The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 32 (2026) No. 1

Belatedly Noted

This new series aims to recognize important books that, for whatever reason, slipped through our review process when they were new. To motivate contributions, we welcome brevity—say, 500–600 words. For this series only (i.e., not for regular, full-length book reviews, which must be assigned by the Reviews Editor) we encourage volunteer submissions. If you wish to contribute, please contact Maria Purciello, Reviews Editor, mpurciel@udel.edu.

This issue’s column has a theme: reference works on French music. One of the three books discussed here dates from the early years of the millennium; the other two are relatively recent. In addition to these three, we should mention a fourth: Histoire de l’opéra français du Roi Soleil à la Révolution, ed. Hervé Lacombe (Paris: Fayard, 2021)—a wide-ranging multi-authored volume that encompasses both a historical survey and discussions of “production et diffusion,” “imaginaire et culture,” and aesthetics and poetics.—Ed.

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Dictionnaire de l’Opéra de Paris sous l’Ancien Régime (1669–1791). Edited by Sylvie Bouissou, Pascal Denécheau, France Marchal-Ninosque. 4 vols. Dictionnaires et synthèses 14–17. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019–20. [941, 935, 967, 1163 pp. ISBN 978-2-406-09061-8/-09064-9/-09673-3/-09846-1 paperback, 978-2-406-09062-5/-09065-6/-09674-0/-09847-8 hardback.]

1.1 This recent and extremely ambitious multi-authored reference work is indispensable for anyone whose research touches upon theatrical music in France during the ancien régime and would also be useful for those interested in the circulation of relevant people, repertory, and ideas beyond France’s borders. Whereas most of the articles concern either works performed at the Opéra in Paris or the people who created or performed in them, the range of topics is so broad that together they provide an eye-opening look at the functioning of one of the most important cultural institutions of the period, the Académie Royale de Musique.

1.2 The articles on works cover every opera, ballet, pastorale, Italian intermezzo, or other type of work performed at the Opéra—or by its troupe in other venues (generally the royal court)—from the birth of the institution until the French Revolution. They include a wealth of information, starting with identification of the genre, act structure, composer, librettist, and date and place of the premiere. Next comes a section on roles, including, when possible, the names of the performers: first the singing cast (complete with vocal ranges), then the dancing cast and their roles. (The call number of the principal libretto consulted is provided—an important consideration, given that surviving copies sometimes reveal that changes were made during a run.) Next follows an act-by-act synopsis, highlighting important vocal and instrumental numbers. The lengthy commentary that follows includes historical and contextual information, dates of revivals through the end of the eighteenth century, performance history beyond Paris, and other details of the work’s reception, including any parodies it received in other Parisian theaters. Each article concludes with a select bibliography of writings about the work, arranged chronologically.

1.3 There are also entries for every individual known to have been associated with the institution, from the composers, librettists, singers, dancers, and orchestra members to the administrators, set designers, copyists, stagehands, and ticket-takers. The articles on singers and dancers have the virtue of listing every single role the performer undertook over his or her career.

1.4 Beyond the articles on works or people, there is an impressively wide range of topics, each receiving its own entry. To sample some of them:

• The performing spaces (Salles de l’ARM): the theater in the Palais Royal in its original and various rebuilt forms, the Grande Écurie at Versailles, the Tuilleries, etc., and places within them such as the Côté du roi
• The functioning of the theater: Décors, Machines, Magasin de l’Opéra (which contained the workshops and storage space)
• Genres: Tragédie en musique, Pastorale, Pastorale héroïque, Drame, Fragments, Parodie dramatique d’opéra, and so on
• Categories of activity: Acteur et actrice chantant (soliste), Acteur et actrice chantant (choriste)—these entries cover the qualities sought in singers, the size and structure of the troupe, how roles were assigned, the hierarchy within the troupe, salaries, terms of service, and retirement—and similar articles covering Acteur et actrice dansant, Maître de ballet, Maître de musique, Copistes, Garde de l’Opéra, Garde-Pompe (firefighters), and so on
• Voice types: e.g., Dessus, Haute-contre, Taille, Basse-Taille
• Terminology pertinent to portions of a work: e.g., Air ajouté, Air à jouer, Ariette, Divertissement, Entracte, Sommeil
• Phenomena touching in various ways on the activities of the institution: Incendies (fires); Franc-Maçonnerie (Freemasonry); Capitation (taxes paid by the performers, for which benefits were mounted); the various pamphlet wars that divided the Parisian intelligentsia (Querelle d’Alceste, Querelle des Bouffons, etc.); and many more

1.5 Volume 4 concludes with an extremely useful chronology of the theatrical seasons, in which can be found basic information about the works, whether premieres or revivals, performed in any given year, from 1670 to 1791.

1.6 The publisher sells the four volumes individually, and it is also possible to purchase individual letters of the alphabet. See the website for details: https://classiques-garnier.com/dictionnaire-de-l-opera-de-paris-sous-l-ancien-regime-1669-1791-tome-i-a-c.html. There is unfortunately no plan to offer an online version.

Rebecca Harris-Warrick
Cornell University
rh14@cornell.edu

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Pierre I Ballard et Robert III Ballard: Imprimeurs du roy pour la musique (1599–1673). By Laurent Guillo. 2 vols. Études du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Sprimont, Belgium: Mardaga, 2003. [732, 814 pp. ISBN 2-87009-810-3/-811-1.]

Christophe Ballard, imprimeur-libraire en musique sous Louis XIV: Avec un inventaire des éditions des Ballard de 1672 à 1715. By Laurent Guillo. Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2021. [658 pp. ISBN 978-2-503-59989-2.]

2.1 Thanks to a monopoly granted by the kings of France, the Ballard family dominated letterpress music printing in that country for two centuries, starting in 1551. With these two catalogs, Laurent Guillo covers the three generations of Ballards who managed the firm during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Pierre I (1599–1639, initially in collaboration with his mother), Robert III (1639–1673), and Christophe (1673–1715, in collaboration with his son in the later years). The earlier catalog includes, among other items, the final flowering of late Renaissance polyphony, organ music, music for solo lute, liturgical music, polyphonic masses in choirbooks, motets, collections of airs de cour and of airs sérieux and à boire, theoretical treatises, and ballet livrets. The later catalog, while reflecting the continued importance of printed texts, liturgical materials, and sacred genres, includes new repertoires of secular vocal music: cantatas, “airs italiens” as well as airs in French, and stage music, especially the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully and his followers. In the 1690s Christophe found modest new ways to make engraved music part of his operation. (Music engraving had come to France in the 1660s, and Robert had seen it mainly as competition.) An interplay with other commercial enterprises, such as Etienne Roger’s shop in Amsterdam, also took on importance.

2.2 These books are monumental. They include extended discussions of the history of the family and the firm, in broad cultural context and based on exhaustive archival research, as well as detailed explanations of printing practices, accompanied by facsimiles of decorations and initials. Legal documents are inventoried and transcribed; the 2021 publication includes complete transcriptions of surviving contracts between Christophe Ballard and the composers whose works he printed, as well as transcriptions of contemporaneous catalogs of the firm’s offerings and the detailed inventory of the Ballards’ typographical materials that was compiled around the time legal control passed from Robert to Christophe. The social history alone is fascinating; for instance, the 2003 publication contains detailed accounts of the Ballards’ legal maneuvers as others attempted to break their stranglehold on the field, and the 2021 volume details the various stages in the relationship between the Ballards and the Lully family in the years following Lully père’s sudden death in 1687. As for Guillo’s enormous contribution to descriptive bibliography, I find especially helpful his ingenious collation of archival data with the surviving editions, as he pairs the fonts and ornamental pieces listed verbally in archival documents (such as an inventory of 1698) with the typefaces and ornaments seen visually in the publications themselves. He lays this out fully in 2003 and refers to it in summary in 2021.

2.3 The catalog of printed editions is more detailed in the 2003 publication than the later one. Catalog entries there include format, collation, and font of the cataloged edition, a detailed inventory of its contents, location of extant copies, and references to secondary literature. In 2021 Guillo did not attempt to list all extant copies of each print or to list the poetic incipit of every air. He cites the sheer size of the job—nearly 1300 catalog entries—and notes the increased availability of digitized exemplars online (p. 7). In any case, the entries in the 2021 catalog are nonetheless replete with useful information. To cite just one helpful detail: Guillo identifies as eighteenth-century forgeries various printed title pages long attributed to Christophe Ballard. All in all, Christophe Ballard imprimeur-libraire en musique sous Louis XIV, which remains in print, is well worth the €85 list price.

Lois Rosow
Ohio State University
rosow.1@osu.edu