TODAY IN CLASSICAL MUSIC HISTORY: NOTED PHILOSOPHER ROUSSEAU “HANGED” FOR HIS SERVICE TO FRENCH MUSIC – THE MAYHEM BEHIND LE DEVIN DU VILLAGE

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

264 years ago today, on October 18, 1752, France would bear witness to what may be arguably described as a Prelude to a Musical Revolution. It would begin at the royal court of King Louis XV of France – it’s chief instigator, the esteemed Swiss-born philosopher and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His arme de choix: a pandering, self authored pamphlet “Lettre sur la Musique Française” - a churlish treatise against the music of France (of which he contested was in poorly scant supply of anything revelatory), and of it’s musical future (of which he insisted would never come into existence) - not withstanding the “unfit” nature of the French language itself, which the emerging musician found most uncouth for distinguished ears.

How odd then, it must have appeared to the King, and later, to the French public, to have been introduced on that fateful autumn day to “Le Devin du Village”* an opera performed in French, and written in French by one of the nations most vocal adversaries, Rousseau himself. 

The introduction of Le Devin marked a turning point for 18th century musical France, a nation already in conteste with Italy – chiefly with it’s infiltration on national operatic culture and customs. Reigning King of the tragédie lyrique (the preferred form of musical stage drama for the French), Jean-Philippe Rameau, with his soul-wrenching oeuvre, was made to bear witness to the injection of the customs of the Italians, in the form of Italian burlettas (intermezzi) – light comic relief, performed in the Italian tongue, to balance out the serious nature of French libretti.

French king Louis XV was an early
supporter of Rousseau's composing
endeavors. He famously offered (and
was refused) life-long patronage of the
philosopher-cum-composer.

Results were immediate, and public reaction was as hotly divided as it was swift: French opera connoisseurs split into two sects: those who favored the change, and those who rallied against it – sometimes though violence. The public, it seemed, had no choice but to endure the makings of a revolution: the Italian company responsible for the musical interjection had officially received permission in 1752 to use what wiles they possessed to attempt to integrate the two very different formats. 

The answer to the question of the philosopher-cum-composer's true musical allegiance that must have plagued members of Louis' royal court would soon be revealed: Rousseau, in a most ingenious fashion (and undeniably spurned on by a raging competitive spirit following the successful run of young Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s comic opera La Serva Padrona – an Italian opera, by an Italian composer, performed by a visiting Italian troupe no less - which had held its premiere in Paris just two months prior to Le Devin’s premiere at Fontainebleau) would present his latest work as a sort of hybrid: designed and touted as an opera for the French, Le Devin would incorporate facets of the Italian opera buffa throughout – most notably in the use of recitative, and in it’s Overture, which employed the Italian style of fast, slow, fast in it's sections. The pandering to French interests on behalf of the composer would be further emphasized by the press, who were quick to point out that the libretto for the opera, written in the country’s native tongue, held the distinction of being the first operatic text to have been written by the composer of the same work. Almost immediately following Le Devin's public premiere, Rousseau's most important musical ally, Jean-Philippe Rameau - who was presently the undisputed king of opera in France - would turn into a rival. Compounding the matter was the fact that, according to Rameau - who had previously corresponded on a semi-frequent basis with the Swiss composer - Rousseau had once expressed through his letters to the Frenchman a showing of espousal to French traditions. The production, then, of Le Devin, using popular Italian styles was undoubtedly viewed by Rameau as the ultimate betrayal. It seemed Rousseau was making enemies in high places.

Public fallout - albeit temporarily - would quickly follow.
 

Overture of Le Devin, in the Italian Style: Allegro, Lent et gai, Allegro 

Rousseau may have thought his machinations infallible - soon however, just as we have seen in the fractured relationship between the two former allies, the operatic newcomer Rousseau’s ‘allegiance’ became inevitably blurred in the eyes and ears of the Parisian melophiles.

So heated was the public divide, it has been recorded by contemporary historians in the time of Rousseau that his own orchestra detested not only their maestro’s views on their countrymen, which they considered an attack on France itself – but also, of the composer’s rampant hypocrisy. It is said following a performance of Le Devin, the musicians took to the theater lobby, erecting hastily fashioned gallows, whereupon they proceeded to “burn” the composer in effigy!

The periodical “The Athenaeum Journal of Nature, Science, and the Fine Arts" payed homage to the event in the coming century by running a detail describing the vitriolic occasion (as originally recorded by the 18th century Belgian-turned-French composer André Grétry):

"In how severe a strife "Le Devin" was nurtured we may judge from the circumstance of the French orchestral players conspiring - so Gretry tells us - to hang Jean Jacques in effigy. "Well," replied the Swiss, "I don't wonder they should hang me now, after having so long put me to the torture." But the fiddlers built their gallows in vain..."

-pp. 455

AN UNRAVELING MUSICAL MYTHS HELL-O-WE'EN SPECIAL: A SPOOKY SOUNDTRACK FOR ALL HALLOWS' EVE

It's that time of year again - when chill seekers look to the dark side of classical music to get their creep on.

More often than not, both newcomers to the genre and seasoned listeners alike are faced with an annually occurring dilemma: will it be Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre of Orff's O Fortuna to set the mood come this All Hallows' Eve? 

With list after list nominating popular, oldie-but-goodie bone-chillers (featured in both online and in print media), the challenge here at Unraveling Musical Myths hasn't been which piece from the standard Hallowe'en canon to highlight, but rather, how to narrow down the spookiest of selections from an arsenal of less familiar diabolical delights, especially curated by the author of this blog for the season.

I have selected from my boiling cauldron the following 13 bone-chilling rides through hell featuring just enough crazed cacophony to make even the bravest listener cower beneath the covers.

UPDATE: In honor Unraveling Musical Myths' long-time reader, Classical_Music_Fan, I have added an additional 13 spooky selections to this years' edition. The links for these extra, tumultuously terrifying treats are listed in the comment section at the end of this post. 

VÍCTOR AGUDELO - EL SOMBRERÓN

We begin within the dark, humid corridors of a Columbian village in the dead of night, where, in the distance, sound the ominous din of horse hooves, steadily clip clopping along cobble stoned streets. Neither quickening or slowing, they march at a determined pace until a sickening high pitched squeal breaks the rhythm: it is the whistle of El Sombrerón, the phantom of the night, sat upon his black steed. 

 

In the distance, a funeral bell tolls - a warning to the would-be hoods, drunks and gamblers of their fate should they engage in public mischief: a desperate sprint for their lives under the moonlit night, chased by El Sombrerón upon his trusty horse. At their side, two angry, vicious black dogs are released from their metal chains, and are sicced upon his victims. 

 

The thrilling chase is based on the local legend of El Sombrerón (known in English as The Man in the [Black] Hat), a mysterious (allegedly real) villager who once roamed the streets upon his black stallion, clad in all black attire. Although rumored to have never harmed another living soul while alive, his menacing appearance instilled in all those who encountered him both curiosity and fear. A constant stern-jawed expression only added to the ever churning rumor mill: who was El Sombrerón? What did he want? Was he good, or evil?

The mysterious man in the black hat continued to spook villagers well after his death, as a phantom menace of virtue.

But make no mistake, dear reader, Columbian composer Victor Agudelo's El Sombrerón dispenses with any trace of virtue: a menacing brass section gruesomely groans to the start-and-stop rhythm of hoof beats, as the listener places himself in the place of the would-be victim. A brief respite - portraying the mysterious chaser "losing" the chased as he cowers behind a brick lined wall under the cover of night - is brazenly interrupted by brash horns as the pace quickens to match the victim's racing heart. With a bone-chilling and sickeningly frustrating pace, El Sombrerón will leave the listener on the edge of his or her seat. 

 

Questions about the ultimate fate of the victim are left unanswered by the brass section, which repeatedly approach crescendi, only to be cut off just before the crest as the mysterious Man in the Black Hat advances and retreats.

 

ALEXANDER MOSOLOV - THE IRON FOUNDRY 

Inspired by The Procession of the Sage from Igor Stavinsky's masterful Rite of Spring, Alexander Mosolov's steely musical interpretation of an iron factory running at full steam begins methodically, with an unintentionally menacing start of the iron master's machine, represented by the stroke of a tam-tam. Percussion and brass sinfully interplay among each other as the machine reaches full power and as the rest of the factory begins to function in unison.

Considered a prime example of Soviet futurist music by a composer known for his brutalist scores, Mosolov's Iron Foundry unveils the horrific cacophony which can be found in everyday life.

EXPLOSIVE! FRENCH QUEEN AND MINOR COMPOSER MARIE ANTOINETTE EXPERIENCES HANDEL-ESQUE DISASTER AT WEDDING CELEBRATIONS feat. Did You Know? LULLY'S "PERSÉE" INAUGURATES ROYAL OPERA HOUSE AT VERSAILLES

It may just have been the first of many bad omens to come: 

247 years ago today, newlywed royal couple Marie Antoinette, (formerly archduchess of Austria and present Dauphine de France), and Louis-Auguste, (heir to the French throne and the future Louis XVI; both 14 and 15 respectively) would receive the shock of their young lives when, during the final festivities held for the future monarch’s recent nuptials, which had been hosted across Paris for some two weeks straight following the May 16th wedding – an errant firework (a rocket) veered off course and set fire to the Temple de l'Hymen (the Temple of Hymen), a specially constructed and elaborate structure erected especially for the royal couple at the Paris' Place de la Concorde.

The disaster would not only echo the calamity that befell Handel in London of 1749 – which also involved the presence of an elaborate structure (erected to serve as a dazzling backdrop for the display of lights) and it’s destruction by an errant firework – but would also succeed it many times over in scale of sheer catastrophe: whereas the tragedy at St James Park of 1749 only claimed two lives, the present disaster in Paris would number over 132 fatalities by the time the final body count had been tallied.

Below, Marie Antoinette biographer Charles Duke Yonge describes, in horrific detail, the deadly actions of the Parisian people as they went from awe to sheer terror - one moment admiring the pyrotechnic feat (even marveling at the raging inferno that lit up the Temple as the rocket struck, thinking it a newly created special effect), and the next, stomping on the bodies of their neighbors as they frantically clawed their way toward safety, running at full speed toward safe terrain (in as much speed as one might acquire whilst in the midst of a full blown stampede).

Perhaps most disheartening of Yonge’s account is the revelation that most of the victims were of the lowest economic class, who had likely come out to celebrate the union of the future king and queen of France, believing in the heirs to the throne as potential saviors to their financial woes. Many would not live to find out – those who were not trampled or otherwise suffocated in the stampede were callously tossed into a river and left to drown by their fellow spectators as they made a mad dash toward safety.

In any event, fate would see to it that the royal couple could have never served as saviors anyhow – the condemned couple would be famously stripped of their titles, beheaded under the sharp blade of the guillotine at the Place de la Révolution in 1793 Revolutionary France, and their corpses dumped in a common grave at the Cemetery of the Madeline – ironically, the very same resting grounds for the victims of the May 30th disaster at the Place de La Concorde.
 

*CLICK TO ENLARGE* A Contemporary mock-up of the Temple de l'Hymen

From "The Life of Marie Antoinette" by Charles Duke Yonge (1876, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York):

Little as was the good-will which subsisted between Louis XV and the Parisians, the civic authorities thought their own credit at stake in doing appropriate honor to an occasion so important as the marriage of the heir of the monarchy, and on the 30th of May they closed a succession of balls and banquets by a display of fire-works, in which the ingenuity of the most celebrated artists had been exhausted to outshine all previous displays of the sort. Three sides of the Place Louis XV were filled up with pyramids and colonnades. Here dolphins darted out many-colored flames from their ever-open mouths. There, rivers of fire poured forth cascades spangled with all the variegated brilliancy with which the chemist's art can embellish the work of the pyrotechnist.

The centre was occupied with a gorgeous Temple of Hymen, which seemed to lean for support on the well-known statue of the king, in front of which it was constructed; and which was, as it were, to be carried up to the skies by above three thousand rockets and fire-balls into which it was intended to dissolve. The whole square was packed with spectators, the pedestrians in front, the carriages in the rear, when one of the explosions set fire to a portion of the platforms on which the different figures had been constructed. At first the increase of the blaze was regarded only as an ingenious surprise on the part of the artist. But soon it became clear that the conflagration was undesigned and real; panic-succeeded to delight, and the terror-stricken crowd, seeing themselves surrounded with flames, began to make frantic efforts to escape from the danger; but there was only one side of the square unenclosed, and that was blocked up by carriages.

The uproar and the glare made the horses unmanageable, and in a few moments the whole mass, human beings and animals, was mingled in helpless confusion, making flight impossible by their very eagerness to fly, and trampling one another underfoot in bewildered misery. Of those who did succeed in extricating themselves from the square, half made their way to the road which runs along the bank of the river, and found that they had only exchanged one danger for another, which, though of an opposite character, was equally destructive. Still overwhelmed with terror, though the first peril was over, the fugitives pushed one another into the stream, in which great numbers were drowned. The number of the killed could never be accurately ascertained: but no calculation estimated the number of those who perished at less than six hundred, while those who were grievously injured were at least as many more.

The dauphin and dauphiness were deeply shocked by a disaster so painfully at variance with their own happiness, which, in one sense, had caused it. Their first thought was, as far as they might be able, to mitigate it. Most of the victims were of the poorer class, the grief of whose surviving relatives was, in many instances, aggravated by the loss of the means of livelihood which the labors of those who had been cut off had hitherto supplied; and, to give temporary succor to this distress, the dauphin and dauphiness at once drew out from the royal treasury the sums allowed to them for their private expenses for the month, and sent the money to the municipal authorities to be applied to the relief of the sufferers. But Marie Antoinette did more. She felt that to give money only was but cold benevolence; and she made personal visits to many of those families which had been most grievously afflicted, showing the sincerity of her sympathy by the touching kindness of her language, and by the tears which she mingled with those of the widow and the orphan.

Did You Know?

Inside the Royal Opera House at Versailles

The Temple of Hymen wasn’t the only structure to have been created in anticipation of the royal marriage of the Dauphin to the archduchess. 

In 1770, King Louis XV commissioned the construction of a large event hall at Versailles to serve as a ballroom for the wedding banquet and subsequent wedding related festivities. 

It would also serve as the first opera hall in France built in the shape of an oval. The Opéra Royal, as it was then called, was an architectural and technological wonder: boasting finely sculpted depictions of Greek gods and symbols marking the Zodiac, and a mechanically operated flooring system which could both raise the orchestra flush with the stage during balls, and lower it for more intimate occasions.

The newly installed opera hall at Versailles couldn’t have served as a better gift for the newly minted Dauphine de France - a musician and minor composer herself, who would later serve as musical patron, most notably to her musical hero (and former teacher) Christoph Willibald Gluck.

The first opera Marie Antoinette would have attended at the Royal Opera House (as the hall would later become known) was Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Persée, composed in 1682. It would serve as the inaugural performance for the venue, and the former archduchess of Austria would witness the occasion whilst still Dauphine.

Although the interior mechanism behind the rising floor may
appear rickety by modern standards, the design was considered
state-of-the-art technology in the late 18th century. The
complex system, consisting of winches and hoists, was
designed by the First Theatre Technician to the King,
Blaise-Henri Arnoult.

Although the state-of-the-art opera hall and its breathtaking acoustics – owed largely to the wooden structure of the venue – were considered a marvel and a sight to behold in it’s day, the opera house was expensive to maintain, and was only used some 40 times before the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Memorable performances during this period included Lully’s Persée in 1770 on the day of the royal wedding; a revival of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Castor et Pollux in honor of the visiting Emperor and brother to the Dauphine, Joseph II in may 1777; and the revivals of Marie-Antoinette favorite composer Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide in late May of 1782 and Armide in June 1784. The latter production saw in attendance the King of Sweden, Gustav III, who was visiting the French court.
 
Listen below to the third act aria from Lully's Persée, "O tranquille sommeil" performed by the American tenor Rockwell Blake:




-Rose.

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