Mythologies of musical persuasion: The power and politics of song in France, 1653–1673

Historians have concentrated on how Louis XIV and his ministers consciously exploited the persuasive power of music to construct a national identity, manipulate foreign perception of the French court, and control the moral and social actions of the populace. However, sites outside the reach of direct monarchic authority—the streets of Paris, cabarets, salons, and even print—nurtured the production of a vast repertory of songs promoting ideologies different from those maintained by the crown. This dissertation details the publication activities of the “sole printer of the king for music,” Robert Ballard (c. 1610–1673), and focuses on three of the composers he printed: Bénigne de Bacilly, Sébastien Le Camus, and André de Rosiers. As the choices Ballard made personally as an editor not only reflected but also shaped the desires of the public for music in mid-seventeenth-century France, I focus on print culture. Ballard\u27s customers, creating cultural practices within (yet distinct from) the constraints of absolutism, supplied him with the bulk of the repertory he published; for writing words for music was an important component of salon sociability. As this cultural history of songwriting reveals, the contestatory implications of song were especially strong when singing was a component part of sociable activities that can be considered transgressive—namely, activities such as drinking in groups, male friendship, and libertine and women\u27s writing. When individuals engaged over the songs they wrote, in sites generally hostile to the court and its dictates, music was not an expression of Louis XIV\u27s absolute power. This dissertation reveals that even when their texts are not explicitly contestational, the songs distributed by Robert Ballard in the 1650s, 1660s, and 1670s always had the potential to cause disruption in the order of the state