Kyle VanderburgMusic in the Classical Period

September 4, 2010

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Influence in Music History

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an eighteenth-century philosopher,

author, music theorist, and composer whose ideas on music greatly shaped

early classical music. Largely self-taught, Rousseau made his first

contributions as a theorist in 1724, where his reading of a paper to the

Académie in Paris later became his Dissertation sur la musique moderne.1

Rousseau had a significant effect on the music of France in the mid-

eighteenth century, a period when France was divided in a Querelle des

Bouffons (quarrel of the buffoons or comic actors), which was an argument

over whether French music should be state-subsidized and largely rooted in

French culture, or French music should work diligently to mimic the

contemporary Italian music.2 Rousseau was one of the leaders of the Italian

opinion, so far as to argue “that the French language was inherently

unsuitable for singing and concluded ‘that the French have no music and

cannot have any; or if they have, it will be so much the worse for them.’”3

Similar other statements and heated arguments by Rousseau prompted

members of the Paris Opéra to respond by “burning him in effigy and

excluding him from the theatre.”4

1 Nicolas Slonimsky, “Rousseau, Jean-Jacques,” Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York: Schirmer, 1992), 1551.2 Donald J. Grout and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music 6th ed. (New York: Norton, 2001), 442.3 Ibid.4 Nicolas Slonimsky, “Rousseau, Jean-Jacques,” Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York: Schirmer, 1992), 1551.

The majority of Rousseau’s contributions to music through

composition are in the form of opera, his first, Les muses galantes, being

stereotypically French in nature.5 His first operatic success came in the

form of his Le Devin du village in 1752, a relatively short work with three

characters formally based on the Italian intermezzo6 but with a French

libretto and in a style that is reminiscent of French folksongs.7

Rousseau also published what could be called the iteration of a music

dictionary, his Dictionnaire de musique, which not only included definitions

of terms but also showed relationships between terms. This work covers an

expansive range of ideas, including “acoustics, music theory, composition,

performance, interpretation, the poetics of musical and operatic genres

(partly incorporating choreography), general musical aesthetics, the history

of music and its geographical variation.”8

Rousseau’s ideas on French opera were linked to his philosophical

ideas against the French monarchy and monarchy as a political construct.

Taruskin argues that the Querelle des Bouffons was a forerunner to the

French Revolution, striking a blow “the absolutist monarchy itself never

fully recovered.”9 Both Rousseau’s philosophy and music celebrated

5 Ibid.6 Catherine Kintzler. "Rousseau, Jean-Jacques." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/23968 (accessed September 6, 2010).7 Richard Taruskin Oxford History of Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2:442.8 Catherine Kintzler. "Rousseau, Jean-Jacques." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/23968 (accessed September 6, 2010).9 Richard Taruskin Oxford History of Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2:442.

rusticity and naturalness over courtly sophistication, and it was these views

that helped shaped the future of French opera.10

Rousseau, through his philosophical writings, helped shape history,

while his extensive writings on an abundance of musical topics helped

change and define music. His act of writing in an Italian style and siding

with Italian opera was an action from which French opera never fully

recovered.

10 Ibid.

Bibliography

Grout, Donald J. and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. New York: Norton, 2001.

Kintzler, Catherine. "Rousseau, Jean-Jacques." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/23968 (accessed September 6, 2010).

Slonimsky, Nicolas. “Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.” Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. New York: Schirmer, 1992.

Taruskin, Richard. Oxford History of Western Music. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.