Lorsque Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) arrive à Paris à l’automne 1773, onze ans se sont écoulés depuis la création d’Orfeo à Vienne. La rupture avec l’opera seria a été consommée, et le développement des théories de la « réforme » initiées par la collaboration avec Calzabigi s’engage résolument dans la recherche d’un drame européen. Il serait cependant erroné de scinder la carrière du compositeur entre un « avant » et un « après » Orfeo, car l’œuvre de Gluck se définit comme l’épanouissement permanent des premières idées dramatiques appliquées dans ses premiers opéras italiens. Gluck établit sa « réforme » à partir de l’expérience sensible et pratique, questionnant en réalité l’ensemble des genres musicaux européens non pas sur leur légitimité, mais sur ce qu’ils offrent de possibilité d’émancipation. Cette étude s’intéresse aux œuvres françaises dans ce qu’elles développent d’autonomie et d’épanouissement musicaux à partir, étonnamment, du recul pris par rapport à l’indépendance de la musique, et grâce aussi à l’émergence dans l’Europe des Lumières d’une esthétique fondée sur la réunion et la liaison entre les arts. Il s’agit de proposer une contribution à l’étude musicale des dernières partitions certes prises comme autant d’éléments du langage gluckiste, mais également envisagées à partir des suggestions originelles des premières œuvres et, dans la mesure du possible, face aux discussions et polémiques sur la musique et l'opéra de l'époque. Les drames parisiens élucident dès lors le concept de langage universel dont le compositeur se réclame lui-même. / When Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) arrived in Paris in the fall of 1773, eleven years have passed since the creation of Orfeo in Vienna. The break with the opera seria was consumed, and the development of theories of the « reform » initiated by the collaboration with Calzabigi is firmly committed to the search for a European drama. It would be wrong to split the composer's career between « before » and « after » Orfeo, as Gluck's work is defined as the permanent development of the first dramatic ideas applied in his first Italian opera. Gluck established his « reform » from the sensible and practical experience, questioning actually all musical European genres, not their legitimacy, but they offer the possibility of emancipation. This study focuses on French works in that they develop autonomy and musical development, from, surprisingly, the step back compared to the independence of the music, and thanks to the emergence in the European Enlightenment of an aesthetic based on the meeting and the connection between the arts. It is to propose a contribution to the study of musical scores last course taken as elements of gluckiste language, but also considered suggestions from the original works of the first and, to the extent possible, given the discussions and controversy over the music and opera of the time. Parisian dramas therefore elucidate the concept of universal language which the composer calls himself.

In mid-eighteenth century Paris, two Benedictine monks from the Congregation of Saint-Maur – also known as the Maurists – started compiling a universal dictionary of arts, crafts, and sciences. The project was initiated simultaneously with what would become one of the most famous literary enterprises in Western intellectual history: the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. The latter started as an augmented translation of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, but it was constructed with another French dictionary as its ideological counterpart: the Jesuits’ Dictionnaire de Trévoux. While the Encyclopédie eventually turned into a controversial but successful best-seller, considered as the most important medium of Enlightenment thought, the Benedictines never finished or published their work. After a decade, the manuscripts were put aside in the monastery library, and were soon forgotten. For about two hundred and sixty years, the Maurists’ dictionary material has largely escaped the attention of researchers, and its history of production has been unknown.      This dissertation examines the history and characteristics of the Maurists’ enterprise. The manuscripts are compared to the Encyclopédie and the Dictionnaire de Trévoux, and the project situated within its monastic environment of production, the history of the encyclopedic dictionary, and the Enlightenment culture. The study has an interdisciplinary character and combines perspectives of History of Science and Ideas, History of Monasticism, History of Encyclopedism, and History of the Book. The research procedure is distinguished by a microhistorical approach, where the studied materials are analyzed in a detailed manner, and the research process included in the narrative.       The dissertation shows that the Maurists early found themselves in a rival situation with the embryonic Encyclopédie, and that the two projects had several common denominators that distinguished them from the predecessors within the genre. At the same time, the Maurists were making a dictionary unique in the eighteenth century, which assumed a third position in relation to the works of the encyclopédistes and the Jesuits. The study provides new perspectives on the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, the intellectual activities of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, as well as the editor in charge of the Maurist dictionary: Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety, otherwise known for his alchemical writings.