Poetry of the Seventeenth Century in Music
Thursday, September 17, 2015
This post is by Clotilde Angleys (Département de la Musique) and originally appeared on the Gallica blog of the Bibliotheque national de France. It is reproduced here in accordance with their Creative Commons policy.
The 37 Livres d’airs de différents auteurs issued by the music publishers Robert and Christophe Ballard are now available on Gallica.
In these anthologies of poems set to music, you will find works by the great names of poetry from the second half of the seventeenth century, from preciosity (with Vincent Voiture and Madeleine de Scudéry) to the dramatic arts (with Pierre Corneille and Philippe Quinault), set to music by contemporary composers (including Jean-Baptiste Lully and Bertrand de Bacilly).
Most of the works in the anthologies are presented without composer or poet attribution. The Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, partner of the BnF, has undertaken an electronic modern scholarly edition of the 1220 airs.
A new online collection permits you to navigate from the Gallica facsimile to the critical edition, of which the first eight volumes are available.
Above: The first volume of this series, Airs de différents autheurs à deux Parties (RISM B/I: 1658|3)
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