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Scholars working on French keyboard music from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries have been strongly aware of the close connection between music and language. By mapping linguistic ideas to musical thoughts, this study identifies the origins of this connection and traces how stylistic changes and performance attitudes were influenced by linguistic concepts. During the seventeenth century, in both musical and linguistic realms, an awareness of a certain weakness in existing language led to attempts to purify it. From the 1650s, the desire for logic, clarity, and order also shaped the development of French keyboard music and propelled the rationalization of usage in music. This development paralleled, to a certain extent, the codification of the French language. In both cases, such classification was, however, only partial. By resorting to the notion of le bon goût, musicians silently confessed to the greater variety that took place in practical music-making when compared to theoretical rules. An enriched understanding of le bon goût within a broader cultural context refines our approach to performing this music. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sacred music at the court of Louis XIII (r.1610-43) has received much less scholarly attention than that of the following reign: in part due to the lack of surviving musical sources associated with the Chapelle Royale from the period, and in part because of the strikingly conservative and functional nature of the little that does survive, there certainly seems to be little incentive for detailed consideration of this period. Literary evidence, however, suggests that we should perhaps look for venues outside the Chapelle Royale—indeed, such evidence points to the performance of sacred music by the Musique de la Chambre alone, and to collaborations between the Chambre and the Chapelle at important ceremonial events throughout the early part of the 17th century, even if, on our current understanding, no specific pieces from these occasions survive. Fortunately, however, a re-examination of an important manuscript source dating from the period (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, V ma Ms.rés.571) brings to light a repertory of sacred music from c.1620 to 1640 that can now be associated with the Chambre, such works also providing a credible model for collaborations between the Chambre and Chapelle at Louis XIII’s dinner table. In this light, Nicolas Formé’s famous Mass for two choirs, the Missa Æternae Henrici Magni (1638), appears also to represent a collaboration between Chambre and Chapelle, with the scoring and musical techniques associated with each ensemble reflected in the disposition of the two choirs. Since Henri Sauval famously credited Formé with the development of the double-choir model which featured in the earliest grands motets (especially those of Jean Veillot from c.1660), it now seems clear that the grand motet as a genre grew out of collaborations between the Chambre and Chapelle dating back into the 16th century rather than, as is often suggested, from any Absolutist imperative emanating from the Sun King’s court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a historiographical review of the state of research on the study of Renaissance travel literature and social life. It describes the mid-20th century revolution in the historiography of the French Renaissance, the work of historians Geoffroy Atkinson and Clarence Rouillard, and the influence of the work of anthropologists Alfred Métraux and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Other subjects under discussion include the bibliographic book "La Littérature géographique française de la Renaissance: Répertoire bibliographique" by Atkinson, the book "Le Huguenot et le sauvage" by Frank Lestringant, and "La Conquéte de l’Amérique: La question de l’autre" by Tzvetan Todorov.

This article explores the unique dramatic rapport between the voice and the instrumental accompaniment — either as obbligato instruments or as a simple continuo line — in select examples of early 18th-century French cantatas. Through examples by Campra, Morin, Bernier and Montéclair, it presents a taxonomy of the different types of dramatic interaction by looking primarily at recitatives. The study shows that composers turned instrumental music into an essential part of the drama by legitimizing its presence either as a diegetic occurrence, a representation of sound — musical, human or otherwise — heard by the singer or as an external manifestation of the singer’s inner self. In its most basic form, the interaction between singer and instrumental music helps the listener envision the dramatic action, as in Campra’s La dispute de l’Amour et de l’Hymen, where the sound of a bourrée gradually interrupting Venus’s sleep heralds the arrival of Love and Hymen. Another type involves the representation of imagined sound, as in Morin’s Le naufrage d’Ulisse , where brief interjections of the storm interrupt the singer as if materializing from his narration of past events. Composers sometimes turned mimesis into diegesis as in Montéclair’s Le dépit généreux, where a descending chromatic bass depicting the singer’s urge to weep becomes his real weeping in the following aria, or in Bernier’s L’amour vainqueur, where the instrumental interjections first represent the singer’s attempts to burst into song, then represent actual singing when they turn into the ritornello of the following aria. More overtly theatrical interactions between singer and instruments can be found in Montéclair’s Le retour de la paix, where the ‘fight’ between violins and singer is an allegory of war, and in Campra’s Le Jaloux where the singer engages in a dramatic tête-à-tête with the violins, whose sound becomes a dramatic interlocutor for the singer throughout the entire piece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the information provided in manuscript and contemporary printed sources is limited and often confusing, the author attempts to list all occasions (over 60) where Lully used recorders in his ballets, comedies-ballets and tragedies en musique. Each such context is then examined to ascertain its purpose, and the results tabulated, with general and detailed commentaries, under 13 recorder associations and symbolisms. They show that in his early works Lully employed recorders in much the same way as had earlier composers of ballets de cour, but that he took full advantage of a range of opportunities in the tragedies en musique to extend and develop his use of recorder symbolism. This greater and wider usage coincides with the redesign by his wind-prayers of the early 17th-century or 'late Renaissance' recorder as the more refined and expressive late Baroque instrument. Lully's use of the new recorders in sleep scenes and pompes funèbres occasions in particular excited considerable approbation. The author suggests that Lully contributed to the revival of the recorder in the last three decades of the 17th century leading to its later use by composers such as Handel and Bach. A series of illustrations linked to the text shows the cultural background to the recorder symbolisms so potently developed in the music of Lully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]