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.

During the late seventeenth century in France, the viol was beginning to emerge as one of the most important musical instruments of the day. French luthiers had created the quintessential French viol, which allowed violists in France to make their mark on viol playing, both as performers and teachers. So fervent was this enterprise that players soon formed cliques, creating two opposing schools of viol playing. One of the main protagonists who is the focus of this thesis, De Machy, led one of these schools. Although we are fully aware of this historical dichotomy, it is widely assumed that De Machy's rivals were the eventual victors of this conflict, and thus have become the model for modern violists to emulate. This has, however, encouraged modern violists to completely disregard the efforts of De Machy, which, as this thesis shall demonstrate, are as important as those of his contemporaries. Chapter 1 discusses De Machy's place in modern scholarship, giving readers an overall view of the kinds of biases and prejudices that currently exist. It also serves to act as a brief collation and analysis of modern writings that discuss De Machy. Chapter 2 provides us with a historical account of the viol in France, giving special emphasis to solo viol playing. It also traces the evolution of musical style and playing technique as well as the development of the instrument within its social role. Chapter 3 discusses French ornamentation on plucked instruments, keyboard instruments and the viol, giving special emphasis to De Machy's own ideas on ornamentation. Possible explanations for the proper execution of these ornaments are also provided. Chapter 4 revaluates Rousseau and the Traité de la Viole (1687), and seeks to determine its reliability as a credible source of information. Chapter 5 describes and analyses the quarrel between De Machy and Rousseau as described by Rousseau in the Réponce de Monsieur Rousseau (1688). In addition to providing a more complete picture of the social interactions of the viol community of the late seventeenth century, this chapter seeks to better explain the issues that De Machy and Rousseau argued about. Chapter 6 examines historical and modern writings and attempts to explain one of the main issues of aforementioned quarrel, the left hand position otherwise known as the ports de main as advocated by De Machy. Appendix A reproduces the avertissement from De Machy's Pièces de Violle. The facsimile of the original publication is presented alongside the English translation. This document is central to many of the issues discussed in this thesis. Appendix B is an English translation of the Réponce de Monsieur Rousseau. One of the aims of this thesis is to re-examine the history of the viol in France, and more specifically, its use as a solo instrument. It is through De Machy's Pièces de Violle and Rousseau's Réponce that most of this information is centred.

During the carnival season of 1700, as some of the entertainments at the court of Louis XIV, there were presented seven mascarades at Marly, a châiteau near Versailles. The mascarade was a small-scale musical production that combined music and dance and was influenced by the ballet de cour and later the tragidie-lyrique. They were composed by André, Anne, and Pierre Philidor who were members of a family dynasty of wind players connected to the French court for several generations. Sources including the music, libretti, descriptive journal and diary entries, costume drawings, and related research allow reconstruction of the mascarades. These sources, especially the survival of the music in this collection, are important in that they display the type of musical/theatrical entertainment occurring at the court of Louis XIV. The thesis includes a modern edition of the music.

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.

A study of the historical development of the origins of ballet in Italy and France during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Specifically focuses on the ballet-comique de la reine and the ballet de cour.