Sébastien de Brossard ed. by Jean Duron

Abstract

BROSSARD'S DRAMATIC WORKS Sebastien de Brossard. L'oeuvre dramatique: Typhon & les Geants [SdB.67] ; Intermedes [SdB.68] ; Concert sur l'Alceste de Lully [SdB.264]. Edition de Jean Duron. (Patrimoine musical francais. Monumentales, III, 7.) Versailles: Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 2015. [Table of contents, p. iii-iv; introd. Fre., Eng., p. v-lxiii; texts and translations, p. lxvi-lxxxvi; facsims., p. lxxxviii-ci; score, p. 1-175; crit. commentary Fre., p. 177-81. Paperback. ISMN 979-0-707034-65-1; pub. no. CMBV 065. euro120.]Sebastien de Brossard (1655-1730), a crucial figure of the late French baroque period belonging to the generation between Lully and Rameau, has received much musicological attention within the last thirty years. Known primarily through his Dictionnaire de musique (1703), a pioneering work of its kind France, Brossard gained a reputation throughout his life as a music theorist and music collector. There is little evidence that his own music was much performed during his lifetime, a few exceptions notwithstanding. This situation changed the last two decades of the twentieth century, when the performance of Brossard's music experienced a renaissance France, thanks to the renewed interest his compositions resulting from the groundbreaking scholarly work by Jean Duron, Yolande de Brossard, and Catherine Cessac. While these scholars have all greatly contributed toward Brossard's thrust into the scholarly limelight through catalogs, biographies, editions, and articles, much of the merit of editing Brossard's oeuvre goes to Jean Duron. Duron's expertise as editor of both Brossard's music and of his theoretical writings has yielded a wealth of publications, which include a thematic catalog (Jean Duron, L'oeuvre de Sebastien de Brossard (1655-1730): Catalogue thematique, Domaine musicologique II, Publications du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, CMBV-a 1 [Versailles: Editions du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles; Paris: Klincksieck, 1995]) and four of the eight volumes that comprise the collected edition of Brossard's works, published by the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles over the last twenty years. The volume under review-edited by Duron-features Brossard's dramatic works, and completes the series devoted to the composer.One of the chief issues facing Duron with this volume was the paucity of Brossard's dramatic works. The most important source of Brossard's own music-his personal collection he bequeathed to the Royal Library, carefully detailed his own Catalogue des livres de musique theorique et pratique (see La collection Sebastien de Brossard, 1655-1730: Catalogue (Departement de la musique, Res. Vm.8 20), ed. Yolande de Brossard [Paris: Bibliotheque nationale de France, 1994], hereinafter, Catalogue; the original document is available at http://gallica.bnf.fr /ark:/12148/btv1b550059643)-does not contain all of his works, and this makes the task of gauging the composer's operatic output particularly difficult. Duron surmises, in the area of dramatic music, it is probable that the three works edited here represent only a part of his production (p. xxxix [page references are to Buford Norman's English translation of Duron's introduction]). The three works question include the dramatic divertissement Typhon et les Geants (Typhoeus and the Giants, 1691), the Concert sur l'Alceste de Lully (Concert based on Lully's Alceste, 1691-95), and a collection of thirteen pieces, both instrumental and vocal-eight of which are by Brossard-entitled Intermedes (ca. 1699). In his introduction (p. xxxix-xlii), Duron also details the historical background to the opera Pyrame et Thisbe, composed by Brossard for the 1685 festivities at Reuil, organized by the 2d Duke of Richelieu for Louis XIV, which is unfortunately lost. The opera was probably never performed because the Reuil festivities were cancelled on account of the king's more pressing project-the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. …