himself crowned in Paris but spent little time there, and Louis XI followed his example, while their successors preferred the royal residences in the Loire valley. In the 14th and 15th centuries France had many centres of musical activity, and musicians moved freely between them. Many permanent chapels were set up during this period.
From 1309 the seat of the papacy was in Avignon, where Benedict XII founded a college of twelve cantores capellae, most of them recruited from the north of France (Laon, Amiens, Thérouanne and Paris). According to Froissart, Gaston Phébus, Count of Foix (1331–91), had ‘a great abundance of good singers’ at his disposal at Orléans in 1388, and he issued invitations to foreign minstrels. At Bourges, Jean, Duke of Berry not only founded the Ste-Chapelle (1405) but also set up his own personal chapel, employing such composers as Solage. At Moulins, Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, assembled a chapel of 12 musicians (including Ockeghem from 1446 to 1448). Amédée VIII and Louis, dukes of Savoy, engaged such composers as Pietrequin Bonnel and Antoine Brumel for their chapel. At Angers and in Provence Count René of Provence maintained eight singers (including Beltrame Feragut), all of whom joined the Chapelle Royale after René’s death.
In the 15th century the two foremost institutions, the chapel of the dukes of Burgundy and the king’s Chapelle Royale, moved about the country quite frequently. The Duke of Burgundy’s musicians did not become an established ensemble until about 1430; before that date, and without any real continuity, they had comprised singers from Notre-Dame and the Ste-Chapelle, and from Cambrai, six of whose singers had been at the papal court before entering the duke’s service. Under Philippe ‘the Bold’ (1364–1404) the chapel was, according to one chronicler, ‘more numerous and better chosen’ than the king of France’s own. While Philippe’s education had been exclusively French, his successor Jean ‘the Fearless’ (1404–19) had been brought up in Flanders; when he became duke he spent most of his time in Paris, where the sixteen chaplains in his service included musicians such as Pierre Fontaine, Johannes Tapissier and Nicolas Grenon. Philippe ‘the Good’ took them into his chapel, but his most famous musicians were Gilles Binchois, Gilles Joye and Robert Morton. During his long reign (1419–67) he spent less time in Dijon than in Flanders, Arras and Lille, where the Order of the Golden Fleece was instituted in 1454, accompanied by lavish musical ceremonies. He also founded maîtrises for four choirboys at Dijon and at Lille. The last of the great dukes of Burgundy, Charles ‘the Bold’ (1467–77), who had received a very good musical education himself, took his singers with him as he moved about the country. They included Hayne van Ghizeghem and above all Antoine Busnoys, who had been in Charles’s service when he was Count of Charolais.
The Chapelle Royale of King Charles VI of France was still a relatively modest ensemble consisting of eleven singers, directed in 1399 by the premier chapelain Jehan du Moulin and then by Adam Maigret. Several of the singers were also members of the choirs of Notre-Dame or the Ste-Chapelle. In 1401 the dukes of Bourbon and Burgundy founded a short-lived cour d’amour which celebrated masses ‘à note, à son d’orgues, chant et déchant’. Under Charles VII and Louis XI the court favoured the châteaux of the Loire as residences. Charles VII chose Jean de Ockeghem to direct his chapel, appointing him to the important post of treasurer of St-Martin, Tours. Having been premier chapelain, Ockeghem was appointed maître de la chapelle de chant du roy in 1465. He served three French kings over a period of 45 years. Under Louis XI, the beginning of whose reign saw a slight reduction in the numbers of musicians in the chapel, pride of place was given to religious ceremonies and to such composers as Johannes Fedé and Jehan Fresneau; Louis’ favourite residence was the château of Plessis-lès-Tours. When Ockeghem died in 1497 he was succeeded by Evrard de la Chapelle.
Until the beginning of the 16th century musicians from the northern provinces were often attracted by offers from the courts and choir schools of northern Italy and the papal chapel, where their gifts for composition and skill in performing the polyphonic repertory were highly esteemed. However, the Council of Basle and the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) gave the king of France considerable independence from the papacy in the granting of benefices, and church musicians in particular were now able to obtain positions offering more security. These events marked the beginning of the emancipation of the French church in its move towards Gallicanism.
Long before the foundation of the universities, musical education was provided by monastic schools and then by the choir schools of a few large cathedrals. The precise role of Alcuin, Charlemagne’s chief adviser, who became abbot of St-Martin in Tours in 796, is uncertain, but there is evidence that the liberal arts were taught in several regions of northern France, particulary at Reims under Remigius of Auxerre (893) and Gerbert d’Aurillac (972), at Chartres under Fulbert (1007) and at Fleury (Orléans) under Theodolphus and Abbon (965), not forgetting the contributions of Benedictines such as Aurelian of Réôme (at the abbey of St Jean de Réôme, diocese of Langres) and Hucbald (at the abbey of St-Amand near Valenciennes). With the rise of the universities in the 13th century, Paris grew in importance as a centre of learning, and many foreigners came to the city to study or teach the sciences of the quadrivium. These foreigners included Englishmen such as Robert Kilwardy, Robert Grosseteste and his disciple Roger Bacon, as well as the theorist known as ‘Anonymus 4’ (so called by Coussemaker), Hieronymus of Moravia, and, at a later date, Johann von Jenzenstein. Some of the greatest theorists of the day visited Paris: Johannes de Garlandia, Johannes de Grocheio and Johannes de Muris. Jean Gerson, who succeeded Pierre d’Ailly as chancellor of the university in 1395, was also a canon of Notre-Dame. A manual for choirboys dating from 1408 has been attributed to him: it prescribes the teaching of plainchant, counterpoint, and some ‘déchants honnêtes’ (inoffensive secular songs), but forbids the singing of bawdy songs. A miniature in a manuscript from Valenciennes shows him surrounded by his students. At this period the university cantor and organist was Guillaume le Bourgoing and the maître de chant was Jean Comitis, former maître des enfants de choeur at Notre-Dame. The university lecturers of Paris were thus able to devote time to the practice as well as the theory of music. In the city, some specialist teachers were beginning to teach secular music as early as the 14th century: Jehan Vaillant is said to have ‘kept a school of music in Paris’.
Minstrels and instrumentalists had evolved their own system of musical training within the profession. In Paris, under Charles VI, Guillebert of Metz noted the presence of ‘escoles de ménestrels’ in the rue des Jugléeurs. In the 14th and 15th centuries the northern regions of France had a custom of holding annual gatherings (‘escolles’) during Lent, for the purpose of exchanging professional information, for example about the making and playing of instruments, and new repertory. The most important gatherings seem to have been at Ypres [Ieper] (1313–1432), Beauvais (1398–1436), Cambrai (1427–40), Saint-Omer (1424–41), and in cities in the Low Countries (Bruges, Brussels, Mons). Elsewhere, we know only that the minstrels of Savoy usually met at Bourg-en-Bresse (1377–1407), and that Pedro III of Aragon used to send his minstrels ‘to the schools’ in France at the end of the 14th century. By the end of the following century, such customs had disappeared. However, there were links between certain minstrels’ guilds and the ecclesiastical chapters: one of these confraternities had its headquarters in the church of Notre Dame-la-Grande in Valenciennes from the 13th century. In 1402 the minstrels of Fécamp were granted a charter allowing them to participate in monastic chant at certain times; in 1465 the minstrel guild of Amiens received permission to use a chapel in the cathedral as its headquarters; and after 1492 the ménétriers of Toulouse had their own chapel in the church of the Carmelite convent.
After the period described (inaccurately) as ‘Franco-Flemish’, music written in France lost much of the supremacy it had maintained in Europe since the 13th century, and the western European countries seem to have concentrated more on their individual repertories. In France itself there was a tendency to neglect the legacy of Josquin des Prez in favour of the Parisian Chanson and other music accessible to a wider public, while the mass and the motet showed the effect of secular influence, at least until the work of Lassus became dominant. Closer contact between poets and composers led to a refinement of the rules regulating the relationship between the two arts during the Pléiade period. However, Italian influence was the most striking feature of the century in France, as in most other parts of Europe. The madrigal had a crucial influence on the evolution of polyphonic song, particularly towards the end of the century, while the many Italian musicians active in France included the Mantuan Alberto da Ripa at the court of François I, Francesco de Layolle in Lyons (the centre of what was virtually a colony of Florentine emigrés) and Balthasar de Beaujoyeux and other violinists at the courts of Charles IX and Henri III.
When François I established Paris as the undisputed political and cultural capital of the country, the need seems to have arisen for the first time to create some kind of national tradition. The anonymous author of L’art, science et pratique de plaine musique (Lyons, 1557) referred to Charlemagne, describing him as anxious ‘to teach the French people the very devout art and science of singing well’, and mentioned Robert ‘the Pious’, Gregory the Great and Charles ‘the Bold’ as composers thanks to whom ‘music is now the ornament of the chapels of princes and the diversion of high and noble courts … now prospering in many provinces’. Baïf’s Académie de Poésie et de Musique had Charles IX as its ‘protecteur et premier auditeur’ and according to its statutes its purpose was to serve ‘the growth of our State and the adornment of the name of the French people’.
(i) The Chapelle Royale and the princely chapels.
(ii) The Reformation and religious conflicts.
(iii) The university, the académies, the salons and guilds.
France, §I, 2: Art music: The Burgundian court
François I (1515–47) made his court an instrument of power marked by a new tendency towards centralization. Although Louis XII had composers such as Mouton, Divitis and Sermisy in his chapel, on his death the chambre consisted of only a handful of instrumentalists. Towards the middle of the 1520s the new king set up his chapelle de musique, reserved for great occasions and in the charge of a maître (Cardinal de Tournon), while its musical direction was entrusted to one and then to two sous-maîtres (Sermisy and Jean-Loys Hérault de Servissas in 1547). At the end of the reign a composeur (Pierre Sandrin) was added. François I introduced French violinists into the écurie to perform alongside the mainly Italian trumpeters, sackbut players and oboists and the Swiss fife and drum players. About 1526 he also founded a chapelle de plain-chant to provide music for the daily offices at court, directed by a maître et surintendant. The major development after 1530 was in the music of the chambre: this body of singers, lutenists and organists steadily grew in numbers, and on the king’s death in 1547 it had some 25 members.
François I’s successors retained the administrative framework he had created. Henri II (1547–59) recruited both Jacques Arcadelt and Janequin, making the latter compositeur ordinaire in his old age, but Charles IX (1560–74) took the greatest personal interest in music, giving his patronage to Baïf’s Académie and showing particular appreciation of the works of Lassus, whom he attempted to bring to his court, and of the ‘chromatic music’ of Nicola Vicentino. Charles also had motets by Jean Maillard and the Proverbes de Salomon of his maître de chapelle Nicolas Millot dedicated to him.
Under François I a kind of royal liturgy had developed around such texts such as Domine salvum fac regem, sung at the king’s coronation as early as 1223 and now serving as an official symbol of loyalty to the sovereign. Jean Mouton, who had earlier celebrated the birth of Louis XII’s daughter Renée in 1510 with a Non nobis Domine, composed a four-part work on this text, possibly for the coronation of François I, while his motet Exalta regina Galliae was in effect a celebration of the king’s victory at Marignan. Two other composers, Jean Maillard (1552) and Guillaume Costeley (1570), subsequently wrote music on the Domine salvum text, although we do not know for what occasions. Music was also composed for peace celebrations, royal births and weddings, both by ‘official’ composers such as Sermisy and by others whose links with the court are more obscure.
François I used his musicians to display his power: they were present at all events involving the royal family and accompanied him on his travels, as when he went to Bologna to meet Pope Leo X in 1515, at his meeting with Henry VIII at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, and at the negotiations for the Treaty of Nice in 1538.
Many princes and cardinals followed the example of the court and maintained their own chapels. Composers such as Valentin Bakfark and Simon Joly enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal François de Tournon, administrative head of the Chapelle Royale; François de Clermont, cardinal of Auch, employed Jean Lhéritier as his maître de chapelle after attracting Janequin to Auch Cathedral for a time; the Cardinal of Ferrara, Ippolito d’Este, appointed Pierre Sandrin as his maître de chapelle; Jean, Cardinal of Lorraine, and his nephew François de Guise both had well-equipped chapels; Count Guy de Bourbon, King of Navarre, employed the organist Nicolas de La Grotte, who subsequently pursued a career at court; and François, Duke of Anjou, King Henri III’s brother, engaged Claude Le Jeune as his maître de chapelle. Although Lorraine was not part of the kingdom at that time, it was governed by music-loving dukes, notably Duke Charles III (1545–1608), to whom Fabrice Marin Caietain and Paschal de L’Estocart dedicated works.
France, §I, 2: Art music: The Burgundian court
Religious conflicts played a major part both in modifying certain features of musical life and in developing the style and forms (chansons spirituelles and canticles) of the ecclesiastical repertory. Until the middle of the 16th century the relative tolerance of the government allowed many Calvinist communities to develop, and psalm singing became a driving force in their struggle for freedom of worship (see Psalms, metrical, §II, 2). In 1551 groups of Calvinists began to go around Lyons singing psalms and abusing the Catholic clergy; psalms were sung publicly at the Pré aux Clercs in Paris in 1558; the following year in Bourges ‘the said psalms [were sung] with much melody by large companies every evening’, and the same thing happened in Béziers in 1561. The fashion for Protestant melodies from Strasbourg and Geneva was reinforced when such officially appointed musicians as Pierre Certon and Janequin made four-part settings of them, and it continued up to 1562, when the 150 psalms translated by Marot and Théodore de Bèze were distributed. The rift between the religious parties culminated that year in the destruction of many organs (at Le Mans, Rouen, Caen, Angoulême, etc.) regarded by Protestants as papist symbols. In the ensuing religious wars two of the leading composers of the time lost their lives: Claude Goudimel died in the St Bartholomew’s Day massacres at Lyons in 1572, and Antoine de Bertrand was killed by Protestants at Toulouse in 1581. Claude Le Jeune only just escaped the Catholic League in Paris and took refuge in La Rochelle before becoming compositeur ordinaire to King Henri IV. After abjuring Protestantism in 1593, the king promulgated the Edict of Nantes (1598), which allowed Protestants freedom of worship in certain areas.
France, §I, 2: Art music: The Burgundian court
The university had largely ignored stylistic developments in music and had lost much of its influence. Janequin and Goudimel studied there for a while; Oronce Finé, a professor at the university, published a lute manual; and Jean Pena and Pierre Forcadel edited the musical writings of Euclid, which were published in 1557 and 1565. However, there was no original thinking on music theory: the only treatises published at this time (by Menehou, Guilliaud and Yssandon) were short, elementary manuals. Musicians with an interest in the practice of their art turned instead to more progressive centres. Chief among them was the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, founded in 1570 by Joachim Thibault de Courville and Jean-Antoine de Baïf with the purpose of restoring ‘the measure and rules of music as formerly employed by the Greeks and Romans’; one of its aims was to make the Académie a ‘school to serve as a nursery from which poets and musicians will one day come’, and where ‘musique mesurée à l’antique’ was taught (see Vers mesurés). Meetings were held every Sunday in Baïf’s house in the rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor on the left bank of the Seine. The music performed was secret to all but members of the Académie, and copying or communicating the works played at meetings was forbidden. The Parlement of Paris, with the support of the university, tried to oppose the registration of the letters patent on which the Académie was founded, but Charles IX overruled them. It is probable that while Lassus was in Paris he attended one of the meetings, for in a letter to Charles IX of August 1571 Baïf mentioned the ‘notable personages, both French and foreign’ received by the Académie. Hoping to convince the artistic world of the value of musique mesurée, Baïf had also planned to organize a meeting of all the musicians in Christendom to test the emotional effects of the works thus created. Under Henri III this first academy was followed by another, the Académie du Palais, directed by Guy du Faur de Pibrac, with its headquarters at the Louvre between 1576 and 1579. After the death of Courville in 1581 Baïf’s colleagues were Jacques du Faur and Claude Le Jeune, and later Jacques Mauduit, who in 1585 composed a requiem mass for the funeral of Ronsard.
Music was still taught in charitable institutions such as that founded in about 1578 by the apothecary Nicolas Houel: a drawing of 1583 shows a viol quartet practising in his Maison de Charité Chrétienne. A new feature of this period was the emergence of ‘salons’ where intellectuals met to discuss poetry, music and art. Nicolas Le Gendre, Sieur de Villeroy, welcomed the poet Desportes and the musicians Certon and Denis Caignet into his house. Among the most influential salons was that of Catherine de Clermont, Duchess of Retz and a lady at court, who herself played the lute. Among the many writers and musicians she received were Baïf, Belleau, Tyard, Costeley and Le Roy.
This was the time when confraternities of Penitents were founded, under the influence of the Counter-Reformation. Music played an essential part in their activities, particularly during large-scale processions. Most of them were located in cities in the south of France such as Toulouse, Marseilles and Aix. The Confrérie Sainte-Cécile was founded at the Augustinian monastery in Paris in May 1575; a surintendant and four maîtres, elected by their colleagues, made annual awards for ‘new motets or other worthy canticles’. Although its statutes have been preserved, we know nothing about its activities except that it probably took part in the procession of Penitents attended by Henri III in 1583. Much more is known about the Confrérie Sainte-Cécile founded at Evreux in 1570 by 21 citizens and the confraternity’s first maître. From 1575 it organised a ‘puy or council of music’ to award distinctions annually to the best compositions, which were then performed by the maîtrise of the cathedral. The names of musicians who received these awards up to 1589 include some of the greatest composers of the time: Lassus, Eustache Du Caurroy, Mauduit, Fabrice Marin Caietain, Paschal de L’Estocart and George de La Hèle. Another Confrérie Sainte-Cécile was founded at the church of St Pierre in Caen in 1564, but nothing is known of its activities.
France, §I, 2: Art music: The Burgundian court
Music publishing began almost simultaneously in Lyons and Paris in 1528, with the Contrapunctus issued by Etienne Gueynard in Lyons and the Chansons nouvelles published by Pierre Attaingnant in Paris. It is possible that another Lyons printer (? Antoine Du Ry) had published woodcut engravings of a collection of motets by Layolle in about 1525; only one of the parts has been preserved. However, Attaingnant was the first to use the method of single-impression printing, also adopted by Jacques Moderne in Lyons in 1532. Attaingnant obtained a royal privilege in 1529, renewed in 1531, and in 1537 was describing himself as ‘imprimeur et libraire du roy en musique’. By 1552 he had published over 150 collections of sacred and secular polyphonic, vocal, and instrumental music. In Lyons, Moderne published some 50 musical works between 1532 and 1557, sometimes pirated from his Parisian rival, but in the mainstream of the cosmopolitan repertory. There were other less prolific publishers in Lyons, such as the Beringen brothers, Robert Granjon and Simon Gorlier. In Paris the leading publisher in the middle of the century was Nicolas Du Chemin, who issued about 100 collections of music between 1549 and 1576, including nearly 700 chansons, among them the first settings of Ronsard’s Amours. Finally, the most important publishers of the second part of the century were Adrian Le Roy, himself a lutenist and composer, and his partner and cousin Robert Ballard, the founder of a dynasty of music publishers. They produced over 300 music books of all kinds, and held privileges reviewed every 10 years, as well as bearing the title of ‘printers to the king’. Their dedications to the Queen Mother, the King and the Duke of Orléans confirm their close relationship with the court and with officially recognized poets such as Ronsard, Dorat and Baïf.
The rise of music publishing made for wider distribution of musical works and gave composers the opportunity to extend their reputations. Printing in itself offered them professional openings: in Paris, Du Chemin engaged Claude Goudimel, Nicole Regnes and Loys Bisson as ‘correcteurs’ and in Lyons Moderne employed Francesco Layolle and probably Pierre de Villiers. While giving preference to composers already recognized by the public (Janequin, Arcadelt and subsequently Lassus), publishers also made contact with provincial maîtres de chapelle such as Cadéac (in Auch), Le Heurteur (Tours) and Cléreau (Toul). Le Roy & Ballard took advantage of visits to Paris by foreign composers (notably Alfonso Ferrabosco and Alessandro Striggio), and ‘discovered’ the Toulouse composer Antoine de Bertrand. It was to Le Roy & Ballard that the Confrérie Sainte-Cécile at Evreux turned to provide advertising material for their annual puy competition, a connection that enabled the publishers, in their turn, to find new composers of talent. A new power in music was thus consolidated in Paris, while at the end of the century music publishing in Lyons was in decline.
France, §I, 2: Art music: The Burgundian court
Instrument making grew and flourished at this period, encouraged not only by the rise of professional instrumentalists’ associations organized by the Confrérie Saint-Julien, which had been founded in the rue St-Martin in 1328. The main centres of instrument making were Lyons and, above all, Paris. There seem to have been spinet and clavichord builders (H. de l’Oeuvre) and flute makers (Claude Rafi) in Lyons earlier than lute and violin makers, of whom there were about 40 in the second half of the century, some of German or Italian origin. The outstanding figure was the lute maker Garspard Duiffoprucgar (Tieffenbrucker) from Bavaria, who was active from 1553 to 1571. In Paris there were at least 70 instrument makers in the second half of the century; this figure does not include organ builders, some of whom called themselves ‘master spinet makers’. Several, including the organ builders Antoine Dargillières and Francisque des Olliviers, the spinet makers Jean Potin, Médéric Lorillard and Jacques Le Breton, and the lute maker Pierre Aubry bore the title facteur du roi. The story that Charles IX ordered 24 violins from Andrea Amati is a legend of 18th-century origin. The instrument makers of Paris also imported flutes, guitars and lutes from Lyons, lutes from Germany and violins, lutes and cornetts from Padua, Venice and Brescia. François Richomme, one of the king’s violinists, played a violin made in Cremona, valued on his death at 90 livres. In the second half of the century some makers were also producing violins ‘after the fashion of Cremona’, cornetts ‘after the fashion of Venice’ and so on. Demand seems to have been high: in 1575 Gervais Rebans acepted an order for 200 lutes, and when Claude Denis died in 187 there were over 600 instruments in his workshop. Several dynasties of intrument makers were found in the latter part of the 16th century, including the Denis, Hardel, Hurel and Jacquet families. In 1599 letters-patent were granted to the corporation of ‘faiseurs d’instruments’, defining the conditions for practising their trade.
The territorial unity sought by the kings of France was accompanied by a desire for political, administrative and cultural centralism in which music played an important part. Louis XIII and, after 1661, Louis XIV insisted on the presence of their leading subjects at court, where a whole ritual was designed to reinforce royal power. Over the decades an ever wider gap opened up between provincial centres and the court, particularly when musical genres such as opera and the grand motet became fashionable and required large numbers of performers. Versailles and Paris inevitably attracted the finest musical talents in the kingdom, who were summoned to participate in the development of national art. The artistic vitality of the provinces suffered in proportion: the maîtrises in particular had increasing difficulty in attracting qualified maîtres de chapelle, and by the beginning of the 18th century were in a state of decline. Composers who did not secure a post in the capital remained of marginal importance in French musical life.
The French church preserved a considerable degree of independence from the authority of Rome. The Council of Trent was not accepted in France until 1615, and even then not by the king or the Parlement but only by the assembly of clergy, after much resistance from the Gallican parties. A Gallican liturgy was introduced, and the Harlay breviary of 1680 even omitted the reference ad usum romanum; a neo-Latin form of poetry emerged, and was used by the composers of motets (see also Neo-Gallican chant).
The relatively isolated position of French music was partly mitigated by Italian influence. The Italian model is mentioned in the first privilege granted to the French opera, and while Louis XIV and Lully discouraged court musicians from going to Italy to study, Italian influence could be discerned in the work of most French composers, although some, like François Couperin, claimed to have adopted the style of the goûts réunis. There was constant comparison of the respective merits of Italian and French music in the successive querelles that marked musical life from the middle of the 17th century until the time of Gluck. Finally, when the most acute phase of absolutism ended around 1750, Paris became an increasingly cosmopolitan European centre, eventually succeeding Mannheim as the primary centre of symphonic music in the continent.
Versailles had already lost its dominant position under Louis XV, and Paris now became the best place in France to observe the rapid growth of ideas and the evolution of taste. Most of the philosophers of the Enlightenment incorporated music in their thinking, and Sauveur, Rameau, d’Alembert, Diderot and the Encyclopedists made original contributions to European musical theory and aesthetics of music.
(ii) Opera: an affair of state.
(iv) Musical life in the provinces.
France, §I, 3: Art music: The 16th century
Under Louis XIII, the musique du roi was divided into the chapelle (directed by two surintendants), the chambre and the écurie, but there was also a smaller independent ensemble, the musique du cabinet, consisting of 12 violins. The posts of these musicians were subject to purchase or reversion, or were in the gift of the king. Musicians were permitted to hold more than one office: around 1650 François Richard was lute master to the children of the chapelle, lutenist in the chambre, composer to the chambre and lutenist to the queen, while in 1714 Lalande held the posts of sous-maître of the chapelle, composer, surintendant and sous-maître of the chambre. Within the chambre, one ensemble acquired particular importance: the 24 Violons du Roi, founded in 1614. It later became the Grande Bande, and was disbanded in 1761. These separate ensembles within the musique du roi combined for performances on major religious occasions and a weddings and funerals.
The young Louis XIV was taught the lute, the harpsichord and the guitar from an early age, but his greatest interest was dancing (fig.8) and he created the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661, shortly before the inauguration of the Académie Royale de Musique. For the latter he held competitions to fill what he regarded as the most important posts. The first such competition, in 1663, enabled him to appoint two sous-maîtres to the chapelle, Henry Du Mont and Pierre Robert. Twice the king himself was the sole judge in the contest to appoint his organists: in 1678, when there was a competition for four organists’ posts in the chapelle, and again in 1693, when he listened to seven organists before deciding to appoint Couperin. The most spectacular competition, for four sous-maîtres to the chapelle, occurred in 1683, when the king invited the bishops of France to summon the maîtres de musique of their cathedrals to Versailles to perform motets of their own composition. 35 candidates presented themselves, with the four appointments eventually going to Goupillet, Collasse, Minoret and Michel-Richard de Lalande, the last of whom was Louis’s personal choice. In 1714, after the others had resigned, Lalande assumed all four posts.
In 1686 Mme de Maintenon founded the Maison Royale St-Louis for the education of girls of noble birth at Saint-Cyr. Nivers was organist and singing master there until his death in 1714 and he, Moreau and Louis-Nicolas Clérambault provided numerous motets for the school’s repertory. Celebrations of the Office of the Assumption and Tenebrae services in Holy Week attracted an audience to Saint-Cyr, as well as to the Abbey of Longchamp and other monastic establishments.
Under the regency and the last two kings before the Revolution the musique du roi lost its dominant position in musical life. Louis XV preferred the pastoral simplicities of Rousseau’s Le devin du village to motets, which were now performed at the Concert Spirituel, while his daughters were interested mainly in instrumental music. There was an atmosphere of chicanery in the chapelle du roi after the end of the regency (1723) until 1760, with much wrangling between the surintendants and maîtres of the chambre, particularly over the performance of settings of the Te Deum. In 1761, for financial reasons, Louis XV once again amalgamated the musicians of the chambre and the chapelle into a single ensemble. The only subsequent innovation of note occurred in 1784, with the foundation of the Ecole de Chant des Menus Plaisirs, directed by Gossec, to train singers for the king’s service. Earlier, in 1778, Mozart had assessed the situation accurately when, on being offered a post as organist at Versailles, he remarked: ‘Anyone who enters the king’s service is forgotten in Paris.’
France, §I, 3: Art music: The 16th century
French opera was created in a manner that would weigh heavily on the musical life of the country. After Mazarin’s disastrous attempt to introduce Italian opera with Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo (1647), the creation of a distinctive indigenous opera seems to have become a kind of national duty. Louis XIV put a ban on foreign musicians; in 1666 Cavalli returned to Italy and the Italian musicians in the cabinet were dismissed. In 1683 Henry Desmarets asked the king’s permission to visit Italy and perfect his art; his request was initially granted, but Lully then persuaded the king to revoke his decision, arguing that the composer would lose his taste for French music. The poet and librettist Pierre Perrin had wished for the foundation of an Académie de Poésie et de Musique, and suggested it to Colbert in 1667. According to Charles Perrault’s Mémoires, Colbert himself would have preferred ‘to leave everyone free to compose operas’, but in 1669 Perrin obtained a privilege to set up academies ‘in our good city of Paris, and other cities of our realm’, the privilege to run for a period of 12 years. When Perrin found himself in difficulties, Lully bought the privilege from him in 1672; this time the wording of the document referred only to Paris, adding merely that Lully might found schools of music ‘wherever he may judge it necessary’. The following year he also obtained an order preventing actors from using more than two voices and six violins in their plays. While the purpose of the other academies created by royal decree (the Académie Française and the academies of painting and architecture) was to formulate theories of their arts and serve as centres for debate the sole objective of the Académie Royale de Musique (and the Académie Royale de Danse) was to stage the works of Lully. In 1684 Louis XIV issued letters-patent making it clear that Lully’s monopoly was valid ‘throughout the whole extent of the realm’, and not only for himself but for his heirs. Actors had already been forbidden to make use of ‘outside’ musicians. Lully defended his rights tenaciously, and even brought a lawsuit against the Les Bamboches marionnette company in 1677.
None of the stage entrepreneurs to whom Lully ceded his rights (for large sums of money) was able to exploit them for long. These licensees included Gautier’s company in and around Marseilles after 1685 and companies in Lyons after 1688, in Rennes in 1689 and in Lille in 1695. Most such ventures ended in bankruptcy. Louis XIV’s decision, which had no parallel in other countries, contributed to the crushing of all initiative in the French provinces.
In Paris, the company of Italian actors performing at the Palais Royal respected the rules imposed by Lully on the number of musicians permitted in vaudevilles and parodies of operas. When they were dismissed in 1697 their tradition was continued by the Foire St-Germain and the Foire St-Laurent, which encountered opposition from the Comédie-Française in defence of its own monopoly. The Opéra-Comique, founded in 1715, was granted a royal privilege in 1721 and became very popular, even among the nobility. However, it experienced many financial and legal difficulties, and in 1762 it merged with the Comédie-Italienne; the members of the company had the title of comédiens du roi. Touring companies began travelling the provinces with a lighter repertory than that of the Opéra, but their existence was precarious. An ever-increasing gulf separated the court and the capital from other French cities, where only ritual performances of the Te Deum or grand funerals provided occasional reminders of royal power.
While the Concert Spirituel and other concert organizations were open to Italian and German repertory, the Académie Royale remained a French bastion devoted to the operas of Lully, Rameau and their successors. According to Bachaumont’s Mémoires, written in the 1770s, during the period of Gluck’s phenomenal success at the Opéra its directors showed ‘little curiosity about foreign music, fearing it would be detrimental to their own’.
France, §I, 3: Art music: The 16th century
The idea of concerts organized for the sole purpose of listening to music became widespread in Paris in the first half of the 17th century. Mersenne mentioned concerts given by Maugars, Lazarin, Robert Ballard (ii) and Dubuisson, and for the period before 1650 the concerts spirituels of Pierre de La Barre (iii) which were attended by the nobility. The ‘Assemblée des honnestes curieux’ organised twice a week by Chambonnières seems to have existed from 1640 to 1655. In the next generation many musicians gave concerts in their own homes, including the lutenist Jacques Gallot, the guitarist Médard, the viol players Sainte-Colombe, father and son (and the elder Sainte-Colombe’s daughters), and Antoine Forqueray.
Many musical fêtes were also held in and around the capital. At the end of the 17th century lovers of Italian music could attend the church of St-André-des-Arts, where the priest, Nicolas Mathieu, introduced them to the trios of Corelli. Among those who attended was Charpentier, who was to direct the music of Mlle de Guise.
The most important concert organization in the 18th century was the Concert Spirituel, founded by Anne Danican Philidor, who obtained a privilege in 1725 allowing him to put on ‘public concerts of sacred music’, although only on days when the Académie Royale de Musique was closed, on condition that ‘no French music nor extracts from operas be sung’. From late 1727 Philidor was allowed to add French music to his repertory. By the time of the Revolution the Concert Spirituel had given nearly 1300 concerts, including music by over 450 composers, first in the Salon des Suisses and then in the Salon des Machines in the Tuileries, made available by the king. The directors of the Concert Spirituel included Mouret, Dauvergne, Gaviniès and Leduc (whose directorship marked perhaps the organization’s most brilliant period), and Joseph Legros. The repertory comprised contemporary French works as well as works by Pergolesi (whose Stabat mater was always popular), J.C. Bach, Haydn, Sacchini and Piccinni. Mozart composed his Paris Symphony for the Concert Spirituel in 1778, and many foreign virtuosos, particularly from Germany and Italy, performed there.
During the 18th century there were many other concert series, including those organized by the financier Crozat from 1713 to 1724, by the fermier-général Le Riche de La Pouplinière from 1731 to 1761 and directed for over 20 years by Rameau, and by the Société Académique des Enfants d’Apollon from 1741. Other concert organizations included the Ecole Gratuite de Dessin, founded by the painter Bachelier (1770); the concerts of Baron de Bagge, a composer and amateur violinist, who was said to pay to have pupils; Mme Filippo Ruge’s Italian concerts (1756–7); and the Concert des Amateurs (1769–81), which commissioned a series of six symphonies from Haydn (1785–6). Among the members of the nobility who maintained sizable musical ensembles were the Prince de Carignan, the Prince de Rohan, the Comte de Clermont and the Prince de Conti, who took on some of La Pouplinière’s musicians after 1762. This intensive musical activity also led to the publication of specialist journals – the Journal de musique (1770–77) and the Almanach musical (1775–83) – from which we know that at this period Paris had over 350 music teachers and over 100 organists.
France, §I, 3: Art music: The 16th century
Many maîtres de chapelle dreamed of a career that would eventually take them to Paris or the Chapelle Royale; one such was Julien Louin, an organist of Nantes, who was granted leave of absence by his chapter in 1685 to go to the capital and ‘learn the new modes’. The king also reserved the right for his emissaries ‘to take from churches, cathedrals and elsewhere, in those places through which they pass, the finest voices and the best singers they may find and make them part of their company’ (Du Peyrat, 1645). The competitors in the puy of Caen in 1671 were urged to imitate ‘the music books of the masters of the king’s chapel as best they can’.
Among the public promoters of musical activities were the provincial Etats or local government bodies, who needed musicians to enhance the pomp of their meetings. They included the Etats of Brittany (Lully’s Atys was performed at Rennes in 1689) and of Burgundy (the Prince de Condé invited Mozart to Dijon in 1766), but the grandest were the Etats of the Languedoc in the 17th century, when Etienne Moulinié was director of music. While the puy of Evreux continued in existence, the chapter of Saintes organised a composition prize in 1628; a puy was founded in celebration of St Cecilia at Le Mans, and in 1672 a prize was set up to continue the tradition of the Confrérie Sainte-Cécile. In some towns the citizens themselves founded musical organizations: at Toulouse, whose oboe bands were famous throughout the region, a Société des Lanternistes gave concerts from 1640 onwards, and Troyes had an ‘académie’ founded in 1647 at the Hôtel-Dieu St-Bernard. After the foundation of the Académie Royale de Musique, very few people were ready to license rights from Lully and his successors and venture into the production of opera, although the licence rights obtained in 1684 by the organist Pierre Gautier (ii) ran for six years at Marseilles and in Provence, and his company performed five operas by Lully at Marseilles, Aix, Toulon, Avignon and Montpellier. In 1688 a three-year concession was granted in Rouen, and several operas by Lully were also staged in following years. In Lyons, the companies of Joseph Dupuis and Jean-Pierre Leguay (1701) exploited their privilege in the region, but not without difficulty. However, most such ventures encountered problems with venues, recruiting and finance, and ended in bankruptcy.
Provincial institutions of greater stability appeared during the first years of the 18th century, mainly in the south of the country; these were the académies, founded with the permission and patronage of the regional governor or administrator, by groups of prominent citizens; their aim was the organization of regular concerts in which amateurs could also take part. The first académies were at Bordeaux (1707), Lyons (1713), Arles (1715), Marseilles (1717), Pau (1718), Aix-en-Provence (1719), Carpentras (1719), La Rochelle (1719) and Montpellier (1719). By 1738 some 30 such académies had been set up in the provinces, but there were frequent interruptions to their subsequent activities. A distinction must also be drawn between genuine académies, with statutes agreed by the authorities, and ordinary concerts, which required only simple permission. However, while the Duke de Richelieu declared at Montpellier in 1752 that the académie was ‘a thing both useful and agreeable to society’, a request to open an académie in Caen in 1759 was refused because it might ‘distract the citizens from the care of their business’. In 1747, when the members of the Grenoble académie asked permission to use a public building in the city for their concerts, the municipal authorities replied that they could not make 99% of the citizens support such an expense for the pleasure of a mere 1%.
However, the académies, which were suppressed by the Revolutionary government in 1793, played a considerable part in musical life, and some of their orchestras were conducted by talented composers, although attempts to involve amateur musicians usually failed. Consequently it was felt, for instance in Bordeaux in 1779 and Lille in 1785, that musical education should be provided, at least for the young. When the Mozart family stayed at Dijon in 1766, Leopold severely criticized the musicians he found there as ‘detestable … wretched … asini tutti’. In 1776 a Parisian singing master called Vaudémont advertised his speciality as training ‘pupils for dramatic performances and provincial companies’.
The programmes of the Concert Spirituel, particularly under the directorship of Antoine Dauvergne (1762–73), testify to the creative vitality that still existed in some provincial maîtrises: a dozen maîtres from Dijon, Auch, Reims, Orléans, Coutances and Nîmes performed motets, while performances were given of a symphony by Franz Beck of Bordeaux and organ pieces by Philippe Valois of Toulouse. After 1775, however, when the fashion for grands motets had passed, the provinces made almost no contribution to concert programmes. During the 17th century some 25% of the country’s composers had come from maîtrises, but in the 18th century the figure fell to less than 10%.
France, §I, 3: Art music: The 16th century
After 1607 Pierre Ballard described himself as ‘seul imprimeur du roy pour la musique’. Having distributed the air de cour in all its forms early in the century, he and his successors then gave priority to collections of chansons pour danser and chansons pour boire (20 books, 1627–61), chansonnettes (20 books, 1675–94) and airs à deux parties (37 books, 1658–94). Sometimes the Ballards received an ‘express command’ from the king to publish motets for the chapelle, but they took advantage of their privileged position chiefly to publish the works of Lully, from Bellérophon (1679) until 1720. After the composer’s death his heirs tried to dispense with their services and had several operas engraved by Henri de Baussen, but they eventually had to cede the whole body of Lully’s work to the Ballards. From the middle of the 17th century there was increasing resentment of their privilege among musicians, and lawsuits were brought against them by Métru and Sanlecque. The Ballards now had to face strong competition from copyists who, like Henri Foucault, traded in manuscript scores, and from Estienne Roger of Amsterdam, who was distributing ‘pirated’ works throughout Europe. Above all, their monopoly was challenged after about 1660 by Parisian authors and printers who had given up the use of movable type in favour of the copperplate engraving process, particularly for the instrumental music (including major works by Marais, Gaultier, Chambonnières and Louis Couperin) neglected by the Ballards. Many composers deposited their works with music shops such as those of the Boivins and Leclercs. In 1738 Charles-Nicolas Leclerc became a music publisher himself, and after 1750 there was a considerable increase in the publication of engraved music. The new publishers were either musicians such as Bailleux, Imbault and Sieber, instrument makers such as Cousineau, Naderman and Pleyel, engravers such as Hue and Vendôme, or full-time music publishers (Boyer, La Chevardière, the Erard sisters). Paris became the main European centre of music publishing, and many foreign composers entrusted their works (particularly their instrumental music) to French publishers, attracted by the high quality of engraving and the publicity they were given by the concert organizations. There were over 150 engravers working in Paris during the 18th century. In a single year (1775), for instance, 250 musical works were published. Theoretical treatises and teaching manuals appeared increasingly after 1750, with high print runs, and this trend culminated in a corpus conceived by the Conservatoire in 1794 as the basis for music teaching. Outside Paris the only music publishing of any importance was in Lyons, where the outstanding figures were J.A. Castaud and C.G. Guera.
France, §I, 3: Art music: The 16th century
The development of instrument making can be traced from the statistics: Pierre (1893) gives the names of some 350 instrument makers in France for the 18th century alone, including 170 makers of string instruments. Although most of them lived in Paris, some worked in such large cities as Lyons, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Lille or, occasionally, in smaller towns such as La Couture Boussey (woodwind) and Mirecourt (violins).
The organ ‘in the manner of Titelouze’ was the standard instrument for a large part of France, and complementary Flemish influence was evident. After 1660 the French classical organ became predominant, in parallel with the flourishing contemporary school of organ composition, exemplified by the works of Couperin, Grigny, Louis Marchand and others. Long before the Revolution, however, the instrument had lost its vitality. In the 17th century Flemish influence initially dominated harpsichord making, but French makers, including the Denis, Jacquet and Desruisseaux families, soon developed their own distinctive instruments. In the 18th century, when some 60 makers were working in Paris alone, many devoted themselves to the restoration of instruments made by the Flemish Ruckers family, obtaining a clearer and less sustained sound because of the light casework, particularly in double-manual harpsichords. Hüllmandel praised the ‘extreme lightness’ of the keyboards made by the Blanchets, and the harpsichords of Pascal Taskin, with their famous jeu de buffle and genouillères (knee-levers) operating the registers. Although the most prized lutes still came from Padua and Bologna, Parisians makers such as Jean Desmoulins, maker to the king about 1630, also excelled. In violin making Italian models retained supremacy, but the early Parisian school emerged in the 18th century with such makers as Claude Pierray, Jacques Boquay and above all Louis Guersan. English viols were the instruments most prized at the beginning of the 18th century, before Michel Collichon, Guillaume Barbey and Nicolas Bertrand began making slimmer instruments with the addition of a seventh string.
Woodwind instruments were a French speciality, thanks to a dynasty founded by Jean Hotteterre, a native of the Norman village of La Couture Boussey. He had settled in Paris by 1632, and was followed by his son Martin and nephew Nicolas who were also virtuoso performers; their oboes, bassoons, musettes and flutes were admired in England and other parts of Europe. Another famous dynasty was the Tourte family of bow-makers, founded by Louis and continued by his son François, who is said to have been advised by Viotti. The pianoforte made its first appearance in France at the Concert Spirituel in 1768. Sébastien Erard was granted a privilege in 1785 to exploit a kind of pianoforte which had ‘been preferred to those made in England’. Throughout the 18th century the Académie des Sciences pronounced its verdict on new instruments and refinements to existing instruments.
In suppressing the maîtrises, académies and guilds, the Revolution caused more of an upheaval in traditional musical life than when it abjured the king and his court music. Far from giving priority to the musical education of the less privileged classes, it created a highly élitist and monopolistic institution in the Paris Conservatoire, while confirming strong support for the Opéra. With no sacred music worthy of the name, the provinces, apart from some large cities, experienced a long period of musical deprivation in the 19th century, for which military bands and Orphéon male-voice choral societies provided only limited compensation.
Talented composers competed for the Prix de Rome, awarded annually from 1803 onwards by the six members of the Académie des Beaux Arts, most of whom were Prix de Rome winners themselves, as were the professors of composition who had taught them at the Conservatoire. They were therefore well placed to have their works accepted by the Paris Opéra. While there was no official artistic policy, everything conspired to bar from the musical establishment any composers who had not followed this course. Gabriel Fauré, who had not won the Prix de Rome but who nonetheless became director of the Conservatoire, was a late exception who proved the rule.
The notion of ‘decentralization’, formed about 1829, was constantly invoked in the course of the century, but had no cultural, administrative or political support; all decisions had to pass through Paris. The state, which had concentrated all musical institutions in the capital for three centuries, was very slow to develop a sense of its educational responsibility for the rest of the country. After 1880 there was a movement to recognize art as a public service, but music remained the poor relation for a long time. When the Conseil Supérieur des Beaux-Arts was set up in 1875, it had 12 artists but only one musician. In 1883, when there were still only five subsidiaries of the Paris Conservatoire, and the state barely contributed to their budgets, Bourgault-Ducoudray was appointed to draw up a report on the reform of teaching in schools and conservatories, which led to the foundation of new institutions in the provinces. In the name of ‘artistic decentralization’, the Chamber of Deputies voted for a modest amount of aid for popular provincial concerts and for some open-air productions of opera in the south of the country.
France, §I, 4: Art music: The ‘grand siècle’ and its aftermath
Throughout the 19th century French governments allocated the main part of their musical budgets to the Paris opera houses: the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, and also, for limited periods, the Théâtre Italien and the Théâtre Lyrique. Although their management methods (ranging from direct administration to licensing) and conditions of contract changed a good deal over the period, this bias towards Parisian opera remained constant throughout all political régimes, which also exercised strict control over the unsubsidized theatres of Paris and the provinces.
When the theatres were granted complete freedom by the Revolutionary assembly in 1791, the droit des pauvres and censorship were abolished; they were reintroduced in 1794 after a period notable for its anarchy and its bankruptcies. Napoleon affirmed his will ‘to continue the unifying and national work of the academies and institutions of the ancien régime’, and set up a hierarchical management system controlled by privileges. By a decree of 1806 provincial theatres were divided into two categories: resident theatres and touring companies. Large cities were authorized to have two theatres: a main theatre for grand opera and another to perform the so-called ‘secondary’ repertory. This system continued under the Bourbon Restoration, but a ruling of 1824 made it clear that each city must be responsible for the financing of its own theatre. Under Louis-Philippe (1830–48), when the railway was beginning to make travel easier, there were many bankruptcies, and municipalities were reluctant to build new theatres (numbers fell from 361 in 1849 to 357 in 1918). There was a general demand for freedom of the theatre, finally granted by Napoleon III in 1864 (although censorship was retained). A period of some disorder followed, and most of the established companies faced crisis, unable to compete with the touring companies which monopolized the best performers and most successful repertories. From 1852 Montelli’s company toured the north of the country with Verdi’s Ernani. The company of the American Ullman, with Caroline Carvalho and V. Capoul, toured 23 towns in 1873 and 25 in 1880. Under the Third Republic, municipalities usually granted the directors of permanent companies a concession and a subsidy on certain conditions. The frequently incompetent directors had to resort to agents, who became intermediaries between artists and theatres, and whose intervention often led to a generally low standard of production. In 1880 royalties in the provinces were a quarter of the amount in Paris, where the state supported all the national theatres. However, there were some exceptions: Rouen staged 34 first French performances between 1835 and 1912 (including the first performance in France of Siegfried), and Marseilles gave 14 operatic premières between 1869 and 1902. Most of the time, however, such productions were confined to one-act opéras comiques, with music by local composers, and they were never revived in Paris.
France, §I, 4: Art music: The ‘grand siècle’ and its aftermath
While chamber music was played more or less everywhere in amateur circles and salons, for instance in Marseilles, Douai and Bagnères, Paris had a series of public chamber concerts, organized by Pierre Baillot between 1814 and 1840, at which an élite audience heard quartets by Beethoven, Boccherini, Haydn and Mozart. This series was followed by other concerts, such as those put on by Alard and Franchomme (1837–1870), Dancla (1838–70), Maurin and Chevillard (1852–70) and Armingaud (1856–68). Such chamber music concerts were rarer in the provinces. In the symphonic field, François Habeneck founded the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1828, by a decree of the minister for the arts, and the society was granted exclusive rights to the use of the Menus Plaisirs during the season.
The conditions imposed on concert performances were not favourable: while the obligation to pay a fee to the Académie Royale de Musique abolished in 1831, the ‘droit des pauvres’ was retained until the 20th century. The authorities did not want the number of concerts in Paris to increase, because they were felt to represent competition for the national theatres. Consequently, most of the concert societies were short-lived (the Athénée, 1829-35; the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts, 1830–33; the Société Philharmonique, 1822). Most of the provincial cities founded philharmonic societies, which consisted chiefly of amateurs and received varying amounts of support from the municipal authorities. They gave only a few concerts a year, mostly for charity. Throughout the century, however, these societies were the main source of performances of orchestral music in the provinces. The first of them were founded before the Parisian societies: at La Rochelle in 1815, Rennes in 1819 and Le Puy in 1820; local initiative led to the creation of the Grande Association Musicale de l’Ouest in 1835, uniting the musical resources of Niort, La Rochelle, Angoulême, Limoges and Poitiers, and to the founding in 1866 of the Association Musicale de l’Ouest, bringing Laval, Rennes and Le Mans together. However, towards the end of the century the philharmonic societies, now recruiting only professionals, had lost all their dynamism. In Paris, Jules Pasdeloup founded the Société des Jeunes Artistes (1853) and then the Concerts Populaires de Musique Classique (1861), at reduced prices (the first concert, in the Cirque Napoléon, had an audience of 6000), and with a new repertory. Following Pasdeloup’s example many cities created their own societies for popular concerts, among them Toulouse (1861), Nantes (1866), Marseilles (1871) and Lyons (1874). The Angers society (founded in 1877) was distinctive for the quality of its orchestra as well as for a greater emphasis on modern repertory. In 1878 the state granted subsidies to Pasdeloup, and on a smaller scale to Edouard Colonne, who was continuing the custom of Sunday concerts, but not to any of the provincial societies. In Paris, Romain Bussine and Camille Saint-Saëns founded the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871. Under the banner of ‘Ars Gallica’ it was to contribute to the reinvigoration of the French school until, in its own turn, it became conservative, and the split caused by Maurice Ravel in 1909 led to the creation of the Société Musicale Indépendante.
France, §I, 4: Art music: The ‘grand siècle’ and its aftermath
The Revolutionary authorities were asked to respond to a universally acknowledged education, as many people saw France as being behind the times by comparison with neighbouring countries. The musical school of the National Guard, which had been directed by Bernard Sarrette, was transformed into the Institut National de Musique in 1793 and later became the Conservatoire, which he continued to direct from 1796 to 1816. The institution nearly disappeared at the time of the Restoration because of its Revolutionary origins, but eventually found stability, despite frequent criticism that it did not provide enough good voices for the national opera houses. An institution specializing in choral singing was founded by Alexandre Choron in 1820, the Ecole Royale et Spéciale de Chant, which became the Institution Royale de Musique Religieuse, but it fell victim to the 1830 revolution. But the rest of the country was still without a system of musical education. A plan devised by Sarrette in 1798 for the creation of a three-tier hierarchy of music schools in the départements was never realized. Some cities had already founded free civic music schools, for instance Dijon, with its Institut de Musique from 1794 to 1797, Douai in 1806, and Roubaix and Marseilles in 1820. The music school in Lille asked the ministry several times to grant it the status of a subsidiary of the Paris Conservatoire, but it remained a municipal school until 1826, when it was promoted to the status of subsidiary (‘succursales’) Conservatoire at the same time as the school of Toulouse. Two new subsidiaries were created in 1841 at Metz and Marseilles. In granting the title of Conservatoire, the state imposed a model on the municipalities but did not provide financial means, and consequently the rise in the number of such subsidiaries nationwide was very slow. The central authority regarded them as a means of discovering fine voices and good instrumentalists who could then be encouraged to pursue their careers in Paris, often with the aid of bursaries granted by their own cities, so that what appeared to be decentralization was only an instrument tending to reinforce centralization.
The movement launched in Paris by G.L.B. Wilhem for musical teaching and practice on a popular level was a far cry from this more or less élitist current. With the support of the Baron de Gérando and his Société pour l’Instruction Elémentaire, Wilhem devoted himself to bringing music teaching into the primary schools of the Paris area, using a set of simplified signs and tables known as the Wilhem Method. At a time when the humanitarian ideas of Lammenais, Saint-Simon and Fourier were spreading, and had been taken up first by Franz Liszt and soon afterwards by Félicien David, the authorities saw this movement chiefly as a means of keeping the working classes out of bars and improving the ‘coarseness’ of their habits. The Orphéon male-voice choir movement began in 1833; many such societies were founded throughout the country, and soon went beyond the choral realm, venturing into instrumental music with brass bands. Many Orphéon competitions were organized after the first was held at Troyes in 1849; an inventory of 1867 enumerates 3243 Orphéon societies, representing nearly 150,000 members, the largest being in the north and the next largest in the Bouches-du-Rhône, Seine and Rhône areas. Teaching methods, however, deteriorated, with Pierre Galin and his ‘méloplaste’ and the numerical method of Emile Chevé and Aimé Paris, and were much criticized. The quality of supervision, of the repertory and of interpretation became very mediocre, with the result that the movement became far removed from its initial idealism.
In the field of sacred music, the Ecole de Musique Classique et Religieuse was founded by imperial decree in 1853. It was directed by Louis de Niedermeyer, with state subsidies, and trained many organists and maîtres de chapelle who took up appointments in the provinces. After the separation of church and state, however, the subsidies ceased. In 1896 the opening of the Schola Cantorum by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d’Indy also marked a return to old traditions and the study of counterpoint, and the new institution was soon presenting itself as a rival to the Conservatoire.
France, §I, 4: Art music: The ‘grand siècle’ and its aftermath
It has been calculated that there were almost 1000 music publishers in France between 1820 and 1914, the great majority in Paris. However, most of them were small firms, specializing in music for café concerts and Orphéon societies, and issued few works. The most prosperous firms were those that published successful works whose popularity ensured that they would be arranged for amateurs, or would earn royalties, an aspect facilitated by the founding in 1850 of SACEM, the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique. A long period of litigation preceded the signing in 1886 of the Berne Convention, which finally assured the international protection of copyright.
The main publishing houses were the firms of Janet and Cotelle (1810–37), Richault (1816–66), Schlesinger (1821–46), Troupenas (1825–50), Escudier (1840–81), famous as Verdi’s publisher, and Brandus (1846–87), which acquired the lists of Schlesinger and Troupenas. The only relatively large provincial publisher was Benacci-Peschier in Lyons (1839–54). The first half of the century was the period of greatest prosperity in French music publishing; as the century progressed it confined itself almost exclusively to the national repertory, with such firms as those of Heugel (from 1839), Massenet’s publisher; G. Hartmann (1848–91), publisher of César Franck and his disciples; Leduc (from 1842) and Durand (from 1870). Until 1860 French commercial policy was protectionist, with high import duties (up to 29%) charged on foreign publications. In 1830 exports of printed music were three times higher than imports. However, in 1867 export figures were lower than import figures for the first time, and this trend continued, owing largely to German competition. This decline can be explained not only by the movement of excise policies towards free exchange but also by the modernization of printing techniques, bringing with it more competitive prices, and by the rise in importance of the Germanic repertory in French musical life. Between 1863 and 1896, French exports remained stationary, while German imports were on average 74% of the total. French publishers were never able to find an answer to this reversal of the previous trend, even during the First World War, when they tried in vain to come to a common agreement to replace the classic German editions.
France, §I, 4: Art music: The ‘grand siècle’ and its aftermath
French instrument making occupied an important position in 19th-century Europe, if only because of the technical progress made by Erard (with the double-action harp in 1810 and the double-escapement piano in 1822), and because of Adolphe Sax’s brass instruments. While France was chiefly exporting string instruments between 1800 and 1805, the piano soon became the major export: in 1827 Erard was employing 150 workers, and in 1830, when about 100 makers were working in Paris, pianos represented 61% of the instruments sold abroad. Patents and new inventions proliferated, mechanization was increased, and the government’s protectionist policies allowed exports to be ten times greater than imports. The country’s main customer at the time was the United States. The largest instrument makers even opened their own concert halls and sought the endorsement of famous artists (Liszt preferred Erard pianos, while Chopin favoured Pleyel instruments). After piano making, the greatest activity was in brass instruments and organ building.
The Second Empire was the golden age of French instrument making; organs and pianos were both manufactured on an industrial scale, while string instruments, woodwind and brass instruments continued to be made in small or medium-sized workshops. The five largest piano manufacturers were Erard, Pleyel, Pape, Herz and Kriegelstein, while makers of brass instruments (Gautrot, Thibouville, Buffet) benefited from the rise of military bands and Orphéon societies, which made Adolphe Sax’s fortune. Outside Paris woodwind instruments were still made at La Couture Boussey, and inexpensive string instruments at Mirecourt. England became the French makers’ principal customer at this period. World exhibitions acted as shop windows for local production, especially those of 1855 (with 243 exhibitors), 1878 (226 exhibitors), and of 1889 and 1900 in Paris. However, the trade agreements of the 1860s opened the way to foreign instruments; piano makers failed to modernize their equipment while the Germans and Americans were adopting new technology. The first workers’ strikes came in 1882. The trend was now entirely reversed, and after 1875 the most sought-after French instruments were strings and wind. After 1890 imports, particularly of pianos, rose steadily, and just as in music publishing Germany became the chief supplier (75%), particularly of Bechstein and Blüthner instruments. French instruments were no longer popular abroad except at the very top of the range.
The importance of the state in cultural and musical life was undoubtedly maintained more strongly in France than in any other country, although greater awareness of the problem sparked a movement towards more professionalism and a decline in amateur music. The 20th century saw the slow demise of traditional institutions such as the Institut and the Prix de Rome, which was ended in 1969, as well as a genuine stagnation in musical education and industries linked to musical life. The two World Wars marked a distinct watershed for these various areas.
The Third Republic continued to provide a moderate amount of support in the form of subsidies to the Opéra, directed for a long period (1914–45) by Jacques Rouché, whose personal fortune, made in the perfumery business, helped to compensate for its chronic financial deficit. Under the Front Populaire, in 1936, the Opéra was nationalized and the Opéra-Comique, facing bankruptcy, was amalgamated with it under the title of ‘Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux’, under the direction of Rouché. In the provinces, the opera houses maintained with difficulty by the municipalities continued to suffer as a result of competition from touring companies, and favoured productions of operetta in the hope of attracting a largely indifferent public.
Between the wars the musical life of Paris was as brilliant as ever, with the Ballets Russes, Ballets Suédois, and various spectacles supported by such patrons as Princesse Edmond de Polignac and Marie-Laure de Noailles, who held salons devoted to the avant-garde of contemporary aesthetics. In the orchestral field the four concert organizations gave rather routine programmes every Sunday: the concert societies were those of Pasdeloup (under Albert Wolff), Colonne (Gabriel Pierné), Lamoureux (Paul Paray), and the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (Philippe Gaubert and Piero Coppola). New works were played by other ensembles such as the Concerts Wiéner (1921–22), the Concerts Straram (1923–33), and the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (under Pierre Monteux, 1929–38). Some radio stations such as Radio-Paris also maintained their own orchestras, but they were not permanent ensembles. In 1934 the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française was formed; it was the first orchestra of this type, and was conducted by D.-E. Inghelbrecht. In 1975 it became the Orchestre National de France. In the provinces, although some large cities such as Marseilles, Lyons and Bordeaux maintained high standards of their own, the main musical events were visits by touring Parisian virtuosos. Most military bands had now ceased to exist, and the Orphéons were very much in decline.
Musical education was the area that experienced the greatest paralysis at this time, beginning with the conservatories. In Paris the scandal of the ‘Ravel Affair’ – the composer’s rejection by the Prix de Rome jury – brought the appointment of Fauré as director of the Conservatoire, and several decisions favouring a more open policy. In the provinces, several new subsidiary conservatories were founded (22 in 1930, as well as 21 Ecoles Nationales), but while the statutes initially provided for state funding of 33% that proportion was progressively reduced, becoming a merely nominal amount after 1930, despite protests. On the initiative of Edouard Herriot a ‘Commission de rénovation et de développement des études musicales’ was set up in 1928, but although a report ensued (written by Charles L’Hopital) there were no effective reforms. Almost the same thing happened when the Front Populaire came to power in 1936 and decided that singing should be taught in the first year at secondary school. Some works were commissioned from composers after 1938, but further measures to introduce music into primary and secondary school teaching, as envisaged by the minister Jean Zay, were deferred. On the eve of World War II the conservatories were in a situation of mediocrity: in obtaining state support the municipalities had thought they would acquire both extra financial means and a guarantee of quality, but neither was forthcoming. In Paris, on the other hand, new private institutions as well as the Schola Cantorum attracted many French and foreign pupils: the Ecole Normale de Musique was founded in 1918 by Alfred Cortot and André Mangeot, and Nadia Boulanger, already well known as a teacher, was one of its first members of staff.
Music publishing and instrument making saw further development of the trends of the end of the previous century. Publishing remained in the hands of family firms, content to exploit their existing lists rather than look for fresh additions to the repertory or turn their attention to the musical heritage of France, which was of increasing importance in musical life. While Durand concentrated on the music of Debussy and Ravel, a new firm, Salabert, built its success on popular songs. Instrument makers saw a fall in the sales of pianos and string instruments, but wind instruments (made by Cousenon, Selmer and Buffet) continued to be exported.
The second half of the century saw both the deployment of the latent forces of ‘centralizing Jacobinism’ in France, and a more or less permanent (although mostly ineffectual) opposition. A national commission was set up in 1962 to study musical issues and reported three years later, but there were no practical results. André Malraux, as minister of culture, set up a music service within the Direction des Arts et Lettres in 1966, and in 1970 it became the Direction de la Musique, de l’Art Lyrique et de la Danse (still in existence today). The composer Marcel Landowski, who was appointed as its head, noted that since the time of Lully there had been no autonomous administrative and political body for music. The principal task of the new service was to address teaching problems in the conservatories, with the creation of national regional conservatories (formerly subsidiaries of the Paris Conservatoire: 16 were created in 1973 and 27 in 1980), of Ecoles Nationales (41 in 1973, 60 in 1980), and of approved Ecoles Municipales (39 in 1973, 72 in 1980). State aid, now inclusive, provided about 25% of the budget of the regional conservatories in 1980. In the provinces, the plan made provision for the appointment of ‘regional delegates’ to encourage and coordinate local musical life, while the virtues of decentralization were extolled. Finally, the state founded a Conservatoire National Supérieur in Lyons in 1979, to be on a par with the Paris Conservatoire. Conversely, despite successive announcements by ministers to the effect that music teaching in primary and secondary schools must be a priority, hardly any progress was made in that area.
Opera, however, remained a central preoccupation of government. After the creation of a Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Municipaux, grouping 13 cities together, a plan for reform of the national opera houses, commissioned from Jean Vilar with the assistance of Pierre Boulez and Maurice Béjart, was brushed aside in 1967. The Opéra-Comique effectively closed down in 1972, but at the Opéra the administrator, Rolf Liebermann, succeeded in gaining public support, thanks to record budgets between 1973 and 1980. Subsidies were granted to the opera houses of some of the larger cities: the Opéra du Rhin at Strasbourg and the opera houses of Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyons and Marseilles. At the same time, however, in 1974, Radiodiffusion Française was closing down its regional orchestras. In 1967 the old Société des Concerts du Conservatoire had become the Orchestre de Paris, which it was hoped would be a model of its kind.
In the years after the mid-century, research on contemporary music was concentrated in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales created at Radiodiffusion Française by Pierre Schaefer in 1958, and the Centre d’Etudes de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales (CEMAMu) founded by Iannis Xenakis in 1966. However, no organization of the time was more influential than the Domaine Musical founded in 1954 by Pierre Boulez. With the backing of private patronage it gave performances of the repertory of the Second Viennese School and the international avant-garde of the day. Gilbert Amy succeeded Boulez at its head from 1967 to 1973. In 1974 President Pompidou and the minister Michel Guy appointed Boulez to carry out his project for an Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique-Musique (IRCAM), which three years later became the music department of the new Pompidou Centre in Paris. It was reorganized by Boulez in 1980, still with the purpose of bringing composers and scientists together to pursue collective research. In 1976 Boulez had also instigated the foundation of the Ensemble InterContemporain, a chamber orchestra specializing in contemporary music and capable of performing especially the works produced by IRCAM.
During the 1960s a new form of musical activity emerged in the shape of festivals, held between spring and autumn, mainly in the provinces (apart from the Festival d’Automne in Paris). Although the open-air spectacles produced in the south of France (in Orange, Béziers, Arles, etc.) at the end of the 19th century may be regarded as forerunners of these events, the first to bear the name of Festival was the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1947. It was followed by the festivals of Besançon (1948), Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and so on. In 1978 there were some 300 festivals, both large and small, throughout the country, over 100 of them state-subsidized. Some were founded by great performers (Pablo Casals at Prades, Sviatoslav Richter at Meslay); some cover specialist fields (early music at Saintes), and three have played an important part in the dissemination of contemporary music – Royan (1965–76), La Rochelle (1973–80), and Metz (first held in 1972) – giving premières of many French and foreign works, but reaching what is mainly an audience of professionals.
The state has also undertaken to preserve the French musical heritage. In 1988 the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles was founded, with the task of promoting French music of the 17th and 18th centuries in the fields of broadcasting, teaching and research.
On the other hand the state authorities, with their natural tendency to favour operations engendering prestige, have been unable to maintain much vitality in music publishing, despite mergers (Heugel and Leduc, Eschig and Durand), or in instrument making: in 1970 the German company of Schimmel bought the three French brand names of Erard, Pleyel and Gaveau, and ten years later imports of musical instruments were three times greater than exports. Finally, the leading record labels have now all become subsumed into multinational companies.
AnthonyFB
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1. History of traditional music studies.
France, §II: Traditional music
In 1852 Louis Napoleon ordered the publication of a general compilation of French popular poetry on the suggestion of Hippolyte Fortoul, his Minister of Education. This effort was not, however, the first of its kind: a questionnaire issued in 1808 by J.A. Dulaure and M. Mangourit for the Académie Celtique, and a subsequent enquiry by Count Narcisse Achille de Salvandy in 1845 concerning a competition with prizes awarded by the grand master of the Royal Counsel of Public Instruction, were the first official attempts to identify folksong materials.
Napoleon’s decree of 1852 did, however, lay the foundation for what would later be called ‘French musical folklore’. The philology section of the Committee on the Language, History and Arts of France was charged with the responsibility for this publication, the purpose of which was the collection of songs. However, agreement was not easily reached on suitable materials for collection and publication. Committee members held repeated meetings, discussing religious, war and festival songs, ballads, historical narratives, legends, tales and satires. Medievalists claimed that this publication was the rightful place for chansons de geste, poetry of the trouvères and troubadours, and epics. Others felt that all French dialects should be represented. Unable to reach a consensus, a commission was established, with Jean-Jacques Ampère as chair, charged with establishing ‘the true nature of folksongs, distinguishing between their various forms, and preparing instructions for our corresponding members accompanied by examples’ (Bulletin du Comité de la Langue, 1853, i, p.26). Ampère’s Instructions were issued in 1853 (ed. Cheyronnaud, 1997) and were immediately sent to all corresponding members who acted as the committee’s deputies in the provinces.
112 deputies were involved in the Fortoul project. Songs transcribed and translated in the field acquired the status of monuments, and were sent to the committee which classified them with reference to an exegetical commentary that set out criteria for their appraisal. 13 song classifications were envisaged, distinguishing between religious poetry and folk poetry of peasant origin, didactic and moral poetry and historical poetry, romantic poetry and occasional songs, and so on. 3250 manuscripts reached the committee and were classified under the 13 headings, intended to be printed in the same number of volumes. The death of Fortoul in 1856, however, ended the publication project, and the documents were deposited in the manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1876.
The results of this collecting, modelled on Herzat de la Villemarqué’s Barzaz-Breiz (1839), were widely distributed. Coussemaker published Chants populaires des flamands de France in 1856, and Damase Arbaud published Chants populaires de la Provence in 1862–4; these were followed by the collections of Max Buchon (1863), Prosper Tarbé (1863), Achille Durieux and Adolphe Bruyelle (1864), Théodore de Puymaigre (1865), François-Marie Luzel (1868–90) and Jérôme Bujeaud (1895) among others.
In 1881 Paul Sébillot began publishing his series Les littératures populaires de toutes les nations, each of which included a number of songs, indicating that a market had indeed been created. Publishers were encouraged to increase the number of titles as folklorists contributed to such journals as Mélusine and the Revue des traditions populaires. The Schola Cantorum established in 1896, with the encouragement of Charles Bordes, Félix Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d’Indy, quickly became a meeting place for discussing traditional and art musics.
There was also an educational element to the domestication of traditional musics. Writing in 1845 and referring to the precepts of J.M. de Gérando (1819) and G.L.B. Wilhem (1821), Salvandy stated that the principal reason for teaching singing in schools was ‘to contribute to the moral and intellectual improvement of the young’ (see Moreau, 1845). In 1895 Julien Tiersot collaborated with the poet Maurice Bouchor in selecting a book of chants populaires pour les écoles that was intended as a model of musical practice for schools. The Heugel publishing firm published an Anthologie du chant scolaire et post-scolaire in 1925, which contained works by specialists in the subject: Tiersot, d’Indy, Dalcroze, Emmanuel, Ducasse, Brun, Bouchor, Expert and others. There were other similar ventures. The Vichy government played to the efficacy of song in a programme of moral edification, and since that time it has been a constant feature of education.
Parallel to the development of printed materials, the advent of sound recording led to the formation of sound archives in Europe in response to the pioneering work of Dr L. Azoulay, who produced the first phonographic recordings at the time of the 1900 Paris World Exposition. Following the example of Vienna (1900) and Berlin (1902), the University of Paris opened a laboratory in 1911, the Archives de la Parole under the direction of Ferdinand Brunot. The Archives provided a structure to organize systematic collecting in the field. The first sound recording expedition set off for the Ardennes in 1912, a second went to Limousin in 1913 and a third to Berry. Organized collecting was interrupted in 1914, but resumed after World War I. Thus a musical folklore of France was in the process of formation along the lines of the museum system, just as the institutional face of ethnology was beginning to change.
In 1925 Paul Rivet, Lucien Lévi-Bruhl and Marcel Mauss established an Institute of Ethnology within the University of Paris. Ethnology had by this time become an academic subject. In 1928 Georges-Henri Rivière was asked to restore the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro, a temple of colonial education created during the period of the Third Republic in 1878. He in turn asked André Schaeffner to organize a department of musical organology in 1929, and this department acquired a library of recordings in 1932. Schaeffner published Origine des instruments de musique in 1936. Meanwhile, the Musée de la Parole again organized collecting expeditions, and in 1929 the Society of French Folklore began publishing a journal, the Revue du folklore français. This publication became the Revue du folklore français et de folklore colonial in 1932 and Ethnologie française in 1971.
At the time of the 1937 World Exposition, four museums shared the recently built Palais de Chaillot, including the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires, devoted to the ethnography of folklore; it was the first official institution of its kind in France. The new museum became a centre of folklore documentation, assembling an archive of instruments inherited from the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro and commercial recordings of traditional French music.
After the creation of the Phonothèque Nationale in 1938, its director Roger Devigne sent missions sonores to the Alps and Provence, while the Musée du Trocadéro organized a collecting expedition in lower Brittany. World War II interrupted these new collecting programmes. Cultivating a sense of regional pride was a dominant theme of the cultural programme under the Vichy regime, and song and dance were among its most important features. In 1930 the Fédération des Associations Régionales spearheaded the creation of a national committee for disseminating propaganda by means of folklore. It became the Comité Nationale du Folklore in 1941 and was in charge of cultural strategies for Pétain’s government. Folklore groups were established throughout France, particularly in the free zone. The Revue du folklore français et de folklore colonial offered advice on the formation of such groups; this was the beginning of cooperation between research and cultural institutions.
Separate from the Vichy government, Patrice Coirault, who had already published Recherches sur notre ancienne chanson populaire traditionelle in 1933, published the monumental Notre chanson folklorique with Picard in Paris in 1941, which set out the main principles that would become standard after the war. In 1945 the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires officially abandoned the use of the term ‘French musical folklore’, as it had pejorative connotations left over from the Vichy period. Thus, musical activities were undertaken in the name of musical ethnography, from 1954 known as ethnomusicology.
From that time, the museum and laboratory system served as a framework for the development of traditional music studies. Under Claudie Marcel-Dubois and Maguy Andral, French ethnomusicology reached out in many directions. Collecting expeditions proliferated, providing materials for the study of ‘music of archaic structure’. Studies of formulae, modes of musical expression and technical mechanisms shed new light on the newly recognized field. Comparative analysis became an important area, and it was soon enriched by input from acoustic analysis, initiating studies of traditional instruments with the study of organology.
The extensive collecting activity set in motion by the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires (particularly after it moved in 1971 to its present site in the Bois de Boulogne) was greatly stimulated by the decentralization law of 1982. By reinforcing the powers of local government, this law paved the way for a great extension of collecting activities in the regions. After the foundation of the Conservatoire Occitan in Toulouse, other associations were established: Dastum in Brittany, the Agence des Musiques Traditionelles d’Auvergne at Riom, the Centre Culturel de Flandre at Hazebrouck, the Centre Lapios in the Gironde and others. With subsidies from regional and local government councils, they undertook ambitious collecting campaigns, which led to the establishment of archives and sound recording libraries. Grouped together within the Fédération des Associations de Musique Traditionelle, they produce the journal Modal and are currently developing major recording projects.
France, §II: Traditional music
While composers such as Canteloube (1947) aimed to define a single body of traditional French music, contemporary collectors emphasize regional identities. Their programmes, organized around the urgency of collecting, lead in the direction of conservation, the construction of archives and the consultation of archival documents, developing along the lines of the museum model in three ways: systematic collecting, field research and international exchange. Marcel Maget, for example, worked with the Arts et Traditions Populaires framework to liberate traditional music from its marginal position by encouraging comparative studies dealing with subjects such as aksak rhythms and issues of transcription and improvisation. The search for lost origins and the fascination with traditional musical creativity have yielded significant field research, which in its turn lends authority to transcription and comparative analysis. In the work of Maguy Andral, older methods have been superseded by the study of variants (beginning with such archaic forms as shepherds’ calls and chanted formulae); Denis Laborde has studied the improvisations by Basque bertsulari of rhymed, metrical verse on existing melodic structures. New areas of study have also emerged: Lothaire Mabru’s work focusses on body postures during instrumental performance; Jacques Cheyronnaud studies formal functions of musical utterances in places of worship.
As repertories have been analysed and compared, there has been a temptation (which Constantin Brāiloiu did not escape) to trace variants of the same song or instrumental piece and to focus on the differences between them, depending on whether they were recorded in Brest or Morlaix, Corte or Ajaccio, Vendôme or Blois. There should be no objection to regarding variation as a recurrent principle in traditional musical forms; this probably has less to do with the intrinsic quality of traditional music than with the ways in which we perceive these repertories. In three variants of a song recorded and transcribed by Claudie Marcel-Dubois in different parts of Haute-Loire (ex.1), a notable feature is the importance of speech in the rhythmic structure of a syllabic song in which the melismatic rate is always one to one.
Local skills and manufacturing methods have produced instruments with unique sonorities, and thus despite organological relationships, the Provençal tambourin is not the same as the drum of the Vendée, the galoubet is not the Basque txistu, the Provençal musette bagpipe is not the same as the cornemuse of the Borbonnais, Berry or Morvan, the Béarnais zither is not identical with the Basque ttun-ttun. However, certain families of instruments are dispersed over particular geographic and cultural areas. Examples of such families include the strident sound of flutes in the south, the drone of bagpipes in the centre and west, the clatter of cog-rattles (fig.16b) and grinding timbre of hurdy-gurdies in the Massif Central (fig.16c), the nasal tone of Pyrenean oboes, the powerful dull thud of the Provençal tambourin, the noisy strains of village wind bands, the blare of signalling horns on rocky coasts or in mountainous regions, the hunting horns of Sologne, the roar of musical copper cauldrons on Midsummer’s Eve in the west, the twanging of Corsican jew’s harps and the famous carillons of bells in the north. Similarities in vocal performance could be enumerated, such as the regular rhythm of children’s counting games, songs bordering on speech, cries bordering on song, shepherds’ calls, the whooping of frenzied dancers, sobs in funeral keening, harvesters’ calls, ploughmen’s injunctions to beasts in the Massif Central, the vibrato of Nivernais drovers, the humming of Bugey charamelleurs and imitations of instrumental sounds, either emphatic guttural effects or monotonous, uniform intonations.
The majority of traditional songs are monodic and performed as solos. However, performance by two singers in a responsorial pattern is widespread in Brittany and the Vendée. In the interior of Brittany this kind of sung dialogue is called Kan ha diskan; two singers take turns singing stanzas, but overlap at the end of each stanza. These responsorial pieces are often dance-songs. In the Basque country, bertsulari poets improvise rhymed stanzas of verse which they sing to a timbre, a tune everyone knows. The practice of sung improvisation, linked with strong regional identities, is expanding today. Apart from organized choirs, such as those found widely in Alsace, vocal polyphony is rare, found in very different regions, such as in Corsica (the paghiella) and the Basque country (the oxote).
It is possible to trace a similar distribution of types of instrumental music. For example, there are repertories for two parts on a single instrument. One playing technique is referred to as picotage (‘pecking’): the instrumentalist constantly returns to a bass note while playing a melody. This (ex.2) is a feature of music for the cabrette (droneless bagpipe) of the Massif Central. The drone may take the form of a rhythmic ostinato, as with the tambourin à cordes (‘string drum’) found in the south and the ttun-ttun of the Basque province of Soule. The manner of playing is the same as that of the one-man fife-and-drum player: the cords of the tambourin are struck with a wooden stick held in one hand while the musician plays the fife, galoubet, or in Soule the txirula, with the other hand. There are also ensembles built around the polyphonic principle: bagpipes and accordions (often diatonic; fig.16a), ensembles consisting of hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes, the Breton bands of bombardes (shawms) and binious (small bagpipes; fig.16d) and village wind bands in Alsace, and Catalan coblas, ensembles of hurdy-gurdies, shawms, cornets and bass which play an important role in dances and processions (fig.16e).
France, §II: Traditional music
The Cantilène de Saint-Faron, a ballad dating from the year 622 that was sung by a chorus of women accompanying themselves with hand-clapping, and recorded in a 9th-century manuscript, is commonly taken to be the first transcription of dance. Manuscript sources from the 9th century to the 12th mention tropes, refrains, trouvère songs, airs for games, dance music and danseries, and noëls. The heyday of the trobar, poetry of the troubadours of the langue d’Oc area, occurred in the 13th century. In the 14th century, the tenor parts of polyphonic art music borrowed popular melodies, and Le Roman de Fauvel (completed c1317) includes many sottes chansons, lays, rondeaux and charivari songs, making it a symbol of the hybrid origins of the Ars Nova. The movement was extended in the following centuries to include drinking songs of the Compagnie du Vau-de-vire, Gautier Garguille’s chansons folastres, and many transcriptions of popular songs in the Bayeux manuscript, to which may be added polyphonic works by Du Fay, Josquin and others. Throughout the 17th century, Pont-Neuf songs and mazarinades (mocking Mazarin and those in political power) encouraged the creation and distribution of a repertory using well-known tunes in which new words were composed to existing airs. This repertory was often distributed in print. Melodic accompaniments were frequently exchanged between church and theatre, tavern and procession. The Parisian publisher Ballard published a number of chansonniers in the 18th century containing medleys of popular songs and airs from operas. This publishing enterprise was extended at the time of the French Revolution to include revolutionary and military songs. Numerous sentimental ballads were published during the Restoration period, and most were to be sung to tunes taken from La clé du caveau, published by Ballard in 1811.
It was amid this publishing activity, coinciding with the beginning of song collection, that the concept of regional song emerged. In the four volumes of Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne (1780), J.B. de Laborde mentioned the origins of the songs he transcribed: Auvergne, Périgord and Brittany. From that time on, musicians imbued regional character to their musics, either in form (the Breton gwerz and sonn, the ébaudes and kiriolées of Bresse, or the Corsican voceri), or in regional dance music (bourrées, montagnardes, the Catalan sardane, the Breton gavotte, the Provençal farandole), or in songs that are symbolic of cultures (e.g. Se canto in Languedoc, Les esclops in the Massif Central, La mère des Huguenots in Angoulême), or finally in terms of rhythm (e.g. the Basque zortziko).
Traditional repertories were adopted once again by musicians and groups in the 1970s, confirming that variation ensures the existence of such repertories. A number of festivals have been created to host traditional music, and the so-called revival of French traditional music is particularly lively and inventive in Brittany. Encouraged by the decentralization law of 1982, the movement now has the benefit of local subsidies and is growing and flourishing.
Parallel to this revival movement, there was renewed interest in the masquerades and ritual music associated with Carnival. Old songs and rounds have been revived in reinvented rituals, such as in Soule, and instruments like the friction drum are now used again in the singing of Christmas carols; the raucous sound of cog-rattles enlivens tintamarres and charivaris, and the cracking of whips accompanies Passiontide songs.
Work songs comprise a repertory extensively analysed by students of folklore; they include reapers’ songs, blacksmiths’ or woodcutters’ songs, sea shanties, songs for vintage time, and chansons de toile sung by women spinning. Lullabies have also received much attention, and new interest in children’s singing games and nursery rhymes has encouraged enthusiastic field research.
France, §II: Traditional music
Apart from the sound of rattles or the blowing of horns in charivaris, where the aim is to produce an unpleasant sound, most traditional instruments are used in dance music. Ex.3 illustrates the basic structure of a quadrille transcribed from a recording made in the Vendée. It was performed on the violin and makes much use of open strings as variable drones, used as percussion to complement a rhythmic ostinato of tapping feet, interrupted by vocal instructions from the instrumentalist to the dancers. Other forms of dances or marches are also accompanied by vocal comments (e.g. the Corsican currente).
The form of most vocal music is strophic. Non-strophic song forms exist, either with a central refrain, refrains without text, or refrains consisting of meaningless phonemes. For instance, in Basque country, particularly in the province of Soule, there is an entire repertory of wordless songs. Single strophes are rare in the sung repertory. On the other hand, enumerative songs are common (Alouette, La Perdriolle), and a decreasing enumeration (generally from eight down to one) is often associated with dance-songs. The lines are usually brief, comprising six or eight syllables, but some songs are organized in decasyllabic metre with individual lines divided into unequal half-lines (6/4 or 4/6), or, less frequently, equal half-lines (5/5). These enumerative forms are governed by the principle of assonance.
Themes of traditional songs draw on historical events, tales, legends, miracles and drama. A number of songs in traditional repertories deal with the state of mind of a bashful or rejected lover, or a fiancé(e) still ecstatically happy or already disappointed. These themes often mingle with local anecdotes, praise of nature, humorous or dramatic situations, and religious subjects. The melodies are very often constructed on timbres, existing tunes not linked to a single text but used to accompany a number of songs. Catholic hymnbooks and Protestant psalters include melodies of popular songs among their tunes, sometimes melodies that are associated with bawdy songs.
The musical structure of songs is generally simple; a single melody is repeated for each stanza, and the refrain is sung to the same musical phrase; it is unusual for the refrain to be sung to a different musical phrase from that of the couplets. Parlando-like sections may also be introduced into songs. Sometimes the melodies even contain imitations of animal noises or of the sounds of certain instruments.
Apart from recitatives in free rhythm, song rhythms are usually the same as the metre of the texts, and the rhythms of dance-songs match the steps of the dance. Most songs are usually syllabic. Melismatic settings have most often been reserved for sacred performance. In all cases, rhythms or styles of utterance are linked to the context of performance, so that the same tune can be used to accompany a lament or a bourrée.
Melodic ranges are variable. A lullaby is usually sung in a narrow range, a romance in a wider range. The most common range is somewhere between a 5th and an octave. Melodic motifs are often built from a succession of small intervals and are of variable length. Most characteristic are dance-songs which are made up of a succession of short phrases.
Formally, ternary structures (e.g. ABA) were most common, perhaps with an element repeated (e.g. AABA). Less frequently there were binary forms or more complex structures (e.g. ABCD). The identification of modal scales has been the subject of debate. While major and minor modes are the most frequent, songs sung in ‘older’ modes, such as the pentatonic, are sometimes found, particularly in the west (Brittany and the Vendée) and in Basque country.
France, §II: Traditional music
LabordeE
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G.L.B. Wilhem: Douze leçons hebdomadaires de musique vocal: à extraits d’après la délibération du consistoire, de la méthode élémentaire et analytique, de musique et de chant (Paris, 1821)
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B. Moreau: Le supérieure des frères de S.-Joseph, du Mans, à son excellence Monsieur le comte de Salvandy, ministre de l’instruction publique, en son conseil (Le Mans, 1845)
Bulletin du Comité de la langue, de l’histoire et des arts de la France (Paris, 1853)
C.E.H. de Coussemaker: Chants populaires des flamands de France: recueillis et publiés avec les mélodies originales, une traduction française et des notes (Ghent, 1856/R, 2/1930)
D. Arbaud: Chants populaires de la Provence (Aix, 1862–4)
M. Buchon: Noëls et chants populaires de la Franche-Comté (Salins, 1863)
P. Tarbé: Romancero de Champagne (Geneva, 1863)
A. Durieux and A. Bruyelle: Chants et chansons populaires du Cambrésis (avec les airs notés) (Cambrai, 1864)
T. de Puymaigre: Chants populaires recueillis dans le pays Messin (Metz, 1865, 2/1881/R)
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