Introduction

In Louis XIV’s twilight years, illness, lack of enthusiasm, increased religious conservatism and shrinking coffers all contributed to the declining influence of musical establishments at Versailles. The ultra-nationalistic music that had been characteristic of Louis XIV’s reign lost its potency, shifting the locus for trend-setting away from Versailles. Power and influence over musical forms and tastes became increasingly decentralised as the eighteenth century wore on. Residing in Paris (rather than at Versailles) while governing as regent during the period of Louis XV’s minority, Philippe, duc d’Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of Louis XIV, cultivated an interest in the fashionable Italian music that would become an all-out public obsession, inspiring a generation of French composers to experiment with an international style that fused Gallic lyricism with the rhythmic propulsion and harmonic drive of Italian idioms. The passionate, polemical debates over the merits of French and Italian style that played out in the public sphere became de facto political arguments, all the while fuelling demand for the new, audacious music. Meanwhile, members of the lesser nobility established themselves as patrons of the arts such that private concerts at invitation-only salons and public concerts (beginning with the advent of the Concert Spirituel in 1725) took the lead in introducing performers and composers from Italy and Germany to increasingly diverse audiences. A growing bourgeoisie also stoked demand for music that would be enjoyed and performed by amateurs within the home: vocal chamber music, instrumental duos and works for solo keyboard.

This chapter traces changing tastes and the development of instrumental forms such as the symphony and string quartet in eighteenth-century France. From the Chapelle Royale and petits appartements at Versailles to Paris’s exclusive salons, and from the concert stage of the Concert Spirituel to the intimate confines of the middle-class drawing room, we will witness the profound influence of foreign musical styles on native composers. We will also note the myriad effects of broader public access to the arts: new platforms (like public concerts and journals that chronicled fashion, art and music) fostered appreciation for technical accomplishment that led to the rise of the virtuoso, elevated the status of the professional musician and contributed to the rapid expansion of the music publishing industry. While the debates between the French and Italian styles were vociferously played out in the public spheres of print and performance, music intended for private, personal entertainment happily integrated the new, foreign-influenced music with quintessentially French idioms of the ancien régime: we observe the updating of nostalgic, century-old songs (brunettes and vaudevilles) with contemporary harmonisations and Italianate walking bass lines, as well as the publication of modern, Italianate concertos and sonatas for refined versions of traditional folk instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy and musette (a bellows-blown bagpipe).

Music at Versailles

The Regency (1715–23) was a quiet period for music at Versailles. While Philippe, duc d’Orléans, presided over the government from his private residence at the Palais Royal in Paris, the young Louis XV was educated in Vincennes and at the Tuileries palace. Philippe d’Orléans was an avid amateur who studied music and composition with some of France’s leading Italian-trained musicians, including Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704), Nicolas Bernier (1665–1734) and Charles-Hubert Gervais (1671–1744), even composing his own operas under their tutelage.¹

Louis XV assumed control of the government upon reaching maturity in 1723, and his long reign (1715–74) ushered in a new era for music in France, even if music at the court remained conservative: rather than expanding, court music and entertainments had been contracting for some time. That said, Louis XV, Queen Marie Leszczinska and her daughters were all accomplished musical amateurs. The queen played several instruments, including the vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy), and hosted concerts several times a week in the Salon de la Paix at Versailles.² From 1751 her musical evenings were held in the Salon des Nobles in her own apartments. Repertoire and musicians for these private concerts were arranged by the surintendants de la musique de la chambre, including André Cardinal Destouches (1672–1749), Colin de Blamont (1690–1760), François Rebel (1701–75) and François Francoeur (1698–1787). Many publications were dedicated to Leszczinska’s daughters, including the first book of Pièces de clavecin (1746) by Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer (c. 1705–55) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sonates pour le clavecin qui peuvent se jouer avec l’accompagnement de violon, K. 8 and 9 (1764).³ In addition to the salon concerts she had hosted since the early 1740s, the marquise de Pompadour (Louix XV’s official mistress from 1745) created the ‘Théâtre des Petits Appartements’ or ‘Théâtre des Petits Cabinets’, which once again allowed for the presentation of theatre pieces, operas and ballets at Versailles from 1747. The marchioness herself frequently took part in these entertainments.⁴

However, religious music comprised the bulk of daily musical activity at Versailles. Despite the prevalence of republican philosophies during the reign of Louis XV, France was still a conservative and devoutly Christian country. Daily life was rooted in Christian traditions and rites from birth until death. The sounds of church bells, the celebration of weddings, funerals and baptisms, processions, the feast days of local patron saints and holy days permeated the fabric of daily life for peasants, lower classes, bourgeoisie and aristocracy alike. The conservative religious fervour that had dominated the court under the influence of Madame de Maintenon (Louis XIV’s second wife) continued under Louis XV.⁵

As it had since the time of Louis XIV, the Chapelle de la Musique Royale played a major role in the life of the court. In addition to Masses on Sundays, solemn Masses on high feast days, official ceremonies and Vespers services, daily Masses were celebrated for both the king and the queen. The highlight of the service was the performance of a grand motet. In addition, a petit motet for one or two voices might be performed during the elevation of the Host. On Easter, Pentecost, All Saints, Christmas, Pentecost, the Feast of the Circumcision, the Feast of the Purification, Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday and Saturday, High Masses (through-composed with choir and instruments) were also sung for the king on Sundays and ordinary feast days. The Mass itself was generally performed in fauxbourdon (plainchant accompanied by instruments), though the tradition and performance of the contrapuntal, polyphonic Mass persisted.⁶ Rather than being an anachronistic or stylistic anomaly, the polyphonic Mass continued to be appreciated and cultivated, and this attests to its perceived solemnity. Henri Madin, a sous-maître at the Chapelle Royale from 1738, ultimately failed in his attempt to reintroduce the ancient practice of polyphonic improvisation over a plainchant tenor in the late 1730s (he published his Traité de chant sur le livre in 1742) as a tool for performing the Mass.⁷

For all the seeming activity of daily Mass and private concerts, court musicians’ duties were relatively light. Although Louis XV initially maintained the three principal arms of the traditional court musical establishment (chapelle, chambre and écurie), the livelihood of the king’s musicians began to resemble that of freelancers: musicians increasingly compiled their yearly income from multiple streams (whether from various part- or full-time appointments held at court, or playing for the Opéra and other Paris theatres). In 1761 major organisational reform swept the court’s musical institutions: Louix XV capped the music budget at 320,000 livres and began to buy back and limit the number of offices available. The chapelle and chambre were merged, resulting in a reduced number of musicians to serve in both sacred and secular settings. The Vingt-Quatre Violons, the group which had comprised the core of the king’s musical establishment for so long, was eliminated.⁸

Louis XVI (who succeeded his grandfather as king in 1774) did not show the same interest in music as his predecessors, but his young bride Marie-Antoinette sang, played the harpsichord and harp and championed a number of foreign musicians, including Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87).⁹Marie-Antoinette hosted extravagant balls during the carnival season and presented spectacles in her own specially designed theatre in the Petit Trianon from 1780, whose repertoire included operas by Gluck (Iphigénie en Tauride), Niccolò Piccinni (1728–1800, Le dormeur éveillé), Antonio Sacchini (1730–86, Dardanus), André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741–1813, Zémire et Azor) and Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729–1817, Le roi et le fermier) that not only reflected the queen’s tastes but mirrored those of Paris.¹⁰ In 1782, however, Versailles’s musical establishment was cut back still further. Limited to forty-two members, the court orchestra was now eclipsed in size and prestige by various concert associations in Paris.¹¹ As a result, the musical establishment at Versailles was reduced to importing performers who had already established their reputations at the Opéra, the Concert Spirituel and the inner circles of Paris salons to fill its ranks, including the violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer, the oboist Gaetano Besozzi and the bassoonist Étienne Ozi.¹²

The public concert: the Concert Spirituel

During Louis XIV’s reign, music and musicians from the French court had been a valuable international commodity, but as the eighteenth century progressed, the court increasingly found itself reacting to Parisian fashions rather than creating them. Publicly supported concerts in Paris and increased private patronage were central to cultivating tastes for international music and development of instrumental genres such as the concerto and symphony.

Following the success of private concerts at the home of the financierAntoine Crozat, in 1724 he and the marquise de Prie initiated a subscription-only concert association that promoted Italian music: ‘gli Academici paganti’, or the Concert Italien.¹³ Convents and monasteries with ties to aristocratic families had also offered resplendent concerts of sacred music on high feast days at least since the turn of the seventeenth century. These events drew large crowds that – with the help of donations – supported the work of the church.¹⁴ An enterprising individual, Anne-Danican Philidor, sought to take advantage of the opportunity to present performances when other major venues were closed. To this end he applied for a royal privilège to establish the Concert Spirituel in 1725. After the Opéra, it would become Paris’s most important presenting organisation until its suspension in 1790.

The Concert Spirituel’s concerts filled a clearly defined niche. As spoken theatre and opera were forbidden during Lent and the Easter season and at Pentecost, Christmas and other religious feast days, the Concert Spirituel primarily presented appropriate sacred music in twenty to thirty concerts per year. For example, concert-goers would hear O filii et filiae by Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657–1726) at Easter, Christmas concerts frequently included the motet Fugit nox by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689–1755, now lost) interleaved with popular noëls, and Corpus Christi was observed with settings of Pange lingua or Sacris solemniis by Lalande.¹⁵ In effect, the Concert Spirituel deferred to the programming and performance schedule of the Académie Royale de Musique (Opéra) by restricting its repertoire to sacred Latin motets presented as concert pieces (divorced from any para-liturgical context) and instrumental music.

While programmes at the Concert Spirituel privileged diversity and variety of musical genres, they nonetheless adhered to a fairly standard format. They were usually bookended by grands motets (traditionally by maîtres from the Chapelle Royale de la Musique) interspersed with a variety of instrumental solos, chamber music and Italianate concertos featuring both native and foreign virtuosos. At different times in the history of the Concert Spirituel, these would be replaced or augmented by short vocal airs and airs italiennes.¹⁶

Because of its royal privilège and the strong associations of its leadership with the court establishment, the Concert Spirituel effectively functioned as a Parisian satellite of the Chapelle Royale.¹⁷ Commonalities between the two institutions extended to repertoire, such that motets by Lalande dominated programmes not only in Versailles but also in Paris for decades following his death in 1726. Only the motets of Joseph Cassanea de Mondonville (1711–72), of which nine survive, achieved similar popularity to Lalande’s following their introduction in the late 1730s; motets by Antoine Dauvergne (1713–97) and François Giroust (1737–99) entered the repertoire in the 1760s and 1770s. A remarkable conservatism governed the sacred repertoire of the Chapelle Royale and Concert Spirituel. This canonical approach, coupled with first-rank composers’ overwhelming interest in and commitment to instrumental or stage works, ensured that motets from Louis XIV’s twilight years by Bernier, Charpentier and Jean Gilles also lived on in the repertoire into the 1770s.

Trends in the grand motet

The endurance of Lalande’s sacred oeuvre was not simply the product of conservatism. Dubbed the ‘Latin Lully’ by Colin de Blamont, Lalande composed music that is rich and varied, displaying both noble and graceful sentiments, keenly affective text-setting and expressive harmony.¹⁸ Interestingly, Lalande’s dedication to repeatedly revising compositions also makes it possible to trace the influence of the goûts réunis in his work and on the grand motet more generally. The late seventeenth-century motet’s aesthetic of homophonic choruses of voices and instruments, short ritornellos and simple yet graceful récits accompanied by five-part strings gave way in the 1720s to elaborate ‘concert arias’ with obbligato instruments, polyphonic or fugal choruses and greater independence between voices and instruments. The chorus ‘Et ipse redimet Israel’ from Lalande’s De profundis is an excellent example of this development.¹⁹

Italian influence and trends from the Opéra were also felt in sacred genres. Grands motets from the 1730s increasingly exchanged récits for da capo airs, and featured lavish instrumental forces borrowed from the opera pit, including oboes, trumpets and drums.²⁰André Campra (1660–1744) went further by incorporating pictorial, dramatic elements directly from opera, such as the storm-scene figuration of ‘Velociter currit sermo eius’ from Lauda Jerusalem and the sommeil (‘Dormi erunt’) and subsequent tremblement de terre (‘Terra tremuit’) of his Notus in Judea Deus. Building on the works of Campra and Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764), Mondonville’s Dominus regnavit uses similar operatic devices to depict the potent imagery of Psalm 92: the chorus ‘Elevaverunt flumina vocem suam’ (‘The floods have lifted up, O Lord’) features swirling semiquaver runs for both orchestra and chorus. In addition to elaborate, virtuosic symphonies, popular elements found their way into the grand motet. Joseph Bodin de Boismortier’s Fugit nox (1741), for instance, adapted the melodies of well-known noëls to the sacred text. Indeed, the grand motet fell prey to such competing influences and inspirations as to give life to the Laudate Dominum of Michel Corrette (1707–95), a ‘Motet à grand choeur arrangé dans le Concerto du Printemps de Vivaldi’ (1766) for full orchestra with woodwinds. Such extravagance gave credence to criticism that long, concerted para-liturgical music served only to distract and divert rather than enrich and deepen the spiritual value of the music.

The rise of the virtuoso

From the outset the public concert became a platform for virtuoso – especially instrumental – display. Several elements contributed to the rise of the virtuoso in this arena. First, the public concert brought together a large, highly educated and passionate audience capable of judging and making comparisons between artists. The rise of the virtuoso in France also corresponded to the proliferation of periodicals and journals dedicated to the arts: Le Mercure de France, L’avant-coureur, Le journal des sciences et des beaux-arts and Les affiches de Province contained reports and reviews of performers and performances that served to publicise, create and build the reputations (and mythologies) of native and foreign virtuosos.²¹ In addition to popularising Italian concertos and sonatas by Vivaldi and Tartini, native virtuosos developed their own distinctive compositional styles and influential schools of playing.

Jean-Marie Leclair (1697–1764) is considered the founder of the French school of violin playing. Leclair benefited from the private patronage of Joseph Bonnier, studied with the Italian violinist Giovanni Battista Somis in Turin and built a formidable reputation through regular appearances at the Concert Spirituel. Also taught by Somis, Jean-Pierre Guignon (1702–74) made his Paris debut at the Concert Spirituel in 1725 and simultaneously held positions in the retinue of the prince de Carignan and as ordinaire de la musique du roy. The violinist Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (1705–70) studied with Somis following early professional success in Lyons and Dijon. He was appointed musicien ordinaire to Louis XV and served in the private orchestra of the marquise de Pompadour. Pierre Gavignès earned the epithet ‘the French Tartini’ and was Leclair’s successor as chief proponent of the French violin school.²² He made his debut at the Concert Spirituel at the age of thirteen, and performed his own concertos and symphonies there in the 1760s and 1770s. He was appointed professor of violin at the Paris Conservatoire from its establishment in 1795. Violinists such as Leclair and Gavignès, and the flautists Michel Blavet (1700–68), Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin (1690–1768) and Antoine Mahaut (c. 1720–1785), all benefited from an elevated status on account of their association with the Concert Spirituel.

Furthermore, new instruments and their players met with enthusiastic receptions at the Concert Spirituel. The cello was elevated from accompanist to first-rank soloist in the hands of Jean-Baptiste-Aimé Janson (1742–1808) and the brothers Jean-Louis and Jean-Pierre Duport. The Concert Spirituel also witnessed the first appearance of the pedal harp (a German invention), concerto soloists on the bassoon, oboe, clarinet (also a German import), trumpet and horn, plus more unusual fare for instruments such as the mandolin, musette and pardessus de viole.

Private patronage

While public concerts made large-scale concerted music available to members of Paris’s rising middle class, the real cutting edge of art, philosophy and fashion was cultivated within Paris’s luxurious private homes. Just as the title character of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme (Act II, scene 1) was advised by his music master to host a concert ‘every Wednesday or every Thursday’ in order to be considered a person of quality, so did a great number of the aristocracy and haute-bourgeoisie host regular salons in their own homes. In fact, music featured in virtually all types of salon gatherings, even those for which music was not a primary focus. Salons welcomed a wealth of interesting and influential people, for whom entry was by invitation only.²³ The diplomat and critic Friedrich-Melchior Grimm observed that the home of the fermier-général (tax farmer-general) Alexandre le Riche de La Pouplinière was ‘a meeting-place for all classes: courtiers, men of the world, literary folk, artists, foreigners, actors, actresses, filles de joie, all were assembled there. The house was known as the menagerie and the host as the sultan.’²⁴ It was at La Pouplinière’s, for instance, that Rameau first met many of his future librettists, and the house became ‘la citadelle du Ramisme’.²⁵

Private concerts promulgated changes in taste, which through the first half of the eighteenth century often meant the introduction and appreciation of Italian music. Reflecting this penchant, the household musicians of the regent Philippe d’Orléans included the castrato Pasqualino Tiepolo and the violinists Michele Mascitti and Giovanni Antonio Guido.²⁶Antoine Crozat, the wealthy treasurer of the États du Languedoc, also held twice-weekly concerts at his home from 1715 to 1725.²⁷Crozat’s Italophilic presentations included a troupe from London: the famous sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Margherita Durastanti, who performed operatic selections of Handel and Bononcini.²⁸ The prince de Carignan similarly maintained a private orchestra that included notable Italian instrumentalists and some of the finest French virtuosos, who cultivated the new, Italian-French mixed style known as les goûts réunis.²⁹ Following Carignan’s death in 1741, many of his personal instrumentalists were absorbed into La Pouplinière’s orchestra.

Patrons from the aristocracy and bourgeoisie provided refuge – metaphorical and physical – for foreign musicians in France. Patrons such as Philippe d’Orléans, Crozat, La Pouplinière and the baron de Bagge not only granted foreign composers and performers exposure to a tight-knit circle of knowledgeable and influential amateurs, but also offered non-native musicians lodging for the duration of their stay. La Pouplinière sponsored Johann Stamitz (1717–57) to reside at Passy and direct his personal orchestra in 1754, at which time he also conducted his works at the Concert Spirituel and Concert Italien. The baron de Bagge similarly sponsored Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805) and Filippo Manfredi in 1767, during which time Boccherini published his Sonatas for keyboard with violin accompaniment, Op. 5, which were dedicated to another salonnière, Anne-Louise Boyvin d’Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy.³⁰

Finally, the taste-makers of the salon had the opportunity to preview (and judge) new instrumental works and operas. Excerpts from Rameau’s ground-breaking Hippolyte et Aricie were first heard at La Pouplinière’s home, Passy, in 1731,³¹ and André Grétry acknowledged that the response of members of the elite salons would be essential to his success in Paris.³² Grétry looked on with fretful anticipation as an early version of his Les mariages samnites (1776) was presented before the entire court at the home of the prince de Conti.³³

As several of Mozart’s letters from 1777–8 attest, eighteenth-century Paris was potentially an excellent place to earn a living as a professional musician. Rather than work as duty-bound servants at a single court, professional musicians could support themselves as free agents on Paris’s large and diverse arts scene. Citing the success of his friend Johann Baptist Wendling (the Mannheim flautist), Mozart waxed poetic about the potential for artistic independence that came with varied income streams: one could perform or compose in virtually any genre (including opera seria, opéra comique and oratorio), present symphonies for one of the public concert associations, give private lessons and publish chamber music by subscription.³⁴

Paris’s finest musicians also found professional success performing in the private orchestras of the aristocracy and haute-bourgeoisie. Interest in maintaining private orchestras blossomed in the 1750s and 1760s in particular. Starting around 1731, La Pouplinière had maintained his small house orchestra, which performed an international repertoire of orchestral works that included pairs of winds and brass. The prince de Conti established his own highly regarded private orchestra in 1757; it included Pierre Vachon (1738–1803) as concertmaster, the Italian virtuoso oboist Filippo Prover, the cellist Jean-Pierre Duport, German horn and clarinet players, and the keyboard player Johann Schobert (c. 1735–67), plus François-Joseph Gossec (1734–1829), who joined Conti’s establishment following his stint at La Pouplinière’s.³⁵

From the 1750s, La Pouplinière’s home Passy was a haven for German composers and instrumentalists cultivating a taste for the nascent symphonic genre. In fact, it was La Pouplinière who engaged horn and clarinet players from Germany to make their first appearances in France in the late 1740s. Succeeding Rameau’s long tenure there, Stamitz led the orchestra at Passy for one year in 1754; he was followed by the twenty-one-year-old Gossec.³⁶ Despite their relatively small size – generally fourteen to fifteen players – private orchestras and their sponsors played an important role in the development and dissemination of the symphony in France.³⁷

While some of the larger salons – like La Pouplinière’s and Crozat’s – focused on symphonic or operatic repertoire, others cultivated the art of accompanied song and new genres in chamber music. In these more intimate salon settings, professionals played beside accomplished amateurs. The many chamber music works dedicated to the baron de Bagge (including quartets by Gossec, Boccherini and Capron) testify to his dedication to the music and musicians he patronised.

Salons like Bagge’s facilitated transformations in instrumental chamber music during the second half of the eighteenth century. These important changes took the form of expanding textures (from Baroque trio texture to quartets or larger ensembles), newly obligatory instrumentation, the standardisation of specific ensemble combinations and the gradual disappearance of a performer-realised figured bass.

Large ensemble music, 1720–1750

As imported forms, concertos and symphonies first found an enthusiastic response in private, Italophilic salons. Subsequently, however, their evolution and development owe a significant debt to the public concert.

Concertos by French composers began to appear in print at the height of the goûts réunis craze in the 1720s and 1730s, and for decades, ‘Spring’ from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was regularly heard alongside sonatas by Corelli and Tartini at the Concert Spirituel.³⁸Michel Corrette composed twenty-five ‘comic’ concertos, which were generally for three treble instruments (with flexible instrumentation that could include violins, flutes, oboes, hurdy-gurdy and musettes) and basso continuo. Like their Vivaldian models, they adopted ritornello form for outer, fast movements, and frequently made use of a unison theme for opening and closing ritornellos. The second movement was usually just a chord progression with decorated suspensions linking the outer movements. Corrette’s Concertos comiques frequently quoted popular tunes from the Foire (fair) theatres and noëls (see, for instance, the concertos entitled ‘L’allure’ and ‘Margoton’ from his Op. 8, and the tunes ‘Les sauvages’ and ‘La Furstemburg’ in his Concerto comique, No. 25).³⁹Boismortier also made significant contributions to this genre with his Opp. 21, 24 and 30 concertos for three treble instruments and his Noels en concerto, Op. 68 (1737).

Through the 1740s, the trio (two generic dessus plus basso continuo) remained the predominant texture for large ensemble music performed at the Concert Spirituel. The performing tradition of playing en simphonie created a kaleidoscope of instrumental colours, but it has also been responsible for some confusion regarding the genesis of the Classical symphony in France. Multi-movement works with designations like pièces de simphonies or concert de simphonies by Jacques Aubert (1689–1753), Boismortier, Corrette, Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682–1738), Dauvergne and Mondonville all utilised trio textures with the addition of figured bass. Transcriptions of harpsichord solos by Mondonville (from his 1734 Pièces de clavecin en sonates avec accompagnement de violon, Op. 3) and Francesco Geminiani (‘arrangées en grand concerto pour orchestre’ or ‘mises en simphonie’) were also regularly performed as ensemble music at the Concert Spirituel.⁴⁰ As late as 1750, even Corelli’s celebrated Op. 5 sonatas could be heard at the Concert Spirituel ‘mise en gd concert par Geminiani’.⁴¹

The 1730s witnessed various experimental works for large ensembles, ranging from the symphonie nouvelle Les élémens (1738) by Jean-Féry Rebel (1666–1747) to Mondonville’s lost Concert à trois choeurs and Concerto de violon avec chant.⁴²Rebel’s Les élémens is the most daring of his seven choreographed simphonies for the dancers of the Paris Opéra. The justifiably famous opening uses stacked dissonance to depict chaos, from which four distinct themes representing air, fire, water and earth emerge.

In contrast to large ensemble works performed en simphonie with only limited instructions regarding orchestration, the virtuoso violinist Leclair’s twelve published concertos (Op. 7, 1737, and Op. 10, 1745) were explicit in their instrumentation, for solo violin accompanied by string orchestra and continuo, and made specialised technical demands upon the player. Leclair’s incorporation of Italian style and techniques drew on his own training and experiences with the celebrated violinists Giovanni Battista Somis (a student of Corelli) in Turin and Pietro Locatelli in London. While his concertos also typified goûts réunis in their adoption of Vivaldi’s models in the outer movements, the lyricism of the slow movements reflected French taste and sensibility.

The symphony and concerto, 1750–1790

Alongside the infiltration of German music and musicians into Paris’s private salons, the 1750s saw the arrival of the nascent Classical symphony by proponents of the Mannheim school on the concert stage. New leadership at the Concert Spirituel from 1748 ushered in a period of financial stability that enabled the organisation’s concert venue and repertoire to expand. Under the direction of the harpsichordist Royer and the violinist Gabriel Capperan, the Tuileries palace underwent major renovations (including the installation of an organ on which the virtuoso Claude Balbastre (1724–99) frequently performed concertos and his own transcriptions of opera overtures) and saw the first French performances of Pergolesi’s Stabat mater and the first foreign symphonies.⁴³

The French Classical symphony of the 1750s combined Classical elements of structure, melody, rhythm and harmonic organisation with thematic development and prolonged sequences.⁴⁴ Whereas early essays in the symphonic genre such as Louis-Gabriel Guillemain’s Premier livre de simphonies dans le goût italien en trio (1740) had been composed in a trio texture, ensemble music of the 1750s was increasingly composed in four parts (such as Antoine Dauvergne’s 1751 Concerts de simphonies, Opp. 3 and 4). Similarly, Gossec’s earliest symphonies (Op. 3, 1756) were published in four parts, with oboe parts interleaved in the viola book. In all likelihood, pairs of horns would also have been added for performances at the Concert Spirituel.⁴⁵ At this stage, most published works still included a figured bass, and a three-movement structure based on Italian models predominated.⁴⁶

Following Royer’s death in 1755, Mondonville upheld his predecessor’s commitment to innovation, introducing symphonies by Wagenseil, Hasse, Beck, Jomelli and Geminiani as well as native composers’ first forays into the genre (Guillemain, Gavignès, Davesne and Gossec). Complete with trumpets, timpani and (after 1760) horns and clarinets from Germany, these expanded grandes simphonies or sinfonie a più strumenti would soon become the standard, even though conservative factions would not allow this progressive symphonic music to become fully established on Concert Spirituel programmes until the 1770s. In the mean time, the orchestra at the Concert des Amateurs (1769–81) quickly gained a reputation for commissions and performances of symphonies. Supported in part by the fermier-général La Haye and the baron d’Ogny as well as by public subscriptions, the Concert des Amateurs was established at the Hôtel de Soubise by Gossec in 1769. During the four years he led the Concert des Amateurs, Gossec conducted many of his own works and was the first to conduct a Haydn symphony in France.

Synthesising foreign elements with inherent French lyricism, the French Classical symphony of the 1770s and the burgeoning symphonie concertante exhibited the influence of Grétry’s comic operas in addition to the powerful, dramatic stage works of Gluck.⁴⁷ French symphonies from this period, which were in three or even two movements (rarely four), were characterised by their ‘brilliant orchestral effect’ and ‘fluid, singing melodies’.⁴⁸Gossec’s innovations lay in his grand instrumental works, which despite their harmonic and thematic simplicity displayed keen, colourful orchestration and refined use of dynamic markings. Works for the new grande orchestre included ample sonorities such as two viola parts, divisi violins, additional winds (including clarinets) and brass (horns, trumpets and drums). Similarly, the three symphonies that Simon Leduc (1742–77) composed for performance at both the Concert Spirituel and the Concert des Amateurs take full advantage of the orchestra’s sonic possibilities, with pairs of flutes and horns, trumpets and drums in the Amsterdam edition of Schmitt, periodically divided second violins and violas and in places an independent part for double bass.⁴⁹

Comparable in style and structure to the Classical symphony, symphonies concertantes comprised another important element in Concert Spirituel programmes from the 1770s. The form flourished in France and particularly in Paris, owing its popularity to contemporary social changes, such as the proliferation of concert societies patronised by bourgeois audiences, as well as to an increased fascination with virtuoso display and enthusiasm for rich orchestral sonorities. Featuring two, three, four or occasionally more solo instruments in dialogue with each other and the orchestra, the symphonie concertante was essentially a Classical concerto for multiple instruments that fused elements of the solo concerto, Baroque concerto grosso, divertimento and symphony. The symphonie concertante’s appeal lay in its light, pleasing and melodious character, and in the flexibility of its instrumentation, which provided a platform for a variety of local performers. Performances frequently included the composer as one of the soloists, as in symphonies concertantes by the violinists Joseph Boulogne, chevalier de Saint-George (1745–99), Simon Leduc and Jean-Baptiste Davaux (1742–1822).⁵⁰

Gossec is generally considered the most important composer of Classical symphonies in France. Following formative studies in his native Wallonia, Antwerp and Brussels, he arrived in Paris at the age of seventeen. With the support of Rameau, he joined the orchestra at La Pouplinière’s and held leadership positions in the private orchestras of both the prince de Condé and the prince de Conti in the 1760s. He served briefly as the general director of the Opéra before assuming leadership of the École Royale de Chant (a predecessor to the Conservatoire de Musique) in 1784.⁵¹ Following his success with the Concert des Amateurs, Gossec was persuaded in 1773 to join the violinists Leduc and Gavignès in leading the Concert Spirituel, where he responded to a mandate to improve the ensemble’s performing standards (which had lagged in recent years), expand the size of the orchestra and overhaul its stale programming. As a result, symphonies by Stamitz, Toeschi, Giuseppe Maria Cambini (1746–1825), Wagenseil, Sterkel, Cannabich and Haydn were regularly brought to Parisian audiences, which had the effect of undermining the achievements of native composers in the symphonic genre in the years prior to the Revolution. Not only did French composers of instrumental music have to grapple with the celebrity and popularity of Haydn,⁵² but they faced a constant struggle in justifying the merits of abstract symphonies and quartets against the prevailing aesthetic criticisms of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Grimm and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, who defined the function and potential of instrumental music in terms of painting and the imitation of nature.

The final decades before the Revolution witnessed increased access to public concerts and the expansion of concert societies. For instance, the Concert des Amateurs, Concert des Associés (1770–?), Concert de l’École Graduite de Dessein (1781–6), Concert des Amis (1772–?), Société du Concert d’Émulation (1781–6) and Concert de la Loge Olympique (1783–9) all flourished. At the same time, private orchestras, which had played an important role in cultivating symphonies and soloists, began to be disbanded because of financial difficulties and the proliferation of orchestras elsewhere, which took away the prestige of maintaining an orchestra.⁵³

Chamber music

The ‘trio’ for four players persisted as a popular texture for chamber music throughout the eighteenth century. Generally, this meant that two treble instruments (perhaps two violins or flutes) were joined by a bowed bass (viola da gamba, basse de violon or cello) and a chordal accompaniment usually on the harpsichord. In the 1720s and 1730s, trio sonatas were frequently expanded to quartets in a variety of instrumental combinations. Telemann’s ‘Paris’ Quartets (flute, violin, viola and continuo, 1738), Guillemain’s Quatuors ou conversations galantes (two flutes, violin and continuo, 1743) and the Quatuors de l’art de la modulation (oboe or flute, two violins and continuo, 1755) by François-André Philidor (1726–95) are all representative of the Rococo quartet in France.

The generalised dessus had long been a cornerstone of French instrumental conventions, whereby a treble part could be played by violin, flute, oboe, pardessus de viole or a variety of other instruments. Furthermore, instrumental doubling had been a standard practice since the mid-seventeenth century. The result had been relatively undifferentiated, ‘idiomatic’ writing for treble instruments, and an approach to large-ensemble orchestration that emphasised combinations of instrumental timbres. By the 1760s, however, obligatory instrumentation and the standardisation of specific ensemble combinations (such as the string quartet with two violins, viola and violoncello) began to take hold. The new specificity of the 1760s excluded the inclusion of wind instruments in pieces that did not call specifically for them; the century-old French instrumental practice of playing en simphonie (that is, doubling instrumental parts) was, in effect, abandoned.

These trends inspired a typically French approach to ensemble writing: the vogue for works concertant et dialogué. Publications of quatuors concertants flooded the Parisian market between 1770 and 1800.⁵⁴Cambini was an essential figure in their development, which would be further cultivated by Vachon, Étienne-Bernard-Joseph Barrière (b. 1748; d. 1816–18), Jean-Baptiste-Sébastien Bréval (1753–1823), Davaux, Jean-Baptiste Janson and Saint-George. A famous mulatto violinist, Saint-George led the Concert des Amateurs from 1773, was orchestra leader for Madame de Montesson’s private concerts and published eighteen string quartets in three collections between 1773 and 1785. Cambini’s Op. 1 quartets were published by Vernier in 1773 and were lauded for their excellent harmony, natural interplay and originality of style.⁵⁵

Quatuors concertants were generally for two violins, viola and cello, though in some cases an oboe or flute could replace the first violin. Marked by a galant, sentimental style and conservative harmonic language, these works reflect the influence of Boccherini and are generally in two or very occasionally three movements. The first movement most often adopts a sonata form with two themes, while the second movement consists of lighter fare: a rondo, minuetto or aria con variazoni. The word concertant referred not to the virtuosity of the music, but to its conversational aspect: all four parts were equally important (contrasting with a traditional Viennese quartet in which the presentation of melodic material is dominated by the first violin).⁵⁶ In a quatuor concertant, each player would have the opportunity to offer and elaborate motifs, contributing to the larger sense of musical dialogue or conversation in much the same way as a salonnière’s guests each made their own witty contributions to an evening’s entertainment. By comparison, the Viennese quartet of Haydn was characterised by a greater variety of forms, intense working-through and elaboration of a single theme by way of expanded development sections, and more wide-ranging modulations.⁵⁷

Vocal music: cantata and cantatille

Just as Corelli’s violin sonatas found a warm reception in Paris’s aristocratic salons, the French cantata (inspired by Italian models) counted Italophilic cognoscenti among its most ardent admirers. Indeed, the cantata’s popularity took hold with a virtual explosion in published compositions around the final years of Louis XIV’s life. The cantata’s heyday coincided with the short-lived Concert Français series (1727–33), an offshoot of the Concert Spirituel. Initiated but not ultimately directed by Anne-Danican Philidor (Mouret took over following his resignation in 1727), the Concert Français presented weekly concerts in the Tuileries on Saturdays and Sundays in the winter (thus competing with other concert series as well as the Opéra and various theatres) and once per week in the summer.⁵⁸ Cantatas and divertissements formed the focal point of the Concert Français’s programmes, which featured the cantatas of Colin de Blamont, Battistin Stuck, Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749), Rameau, Mouret, Jean-Baptiste Morin (1677–1745), Louis Le Maire (c. 1693–c. 1750), Louis-Claude Daquin (1694–1772) and others, performed by some of the era’s finest singers (in particular Mademoiselle Antier and Le Maure).⁵⁹ The brief but intense interest in the cantata can be understood as a response to the insular aesthetic cultivated at court and the petrification of the operatic repertoire in the years between Lully’s death and Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie (1733).⁶⁰

A true manifestation of the goûts réunis, the French cantata borrowed from Italian forms such as the da capo aria while adhering to distinctly Gallic aesthetics of lyricism and sensibility, ornamentation and flexibility in recitative.⁶¹ Most cantatas adapted a format of three arias interspersed with recitatives, with or without obbligato instruments (most often a single violin or flute, but occasionally larger or more varied forces). Although many cantatas were obviously intended for the chamber and use just voice and continuo, sometimes with two violins or other obbligato instruments, a significant minority specify orchestral forces for accompaniment.⁶² With their concise texts on attractive subjects, mostly drawn from classical mythology, though occasionally from the Old Testament, cantata texts were a minor yet fashionable poetic form and were regularly published in the Mercure de France from 1711 to the 1740s.⁶³

Cantatas also brought operatic elements into the salon. The cantata’s dramatic symphonies served to illustrate a host of natural or deity-induced disasters ranging from storms to earthquakes and potent magical slumber.⁶⁴ As Michele Cabrini has recently argued, the significance of the instrumental contributions to the cantata should not be underestimated. Rather, the instruments ‘are raised to the status of dramatic character and equal partner to the voice, thus increasing the theatricality of the action’.⁶⁵Le sommeil d’Ulisse (1715) by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729) serves as a prime example of a cantata that creatively expands on the standard form (with five airs and récits) and includes dramatic elements borrowed from the stage, including a swirling tempest and an extensive, beguiling sommeil. It is important, however, to recognise the differences between cantatas and dramatic works for small forces. Cantatas were not operas ‘in miniature’. They generally depict a single event (rather than the progression of a drama), and the singer narrates the scene rather than embodying a character. In addition, cantatas were never staged; neither did they incorporate the all-important elements of the tragédie lyrique, a chorus and dance.⁶⁶

In the wake of renewed interest in the tragédie en musique in the 1730s, the composition of large-scale, dramatic cantatas decreased dramatically.⁶⁷Composers of vocal chamber music instead cultivated the cantatille, which – as the diminutive of the name implies – was generally shorter than the cantata. Cantatilles usually included only a pair of arias interspersed with one or two recitatives. Although cantatilles were formally small-scale works, surviving scores frequently imply the use of large orchestral forces.⁶⁸ In addition, despite their generally light, charming subjects and predisposition towards triple metre, cantatilles were musically no less complex than the cantatas that had preceded them. The cantatilles of Mouret, for instance, beautifully pair the grace of dance metres with subtle, varied phrase lengths.⁶⁹ At turns intimate and virtuosic, the air ‘Doux rossignol’ from Julie Pinel’s 1737 Le printems exults in conversational interplay between soprano and obbligato flute or violin.

Overshadowed by the opera, and with only limited success in adapting to the new aesthetic requirements of the German-influenced Classical style, cantatas and cantatilles continued to be composed into the 1770s, though they had made little impact since the zenith of their popularity in the 1720s and 1730s. Working in the 1740s and 1750s, Louis-Antoine Lefebvre composed twenty-three cantatilles and one cantata that attempted to integrate the accompanimental textures, melodic contours and phrase structure of the Classical style.⁷⁰ By contrast, the court composer Pierre de La Garde responded to changing tastes by adopting the tuneful, naive style of opéra comique to the cantatille and providing an accompaniment of guitar (which was very much in vogue), violin and harpsichord.⁷¹

Music in the home: vocal music

Songs and other small forms of vocal chamber music were ubiquitous in eighteenth-century France. Paris’s blossoming publishing industry issued numerous new songs each year, and periodicals like the Mercure de France not only kept the new bourgeoisie abreast of developing fashions in literature, art and music, but also frequently published songs and tunes from current operas and announced new publications of ‘sheet music’.⁷² By mid-century, publishers were printing weekly and monthly tabloids of sheet music, designed for domestic music-making and purchased by subscription.⁷³

Eighteenth-century French song drew on the rich rhetorical language of the seventeenth-century air sérieux, but cultivated a lightness and ease that, as a whole, reflected the Epicurean tenets of the Rococo: leisure, pleasure and charm. Popular forms included the brunette, which was a simple, bipartite song that expressed tender sentiments within a limited vocal compass. Alternately known as an air tendre or gavotte tendre (which betrayed its origin as a dance tune), the brunette was quintessentially French in its natural simplicity, refinement and frequent preciosity.⁷⁴ Collections, or recueils d’airs, freely mixed brunettes with Italian ariettes, vaudevilles and drinking songs (airs à boire).⁷⁵ The romance is found in song collections from the 1760s onwards. A lyric narrative poem of Spanish origins, the romance, like the strophic brunette, hewed to an aesthetic of simplicity, naturalness and sentimentality. The form exerted a strong influence on the Opéra-Comique, where it featured in Rousseau’s Devin du village (most famously, ‘Dans ma cabane obscure’) and Mondonville’s Titon et l’Aurore, as well as works by Monsigny and François-André Philidor.⁷⁶

Although the repertoire was limited to charming but simple bipartite airs with light, pastoral subjects, successive collections nonetheless reflect changing tastes through the eighteenth century. Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (1667–1737), for instance, in his Brunètes anciènes et modernes (c. 1725), appended Italianate walking bass lines to airs dating back to the mid-seventeenth century. In his nine collections of airs from the 1730s and 1740s, François Bouvard (c. 1683–1760) expanded the form of the brunette to include introductory simphonies with ornate accompaniment consisting of flute, violin and bass.⁷⁷ The 1760s periodical La feuille chantante, ou Le journal hebdomadaire, by comparison, included all the traditional small vocal forms (chansons, vaudevilles, rondeaux, ariettes, duos, brunettes, etc.) but added harp as an accompaniment option along with violin and harpsichord.⁷⁸ Publications from the 1770s also began to include romances (made popular at the Opéra-Comique) with harp accompaniments, tablature for the increasingly popular guitar or fully realised harpsichord accompaniments.

Airs and brunettes were not just the province of amateur singers, but were also performed by instrumentalists. Following Jacques Hotteterre’s 1721 Airs et brunettes, a steady stream of publications featuring vocal repertoire adapted to instruments appeared.⁷⁹Brunettes were considered extremely useful pedagogical tools and could also be adapted as a vehicle for soloists (as in the virtuoso variations included in Blavet’s three-volume Recueil de pièces, petits airs, brunettes, menuets, etc. avec des doubles et variations, issued in 1744–51).

Parodies – whether spiritual texts added to profane airs or satiric verses set to the tunes of well-known songs – were another important genre in both domestic music-making and larger society. The simple, syllabic vaudeville formed a cornerstone of the early opéra comique because it was well suited to satirical or topical subjects. As Dorothy Packer has observed, ‘the vaudeville’s brevity encouraged a concise musical expression; its pointedness gave it a distinguishing piquancy’.⁸⁰Vaudevilles ranged from drinking songs to biting political satire, from moralistic or didactic airs to love songs, or even to recipes.⁸¹ While many vaudevilles were included in recueils d’airs, they were also transmitted orally: like English ballad tunes, vaudevilles could simply be provided with a timbre (or verbal cue) identifying the famous tune to which the new text should be sung.

Instrumental fashions in the drawing room

From the Regency until the Revolution, solo music increasingly favoured novelty and emphasised virtuoso display. While the fiery sonatas of the violinists Jean-Féry Rebel and Leclair and flautists like Blavet and Mahaut stressed technical accomplishment, the harpsichord suites or concerts of François Couperin (1668–1733), Rameau, Royer, Daquin and Jacques Duphly (1715–89) reflect a prolonged fascination with the character piece. Individual pieces often carried fanciful titles, paid homage to colleagues or patrons, or were transcriptions of stage works. For instance, Rameau arranged excerpts from his Les Indes galantes (1735), Royer included dramatic set pieces from his operas Pyrrhus, Le pouvoir de l’amour and Zaide in his Pièces de clavecin (1746), and Balbastre was famous for arranging opera overtures for performance at the Concert Spirituel.⁸²

The clavecinistes of the 1740s and beyond were also interested in exploring the limits of the instrument’s colouristic possibilities. Contrary to modern expectations, the dynamically endowed forte-piano did not eclipse the harpsichord upon its introduction in Paris in 1761. Rather, harpsichord production in Paris increased through the 1770s and showed no signs of slowing until the 1780s.⁸³ The most famous harpsichord builders were consumed with rebuilding old Flemish and French instruments (particularly those of Ruckers and Couchet) – updating actions, reinforcing soundboard and case and enlarging the compass to a full five octaves – and with installing buff stops, which were ubiquitous by 1750.⁸⁴Balbastre pushed the harpsichord to its technical and colouristic limits and is credited with the invention of the peau de buffle (a rank of soft leather plectra); he used knee pedals for special effects.

Since virtually all pianos were imported prior to the Erard firm’s first serious attempts to manufacture instruments in 1777, it was the English square piano that found a home in French drawing rooms in the 1770s and 1780s (while the Erard firm was experimenting with hammer actions in the 1750s and 1760s, serious manufacturing of square pianos began in 1777; production of grand pianos began in the 1780s).⁸⁵ The piano made its debut at the Concert Spirituel on 8 September 1768 when Mademoiselle Le Chantre performed works by her teacher Romain de Brasseur, but, perhaps because of the popularity of Balbastre’s organ concertos, the piano only rarely made subsequent appearances on the concert stage. The four symphonies concertantes (1777–83) of Jean-François Tapray (b. 1738–9; d. after 1798), which juxtapose harpsichord and piano, mark the last ‘French music in which the harpsichord was indispensable’.⁸⁶

The same fashion for depictions of amorous shepherds and gently warbling nightingales that inspired scenes by Antoine Watteau and François Boucher, and which drove the publication of a seemingly endless stream of sentimental airs and brunettes, also popularised the appropriation of ‘folk’ instruments by the aristocracy. But just as Marie-Antoinette’s Hameau de la Reine (the rustic farm she had built behind the Petit Trianon at Versailles) allowed her to play at peasantry within the luxurious confines of the royal estate, so were the musette and vielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy) suitably ‘civilised’ to appeal to noble amateurs. Rococo iterations of the hurdy-gurdy and musette were highly ornamented; stripped of previously negative associations,⁸⁷ they were championed by virtuosos, including Jacques Hotteterre, Nicolas Chédeville (1705–82) and Jean-Baptiste Dupuits.⁸⁸

Music for musette and hurdy-gurdy spanned a wide variety of genres from chamber concertos to sonatas and duos, character pieces and suites of dance music sporting titles that celebrated their supposedly rustic origins, such as Fêtes rustiques (c. 1732) by Jacques-Christophe Naudot (c. 1690–1762), Boismortier’s Balets de village (1734) and Chédeville’s Amusements champêtres (three volumes, 1729, c. 1731, c. 1733).⁸⁹ Interestingly, the craze for goûts réunis also extended to the peculiarly French fashion for playing the musette and hurdy-gurdy: Chédeville passed off Il pastor fido (a collection of sonatas for musette, 1737) as the work of Vivaldi and likewise reworked concertos from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as Le printems, ou Les saisons amusantes (1739) for hurdy-gurdy and chamber ensemble.⁹⁰

Conclusion

As the Revolution approached, the effects of Enlightenment philosophy, which privileged the diffusion of culture and celebrated the liberating power of knowledge, extended to the large, public venue of the concert hall and the intimacy of the drawing room. Although the advent of concert societies and explosion of periodicals and published sheet music in Paris in the second half of the eighteenth century increased public access to arts and culture, music was still most successfully cultivated within the realm of the social elite. Ultimately, throughout the eighteenth century private patrons among the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie played an essential role in shaping public taste for virtually every musical genre.