Dissonance in the Republic of Letters by Mark Darlow

Author:Mark Darlow [Darlow, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367600129
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Indeed, in his Memoirs, Marmontel places Turgot squarely within the Italian party in the earlier Querelle des Bouffons.26 Although Turgot may subsequently have avoided direct intervention on music, he privately continued to take an interest: the following year, he wrote to Condorcet of his impressions of Iphigénie en Aulide, singling out those movements he particularly admired. On the negative side he felt that there was too much recitative 'or aria which is close to recitative', and too few arias and ensembles. 'C'est peut-être la faute du poète, qui n'a point donné au musicien des paroles bien coupés, liées à l'action et propres au chant. Peut-être aussi le musicien a-t-il sur cela un faux système' [This is perhaps the fault of the librettist, for not giving the composer a well-shaped text, both dramatic and fitting for song], he hypothesized: this has a Piccinnist ring to it, as claiming arias are too close to recitative suggests their lack of chant, their proximity to declamation. He concluded that he was gratified to have his impressions confirmed by ambassador Caraccioli (due to leave the following week).27 Indeed, it would be impossible to pigeon-hole Turgot in the matter of French versus Italian music: he was close to Marie-Antoinette briefly before his appointment, via his contacts with the Abbé de Vermond, but his views on primitive languages place him closer to Gluckism, and his ideas seem to have transcended the rivalry which was to erupt.28

There are three conclusions to be drawn at this stage. Aside from the detail of Turgot's theory, the very fact of considering primitive languages as susceptible of song opened up a revision in the long-standing rivalry between French and Italian, and suggested the possibility that French opera could be reformed along French lines, adding concrete historical theories to support the point which critics of Rousseau, and particularly Chabanon, had made so forcefully since the mid 1750s: there was nothing intrinsic to the French language (or indeed any other) to make it unsuitable for musical setting, whatever Rousseau may have claimed (above,Chapter 2). For such critics, it was impossible to claim that the Italian language was uniquely euphonious, and hence melodious when set to music. Hence also the widespread claim by detractors that Gluck lacked song: it was a means of cancelling the cultural connection between primitive language, simple theatrical work of direct emotional and intellectual appeal, and music's powerful effects. (In fact we shall see that the very terms used to describe Ossianic material are used by anti-Gluckists in criticism of his music.) Second, Daniel Gordon has also established that, for Suard, the Ossian material allows him to introduce a particular theory of history and view of sociability; this will be crucial to my discussion in Chapter 4.29 Finally, the first abortive reform movement to French opera attempted to use early but nonclassical civilizations, such as Chabanon and Gossec's use of druids in first-century Gaul in Sabinus, or Poinsinet and Philidor's use of Norwegian and Danish history in Emelinde, and implied a

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