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Piccinni's Iphigénie en Tauride: ‘Chant périodique’ and dramatic structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Elisabeth Schmierer
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Extract

For my part, I cannot cease admiring the intelligence with which Monsieur Piccinni has led the audience from sentiment to sentiment, from interest to interest; how he has graduated the effect of his music – how one feels not only each scene but also its connection with the general tone of the subject; how all the airs, all the recitatives, all the ballets, all the choruses tend to refer to the whole, how all these individual groups eventually form a total group in which everything agrees, everything is true, in which each detail sets off those surrounding it. That is worthy to be called genuine dramatic music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , July 1992 , pp. 91 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Coquéau, Claude Philibert, L'Entretiens sur l'état actuel de l'Opéra de Paris (Amsterdam, 1779), 104f.Google Scholar, rpt. in Lesure, François, ed., Querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes (Genf, 1984), II, 367–540.Google Scholar In the original: ‘Pour moi, je ne me lasse pas d'admirer avec quelle intelligence M. Piccinni a conduit le spectateur de sentiment en sentiment, d'intérêt en intérêt, comme il a gradué l'effet de sa musique, comme non seulement chaque scène est sentie; mais encore ses rapports avec l'ensemble général du sujet, comme tous les airs, tous les récitatifs, tous les ballets, tous les choeurs tendent rappeller cet ensemble, comme tous ces groupes particuliers finissent par former un groupe totale où tout est d'accord, tout est vrai, où chaque détail fait valoir ceux qui l'entourent. Voila ce qu'il faut vraiment appeller de la musique dramatique.’

2 See Henze-Döhring, Sabine, Opera seria, Opera buffa und Mozart ‘Don Giovanni’, Analecta musicologica 24 (Laaber, 1986).Google Scholar

3 see Leopold, Silke, ‘Opernreformen’, in Die Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts, Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft 5, ed. Dahlhaus, Carl (Laaber, 1985), 240–3.Google Scholar

4 Three studies written in the 1970s are available in typescript: Allroggen, Gerhard, Studien zu den italienischen Opern N. Piccinnis (Bochum, 1976)Google Scholar; Liggett, McG., ‘A Biography of N. Piccinni and a Critical Study of his “La Didone” and “Didon”’, diss. (Washington Univ., 1977)Google Scholar; Rushton, Julian, ‘Music and Drama at the Académie Royale de Musique (Paris) 1774–1789’, diss. (Oxford Univ., 1970).Google Scholar More recently, see Hortschansky, Klaus, ‘Atys’, and Iphigénie en Tauride’, Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, IV (Munich, 1991), 783 and 784.Google Scholar

5 See the dissertation cited in n. 4, 355ff., and ‘The Theory and Practice of Piccinnisme’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 98 (1971/1972), 31–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See the comments in ‘Iphigénie en Tauride: The Operas of Gluck and Piccinni’, Music and Letters, 53 (1972), 411–30.Google Scholar

7 see Loewenberg, Alfred, Annals of Opera (Totowa, N.J., 1978), 405.Google Scholar

8 Ginguené, Pierre-Louis, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Nicolò Piccinni (Paris, 1800), 82.Google Scholar

9 Cf. Kunze, Stephan, ‘Gluck, oder: Die “Natur” des musikalischen Dramas’, in Christoph Willibald Gluck und die Opernreform, ed. Hortschansky, Klaus, Forschung, Wege der 613 (Darmstadt, 1989), 390–418.Google Scholar

10 See various sources edited by Lesure, (n. 1), I, 202ff., 214, 420.Google Scholar

11 See Marmontel, Jean-François, ‘Essai sur les révolutions dans la musique en France’, ed. Lesure (n. 1), 161 and 172f.Google Scholar

12 ‘Piccinnisme’ (see n. 5), 34.Google Scholar

13 The following discussion of ‘chant périodique’ will be treated at greater length in my Habilitationsschrift, Die französischen Opern Niccolò Piccinnis.

14 see Groth, Renate, Die französische Kompositionslehre des 19. Jahrhunderts, Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 22 (Wiesbaden, 1983), 155ff.Google Scholar

15 Dictionnaire de la musique moderne, II (Paris, 1831), 141.Google Scholar

16 Essai sur l'union de la poésie et de la musique (Paris, 1765; rpt. Geneva, 1970), 6.Google Scholar

17 Ed. Lesure, (see n. 1), 196.Google Scholar

18 “Air’, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Supplément, I (Paris and Amsterdam, 1776), 237Google Scholar; Eléments de littérature, in his Ouvres complètes (Paris, 1818–1819), XII, 155.Google Scholar

19 Eléments de littérature, in Ouvres complètes, XIV, 544.Google Scholar

20 In Lesure, (see n. 1), 169.Google Scholar

21 Cf. the entries ‘Air’ in the Supplément to the Encyclopédie (n. 18 above) and «Période’ in the Encyclopédie itself, XII (Neuchâtel, 1765), 361f.Google Scholar

22 Essai (see n.16), 18.Google Scholar

23 The further implications will be discussed in chapter 1 of my Habilitationsschrift (see n. 13).

24 Essai (see n. 16), 17.Google Scholar

25 Encyclopédie, X (Neuchâtel, 1765), 767.Google Scholar Cf. the entry Motivo by Blumröder, Christoph von in the Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie, ed. Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich, esp. 3–5.Google Scholar

26 ‘Dessein’ was often used synonymously with ‘motif’; cf. the above-cited entry on air by Marmontel (n. 18).

27 Döhring, (see n. 2), 131f.Google Scholar, emphasises that ‘Gluck by no means dethroned the aria as a genre; on the contrary, he significantly expanded its wealth of forms in the tragédie lyrique by comparison with Lully and Rameau. He merely eliminated (albeit not entirely) the virtuoso aria of the Neapolitan type.’

28 In Gluck the dream reflects the events surrounding the murder of Agamemnon and Clytemnestre and an intimation of Oreste's sacrifice.

29 ‘Iphigénie’ (see n. 6), 414.Google Scholar

30 See Matthias Brzoska's analysis of Becton's Rigueurs du Cloître, ‘De l'Anticléricalisme révolutionnaire au cléricalisme anti-révolutionnaire chez H. M. Berton de 1790 â 1799’, in Le Tambour et la harpe: Ckuvres, pratiques et manifestations musicales sous la Révolution, 1788–1800, ed. Julien, Jean-Rémy and Mongrédien, Jean (Paris, 1991), 260.Google Scholar

31 Cited from Weisstein, Ulrich, ed., The Essence of Opera (1964; rpt. New York, 1969), 106.Google Scholar

32 Essai, ed. Lesure, (see n. 1), 181.Google Scholar

33 See his ankle ‘Période’, in Eléments (n. 19), 532ff.Google Scholar

34 See Marmontel, ‘Récitatif’, in the Supplément to the Encyclopédie (n. 18), IV, 585.Google Scholar

35 Rushton observes that Gluck's arias are usually intended as intensification; ‘Piccinnisme’ (see n. 5), 37ff.Google Scholar

36 Such a conception derives from the French operatic tradition. See, for example, the first aria in Rameau's Zoroastre, ‘Non je ne puis assez punir’, which is interrupted by insened recitative.

37 Similar forms are found in Piccinni's Italian operas; see, for example, Cecchina's ‘Padre mio, dove sei tu’, which interrupts a recitative.

38 Rushton's comparison of the libretti in his article ‘Iphigénie’ (see n. 6), 414Google Scholar, comes to the opposite conclusion. Guillard's use of the subject is said to be economical, while Dubreuil repeats the storm and question scenes. On the other hand, he concedes that Guillard repeats Oreste's mad scene, which forms an important part of the dispute with Pilade, the first being ‘genuine’, the second ‘self-induced’. But the same argument can be made for Piccinni's and Dubreuil's storm scene; and the importance of the shipwreck, which Rushton characterises as ‘without dramatic importance’, has also been discussed above. By contrast, Guillard resolves the recognition scene better, avoiding a second set of questions: as Iphigénie approaches him with the sacrificial knife raised, Oreste calls out, ‘Ainsi tu péris en Aulide, Iphigénie ô ma soeur!’ Rushton justifiably explains the ‘apparent leisureliness’ of this important scene in Guillard by reference to its psychological complexity, but does not consider Dubreuil's and Piccinni's differing conceptions, judging their work according to Gluckian criteria.

39 Roullet, Du, Lettre sur les Drames-Opéra (Paris, 1776), 11Google Scholar; rpt. in Lesure, (see n. 1), 117.Google Scholar

40 See her entry on ‘Alceste’ in Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, II (Munich, 1987), 444.Google Scholar