The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris by Nicholas Hammond (review)

During the past few decades, thanks to film and to critics such as Louis Marin, Jean-Marie Apostolidès, and Peter Burke, we are able to visualize seventeenth-century France. However, as Nicholas Hammond points out in this thoughtful and fluid study, such visual emphasis has tended to overshadow if not overwhelm other sensory perceptions of this period. Hammond argues that to omit the role of sound 'would both underestimate the real significance of the transient and ignore an essential component of what makes up the premodern world and the people who inhabited that world' (p. 9). The lack of any contemporary recording devices does not mean that we cannot capture the soundscape of the early modern city: we can endeavour to do so using written accounts, which, after all, we use for other sensory and imaginative perceptions. Hammond suggests that so many historical events are defined by sound that 'it seems perverse for subsequent scholarly research to have all but ignored their significance' (p. 11). Just like different auditory waves reaching a listener, Hammond weaves through the narrative from different perspectives, from the political climate of Louis XIV's abrupt taking of personal power in 1661 to some unexpected intrigue detailed in certain street ditties. Following on from Joan DeJean, Hammond shows the ways in which the Pont Neuf was the centre of the dissemination of satirical music in addition to being a vibrant epicentre of Parisian culture; there was a surprising degree of social mixing in its lively, sometimes unruly, atmosphere, and Hammond takes the reader on a journey that encompasses listeners of the music, folk singers, and targets of mordant —or sometimes sympathetic—sonic pillorying. One of the characters who haunted the bridge was Philippot le Savoyard, a blind composer and performer of popular songs whose admirers included Nicolas Boileau. Many of his songs were published, and Hammond provides convincing and sensitive close readings of selected lyrics, particularly in the ways in which Philippot evokes his sightlessness and coaxes his audience to experience his audiocentric world. A chapter on the politicization of sound considers, among other themes, the spatial reverberations of preachers' voices within churches. The trial of Nicolas Fouquet is the centrepiece of this chapter and Hammond charts how public opinion evolved with respect to the disgraced minister. The hero of the unedifyingly corrupt legal process is one of the judges, Olivier Lefèvre d'Ormesson, who remained impervious to repeated coercion to suborn him and who was influenced by Mme de Sévigné. The price he paid was high but his courage was recognized (and immortalized) in street songs, demonstrating how these works were both subversive and a safety valve. Hammond devotes two chapters to a song that unveils institutional hypocrisy in relating that Jacques Chausson was burned at the stake for sodomy while the comte de Guitaut was rewarded with the Cordon Bleu despite his same-sex liaisons. Hammond notes the tragic irony of Guitaut wearing the cope of the Ordre du Saint-Esprit with its flame motifs close to where others sharing his lifestyle perished by fire. This readable and groundbreaking book opens up new pathways to a turbulent period and has much to offer students and scholars of the Ancien Régime.