13: Foreigners in Paris

Christoph Gluck in Paris, at the keyboard of what is probably a square piano. Portrait by Duplessis, 1775

Websites

Portal to websites on the French Revolution

http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/modsbook13.asp

Foreign Musicians in Paris: A Web Resource at the University of North Carolina

Digital Facsimiles

Gluck's Armide, full score, first edition IMSLP

Salieri's Les Danaïdes, full score, first edition IMSLP

Cherubini's Les deux journées, full score, first edition IMSLP

Tuileries Palace in Paris, home of the Concert Spirituel, shortly before its destruction by fire in 1871

Recordings

Example 13.1: "Véronique Gens: Tragédiennes," cond. Christophe Rousset, Virgin; includes Gluck's Enfin, il est en ma puissance (available on iTunes); this scene also on Youtube

Example 13.2: Mozart, Symphony No. 31 in D, "Paris," first movement, Freiburger Barockorchester, cond. Gottfried von der Goltz, on Youtube

Example 13.3: Cherubini, Les deux journées, cond. Christoph Spering, Opus 111 (available on iTunes)

Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp (really a symphonie concertante), first movement, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, cond. Gottfried von der Goltz, on Youtube

Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria (later Queen Marie Antoinette of France) at the square piano: detail of the painting reproduced in the webpage for chapter 8

Cherubini, Lodoïska, cond. Jérémie Rhorer, Naïve (available on iTunes)

Salieri, Les Danaïdes, cond. Christophe Rousset, Ediciones Singulares

La Prise de la Bastille: Music of the French Revolution, Concerto Köln, Capriccio (also available on Youtube)

See also "Audio and Video Recordings to Accompany Anthology" (click on left)

Marie Antoinette playing the dulcimer: automaton by David Roentgen, a famous German cabinetmaker, who presented it to the queen in 1785; video of the automaton in operation on Youtube

Video

Mozart, Symphonie concertante in E Flat, K. 364, Grace Park and Wenting Kang, with the New England Conservatory Chamber Orchestra, on Youtube

Readings

Cumming, Julie E. "Gluck's Iphigenia Operas: Sources and Strategies," Opera and the Enlightenment, ed. Thomas Bauman and Marita Petzoldt McClymonds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 217–40 Worldcat

Darlow, Mark. Staging the Revolution: Cultural Politics and the Paris Opera, 1789–1794 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) Worldcat

A caricature of the final scene of Salieri's Les Danaïdes, from Bobèche à l'Opèra, a parody published in 1828. The inscription reads: "Let every woman come to Les Danaïdes in Paris, for the moral of the play is that one shouldn't kill one's husband."

Dean, Winton. “Opera under the French Revolution,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 1967–68, 76–96 http://www.jstor.org/stable/765878

Deane, Basil. Cherubini (London: Oxford University Press, 1965) Worldcat

Doe, Julia. "Opéra-comique on the Eve of Revolution: Dalayrac's Sargines and the Development of 'Heroic' Comedy," Journal of the American Musicological Society 68 (2015), 317–74

Fend, Michael. "An Instinct for Parody and a Spirit of Revolution: Parisian Opera, 1752–1800," The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music, Simon Keefe, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 295–330 Worldcat

The Baronne de Crussol holding a book of music open to "Le dieu de Paphos et de Gnide," from Gluck's last French opera, Echo et Narcisse; portrait by Elizabeth Vigée Lebrun

Fend, Michael. "Romantic Empowerment at the Paris Opera in the 1770s and 1780s," Music and Letters 94 (2013), 263–94

Heartz, Daniel. Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720–1780 (New York: Norton, 2003), 801–81 Worldcat

Johnson, James H. Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (University of California Press, 1995), 97–162 Worldcat

Johnson, Victoria. Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) Worldcat

Music and the French Revolution, ed. Malcolm Boyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) Worldcat

Perovic, Sanja. "Death by Volcano: Revolutionary Theatre and Marie Antoinette," French Studies 67 (2013), 15–29 http://fs.oxfordjournals.org/content/67/1/15.full

A French embroidered waistcoat, 1785–95, showing Dido and Aeneas, the two main characters in Piccinni's opera Didon of 1783. For more information and and a higher-definition image, go to https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18445265/

Range, Matthias. "The 'Effective Passage' in Mozart's 'Paris' Symphony," Eighteenth-Century Music 9 (2012), 109–19 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8480680

Rice, John A. Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 307–29 Worldcat

Rice, John A. "The Staging of Salieri's Les Danaïdes as Seen by a Cellist in the Orchestra," Cambridge Opera Journal 26 (2014), 65–82; pre-publication copy on academia.edu

The destruction of Armida's palace: painting by Coypel (1737) inspired by the last scene of Lully's Armide

Rushton, Julian. "The Theory and Practice of Piccinnisme," Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 98 (1971–72), 31–46, reprinted in Essays on Opera, 1750–1800, ed. John A. Rice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 3–18 JSTOR

Schmierer, Elisabeth. "Piccinni's Iphigénie en Tauride: 'Chant Périodique' and Dramatic Structure," Cambridge Opera Journal 4 (1992), 91–118 JSTOR

Zaslaw, Neal. Mozart's Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Reception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 306–34 Worldcat

François-Joseph Gossec with two of the compositions with which he celebrated and commemorated the French Revolution: the Marche Lugubre and the Te Deum

Study Guide

Names, titles, and terms introduced in chapter 13

King Louis XVI

Archduchess (later Queen) Marie Antoinette

Christoph Gluck

François Roullet

Iphigénie en Aulide

Armide

Philippe Quinault

Enfin, il est en ma puissance

Jean Legros

Mozart's Symphony in D, K. 297, "Paris"

symphonie concertante

Antonio Salieri

Les Danaïdes

William Bennet

Luigi Cherubini

Giovanni Battista Viotti

Lodoiska

Varennes

Maximilien Robespierre

Reign of Terror

Les deux journées

Topic for discussion

Evaluate the role that Queen Marie Antoinette, herself a foreigner in Paris, played in music during her short life.