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French Binary Air within Italian Aria da Capo in Montéclair's Third Book of Cantatas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1977
Extract
The twenty French and four Italian cantatas of Michel Pignolet de Montéclair are distributed over three printed editions dated 1709, 1713 and 1728 respectively. Bachelier in his Recueil de cantates published in The Hague in 1728, described Montéclair's first two cantata books as follows:
Mr Montéclair through his individual taste gives pleasure to those who hear him. His melody and skilful accompaniments à l'italienne enliven his works. Since the texts with which he has worked are not the most usual, it is undoubtedly his good taste which has suggested to him the manner of treating them. … I have no doubt that were the poems in the style of Mr Rousseau to fall into his hands, he would use them with success and win the approbation of Connoisseurs.
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- Copyright © 1979 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors
References
NOTES
1 Bachelier, I., Recueil de cantates, contenant toutes celles qui se chantent dans les concerts (The Hague, 1728). This source contains the texts of 99 cantatas, including those set by Bernier (24), Clérarnbault (14), Montéclair (12), Stuck (11). Morin (7), Bourgeois (2).Google Scholar
2 See Book II (1713), setting of ‘Vénus approuve son audace’ (p. 64) and ‘Amants, tout cède à la Constance’ (p. 69).Google Scholar
3 The source for the quotation is Couperin's L'Art de toucher le clavecin (Paris, 1717) in which the composer inserted an allemande in sonata style to illustrate an alternative to the French style brisé.Google Scholar
4 See Schmidt, GustavFriedrich, Die fruhdeutsche Oper, ii (Regensburg, 1933), 382–97.Google Scholar
5 Book II (1713), 49.Google Scholar
6 The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata (London, 1974).Google Scholar
7 Ibid., 154.Google Scholar
8 An example of a Binary I air is ‘Je pourrais l'obtenir’ in Act 1 scene i of Lully's Amadis (Œuvres complètes, ed. H. Prunières,‘Les opéras’, iii, Paris, 1939, p. 43). This has an xyxy rhyme-scheme, and Part a modulates from G minor to B♭ major. There is a secondary cadence point between b and b 1.Google Scholar
9 See, for example, François Richard's récit ‘Dans ce beau séjour des plaisirs’ from Airs de cour avec la tablature de luth (1637) found in Airs de cour pour voix et luth (1603–1643), ed. A. Verchaly (Paris, 1961), 192–3.Google Scholar
10 For the complete cantata see M. P. de Montéclair, Cantatas for One and Two Voices, ed. J. Anthony and D. Akmajian (Madison, 1978).Google Scholar