The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 31 (2025) No. 1

Music, Dance and Franco-Italian Cultural Exchange c. 1700: Michel Pignolet de Montéclair and the Prince de Vaudémont. By Don Fader. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2021. [362 pp. ISBN 978-1783276288]

Reviewed by Margaret R. Butler*

1.1 In his recently published monograph, Don Fader has given us an authoritative, meticulously researched study of an individual whose importance in the intersections between French and Italian styles at the turn of the eighteenth century has long gone unrecognized. Montéclair is placed at the center of the narrative, and detailed microhistories around him emerge like spokes emanating from a wheel’s hub. Through analysis of a wealth of detail, drawing on a rich and diverse array of sources, Fader grapples with thorny questions around cosmopolitanism, the definition of national styles (not a purely musical matter but one involving issues of identity and taste), and “les goûts réunis”; reminds us of the importance of travel and collaboration among composers and other members of an institution’s creative personnel; points up the central role of patronage in this complex interplay, and its implications; and explores nuances in genres sung, played, and danced.

1.2 A central contribution of the study is Fader’s framing of his story as an histoire croisée, one that exerts a mutual and ongoing influence on his subject. One wishes for a bit more development of this concept, likely new to most of his musicological readership, as it relates to his topic, although the contrast with cultural transfer (as an influence that is unidirectional and static rather than malleable and dynamic) is helpful and clear. He shows us that the reciprocity of this relationship had deep roots, and he presents the many contexts in which it occurred. He begins by introducing us to Montéclair, a multifaceted musician whose wide-ranging activities shaped musical life in the Prince’s milieu, and then traces Montéclair’s path as it traverses a series of cultural centers: Brussels, Paris, Milan, Turin. While Turin’s importance as a center for Italian and French stylistic blends in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is by now familiar terrain, Fader reinforces its importance and nuances its story by privileging Montéclair’s experience and involvement in the creative hybridization that occurred there.

1.3 Fader’s story proceeds chronologically at first, with chapter divisions initially corresponding largely to locations in the journey. Chapter 1 focuses on Montéclair’s patron, the Prince de Vaudémont, and  offers a broad perspective on the prince’s political orientation and significance, his charisma and talent as a dancer, and his commitment to building an ensemble that reflected his cosmopolitan tastes. The chapter takes the reader from Brussels to Paris, arriving in Milan where Chapter 2 begins. Here we are given a full view of Vaudémont’s patronage, with opera, dance, and instrumental music each treated in detail. One wishes that a  chronology clarifying the duration of the Vaudémont era (1698–1707) had been provided at the outset (the inclusive dates appear for the first time on p. 54), making clear that Chapter 3’s deep dive into links between Turin and Milan during the Milanese period constitutes an expanded view of a portion of the foregoing chronology. Chapter 4 treats Montéclair’s return to Paris and his many subsequent activities: performing, publishing pedagogical texts and criticism, and collecting and editing Italian music.

1.4 Fader’s study allows us to draw parallels to other musicians who played equally significant roles in later manifestations of les goûts réunis, and whose importance has gone largely unnoticed. In some respects, Montéclair resembles Jacques-Simon Mangot, Rameau’s brother-in-law, who likewise held many different positions and who was a multi-talented musician, composer, opera director, and instrumentalist (as well as a singer). Like Montéclair, Mangot traveled and was well acquainted with both French and Italian musical styles. (He too wrote about his impressions of their differences, though in far less detail than Montéclair.) And his recreations of Rameau’s operas for Parma helped change the landscape of eighteenth-century opera, opening up new possibilities for adaptation and generic intermingling. Mangot had everything to do with how French entertainment looked and sounded to the city’s hybrid theatrical public composed of Italian and French patrons in the Bourbon-controlled colony of mid-century Parma. To be certain, Montéclair as a prolific composer and theorist far exceeds Mangot as a creative artist. Yet Montéclair’s wide-ranging influence on music and theater in Vaudémont’s Milan does bear some resemblance to Mangot’s in Philippe de Bourbon’s Parma, reminding us of the significance of figures proficient in multiple national styles whose spheres of influence encompassed but extended far beyond composing.^[1]

1.5 Fader’s contribution propels us forward in understanding the vital role played by the intersection among economics, performance, the marketplace, and artistic products. He demonstrates the importance of looking closely at the specific musical and theatrical features of the locations along his subject’s itinerary and contextualizing those examples within broader cultural shifts that point to the intersections of political, cultural, and aesthetic changes.

1.6 In a study this complex, organization is a challenge. The book’s division into sections, subsections, and chapters, with multiple levels in its hierarchy whose relationship is not always clear, is curious, and at times the labeling of these portions seems overly complicated. The four numbered chapters consist of activities in different cultural centers or transitions from one place to another. Chapter 3, with four large sections (each of which, like the preceding and following chapters, includes multiple smaller sections whose topics appear in the Table of Contents) is significantly longer given the wealth of material presented and the importance of the Turinese connection, resulting in a side trip out of the chronological progression. Given the trajectory thus far, it seems somewhat out of balance with the previous two chapters and the following Chapter 4. The “Northern Italian Nexus” (p. 110) is a concept developed in Chapter 3, and an important one—it demonstrates the value of conceiving of Milan, Turin, Venice, and other important centers in the northern Italian states as interconnected. Yet the phrase appears no fewer than three times in different chapter titles and section names (Chapter 3’s title, section II within that chapter, and the first of the book’s two Epilogues). The book seems to end multiple times, with a General Conclusion and two Epilogues in which a second conclusion is inserted. At times one tends to lose the forest for the trees; yet it is a story in which details matter, and this comes across clearly in the attention that Fader lends them. He hints at the importance of performers (p. 5) but could go further to develop this point. Although this is clearly not his main focus, the mobility of performers in this era seems worth more than a mention in view of the emphasis he places on the significance of travel and collaboration.

1.7 The narrative is enhanced by numerous illustrations, including varied and helpful figures, tables, and musical examples. In short, Fader’s rich and complex study is a valuable reminder of the possibilities that open up when we remember the extent to which our national styles are constructs that help us tell particular kinds of stories. Fader’s excellent work reminds us anew of the importance of an approach that is narrow and deep, but that also notices links and communities, as we seek to nuance our stories about stylistic development, generic play, and theatrical life.