Study on French Baroque singing by accent and intonation segmentation

Abstract

The baroque music is modelled on the language, so the claim of the composers of the time and the report of the musicians and musicologists of today. It is thus national because it always refers to a specific language. Typically, we consider as a proof the work of the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully who, as the saying goes, would have formed his recitatives according to the declamation of the actress Champmeslé. Starting from a specific linguistic material, Baroque music is national: it is French, Italian, German, English ... Numerous studies, in particular musicological, have shown the treatment of language rhythm among composers. In this article we will discuss the subject from a wider angle and try to show by an accentuated and intonational segmentation of the text and the melody composed by the musicians, to what extent the prosody of French and the French Baroque music correspond.We use the prosodic segmentation model proposed by Piet Mertens for French, and we base our study on a body of recitatives, because this genre is considered extremely close to declamation, and therefore to the spoken language. Despite the differences between the language used in the compositions and the standard Parisian French of the 21st century, due to the style and evolution of French, Mertens' approach proves to be convincing in describing the compositional setting of the text by composers French Baroque. The research thus confirms the close proximity between textual and musical prosody for the French Baroque recitative.