The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
1698: Charpentier and his Circle
My Musing about the Discovery of an autograph treatise written in 1698 by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (manuscript "XLI" of the Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana) focuses on the manuscript itself and addresses its authenticity.
The present Musing moves beyond the newly discovered manuscript, to lay out some hypotheses about the raison d'être of the manuscript — that is, about what Marc-Antoine Charpentier and his circle were doing, intellectually, during the fall of 1698. Hypotheses, yes, but hypotheses grounded on some intriguing coincidences. Coincidences that give rise to the question marks that stud this Musing. It is my hope that these questions will suggest to other scholars the importance of stray bits of evidence they have gleaned, and how that evidence fits into this puzzle.
Manuscript "XLI": a succinct scientific text
In my presentation of the discovery, I assess similarities in concept and layout between the Lilly autograph (1698) and two Charpentier manuscripts (circa 1691-93): the Règles de composition de Monsieur Charpentier, and the Augmentations to that treatise written for Louis XIV's nephew, Philippe Duke of Chartres. These two manuscripts have survived as copies in the hand of Étienne Loulié, Charpentier's long-time associate. In that presentation I argued that in both concept and layout, the two Loulié copies are faithful to the lost Charpentier originals. That is, they use a format that I have described as the "Chartres model" (see Part III of my presentation of the discovery).
For example, the Règles, written for the Duke of Chartres circa 1691, consists of several "treatises," traités, each stating quite specific rules to be followed in relatively precise chordal progressions. As I demonstrated in the presentation of the newly discovered manuscript, each section is highlighted by a centered title that is followed, first, by a statement of the general principle in one or two concise sentences, and then by some brief musical examples accompanied by as many as eight or nine sentence-long rules related to the chord progressions shown in the examples. (1)
The layout of the newly discovered manuscript "XLI" is an offshoot of the Chartres model, but there is a world of difference between Charpentier's approach in the Loulié copies and his approach in the recently discovered autograph manuscript. The Lilly autograph too is made up of several "treatises" — each of which consists of a general rule written in a large hand, followed by a few brief examples of chord progressions and, in a smaller hand, some brief remarks about these progressions. The centered statements at the beginning of each traité are succinct — reductionist, in a philosophical sense. They treat all aspects of the subject in as few words as possible. Indeed, in each little traité Charpentier is implicitly defying anyone to find an exception to the principles he presents. His reasoning would seem to be deductive. (2)
In other words, his way of presenting his work has evolved between the Règles of circa 1691 and manuscript "XLI" of late 1698. He has moved toward concision (3); his presentation of his findings has become increasingly scientific, in both content and layout. If I am reading his intentions accurately, he believed that he had distilled the principles underlying harmonic practice, and that these principles are irrefutable; they cannot be challenged; and, as far as he can discern, they are applicable in every instance.
The Duke of Chartres, the Royal Academy of Sciences
For seven or eight years during the 1690s, Charpentier and Loulié taught music to the Duke of Chartres. (For more on the Duke, see Part II of my presentation of the newly discovered autograph treatise.) In the prince's course of study, musical theory had been presented as a body of knowledge that was a twig on one of the branches of physics. That is, the prince's teachers had subdivided physics into three broad categories: machines, that is, the "principles of mechanics"; light, that is, "optics": and sound, which included not only "music" but also the science that came to be called acoustics. (4)
Loulié would soon be immersed in a project that linked "sound" and physics, and that laid the foundations for the science of acoustics. Thanks to the Duke's patronage, and working under the aegis of the Royal Academy of Sciences, the musician began collaborating with Joseph Sauveur to measure musical sound. Consequently, around 1698 he stopped drawing up composition methods and took on the daunting task of defining and describing music in a scientific way: La Musique est la science des Sons, "Music is the science of sounds." A few years earlier, this same emphasis on scientific definitions had shaped Charpentier's definition of music, seen from the perspective of esthetics. In his Augmentations for Chartres, he wrote: Définitions de la Musique: La Musique est un mélange harmonieux des sons ..., "Definitions of music: Music is a harmonious blend of sounds."
The discovery of manuscript "XLI" raises the possibility that Charpentier — and Loulié too? — remained closer to the Duke than was hitherto imagined. It has long been known that Charpentier benefitted from the Duke's protection: in late June of 1698, at Chartres's urging, he was named music master at a prestigious royal chapel, the Sainte-Chapelle on the Ile-de-la-Cité.
Was manuscript "XLI" directly or indirectly related to the scientific work going on at the Academy of Sciences, to which the Duke was extending his protection? Should this newly identified Charpentier manuscript be seen as a scientific presentation of the theory of tonal harmony, as Marc-Antoine Charpentier understood it in 1698?
1697-1698: a possible scenario
The date 1698 appears significant for our understanding of manuscript "XLI"; but at the moment the facts are frustratingly scant. Scant though they be, these facts nonetheless suggest a scenario that could potentially shed light on the raison d'être for manuscript "XLI."
Circa April 1697, Charles Masson published the first edition of his Nouveau traité des règles de la composition de la musique. A second edition appeared in 1705. The layout in both versions is very close to the "Chartres model" described above. Neither in 1697 nor in 1705 did Masson demonstrate the analytical rigor and concision that, we shall see, was achieved by Charpentier in 1698. Still, in both layout and approach, Masson's Traité is remarkably similar to Charpentier's Règles of circa 1691: a centered section heading is followed, first, by a brief definition and then by a sizeable number of rules that apply to specific situations and that are accompanied by brief musical examples.
Masson may well have been allowed to see some of Charpentier's theoretical writings — perhaps by Charpentier himself, perhaps in the form of Loulié's personal copy of the Règles. How else does one explain the Charpentier-like esthetic (and moral) comments about one chord being appropriate ("good," bon) and another one inappropriate ("bad," mauvais), that are sprinkled throughout the musical examples in Masson's Nouveau traité, just as they are sprinkled throughout the Règles, and as they would soon be sprinkled throughout manuscript "XLI"? (5) There may be an earlier common source for these esthetic-moral judgments, but if so, I missed them in the pre-1690s treatises I read for my Harmonic Orator. (For the Règles de Composition par Monsieur Charpentier, see Part II of the presentation of the autograph treatise; and for these esthetic judgments, see Part III)
Still, caution is the rule here, because the vocabulary of music theory and the formatting of musical methods and treatises tended to be similar from one author to another. Indeed, were it not for the manuscripts that Sauveur drew up for the Duke of Chartres's science courses, (6) and that therefore use a Chartres-model layout and approach, I might have assumed that the layout of Loulié's Éléments was imposed by the Ballard print-shop, and that Charpentier had adopted that layout because he thought Ballard might publish the Règles. Such similarities are, of course, doubly likely in the close circle of friends and associates where Charpentier and Loulié appear to have been moving at the time. Only by close reading and a detailed comparison of page layouts, texts, and musical examples can shifts be discerned that permit us to ascertain originality in format and terminology. In addition, if a common source for esthetic-moral judgments could be located, it might shed light on the origins of this practice, and whether it initially was primarily moral or esthetic. (I do not intend to do that close reading or to make that comparison: the requisite sources are not readily available to me.)
During the 1690s, Charpentier, Loulié, and Masson clearly were linked intellectually and programmatically, although the extent of their personal contact remains a matter of conjecture. For example, we know that, as Charpentier had done from 1688 to 1698, Masson was composing for the Jesuits at the professed house of Saint-Louis (7); we know that Loulié and Masson had been discussing tonal harmony with Sébastien de Brossard, beginning in circa 1685 (8); we know that Loulié worked closely with Charpentier at the Hôtel de Guise, 1673-1687, and that the two men continued to collaborate in the early 1690s, during the Duke of Chartres's course of study; and we know that, under the prince's protective mantle, between circa 1693 and 1701 Loulié and some twenty unidentified musicians were participating in the acoustical experiments of the Royal Academy of Sciences, serving as the ears of hearing-impaired Joseph Sauveur. (9)
Was Charles Masson one of those musicians? If so, did he remain faithful to Sauveur after the dispute that prompted most of the musicians, among them Loulié, to stop working with Sauveur circa 1700? Does that explain why, in 1705, Sauveur "approved" Masson's little handbook on how to compose a bass for a melody? (10) And what are we to make of the fact that, also in 1705 — a scant year after Charpentier's death — Masson dedicated the second edition of his Nouveau traité des règles de la composition de la musique to the Duke of Chartres? And that the prince, now Duke of Orleans, had "looked at it" and "approved"? Does this somehow explain why the esthetic judgments so characteristic of the late Charpentier's approach to teaching composition were eliminated from that second edition? (11) With Loulié and Charpentier dead, was Masson turning the page and hoping to replace them in the Duke's circle?
Irrespective of how these questions are eventually answered, it seems that Charpentier read Masson's Nouveau traité and gave some thought to its contents. In fact, Masson's little book may well have been a sort of intellectual challenge to Charpentier. How succinctly could he, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, the new master of the Sainte-Chapelle and the respected teacher of a prince, present the overarching principles that govern the art of composing according to tonal harmony?
Defining "Fugue"
Charpentier also seems to have wondered just how concise he could be about the fugue, which Masson called "one of the most difficult subjects in composition," un des plus difficiles articles de la composition. (12)
In lieu of Masson's approximately nine pages of text and seven pages
of musical examples, in manuscript "XLI" Charpentier presented Fugue and
Imitation in one sentence each: "Fugue is the representation of a melody
at the fourth or the fifth, above or below, and sometimes at the octave
or at unison," La fugue est la representation du chant à la quarte
ou à la quinte au dessus ou au dessous, quelque fois à l'octave et à
l'unisson; and "Imitation is the representation of a brief melody
at the second, the third, or unison," L'imitation est la
representation d'un petit chant à la seconde, à la tierce ou à l'unisson.
(13) To demonstrate these two types of "representation," five
musical examples that stretch from one margin of the page to the other,
round out the presentation.
The vocabulary that Charpentier employed
— and particularly his choice of the word représentation,
"representation" — will permit us, as a first step, to compare these
definitions with the ones that Charles Masson and Étienne Loulié had
written not long before.
It so happens that, circa 1697, Loulié, too, was drafting a definition of Fugue. He defines it as a "repetition or an imitation of a melody"; it is "a brief melody of two or three notes and more, that one repeats or that one imitates in turn in the upper voice and in the bass," une Répétition ou une Imitation d'un chant, ... un chant court de deux ou trois nottes et plus qu'on repette et qu'on imite tour à tour dans le dessus ou dans la basse. (14) In other words, Fugue either = a) Répétition or b) Imitation.
The vocabulary that Masson employed in 1697 is similar to Loulié's, but he uses verb forms rather than nouns: "Fugue is a melody that ought to be repeated or imitated," La Fugue est un chant qui doit être repeté ou imité. (15) Here, too, Fugue = a) répéter or b) imiter. In other words, for both Loulié and Masson, imitation/imiter is synonymous with Fugue; but an imitation is not a musical form in its own right.
Masson goes on to say that, in a fugue that is a "simple repetition of the melody," the "second voice imitates the melody of the first voice at a distance of a fourth or a fifth," la seconde partie imite le chant de la première à la distance d'une quarte ou d'une quinte (p. 70). In the second edition of 1705 (pp. 108ff), he retained the vocabulary of the first edition.
Back in 1693 or thereabouts, in his Augmentations for the Duke of Chartres, Charpentier had employed the same two words: imitation and fugue. And he too had treated them as synonyms: that is, Fugue = imitation. "Imitation at the fourth or at the fifth, whether ascending or descending, is not one of the lesser beauties [of music], ... Fugue is the imitation of the melody at a fourth or a fifth, be it rising or descending," L'imitation à la quarte ou à la quinte tant en montant qu'en descendant n'en fait pas une des moindres beautés .... La fugue est l'imitation du chant à la quarte ou à la quinte tant en montant qu'en descendant. (16)
In other words, Masson and Charpentier agreed about musical fourths and fifths; and until 1697 or 1698 they both seem to have been comfortable with the word imitation/imiter as a synonym for fugue.
But now, in 1698, Charpentier changed his vocabulary. The change was perhaps precipitated by his decision to elevate Imitation to the level of a musical form, just as Fugue is a musical form - and consequently, to elevate imitation to the level of a scientific term. As a consequence of this decision, he could no longer use the noun "imitation" to define the musical form called Imitation: that would have created the equation Imitation = imitation. He therefore replaced "imitation" with "representation," représentation: "Fugue is the representation of the melody," La fugue est la représentation du chant... (17) In other words, the equation now is: Fugue = représentation. (It is noteworthy that, even back in the early 1690s, Charpentier had not used "repeat" or "repetitions" to define fugue, as Loulié and Masson would subsequently do.)
The implications of Charpentier's new wording at first glance perhaps seem superficial, pragmatic. They actually are very profound. To measure the profundity of this change in meaning, one need only consult Furetière's Dictionnaire universel (1690) and compare the definitions of Imiter, Répéter, and Représenter.
Imitation - Copie d'un original. Ce tableau n'est qu'une imitation du Raphael, du Poussin. ... C'est aussi l'action par laquelle on agit conformement à un modelle. Le Sauveur a commandé à ses Apostres de faire la Cene à son imitation
Imiter - Copier quelque chose sur une autre qu'on a choisie pour modelle. ... Le perroquet imite la voix de l'homme. On dit proverbialement que l'Art imite la nature. Et on dit d'une chose qu'elle est bien imitée quand elle est bien tirée d'apres nature.
The verb "to imitate," and the noun "imitation," denote conforming to a model, copying a model — just as a parrot imitates the human voice. This evocation of a parrot suggests that although an imitation must seem "natural," it is can be mindless.
Répéter - Dire plusieurs fois une même chose ... Quand on dit son chapelet, on repete plusieurs fois son Pater et son Ave. ... En dogmatique signifie aussi reiterer quelque action ... Les échos repetent plusieurs fois les sons et la voix. Les petits coups de marteau plusieurs fois repetez causent à la fin un grand effet.
The verb "to repeat" (and the related noun répétition, which Furetière did not define) denotes the rather mechanical reiteration of a sound. True, the soul may be experiencing elevated thoughts during the recitation of the rosary, but the recitation itself is routine and predictable — just as an echo is a routine, almost automatic repetition of a given sound.
Représentation (18) - Image qui nous remet en idée et en la memoire les objets absents, et qui nous le peint tels qu'ils sont. L'Eglise a receu les images, parce que ce sont les representations de Dieu et des Saints. (19) Quand on va voir les Princes morts dans leur lit de parade, on n'en voit que la representation, l'effigie.
Représenter - Faire une image ou peinture d'un objet, qui nous le fasse connoistre tel qu'il est. Un miroir represente les choses au naturel.
Charpentier's new term, "representation," représentation, denotes a more abstract and general way of thinking and perceiving than the other two words do. A representation involves "the idea and the memory of absent things." It may be an "image," a painting that can embody the ineffable: God, the saints, a dead monarch. But although it must be perceived as "natural" and "recognizable" — after all, it "paints the thing as it is" — this representation is a "reflection" of the thing. It is not, and presumably cannot be, a mere "copy" (imitation) or "reiteration" (répétition) of the subject, because the effigy of a dead king takes the place of the real-life man, and the multitude of portraits by his court artists take the place the real-life king and must therefore be shown the same deference as the man himself. Furthermore, the mind is capable of grasping this "memory of an absent object." Thus the representation hovers somewhere in one's "ideas" (20) and "memory." And if we take Montaigne (21) as an additional guide to what Charpentier meant by représentation, then we see that the "lines of this painting" continually change and vary, for the listener/reader and for the composer/author alike.
In other words, to "represent" something is to depict it (as in "picture," pictura) convincingly. Thus, in both fugue and imitation, one's memory makes the connection between the original melody and the melody one is now hearing. And although each reappearance of that melody is a recognizable "representation" of the original melody, it is not a slavish copy. Rather, it is the embodiment of the original melody. More revealing still: in Charpentier's thought, post-1698, neither Fugue nor Imitation could be seen as a mere parroting of the original melody.
This is what I meant when I asserted that Charpentier's reasoning was simple yet profound — like all great science or natural philosophy. Having decided to treat Fugue as distinct from the Imitation, he could no longer employ imiter to define either term. Circa 1693 he had rejected répéter; he rejected it in 1698 Circa 1693 he had not offered the Duke a choice of words; and he did not offer his reader a choice in 1698. (That, by contrast, is exactly what Loulié and Masson were doing in their definitions of Fugue: "repetition or imitation, repeat or imitate," répétition ou imitation, répeter ou imiter. This "or" placed the onus on the reader: was he supposed to "repeat," or should he "imitate"?)
There is nothing ambiguous about the two definitions of 1698. Fugue
and Imitation are "representations" of one melody or another. That
Charpentier settled on représentation, to replace imitation,
can only mean that he himself was now seeing Fugue from a very different
perspective. These representations — these fugues, these imitations —
reside in the "idea," in the "memory." Like ideas and memory, these
musical representations are not parrot-like imitations or hammer-like
repetitions. They are melodic paintings of something that has been
retained in the mind's ear.
Concise though his definitions are, they
state everything that a perceptive person need know about depicting
these "representations." What profound evidence of Charpentier's careful
attention to vocabulary! What profound insights into Charpentier's
esthetics!
I shall stop there, with those two consecutive exclamation marks. But the brief triadic comparison that I have sketched here merits one day being taken up by someone more versed in musical theory than I. In guise of a conclusion I simply ask two more questions: Are we to conclude that Loulié, Masson, and Charpentier were comparing notes in 1697 and 1698? How many other significant differences in wording can eventually be teased out of manuscript "XLI," to differentiate the Charpentier of 1693 from the Charpentier of 1698?
For the "disciple"
To this tour de force Charpentier appended a "remark" that resembles a theatrical aside where an actor stops what he is doing, turns toward the audience, and addresses it briefly: Remarque pour esgayer le disciple ..., wrote Charpentier on folio 5 verso of the Lilly autograph, as he began a 139-word discourse on beautiful musical intervals. He ended this presentation of the fugue with 104 words about the ranges of voices in French song. Once again (in large letters, as if it were the title of a sub-section) he addressed his reader directly: Remarquez .... (22)
Together, these two asides to his reader fill the equivalent of an entire page, one-twelfth of the treatise as a whole. Charpentier clearly felt no need to be succinct when speaking directly to his reader, his "disciple."
To whom was he addressing these words of "cheer," these cautionary "remarks"? Who might this "disciple" be?
The "disciple" might conceivably have been one of the older boys at the Sainte-Chapelle, a boy already quite well-informed about composition and the emerging tonal harmony, a boy whom Charpentier had immediately singled out as gifted. Still, it is difficult to imagine the recently installed master of the Chapel feeling such a compulsion to teach one of the choirboys about fugue and imitation, about the vocal ranges of voices performing imitations, or about the differences between French and Italian practices.
There was another master-disciple relationship, a relationship of considerable import. Sources describe the Duke of Chartres as having been Charpentier's "disciple." (23) Is this little manuscript Charpentier's copy of a gift he prepared for Chartres, a gift intended to refresh, strengthen, and up-date the prince's understanding of harmony? A gift to supplement the sketchy presentation of the art of the fugue that Charpentier had included in the Augmentations some five years earlier? The possibility cannot be ruled out, because the Duke of Chartres was actively composing: Penthée, an opera performed at the Palais-Royal in 1705, but perhaps performed privately in 1703; Suite d'Armide ou Jérusalem délivré, performed at Fontainebleau in 1712; and a Laudate Jerusalem Dominum for five voices, written in 1701 at the earliest.
Manuscript "XLI" contains what might be a clue to the identity of the person for whom it was intended. In the left margin of folio 1 verso, beside a discussion of consecutive fifths, Charpentier wrote a rather large "hìc," and below it, in smaller letters, "attention," underlined: "Here: pay attention!" In other words, at that moment his thought was directed to a reader with claims to being learned, to understanding Latin. If we can determine that the Duke did not know Latin, we could more or less cross him off the list of possible "disciples."
The sources tell us that Chartres did indeed know some Latin. The educational program had included at least a modicum of that language: "and since prayers and religious services are ordinarily in Latin, and since almost all of Europe understands it, it is good for [the prince] to know it,"... et comme les prières, les offices sont ordinairement en latin, et que presque toute l'Europe l'entend, il est bon qu'il le sache. (24) Does this hìc shed light on the personal rapport that Charpentier had established with Chartres back in the early 1690s, when he was one of the prince's teachers? That is, the headstrong youth was taught "by example"; he was "surrounded by honest folk who liked him"; he conversed with "erudite" people whose task was to shape him linguistically and artistically, and with "savant" people who could discuss the scientific aspects of the different arts. (25) Charpentier could read and speak Latin; by the age of nineteen he had finished the cursus in a collège and had enrolled at the Paris Law Faculty, where courses were conducted in Latin. Had the Duke's preceptor asked him to lard his conversations — and even his lessons— with Latin expressions, so that the prince would continually be exposed to this language that "almost all of Europe understands"?
To conclude these preliminary findings, I would like to suggest that historians of French musical theory are now in a position to delve more deeply and more fruitfully into Loulié's numerous compositional treatises. Better yet, they might gain new insights by comparing the contents of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Règles and Augmentations with the content of his very formal and reasoned, indeed scientific manuscript "XLI." And lastly, it would be profitable to compare the contents and approaches of Charles Masson's Nouveau traité, Loulié's manuscript composition treatises of the mid-1690s, and Charpentier's manuscript "XLI" of 1698. This doubtlessly would permit scholars to discern just how, circa 1700, the workings of tonal harmony were understood by the circle of musicians linked to the Duke of Chartres and the Royal Academy of Sciences. Until now, each musician-theorist - and each academician who took part in Sauveur's acoustic studies — has been viewed more or less in isolation. Yet these men formed a circle, and that circle revolved less around Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye than around the Palais-Royal where Chartres resided. The thinking and the practices of this little circle seem to be a major link in an intellectual chain that stretches from the 1670s to Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie of 1722. I have sketched elsewhere the earlier links in this chain; but the deaths of Loulié (1702) and Charpentier (1704), and the apparent demise of Masson only a few years later, create a gap of almost two decades between 1704 and Rameau's appearance on the scene.
A "missing link" in this chain appears to have been found. He flourished during that two-decade gap. I am referring to the unidentified author of the Traité d'accompagnement to which the Charpentier autograph was appended. And wonder of wonders, the as yet unidentified author of the Traité belonged Charpentier's and Loulié's circle. (A brief Musing about this author will soon be posted.)
Notes:
1. Take, for example, the section of the Règles called
Pratique de la sixte. (For the text, see Catherine Cessac,
Marc-Antoine Charpentier pp. 444-46 of the 1988 edition and pp.
478-81 of the 2004 edition.) There are 10 rules for very specific
situations, 13 measure-long examples, plus more rules and "exceptions."
2. In "Loulié," Recherches 25 (1987), pp. 52-58, I drew parallels between the manuals written for the Duke of Chartres post-1688 and the textbooks published by Nicolas Le Jeune de Franqueville, the director of the Académie de l'Enfant Jésus, which had links to Mme de Guise . His Grammaire abrégée et méthodique (Paris, 1686, 4th ed.) begins: La Gramaire est un Art qui nous enseigne à bien lire, écrire, parler, et prononcer. Elle a quatrie parties ... His Miroir de l'Art de de la Nature (Paris, 1691), tri-lingual language manual, discusses musical instruments in a similar manner: Les instruments de musique sont ceux qui retentissent: premierement quand on les touche ... secondement ... où l'on touche des cordes, ... enfin on joue en sifflant avec la bouche .... The concision in these manuals, and in Charpentier's manuscript "XLI," is the antithesis of Marin Mersenne's Harmonie Universelle.
3. For example, in manuscript "XLI," in the section Pratique de la sixte, with its centered title, Charpentier reduced his presentation to two overarching rules, one for a major sixth and one for a minor sixth. Both rules are centered and written in a rather large script. He provided 13 measure-long examples, just as he did in the Règles; but now his comments about these chords are restricted to 2 rather brief sentences written in a somewhat smaller hand, plus an equally brief "observation" about the importance of avoiding a fausse relation (Lilly autograph, fol. 2r). Compare this with note 1, above.
4. Le comte de Seilhac, L'abbé Dubois, premier ministre de Louis XV (Paris: Amyot, 1862), I, p. 194. See also Lorraine J. Daston, "Classifications of Knowledge in the Age of Louis XIV," in Sun King, The Ascendency of French Culture during the Reign of Louis XIV, ed. David Rubin (Washington DC: Folger Books, 1992), pp. 207-20.
5. For example, "bon" or "mauvais" are indicated beneath numerous examples (for example, pp. 23, 50, 61), as are several words not used by Charpentier: "rarement" (p. 42), "quelque fois" (pp. 45, 58, 59, 60, 71, 72, 73, 74) and "ordinairement" (pp. 58, 59, 60).
6. For an idea of the content and layout of the scientific treatises written for Chartres, see Sauveur's "Éléments de géométrie," BnF, ms. fr. 174737, compiled before October 1689: La Géométrie est une science qui a pour objet l'étendue; this one-sentence introductory paragraph is followed by: L'Etendue a trois dimentions [sic], la longueur, la largeur et la profondeur. Sauveur's Éléments de fortification was likewise written for Chartres and uses the Chartres-model layout, BnF, ms. fr. 12381. Although not written for Chartres's education, Sauveur's "Traité de la Théorie de la Musique" of 1697 (he mentions Loulié on pp. 158-59, ms. n.a. fr. 4674) demonstrates how the mathematician continued to use that approach in his more theoretical writings: La musique a pour objet le son en tant qu'il est agréable à l'organe de l'ouie, which is followed by another one-sentence paragraph: La musique est de deux sortes, l'une spéculative, et l'autre pratique. Academician Denis Dodart's "De la musique," BnF, ms. fr. 14852, circa 1699 — it is related to Sauveur's work on acoustics and his quest for a universal "New System" that explains music mathematically — likewise begins with a discussion of "sound" and even includes a sentence about major and minor scales: Je vous diray seulement qu'à présent on ne parle que de deux sortes de modes, mode majeur et mode mineur, fol. 74v; but Dodart's manuscript is considerably more discursive than the manuals prepared for the Duke of Chartres. René Ouvrard, Loulié's master at the Sainte-Chapelle, had taken a similar scientific approach in his L'Art et la Science des nombres (Paris, 1677), where the section called "Préludes d'Arithmétique" begins with a scientific definition: L'Arthmétique est la Science des Nombres ou l'Art de Conter [read: compter], p. 3. Although Ouvrard moved to Tours in 1679, his treatise may have served as a model for Chartres's course of study. Sauveur's "New System" is inseparable from earlier presentations of music as number; see Myriam Jacquemier, "La musique comme principe cosmologique," in Histoire et littérature au siècle de Montaigne, ed. F. Argod-Dutard (Geneva: Droz, 2001), pp. 379-99, and especially p. 380: from Plato and Mersenne, to Gassendi, there is a discours d'ordre théologique qui, de la science de nombres à celle des sons [my emphasis] projeta sur l'image mythique du monocorde [again, my emphasis: the monocord was part of the Duke of Chartres's course in music-as-physics] le principe de l'unité du monde dans sa complexe variété.
7. To call oneself "maître de musique" of the Church of Saint-Louis, one did not need the sort of full-time appointment from which Charpentier apparently benefitted from late 1687 to early 1698. It apparently sufficed to have received a special commission. For example, in 1694, while Charpentier was master there and was routinely using Jesuit paper, Paolo Lorenzani was paid 106 livres for music he had composed, Rome, Jesuit archives, 631/A.
8. Brossard wrote a little treatise laying out his "discovery" of tonal harmony, gave a copy to Samuel Morland in 1685, and subsequently lost his own copy. He was upset that Ozanam, Loulié and Masson, his "friends," subsequently included this discovery in their own publications, thereby robbing him of the glory he merited: "I believe I was the first who, if I did not invent this division [into major and minor keys] at least made it known in France ... Others published this discovery first, and sieurs Ozanam, Loulié, and Masson having discussed it in their published treatises, I was careful not to claim for myself the glory of this invention, ... and my only option now is to express to my friends privately my chagrin at their having published it before me," ... Je crois être le premier qui a sinon inventé cette division du moins qui l'aye fait connoitre en France ... J'ay été prévenu dans la publication de cette découverte et les Srs Osanam, Loulié et Masson, en ayant parlé dans les traitez imprimez qu'ils ont donnés au public depuis ce temps-là, je n'ay eu garde de m'en attribuer la gloire et l'invention ... et il ne m'est plus permis que de confier en particulier à mes amis le chagrin où je suis d'avoir été prévenu, BnF, ms. fr. n.a. 5269, fol. 144. (Disputes over discoveries, both minor and major, are of course characteristic in scientific groups!) For Brossard and his Parisian friends, see Patricia M. Ranum, "À la recherche de son avenir: Sébastien de Brossard à Paris, 1678-1687, in J. Duron, ed., Sébastien de Brossard, Musicien (Paris: Klincksieck, 1998), pp. 283-306.
9. For these musicians, see Patricia M. Ranum, "Le Musicien Tailleur: Etienne Loulié et la musique des anciens," in Louise Godard de Donville, ed., D'un siècle à l'autre: Anciens et Modernes, acts of the 16th colloque of the CMR 17, Marseille, January 1986, pp. 239-253. That Sauveur was willing to approve a publication by Masson in 1705 (see below, note 9) suggests that Masson was not among the musicians who became exasperated with Sauveur and quit the project, circa 1700.
10. Charles Masson, Divers traitez sur la composition de la musique: Premier traité, Secret de l'harmonie, pour apprendre d'une manière tres-sure & tres-facile à faire une basse à un dessus (Paris: Collombat, 1705), privilege granted May 18, 1705, with approbation de Monsieur Sauveur, Maistre de Mathematiques des Rois d'Espagne & d'Angleterre, et de Messeigneurs les Ducs de Bourgogne & de Berry, Examinateur des Ingenieurs, Professeur au College Royal, & de l'Academie Royale des Sciences. In the Avertissement, Masson commented: On a cru jusqu'à present qu'on ne pouvoit pas donner de régles certains pour faire une basse sur un dessus; qu'il n'y avoit que l'oreille, le bon goût & la grande experience qui pouvoient procurer cet avantage. Cependant j'ose avancer que j'en ay trouvé des tres-courtes & tres-faciles, qui jointes à deux petites tables, l'une pour le mode majeur, & l'autre pour le mode mineur, apprendront en tres-peu de tems, sans embaras & infailliblement à faire une basse à un dessus. Masson's emphasis here on "good taste," le bon goût, is neither moral nor esthetic. For Masson and his treatises, see Herbert Schneider, "Charles Masson und sein 'Nouveau traité'," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 30 (1973), pp. 245-274.
11. However, b's, p's, and m's appear in the "table" on pp. 121-27, to demonstrate harmonic movement that was bon, passable, or mauvais.
12. Masson, Nouveau Traité, pp. 10-11.
13. Lilly
autograph, fols. 5v-6r.
14. BnF, ms. n.a. fr. 6355, fol. 69. Loulié
lists three types of fugue: fugue simple, double fugue, and
contrefugue ou fugue renversée. He uses almost the same words to
define fugue in plainsong: La fugue est une repetition ou imitation
de quelque morceau de chant du plainchant, fol. 227; in this same
treatise he comments: Quand on prend la fugue à la 5e ou à la Quarte
par imitation, il faut toujours.... (fol. 227).
15. Masson, Nouveau traité, pp. 69ff. He describes four types of fugue: parfaite ressemblance ou repetition du meme chant, done at unison or at the octave; une simple imitation du chant, "a simple imitation of the melody" done at a fifth or a fourth; contrefugue or fugue renversée; and double fugue.
16. For Charpentier's brief presentation of the fugue circa 1693, see Cessac, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, p. 460 (1988), or pp. 494-95 (2004).
17. Lilly autograph, fol. 5v.
18. Not until its 1798 edition does the Dictionnaire of the French Academy include "to present anew" as one of the meanings of Représenter.
19. Représentation was used in the same way at the Jesuit
Novitiate in Paris, circa 1685: "The Eucharist is a representation of
[Christ's] death," p. [76] of the forthcoming edition by Patricia M.
Ranum of Instructions pour le Novitiat, under the title Beginning to
be a Jesuit (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources). In other
words, Christ is "represented" by a wafer and a chalice that do not look
like him but that, when held aloft by the priest, trigger in the
"memory" of the worshiper the "idea" or customary depiction of the
crucified Jesus in paint, wood, or stone. For the Eucharist as a
representation ("This is my body"), and for images as representations of
Louis XIV, see Louis Marin, Portrait of the King (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1988), especially pp. 10-13; see also p.
5, for the "power" underlying "something that was present and is no
longer is now represented. In the place of something that is present
elsewhere, a given is present here. At the place of representation then,
there is a thing or person absent in time or space, ... and a
substitution operates with a double of this other in its place." See
also Erwin Panofsky, Idea, a Concept in Art Theory, trans.
Joseph Peake (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1968).
20. For the idea or "mind" that is essential to the
"representation," see Félibien's comments about Poussin's paintings:
Félibien admired Poussin ability "pour représenter" on a canvas
the noble subjects he had formed "dans son esprit," quoted in Bernard
Teyssèdre, Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris ...
(Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts, 1957), p. 130, n. 3; see also pp. 126-27,
for Poussin and the musical modes.
21. Montaigne talks of "representing" himself, of painting a portrait of himself that is continually "changing" but at the same time is "true": Les autres forment l'homme; je le recite et en represente [my emphasis] un particulier bien mal formé. ... Or les traits de ma peinture [my emphasis] ne forvoyent point, quoy qu'ils se changent et diversifient. Je ne peints pas l'estre. Je peints le passage . ... Tant y a que je me contredits bien à l'adventure, mais la verité, ... je ne la contredy point. ... Les autheurs se communiquent au peuple par quelque marque particuliere et estrangere; moy le premier par mon estre universel, comme Michel de Montaigne, non comme grammarien ou poete ou jurisconsulte. ... "Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one [Montaigne himself], very ill-formed. ... Now the lines of my painting do not go astray, though they change and vary. ... I do not portray being: I portray passing. ... I may indeed contradict myself now and then; but truth ... I do not contradict. ... Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark: I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian or a poet or a jurist. ..." Essais, book III, chapter 2; trans. Donald Frame, The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965). For a study of the text from which the above lines are excerpted, see the classic Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W.R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 285-311. A personal observation of Auerbach's sheds still more light on the concept "representation": "I suppose anyone who has read enough of Montaigne to feel at home in the essays must have had the same experience as I. ... I thought I could hear him speak and see his gestures" (p. 290).
22. These "remarks" appear to have been prompted by Masson's illustration of the clefs appropriate for each instrumental and singing voice, and especially by his comment about the range of each voice: On ne doit point donner plus de dix ou douze notes d'étendue à chaque partie, afin de ne pas gêner les voix, in Nouveau Traité, pp. 11-12. See Théodora Psychoyou's edition of Charpentier's Motets pour choeur (Versailles: Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, 2008), vol. 8, pp. v-vi; and her "The Historical Implications of a Distinctive Scoring: Charpentier's Six-Voice Motets for Mademoiselle de Guise," in Shirley Thompson, ed., New Perspectives on Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 207-227, especially pp. 207-208 where she discusses the 5-voice French approach (which Charpentier used for the choruses of some of the chamber operas he composed for performance at court), as contrasted with his 6-voice compositions for the Guises in the 1680s.
23. Yolande de Brossard, ed., La Collection Sébastien de Brossard, ... Catalogue (Paris: BnF, 1994), p. 276: Mgr le Duc de Chartres son disciple .... Fontenelle used the same master-disciple image to describe Chartres's relationship to Joseph Sauveur: Le disciple s'acquitta avec son maître (quoted by Ranum, "Étienne Loulié," part 2, n. 166).
24. Seilhac, I, p. 191, item 2.
25. Seilhac, I, pp. 186, 187, 189, 190.