Yes, yes, I’ll get around to David et Jonathas eventually, but first…
This is from a flute sonate by Michel de la Barre that I used to play. (The melody is in French violin clef, so bottom line G.) As you can see from the “gold” curlicues, a certain amount of teenage adoration was going on with respect to this intense little cadential moment, particularly the 7 chord after the long flattement followed by that tumbling release into yet more dissonance, and finally resolution.
Scrumptious. Scrumptious. Scrumptious.
How can anyone not love the sheer sensuousness of French music? A lot of it’s to do with what goes on underneath in performance, with richly realised continuo lines, especially when multiple instruments are enlisted. Then there’s the exquisite system of stylised ornaments (so unlike the Italians’ free-form noodling) and that elegant unevenness of rhythm that swings along under the name notes inégales. Oh, and the wobbly 4-3 cadential trills (yum). And yet the French could also go for the bold effect when they wanted: lots of oboes and plenty of noisy percussion. This is the music of a nation that believed it led the world – both mighty and mighty tasteful.
My CD shelves are littered with Lully and Rameau and the Couperins and Marais (swoon), not to mention Leclair, la Barre, Boismortier, Blavet, Mouret, Hotteterre and quite a few recordings by the little-known M-A Charpentier. And languishing in boxes are stacks of facsi-smiles by the same suspects – keyboard and flute pieces that are as beautiful to read as they are to listen to.
Oh, but this beautiful music is difficult to play. And some would say to acquire an ear for. Despite the intensity of its effects and theatrical instinct, it’s incredibly subtle. It demands interpretations that are completely attuned to performance style and instrumental idiom. Think of it this way…
It’s possible to point to modern-instrument performances of Handel and Bach and Vivaldi that are perfectly satisfying and convincingly stylish. I’ll go further and say that it’s possible to point to old-fashioned modern-instrument performances of these composers that would appear to disregard most of what we know about baroque style and which are still musically satisfying. But I’m hard pressed to think of any successful modern performances of French baroque music. Angela Hewitt’s recordings of Couperin’s keyboard suites maybe. It’s telling that, comparatively speaking, there are precious few modern-instrument recordings of the French repertoire.
French baroque music, it would seem, depends much more heavily on style and idiom than Bach and his friends.
It’s like the Beatles and ABBA. The Beatles’ songs can and have survived (and thrived) under just about any performance interpretation you can imagine, even the most extreme. ABBA? With very few exceptions unless you perform the songs as they did and with the colours and sounds of their style, it sounds like nothing. Even the reworkings of their songs for Mama Mia! were closer to the originals than not.
Bach is like the Beatles; the French are like ABBA. (One argument is that Bach [and the Beatles] wrote the greater music, hence allowing it to transcend interpretation. I think this misses the point.)
It’s probably no coincidence that both ABBA and the French were writing music that, even when not actually intended for dancing, always has its feet firmly on the dance floor. If there’s one thing the French did well, it was ballet music. (In fact, they continued doing it better than anyone until Tchaikovsky took over for the Russians in the 19th century.) When the Germans plundered the best of the French to create an international style, it was the dance rhythms and gestures – and the synchronised bowing – they took.
But there’s something else that was even more influential than Louis XIV’s finely turned calves. Language.
And here I’ll make a confession: just as I prefer Wagner without singing, so I tend to gravitate towards French baroque music without singing. The parallel ends there, though. In the case of Wagner it’s the particular vocal style I can’t take in large doses, which is why I’m quite happy listening to, say, the more intimate Wesendonck Lieder. With French baroque music it’s the language that gives me difficulty, since my French stops with ballet terminology, a few convenient cognates, and asking politely for a kilo of apples.
I’m not talking about meaning here, the kind of linguistic difficulty that would be solved by a good translation. No – more than Italian, more than German, more than English – the French musical style is so wrapped up in the character of the language itself that not truly understanding it becomes an impediment. So I’m quite at ease with French sacred music where the words are in Latin. And if you were to look more closely at my littered CD shelves you’d notice a strong skew towards the instrumental and the orchestral-theatrical.
Of all the difficulties in performing and listening to French baroque music, the ability to get inside the text and the textually driven aspects of the music is top of the list. That’s true even in instrumental music where the sound you make (for example, in the way tongue and lips are used in flute playing) as well as the rhythms and phrasing can be so heavily influenced by the language you speak. I suspect all non-French speakers, perhaps all non-native-French speakers, struggle with these things. That we persevere is indication of the expressive rewards of this music.
With the exception of Couperin’s Baricades mistérieuses – a strange little piece that I find works well-enough on piano – I haven’t played any of this repertoire in a long time, nor will I ever claim that I properly mastered it. But when I’m feeling utterly miserable, Marais will be my companion; there’s nothing like a viole de gambe to induce cathartic tears. When joy leads me to exuberance, there’s a chance that Rameau and Lully will be there. And every Christmas the Midnight Mass by that fellow (what’s his name?) is on my playlist.