The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
"Les goûts réunis," not only in the music of the late
1720s
but in painting and cooking as well
Factlet first posted on September 15, 2008
François Couperin's expression, les goûts réunis is generally understood in a rather narrow sense by musicologists and musicians. (Les Goûts-réunis is the title Couperin gave to some instrumental pieces published in 1724.) They generally consider the expression as denoting a blend of Italian and French styles in music: "... ce recueuil, qui scelle l'union des styles italien et français," as Denis Herlin described it in the Dictionnaire de la musique en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (1992), ed. Marcelle Benoit, p. 324.
The identical expression les goûts réunis is also found in a book printed just one decade after the publication Couperin's Les Goûts-réunis. But this time the expression was applied to food!
The statement about les goûts réunis is cited in Florent Quellier's new book, La Table des Français, une histoire culturelle (XVe-début XIXe siècle (Rennes, 2007), p. 210. It is found in the preface to a cookbook, Les Dons de Comus ou les délices de la table (Paris, 1739) a preface generally attributed to two Jesuits, Pierre Brumoy and Guillaume-Hiacinthe Bougeant. Although one might wonder how two Reverend Fathers came to preface a cookbook, a quick glance at their biographies as preserved in any of the mid-eighteenth-century editions of Moréri's Dictionnaire reveals that both men were extremely knowledgeable about the arts in general, and that they were aware of the broader cultural and esthetic picture when they drew parallels between the arts (specifically, music and painting), the sciences, and cooking. This suggests that the expression has a far deeper and more pervasive meaning and extended beyond music and Couperin.
The sentences quoted by Quellier read as follows. (I have highlighted key ideas or expressions in bold type):
"On distingue aujourd'hui chez les gens du métier & chez les personnes qui se piquent d'avoir une bonne table, la Cuisine ancienne & la Cuisine moderne. La Cuisine ancienne est celle que les François ont mis en vogue par toute l'Europe, & qu'on suivoit generalement il n'y a pas encore vingt ans. La Cuisine moderne établie sur les fondements de l'ancienne, avec moins d'embarras, moins d'appareil, & avec autant de variété, est plus simple, plus propre, & peut-être encore plus sçavante. L'ancienne Cuisine étoit fort compliquée, & d'un détail extraordinaire. La Cuisine moderne est une espèce de Chymie. La science du Cuisinier consiste aujourd'hui à décomposer, à faire digérer & à mieux quintessencier des viandes, à tirer des sucs nourissans & legers, à les mêler & les confondre ensemble, de façon que rien ne domine & que tout se fasse sentir; enfin â leur donner cette union que les Peintres donnent aux couleurs, & à les rendre si homogènes, que de leurs différentes saveurs il ne résulte qu'un goût fin & piquant, & si j'ose dire, une harmonie de tous les goûts réunis ensemble."
Try a simple experiment. Change a few key words in this quotation, replacing "cuisine" with "musique"; "ancienne" with "pre-1715 or thereabouts" (that is, the music of Lully and his contemporaries and followers); "moderne" with "post-1715 or thereabouts" (as exemplified by the music of Couperin and Rameau). Does this revised version not suggest that the quest for "les goûts réunis" in French music may have alluded to a blend of "old" and "new" French musical styles, in addition to the more-talked-about blend of French and Italian forms?
In our revised version of the Jesuits' statement, the aim of this blending would be to produce a musical sound where the sharply contrasting tonal colors of the second half of the seventeenth century ― one thinks immediately of the works of "ancient" painters such as Mignard, Le Brun, Bourdon, La Hyre ― survive, but where they have been softened, blurred and pastellized, in the manner of "modern" painters such as Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher. Indeed, with a few different changes in vocabulary, so that art terms replace cooking terms, the Jesuits' statement could be applied not only to French music from circa 1665 and into the 1720's, but also to the evolution of French paintings.
Several decades ago Jean-Louis Flandrin (Histoire de la vie privée, ed. Ariès and Duby, paperback edition Paris: Seuil, vol. 3, p. 293) quoted other lines from the Reverend Fathers' preface. I quote these lines here, because they help us better to understand the context in which the expression les goûts réunis was used:
"Les Italiens ont poli toute l'Europe, & ce sont eux, sans contredit, qui nous ont appris à manger [...]. Il y a cependant plus de deux siècles qu'on connoît la bonne cuisine en France, mais on peut assurer sans prévention qu'elle n'a jamais été si délicate, & qu'on n'a point encore travaillé ni si proprement ni d'un goût si fin [pp. xii-xiii].
" La Cuisine, comme tous les autres Arts inventés pour le besoin ou pour le plaisir, s'est perfectionnée avec le génie des peuples, & elle est devenue plus délicate à mesure qu'ils se sont polis [...]. Les progrés de la cuisine [...] ont suivi parmi les Nations civilisées les progrés de tous les autres arts" [p. 1]
I wish I could quote the entire discussion, but no copy of the first edition of Les Dons de Comus is available to me; and that definitely is the edition that should be consulted. The version available online at Gallica2.bnf.fr is the second edition (1758), where an entirely new treatise on the history of food replaced Bourgeant and Brumoy's original preface.