Musical Debate and Political Culture in France, 1700–1830 by R. J. Arnold (review)

R. J. Arnold's new book is stimulating and ambitious. Rejecting James Johnson's method in Listening in Paris (Berkeley: University of Cali -fornia Press, 1995), in Chapter 1 Arnold determines to put us on critical guard. For every apparent certainty, an uncertainty lurks; one line of analysis must be confronted by a contrasting alternative. The story to be told is not principally about music and opera, but about the acts and contexts and modes of disputation themselves. At the same time, the book's whole point is predicated on the importance of music in French society, which explains the almost inevitable connection between 'heightened political tension' and 'heightened aesthetic tension' (p. 15), or between 'a concurrence of an excitable political atmosphere and an artistic challenge that demanded a response' (p. 152).

Its argument must therefore communicate operatic drifts and institutions across a long time-scale. Using a formidable bibliographical backup, Arnold makes a convincing enough case except where the early 1790s are concerned: it is only possible to deny their 'particular novelty or invention in French opera' (p. 154) by ignoring operas with spoken dialogue by Berton, Kreuzer, Méhul, and Cherubini. Attaining the strength of an avant-garde, they would shortly inspire Beethoven. Readers seeking correspondences here between political and aesthetic tensions must content themselves with '[cultural rhythms] are rarely aligned neatly with political events' (p. 157). Did not the new culture translate into music? Of course, it did, but the debates about musical 'noise' and 'terrorism' are deferred until Chapter 6 (p. 185), supposedly the home of post-1800 matters.

Taking the subject of querelles across the 1790s and into the new century came from the wish to test out continuities. In closing the book, Arnold's first conclusion neatly covered both centuries: 'querelles . . . were . . . struggles for authority over the ways in which opera was apprehended by its audiences' (p. 212). Correspondingly, the role of encoded meanings (for which Richard Taruskin's phrase 'Aesopian discourse' is borrowed) is finally downgraded to near-elimination. This is disappointing, partly because it contradicts earlier evidence, and partly because so many interesting other possibilities have been raised. For example (I extract one thread from the closely-woven essay serving as Arnold's Introduction) 'It is not . . . entirely clear that forming judgements on music was something that took place in the public sphere' (p. 11). Appreciating performance art is complex, and theatre itself was the most obvious and volatile locus of that sphere.

The book is organised in sequence: Raguenet versus Le Cerf; Ramistes versus Lullistes; the Querelle des Bouffons; the Gluck-Piccinni disputes; the 'Interlude' of the 1790s; and 'New Avenues for Musical Debate', including Rossini's advent. Richly discursive accounts cover the media of debate (tracts, pamphlets, 'letters', or plays) and the identity of the main authors. Various longer-term problems are raised periodically, e.g., the tendency to fashion querelles into binary poles such as 'France' / 'Italy'. Another early binary is a 'distinction between savant and demotic styles of musical appreciation' (p. 36), later to gain 'sharpness of contour' (see p. 144). This conflict between trained and untrained taste (still with us) became acute when music embraced orchestral complexity, and Mozart and Beethoven hoved into view. The argument can lose momentum, however: a welcome exposure of Méhul's preface to Ariodant (pp. 175–6) skips Méhul's main suggestion, for composers to join the written debate systematically, thus enhancing the education of listener-debaters. It cannot be a plea for 'professionalisation' tout court. State music education had become a reality in Paris, and Arnold describes conflicts at the Conservatoire shortly after.

In the first chapter, the France-Italy binary is reconsidered: Arnold considers it 'unstable' (p. 43). Several recent publications strongly argue for political debate, at court level, conveyed through Italian-influenced opera (Georgia Cowart's 'Carnival in Paris or Protest in Paris...