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‘Baptist's Vein’—French Orchestral Music and its Influence, from 1650 to 1750

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

C. L. Cudworth
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Extract

‘The master of the Court musick in France was Baptista (an Italian frenchified). The Entrys of Baptist ever were … valued as most stately and compleat harmony; and all the compositions of the town were strained to imitate Baptist's vein.’

This Quotation Concerning Lully, from North's Memoirs of Musick, is the key to a whole century of musical history, for it was not only London town which was ‘strained to imitate Baptist's vein’ but almost the whole of Europe as well, and in this paper I hope to trace the influence of Lully's ‘vein’ in the development of the modern orchestra. Our story begins just before his time, when the Italians were composing the first operas, when the English were experimenting with the masque and the French had already made a very good beginning with their Ballet de Cour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 83 , 1956 , pp. 29 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1956

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