The language of music in France: Rhetoric as a basis for expression in Michel Lambert's Les Airs de Monsieur Lambert (1669) and Benigne de Bacilly's Les Trois Livres d'Airs (1668).

This study probes the relationship of rhetoric and French music, specifically in the airs published by Michel Lambert and Benigne de Bacilly during the 1660s. It is unique in its emphasis upon both the theoretical and the practical applications of rhetoric to this repertory. First I ascertain how, in theory, the relation was interpreted by seventeenth-century scholars and musicians. I then analyze the airs to determine how, in practice, lyric poetry and the rhetorical devices used therein provided a basis for musical style and the expression of affect. The first two chapters consider French theoretical, musical, and textual sources. In chapter 3, I identify the primary affects expressed in the airs and specify the musical devices used to imitate the tones of voice that rhetoricians associated with the expression of these passions. Chapter 4 shows how Lambert and Bacilly used these devices to project the affects embodied in an entire lyric. Chapter 5 reveals how the parts of the song-text correspond to the divisions of an oration and demonstrates how the composers realized the expressive function of each section, as recommended by French rhetoricians. Chapter 6 shows how poetic syntax provided structure in the air and considers the composers' setting of the musical-rhetorical figures. Any assessment of seventeenth-century French music hinges upon an understanding of how rhetoric guided and inspired composers, but such an evaluation has to begin with texted music. This study demonstrates that Lambert and Bacilly constructed their works as agents of affective communication and provides tangible musical evidence that the means of expression was founded in rhetoric. The various musical devices used by Lambert and Bacilly to convey passions constitute the essence of vocal music style in France during the 1660s--a style defined by the inter-connections between language and music.Ph.D.Communication and the ArtsLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsMusicRomance literatureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129265/2/9423190.pd