Philidor [Filidor].

French family of musicians. The family name was originally Danican (possibly a corruption of ‘Duncan’), and according to La Borde the name ‘Philidor’ derives from the family’s earliest known musician, Michel Danican, whose oboe playing supposedly inspired in Louis XIII a comparison with the Italian oboist Filidori. It seems likely that the musician who pleased Louis XIII was the father of another Michel Danican (b Dauphiné, c1610; d ?Bordeaux, Aug 1659) and of Jean Danican (b ?Dauphiné, c1610; d Paris, 8 Sept 1679), the first member of the family whose name appears in documents as ‘Danican dit Filidor’. By 1645 Jean was in the royal service as oboist in the musketeers, and both he and Michel (ii) were employed in the Grande Ecurie, the branch of the royal musical establishment that supported military and other outdoor performances, Michel by 1651 as a member of the Cromornes et Trompettes Marines, and Jean around 1654 in the same ensemble and by 1659, if not before, among the Fifres et Tambours. Jean may also have composed (it is unclear whether the designation ‘Philidor le père’ in the lost volume 25 of the Philidor Collection refers to him or to his son André). Two of Jean’s many children became musicians, and were also known increasingly by the name Philidor: (1) André Danican Philidor l’aîné; and (2) Jacques Danican Philidor (i) le cadet. The rest of the family stems directly from them (fig.1).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1) André Danican Philidor [l’aîné; le père after 1709]

(2) Jacques Danican Philidor (i)

(3) Anne Danican Philidor

(4) Pierre Danican Philidor

(5) François-André Danican Philidor

REBECCA HARRIS-WARRICK (1, 4), JULIAN RUSHTON/REBECCA HARRIS-WARRICK (Introduction, 2, 3), JULIAN RUSHTON (5)

Philidor

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BenoitMC; EitnerQ; FétisBS; LaBordeE

E. Titon du Tillet: Le Parnasse françois (Paris, 1732–60/R)

E. Thoinan: ‘Les Philidor, généalogie biographique des musiciens de ce nom’, France musicale (22 and 29 Dec 1867; 5, 12 and 19 Jan; 2, 9 and 16 Feb 1868)

M. Benoit: Versailles et les musiciens du roi, 1661–1733 (Paris, 1971)

D. Herlin: Catalogue du fonds musical de la Bibliothèque de Versailles (Paris, 1995)

J.-F. and N. Dupont-Danican Philidor: Les Philidor: une dynastie de musiciens (Paris, 1995)

N. Dupont-Danican Philidor: Les Philidor: répertoire des oeuvres, généalogie, bibliographie (Paris, 1997)

Philidor

(1) André Danican Philidor [l’aîné; le père after 1709]

(b ?Paris, c1652; d Dreux, 11 Aug 1730). Music librarian, composer and instrumentalist, son of Jean Danican. The date of his birth is unknown, but his death certificate gave his age as ‘approximately 78’. In 1659 he was named to the position formerly held by Michel Danican in the Cromornes et Trompettes Marines and from 1667 to 1677 he served as hautbois in the royal musketeers. From 1670 his name appears in librettos of Lully’s ballets and operas as a performer on a number of woodwind and percussion instruments (as of 1714 he owned 33 instruments including oboes, flutes, recorders, bassoons, musette and drums). In 1678 he was named a drummer in the Fifres et Tambours and he was appointed to the prestigious 12 Grands Hautbois du Roi in 1681; from 1682 he served as ordinaire de la musique de la chapelle and in 1690 he and three other wind players officially joined the Petits Violons. As a member of these ensembles Philidor played for military ceremonies, balls, theatrical works and services in the royal chapel, and also took part in military campaigns.

Although Philidor l’aîné probably composed occasional pieces (marches, signal airs, dances etc.) throughout his career, he did not begin to compose for the stage until after Lully’s death in 1687. A flurry of compositional activity in 1687–8 suggests that he may have been trying to position himself as a candidate for Lully’s post of surintendant of the king’s music, but in 1689 the position went to Michel-Richard de Lalande. During the carnival season of 1700, Philidor, his nephew Pierre and his son Anne composed a number of divertissements for performance at Marly, largely for the entertainment of the Duchess of Burgundy, wife of the king’s eldest grandson.

Philidor l’aîné married twice; by his first marriage in 1672 to Marguerite Mouginot he had 17 children, among whom were Alexandre Danican Philidor (b Paris, July 1676; d Versailles, 6 Jan 1684), who despite his tender age held a post among the Cromornes et Trompettes Marines from 1679–83; (3) Anne Danican Philidor; Michel Danican Philidor (b Versailles, 12 Sept 1683; d Paris, 19 May 1723), a timpanist to the king and godson of Michel-Richard de Lalande; and François Danican Philidor (i) (b Versailles, 17 March 1689; d Paris, 13 March 1717), a flautist who composed two volumes of Pièces pour la flûte traversière (Paris, 1716 and 1718) and who is often confused with his cousin of the same name. By his second marriage in 1719 to Elisabeth Leroy he had six children, including (5) François-André Danican Philidor.

Philidor l’aîné is best remembered for his work as the king’s music librarian, in which capacity he presided over an enormous effort to collect and preserve music not only from Louis XIV’s reign, but as far back as that of Henri IV. 1684 is often cited (without documentation) as the year of his appointment, but in 1694 Philidor himself claimed that he had been working as music librarian for 30 years. (The earliest known score he copied for the royal library is dated 1681.) Philidor shared the post with the violinist François Fossard until the latter’s death in 1702 and thereafter occupied it alone. Although Philidor had a number of assistants, he himself copied dozens of volumes. The dedications to the king in the series of Lully ballets he prepared reveal his consciousness of the historical value of his work. In addition to his work for the king, Philidor copied music for other aristocratic and royal patrons. In 1694 he and Fossard were granted a privilege to print some of the music from the king’s collection, but they published only a single anthology of Airs italiens (Paris, 1695). Philidor had intended that his son Anne succeed him as music librarian, but it was his son-in-law Jean-Louis Schwartzenberg, known as Le Noble, who took up the post.

Manuscripts emanating from Philidor’s workshop are found in many libraries and private collections. The so-called Philidor Collection, formerly in the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire, included 59 volumes when it was inventoried by Nicolas Roze in the early 19th century; almost half have since disappeared. (Some of the lost volumes contained music by members of the Philidor family.) This collection is now housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which also holds a significant number of other volumes copied by Philidor’s workshop. Another substantial collection is located in the Bibliothèque Municipale, Versailles, and a large body of manuscripts that Philidor prepared for the Count of Toulouse (the illegitimate son of Louis XIV) belonged to St Michael’s College, Tenbury, until 1978, when the collection was sold; at that time a number of volumes returned to Paris and Versailles.

WORKS

for further details see Harris-Warrick and Marsh, pp.18–21 and Dupont-Danican Philidor, pp.91–7; all printed works published in Paris

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F.-J. Fétis: Revue musicale (9 Aug 1827)

E.H. Fellowes: ‘The Philidor Manuscripts’, ML, xii (1931), 116–29

A. Tessier: ‘Un fonds musical de la bibliothèque de Louis XIV: la collection Philidor’, ReM, nos.111–15 (1931), 295–302

F. Waquet: ‘Philidor l’aîné’, RdM, lxvi (1980), 203–16

C. Massip: ‘La collection musicale Toulouse-Philidor à la Bibliothèque nationale’, FAM, xxx (1983), 184–207

R. Harris-Warrick and C.G. Marsh: Musical Theatre at the Court of Louis XIV: ‘Le mariage de la grosse Cathos’ (Cambridge, 1994)

Philidor

(2) Jacques Danican Philidor (i)

[le cadet] (b Paris, 5 May 1657; d Versailles, 29 May 1708). Instrumentalist and composer, son of Jean Danican and younger brother of (1) André Danican Philidor l’aîné. In 1667 he joined his father in the Fifres et Tambours, a position which took him on several military campaigns. When his father died in 1679 he took over his post among the Cromornes et Trompettes Marines and in 1682 he joined the Grands Hautbois. In 1690 he became an official member of the Petits Violons as a bassoonist and he also performed in the royal chapel. He appears also to have been an instrument maker; when he died he owned ‘tools serving to make musical instruments’ in addition to 44 instruments, most of them woodwinds. Only a few of his marches and dances survive in manuscript anthologies; the volumes of the Philidor Collection containing more of his works have been lost.

Philidor le cadet had 12 children, among whom four were musicians: (4) Pierre Danican Philidor; Jacques Danican Philidor (ii) (b Paris, 7 Sept 1686; d Pamplona, 25 June 1709), who was to have inherited his father's position in the Fifres et Tambours but was killed in Spain while serving as a drummer in the guards of the Duke of Orléans; François Danican Philidor (ii) (b Versailles, 12 Jan 1695; d Paris, 27 Oct 1726), who joined the Grands Hautbois in 1716 after also having served as a drummer to the Duke of Orléans, and who at the time of his death had the title of timpanist to the Queen of Spain; and Nicolas Danican Philidor (b Versailles, 1 Nov 1699; d Versailles, 8 Sept 1769), who succeeded his brother Pierre as a grand hautbois (1726) and as a viol player in the king's chamber (1731) and later played serpent in the royal chapel.

Philidor

(3) Anne Danican Philidor

(b Paris, 11 April 1681; d Paris, 8 Oct 1728). Composer, instrumentalist and entrepreneur, son of (1) André Danican Philidor l’aîné. He was named after his godfather, the Duke of Noailles. He was granted the survivance of his father's post in the Grands Hautbois in 1698 and joined the royal chapel in 1704 and the Petits Violons by 1712. He composed sacred and instrumental music, and by the age of 20 had at least five stage works produced. He also collaborated with his father in his duties as a royal music librarian. He was apparently well regarded at court: the king and two other members of the royal family signed his wedding contract in 1706. In 1725 he founded the Concert Spirituel to provide musical entertainment on days when, for religious considerations, the Académie Royale de Musique (the Opéra) was closed. The first concert was on 18 March in the Salle des Suisses of the Tuileries palace, and the series, which lasted until 1790, promoted instrumental and sacred vocal music. In December 1727 Philidor expanded his enterprise by initiating the Concerts Français, a series primarily of secular concerts featuring French cantatas. He resigned from the directorship of both series a few months before his death in 1728 and was replaced by J.-J. Mouret. The Concerts Français lasted only until 1730 on a regular basis, though annual concerts were given during the next three years. Philidor also directed concerts for the Duchess of Maine and was superintendent of music for the Prince of Conti.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PierreH

S. Blondel: ‘Origine du Concert spirituel’, Chronique musicale, iv (1874), 5–11

D. Tunley: ‘Philidor's “Concerts Français”’, ML, xlvii (1966), 130–34

M. Barthélemy: ‘Une oeuvre inconnue d'Anne Danican Philidor au Conservatoire royal de musique de Liège’, RMFC, xv (1975), 91–5

Philidor

(4) Pierre Danican Philidor

(b Paris, 22 Aug 1681; d Versailles, 30 Aug 1731). Composer and instrumentalist, son of (2) Jacques Danican Philidor (i) le cadet. He began composing at an early age; a pastorale of his composition was performed at court in 1697. He was granted the inheritance of his father's post among the Grands Hautbois the same year and by 1708 when his father died was also playing for the royal chapel and among the Petits Violons. In 1716 he became a member of the chambre du roi as a viol player, where his colleagues included François Couperin and Marin Marais. In 1717 and 1718 he published three books of suites, half of them intended for two unaccompanied flutes, the others for two treble instruments and continuo. In 1726 he resigned his post in the Grands Hautbois in favour of his younger brother Nicolas, but remained as a viol player until shortly before his death, when he gave that post as well to Nicolas.

WORKS

Philidor

(5) François-André Danican Philidor

(b Dreux, 7 Sept 1726; d London, 31 Aug 1795). Composer, youngest son of (1) André Danican Philidor l’aîné, and half-brother of (3) Anne Danican Philidor. Although he was best known to his contemporaries as a chess player, his stage works show him to be one of the most gifted French composers of his generation.

1. Life.

2. Works.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Philidor: (5) François-André Danican Philidor

1. Life.

As a page-boy in the royal chapel at Versailles, he received a good musical education with André Campra, the maître de chapelle; he also learnt the favourite pastime of the musicians, chess. In 1738 he had a motet performed and favourably received in the chapel, and though he left Versailles for Paris in 1740, his works continued to be performed there. Another motet was heard at the Concert Spirituel in 1743. Philidor’s early music is lost, but was presumably modelled on that of his master.

From 1740 Philidor lived in Paris, performing, teaching and, in the family tradition, copying music. He also assisted Rousseau, in an unknown manner, with Les muses galantes. His skill at chess marked him out earlier than his musical gifts. At the Café de la Régence he came into contact with many of the brightest minds of the time, including Diderot who was to call him, in Le neveu de Rameau, ‘Philidor le subtil’. He met, studied with and defeated France’s leading player, Légal. In 1745 he left Paris on a concert tour of the Netherlands with Geminiani and Lanza; when Lanza’s daughter died, however, the tour was cancelled and Philidor, stranded, supported himself by chess. Some British officers helped him to travel to London, thus beginning his lifelong connection with England. He established himself as the strongest player of central and northern Europe (though he never played the leading Italian masters), and particularly impressed by simultaneous blindfold play. In 1748, at Aachen, he wrote his L’analyze des échecs (later revised as Analyse du jeu des échecs). With the help of the Duke of Cumberland, whom he met at Eindhoven, the book was published in London (1749); it was later translated into several languages and had numerous editions into the 20th century. Philidor remained in England until 1754, returning in 1771 and 1773, then annually for a season from 1775 until 1792, giving lectures and demonstrations subscribed by the St James Club and moving in the same circles as Dr Johnson and Dr Burney.

Philidor’s return to Paris in 1754 was encouraged by friends such as Diderot, but his efforts to establish himself as a composer met with mixed fortunes. A trial motet, Lauda Jerusalem, for a post at Versailles was deemed too Italian (unfortunately none of Philidor’s sacred music survives). During his travels he had encountered the newest Italian music, including the Neapolitan style which had made such an impression in France during his absence abroad. Appearing in the aftermath of the Querelle des Bouffons, Philidor’s early operas show the unmistakable imprint of Pergolesi.

After writing his one instrumental work, a set of quartets inappositely named L’art de la modulation, he began his successful career as a theatre composer in 1756. His italianate style, rejected by Rebel (the director of the Opéra) as unsuitable for that institution, was no obstacle in opéra comique, and from 1759 to 1765 Philidor produced 11 opéras comiques of which eight were decidedly successful; after Le sorcier (1764) he became the first composer to be called on the stage at the Comédie-Italienne. Tom Jones (1765) was at first a failure, and, as later with Ernelinde, Sedaine was called in to revise the libretto. Ernelinde (1767) was performed 18 times at the Opéra (fig.3), briefly revived in 1769 under the title Sandomir, prince de Dannemarck and presented in Brussels in 1772. The version played at Versailles in 1773 and the Opéra in 1777 was completely revised, in five acts; with public taste modified by Gluck, real success replaced the earlier succès d’estime and it was paid the compliment of parody.

Philidor’s later musical production was more sporadic. He produced his major choral work, the Carmen saeculare (1779), in London at the suggestion of Giuseppe Baretti, who adapted the libretto from several odes of Horace including the one which gives the work its title. Masonic symbolism graces the title-page of the finely engraved score. Carmen saeculare was admired, published and performed in London and Paris.  Philidor’s career was now divided between the two capitals, but he continued to teach music and to write for the French theatre and the Concert Spirituel. His later tragedies, Persée and Thémistocle, had scant success; he was accepted neither by the Gluckists nor by the Italian devotees, while in comedy he suffered from the competition of Grétry.

At the outbreak of war between England and France, Philidor was in London, and was unjustly put on the list of émigrés. He died, separated from his family, at 10 Little Ryder Street, and was buried from St James’s, Piccadilly; the exact location of his grave is not known. There is a bust of Philidor by Augustin Pajou and a portrait by Cochin, engraved by Saint-Aubin in 1772 (fig.4).

Philidor: (5) François-André Danican Philidor

2. Works.

Educated in both French and Italian styles, and undoubtedly acquainted with contemporary German music, Philidor is usually acknowledged to have possessed the greatest technical ability of the early composers of opéra comique. He probably intended no affront to ingrained French traditions, but he was undoubtedly of use to those who did, such as the philosophes and his librettist A.A.H. Poinsinet. As a composer he was not lacking in self-criticism, as the four versions of Ernelinde testify; but he allowed free rein to a natural fluency supported by too good a memory, of obvious value in chess but dangerous for a composer. The problem of what Burney called Philidor’s ‘Italian plunder’, which led to charges of deliberate plagiarism, is especially acute in Ernelinde. The likeliest explanation is that he read, heard and subconsciously assimilated to such effect that he was unaware of the extended near-quotations that appear in some of his scores.

Besides occasional collaboration with such leading authors as Favart and Sedaine, Philidor worked with Louis Anseaume in Le soldat magicien, and with A.F. Quétant in the brilliantly successful Le maréchal ferrant. But Philidor’s literary sense was relatively undeveloped. His chief collaborator was Poinsinet, whom the memoirs of Jean Monnet and Grimm’s Correspondance littéraire present as possessed of little poetic ability, but of a monumental conceit and gullibility which made him the butt of innumerable practical jokes. Nevertheless, after Sancho Pança Poinsinet wrote the three works with which Philidor’s career reached its apogee, Le sorcier, Tom Jones and Ernelinde.

Philidor was the first French composer successfully to use a modern Italian style in the major theatres. He was preceded by Duni in opéra comique, but Ernelinde was a pioneering attempt to modernize the dramatic and musical character of the Paris Opéra. He soon developed a more ornate melodic style than was usual in comédie mêlée d’ariettes, and applied the Italian style to French forms at the Opéra well before Gluck. As noted by Garcin (Traité du mélo-drame, 1772), he was superior to his early rivals in his instrumentation, which though seldom elaborate is always telling. His work benefits from the solid but undeniable virtues of his harmony, and from melodic invention which, if not strikingly individual, is effectively used in characterization.

Philidor’s early comedies subject the mixture of social classes and human foibles, like gullibility and greed, to scrutiny under the guise of farce. Blaise le savetier deals with such mundane matters as evading the rent by compromising the landlord. Simple domestic farce (Blaise and Le soldat magicien) developed into sophisticated comedy (Tom Jones and Les femmes vengées); rustic dramas in which the dialogue is spiced with patois (Le maréchal ferrant and Le bûcheron) culminate in Le sorcier.

Parody of serious genres appears in the simile aria ‘Je suis comme une pauvre boule’, which marks the height of Sancho Panza’s difficulties in governing his ‘island’. In Le bûcheron the aria for the woodcutter, its chopping motif already heard in the overture, breaks off for the draught of wine that gives him enough strength for a roulade. Mercury then offers him three wishes, singing accompanied recitative (‘sostenuto’ in the score). The reference to tragédie lyrique was doubtless appreciated at Versailles, where it was given two weeks after its première. Another such parody is Julien’s conjuration in Le sorcier.

Philidor’s inventive use of onomatopoeia often marks an air dealing with a métier: the woodcutter, blacksmith and coachman (Le maréchal ferrant); Blaise the winemaker (Le sorcier); and hunters (Tom Jones). It is part of an affection for making the commonplace musical; the first number in Le soldat magicien is a game of backgammon. Le bûcheron and Le sorcier demand male singers capable of grotesque falsetto to d''. Another favourite comic genre is the sung invoice, in Le soldat magicien, Le bûcheron and Le maréchal ferrant.

In ensemble writing Philidor pioneered the simultaneous use of compound and simple metres in Le maréchal ferrant, Tom Jones and the battle music of Ernelinde. In the quartets and quintets of Blaise le savetier and Le soldat magicien Philidor manages to convey the utmost confusion while remaining musically transparent; among the best of these ensembles is the septet in Le bûcheron. Poinsinet did not take full advantage of Philidor’s abilities in Sancho Pança and Le sorcier, but another masterly septet ends the second act of Tom Jones.

Philidor’s occasional and possibly unintended plagiarism damaged his reputation and contributed to a controversy, dwarfed by the subsequent Gluck–Piccinni quarrel, over Ernelinde. Even the clear echo of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in Le sorcier (‘Nous étions dans cet âge’) is inexact, and forms part of a well-constructed opera in which the music is otherwise all new; it dispenses with the traditional timbres.

The success of Monsigny and Grétry in opéra comique ended Philidor’s supremacy, which he never regained, although several of his works continued in the repertory of the Comédie-Italienne (which by then had merged with the Opéra-Comique). Given a good libretto like Les femmes vengées (1775), he could still write a successful comedy. Carmen saeculare (1779), an extended cantata in four parts and over 20 separate movements, sets texts from several of Horace’s Odes; only the fourth part is based on Carmen saeculare itself. With solo (recitative and aria) and choral sections including an ingenious double fugue, it is a remarkable compendium of late 18th-century affects.

Neither of the serious operas that followed achieved a succès d’estime comparable to that of Ernelinde, and neither is as dramatically effective. Persée was one of the few tragédies lyriques of this period not to be published; but there is distinguished solo and choral music in this resetting of Quinault, especially when Philidor evokes an older French style (as in the opening chorus and the sleep scene). The reconciliation scene in Thémistocle, using a melody from the overture, is touching, its surroundings comparatively uninspired.

Philidor pursued two careers for much of his working life, yet his operatic output is considerable, with a high proportion of effective works, and even his failures include fine numbers. But his musical productivity declined with his popularity, and he did little to maintain the impetus he gave to stylistic change in comic and serious genres.

Philidor: (5) François-André Danican Philidor

WORKS

all printed works published in Paris

stage

opéras comiques and first performed in Paris, unless otherwise stated

other works

Philidor: (5) François-André Danican Philidor

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Choron-FayolleD; DNB (T. Seccombe); EitnerQ; PierreH

Prospectus [for the pubn of Ernelinde] (Paris, 1768)

Lettre à M. le Chevalier de *** à l’occasion du nouvel opéra [Ernelinde] (Paris, 1768)

Réflexions sur un prospectus où l’on propose par souscription la partition complète d’Ernelinde … par M. T*** (Paris, 1768)

L. Petit de Bachaumont and others: Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la république (London, 1777–89)

G. Baretti: The Introduction to the Carmen Seculare (London, 1779)

R. Twiss: Chess (London, 1787–9)

A.E.M. Grétry: Mémoires, ou Essais sur la musique (Paris, 1789, enlarged 2/1797/R)

P.L. Ginguené: ‘France’, Encyclopédie méthodique: musique, i (Paris, 1791/R)

R. Twiss: Miscellanies (London, 1805)

F.M. von Grimm: Correspondance littéraire (Paris, 1812–14); ed. M. Tourneaux (Paris, 1877–82/R)

‘Das Carmen Seculare des Horatius, von Philidor in Musik gesetzt’, Caecilia [Mainz], v (1826), 45–8

J. Lardin: Philidor peint par lui-même (Paris, 1847); extract in Le Palamède, 2nd ser., vii (1847), 2–3

G. Allen: The Life of Philidor, Musician and Chessplayer (New York, 1858, enlarged 2/1863/R, 3/1865)

A. Pougin: ‘Philidor’, GMP, xxvi (1859), 303–5, 318–20, 327–9

A. Pougin: ‘André Philidor’, Chronique musicale, iv (1874), 241–8; v (1874), 74–82, 203–8; vi (1874), 22–32, 105–12, 200–07; vii (1875), 10–16, 111–19, 215–23; viii (1875), 20–26, 118–25, 264–75

C. Piot: ‘Particularités inédites concernant les oeuvres musicales de Gossec et de Philidor’, Bulletin de l’Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique, 2nd ser., xl (1875), 624–54

A. Pougin: Introduction to vocal score of F.-A. Philidor: Ernelinde (Paris, 1883/R)

P. Fromageot: Les compositeurs de musique versaillais (Versailles, 1906)

H. Quittard: ‘Le bûcheron, opéra-comique de Philidor’, RHCM, vii (1907), 421–4

H. Quittard: ‘Ernelinde de Philidor’, RHCM, vii (1907), 469–74

H. Quittard: ‘Le sorcier, opéra-comique de Philidor’, RHCM, vii (1907) 537–41

G. Cucuel: Les créateurs de l’opéra-comique français (Paris, 1914)

G.-E. Bonnet: ‘La naissance de l’opéra-comique en France’, ReM, ii/6–8 (1921), 231–43

G.-E. Bonnet: ‘L’oeuvre de Philidor’, ReM, ii/9–11 (1921), 223–50

G.-E. Bonnet: Philidor et l’évolution de la musique française au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1921)

M. Pincherle: ‘Ernelinde et Jomelli’, ReM, iv/7–9 (1922–3), 67–72

E. Blom: “‘Tom Jones” on the French Stage’, Stepchildren of Music (London, 1925/R)

B. Harley: ‘Music and Chess’, ML, xii (1931), 276–83

C.M. Carroll: François-André Danican Philidor: his Life and Dramatic Art (diss., Florida State U., 1960)

C.M. Carroll: ‘The History of “Berthe” – a Comedy of Errors’, ML, xliv (1963), 228–39

J.G. Rushton: Music and Drama at the Académie Royale de Musique, Paris, 1774–1789 (diss., U. of Oxford, 1970)

J.F. Magee: A.D. Philidor: his Life in Pictures and Stories: a Scrapbook of Portraits, Letters, Clippings (MS, US-NYp)

J.G. Rushton: ‘Philidor and the Tragédie Lyrique’, MT, cxvii (1976), 734–7

C.M. Carroll: ‘A Classical Setting for a Classical Poem: Philidor’s Carmen Saeculare’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vi (1977), 97–111

E.A. Cook: The Operatic Ensemble in France, 1673–1775 (diss., U. of East Anglia, 1989)

M. Couvreur: ‘Diderot et Philidor: le philosophe au chevet d’Ernelinde’, Recherches sur Diderot et l’Encyclopédie, xi (1991), 83–107

J.G. Rushton: Introduction to F.-A. Philidor: Ernelinde, FO, lvi (1992)

P. Vendrix, ed.: L’opéra-comique en France au XVIIIe siècle (Liège, 1992)

RMFC, xxviii (1993–5) [Philidor issue]

D. Charlton: ‘The romance and its Cognates: Narrative, Irony and vraisemblance in Early Opéra Comique’, Die Opéra comique und ihr Einfluss auf das europäische Musiktheater im 19. Jahrhundert: Frankfurt 1994, 43–92

C. Rollin: Philidor: il musicista che giocava a scacchi (Brescia, 1994)

D. Charlton: ‘The Overture to Philidor’s Le bûcheron (1763)’, D’un opéra l’autre: hommage à Jean Mongrédien, ed. J. Gribenski, M.-C. Mussat and H. Schneider (Paris, 1996), 231–42