CHAPTER 35

1. CHAPTER 35 Music in Paris and at the Court of Versailles: Vocal Music

2. Absolutism: the political theory according to which the ultimate power of the state resides in the hands of the king who claimed to rule by divine right. Louis XIV, the Sun King, personified the absolute monarch and it was his long and authoritarian reign (1643-1715) that inspired the political theory of absolutism.

3. Versailles Versailles is a colossal palace built by Louis XIV as his new residence near Paris. An example of the grandeur to which Louis aspired, Versailles became the home of thousands of governmental officials, courtiers, and hundreds of artists and musicians.

4. Ballet de cour: a type of ballet danced by professional dancers and members of the court at the French royal court from the late sixteenth to the late seventeenth century. It featured sets of dances and choruses, simple airs, instrumental interludes, pantomime, and lavish scenery and choreographies. The king himself often danced in the closing dance, the grand ballet.

5. Air de cour: a simple, strophic song for single voice or a small group of soloists. • Vingt-quatre violons du roi: the twenty-four string instruments of the violin family (violins, violas, and oversized cellos) that constituted the core of the French court orchestra.

6. Jean-Baptiste Lully • Jean-Baptiste Lully: a native of Florence, Italy, he served as principal composer of Louis XIV. With the king's support, Lully gained exclusive authority over public vocal music in France. Among the musical institutions over which Lully gained control was the Académie royale de musique, an opera company established and financed by the king for the growth of French opera.

7. Tragédie lyrique: a new genre of French opera created by Lully that fused elements of the ballet de cour and traditional French tragic theater. Lully's libretti drew on mythological and chivalric topics to create thinly disguised allegories in praise of the king and the aristocracy. • Divertissement: a lavish choreographed, diversionary interlude with occasional singing that interrupted the action of a tragédie lyrique. • French overture: an instrumental prelude created by Lully as the opening number of his French operas. It usually opens with a slow section in duple meter marked by stately dotted rhythms, followed by a fast triple-meter section in imitative counterpoint, and a return to the slow, dotted rhythm of the first section.

8. Récitatif ordinaire: a new type of recitative developed by Lully which differs from Italian recitative in its increased length and vocal range, frequent meter changes, and moments of florid lyricism.

9. Religious Music • In his old age, Louis XIV assumed an increasingly pious life, and his court took on a more devout decor. Consequently, Lully and other younger composers were increasingly encouraged to provide sacred music for the king and his family. Among the younger generation of composers, Marc-Antoine Charpentier introduced Italian church-style music and oratorio into France.

10. Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: French composer, she was first granted a place as a performer at the French royal court at the age of five by Louis XIV. She later established herself in Paris, where she composed a tragédie lyrique, instrumental works for harpsichord and violin, and three books of cantatas. • Cantate française: flourishing in early eighteenth-century France, it is a piece of chamber vocal music projecting a short mythological or scriptural drama in French. Like an Italian cantata, it unfolds in a succession of arias and recitatives for solo voice accompanied by continuo or small orchestra. Most of the arias in a cantate française were in the Italianate da capo (ABA) form.