TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
The Seventeenth-Century French Harpsichord Suite and Social Philosophy:
A Reexamination of Suite Organization
Margot Martin
This paper addresses the current divergent theories surrounding harpsichord
suite organization and offers a new explanation for the organization of
the suite. It focuses especially on the published harpsichord collections
of Chambonnières (1670), La Guerre (1687), d’Anglebert (1689), and
Le Roux (1705), and examines the keyboard suite in light of the social
and artistic practices of the period. It first discusses the seventeenth-century
perception of music as a sister in the family of arts and examines the
function of an artistic work (including music) within society. It
considers the social ceremony of ballroom dance and examines the music
as an artistic representation of dance. It also discusses commonly
held concepts of expression through movement, using paintings of Charles
Le Brun to illustrate these concepts and to delineate criteria that governed
musical expression. Principles of artistic expression are further
explored by investigating parallels between musical practices and conventions
of literary portraits. This helps to more specifically define the
music in its role as an artistic representation and to explain how it operated
in that role. Finally, all of these various elements are joined together
as a foundation for musical analysis, which gives us a culturally and historically
informed reading of the music. Such analysis brings to light the
governing factors behind the music and its arrangement in the suites, and
shows how the music functioned as a representation of social order through
its multiple layers of representation.
Last updated on 22 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita