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- I have selected as an example
Jean Henry D’Anglebert’s Tombeau de M.r de Chambonnières,
from his print of 1689 (109-110). I acknowledge the danger of
 single
examples: I too can produce lists of pieces that behave otherwise—most
obviously, the unmeasured preludes that flourished during this
period in the hands of Louis Couperin, Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet
de la Guerre, and D’Anglebert himself, as well as the hybrids
produced by composers such as Marc-Antoine Charpentier or François
Couperin who self-consciously trafficked in Italianate styles.
I know, moreover, that the genre of the tombeau
virtually demands an elegiac, introspective quality. Yet D’Anglebert
[pictured right] exemplifies in his tombeau (and in most of his
pieces) so many of the points I wish to make, and he does so with
what seems to me such beauty and skill, that I hope to avoid the
charge that the music itself is inept, even if it works according
to premises far removed from the ones within which we usually
operate.
- Let me begin with the usual series
of negatives. First, D’Anglebert’s tombeau displays
no imitative counterpoint of the sort we like to celebrate in
Bach. (Note, however, that if we were to turn the page in the
print we would find a set of five fugues on a single subject.
D’Anglebert was, in other words, fully capable of contrapuntal
complexity, even if he does not showcase it in most of his work.)
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- Second, this tombeau does not
employ melodic motives to pull the various parts of the piece
together; instead, the rhythmic groupings of the surface constantly
shift. To be sure, as a gaillarde,5
it offers the regularity of dance steps: the piece guarantees
at least the rational structure of a slow triple meter with stresses
on beats 3 and 1, and it thus choreographs the body in accordance
with a neoplatonic matrix. But the listener cannot predict when
a metric unit will contain a surfeit of ornamental notes (e.g.,
the middle beat of m. 3) or when it will hover with virtually
no activity.
- Finally, the piece never really
modulates. Binary dance forms tend to adhere closely to conservative
harmonic conventions, but this example does not even establish
its dominant as a secondary key at the end of the first half.
Twice D’Anglebert implies the possibility of moving to the
subdominant (both mm. 2-4 and 17-19 gesture toward G major), but
neither passage concludes with a cadence. The key of A minor becomes
a viable destination in mm. 14-15, but the would-be cadence on
A never materializes. In the final analysis, the tombeau remains
in D major from start to finish.
- Yet this series of negatives seems
to me less an indictment of D’Anglebert’s skill as a
composer than of our analytical habits, which were designed for
illuminating particular repertories but then applied willy-nilly
as universal standards to all music. I do find it noteworthy that
D’Anglebert does not utilize imitative counterpoint, unifying
motives, or a progressive modulatory schema in this tombeau. But
his refusal of these devices—all of which he employs in other
pieces—leads me to ask what these devices usually accomplish.
- If we turn to the dance suites
of Bach or the dance-types (allemandes, gigues) in which the French
also typically made use of imitative counterpoint, we find that
this device produces relatively long rhythmic groupings, the reiteration
of which invites listeners to project into the future.6
As soon as the second voice enters to repeat what we have just
heard in the first, we can leap forward in our imaginations to
anticipate what will happen next. To be sure, the specific engagement
between voices may offer us delight. Yet as soon as the imitation
begins, we know from past experience with such techniques to jump
ahead in time and start speculating. Something similar occurs
with motivic play: when a composer indicates that a two-beat-long
motive will saturate the texture of a piece, the listener quickly
assumes a particular way of parsing out time.7
Of course, motives produce a sense of identity, organic relatedness,
and much else as well. But they also greatly influence our perception
of temporality.8
- As does the rhetorical version
of modulation that pervades contemporaneous Italian music, which
works on the basis of instilled, heightened, and fulfilled desire.
Developed as a means of expanding the simple linear formulas of
modal practice, this set of procedures sustains each pillar of
the background structure by deferring arrivals, barely granting
each implied cadence before rushing off toward the next. Each
moment serves principally to whet the appetite for its successor,
maximizing a headlong race into the future—the immediate
future of the next modulatory arrival, the final destination of
the return to tonic.9
- It is this
element of multi-leveled goal orientation, I would argue, that
people unaccustomed to French seventeenth-century music miss the
most: to the extent that progressive tonality counts as "how
music is supposed to work," its absence spells pure and simple
incompetence. Yet if we take seriously the choices made by D’Anglebert
and his colleagues, we can glean insights into a society quite
alien from the one that gave our own dominant tradition not only
its compositional techniques, but also its sense of being. For
D’Anglebert worked within a culture that for a wide variety
of reasons wished to promote sensibilities of timelessness.
Laurent
de La Hyre, "The Kiss of Peace and Justice"
- But how precisely does a composer
go about producing such effects? Music by its very nature unfolds
through time; of all media it would seem the most resistant to
the project of conveying immobility. Put briefly, D’Anglebert’s
task is to produce an experience of time in which the listener
is absorbed by each present instant. He is obliged to satisfy
the rules of orderly succession (the much vaunted raison)
as he moves from moment to moment: the transgression of fundamental
propriety would undermine the idyllic security of this prolonged
stasis. He may even group together a couple of measures in a quasi-causal
conspiracy, as in the case of the implied modulations, although
none of these actually comes to fruition. Yet—in contrast
with superficially similar strategies in Italian music of the
time—those missed cadences do not spark the rhetorical effects
of disappointment or frustration; rather the relatively low level
of anticipation involved produces merely a bittersweet inconclusiveness.
Gradually we learn from this music not to bother with future-oriented
thought, but to embrace the serenity of each new configuration
as it arises.
- D’Anglebert thus needs to
make every moment sufficiently full that we can desire nothing
more, so that the attention moves on to the next instance of plenitude
only with reluctance. And this he accomplishes in large part through
his highly refined negotiations between two different conceptions
of rhythmic activity: what the French referred to as Mesure
and Mouvement. Couperin wrote that whereas "Mesure
defines the number and equality of the beats," "Cadence
or Mouvement is properly the spirit and soul that it is
necessary to add" (qtd. In Scheibert 40-41). Bénigne
de Bacilly further explains these important qualities thus:
Mouvement
[. . .] is a certain quality that gives soul to the song,
and that it is called Mouvement because it stirs up,
I may say it excites, the listeners’ attention, in the
same way as do those who are the most rebellious in harmony
[. . .] it inspires in hearts such passion as the singer wishes
to create, principally that of tenderness [. . .] I don’t
doubt at all that the variety of Mesure, whether quick
or slow, contributes a great deal to the expression of the
song. But there is certainly another quality, more refined
and more spiritual, that always holds the listener attentive
and ensures that the song is less tedious. It is the Mouvement
that makes the most of a mediocre voice, making it better
than a very beautiful voice without expression. (qtd. In Scheibert,
40-41)
-
We might say that listeners can
follow quite easily the raison of the tombeau’s
Mesure (its metric structure), but would be hard pressed
to anticipate the bon goût of its Mouvement
(its particular way of inhabiting each successive beat). Couperin
and Bacilly write primarily for performers, and they point to
something beyond simple metrical accuracy for which players
or singers must take responsibility. To the extent that a score
such as D’Anglebert’s represents a kind of recorded
improvisation, we may discern at least some of the ways in which
he composes in the effects so treasured by his contemporaries—the
effects conducive to absorption.
-
One of D’Anglebert’s
principal strategies for playing Mouvement against Mesure
is his lavish deployment of ever-changing ornaments. Unlike
Italian ornaments, which  almost
always lead forward impulsively to the next event, French agréments
[pictured (click to enlarge)]
serve to ground any rhythmic excess that may have accumulated
by securing the weight onto the strong beats, the markers of
Mesure; the tension/release mechanisms that animate the
music occur on the very local level of the half note. But even
as the arrival on the beat reliably anchors the dance step,
the agréments draw the ear down into the intricacies
of those slight delays that flirt with the self-evident main
pitch, thus sustaining a crucial quality of hovering and allowing
for the constantly replenished novelty of Mouvement.
-
D’Anglebert also ensures
that we will expect something beyond the luxury of the instant
at hand through judiciously
arranged harmonic dissonances, for he saturates the surface
of his tombeau with lengthy suspensions and anticipations. These
operate much like a series of locks on a canal: they break down
what could otherwise be an abrupt shift into tiny increments
that release the pressure only gradually. [Versailles floor
plan pictured]
-
Thus the opening trajectory—a
descent from tonic (D) down to the mediant (F#) in the bass—is
both urged along by a tenor line that applies the pressure of
2-3 suspensions at irregular intervals and also delayed by the
bass’s seeming reluctance to part with each of its pitches
(note, for instance, the port
de voix that creates a pull on its move to C# in m.
1). No sooner is the basic trajectory of the progression clear
to the ear (with the descent to C natural in m. 1 and dissonance
added at the beginning of the next bar) than D’Anglebert
begins playing with rates of motion: observe the way he sustains
that dissonance for two full beats in m. 2—enhancing the
poignancy of the moment through the feathery mordent of the
middle voice marking the second pulse. But as the bass descends
to B (such a big deal for such an obvious move!), the tenor
quickens its pace and coaxes the ear into the even richer sonority
of m. 3—suspended in turn with a wistful melisma in the
soprano. Even the arrival on F#, destined for the downbeat of
m. 4, lingers so that the soprano reaches its melodic goal alone
and in tension against the bass. Finally, the bass slips down
to produce the desired pitch, though on the off-beat as a mere
afterthought, and the right hand supplies its downward arpeggiation
of the first-inversion tonic sonority—the affirmation of
a quasi-caesura—over a rhythmic void in the bass.
-
I don’t want to bore you
with an inchworm’s eye view of this piece. Yet D’Anglebert
focuses our attention at precisely this level—on the fact
of that exquisite mordent in m. 2, on the sudden awakening and
repositioning that follows, on the swirl of circular activity
in m. 3, on the non-simultaneity of arrivals in m. 4. Consequently,
one shouldn’t even think about playing a piece like this
unless one is willing to savor to the utmost every detail in
turn. Harpsichordist Lisa Crawford used to smile with delight
at her hands when they played these pieces, as though they were
adorable pets who were frolicking of their own accord.
-
Compare the method
behind my description of D’Anglebert’s opening passage
with Denis Diderot’s celebrated review of Greuze’s
painting "Young Girl Mourning her Dead Bird"10
[pictured below]:
The
pretty elegy! The charming poem! [. . .] Delicious painting!
[. . .] Oh, the pretty hand! The pretty hand! The beautiful
arm! Notice the truthful details of these fingers; and these
dimples, and this softness, and this blushing tint with which
the pressure of the head has colored the tips of these delicate
fingers, and the charm of all this [. . .] One would move
closer to this hand in order to kiss it, if one didn’t
respect this child and her pain [. . .] This kerchief is thrown
on the neck in such a fashion! So supple and light! When one
sees this detail one says, Delicious! If one stops
to look at it, or returns to it, one exclaims: Delicious!
delicious! (qtd. in Brooks 35-7)
Or compare it with this eyewitness account of Chambonnière’s
performances of his music: "Every time he played a piece
he incorporated new beauties with ports-de-voix, passages,
and different agréments, with doubles cadences.
In a word, he so varied them with all these different beauties
that he continually revealed new charms" (qtd. in Fuller
"’Sous le doits’" 196). Or read Charles
Rosen’s exquisite analysis of how one of D’Anglebert’s
contemporaries—the poet and fabulist Jean de La Fontaine—manipulated
minute shadings in French vowel sounds to produce his unparalleled
effects of aural patterning (38-46).
-
To focus on—indeed, to fetishize—each
moment of a piece goes quite contrary to our training as analysts
and as musicians; philosophically we descend from an anti-French
tradition of German Kultur that insisted on the moral
virtue of structural essence in counterdistinction to the sensual
surfaces of French Civilisation,11
and we learn to brush away such details in order to get at a
composition’s formal truth. Accordingly, D’Anglebert’s
processes may well breed impatience to get on with things and
not to dither about where exactly to locate the downward arpeggio
demanded in the beat that serves as a pick-up to the first full
measure. We might be tempted to mutter in exasperation: "It’s
a tonic triad—get over it!" But that beat (by far
the most difficult to execute in the entire piece) sets the
atmosphere for everything that follows: the appoggiatura (itself
elaborately embellished) that delays the arrival on A before
the arpeggio can commence already puts a nostalgic tug against
the necessity of moving forward through time, and the eloquent
repetition of A just before m. 1 produces a gesture of stoic
resolve following the collapse performed by the arpeggio. Delicious!
delicious!
-
A telling feature of this music,
once it has seduced one into its phenomenological web, is that
the performer actually wants to play the repeats—even
the invitation at the end of each dance to recommence from the
beginning. The longing to sustain this out-of-time state
becomes almost a physical necessity, and one dives back in to
revisit each exquisite moment as soon as one reaches the double-bar.
After a summer of playing only this music and noticing in myself
this odd compulsion to take repeats, I assumed I would bring
this new-found reflex back with me when I played Bach. But no:
even the most Francophilic of Bach’s dances pushes inexorably
forward through its series of destinations. Taking the repeats
in Bach is, to be sure, always instructive, for we cannot truly
grasp how he got from one place to another in a single hearing.
Still, to go back and do it all over again feels a bit like
turning back the clock, like a betrayal of the narrative impulse
that propels Bach’s music onward.12
-
When this Italianate impulse
begins to infiltrate François Couperin’s music,
he often marks it programmatically as a special effect. See,
for instance, the opening movement (an allemande) of his Second
Order, titled "La Laborieuse" (the laborious),
in which a two-beat-long motive works hard to achieve every
twist and turn along the course of the piece. Or, more famously,
"Les Baricades Mistèrieuse" (mysterious
barricades, from the Sixth Order): a rondeau movement that enacts
in its third couplet, however gently, the sense of striving
to overcome invisible obstacles typical of the Italo-German
version of tonality. It is as though the premises of such techniques—the
very basis of what pass in Bach as "purely musical"—demand
some extramusical explanation within the French context. Interestingly,
the one movement Couperin named after himself, "La Couperin"
in the Twenty-first Order, identifies through its procedures
with the Italian style.
.
References
5.
Two other compositions labeled "gaillarde" appear in
D’Anglebert’s print, one virtually a transposition of
the tombeau de M.r de Chambonnières into the minor
mode (see 81-82; the other gaillarde is on p. 50). It is not the
same dance as the more familiar galliarde, a lively dance usually
paired with a pavane. Jacques Champion de Chambonnières
includes one gaillarde in the his collection, composed much earlier
but printed in 1670 (D’Anglebert, book II 7-8).
6.
See, for instance, McClary Conventional Wisdom, chapter
3.
7.
For more on the very sophisticated ways listeners orient themselves
with respect to music, see Zbikowski.
8.
See McClary "Temp Work."
9.
See McClary Conventional Wisdom, chapters 1 and 3 for discussions
of early Italian tonality.
10.
Original source: Denis Diderot, "Salon de 1765," in
Oeuvres esthétiques, ed. Paul Vernière (Paris:
Garnier, 1959), 533. Diderot writes, of course, at a very different
moment in French history. Yet Michael Fried argues persuasively
throughout Absorption and Theatricality that Diderot attempts
in his art criticism to teach viewers how to interact appropriately
to paintings that play not to the taste for theatricality prevalent
at his time, but rather to the contemplative states of mind associated
with absorption—a value far more frequently appealed to in
art of the seventeenth century.
11.
See the theoretical and historical discussion of Kultur
versus Civilisation in Elias The History of Manners,
chapter 1. See also McClary "Unruly Passions," 85-112.
12. See again McClary Conventional Wisdom, chapter
3.
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