The Lure and Legacy of Music at Versailles: Louis XIV and the Aix School by John Hajdu Heyer (original) (raw)
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The Lure and Legacy of Music at Versailles
2014
XIV and his court at Versailles had a profound influence on music in France and throughout Europe. In 1660 Louis visited Aix-en-Provence, a trip that resulted in political and cultural transformations throughout the region. Soon thereafter Aix became an important center of sacred music composition, eventually rivaling Paris for the quality of the composers it produced. John Hajdu Heyer documents the young king's visit and examines how he and his court deployed sacred music to enhance the royal image and secure the loyalty of the populace. Exploring the circle of composers at Aix, Heyer provides the most up-to-date and complete biographies in English of nine key figures, including Guillaume Poitevin, André Campra, Jean Gilles, François Estienne, and Antoine Blanchard. The book goes on to reveal how the history of political power in the region was reflected through church music, and how musicians were affected by contemporary events. john hajdu heyer is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He began his exploration of French sacred music from the time of Louis XIV during his years as a student in Paris with Nadia Boulanger (1967-70). His publications include two books and five critical editions of works by Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean Gilles. His work as a musicologist and conductor has twice been recognized with the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for "distinguished contribution to the study and performance of early music." He has served on the Council of the American Musicological Society, the editorial board for the Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music, and was active on the committees preparing the collected works of Lully. In the past four years, he has undertaken extensive research in archives and libraries of southern France.
2010
Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au 'The nature of fame: Charpentier's Les Plaisirs de Versailles and Lalande's Les Fontaines de Versailles compared' This essay is based on a journey which began more than ten years ago, in Brisbane Australia. Versailles in the 1680s and Brisbane in the 1990s are rather different worlds, but the temporal and geographical barriers can be overcome, with a small dose of imagination and determination. The impetus for embarking on the project of realising some secular works from the early 1680s was, at first, a simple case of curiosity about the composers and their creative context. Without recourse (at the time) to recordings or published editions, 1 the ensembles which were involved, and their audiences, unanimously relished the experience of exploring some of the intriguing theatrical repertoire from the time of Louis XIV. Two works, one each by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Michel-Richard de Lalande are therefore the focus of this discussion, namely the former's Les Plaisirs de Versailles (H.480) and the latter's Les Fontaines de Versailles (S.133). The current writer's immediate goal at the time was to create some new editions for these antipodean performances. However it soon became evident that broader philosophical issues were at play in relation to the genesis of these works, such as the historical impact of coincidence, and the very nature of fame. A composer's posthumous reputation can all too easily be affected by factors and circumstances which are in themselves purely contextual and transitory. Like beauty, one's artistic worth resides in the eye (or the ear) of the beholder. Thus informed by the firsthand experience of performing two otherwise ephemeral courtly divertissements from three centuries ago (albeit in a new and perhaps unlikely context), this essay will examine how 'occasional' works can sometimes have long-term consequences for their creators. In his examination of the phenomenon, Clive James noted that "from its earliest times, fame and its means of transmission-its media-were intimately involved with one another." 2 This is most pertinent in relation to the temporal art of music. Furthermore, while most figures in society rely on others to promulgate their reputation, creative artists also leave behind their artefacts for posterity, which are however then prone to decay, loss, or simple neglect. The assignment of some level of importance to a particular work or creator is primarily reliant upon the perceptions of those who interpret these pieces of evidence. This factor, more than any other has implications for what is available for future audiences and subsequent generations of interpreters.
Music and the Absolute Monarch: Trends in Seventeenth Century France and China!)
The purpose of this paper is to show how music was used to support autocratic government at the courts of two great contemporary rulers. Louis XIV of France(16431714) and the Kangxi Emperor of China(1662-1772). At a time of world-wide development in the arts, it is appropriate to compare and contrast the situation of one of the most influential of them at the very heart of contemporary western and eastern civilizations the courts of the Sun King at Versailles and the Son of Heaven in Beijingo But to do so, we must first go back several centuries and note the philosophical ground according to which each conceived its musical usage. In Europe, Plato had first emphasized the necessity to the Governor of music, dance and verse, which linked him with cosmic movement, the rhythm of the spheres. Later, in the sixth century, Boethius had named Christ Summus Ille Musicus', thereby stressing that through the most divine music, communion could be achieved with Christ and God. Mediaeval the...
Royal Peculiar: The Music and Patronage of Philippe of Orléans, Regent of France
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H-France Review , 2021
Review by John Romey, Purdue University Fort Wayne. Les foyers artistiques à la fin du règne de Louis XIV (1682-1715): Musique et spectacles, a 2019 collected volume of essays edited by Anne-Madeleine Goulet, broadens our knowledge about the sites in which noble and haute-bourgeois Parisians witnessed, created, and shaped French musical and theatrical traditions. In the same vein as much of Goulet's previous scholarship, the volume's contributors examine myriad performative activities not merely as reconstructions of past works and events from fossilized archival documents but as vibrant, polyvalent, and flexible modes of sociability. The essays also extend efforts to decenter Louis XIV's court as the locus of divertissement and artistic experimentation during his late reign, a time in which his court was becoming increasingly devout under the influence of Madame de Maintenon, his morganatic wife. Throughout its pages, the book discusses spaces in which public and private intersected. As the authors examine these spaces, they invite the reader to explore not only the diverse social forms of entertainment performed and consumed by early modern Parisians but also to understand how the social networks of the nobles and bourgeois who gathered in these spaces were essential to career advancement for artists. Many of the artists who circulated in these spaces sought to create new forms, styles, and genres to distinguish their work as modern, nurtured relationships to obtain better positions both at court and in under-studied tangential patronage systems.
Rethinking Interactions between French Music Schools and Paris Conservatoire during the 19thCentury
2021
Keynote. "Between Centres and Peripheries. Music in Europe from the French Revolution until WWI (1789-1914)", International Virtual Conference, 06-09 May 2021. During the 19th century, the city of Paris had a central role in the development of several musical fields: the main lyrical institutions were implanted there, and lyrical repertoire was first produced in the capital before being performed in other cities; musical editors, musical journals and instrument makers were mainly based in Paris and sold their products all around the country. The ‘city of lights’ was shining for all, and one can expect that Paris Conservatoire took on the same task by training French musicians, or by proposing a teaching model that could be reproduced everywhere. This actually allows it to justify being the only music school fully funded by the state. First being the only French public musical school, Paris Conservatoire also became the top of a large hierarchical system during the second half of the century, with two types of schools under its governance: ‘Succursales du Conservatoire’ and ‘École nationale’. Observed from Paris, the history of national music education would thus be the tale of a standardization of practices, decided in the capital and applied throughout the territory. But if we change perspective, and start studying the music schools of French towns one by one, the Parisian influence is far from obvious. On the one hand, other influences are at work when they are created, and the well-being of the national education system is not the main concern of the private structures that allow these births. On the other hand, the municipalities which financially support the development of conservatories may have their own music policy, sometimes in contradiction with Parisian objectives. The different examples show great disparities in the relationship with Paris: form a certain docility to demands for independence.