Opera played a key role in music life in the baroque era. The genre was
born in Italy, and was rapdily embraced across Europe, with the exception of
England. In the 1640s Italian operas, written by Luigi Rossi and Francesco
Cavalli respectively, were performed in Paris, but soon France established a
tradition of its own. The man largely responsible for the development of
French opera was an Italian, Giovanni Battista Lulli, later known as
Jean-Baptiste Lully. In order to create a pure French opera he actively
tried to repel any Italian influence. As a result Marc-Antoine Charpentier,
arguably the composer with the greatest theatrical skills of all French
composers, was prevented from developing into a major composer of opera
because of his strong Italian leanings.
Lully regularly worked with the playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better
known as Molière. In 1672 they clashed and Molière the began working with
Lully's arch-enemy Charpentier. One of the fruits of the cooperation
between Lully and Molière was
Le bourgeois gentilhomme, a
comédie-ballet which received its first performance in 1670. It was
written at the request of Louis XIV who in 1669 had been visited by the
Turkish ambassador which stirred the Sun King's interest in his
culture. This element was to be included in a
comédie-ballet and is
represented here in the
Cérémonie des Turcs. The subject of various
'national styles' comes to the fore in the
Ballet des
nations. The inclusion of
ballets was one of the features of
French opera, partly because Louis XIV was a great lover of dancing and
sometimes actively took part in performances of
opéra-ballets.
Marin Marais was a pupil of Lully and developed into one of the greatest
players of the viola da gamba of his time. He composed four operas in the
genre of the
tragédie en musique which show the influence of Lully.
Alcyone has become his best-known work for the theatre, and has
been recorded complete. However, in Lully's time a tradition had been
established to perform instrumental pieces from an opera separately. German
composers were inspired by this tradition and started to compose
ouvertures - also known as orchestral suites - as independent
works, without any theatrical context. Today suites from French operas are
quite popular as the many recordings of such suites from the operas by
Rameau show. Instrumental pieces from Marais'
Alcyone are
also regularly played today, and last year I reviewed here a disc with four
suites from this opera by Le Concert des Nations, directed by Jordi Savall
(
review). The present disc includes a much shorter
extract, but part of it is the most famous piece from this opera, the
Tempête, in which a wind machine is used.
Another feature of Marais' opera was the participation of a double
bass, the first time this instrument had been included in the French opera
orchestra. That brings us to an important issue in regard to performances of
French orchestral music of the 17th and early 18th centuries. It’s hardly
given any attention in the liner-notes. Robert A. Green refers to the
Vingt-quatre Violons, the string band of the French court and states that it
"included instruments we would now identify as violas and cellos, as
well as violins". He should have specified the difference in line-up
between the French orchestra of the time and the common modern baroque
orchestra of today, including Tempesta di Mare. Until the early decades of
the 18th century French orchestral scores were divided into five string
parts. These were known as
dessus de violon,
haute-contre de
violon,
taille de violon,
quinte - mostly played by
the viola da gamba - and
basse de violon. The
dessus de violon
is identical with the violin, the
basse de violons is
comparable with the cello, although larger and with a lower tessitura,
something between the cello and the double bass. The three other instruments
played the parts which today are mostly taken by the second violins and the
violas. Thanks to a stronger presence of the middle voices such a scoring
results in a mellower and fuller sound than the common scoring of baroque
orchestras of the German or Italian type. That is one reason that
Savall's recording of Marais' instrumental pieces is more
satisfying than the Tempesta di Mare's performance.
Jean Féry Rebel composed just one opera,
Ulysse, which
didn't go down all that well. He had much more success with his dance
music, for instance
Les caractères de la danse. His most famous
work is
Les Elémens which he called a
simphonie nouvelle.
The novelty was especially the opening movement,
Le cahos which
depicts the chaos before the various elements, "subject to invariable
laws, took their prescribed place in the natural order", as the preface
says. It opens with a chord consisting of all the notes of the D minor
scale. Although it is basically scored for strings and bc in four parts,
there are indications that wind instruments, such as flutes, oboes and
bassoons, may be used in some of the movements. The two upper parts are for
dessus, whereas the third part has the indication
haute-contre
et taille. The traditional scoring in five parts has disappeared, but
this indication suggests that Rebel still expected the use of the
traditional French instruments in these middle voices.
The difference in line-up between Tempesta di Mare and what was common
practice at the time is one of the minuses of this recording, but is not
decisive. I have heard recordings of this kind of repertoire with a
comparable line-up which were more satisfying. The suites by Lully and
Marais were written for the theatre. That is reflected by the rather dry
acoustic of this recording, which suits the music. It is not reflected by
the way the music is played, I'm afraid. The performances are rather
tame and bland, and not very theatrical. Rebel's
Les Elémens
comes off best by far, whereas the Lully is the most disappointing part of
this disc.
This is the first volume in a series. I am curious what the second volume
will include. I sincerely hope it will be more engaging and theatrical than
the first.
Johan van Veen
www.musica-dei-donum.org
twitter.com/johanvanveen
Previous reviews:
Brian Wilson
and
Dominy Clements
