Rousseau Among the Moderns: Music, Aesthetics, Politics

Notes

N O T E S introduction 1. For a study of Rousseau’s influence on the Revolution itself, see Swenson, On Jean-Jacques Rousseau. See also Peter Gay’s introduction to Cassirer, Question of Rousseau. Gay writes, ‘‘The influence of Rousseau’s doctrines has been immense— they left their mark on the most diverse spirits and movements. Burke execrated Rousseau as the very embodiment of the Age of Reason. De Maistre and Bonald condemned him as the advocate of an irresponsible individualism and as the philosopher of ruinous disorder. Later critics, such as Sir Henry Maine, attacked him for establishing a ‘collective despot’ and for reintroducing, in the Contrat social, ‘the old divine right of kings in new dress’’’ (4; internal quotes from Henry Maine, Popular Government [New York: Holt, 1886], 157, 160). 2. In response to Derrida’s reading of Rousseau, de Man’s Blindness and Insight includes a chapter that takes issue with Derrida’s reading, especially with respect to Rousseau’s account of rhetorical language. Gearhart presents a reading of Rousseau’s articulation of the relationship between history and fiction in relation to both de Man and Derrida in Open Boundary, 234–84. Other notable contributions to the critical debate include Siebers, ‘‘Ethics in the Age of Rousseau’’; McDonald, ‘‘Derrida’s Reading of Rousseau’’; Garver, ‘‘Derrida on Rousseau’’; and Bernasconi, ‘‘No More Stories .’’ Finally, for a reading of Rousseau that raises the possibility of accent in written language, see Wyss, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 3. Among the more important early studies of Rousseau’s contributions in musicology are Jansen, Jean-Jacques Rousseau als Musiker (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1884); Tiersot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau; and Pougin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau musicien. There are also important studies that integrate considerations of music, such as Wokler, Social Thought, and Robinson, Rousseau’s Doctrine of the Arts. 4. A few critics have published interdisciplinary studies of Rousseau that cover works in music. See Scott, ‘‘Harmony’’; O’Dea, Rousseau; Lefebvre, L’esthétique de Rousseau; Thomas, Music and the Origins of Language; Strong, ‘‘Theatricality, Public Space’’; and Strong, ‘‘Music, Politics.’’ Finally, Robert Wokler presents a strikingly original argument that historians looking for the traces of the practical implications of Rousseau’s work in the French Revolution ought to look at the writing on music, and specifically the Lettre sur la musique française and the Essai sur l’origine des langues (‘‘Rousseau on Rameau and Revolution’’). 5. A characteristic publication born of this uncertainty is an issue dedicated to ‘‘The Future of Criticism—A Critical Inquiry Symposium,’’ Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004). As W. J. T. Mitchell points out in the preface to the issue, the New York Times and the Boston Globe covered this meeting of the journal’s board that focused on the ‘‘crisis’’ in theory. Many of the essays in the issue focus on literary theory’s potential for political engagement. 188 Notes to Pages 2–5 6. As the editor of Eighteenth-Century Studies from 2004 until 2012, I occupied a privileged vantage point from which to survey the field. Since its creation in 1967, the journal has had an interdisciplinary focus. Nonetheless, the increase of submissions and publications in art history, musicology, and material cultural studies has been noticeable in the last ten years. 7. According to Tiersot, the Geneva Library has a manuscript that looks to be incomplete notes for a treatise on harmony, based largely on Rameau, in Rousseau’s hand (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 58). 8. I strongly disagree with critics such as Wokler who insist on attempting to ascertain the ‘‘intended meaning’’ behind Rousseau’s texts, gleaned from the historical context that gave rise to them (see Social Thought). 9. For a detailed discussion of aesthetic modernity in nineteenth-and twentiethcentury thought, see chapter 5 of this volume. 10. For a complete account of the writings in music, see Gagnebin’s introduction to Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, 5:xiii–xxix (hereafter OC). 11. Wokler asserts that ‘‘throughout his life Rousseau was more devoted to the study of music and its theory than to any other subject’’ (Social Thought, 242). 12. For a detailed analysis of this episode from the Confessions, see chapter 4 of this volume. 13. See Gagnebin’s account in the introduction to OC, 5:xiii–xiv. In the Confessions , see esp. 1:11–12, 117–31, 147–51, and 313–16. 14. The last musical composition is likely Romance du Saule, one of the ballads in Consolations des misères...