TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
Antique Graces in Vogue: Free Ornamentation in the Instrumental doubles
of Montéclair
Charles Gower Price
Shortly after forming a Parisian publishing enterprise in 1721 with his
nephew, François Boivin, Montéclair issued three collections
of music for transverse flute (or alternate melody instrument) that include
doubles recalling styles of improvised graces that had been
popular over a generation earlier. One collection titled Brunètes
anciènes et modernes contains suites for either two flutes or
flute and bass, a second six concerts for two unaccompanied flutes,
and a third six concerts for flute and basso continuo. These publications
are well suited to please the renewed aristocratic taste for the tendre
and galant following the sober closing years of the reign of Louis
XIV.
Montéclair’s instrumental doubles fall into two distinct
categories: first, the rhythmically varied free graces in the style of
the seventeenth-century vocal doubles of the air de cour,
and secondly, the simple division variation of a bipartite dance movement
in which the rhythmic values of the melody are consistently halved. Significantly,
elements of these ornamental styles can be observed transferred into some
of the titled character pieces that are also found in these collections.
Such evocations of older styles reflects the vogue during the Regency for
the native French sensibilities of the past in the face of pervasive Italian
influence, and they also provide a link with the closing phase of an earlier
practice of vocal and instrumental improvisation in seventeenth-century
France.
Last updated on 22 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita