Louis XV’s Paris: About the Program

Louis XV of France was only five years old in September 1715 when his great-grandfather, Louis XIV, died. For the next several years, France was ruled by a Regent in his name, his grand-uncle Phillipe II, Duke of Orléans, who did not exert the consistent focus on music that Louis XIV had done. When he came to his maturity in 1723 (at the age of 13) and took over the government on his own, Louis XV had not developed any strong tastes in music. Jean Phillipe Rameau served as his court composer, continuing the grand opera style of Jean-Baptiste Lully (who had served Louis XIV). As a result, various nobles and aristocrats promoted a variety of new musical styles (often from Italy) in mid-eighteenth-century Paris. So when an Italian comic opera troupe (known as “buffonists”) met with success in performing the new style of Italian opera by presenting Pergolesi’s La serva padrona and other works in 1752, it precipitated a raging debate about music in France as compared to Italy in the social media of the day—small printed pamphlets that were quick and cheap to produce—resulting in what is often referred to as the “Querelle des Boffons.” Today’s program provides an aural snapshot of French musical culture during this turbulent time.

Like many French musicians, Antonie Dauvergne (1713-1797) began his career outside of Paris (in his case, south central France around Clermont-Ferrand) and moved to the capital as a young adult in the 1730s. He probably studied composition with Rameau and began a successful career in as an instrumentalist (eventually becoming a violinist in the Opéra orchestra) and a composer. His Concert de simphonies op. 4/1 (1751), scored for strings and basso continuo, begins with a French Overture—duple opening and closing sections of stately dotted rhythms framing a fast triple section in imitation. The second and third movements are dance pairs with the second moving to B major, before the first is repeated da capo. The concluding movement is a Passacaille (or Passacaglia) a piece based on a repeating bass pattern. Following his success as an instrumentalist, Dauvergne went on to compose his own brief, comic opera, Les troqueurs (The Swappers, 1753) and played an important role in bringing Gluck to Paris in 1774.

Johann Stamitz (1717-1757) was a violinist and composer at the court of the Elector Karl Theodor of Mannheim, who spent lavishly on music. Stamitz composed for some of the finest musicians outside of Paris, and his works are often considered central to the development of the symphony before Haydn, especially in his use of winds. He visited Paris late in his life (1754-55), staying at the palace of La Pouplinière (a major patron of Rameau), who maintained a private orchestra (which was not an unusual expense at the time, as was the case with Haydn and the Esterhazy family). It was for this Parisian orchestra and audience that Stamitz wrote his ten orchestral trios. Stamitz gave the works a symphonic feel (as opposed to a chamber trio) though the use of orchestral effects such as tremolos (passages of quickly repeated notes) and sudden dynamic contrasts. The outer movements of his Orchestral Trio op. 4/5 in G minor both begin with imitative mottos and are propelled by dynamic contrasts to contrasting second themes in B-flat major. The Andante second movement, in E-flat Major, features an arpeggiated, lyric theme in a binary form. The third movement consists of a pair of Minuets (the first repeated da capo) in G minor with the brief, central minuet in G major.

Christoph Gluck (1714-1787) produced slightly different versions of his most famous operas in both Vienna and Paris. Working with the librettist Ranieri de’Calzabigi, Gluck created Orfeo ed Euridice (Vienna, 1762) and Alceste (Vienna, 1767) to great acclaim. Following the success of Iphigénei en Aulide (Paris, 1774), Gluck revised his earlier works for French audiences. For the French adaptation of Orphée et Eurydice (Paris, 1774), Gluck wrote one his most famous works, the Dance of Blessed Spirits at the beginning of Act II to depict the Elysian Fields, where the noble and virtuous reside after death. For such an elevated scene, Gluck set a stately minuet in G Major for two flutes and strings as the frame for a virtuoso flute solo in D minor. The instrumental movement provided an opportunity for an extended ballet and dazzling orchestra writing, both of which were written to appeal to Parisian audiences. Gluck’s Parisian works demonstrated a way to synthesize Italian and French operatic traits that had been debated in the Querelle des Boffons, and his music (more than Rameau’s) offered a path for musical development that was taken up by Mozart and later composers. Louis XV passed only a few months before the Paris premiere of Orphée; he, therefore, missed an important resolution to the great musical debate of his reign.

While Jean Phillipe Rameau (1683-1764) is famous today for his essential theory treatise, Traité de l’harmonie (1722) and stage works, he wrote extensively for the harpsichord, both solo works and his Pièces de clavecin in concerts (1741), a set of six, three-movement suites for harpsichord and two other instruments (usually violin, and cello). As is typical of French dance collections, the titles refer to the composer’s circle of acquaintances and interests. For the First Concert: La Coulicam (a quick duple) refers to a character in a history of Persia, written by a Jesuit acquaintance of the composer; La Livri (a stately Andantino) is a memorial or tombeau for the Count Livry (a friend of Rameau); and Le Vézinet (the concluding fast duple) is a wealthy suburb of Paris—but how the music of each movement is related to these people and places is known only to the composer. After his death, someone reorchestrated the trio versions for a five-part string orchestra, keeping the two original string parts and redistributing the harpsichord material into the three new lines.