TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
Containing the Italian in Lully’s ‘Dialogue between French and Italian
Music’
Rose A. Pruiksma
While Lully’s dialogue between French and Italian music is frequently cited
in discussions of French vs. Italian musical debates of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, it is rarely placed in the context of French
and Italian political and cultural relationships, nor in the context of
its ballet. Nor do other discussions of this piece note its careful
negotiation between the two musical styles and the way each music moves
from mockery of the other to adoption of her own style. Although
Lully gives French music the last word, La Musique Française does
not escape her excursions into the realm of Italian musical style unscathed;
even as she asserts her right to languish, she does so with an Italian
inflection in her harmonic language and use of text-repetition.
This piece demonstrates the ease with which containment of Italian musical
style could lead to contamination and the paradoxical nature of the role
of Louis XIV’s court ballets in constructing French identity: to demonstrate
French musical style’s distinctiveness, Lully depended upon the foil of
Italian musical style. Having made himself into a French composer
in the tradition of the king’s violinist-dancers, Lully could only prove
his mastery of French musical style by employing his native Italian.
This piece also shows that the difference between the two did not turn
on Italian music as sensual and passionate and French music as less emotional,
restrained and elegant; in both musical styles composers were concerned
with projecting appropriate emotional affects, differing more in degree
than in kind.
Last updated on 22 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita