What Rameau’s Chamber Servant Said: Gutman & Historicity

T o remember something is to ‘remake’ it in [one’s own preferred] image.”
  —  Christian Jouhaud, Directeur de recherche au CNRS Centre de Recherches Historiques, ‘Anxieties of Genre’.

I would like to take you into the history of seventeenth-century France through a narrow door—a door that is not only narrow but hidden. Why should we struggle to squeeze through this passage? Well, there are at least two reasons. First, it is an attempt to experience a disorienting perspective on a landscape that we believe we already know completely; and second, the narrowness of the path underlines its particularity and in that way elicits a comparison with other paths elsewhere. This narrow passage is a text, perhaps an insignificant one, written by a seventeenth-century author. After making a few observations concerning its mechanics, I will use this text as a model to interpret something else, to understand it as something that stimulates thinking about historiographical hypotheses: as a convenient tool to shake up the political history of seventeenth-century France. In other words, I propose to utilize literature as a hidden door in order to enter the arena of political history, where we usually do not find any door at all. Deux histoires en une, or Two Stories in One, is a brief text by Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, a work of uncertain status...”
  —  Christian Jouhaud, Two Stories in One.

In response to commenters on previous CMT posts about Baroque keyboard performance practice, I want simply to recommend the recent writings of Christian Jouhaud at the CNRS in Paris. While his books and journal articles do not directly address historically-informed musical performance per se, they do I think offer a useful and relevant perspective as concerns historical authenticity and integration of various types and qualities of evidence in a manner that does not foreclose interpretive options and multi-vocal discourse.

Consider Stephen Gutman’s recordings of Rameau and, in particular, his rendering of mordents and other ornaments.



    [50-sec clip, Stephen Gutman, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Suite No. 2 IX, ‘Tambourin’, 1.2MB MP3]

Stephen Gutman is one of Britain’s most innovative interpreters of modern music. He studied at the Royal College of Music and was subsequently awarded first prizes in the Brant Competition and the British Contemporary Piano Competition. He has given the U.K. premieres of works by Birtwistle, Ligeti and Schnittke among others. He has commissioned new compositions from Julian Anderson, Michael Finnissy, Simon Holt, Luke Stoneham, and others. He is a Professor of Piano at the Guildhall School of Music in London. His recordings of Baroque and other early music are instructive.

Gutman excels in constructing a plausible and well-evidenced but still animated account ... something of the sort that Jouhaud analyzes admiringly in regard to “diaristic” and narrative first-hand historical evidence his recent book. We hear Gutman’s sensitive, agogic prolongations of mordents that aim to guide our attention, before he moves on to the next statement. In these stylistic choices, he creates a distinctive, ‘first-hand account-like’, narrative quality that takes the pieces well outside the conventional bounds. The effect is quasi-diaristic, expressed in a way that evokes a “direct-witness” sense of having actually “been there” in 1724 at the time of these Rameau pieces’ first performance.

At any rate, I imagined that you and other CMT readers might find Christian Jouhaud’s ‘meta-history’ writings of interest. Stephen Gutman is simply one performer whose interpretive decisions seem to embody some of the points that Jouhaud makes in his analyses. Enjoy!

L es monuments historiographiques peuvent-ils transmettre autre chose qu’un patrimoine à célébrer ? Le Grand-Siècle et ses solennelles majuscules sont un terrain idéal pour poser cette question. Ce livre cherche des présences vivantes du passé en s’intéressant de préférence aux lézardes sur la façade du monument. Il le fait à partir du ‘journal’ de Marie du Bois, valet de chambre de Louis XIV, et de divers écrits d'historiens consacrés au XVIIe siècle. Il procède d’abord à une inversion de places: le témoin direct de son temps est traité en historien, alors que les écrits des historiens sont considérés comme des témoignages sur l’action de rendre le passé présent. Dans les deux cas, l’entrelacement du passé et de l’écriture qui le restitue est saisi comme l’événement d’une rencontre. Une telle rencontre advient dans des ‘lieux’ historiques qui constituent les différents chapitres du livre: la vision, la commémoration, l’enfance, l’envers et l’endroit, l’action d’entrer, de construire des espaces, de poser des frontières et de les subvertir.”
[Can historiography transmit something else for a heritage to celebrate? The Grand-Siècle and its solemn capital letters are an ideal occasion for asking this question. This book looks for living presences of the past in itself, which is interesting alternative to the ‘crack on the monument façade’. It does it from the diary of Mary du Bois, chambermaid of Louis XIV, and of various historians of the 17th Century. It proceeds first to a place inversion: the direct witness is treated as historian, while the manuscripts of the card-carrying historian academics are considered as testimonies on the action to return the past present. In the two cases, the intertwining of the past and present and writing that restores and revisits the past—are seized as the essence/event of an encounter. This happens in ‘historic places’: the vision, commemoration, childhood, the towards and the place, the action to enter, to construct spaces, to establish and subvert boundaries.]
  —  Christian Jouhaud.

• Stephen Gutman website
  
• Christian Jouhaud page at EHESS / CNRS.
  
• Jouhaud C. De la ‘raison d’Etat’ dans ‘La formalité des pratiques’ à la ‘raison d’Etat’ en action à Loudun. Un découpage du temps historique, in Lire Michel de Certeau - La formalité des pratiques. In Büttgen P, Jouhaud C, eds., Zeitsprünge, Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, Vittorio Kolstermann, Frankfurt am Main, 2008, p. 205-16.
  
• Jouhaud C. Sauver le Grand Siècle? : Présence et transmission du passé. Seuil, 2007. [To Save the Big Century?: Presence and Transmission of the Past]
  
• Jouhaud C. Les pouvoirs de la littérature. Gallimard, 2000. [The Strengths of Literature]
  
• Gutman S. Rameau: The Complete Keyboard Music, Vol. 1. (Toccata, 2007.)
  
• Hatten R. Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation. Indiana Univ, 2004.
  
• Judd C. Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing with the Eyes. Cambridge Univ, 2006.
  
• Koepp C, Jouhaud C. Two Stories in One: Literature as a hidden door to the history of Seventeenth-Century France. Diacritics 1997; 27:92-100.
  
• Lester J. Bach's Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, Performance. Oxford Univ, 2003.
  
• Lockwood L, Kroll M, eds. The Beethoven Violin Sonatas: History, Criticism, Performance. Univ Illinois, 2004.
  
• Schueneman B. The French Violin School: Viotti, Rode, Kreutzer, Baillot and Their Contemporaries. Lyre of Orpheus, 2005.
  
• Winold A. Bach's Cello Suites: Analyses and Explorations. Indiana Univ, 2007.
  
• DSM. Situating Performance & The Politics of Location. CMT blog, 17-NOV-2008.

I nterpretation is the beginning and end of all musical understanding. Whether as performers, theorists, or historians, we are constantly interpreting sounds through time. The varieties of musical understanding range from the recognition of patterns (clues to the intentionality behind a musical work) to the reconstruction of a style; from the processing of musical relationships to the adducing of their expressive correlates; from the kinetic energy transmitted by a performance to the abstract speculation occasioned by the contemplation of a work... First, since it is impossible ever to ‘prove’ a given expressive interpretation,can one nevertheless establish an interpretation as highly plausible based on mutually supportive evidence drawn from inside and outside the work? Second, if consensus cannot be reached on particular labels for expressive meanings, can one nevertheless explain the consistency with which one correlates musical structures in a style with expressive meanings? The first inquiry demands a hermeneutic approach; the second demands a structuralist accounting. Each approach depends on the other.”
  —  Robert Hatten, p. 9.