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The Arts Conjoined: a Context for the Study of Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Margaret M. McGowan
Margaret M. McGowan
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Extract

The conditions of artistic production in late sixteenth-century France required musicians and poets, composers and painters, choreographers and performers to work together. They shared the same objectives and they worked from the same aesthetic principles. Their common experience suggests that, as historians and analysts, we can enlighten the study of one art form – music or the dance, for example – by placing it within the context of others, assessing their interaction and their shared purpose. If this assumption is accepted we must consider issues of production, that is those practical matters concerning technique and the varied conditions of performance; we must examine the audience's expectations of those events which drew together the arts into a single spectacle or in a sequence of festivals and which relied for their inspiration on intellectual currents nourished through renewed acquaintance with ancient sources; and we need to assess the nature of the works themselves, their impact on the status of the artist (broadly defined), and on the social and political benefit for the patrons. There is inevitably much overlap across these three areas of production, expectation and outcomes, yet, in the discussion which follows, attempts will be made to keep them separate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 13 , October 1994 , pp. 171 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 For a discussion of interart analogies, see my book Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985), chapter 2, pp. 51–88Google Scholar.

2 In ‘Ut musica poesis’ the late Howard Mayer Brown stressed the intellectual order posited by poets and musicians; the present paper tries to extend that work to include social, humanist and artistic trends which brought all arts closely together at this time.

3 Yates, F. A., The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1947)Google Scholar, and Jacquot, J. (editor of Les fêtes de la Renaissance, Paris, 1956, 1960, 1975)Google Scholar have demonstrated how Renaissance artists used ancient sources in their search for the therapeutic ‘effects’ they thought could be produced through different forms being appropriately conjoined.

4 Binet, C., La vie de Pierre de Ronsard, version C, ed. Laumonier, P. (Paris, 1909), p. 45Google Scholar note 12.

5 For a modern edition of Jouan's, AbelRecueil et discours du voyage du roy Charles IX, see The Royal Tour of France, ed. Johnson, W. McAllister and Graham, V. E. with many additional documents gleaned from provincial as well as Paris archives (Toronto, 1979)Google Scholar.

6 McAllister Johnson and Graham, pp. 75–6, and Appendix i, pp. 147 ff., for the Fontainebleau fêtes.

7 Ibid., Appendix xxi, pp. 328 ff., for a description of the events at Bayonne.

8 Ibid., pp. 101–2.

9 Ibid., pp. 187 ff., for a description of the king's entertainment at Lyons in the summer of 1564.

10 A clear idea of the nature of music-making in Lyons can be gained from Dobbins's, Frank detailed account in Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar.

11 I am not convinced that we can, in our present state of knowledge, assume that Paris was the centre and that artistic production elsewhere should be seen as the periphery, as Howard Mayer Brown implies on pp. 25 and 29 of ‘Ut musica poesis’.

12 In her letter to Charles IX (September 1563), Catherine recalls the advice given to her by her father-in-law, François I; he had argued that it was politic to engage nobles in entertainments in order to ensure relative harmony at court: Lettres de Catherine de' Medici, 5 vols., ed. Le Cte Hector de la Ferrière, M. (Paris, 1885), ii, p. 92Google Scholar.

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19 Belleau, R., Oeuvres poétiques [1569], ed. Marty-Laveaux, C., 2 vols. (Paris, 1877–1878; repr. Geneva, 1965), iiGoogle Scholar, dedication to Les amours et nouveaux eschanges.

20 Discours du grand et magnifique triumphe faict au mariage de … François … et … Marie d'Estrevart, roine d'Escosse (Paris, 1558), sig. C.ivGoogle Scholar.

21 See Johnson, McAllister and Graham's, edition of Le recueil des inscriptions, 1558 (Toronto, 1972), pp. 103–5Google Scholar, for Jodelle's account of this spectacular disaster.

22 L'Arimène by Ollenix, du Mont-Sacré [pseudonym for Nicolas de Montreux], Paris, 1597Google Scholar, sig. A.iiv.

23 Ibid., sig. A.iiij.

24 Ibid., fol. 122.

25 Ibid., fol. 123v.

26 I wish to thank Dr Frank Dobbins for drawing my attention to this work of which a manuscript presentation copy survives in the British Library (Harleian 4325); rather crude watercolour drawings show the costumes for Mercury, Ceres, Fame and two shepherd couples and the general disposition of the scene and hall. There have been two modern printings: the first by N. Yemeniz (Lyons, 1857), the second by C. Longeon (1982).

27 Pastorelle, fols. 24v–25. A fervent catholic and priest, Papon seeks not only to praise French glories (particularly those of the Guise) and to extol peace returned but also to promote the cause of the church.

28 Papon appended to the end of his presentation copy an account of the performance from which this extract is taken, fol. 56v.

29 Despite these grandiloquent tones, the scenery appears relatively rudimentary, tapestries providing the walls on which a series of portraits were affixed.

30 Pastorelle, fol. 55v. Papon seems to use the word scene to mean act.

31 Arbeau, T., Orchésographie (Paris, 1589Google Scholar; trans. M. S. Evans, New York, 1948, p. 177), explains how this moresco was performed with bells attached to the dancers' legs.

32 Pastorelle, fol. 56v. These interludes taken from the repertory of the commedia dell'arte are further proof of the enduring Italian influence in France at this time, and that it went well beyond the court.

33 Johnson, McAllister and Graham, , The Royal Tour, Appendix v, pp. 147 ffGoogle Scholar.

34 Ibid., Appendix XXI, pp. 328 ff.

35 The passage cited from the Bayonne fêtes confirms the hierarchy discussed by Brown, in ‘Ut musica poesis’, pp. 4–12Google Scholar, where relevant passages from Pontus de Tyard's Solitaire second are analysed, followed by an appraisal of various settings of Ronsard's poems.

36 Monique Rollin has shown how, for a slightly later period, dance music was printed to allow for variations to be introduced impromptu in performance, ‘La musique de ballet dans les tablatures de luth: souvenir et source d'inspiration’, Cahiers de I'IRHMES, 1 (1992), pp. 53–75Google Scholar.

37 Castiglione's Book of the Courtier was first published in French as Le parfait courtisan in 1538; Guazzo's La civil conversazione was published in Brescia in 1574; and Faret's adaptation of these traditions came out in Paris in 1632.

38 Nakam, G., Montaigne en son temps (Paris, 1982), p. 56Google Scholar, commenting upon Montaigne's references to Italian masters in De I'institution des enfans, offers this information: ‘La cour prend des leçons de danse, sous la conduite du maître italien Ludovico Palvallo, et s'enthousiasme pour le célèbre milanais Pompeo Diabono arrivé en France en 1554.’

39 Le printemps, Paris, 1572, fol. 10vGoogle Scholar.

40 Ibid., fols. 164v–165.

41 Bonniffet, Pierre, Un ballet démasqué: l'union de la musique au verbe dans 'Le printans' de Jean-Antoine de Baïf et Claude Le Jeune (Paris and Geneva, 1988)Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., pp. 153–6.

43 This is the first strophe of the dedication to the Duc d'Alençon of Les jeux (1573); it is cited by Bonniffet on p. 155.

44 Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636), proposition xx, p. 391Google Scholar, ‘Les Compositeurs de balets donnent à leurs Branles, et autres pieces qui servent à la recreation: car ils usent des mesmes pieds qu'Anacreon, Pindare, Theocrite, et les autres Poëtes, encore qu'ils ne suivent autre chose que leur genie et qu'ils n'en ayent point oüy parler: c'est pourquoy l'on peut appeler chaque espece de vers, Branle, Courante, etc. suivant le mouvement du vers.’

45 Le printemps, fol. 165v.

46 Bonniffet rounds off his argument about Baïf's collection of poems thus: ‘on peut voir dans le Printans le premier monument de la musique de danse au XVIe siècle’, Un ballet démasqué, p. 156.

47 Ideal Forms, pp. 221–6.

48 Le plaisir des champs (Paris, 1583), pp. 57 ff.Google Scholar; Gauchet, almoner of the king, dedicated his work to the Due de Joyeuse two years after the Balet comique de la royne (1581).

49 Ibid., p. 68.

50 See Lesure, F., ‘Recueil des ballets de Michel Henry’ [c. 1620], published in Fêtes de la Renaissance, ed. Jacquot, , i, pp. 205–20Google Scholar.

51 For a discussion of this common language, and concerning interart analogies more generally, see Ideal Forms, pp. 51–63.

52 Salel, H., Oeuvres poétiques, modern edn (Paris, 1930), p. 301Google Scholar.

53 Solitaire premier, ed. Lapp, , p. 42Google Scholar.

54 Tuccaro, L'art de sauter, fol. 28r.

55 Cited in Champion, P., Ronsard et son temps, i (Paris, 1925), p. 31Google Scholar.

56 Tuccaro, L'art de sauter, fol. 38v, ‘Hesiode au commencement de ses vers voulant louer les Muses, escrit qu'elles sautent et ballent souvent entre-elles de fort bonne grace’.

57 Ibid., fol. 36.

58 Howard Mayer Brown has stressed the cosmic context in which music was placed by musical theorists at this time; see ‘Ut musica poesis’, pp. 3–4.

59 Chamard, H., Histoire de la Pléiade, 4 vols. (Paris, 1939), iii, p. 357Google Scholar, note 1. Lassus paid his first visit to Paris in 1571 when he dedicated a new book of five-part chansons to Charles IX; see Roche, J., Lassus (Oxford, 1982), p. 45Google Scholar, and for a full account of this visit, Sandberger, A., ‘R. Lassus' Beziehungen zu Frankreich’, Sammelbände der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft, 8 (1906–1907), pp. 355 ffGoogle Scholar.

60 Ronsard wrote of Lassus that he ‘semble avoir seul desrobé l'harmonie des cieux pour nous en resjouir en la terre’ (cited by Champion, , Ronsard et son temps, iv, p. 135Google Scholar); and Jodelle compared him to Mercury: ‘Mercure aussi, qu'on fait fort subtil inventeur, / En musique, peut estre, est la Musique mesme, / Haussant, baissant, partout ce beau vol enchanteur’ (cited by Champion, iii, pp. 247–8).

61 The details of this indoor festival are less well known than that other processional celebration, the royal entry into Paris: L'entrée à Paris de Charles IX, ed. Yates, F. A. (Amsterdam, 1974)Google Scholar.

62 See Jodelle, E., Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols., ed. Balmas, E. (Paris, 1968), ii, pp. 268–74Google Scholar.

63 The tradition was well established. For an earlier example of the French court mirrored in Olympus, see Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Chanson des astres (otherwise called ‘Chanson appelée le Ciel, sur les dames de la cour de Françoys Ier. Elle se chante sur l'air du Curé de Créteil, 1544’, note in the Recueil de Maurepas), published by Blanchemain, P., Oeuvres poétiques, 3 vols. (Paris, 1873), i, pp. 121 ffGoogle Scholar.

64 Jodelle, , Oeuvres, ii, p. 272Google Scholar.

65 Discours du grand et magnifique triomphe, sigs. B iij-iv.

66 The most detailed account of the proceedings can be found in Goulart, S., Mémoires de l'estal de France (s.l., 1578), 3 vols., i, fols. 262r–270vGoogle Scholar.

67 Ibid., fol. 236v.

68 Ibid., fol. 269r.

69 This ballet is followed by further displays of martial skills among the challengers released from hell, before fireworks end the proceedings.

70 For a study of the precise context of these fêtes, see my article ‘Une affaire de famille: les fêtes parisiennes en l'honneur d'Henri, due d'Anjou, roi de Pologne’, Arts du spectacle et histoire des idées, introduced by Vaccaro, J.-M. (Tours, 1984), pp. 9–20Google Scholar.

71 The verses were composed in Latin and published in Magnificentissimi spectaculi (Paris, 1573).

72 Dorat, Magnificentissimi spectaculi, fol. Fiv, ‘Sed quis tam varias saltandi expressint artes, / Quas Belloioius mille Choragus habet? / Quod solum potuit, pictis, Baptista tabellis, / Expressit prima, caetera carmen habet’.

73 Brantôme, , Oeuvres, v, pp. 59–60Google Scholar.

74 d'Aubigné, A., Histoire universelle, iv, p. 178Google Scholar; cited by Yvanoff, N., ‘Les fêtes de cour des derniers Valois d'après les tapisseries du Musée des Offices’, Revue du XVIe Siècle, 19 (1932–1933), pp. 115–16Google Scholar.

75 ‘Ut musica poesis’, p. 33.