This week in class we mixed
things up a bit and staged a debate. One team argued that the musical monopoly held
by Lully and King Louis XIV was a good thing for the future of music whereas
the other team argued against this. I was in the opposing team and, not being
used to taking part in proper debates or being one for any form of confrontation,
felt a little wary of the whole idea. My personal views on the subject are
somewhat mixed as while the music of Lully’s time has endured and certainly
earned its place in history, I wonder what might have been if other composers
had been allowed to flourish in Paris during this time.
During this duo’s reign it was
certainly a case of your face having to fit. If you weren’t one of the ‘chosen’
few then you might as well give up or move to Italy. Lully was very demanding
of everyone he worked with and if you made a mistake or tried to embellish what
he had written then you would quite possibly fall out of favour. Lully was not
above breaking a musician’s instrument to demonstrate his displeasure.
Something that Lully did bring
to his operas, with the help of his librettist, Philippe Quinault, was a proper
storyline. This differed from the Italian style where a story was loosely woven
to join the many airs and choruses together into an entertainment. Even though
Quinault wrote the libretto, he had to keep revising it until Lully was
completely happy. As Robert Isherwood writes “Thus, despite the importance of
the text in the tragédie lyrique, the composer’s will prevailed over the poet’s.”
Louis eventually lost interest
in opera and, influenced by his mistress, Madame de Maintenon, he turned his
attention to religion and religious music. Lully, also getting older, also
turned his attention in this direction, leaving French opera to its own devices
and allowing other composers to finally get a chance to show their
capabilities. One of these was Marc-Antoine Charpentier whose opera, Medée was
performed in 1693. Charpentier had studied with Giacomo Carissimi in Italy and
while his music was still French in style it contained much richer harmonies
unlike the rather transparent textures of Lully’s work. Italian versions of Medea
were comedies but this French version has a much darker, more serious
storyline.
Here is a link to a rather
interesting version of the fully staged opera.
It seems to me that while
Lully and King Louis played a very important part in the development of French
opera during the Baroque period, it really only flourished once they had moved
on to new interests. As well as Charpentier, it made way for composers such as
André Camprei, who wrote Fêtes
Venitiennes in 1710. This work was simpler and more jolly than Lully’s Armide although it was structurally similar
with orchestral interludes within the airs. François Couperin as another influential
composer and, unlike Lully, was a big fan of the ornament. He even wrote a
detailed table of when and how to perform them. As you can see below, the score
of La Ténébreuse is liberally scattered with them.
Whatever we think about the
monopoly held by Lully and Louis, it is a fact of history and has shaped the
music we have today. As for our debate, the team arguing for the monopoly won
by one point and I’m ok with that. I may just have to hone my debating skills
in case we do it again though.
References
Isherwood, Robert. The
operas of Lully. Music in the service of the King: France in the seventeenth century (1973)
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