Lully’s music in northern Europe: evidence of early circulation in Swedish libraries

Abstract

Abstract At Jean-Baptiste Lully’s death in 1687, music from his stage works was already circulating within and outside France, and was used and praised by ‘all connoisseurs’ in Europe (according to Dutch music publisher Amédée Le Chevalier). This was at a point when many of Lully’s works were still not printed and the Parisian music dealers had not yet started their business with his music. Surviving manuscript sources from the dissemination of Lully’s music before his death are few and fragmentary and have sometimes survived at a geographical distance from Paris. This article investigates a handful of previously unconsidered music sources, copied or printed in France in the 1670s and early 1680s, which were acquired by various members of northern aristocratic families and have survived in Swedish libraries. Viewed as a whole, these seemingly disparate sources can throw light on the details of the early circulation of Lully’s music, as well as on musical practices of the elites in late 17th-century Europe.