Querelle des Bouffons

The 1752-1754 run in Paris Buffonistenstreit (French Querelle des Bouffons ) turned superficially about the supremacy of French or Italian opera. On another level, it was a matter of current political emancipation of bourgeois opera genres (which the objects clause according to the comedies included ) against the court opera ( sung as a tragedy). During the dispute, the philosopher and composer Jean -Jacques Rousseau was able to distinguish with his antiaristocratic attitude, medium pioneered the dispute focused on the middle-class audiences Opera Troupe of Charles Simon Favart and their genre of opéra comique the way.

Trigger

Competition between French and Italian troops in Paris (see Paris market theater ) had decades of tradition and fueled by the free licensing disputes troops with the courtly theaters. The highly successful performance of Pergolesi's La serva padrona Intermezzo ( 1733) on August 1, 1752 by an Italian opera troupe under Eustachio Bambini sparked this rivalry again.

Rousseau, who had become in 1750 with his treatise Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts ( Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts) famous because he is rejecting the achievements of civilization, and who had already tried a considerable time without success as a composer, has now received opportunity to demonstrate what he meant by the prestigious nature of his condition. By deliberately simple French musical comedy Le Devin du village, he could break the winning streak of the Italian troops in October 1752 and had saved in some eyes the national pride. But since he did not want to take sides with the conservatives, as it now gave the impression he published in November 1753 essay Lettre sur la musique Francoise, with whom he denied any musical quality of the French language. Only the Italian language is the music appropriate as it is " gentle, sonorous, harmonious and wohlakzentuiert " sounds. Because the celebrated hero supported the opponents, this scripture was a great provocation.

In the course of the conflict more than 60 fonts usually leading philosophers have been published. The major players in the controversy were the one hand, the conservative, the French opera preferable Coin du Roi ( King's Lodge ) and on the other hand, the progressive, the Italian opera verfechtende Coin de la Reine ( the Queen's Lodge ). The latter included, inter alia, the encyclopedist by Denis Diderot, Jean Baptiste le Rond d' Alembert, Jean -Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Melchior Grimm.

Courtly and middle vs. serious and comic opera

In contrast to the discussion of the priority of the French or Italian music to beginning of the century (the Italian music was considered to be taught French as a simple and natural ) emphasizes Rousseau the simplicity of the melody accented Italian music compared to the complexity of the through lush instrumentation, intricate polyphony and harmony dominated set of French Tragédie lyrique. The decisive factor for this inversion of the principles were the facts, that the reception of Italian music " easier " now less on the opera seria than on the more "natural " and opera buffa was referring, especially on those works which originally appeared in only as an intermezzo the pauses between the acts of the court operas were inserted and were not considered independently. With their everyday actions could the bourgeois (and the court partially ) identify audience better than with the political subjects of tragedies.

The by Rousseau's writing mainly attacked composer Jean -Philippe Rameau had taken before the Buffonistenstreit elements of the lighter Italian style in his operas but is attacked (as in Pigmalion 1748), in its capacity as court composer.

Consequences

The Buffonistenstreit had profound consequences for the development of French opera: the courtly French orthography (such as the characteristic time changes in the recitative ) increasingly disappeared and resembled themselves to the popular Italian style, first at the Opéra Comique, the after Buffonistenstreit of the Italians Egidio Duni was coined, and then also in the Tragédie lyrique, without altering the structure of their fünfaktiger. In Piccinnistenstreit a contrast between Italian and French music was conjured up and decided this time in favor of a French operatic style, was blamed for the Christoph Willibald Gluck again.