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FROM LE CRI DE LA NATURE TO PYGMALION:

A STUDY OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU'S PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC AND

AESTHETIC AND REFORM OF OPERA

by

Stephen

John Xavier Baysted

A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfilment for the degree of

DOCTOR

OF PHILOSOPHY

Dartington

CoHege of Arts

August

2003

This copy of the tbesis bas been supplied on condition that anyone wbo consults it is understood to ircqgnise that

gbt irsts uitb its autbor and that no quotafionfmm the tbesis and no information detivedfmm it Mig its copyri bepublisbed nitbomt the author'sprior consent.

Abstract

Stephen John Xavier Baysted

From Le Cri de la Nature to Pygmalion: A Study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Philosophy of

Music and Aesthetic and Reform of Opera

The thesis sets Rousseau's philosophy of music and aesthetic of opera against the wider philosophical backcloth of eighteenth-century France and in contraposition to the more scopic music-theoredcal backdrop, of which Rameau's writings are taken as a paradigm. The first half of the thesis contends that the philosophy of music is fashioned upon a trinary model which mirrors the philosophy of nature and history. The first sector is an ideal, hypothetical state; the second (the 'fall) is the moment when the ideal state is ruptured, when societal and cultural institutions - and history - commence; the third, is the 'actual state', the culmination of the process of history. It is argued that relativism is at work between the second and third sectors and Rousseau assigns a rigorous system of value to the process of history and all points along it, the process itself, taken as a whole, is seen as a degenerative slide away from near- perfection to imperfection. 7111c
second half of the thesis explores the ramifications of the trinary model and the effect the degenerative process has upon the voice, music and opera. The voice is considered the unique phenomenon that connects all sectors of the trinary structure: though objectified and endowed with an ontology, it is not immune to the degenerative process. At the fall-state, the voice begins to rupture and two entities - melody and language - gradually emerge. Over time, melody and speech

are forced further apart until neither bears much resemblance to the other. With the invention of harmony, melody degenerates: harmony begins to overshadow melody, until in the

eighteenth

century - consummated in the music and theoretical postulations of Rameau - melody is subjugated and subsumed entirely within the harmonic domain of musical production. The

impact upon opera is more complex and the concluding chapters explore the radical and largely ygmalion (1762) is considered reform-driven aesthetic of opera. Roussea&s final dramatic work P not

simply as an outcome of this aesthetic, but as an embodiment of the philosophy of music itself; the animated statue enunciates Rousseau's vision of the origin of human expression.

Contents

Page

Acknowledgement 1

Authoes

Declaration 2

Introduction

3

Chapters:

1. Rameau and Rousseau: conflicting visions of the musical universe 12

1.1. Agnate Concepts: The Basse Fondamentale and the Pythagorean 'Monochord' 13

1.1.2 Rameau's Scientific Ambition 21

1.1.3

Rameau's Philosophical Vision 26

1.1.4 Rameau's Cosmology 35

1.1.5 Rameau's Vision of Music 38

1.2.

Rousseau: from disciple to antagonist 41

1.2.1

Les Muses Galantes 50

1.2.2

The Engelopidie- 'un travail extraordinaire' 60

2. The genesis of the Concept of the State ofNature 67

2.1. Winding the clock back from History to Hypothesis 80

2.2.

Locating the Necessary Origin of the Fall 86

2.3. The 'Fall-State' and the first two species of 'Need' 91

2.4.

The Divine Nature of the Fall 93

2.5. Adumbrating the bigger picture: Synthesising the First and Second Discomrs 96 2.6.

The problematic notion of the Beginning 100

3.

The Common Origin Hypothesis 105

3.1.

The Origin of Expression: Voix and Langme 105

3.2. The Question of the Essai sur 110n, ýine des LaýTues 110 3.3.

Common Origins and the Third Species of Need 113

3.4. 'Ihe'IdyU of the Well' 117 3.5.

The Great North-South Divide 119

3.6. The Origin of Music 123

3.7. The Origin and Degeneration of Melody 128

3.8. The Discovery of harmony and the further degeneration of melody 134 4

The Aesthetic, the Critique and the Blueprint 137

4.1. The Dictionnairr de Musique as 'Aesthetic Manifesto' 138 4.1.1 Concept and Form: synchrony, diachrony and the syncretic 144 4.2. Melody and Harmony: the constituent elements of music-as-art diverge 147

4.2.1 The 'Dual Potentiality' of the voice 159

4.2.2 Primus interparrs or 'un tous trýs bien IiF? 166 4.3. Towards reform: the problem of recitative and a thoroughly French solution 175 4.3.1

The Florentine compromise 176

4.3.2

Reformatory steps: Le Detin du Villqge (1752) 185

5. Pygmalion: words without music and music without words 193

5.1. The final reformatory steps: The 'PY gmalion Mechanism' 199

5.2.

The question of collaboration and authorship 205

5.3. The recourse to myth: the Fiction om Morreau Alli. . Sorique sur la Riviladon 214

5.4. Reading Py gmalion 221

5.4.1.

Myth as aesthetic doctrine: the oxymoronic conception of 'artistic creation' 222

5.4.2 The Deus exMachina. a critique of the ardsesvanity 227

5.4.3 Separation or reunion: Narcissism or Androgyny? 230

5.4.4 A Contemporaneous view 234

5.4.5.

lbemoi'as expression of independence, self-existence and individuality 235

5.4.6. Tbe'm& as the dramatic equivalent of the 'idyll of the well' 236

Conclusion

237

Bibliography

242

Appendix Items: 254

1. Example: Rousseau's numeric system of notation: 'volez, plaisirs volez'

from

Rameau's Dardanus

2.

Extract: 'Air Suisse Appelk Le Rans des Vacbe.?

3. Extract: Scene 6 from Rousseau's Le Dedn du Village

4. Extract: Ms N (Autograph libretto manuscript of Pj ion) gmal

5. A complete translation of Rousseau's Pygmalion

6. Extract: Rousseau's 'Andantino' from the Pjgmalion overture

7. Extract: Rousseau's 2 nd titournello from Py ion gmal

Acknowledgement

I would like to sincerely thank my supervisors, Professor Max Paddison and Dr Bob Gilmore, for all their encouragement, support, advice and assistance during the writing of this thesis. I would Eke to acknowledge the financial support provided by Dartington College of Arts in the form of a studentship which assisted my research in the UK, France and Switzerland. I would also like to thank Professor Edward Cowie and Corrie jefferey for their help. I would like to thank the staff at the Bibliothýque d'Etudes Rousseauistes at Montmorency for their hospitality and their assistance in obtaining secondary source materials. I

would like to sincerely thank my former colleagues at Rose Bruford College, in particular Anthony Hozier and Dr Chris Megson, the administrative team, and the library staff. -

I would like to thank Dawn Ferris for her love, support and considerable patience over the past eighteen months. And finally, thank you to my parents for all their love, advice, encouragement and financial assistance: here are 78,000 words in return for 34 years.

Author's Declaration

At no time during the registration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy has the author been registered for any other University award. This

study was partiaUy financed with the aid of a studentship from Dartington. CoUege of Arts (1994-1997).

Signed

t4A ................................... Date MA)... 9. Z .............................................. 2

Introduction:

Jean-Jacques etoit ne pour la musique. '

jean-Jacques Rousseau was bom on 28 June, 1712 in a town house on the Grand Rue in what is now Geneva's Vielle-Ville? Rousseau was the son of a watchmaker, and although he would later become an apprentice engraver, he was, nevertheless, ultimately destined for a very different mitier. For jean-Jacques, his calling was to be music, the one activity in his life that would cause him the most anguish and the greatest personal torment, and yet it was an activity from which he was simply unable to desist. As he would put it a little over three years before his death, and looking retrospectively across what was, by the standards of any epoch, a remarkable life, Rousseau declared of himself that 'Jean-Jacques 6toit n6 pour la musiquc. " Music was an art form for which, he claimed, he had begun to feel great affinity in his childhood and the only one to which he would remain constant throughout his fife. " This constancy is reflected not only in the extraordinary diversity of writings that either intersect with, develop, or expound musical themes and issues, but is also manifest in the significant, formative events that would punctuate and determine the course of his life as philosopher, political theorist, novelist, and pamphleteer. Amongst these events we may list the failure of his

Projet

concemant des nouveaux jignespour la musique (1742); the musical revelation in Venice (1743); the ignominious treatrnent of his first opera, Ixs Muses Galantes, at the hands of his idol jean-

Philippe

Rameau (1743); the iMbicle concerning his alterations for Rameau and Voltaires IXs Fetes de Rambr (1745); the drafting of the music articles for Diderot and D'Alemberes Engc*&e (1749); the rampant success of his opera comique Le Devin dm Village (1753); the rancorous events of the QuetrIle des Boffjons (1752-54), and the remorseless musico-ontological polemic with

Rameau

that ensued (1753-58); the penning of PjSma, 6on whilst in exile (1762); and the

Rousseau, 'Second Dialogue, Romssemjug dejean-jarlms, in (Euvrrs dejean-jacques Romsseam, 20 vols. tom. 17, (Paris: Tenre et

Ledoux, 1819), p. 525. lean-Jacques was bom for music. My translation. All subsequent translations are by the present

author

unless otherwise stated. All subsequent references to this edition of Rousseau's complete works will read as follows:

the tide of the individual work, followed by Oexm, followed by the volume number (indicated as, for example, 0 1) and lastly

the relevant page number(s). 2

For a detailed survey of Rousseau's early life and formative years in Geneva see Maurice Cranston, jean-jacque-c The e=6 ife and

xvrk offtax-jacqmes Romsseam 1712-1754, (Ilarmondsworth: Penguin: 1987), pp. 13-29 or Olivier Marty, Rousseiw de Aenfana j

j2oyaraxteAw, (Paris: NouveUes Editions Dibresse, 1975), pp. 9-27.

3 Rousseau, -Second Dialogue, p. 525.

4 Rousseau, Confemim, tmnsL byj. M Cohen, a lumondswordL Penguin Classics, 1953), P. M.

3 completion of the Dicfionnairr de Mmjique for publication in order to put bread on his table (1764). Music was so central to his Efe that, in fact, it was not until the publication of his

Discours

sur I ýri gine et ksfondements de 17nii , kalitiparmi les bommes (1754) at the age of forty-thrce, that

jean-Jacques Rousseau became, in the eyes of the public, a Pbilosopbe in the fiffi sense of the term, and ceased to be merely Rousseau the musician. ' And what is more, it was not until 1782, whenquotesdbs_dbs47.pdfusesText_47

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