Communications

Abstract

Communications John Hajdu Heyer, professor emeritus This column provides a forum for responses to the content of this journal, and for information of interest to readers. The editor reserves the right to publish letters in excerpted form and to edit them for conciseness and clarity. To the Editor: The April–June 2016 issue of Fontes Artis Musicae (vol. 63/2) printed what is now a fourth published review of my 2014 book The Lure and Legacy of Music at Versailles: Louis XIV and the Aix School. Authored by Matthias Range, this review stands apart from the others as it contains a plethora of errors and inaccuracies. I appreciate Fontes Artis Musicae’s willingness to publish this response. All an author can ask of a reviewer is a factual report based on a careful reading of the text. This review falls short. It is difficult to reconcile too many of Range’s statements with the text of the book. Early in his review (second paragraph), he states: The term ‘Aix School’ seems very much to be Heyer’s own creation—although we are not told anything about this. An evaluation of the term near the beginning of the book would have been appreciated. He later claims that ‘[Heyer] has managed to avoid a clear definition of what exactly he means with the “Aix School”’ until the book’s final chapter (Review: p. 160, left column, line 2). Range apparently failed to notice the Preface, which begins with these words (p. xv): In the conclusion to his 1996 article ‘Le grand motet à l’époque de Rameau: Le cas de Claude-Mathieu Pelegrin (1682–1763)’, Jean Duron, while noting the number of distinguished composers who came from the choir school at Saint-Sauveur in Aix-en-Provence, poses a simple question, ‘Might there have been an Aix School?’ [Footnote 1 in the book: Duron 1996, 174: ‘Y aurait-il eu une école aixoise?’] This book responds affirmatively to that question. An extraordinary group of composers emerged from the cathedral of Saint-Sauveur (Holy Savior Cathedral) in late seventeenth-century Aix. The next paragraphs identify and describe the group, outline the time span of the book, introduce the composers, and conclude with the statement: Along with Pelegrin, Poitevin and his other students, André Campra (1660–1744), Jean Gilles (1668–1705), Jacques Cabassole (1674–c. 1733), François Estienne (1674–1755), Laurent Belissen (1693–1762), and Antoine Blanchard (1696–1770), as well as a few others, formed the Aix School. The Preface clearly introduces and explains the term at the outset and cites its origin with Jean Duron. The ‘evaluation of the term’ sought by Range is thus provided, in fact, in the first paragraphs of the book’s Preface, then restated on p. 2 of the General Introduction. Part II, titled ‘The Aix School: A Legacy of Maîtres’, further expands on the points introduced in the earlier pages. Later criticisms of the book affirm Range’s neglect of the Preface. He states that ‘the text includes too many inconsistencies and mistakes to list them in detail’ (Review: p. 160, right column, line 3 up), supporting the claim with this example (Review: p. 161, left column, line 4): There is no consistency as to when the French original of quotations is given in footnotes: on p. 29. fn. 57, we have the original text from a 1660 publication, while on pages 23 to 27 we are not given the original texts from a 1666 publication. Once again, a closer reading of the Preface (p. xvii) would have alerted Range to the fact that I intentionally included the original French in some footnotes but not in others for a reason. The Preface states: Original transcribed French texts from primary sources, where translated, are given in the footnotes, but manuscript transcriptions are not modernized. French texts that are available in secondary sources are not repeated in the footnotes. A bibliography lists both primary and secondary sources, many of the latter being available online. [End Page 326] Both passages singled out by Range follow this approach. That from the later source (Pitton’s Histoire de la Ville d’Aix of 1666), while an early print, is available...