The Ranums' Panat Times

This Musing begins with a summary of Dowling A. Thomas's chapter on Charpentier's Medea
A second part of the Musing provides evidence about Charpentier from commentators, 1693-1780

My observations about Charpentier's purported "otherness" are divided into three sections:

Otherness: was Charpentier rejected?
Otherness: his Italian training
Otherness: his savoir

I. Charpentier's "Otherness": was he "rejected"?

I take no issue with D.A. Thomas's arguments about the "otherness" of Medea: by birth a "barbarian," she adopted a barbarous behavior that differed from the conduct of the nobles of King Créon's court. (I was especially intrigued with the idea that this "otherness" might be audible in the very chords that Charpentier gave to Medea's lines, but that is a subject for a future Musing.)

By contrast, his assertions about Marc-Antoine Charpentier's "otherness" simply do not square with what we know about the composer's long career.

True, for the first eighteen years of that career Charpentier did much of his work within a special "mainline" cultural milieu. While he was serving the two Guise princesses ­ one of them Louis XIV's first cousin and the other the very wealthy and proud Last Guise ­ he explored new ways to convey the Tridentine devotions that had become the very core of "everyoneness" in France. Sometimes (doubtlessly at Their Highnesses' urging) he resorted to Italianate devices and to Italian genres such as the oratorio, the pastoraletta, the serenata.

Throughout his career, 1670-1704, Charpentier and his musical creations nonetheless occupied a place at the very heart of the art forms and the scientific knowledge being promoted by Louis XIV and his ministers.

From 1672 to 1680, he composed incidental music for Molière and his successors at the Théâtre Guénégaud; and from 1680-1685 he wrote for the Comédie Française, newly created by the King. On several occasions, plays ornamented with Charpentier's music were performed at court. During these thirteen years Charpentier was the theatrical composer for Paris. Indeed, one might argue that when Lully abandoned Moliere, he became the "other," while Charpentier became the "insider," cozily ensconced in Lully's old chair. True, Lully had won the opera privilege; but in accepting it, he had assumed a tremendous financial risk. He could lose everything if his new opera did not succeed. Be that as it may, musicologists are coming to see the old Lully-Charpentier rivalry, and Lully's willful repression of Charpentier's music, as a twentieth-century myth that had best be discarded in the face of new evidence.

In the late 1670s, Charpentier had been ad hoc composer to the Dauphin. Once the Dauphin's Music disbanded, circa 1682, Charpentier continued to compose for the royal court. In fact, some months prior to the opening of Médée, he had received a commission to celebrate the first induction into the Royal Order of St. Louis, a ceremony over which the King himself presided. Composing pieces of circumstance for the Dauphin and the King scarcely constitutes the "otherness" that D.A. Thomas makes the central point of his chapter.

By late 1681 Charpentier's name had become so familiar to the French public that an engraver named Landry included him in an illustrated Almanach for 1682. The composer is shown at a court ball, holding a menuet that praises Louis XIV ­ who is dancing in the background. Landry would scarcely risked reducing sales by portraying a composer whom the public viewed as tainted by "otherness."

In 1687 Charpentier was commissioned by the Académie des Beaux Arts to write for a lavish service celebrating the King's recovery from an anal fistula. Once again, our composer is ­ literally, this time ­ at the creative heart of official French artistic culture.

A few months later, he left the Hôtel de Guise and began ten years of service to the Jesuits, both at their collège of Louis-le-Grand and at their magnificent church of Saint-Louis. This new post put Charpentier at the heart of the religious establishment, for this was "one of the most brilliant positions of that time" (Brossard). Always eager to see every seat rented for their special devotions, the reverend father would scarcely have alienated their public by appointing a music master whose style might not please.

Then, in 1692, Charpentier was appointed to participate in the education of Louis XIV's nephew, specifically, to teach the youth composition. A responsibility of such magnitude would scarcely have been entrusted to a composer tainted by "otherness." In 1693, while he was writing and rehearsing Médée, Charpentier was teaching composition to the prince. (The project continued into 1694.) In short, at the very moment when Médée opened and was done in by a "cabale," the composer was working face to face with the future Regent of France.

These examples of the "in-ness" that characterized Charpentier's career for two decades were capped by his selection by the administrators of the Royal Academy of Music to prepare an opera for late 1693. The result was Médée. Since the Academy was going through a financial crisis, the administrators would scarcely have chosen a composer whose music was sure to displease the music-loving public by its "otherness." In fact, Italianate leanings clearly did not render a composer suspect to the adminstrators, who in 1690 had extended a commission to Italian-born and Lully-trained Theobaldo de Gatti.

Charpentier was not, of course, an "insider" at the Royal Academy. No composer was. Between Lully's death in 1687 and the opening of Médée in December 1693, the administrators had been turning to a variety of composers: one or another of Lully's sons contributed to four new operas; Pascal Collasse, to five; and Theobaldo de Gatti, Henri Desmarets, and Marin Marais to one each. A few of these operas were successes, most were failures.

The fact that Charpentier ceased writing vernacular music in 1688 suggests that he was contented with his work at Saint-Louis and with teaching the prince. Indeed, the facts at our disposal, combined with the contents of the composer's autograph notebooks, suggest that he was turning his back on operas, and that the invitation of 1693 probably resulted from his work with the prince, rather than from a deep need to get even with Lully's ghost.

To summarize: the facts of Charpentier's life suggest anything but "otherness." In fact, by the time he received the invitation to compose an opera for the Académie Royale de Musique, Marc-Antoine Charpentier conceivably felt that he had penetrated deeper that he had ever dreamed possible, into the heart of the royal cultural program.

II. Charpentier's "Otherness" : his Italian training

Jean Donneau de Visé, the principal editor of the Mercure galant, repeatedly alluded to Charpentier's studies with Carissimi. (One is quoted below.) Since Donneau was the composer's associate in the theater, it is difficult to imagine that he viewed Charpentier's three years in Rome as a liability. Rather, the Guenégaud Troop clearly considered his work with Carissimi to be a plus that would lead to increased ticket sales.

None of the chansons written in 1693, during the cabale that sunk Médée, mention Charpentier's years in Italy (reproduced in full by Catherine Cessac, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, 2004 pp. 410-411, and by Jérôme de la Gorce, L'Opéra à Paris au temps de Louis XIV, 1992, pp. 92-93). So much for the purported widespread perception that Medea was an allegory representing Charpentier.

Not until Charpentier's death do we find another allusion to his Italianism. In a 1704 the Journal de Trévoux, quoted in full below, wrote: "Charpentier, aussi sçavant que les Italiens..."

With Trévoux's allusion to Italy and savoir, a frenzied bumblebee seems to have crept under Lecerf de la Viéville's wig. His Comparison (1704-1706) not only quoted Trévoux, it alluded at least four more times to Charpentier's "savoir," and five times to Italian composers and/or Italianate music. (These passages are cited below.) After Lecerf, the Italianateness of Charpentier's music ceases to be an issue, although the composer's work with Carissimi is often mentioned. In short, Lecerf's repeated linkage of savoir and things Italian proves to be a unique reference on the cultural scene. (For more on Lecerf, and for what he means by savoir, see my comments about the excerpts quoted below.)

Indeed, in 1724, when judicious Sébastien de Brossard recalled the cabale that had sunk Médée, he pinned the blame on "jealousy," and he asserted that, contrary to what these detractors were saying, Charpentier had retained only "good" Italian practices, and had rejected the "bad" ones. (The full text is reproduced below.) Brossard certainly does not present these criticisms as having characterized Charpentier's career as a whole, so he clearly is alluding to the three years during which Charpentier was being attacked by Lecerf de la Viéville.

To summarize: Until the volumes of Lecerf's Comparison began to appear in 1704, the Italianateness of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's music was viewed favorably. After Lecerf's death in 1707, the issue disappeared from commentaries.

III. Charpentier's "Otherness": his savoir

First of all, a recently discovered document reveals that Marc-Antoine Charpentier was exceptionally well-educated. This, of course, made him markedly "different" from his contemporaries, but a good education scarcely made for "otherness." By the time he turned nineteen, he had earned a maîtrise ès arts and had enrolled at the Law Faculty. In other words, we can assume that he spoke, read, and wrote Latin with relative fluency, that he had read the basic classics, and that he knew some Greek. That did not, of course, make him "savant": but this early training stood him in good stead when he set about deepening his understanding of musical theory later in life.

The Mercure galant and the Gazette de France are our sole sources about Marc-Antoine Charpentier's artistry during the 1670s and 1680s. Nowhere in these publications have I found an allusion to his being "savant," his possessing savoir. Rather, these sources tell how he was "famous for a thousand works that have charmed all of France"; how "his music has caused a stir," was "very touching," was "approved by so many people, "was highly esteemed by the able connaisseurs," "expressed perfectly the content of the words." (For these statements, see my portrait of Donneau de Visé, in Portraits around Marc-Antoine Charpentier, 2004.)

Not until 1704 ­ a few months after Charpentier's death ­ does his savoir become a subject of discussion; and when it does, it goes hand in hand with an equaling the Italians in knowledge, but not necessarily imitating their style. For example, the Jesuits who produced the Journal de Trévoux, called their former music master having been "aussi sçavant que les Italiens."

From Charpentier's autograph manuscripts, and from the activities of his musician colleague, Étienne Loulié, we can deduce when Charpentier began increasing or fine-tuning his savoir about musical theory. At some point in 1680, 1681 or 1682, he copied out a mass by the Italian composer Francesco Beretta and annotated it with observations that demonstrate that he was, as Brossard later said, borrowing the good and rejecting the bad: "I don't think that the Italians are right to..., I would prefer..."; "the Italians are not right to believe..."; "the numerous pauses used by the Italians prevent..."; "I find that..."; "I approve of this because...." (See the appendix in Cessac, pp. 467-469)

These were very the years when a young Norman named Sébastien de Brossard and Guise musician Loulié were immersing themselves in musical theory and were deducing the existence of major and minor keys. Continuing his investigatoins, Loulié came to be the most informed theorist in Paris, and an excellent pedagogue to boot. In 1690 or 1691, in collaboration with the brilliant mathematician Joseph Sauveur, Loulié taught the "elements" of musical notation and theory to Louis XIV's nephew, the Duke of Chartres. Charpentier succeeded him, teaching the prince composition in 1692-1694. Within a few years the lessons had spawned a study of acoustics in which Loulié and Sauveur participated, under the aegis of the Académie des Sciences.

The project for the prince's education specified that participants must possess either érudition (must "know things that depend principally upon the good taste that should regulate our judgment") or savoir ("must "apply [themselves] to things where the mind alone is involved"). It is crucial to note that the savoir that had won Charpentier this prestigious position had nothing specific to do with Italy and its musical style: his duty involved teaching the prince the basic rules of traditional counterpoint, and giving him an understanding of the emerging rules of tonal harmony. (That the prince soon became a convert to Italian music suggests his admiration for Charpentier; but that doubtlessly was an unexpected excursion that his governor could scarcely have anticipated.)

In short, when Charpentier was composing Médée it was scarcely a secret that he was one of the respected "savants" who had been selected to teach the prince. Hence the use of the word in the brief obituary in Trévoux; and hence, surely, Lecerf de la Viéville's use of the word as a dagger with which to slash at the composer's reputation, and at Italianate music in general.

To summarize: The linking of savoir and Italy appears to have been made by Lecerf de la Viéville, in his comment upon the sentence in Trévoux that commended Charpentier for his knowledge about compositional theory and practice in general.

 Click here to read evidence from commentators, 1693-1780