The Confusion of Diverse Voices: Musical and Social Polyphony in Seventeenth-Century French Opera

Abstract

<jats:p>This essay explores how two early modern French writers considered choral music in opera as a figure for society. Pierre Corneille, in his musical tragedy “Andromède,” and scientist and critic Claude Perrault, in several texts about music and acoustics, made subtle apologies for the polyphonic choral song condemned by many contemporaries as unintelligible. Beyond defending the aesthetic value of choral music, Corneille and Perrault associated multi-part song with collective vocalizations offstage, in the real world. Their instructions on how to appreciate choral interludes in opera also served, therefore, to train listeners to attend to the polyphony of society.</jats:p>