Trio Hantaï and Marin Marais: Intimate Character Pieces and Politics of Melancholy

M    arais’s third book of ‘Pièces de Viole’ (the source of this afternoon’s work) came out in 1711 [when Marais was 55 years old], two years after he withdrew from his operatic career after the failure of his fourth opera, ‘Sémélé’. The suite in C minor from this book begins with a deeply tragic Prélude, which is followed by a vigorous Fantaisie with a brilliant and virtuosic variation or double.”
  —  Robert Mealy, Program Notes, BEMF, 2009.

T    he suites [of Marais] are more loosely organized than those by Couperin. The policy of mixing the ‘difficult’ with the ‘easy’ is discreetly expressed by Marais in his ‘Avertissement’ to Pieces de Viol (I): ‘And because simple melodies meet the tast of a lot of people, I have composed some pieces with this in mind, where chords scarcely enter. One will find others where I have used them more, and several which are entirely filled with them for those who love harmony...’ Marais differs markedly from Couperin in that he made little conscious effort to achieve anything resembling goûts réunis [conforming to prevailing/popular taste]. This is not surprising, since the music itself is so wedded to the [viol] and so bound to the tradition of virtuoso solo performance... Some of Marais’s expressive and quasi-improvisatory preludes, especially those from Book (2), seem indebted to the lute repertory in particular. The same ornaments, the same melodic turns and the same rhythms are found.”
  —  James Anthony, French Baroque Music, p. 389.

T  he Trio Hantaï performance at BEMF yesterday was especially intimate—exerting a wide range of forces on our emotions. The Jordan Hall (New England Conservatory) venue was a bit large for the trio. But, on the other hand, the acoustics of the large hall only served to accentuate the intimacy of the Trio’s playing. It felt as though they were playing in a private home, so great was the person-to-person, player-to-audience expressiveness of each of the three Hantaï brothers.

T  he Marin Marais piece especially captured my imagination—the profound sadness of it. A number of us in the audience had damp eyes—signaling an affective resonance with what we were hearing. We thought of the trials that Marais had been experiencing 300 years ago—not about three Hantai ‘talking-heads’ discoursing about Marais, but instead projecting ourselves into Marais’s actual historical, political situation.We remained intensely ‘present’, not displaced to the margins of what was represented by the Hantaïs’ playing. The signs of this affective state—these tears—were real tears of mourning, just like the ones we cry for, say, Anna Karenina, or other fictive characters.

A    n affect is never a purely psychological thing, nor a purely somatic one.”
  —  Joyce McDougall, The Many Faces of Eros, p. 157.

I  n other words, it was French Baroque stage recreated in Boston, complete with ceremonies where our passions were called into being—by the sacrifices exacted by a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Marais evoked our own [post-modern] subjectivity, from the distance of the 17^th/early-18^th Century. In short, I loved it.

A  t age 20, Marin Marais married Catherine d’Amicourt (on 21-SEP-1676), and they had 19 children together [?!]. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully and bass viol/da gamba with Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe. Subsequently, he wrote his five remarkable books of ‘Pièces de viole’ (1686-1725), a life’s work that covers the gamut of court preferences and personal emotions. But not a great amount of historical detail or correspondence or other evidence has been preserved, through which we might know very much about Marais’s life. The Milliot – de la Gorce biography from about 20 years ago is good so far as it goes, but it is frustrating in that it is unable to go as far as one might wish. For example, were these ‘Pièces en ut mineur’ (Prélude — Fantaisie — Allemande — Sarabande grave — Gigue — Rondeau) a personal statement or instead an oblique commentary on political developments in France in about 1711?

D    uring the so-called ‘Age of Melancholy’, many writers invoked both traditional and new conceptualizations of the disease in order to account for various types of social turbulence, ranging from discontent and factionalism to civil war. Writing about melancholy became a way to explore both the causes and preventions of political disorder, on both specific and abstract levels. Thus, at one and the same moment, a writer could write about melancholy to discuss specific and ongoing political crises and to explore more generally the principles which generate political conflicts in the first place.”
  —  Adam Kitzes, Politics of Melancholy.

T  he other music by Leclair, Rameau, Couperin, and J. S. Bach was excellent, too; I don’t mean to diminish it by commenting only on the Marais. The wit, imagination, and virtuosity of the Hantaïs’ playing were superb throughout. Jérôme, still bowing to the audience’s applause, rises and sees that Pierre and Marc have already left the stage a few seconds earlier. He shrugs to the audience, gives a comical “Well, you two are at liberty to exit, then” gesture, dangling his viol out toward the gaping stage door through which they had passed. He smiles and good-naturedly exits himself. The Hantaï brothers are masters of absolutely every Baroque gesture that exists, and not only the musical gestures!

• Pierre Hantaï, harpsichord
  
• Jérôme Hantaï, viola da gamba
  
• Marc Hantaï, Baroque flute

• Marin Marais page at Wikipedia
  
• Mealy R. Program Notes. BEMF, 2009. [100KB pdf]
  
• 'Music and Emotion' bibliography at Ohio State Univ
  
• Intl Conf on Music and Emotion, 31-AUG - 03-SEP, Durham Univ, U.K.
  
• Max Planck Institut for Cognitive & Brain Sciences
  
• Anthony J. French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau. Amadeus, 2003.
  
• Bowles G. Thematic Catalog of the Works of Marin Marais. Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
  
• Hsu J. Handbook of French Baroque Viol Technique. Liss, 1982.
  
• Kitzes A. The Politics of Melancholy from Spenser to Milton. Routledge, 2006.
  
• Koelsch S, et al. A cardiac signature of emotionality. Eur J Neurosci 2007; 26:3328-38.
  
• Li T, Ogihara M. Detecting emotion in music. ISMIR, 2003.
  
• McDougall J. The Many Faces of Eros. Norton, 1995.
  
• McDowell B. Marais & Forqueray: A Historical and Analytical Study of their Music for Solo Basse de Viole. PhD Dissertation, Columbia Univ, 1974.
  
• Milliot S, de la Gorce J. Marin Marais. Fayard, 1991.
  
• Petrides K, Niven L, Mouskounti T. Emotional intelligence of ballet dancers and musicians. Psicothema. 2006;18 Suppl:101-7.
  
• Radden J, ed. The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva. Oxford Univ, 2002.
  
• Sadie J. The Bass Viol in French Baroque Chamber Music. UMI, 1980.
  
• Sloboda J, Steinbeis N, Koelsch S. The role of harmonic expectancy violations in musical emotions: evidence from subjective, physiological, and neural responses. J Cogn Neurosci. 2006;18:1380-93.
  
• Teplow D. Performance Practice and Technique in Marin Marais’ ‘Pieces de Viole’. UMI, 1986.
  
• Thompson C. Marin Marais’s ‘Pieces de Viole’. Musical Quarterly 1960; 46:482-99.