Cycles of regeneration and decline in musical drama at the Académie Royale (the Opéra) can be associated with the names of a series of major composers. The first was Lully; 1774 marks the beginning of the "époque de Gluck". Gluck had already attempted the 'reform' of Italian opera in Vienna, with as its chief manifesto the preface (dedication) to Alceste, published in 1769 and translated into French about 1773. It has long been recognized that this reform owed something to the methods of Rameau (which were developed from Lully's). This study therefore opens with a comparison of Rameau and Gluck, showing the fundamental ways in which their methods and intentions differed. The "époche de Gluck" was not a sudden reversal of French operatic method, and one of its features - the introduction of the "international style" (basically Italian) of 18th-century music onto a stage which had generally tended to resist it - had been anticipated in several French operas, mostly mediocre resettings of old libretti but including distinguished works by Gossec and Philidor, composers whose talent Gluck recognized. Consideration of these works is followed by a discussion of the types of aria, recitative, and arioso used in Gluck's French operas, and of Iphigénie en Aulide, the work which definitely established the synthesis of French and Italian elements, and made a return to old French opera impossible while effectively forestalling the attempt to introduce a more purely Italian music. After adapting three of his existing operas, of which Alceste, on a subject also treated by Lully, was the most radically revised, Gluck directly challenged the founder of tragédie-lyrique by resetting Quinault's Armide with comparatively little alteration. Meanwhile various attempts were being made to introduce purely Italian music to France; arrangements of Sacchini were not played at the Opéra, but Piccinni was commissioned to set another, substantially altered, Quinault poem. Roland, J. C. Bach's Amadis, and subsequent resettings by Piccinni, Gossec, and Philidor, are measured in this study against Lully and each other. The controversy between the Gluckistes and Piccinnistes, a literary war in the tradition of the "Guerre des Boufions" raged fiercely from 1777 to the early 1780s. Artistically it came to a head in the two operas of Iphigénie en Tauride which, despite Piccinni's disclaimer of any desire to emulate Gluck, are in many ways comparable and revealing about the two composers' intentions and achievements. Piccinni was brought to Paris as apostle of Italian good taste and the melodic "Période"; but his French operas, far from opposing to Gluck's dramatic conception of opera the purely musical approach that had dominated in Italy for so long, are themseleves thoroughly, indeed strenously dramatic in intention. One consequence of this is that although many composers paid artistic homage to Gluck, the majority of their works resemble more closely those of Piccinni; Gluck was personally inimitable, and in any case belonged to an earlier generation. Moreover a critical study of "Piccinniste" melody suggests that elegance and adherence to the "Période" frequently produced music which, in terms of its own musical development and of the dramatic articulation to which it is supposed to contribute, is superficial; both Piccinni and Sacchini were more successful dramatically in the short forms and ariosi for which French precedent was stronger, than in the Italianate aria and recitativo accompagnato. The operatic genre most typical of the period, and the most successful, was tragédie-lyrique, frequently with Greek or 17th-century French dramas as model. The French composers, however, concentrated on comedy, pastoral, and non-tragic adventure operas. While Gluck's and Piccinni's pastoral operas were relative failures, successful composers of lighter genres, including Floquet and Grétry, were unequal to the challenge of tragedy. The later works of Philidor and Gossec kept the possibility of indigenous French opera alive, particularly as their work shows a closer relation to their own past (the 'chant français') than did their contemporaries'. With many points of interest, these works are uneven in quality; they include such oddities as Candeille's Fizarre, Dezède's "opéra féerie" Alcindor, and the "paysannerie larmoyante" Rosine by Gossec. The direct succession to Gluck was in the work of actual or intended pupils and shows strong symptoms of decadence, and exaggeration of techniques and passions. Lemoyne and Salieri both modified their manner after their first "horror" operas, Electre and Les Danides; the former declared himself Piccinniste but without making any significant change of style. Salieri also approaches Piccinni when less overtly copying Gluck, in his sober Les Horaces and exotic Tarare. Vogel's La Tolson d'Or, dedicated to Gluck, imitates his almost too closely in places, but elsewhere escapes into the (more Piccinnian) language of his own generation. Piccinni's last works met with varying degrees of success or failure; they show intermittently (in Didon and Pénélope) a deepening dramatic insight. His dramatic intentions - which led to the suggestion that he had become a Gluckiste - may have contributed to his eclipse, since the increasingly popular Italian cantibale had found a more consistent champion in Sacchini. The latter's musical gifts to some extent disguised his relative lack of interest in drama, a penchant which permits the discussion of him in this study to be comparatively brief.

An understanding of the nature and role of the parlements is essential to effective study of the French old régime, and of the origins of the Revolution. Much light can be thrown on this question by the study of the magistrates of these courts, their interests, and the conditions under which they passed their lives. The results of such enquiries have the added use of illustrating aspects of aristocratic life not directly connected with the parlements. The study of parlementaires, therefore, has relevance to political, institutional, social, economic, and intellectual history. Too often, studies have been too narrowly tied to their political or social and economic aspects, with no attempts other than the crudest to link them, and the result has tended to produce an unbalanced picture. In this thesis an attempt has been nade to bind together all the aspects of the lives of one group of parlementaires, to relate then one to another, and to to present a total view which will make the ways of parlementaires more understandable.

L'historiographie musicale trouve dans la France de l'epoque baroque un champ ideal de developpement. Ce phenomene est lie a la conjonction de differents facteurs: le modele fourni par l'histoire generale, l'heritage humaniste, les mouvements polemiques, les tentatives de refonte de l'histoire de l'Eglise. Les musicographes, de Salomon de Caus (1615) a Jacques Bonnet-Bourdelot (1715), etablissent les fondements d'une critique historique et l'appliquent dans des ouvrages qui annoncent l'expansion de la musicologie a l'age des Lumieres.

La thèse examine les relations franco-suisses au début du XVIIIe siècle en s’interrogeant sur les pratiques et les canaux de négociation d’un côté, et celles du statut des acteurs de l’autre. Elle s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une histoire diplomatique renouvelée s’appuyant sur les acquis de l’histoire culturelle et sociale. Une première partie traite des relations entre les souverains : les autorités suisses et le roi de France. Face à l’asymétrie entre le roi et les cantons, leurs relations peuvent non seulement être décrites selon un modèle de relation entre souverains (inégaux), mais aussi selon un modèle patron-client. Une deuxième partie analyse les relations personnelles de l’ambassadeur français en Suisse. Il y est démontré comment les pratiques de communication entre l’ambassadeur et ses interlocuteurs suisses étaient façonnées par la culture politique différente des cantons qui n’acceptaient pas tous dans la même mesure les relations personnelles entre magistrats et diplomates étrangers. La troisième partie examine les canaux de communication et de négociation entre la Cour de France et les autorités suisses. Grâce à la présence de nombreux diplomates accrédités en Suisse et en s’appuyant sur leurs sujets séjournant aux cours étrangères en tant qu’officiers ou diplomates au service d’un prince étranger, les cantons pouvaient pratiquer une « diplomatie sans diplomates » qui ne coûtait presque rien. En dernier lieu, l’analyse des négociations du renouvellement d’alliance entre le roi de France et le canton de Berne soulève le problème des négociations avec une république aux temps modernes. / The thesis examines the Franco-Swiss relations in the early 18th century and probes into both the practices and channels of negotiation as well as the status of the actors. As a contribution to the flourishing ‘new diplomatic history’, it draws on the methods and innovations of cultural and social history. The first part discusses the relations between two unequal sovereigns: the Swiss authorities and the French king. Given the asymmetry between the king and the cantons, their relations can not only be described as relations between (unequal) sovereigns but also as patron-client ties. The second part examines the personal relations of the French ambassador in Switzerland and shows how the different political cultures of the cantons shaped the communicative practices between the ambassador and his Swiss interlocutors. In the third part, the channels of communication and negotiation between the French court and the Swiss authorities are analysed. Thanks to the presence of numerous foreign diplomats accredited in Switzerland and relying on the services of Swiss subjects staying at foreign courts as officers and diplomats serving a foreign prince, the Swiss republics were able to practice “diplomacy without diplomats”, thus economizing on the expenses associated with maintaining a formal diplomatic body. In the final part, the analysis of the negotiations for the renewal of the alliance between the French king and the Republic of Berne provides a case study of what it meant to negotiate with a polyarchy in the early modern period.

The musical compositions known collectively as the French cantata have remained relatively unknown since their popularity waned in the middle of the 18th century. In order to establish a foundation for their systematic study and to bring them to the attention of a wider audience, this survey and catalog have been prepared. The cultural mileu in which the cantatas were written, their formal structure, and principles related to their performance have been presented along with pertinent biographical and bibliographical information.

published_or_final_version / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

In 1767, Mme Benoist published an epistolary libertine novel entitled Lettres du Colonel Talbert. Although she has received little critical attention to date, she was a prolific author who appeared with great regularity at minor literary salons. Her presence at these salons is well-established in personal memoirs and correspondences, and actively remarked upon by other authors—men and women—of the period, including Mme Roland and Choderlos de Laclos. Mme Benoist’s preferred genre was the novel with its explicit blend of high and low literary cultures, its melding of the philosophical and the sentimental, its pursuit of formal innovation, and its deliberate marketing in multiple formats and for multiple audiences, including publication through the mainstream book market, and serial publication in revues and journals with a large female readership, such as the Journal des Dames. This study focuses on Lettres du Colonel Talbert (1767) as both a paradigmatic and privileged text inside Mme Benoist’s larger corpus, and one which explicitly engages many of the most pressing moral and philosophical debates of the period, including the legal status of women. To do so, Mme Benoist appropriates the libertine novel as specific novelistic subtype. In Les Lettres du Colonel Talbert, Mme Benoist parodies the libertine novel and in doing so, converts the libertine textual economy to one in which well-established narrative codes of femininity and masculinity are inverted. Although her depiction of the heroine, Hélène—an exceptional and courageous young woman who resists the predatory advances of a man through sheer strength of moral character—is not in itself unusual, Mme Benoist’s choice to frame her heroine’s moral struggle in a narrative epistolary exchange between two diametrically opposed male “types” in enlightenment thought—the libertine and the honnête homme— Mme Benoist effectively subverts masculine textual dynamics at the level of plot and character. More importantly, she also subverts the libertine novel’s traditional identification with masculine authorship. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The purpose of the study is the investigation of the topics of transposition and the transposed major and minor modes as discussed principally by selected French authors of the final twenty years of the seventeenth century and the first three decades of the eighteenth. The sources are relatively varied and include manuals for singers and instrumentalists, dictionaries, independent essays, and tracts which were published in scholarly journals; special emphasis is placed on the observation and attempted explanation of both irregular signatures and the signatures of the minor modes. The paper concerns the following areas: definitions and related concepts, methods for singers and Instrumentalists, and signatures for the tones which were identified by the authors. The topics are interdependent, for the signatures both effected transposition and indicated written-out transpositions. The late Baroque was characterized by much diversity with regard to definitions of the natural and transposed modes. At the close of the seventeenth century, two concurrent and yet diverse notions were in evidence: the most widespread associated "natural" with inclusion within the gamme; that is, the criterion for naturalness was total diatonic pitch content, as specified by the signature. When the scale was reduced from two columns to a single one, its total pitch content was diminished, and consequently the number of the natural modes found within the gamme was reduced. An apparently less popular view narrowed the focus of "natural tone" to a single diatonic pitch, the final of the tone or mode. A number of factors contributed to the disappearance of the long-held distinction between natural and transposed tones: the linking of the notion of "transposed" with the temperament, the establishment of two types of signatures for the minor tones (for tones with sharps and flats, respectively), the transition from a two-column scale to a single-column one, and the recognition of a unified system of major and minor keys.

Democracy was no more than a marginal force during the eighteenth century, unanimously denounced as a chimerical form of government unfit for passionate human beings living in commercial societies. Placed in this context this thesis studies the concept of ‘representative democracy' during the French Revolution, particularly under the Directory (1795–1799). At the time the term was an oxymoron. It was a neologism strategically coined by the democrats at a time when ‘representative government' and ‘democracy' were understood to be diametrically opposed to each other. In this thesis the democrats' political thought is simultaneously placed in several contexts. One is the rapidly changing political, economic and international circumstances of the French First Republic at war. Another is the anxiety about democratic decline emanating from the long-established intellectual traditions that regarded the history of Greece and Rome as proof that democracy and popular government inevitably led to anarchy, despotism and military government. Due to this anxiety the ruling republicans' answer during the Directory to the predicament—how to avoid the return of the Terror, win the war, and stabilize the Republic without inviting military government—was crystalized in the notion of ‘representative government', which defined a modern republic based on a firm rejection of ‘democratic' politics. Condorcet is important at this juncture because he directly challenged the given notions of his own period (such as that democracy inevitably fosters military government). Building on this context of debate, the arguments for democracy put forth by Antonelle, Chaussard, Français de Nantes and others are analysed. These democrats devised plans to steer France and Europe to what they regarded as the correct way of genuinely ending the Revolution: the democratic republic. The findings of this thesis elucidate the elements of continuity and those of rupture between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

De 1746 à 1756, l’architecte allemand d’origine huguenote Simon-Louis Du Ry voyagea en Suède, en Hollande, en France et en Italie pour apprendre son métier. Il retourna en Italie de 1776 à 1777. Lors de ses périples, Simon-Louis Du Ry a entretenu une intense correspondance avec sa famille. Il a tenu un journal de son second tour d’Italie. Ces manuscrits sont une source très précieuse pour l’histoire de la mobilité des artistes à l’époque Moderne. L’objet de cette thèse est d’analyser et d’éditer les récits de voyage de Simon-Louis Du Ry. Nous considérons le voyage comme une pratique individuelle obéissant à des contraintes sociales et matérielles, et comme un mode de perception du monde, des autres, du savoir et de soi-même. L’enjeu est de prendre en compte le voyageur en tant qu’individu, mais aussi l’environnement dans lequel il organise ses déplacements. Après avoir décrit ces périples (itinéraires, modes de transport et d’hébergement, activités du voyageur…), nous les comparons aux modèles de voyage en vogue à l’époque qu’étaient le Grand Tour, le voyage savant, et le voyage artistique. Nous nous attachons aussi à étudier la manière dont Simon-Louis Du Ry a relaté ses pérégrinations, ainsi que l’influence que ces voyages eurent non seulement sur la carrière de cet architecte, mais aussi sur son milieu d’origine, c’est-à-dire le landgraviat de Hesse-Cassel au siècle des Lumières. L’édition critique des récits de voyage de Du Ry que nous proposons est accompagnée d’un apparat critique constitué de notes et de trois index : toponymique, biographique et thématique. / From 1746 to 1756, Simon-Louis du Ry, the German architect with Huguenot roots, traveled to Sweden, Holland, France, and Italy to learn a trade. He returned to Italy from 1776 to 1777. During his travels, Simon-Louis du Ry maintained an intense correspondence with his family. He kept a diary of his second trip to Italy and these manuscripts are a very valuable source for the history of the mobility of artists in the Modern era. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and edit Simon-Louis Du Ry’s travel writings. We consider travel an individual experience which is limited by material and social issues, and a way of understanding the world, others, knowledge and oneself. Our challenge is to take account of the traveler as a person, but also of the environment in which he organizes his travels. After describing these journeys (including routes, transport and accommodation, and traveler’s activities), we compare them with the travel patterns in vogue at that time: the Grand Tour, the scholar’s travel, and the artist’s travel. We aim to explore how Simon-Louis Du Ry has described his travels and the influence that his journeys have had, not only on his architectural career, but also on his cultural background, i.e. the landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel during the Enlightenment. The critical examination of Du Ry’s travel books that we offer is accompanied by a critical apparatus consisting of notes and of three indexes: geographical names, biographical names, and subjects.