The Courtly Consort Suite in German-Speaking Europe, 1650-1706 by Robertson Michael;

Author:Robertson, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Ex. 6.5. J.S. Cousser, La cicala (Stuttgart. 1700), Suite I. 'Chaconne'

The rondeau format is used throughout the three collections, but there are times when Cousser seems to use it as a way of extending weak material. The rondeau in the second suite of Apollon enjoüé has little more than a rising sequence of repeated notes in the grand couplet and the two trio sections of the petite couplet offer little more. Cousser is less sparing in his use of the chaconne than he was in Composition de musique: there are three examples in Apollon enjoüé, four in Festin des muses and two in La cicala. The opening of the lengthy chaconne from the first suite of La cicala is given in Example 6.5. Most of the movement is made up of simple repetitions of unrelated four- or eight-bar phrases. Although it is hinted at in the bass line, there is no basse contrainte or use of rondeau-style couplets.

The fourth suite of Apollon enjoüé contains probably the most ambitious chaconne that Cousser ever wrote. It has some unusual features. Instead of the normal triple metre for this dance, it has a time signature, and prominent use is made of a solo oboe. A basse contrainte, often varied, is used throughout. The movement has two principal sections: the first in the major key, and the second in the minor; the first sixteen bars are repeated at the end of the movement. Cousser also makes considerable use of repetition, but not by simple repeating four- or eight-bar phrases. In each of the three sixteen-bar phrases that make up the first section of this chaconne, an eight-bar phrase for solo oboe and the basse de violon is repeated as a fully harmonized version by the whole ensemble. The second section, in the minor key, mostly follows a similar pattern. But instead of a solo oboe and bass, there are trios for a combination of two oboes with the two unison violas providing the bass line. These trios are, as in the major-key section, given fully harmonized tutti repeats.

In other trios in the collections, Cousser is more content to imitate Lully. Example 6.6 compares the trio ‘Ritournelle pour Mercure’ from the first act of Lully’s 1680 Proserpine (LWV 58) with the ‘Ritournelle à 3’ from the second suite of Apollon enjoüé. It is not only the movement titles that are similar: rhythms and points of imitation all suggest that Cousser had trios such as the one from Proserpine clearly in mind when it came to writing his own.

All three 1700 collections contain ‘character’ movements with quasi-programmatic titles that are clearly meant to suggest a dramatic origin. Example 6.7 shows the opening of ‘Vole de Demons’ (Demon tricks) from the fourth suite of Festin des muses and, given the link with the theatre often proclaimed on the title pages of German Lullist suite collections, the inclusion of these quasi-dramatic movements is hardly surprising.

Some movements may have been given titles merely to give the impression of dramatic origin, but some of them do indeed come from Cousser’s operas written during the 1690s.

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