Rousseau Among the Moderns by Simon Julia

Author:Simon, Julia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Published: 2013-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Using the Primitive: The Faux Folk

Rousseau’s Dictionnaire seems to be suggesting that there are tropes of authenticity in music. If the “primitive” and “authentic” are conventions, but ones that evoke powerful emotional responses in listeners, then might these forms be used to elicit a strong listener reaction? And given the formal conventions identified, might it not be possible to use this sociocultural conditioning to create elite European art music capable of tapping the emotions that Rousseau claims are absent from the complex contrapuntal harmonies of contemporary composers by invoking the “primitive”?

Le devin du village represents precisely this strategy of tapping the emotion of “primitive” music within the context of European elite music. Rousseau’s well-known account in the Confessions of his experience as a member of the audience at a performance in 1752 underscores the emotional response of the listeners:

Dès la prémiére scene, qui véritablement est d’une naiveté touchante j’entendis s’élever dans les loges un murmure de surprise et d’applaudissement jusqu’alors inouï dans ce genre de piéces. La fermentation croissante alla bientôt au point d’être sensible dans toute l’assemblée, et, pour parler à la Montesquieu, d’augmenter son effet par son effet même. A la Scene des deux petites bonnes gens cet effet fut à son comble. On ne claque point devant le Roi; cela fit qu’on entendit tout; la piéce et l’auteur y gagnérent. J’entendois autour de moi un chuchotement de femmes qui me sembloient belles comme des anges, et qui s’entredisoient à demi-voix: cela est charmant, cela est ravissant; il n’y a pas un son là qui ne parle au cœur. Le plaisir de donner de l’émotion à tant d’aimables personnes m’émut moi-même jusqu’aux larmes, et je ne les pus contenir au prémier duo, en remarquant que je n’étois pas seul à pleurer. (1:378–79)

[From the first scene, which is really touching in its simplicity, I heard a murmur of surprise and applause, hitherto unknown at plays of this sort, rising from the boxes. The mounting excitement soon reached such a pitch that it was noticeable right through the audience and, to use an expression of Montesquieu’s, began to increase its effect by its effect. There is no clapping when the King is present; for that reason every note was heard, to the great advantage of the piece and its author. Around me I heard a whispering of women who seemed to me as lovely as angels, and who said to one another under their breath: ‘That is charming. That is delightful. There is not a note that does not speak straight to the heart.’ The pleasure affecting so many pleasant people moved even me to tears, which I could not restrain during the first duet, when I noticed that I was not the only one who wept. (353)]

Because it is Rousseau’s own account of the effects that his music has on the contemporary audience, we have to take it with a large grain of salt.30 Nonetheless, what he reports obviously accentuates what he most valorizes: tears, especially from the women.31 This emotional response validates his own emotional outpouring in response to the simple melodies.

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