Printable PDF Ranum 111–127

The Longs and the Shorts of it:
Some Considerations on Operatic Recitative and Song
and their Relation to Theatrical Recitation
by
Patricia M. Ranum
Circa 1667, Pierre Perrin, one of the "creators of
French opera," set down some of the principles that guided
him as a librettist:
Pour la pensee [...] j'ay choisy les objects de la
nature les plus beaux, les plus plaisants et les plus
admirables, le Ciel, les Astres, la verdure, les fleurs, les
ruisseaux, les oyseaux, les Zephirs, & c , et les actions
de plaisir et de merveille, chanter, danser, dormir, faire
l'amour, s'entretenir de choses agreables, combattre,
voler, courir legerement, &c. [...]
Pour la quantite des syllabes. Comme on doit
observer necessairement dans les vers de musique les
syllabes brieves et longues, [...] je l'ay exactement et
regulierement observee dans toutes mes compositions
Lyriques [...] (Auld 111-135)
This statement was made during the infancy of opera,
which soon came to be called the tragedie lyrique. And,
for more than a century, treatises continued to emphasize
the importance of properly observing the rules of
"quantity" in the two operatic vocal forms — song and
recitative — developed by Lully and his successors. A
discussion of operatic verse must therefore consider three
musical practices: song, recitative and quantity, that is, the
long and short syllables. Let us therefore begin by defining
these three practices.
A song is a miniature speech — often only one peri ode
long — that presents commonplaces about a given emotion.
This speech can be deleted from the opera without
112 PATRICIA M. RANUM
affecting the plot. Musically, the song is built upon a
strong and unchanging beat.
Recitative is verse drama that is sung rather than
spoken and that is built of alexandrines mixed with 8- and
10-syllable lines. Since it "imitates" the "natural accents of
speech," its meter changes continually, to capture the
tempi of speech. Not a single line of recitative can be
deleted without affecting the plot.
Being "long" or "short" had nothing to do with the
syllable's position in an iamb or anapest, as in the poetry
of the Ancients. Instead, a syllable was considered "long"
or "half-long" because of the way it sounded. (What is the
difference between a "long" and a "half-long" syllable?
Long syllables are easily trilled — appas or Ah! — while
half-long ones sound better with a little mordent-like
tremble of the throat — amour, jours, beaute.) Although
the detailed rules of quantity in Benigne de Bacilly's Art de
Bien Chanter (1668) fill more than 100 pages of the little
handbook, these syllables fall into four easily recognized
categories:
1) they are the penultimate syllable in a word that ends
in a mute e: aime, dme, venge, flamme,
2) they end with r or /; ber-ger, ar-deur, fleurs
3) they include a nasalized vowel: con-tent,
grands, or
con-stant,
4) they incorporate a long vowel: cieux, beaux, las,
doux
Example 1 shows some of the commonly used "long" and
"half-long" syllables (shown in capital letters) used in
French songs for over a century.
EX. 1 Typical "long" syllables excerpted from Bacilly's
lists
of 1669:
AIRS
CIEUX
GRANDS
MAUX
SONGER
ARDEUR
MARTYR
BRULER
THE LONGS AND THE SHORTS OF IT... 113
VIENS
A(me)
BIENS
riGUEUR
seCOURS
resPECT
LIEUX
GOUTER
FLAM(me)
BLAMER
BERGER
DERNIER
OFFENSER
TOUJOURS
CONTENT
FONDS
TEMPS
JEUX
DOUX
CHAR(me)
DOUX
CHARMANT
EAUX
CONSTANT
PLAINS
BEAUTE
FLAT(te)
INSTANT
JOURS
CHANTS
OISEAUX
CAUSER
TIRSIS
SANG
DORMIR
DIEUX
heLAS
LANGUIR
PLEIN
SERVIR
LAS
PLAISIRS
BEL(le)
SOUPIRS
BONTE
VAINS
INSENSE
DANGER
CRUEL(le)
PAIX
FEUX
SENS
RIEN
zePHYR
BEAUX
trePAS
LAIS(se)
VEN(ge)
NUITS
LANGUEUR
AI(me)
LONGS
GARDER
deSIRS
CHAMPS
COEURS
PARLER
CHANGER
HEUREUX
NOEUDS
VENGER
The words on this list eloquently convey the sonority of
the lyrics of baroque music. At the same time, they vehicle
the subjects most commonly discussed: the doux noeuds de
I'amour des dieux the chants charmants des bergers, and so
forth.
These four types of long syllables have one trait in
common. As Henri Morier has demonstrated in his
magistral Dictionnaire de poetique et de rhetorique, syllables
of this sort can be spun out. Indeed, Morier likens some of
them to trills. (Morier q. v.) It is therefore not surprising
that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century vocal treatises
instructed singers to restrict their vocal ornaments to the
long syllables of the lyrics: by their very nature these
syllables lend themselves to trills and mordents. (Just try to
trill a "short" monosyllable such as vu or y\) Above all, be
it spoken or sung, a long syllable can be projected to the
farthest corner of a theater or a church. These syllables
therefore constitute a built-in sound-system of sorts. Thus,
from the 1660's to the late eighteenth century, librettists
consistently incorporated long syllables into the key words
of their songs.
114 PATRICIA M. RANUM
It can be no accident that the "thoughts" Perrin chose
to depict in the 1660s were used as the key words of songs
— but not for recitative — for the next century, and that
these key words are made up chiefly of "long" syllables.
Indeed, some 65% of the syllables Perrin used to describe
the "thoughts" most appropriate for songs, are long
according to Bacilly. Perrin's statement raises two questions
that will serve as the focus for this paper:
1) Are "long" and "short" syllables used the same way
in songs and in recitative?
2) Do "long" and "short" syllables play a role in
expressing the tender, "agreeable" and "pleasant"
passions Perrin considered most appropriate for opera?
Looking exclusively at "the longs and shorts" of the
verses, let us first try to discern similarities between the
lyrics of songs and recitative.
First of all, though the vocabulary of these two vocal
forms differs, their key words are principally long
syllables. In his brilliant Mouvement rythmique en frangais
(1979) Joseph Pineau emphasizes the importance of key
words — or relais (relays) — to our comprehension of
discourse as a whole. The mind, he states, reaches out for
each new relay, from which it then launches itself toward
the next relay. 1 If the listener understands the relay words
clearly, his mind will follow the entire statement,
intuitively filling in any syllables blurred by extraneous
noises or imperfect pronunciation. On the other hand, if
the relay words are indistinct, the entire text tends to
become unintelligible.
How does one recognize a relay in song or recitative?
In both of these vocal forms, the relays fall in a
predictable place, measure after measure. Example 2a
shows the relays from the first four petits vers of a song
by Michel Lambert, Lully's father-in-law. Each relay sits
atop a barline and generally is made up of one or more
THE LONGS AND THE SHORTS OF IT... 115
long syllables. The words between the relays provide only
minor clues to content. More often than not, they are short
syllables.
Relay words frequently are emphasized by an oratorical
accent,2 instead of the so-called "tonic" 3 one that
predominates in everyday speech. To see how relay words,
long syllables and the oratorical accent work in practice,
let us look at the first measures of Lambert's song (Exx. 2b
and 2c). The highest notes in a melody are inevitably
perceived as important, so the audience focuses its
attention on the syllables that been given melodic accents.
In the everday-speech version (Ex. 2b), the tonic accent is
heightened by this melodic accent. (The accented notes are
circled and the curved lines above the notes show visually
the inflections of the voice, the densest part indictating the
tonic accent.) But, though these stressed syllables are longs,
they are very ambiguous: trou-VER, her-BET-, ber-GEr-,
seul-LET-, grand BIEN, grand MAL. As the audience
attempts to interpret the message being conveyed by these
ambiguous long syllables, they conclude that something is
being said about "good" and "bad", and perhaps something
about "stupidity" or "animals" (bete) and "worms" or
"verse" or "green" (ver). 4
The song as Lambert actually wrote it eliminates these
ambiguities (Ex. 2c). The root syllable of each relay
receives an elevated pitch, that is, an oratorical accent.
(These accents are shown within boxes, while the darkest
portion of the curved line facilitates visual comparison of
the locations of this accent and the tonic one.) People
listening to the song as Lambert actually wrote it,
experience no confusion. As they strive to grasp each
successive relay, they hear a long and distinctive root
syllable followed by an equally long, but more ambiguous
final syllable. Thus they seize the singer's argument: HERBET, BER-GEr, SEU-LET, GRAND BIEN, GRAND MAL.
"Aha!," they conclude, "in the grass is a shepherdess,
alone, which is both very good and very bad."
The oratorical accent functions the same way in
operatic recitative, where it is part of what were called the
116 PATRICIA M. RANUM
"accents naturels de la parole." Indeed, as French operas
developed during the 1670s and 1680s - - and with it the
art of performing sung dances and recitative - - Lully
emulated the spoken declamation of La Champmesle.
Refusing to tolerate in his recitative the lavish
embellishments that had characterized the air de cour, he is
said to have exclaimed: "Mon Recitatif n'est fait que pour
parler, je veux qu'il soit tout uni." And, the source
continues:
II le vouloit si uni...qu'on pretend qu'il alloit le former
a la Comedie sur les tons de la Chanmeie. II ecoutoit
declamer la Chanmeie, retenoit ses tons, puis leur
donnoit la grace, l'harmonie & le degre de force qu'ils
devoient avoir dans la bouche d'un Chanteur, pour
convenir a la Musique a laquelle il les aproprioit de
cette mainiere (Vieville in Bourdelot 187-188).
(These restrictions and techniques also applied to Lully's
songs.5) Racine himself is said to have used a sort of
musical notation to show this famous actress the intervals
through which her voice was supposed to move in
particularly emotional passages. And, by the early 18th
century, operatic recitative had come to be recognized as
capturing so effectively the oratorical accents of
declamation that Abbe Dubos began asking musicians
about the feasibility of capturing spoken declamation by
means of musical notes.6
Instead of showing their virtuosity by florid ornaments,
peformers of both song and recitative were henceforth to
"imiter dans les chants, les tons, les soupirs, les accents, et
tout ces sons inarticules de la voix qui sont les signes
naturels de nos sentiments et de nos passions." (Dubos 673)
In short, the only acceptable ornaments were the passionate
"tremblings," "constrictions," "sighs," "accents" and
"turns in the throat" that gave their names to the vocal
and instrumental ornaments of the period: tremblements,
pinces, soupirs, accents, tours de gosier. This stripped-down
way of singing, in which sighs and tremblings emphasized
key words, was considered a "declamation naturelle" an
expression of "les sentiments naturels." If the key relay
THE LONGS AND THE SHORTS OF IT... 117
words were not made up of long syllables, these sentiments
could not be adequately expressed, since only long syllables
should be ornamented.
Example 3 shows how Marc-Antoine Charpentier and
Thomas Corneille used relays and oratorical accents in
Medee (1693). In verse after verse, the poet strung together
a series of closely spaced relay words composed of at least
one, and often two long syllables. Charpentier then placed
three-quarters of the relay words astride the barlines of
the musical staff and gave the root syllable of 60% of these
relays the oratorical accent we have observed in Lambert's
song (shown by a box and solid curved brackets). These
oratorically accented relays convey the most passionate
ideas of this recit. For the less emotional relays that
remained (shown by dotted brackets), Charpentier used the
tonic accent associated with every-day speech. Note that,
though only two ttemblements (little crosses) are marked
over the notes, in performance the singer continually
incorporates subtle soupirs, accents, tours de gosier.
The oratorical accent is used as a vehicle for passionate
discourse in French song and recitative from Lully through
Rameau. Omnipresent in both song and recitative, this
accent is not however a device that distinguishes song from
recitative. Both song and recitative use, on the average,
50% oratorical accents and 50% tonic accents. The
oratorical accent serves chiefly to facilitate projection of
the relay and to highlight the most passionate of these
relays.
In other words, the accentuation of both the songs and
the recitative in Lully's operas, and in those of his
successors such as Charpentier, mirrors theatrical
recitation. La Champmesle surely spun out the long
syllables of the relay words. She probably emphasized the
emotional words by giving their root syllable an oratorical
accent and used the tonic accent for the rest of the relays
in Racine's plays, as Medea in Charpentier's opera.
Operatic scores can therefore be used as a point of
departure from which to reconstruct seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century spoken declamation, with its pauses, its
oratorical accents and its shifting pitches. 7 The result
118 PATRICIA M. RANUM
would be very different from the recitations one so often
hears today, where the tonic accent reigns supreme.
To summarize: long syllables, the relay words in which
they appear and the vocal ornaments and oratorical accents
that emphasize these syllables and words are used in
similar ways by both song and recitative.
* * *
If songs and recitative differ in the way they use long
syllables, is it therefore in the way they use these syllables
to express the passion? The better to discern any such
difference, let us look first at recitative and the way its
so-called "natural speech" tells of love and tender
thoughts.
Lully's indebtedness to Racine and La Champmesle
should not lead us to conclude that every French verse
tragedy would make a good libretto. Henri Morier and I
have been investigating this question, each from our
distinctive perspective. In the volume of melanges recently
offered to Frederic Deloffre, Morier discerned some
crucial and thought-provoking differences between the
way Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine used long syllables at
the hemistiches of the verses in Medee (1635) and in
Berenice (1670), which is probably the first play for which
Racine coached la Champmesle (743-759). His article
prompted me to tally both the long and the short syllables8
in an unemotional and essentially narrative scene at the
start of each of these plays, and to compare the results
with similar scenes in Atys (1689) by Lully-Quinault and
Medee (1693) by Charpentier-Thomas Corneille.9 That is to
say, regardless of their position in a vesre, I counted the
number of syllables specifically described as being "long"
or "half-long" by Bacilly, or fitting into one of the four
categories presented earlier in this paper. I considered all
the remaining syllables "short". The near-unanimity of the
results, shown in Ex. 4, would seem to indicate that the
so-called "natural" operatic recitative is in this respect
quite similar to spoken drama and that both of these
theatrical genres can be expected to employ a very unnatural 60%-40% ratio of longs to shorts in all but the
THE LONGS AND THE SHORTS OF IT... 119
most passionate scenes. (A tally of several conversational
twentieth-century letters in my files suggests that in real
natural speech that is committed to paper, only 40-45% of
the syllables are long.)
EX. 4 Frequency of "long" and "short" syllables in plays
versus operas
LONGS
SHORTS
Pierre Corneille,
Medee (1635)
56%
44%
Jean Racine,
Berenice (1670)
60%
40%
Phillipe Quinault,
Atys (1689)
Thomas Corneille,
Medee (1693)
60%
40%
60%
40%
These results gave rise to another question: Since
neither relays nor the oratorical accent distinguishes song
from recitative, and since recitative relies on a rather
predictable ratio of longs and shorts, could it be the
number of longs and shorts that distinguishes recitative
from the songs that are scattered throughout every French
opera of the period?
A tally of syllable lengths in these two types of vocal
text produced the revealing results shown in Ex. 5.
Although operatic recitative is almost indistinguishable
from spoken verse drama, songs rely heavily upon what
can best be described as the "long sound": nasals, r's, /'s,
and intrinsically long vowels such as e, a, and eux. On the
average, three-fourths of the syllables in a song are long!
EX. 5 Frequency of "long" and "short" syllables in
recitative versus songs
LONGS
SHORTS
Atys
60%
40%
Medee
60%
40%
120 PATRICIA M. RANUM
Selected group of 18
sung dances
76%
Why?
24%
A partial answer is suggested by Abbe Dubos who,
although he did not refer to the use of longs and shorts,
seems to have been affected by them when, in 1719, he
compared verses by three of the poets we have been
looking at here: Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Phillipe
Quinault (Ex. 6) (Dubos 675-678).
EX. 6 Examples of suitable and unsuitable libretti, Abbe
Dubos (1719)
Pierre
Le
Le
Le
Et
Corneille
mechant par le prix au crime encourage
mari dans son lit par sa femme egorge
fils tout degoutant du meurtre son pere
sa tete a la main demandant son salaire...
Jean Racine, libretto for the Idylle de Sceaux
Deja grondoient les horribles tonneres
Par qui sont brise les remparts
Deja marchoient devant les etendarts,
Bellone, les cheveux epars
Et se flattoit d'eterniser les guerres
Que ses fureurs souffloient de toutes parts.
Phillipe Quinault, Thesee
Doux repos, innocente paix!
Heureux, heureux un coeur qui ne vous perd jamais.
L'impitoyable amour m'a toujours poursuivie,
N'etoit-ce point assez des maux qu'il m'avoit faits?
Pourquoy ce dieu cruel avec de nouveaux traits,
Vient-il encore troubler le reste de ma vie?
Corneille's verses, maintains Dubos, with their
hemistiches built of repetitive 3+3s and 2+4s, are totally
unsuited to operatic recitative. A "declamation naturelle"
of these lines is impossible: the words are "plutot nobles et
imposants, qu'expressifs" and the over-all effect is far too
"uniforme."10 Although Racine's verses, which were set to
THE LONGS AND THE SHORTS OF IT... 121
music by the great Lully, "contiennent les images les plus
magnifiques dont la poesie se puisse parer," only one
person in thirty, insists the abbe, would prefer Racine's
lines to those of Quinault, also set to music by Lully. If
Quinault's recitative succeeded brilliantly where Racine's
failed, it was, asserts Dubos, because Quinault knew how
to express "les sentiments naturels d'un coeur agite d'une
nouvelle passion." Quinault was an acknowledged master of
the art of using longs and shorts. He knew that love was
expressed by long syllables, and his collaborator Lully was
renowned for the skillful way in which he incorporated
long notes into amorous passages (Grimarest 125).
In view of this connection between longs and love, can
we infer that, the stronger the tender sentiment, the
greater the number of long syllables? A tally of the
syllable lengths in the three examples provided by Dubos
suggests that this is indeed the case (Ex. 7).
EX. 7 Frequency of "long" and "short" syllables in
Dubos' three examples
LONGS
SHORTS
44%
Pierre Corneille
56%
43%
Jean Racine
57%
35%
Philippe Quinault
65%
In the noble and magnificent lines of which Dubos was so
critical, Corneille and Racine fell several points short of
the expected 60%-40% ratio. On the other hand, the
amorous verses for which the abbe commends Quinault
exceed the average for recitative by 5 points. These subtle
differences are also present throughout Charpentier's
Medee, when scenes are analyzed by harmonic key and the
passion associated with that key. 11 In this opera the ratio
changes with the harmony (and therefore with its implied
energie or passion). In keys that are considered "warlike"
(C major, D major), "serious" (d minor) or "magnificent"
(B flat major, g minor), the ratio of longs can drop to
50%, while for the "tender and plaintive" key of a minor,
the longs soar to 75%. These percentages would seem to
122 PATRICIA M. RANUM
reinforce Dubos' observations about Racine's, CorneiUe's
and Quinault's verse.
It can be no accident that, in some of Quinault and
Lully's songs about love, as many as 83% of the syllables
had trill-like, vibrating, long vowels. (See Ex. 8 for the
lyrics of four dances from Atys, sung as preparations for a
wedding were getting underway.
EX. 8 Lyrics from Atys, Act IV, sc. 4 (the "longs" are
capitalized)
Menuet: La BEAU-TE la PLUS se-VE-re
PREND piTIE D'UN LONG TOUR-MENT
Et l'a-MANT qui PER-se-VE-re
De-VIENT UN HEU-REUX a-MANT.
TOUT EST DOUX et RIEN ne COU-te
POUR UN COEUR QU'ON VEUT TOU-CHER
L'ON-de se FAIT U-ne ROU-te
EN s'ef-FOR-CANT D'EN CHER-CHER:
L'EAU qui TOM-be GOUTte a GOUT-te
PER-ce le PLUS DUR ro-CHER.
Menuet: L'hy-MEN SEUL ne scau-RAIT PLAI-re
IL a BEAU flat-TER NOS VOEUX;
L'a-MOUR SEUL a DROIT de FAI-re
le PLUS DOUX de TOUS LES NOEUDS.
IL EST FIER, IL EST re-BEL-le;
MAIL IL CHAR-me TEL QUTL EST:
L'hy-MEN VIENT QUAND ON l'ap-PEL-le,
L'a-MOUR VIENT QUAND IL LUY PLAIT.
Menuet: D'U-ne CON-STANCE EX-TRE-me
UN ruis-SEAU SUIT SON COURS;
IL EN se-RA de ME-me
Du CHOIX de MES a-MOURS
Et du mo-MENT que J'AI-me,
C'EST POUR ai-MER TOU-JOURS.
Gavotte: UN GRAND CALME EST TROP Fa-CHEUX
NOUS ai-MONS MIEUX la TOUR-MEN-te
Que SERT UN COEUR qui S'EX-EM-pte
De TOUS LES SOINS a-MOU-REUX?
THE LONGS AND THE SHORTS OF IT...
123
A QUOI SERT UNE EAU DOR-MAN-te?
UN GRAND CALME EST TROP Fa-CHEUX;
NOUS ai-MONS MIEUX la TOUR-MEN-te.
A late eighteenth-century essay by Marmontel suggests
why, for over a century, the lyrics of French songs were
built almost exclusively of long syllables. Discussing Lully's
operas, which were still being regularly peformed,
Marmontel points out that Lully was aware that recitative
could go only so far in expressing passions, because it
occupies the lowest rung of the vocal hierarchy. At a
certain point in the composer's "imitation" of nature, he
asserts, Lully knew that "la nature indiqueroit des
mouvements plus decides, des inflexions plus sensibles."
When this occured:
il falloit saisir [...] ce moment pour rompre la
monotonie du recit ou du dialogue par un chant plus
marque qui se detacheroit du recitatif continu, et qui,
saillant et isole, reveilleroit l'attention de l'oreille, en
lui offrant un plaisir nouveau. De la les chants phrases
et cadances que Lulli [...employoit] dans la scene.12
More is involved here than simply adding variety to perk
up a sleepy audience. It is nature that forces the shift from
recitative to song. And the shift gives "pleasure," for it
brings into play the art of rhetoric, that pleasure-creating
art. When this crucial moment arrives, the irregular
"mouvements"13 of the individual soul, as expressed in the
fluctuating "mouvements" of recitative, that "feeblest" of
vocal forms, yield to the cadenced meter of song — that
is, to a well-organized miniature speech that expresses
"pensees communes"14 about that particular passion. Socalled "natural speech," with its 60%-40% ratio of longs to
shorts, is abandoned in favor of a strictly metered form
that moves ahead in an extremely unnatural and sonorous
flow of "sons pleins et retentissans." In other words,
recitative cannot go beyond the individual's passions, so
song steps in. "Pleasing" the listener by its symmetrical
organization and its departure from normal speech
patterns, and "touching the soul" by its expression of
124 PATRICIA M. RANUM
"sentiments," song philosophizes on the primordial level
about life, love, hope and despair.
* * *
And so it was that, from the 1660s on, librettists
remained faithful to the pastoral and amorous "thoughts"
preferred by Perrin and to the long and the short syllables
of declamation. In Lully's day and on into the 1730s, relay
words chosen from a small arsenal of monosyllables and
polysyllables were placed across the barline of song upon
song and recitative upon recitative. By 1743 these relays,
and their location, had become so fixed and so predictable
that Montdorge, Rameau's librettist, penned this lament:
...quand on est oblige de suivre la liste des mots
enregistres au theatre lyrique, et d'observer des longues
et des breves sur la note, on veille des nuits entieres
sans pouvoir fixer dans un rigaudon les Zephirs dont
les desirs font naitre les plaisirs, et le lendemain on est
bien heureux si on a pu mettre en mesure ces longueurs
sans alarmes, ces rigueurs et ces larmes, ces fadeurs et
ces charmes, dont le ridicule est si bien connu
(Montdorge 27-28).
Baltimore, MD
Notes
x
For the application of Pineau's principles to seventeenthcentury French music, see Patricia Ranum, "Y a-t-il une
rhetorique des airs de danse francais?" in Die Sprache der
Zeichen
und
Bilder,
Rhetorik
und
nonverbale
Kommunikation in der fruhen Neuzeit, Ars Rhetoria I 23854.
2
I borrow this term from Olivet. This accent is a blend of
the several "vertical" accents described by Morier,
"Accent," pp. 27-42. According to Morier, vertical accents
do not lengthen a syllable (28). Yet the use of so many
"long" syllables on vertically accented syllables suggests a
THE LONGS AND THE SHORTS OF IT... 125
lengthening (or a "horizontal" accent of some sort) as well,
as in Morier (26).
3
Morier (1211), points out that this is an improper term for
the final accented syllable of a rhythmic group, which
Morier calls the "accent temporel oxytonique normal,"
"Accent", (19).
4
Singing treatises are unanimous: the final r of infinitives
and of nouns such as berger should be audible.
5
Having discussed in detail the nuances of performing
recitative, J.-L. Le Gallois de Grimarest, Traite du
Recitatif (139), first published in 1705, makes it clear that
the same rules apply to songs.
6
"Ils m'ont repondu que la chose etoit possible et meme
qu'on pouvoit ecrire la declamation en notes en se servant
de la gamme de nostre musique, pourveu qu'on ne donnat
aux notes que la moitie de Tin to nation ordinaire.... Ainsi on
noteroit les moindres abaissements & les moindres
elevations de voix qui soient bien sensibles du moins a nos
oreilles." (Dubos, 475-477).
7
A starting point might be listening to the recording of
Charpentier's Medee by William Christie's group, "Les Arts
Florissants" (Harmonia Mundi, 1984) while following the
musical score of the facsimile edition, and Lully's Atys by
the same group (Harmonia Mundi, 1987), while consulting
a modern or facsimile edition.
8
Unlike Morier, I did not include all plural forms among
the longs, for this could have distorted my findings.
Although Bacilly asserts that plurals are always long, in
practice songs and recitatif avoid using the plural forms of
a monsyllable that is short in the singular (for example,
nu/nus, vu/vus, cri/cris). Longs of this sort are however
frequent in plays.
9
The verses consulted were: P. Corneille, Medee, lines 142177; Racine, Berenice, lines 99-134; Charpentier-Th.
126 PATRICIA M. RANUM
Corneille, Medee, act I, sc. 2; and Lully-Quinault, Atys, act
I, sc. 2.
10
Compare this statement with Morier's findings about
Corneille's verse, "L'Alexadrin classique," passim.
11
For Charpentier's list of keys and their passions, see
Ranum, (250-251).
12
In Diderot, Encyclopedie ou dictionnaire raisonne,
(XXVIII, 444-48, and especially 446). For Marmontel's
thought-provoking discussion of song versus recitative, see
also his articles "Air" (I, 764-65) and "Lyrique" (XX,
566-77).
13
By mouvement writers about music and opera meant the
"movement" or emotions that agitate the human soul and,
by extension, the musical rhythms that best convey this
emotion.
14
A song expresses a single commonplace emotion:
tenderness, infidelity, constancy, and so forth (Grimarest,
139).
Works Cited or Consulted
Auld, Louis. The Lyric Art of Pierre Perrin
(Henryville, PA: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1986)
Diderot, Denis. Encyclopedic ou dictionnaire raisonnee
des arts et des sciences (Berne & Lausanne: Societes
typographiques, 1781).
Dubos. Reflexions critiques sur la poesie et sur la
peinture (Paris: J. Mariette, 1719).
Grimarest, J.-L. Le Gallois de. Traite du Recitatif (The
Hague: Pierre Gosse, 1760).
Lecerf de la, Vieville . Comparison de la musique
italienne et de la Musique francoise (1705). Facsimile in
Bourdelot, Pierre, and Bonnet, Pierre. Histoire de la
musique et de ses Effets (Graz: Akademische-druck u.
Verlassanstalt, 1966).
Montdorge, Antoine Gautier de. Reflexions d'un peintre
sur Vopera (The Hague: Pierre Gosse, 1743).
Morier, Henri. «L'alexandrin classique etait bel et bien
un tetrametre» in Melanges offerts a Frederic Deloffre,
Langue, litterature du XVII et du XVIIIe siecle (Paris:
SEDES, 1990).
Olivet, abbe Pierre Joseph d'. Traite de la Prosodie
Francoise (Geneva: Freres Cramer, 1750).
Pineau, Joseph. Le Mouvement rythmique en frangais:
principes et methodes d'analyse (Paris: Klincksieck, 1979).
Ranum, Patricia. «Y a-t-il une rhetorique des airs de
danse francais?» in Volker Kapp, ed. Die Sprache der
Zeichen
und
Bilder,
Rhetorik
und
nonverbale
Kommunikation in friihen Neuzeit, Ars Rhetoria I (Marburg:
Hitzeroth, 1989).