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* Rose Pruiksma (rose.pruiksma@unh.edu) is a Lecturer in Music History at the University of New Hampshire. She works on representation, politics, and culture in the court ballets of Louis XIII and Louis XIV.
[1] These men were either blood relatives of Richelieu (Maillé-Brézé), related to him by marriage (Harcourt and La Meilleraye), or men who owed their advancement to the cardinal (Châtillon).
[2] The first and fourth acts provide a mythological framework for the ballet; in the first act, demons and furies sow discord, Gallic Hercules enters the scene and proceeds to battle two lions and an eagle. In the fourth act, Gallic Hercules again battles the lions and eagle and is saved in the end by the arrival of Jupiter who restores peace. The fifth act presents general antic rejoicing as a result of this peace, a peace that existed only in the framework of the ballet, as the actual war continued to be fought on three fronts.
[3] This theater, known after Richelieu’s death as the theater of the Palais Royal, housed Italian players and Molière’s company. It no longer exists; see Barbara Coeyman, “Theatres for Opera and Ballet During the Reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV,” Early Music 18, no. 1 (Feb. 1990): 22–37.
[4] Margaret McGowan (L’Art du ballet de cour, 1581–1643 [Paris: CNRS, 1963], 188–90) notes the impact of this new stage design on the dance and the newly instituted spectator/performer separation.
[5] While some sources give the date of this marriage as February 11, 1641, the Gazette de France of February 9, 1641, page 68, notes “Le 7 le Roy vint d’Escoüan en cette ville [Paris], & donna audience dans le Louvre au Nonce de Sa Saintété, puis en sa presence, de celle de la Reine & de tous les Princes & Seigneurs de la Cour, fut passé le contract de marriage d’entre le Duc d’Enguien fils aisné du Prince de Condé, avec Mademoiselle de Brézé niepce du Cardinal Duc [de Richelieu], & fille du Mareschal de Brézé.”
[6] McGowan, L’Art du ballet de cour, 189.
[7] Musical sources include the five-part “Concert donné à Louis XIII” found in F-Pn Rés F. 494 and Jules Écorcheville’s edition of the dances from the Kassel manuscript, Vingt suites d’orchestre du XVIIe siècle français (Berlin: L. Liepmannssohn; Paris: L. Marcel Fortin, 1906; reprint, New York: Broude, 1970).
[8] Hugo Reyne, director, La Simphonie du Marais, Musiques au temps de Richelieu “Musiques profanes,” Ballet de la prospérité des armes de France (Vendée: Musique à la Chabotterie, 2008). This is a two-disc set in which the first disc includes motets and a mass attributed to Guillaume Bouzignac.
[9] François de Chancy, 2nd Livre d’airs de cour, vols. 1 and 2, edited by Thomas Leconte (Versailles: Éditions du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, 2006).
[10] While McGowan, L’Art du ballet de cour, 307, and others after her, including Leconte, give the performance dates of February 7 and 14, this is an error. The two separate Gazette accounts of the 1641 ballet come from February 9 (page 68) and March 16 (page 148). McGowan gives the page reference for the March performance, but replaces the date with that of the original February performance.
[11] McGowan, L’Art du ballet de cour, 188–90.
[12] Olivia Bloechl, “War, Peace and the Ballet in Le Soir,” Early Music 38, no. 1 (Feb. 2010): 91–100.
[13] Historian Sharon Kettering has recently ventured into this territory with her article “Favour and Patronage: Dancers in the Court Ballets of Early Seventeenth-Century France,” Canadian Journal of History 43, no. 3 (Winter 2008): 391–415.
[14] In the Philidor Manuscript, this ballet is titled “Ballet de Mr le Cardinal de Richelieu” and can be found on pages 103–18 of the second volume of Anciens ballets (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k107418q/f107).
[15] David J. Buch, Dance Music from the Ballets de cour 1575–1651: Historical Commentary, Source Study, and Transcriptions from the Philidor Manuscripts. Dance and Music Series, 7 (Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 1993), 13–38.
[16] The title pages of volumes 1 and 2 both read: Recüeil de Plusieurs Anciens Ballets Dancez Sous les Regnes de Henry 3. Henry 4. Et Louis 13. Depuis l’An 1575 Jusqu’à 1641 Recherchez et mis en ordre Par Philidor l’Aisné Ordinaire de la Musique du Roy en 1690.
[17] “Ainsi je n’ay point fait de scrupule d’assembler tout ce que J’ay pu de Vieux Ballets qui ont esté dancez sous les Rois Henry 3. Henry 4. et Louis 13. et de les retirer de la poussière de quelques Cabinets, où ils estoient comme ensevelis.”
[18] Philidor’s date of 1627 on the heading for these airs (contained on pages 1–24 of F-Pn Rés F. 494 (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k103658m/f55.image), all drawn from ballets dating from 1635 and 1636, plus one air from the 1641 Ballet de la prospérité des armes, raises other questions concerning the accuracy of Philidor’s headings and sources.
[19] Buch, Dance Music, 59.
[20] “On pourra répéter la deuxième section si l’on veut.”
[21] Anyone who edits court ballet music, especially from the Philidor sources, is confronted with this issue; in addition to Buch, Dance Music, see Meredith Ellis Little, “Problems of Repetition and Continuity in the Dance Music of Lully’s Ballet des arts,” in Jean-Baptiste de Lully: Actes du colloque, ed. Jérôme de la Gorce and Herbert Schneider, 423–32 (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1990).
[22] Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations, L’Orchestre de Louis XIII (AliaVox Spain [2002]); Vincent Dumestre and La Poéme harmonique Estienne Moulinié, L’Humaine Comédie (Alpha 005 [2000]); Pierre Guédron, Le Consert des Consorts (Alpha 019 [2002]); Anthoine Boesset, Je meurs sans mourir (Alpha 057 [2003]).