Overview

"The history of music at the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr-the famous convent school founded by Madame de Maintenon and established by Louis XIV in 1686 as a royal foundation-is both rich and intriguing; its large repertory of music was composed expressly for young female voices by important composers working within significant contemporary musical genres: liturgical chant, sacred motets, theatrical music, and cantiques spirituels. While these genres reflect contemporary styles and trends, at the same time the works themselves were made to conform to the sensibilities and abilities of their intended performers. Although Jean-Baptiste Moreau's music for the biblical tragedies by Jean Racine shows the influence of contemporary opera, it more closely resembles works written for and performed at the Jesuit colleges for boys. The liturgical chant sung in the church was composed by Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers and reflects two seemingly conflicting contemporary attitudes, featuring both new chant compositions for the liturgy and ""reforms"" to traditional chant, which (in the minds of the reformers) had fallen into a corrupted state. The large repertory of petits motets (short sacred Latin pieces for solo voice), mostly composed by Nivers and Louis-Nicolas Clerambault, are simpler and more restrained than works by contemporary composers such as Andre Campra and Nicolas Bernier. A close study of the motets reveals much about subtle changes in musical style and performance practices at Saint-Cyr in the eighteenth century. In all cases, the stylistic features of the music for Saint-Cyr reflect a careful consideration of the needs and capabilities of the young-although accomplished-singers of the school, as well as an awareness of the rigorous requirements of Madame de Maintenon, who kept a close watch over the propriety of all things relating to the piety, behavior, and image of her charges."

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9781409450535

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Reviews

Because so much of the religious music of France was destroyed in the ravages of the dechristianization movement, the sources that survive from Saint-Cyr, including its music library and many documents related to its history and its musical activity, are treasures that take on greater significance, one that must be viewed in context due to the exceptional nature of the Maison Royale. Deborah Kauffman's thorough and inquiring study offers much that will be of relevance to historians with interest in women's studies, the education of women, French history, society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the musicological understanding of the old regime. -John Hajdu Heyer, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

"""Because so much of the religious music of France was destroyed in the ravages of the dechristianization movement, the sources that survive from Saint-Cyr, including its music library and many documents related to its history and its musical activity, are treasures that take on greater significance, one that must be viewed in context due to the exceptional nature of the Maison Royale. Deborah Kauffman’s thorough and inquiring study offers much that will be of relevance to historians with interest in women’s studies, the education of women, French history, society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the musicological understanding of the old regime."" —John Hajdu Heyer, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music"

Author Information

Deborah Kauffman is Professor of Music at the University of Northern Colorado. Her special areas of interest include French baroque music, music in convents, and the musical repertory of the Maison de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr. She serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Musicological Research.

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