The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 30 (2024) No. 1

Für Gott und die Welt: Musik zu den Statuspassagen Ludwigs XIV. (1638‒1662). By Hanna Walsdorf. Musica poetica / Musik der Frühen Neuzeit 6. [x, 434 pp. ISBN 978-3-937788-77-7.]

Reviewed by Michael Klaper*

1. Introduction

2. A Cultural Historiography of Music for Louis XIV

3. The Quest for (Musical) Meaning

References

1. Introduction

1.1 Hanna Walsdorf is well known as a truly inspiring scholar who dedicates much of her work to early modern dance music. She has an extraordinary talent for finding and assembling new source materials concerning seemingly well-known works, such as the comédie-ballet Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670) by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully.^[1] Applying strictly philological methods—e.g., the comparison of diverse sources for a given theatrical performance—she is able to shed new light on the texts and contexts of such spectacles without neglecting theoretical frameworks (for example, theories of ritual) or the cultural spaces surrounding the spectacles themselves.

2. A Cultural Historiography of Music for Louis XIV

2.1 All this is true of Walsdorf’s book under review here, whose title in English translation reads For God and the World: Music for Louis XIV’s Rites of Passage (1638‒62). This study is the author’s Habilitationsschrift and is among the many results of a research project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany’s most important institution for the sponsorship of scientific projects), which ran from 2014 to 2020: ‟Ritual Design for the Ballet Stage: Constructions of Popular Culture in European Theatrical Dance, 1650‒1760.”^[2]

2.2 As the book’s title indicates, it is an in-depth study of what the author sees as rites of passage in the life of the French king Louis XIV (1638‒1715), focusing on his birth through the early years of his personal reign at the beginning of the 1660s. Thus, the heart of the book presents detailed reconstructions and descriptions of public and private festivals and rituals on such occasions as Louis XIV’s baptism (1643), his ascent to the throne (in the same year), his anointing and coronation (1654), as well as his wedding (1660). Walsdorf takes account of a vast array of diverse musical compositions that had the function of announcing these events, confirming and commemorating their importance, and contributing to their spiritual or allegorical significance. Preceding the chronologically ordered chapters on the events, an introductory chapter discusses the historical and social framework as well as the theoretical concepts underlying the ensuing narration.

2.3 Most important for Walsdorf are the classic studies by Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (1957),^[3] and Marc Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges (1924),^[4] which (according to the author) have gained a fruitful reception in disciplines such as history and art history, but perhaps less so in musicology. These, and other, more recent studies, such as Kristin Marek’s Die Körper des Königs (2009),^[5] form the methodological framework for Walsdorf’s own study. Thus, her starting point is the medieval theory of the king’s two bodies—the mortal “natural” body and the immortal “political” body that lived on in his successor—along with the concomitant belief that the king was touched by divine grace. Walsdorf’s underlying premise is that this way of thinking was still important in Louis XIV’s time. As she understands it, Louis had a sacred “body” (or character), a political body, and a natural body, and these imply diverse levels of rulership. Furthermore, these bodies could, in turn, be staged and referenced not only via texts, the visual arts, architecture, and so on, but also by music. As Walsdorf shows, the different musical ensembles of the French royal court each played its own part in this staging. Through the Chapelle (responsible for sacred music), the Écurie (responsible for political representation), and the Chambre (responsible for chamber music), each of the three bodies had a sonic expression of its own.

2.4 Walsdorf’s book is impressive for the wealth of information and documentation it offers. The author turns her attention to every sort of musical or music-theatrical work she can identify as having a connection to the events in question, whether a concerted mass by the Venice-based composer Giovanni Rovetta or a monophonic song by the Parisian poet Marc-Antoine Girard de Saint-Amand, both written in honor of the birth of Louis XIV in 1638. This also extends to little-known repertoire, such as the Ballet de la Félicité of 1639, which celebrated the same event. In addition, Walsdorf tries to assemble every possible sort of documentation, be it contemporaneous (or slightly later) chronicles, festival descriptions or diaries, pictures, drawings, coins, and so on. All the sources are compared, which also serves to point out what we cannot know with certainty. Many of the sources are reproduced, and the texts are transcribed and either summarized or translated into German.

2.5 In this way we come as close as possible to a complete picture of each of these events, even if the music sung or played for the occasion is now lost. One of the great strengths of Walsdorf’s book is its presentation of music as only one essential part of a much more wide-ranging strategy of staging the king in his different bodies (or aspects). Indeed, Walsdorf demonstrates that the musical dimension of some events was restricted to the ringing of bells; the whole soundscape otherwise included only, for example, acclamations and the firing of cannons. Given the recent interest in sound studies, surely no one would complain about this description. Finally, the book includes an appendix that presents a documented chronology of Louis XIV’s appearances in ballets and mascarades from 1651 through 1670, a comparison between different livrets of the aforementioned Ballet de la Félicité, lists of examples, and an index of the persons named.

3. The Quest for (Musical) Meaning

3.1 Für Gott und die Welt might rightly be called an example of the cultural historiography of music: it decidedly places music within a larger cultural, political, and artistic environment, and it offers new and interesting perspectives on many little-known—and a few familiar—festive events and musical artefacts. However, one of the shortcomings of the book is the way in which the author approaches the music she transcribes and attempts to illuminate. This starts with the very first musical examples presented: excerpts from the Ballet de la Félicité (pp. 127‒52). Although the identification of the source and the transcription of these pieces are valuable in themselves, the analysis of the music fails for two reasons: first, the criteria on which the analysis is based are not at all clear, and second, the descriptive approach does not serve any argument or thesis.

3.2 This situation becomes even more problematic in the case of  the dance music from the Ballet de l’Impatience of 1661 (pp. 301‒20). Of course, the question of how far specific dances might be inspired by, or might refer to, the subject of a given entrée is a thorny one. It does not become easier, however, if one searches, as Walsdorf does, for vague analogies between certain musical traits and supposedly underlying ideas, almost in the manner of madrigalisms. Take, for instance, the following description of Ex. 20 on p. 345 (concerning the danced entrées in the wedding opera Ercole amante of 1662): ‟The music of [Louis XIV’s] sublime dance was based on ever-returning, ascending melodic phrases that led him across the stage like the rising sun, filling everything with warmth, in a majestic tempo.”^[6] The problem with such descriptions is that we simply cannot know whether they correspond to the perceptions of contemporary audiences.

3.3 Some minor factual errors in the book need to be mentioned as well. It is not completely true, for example, that the anonymous author of the argument of the Ballet de la Félicité “even presented the ballet in the tradition of Greek tragedy,”^[7] given that he speaks of tragicomedies rather than of tragedies (pp. 132‒3). Similarly, with regard to the ballet entrées by Jean-Baptiste Lully for the Parisian performances of Francesco Cavalli’s opera Xerse (1660), Walsdorf’s claim that they were intended to connect this older but revised opera to its new context (Louis XIV’s wedding with the Spanish Infanta, Maria Teresa) seems doubtful, at least without further explanation, particularly because Walsdorf calls some of them ‟current fashionable dances that had a rural and playful flair” (p. 301).^[8] Finally, the characterization of Louis Hesselin as ‟Dirigent” (conductor) of the Ballet de l’Impatience—following Jean Loret, who identifies him as “conducteur”—is misleading since Hesselin seems to have been the organizer of the spectacle (p. 303).

3.4 These quibbles represent only minor details, and they do not disturb the overall impression Walsdorf’s book has left on me. Clearly, it is a milestone in the field of ‟ideengeschichtliche” music historiography: a music historiography informed by the history of ideas.