The popular lute: an investigation of the function and performance of music in France between 1650 and 1700

In this project I wish to establish a seventeenth century popular concept focusing on the lute in France between 1650 and 1700. By promoting a more culturally based understanding of French lute music, I try to unveil some of its functions as social phenomena. The argument takes a starting point in Robert Middleton’s popular as presented in his book Studying popular music (1990), together with selected writings by Foucault; and from that I map different cultural groupings within the French society as to unveil how lute music was articulated. Following, I investigate how the construction of musician and music fits into and fulfill the conception of seventeenth century popular music that I propose. This study presents an internally contradictory concept of lute music that participates in dialogues between internal and external, self and other, individual and society