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2021
- handle: 10670/1.q611dz
- isbn: 978-1-472-47926-6
- halshs: halshs-03448641
- doi: 10.4324/9781315554990-14
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info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.4324/9781315554990-14
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Work, Method of Industry (Psychology) Method of work Serious music Musical compositions Art music Musical works Classical music Western music (Western countries) Art music, Western Western art music 18th centuryCiter ce document
Thomas Leconte, « An anonymous Messe des morts on themes by Rameau and Mondonville », HAL-SHS : histoire, ID : 10.4324/9781315554990-14
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Résumé
Among the holdings of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France is an anonymous and unpublished Requiem Mass dating from the later eighteenth century and based on themes from Castor et Pollux, an opera which, in its revised version of 1754, was considered to be Rameau’s best. More a musical homage than an act of plagiarism, this work is all the more intriguing because of its unusual character. The practice of adapting secular music for use in a sacred context was not rare in the eighteenth century; yet this Messe de Requiem is unique in the scale and systematic application of this procedure, which infuses the work and underpins its architecture. We should not regard such borrowings as musical short-cuts, since this type of reworking represents a complex exercise. Over and above the tour de force involved, the particular choices made by the composer-reviser, his methods of borrowing and their mechanisms (the most significant examples of which will be presented here) provide unexpected clues to the reception of Rameau’s music and, perhaps also, to the manner in which it was performed. More generally, this finely crafted mass constitutes a musical testimony to the numerous homages paid by French musicians to a composer whom they recognized as one of their greatest masters.