Jean-Jacques Rousseau's writings on music as an aspect of preromanticism

Rousseau's works concerning music reveal various recurrent themes which are now considered preromantic. While the writings on theory may be viewed as a treatise on Rousseau's preromantic philosophy, the characters and themes of his operas seem to foretell his most outstanding sentimental work, La nouvelle Héloise. Rousseau wrote the "Lettre à M. Grimm," "Lettre sur la musique française," and the "Lettre d'un symphoniste," in which he revealed his preferences for the simple Italian melodic music over the more complex French harmonic music, at the time of the "Guerre des bouffons" in France. During the "Guerre des Gluckistes et des Piccinistes" Rousseau wrote "Fragments d' observations sur l' Alceste" and the "Extrait d'une réponse du petit faiseur à son prête-nom sur un morceau de l' Orphée" in support of Christoph Willibald Gluck's emotive French reform operas