Jean-Joseph de Mondonville
Encyclopedia
Jean-Joseph de Mondonville (December 25, 1711 (baptised) – October 8, 1772), also known as Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, was a French
violin
ist and composer
. He was a younger contemporary of Jean-Philippe Rameau
and enjoyed great success in his day. Pierre-Louis Daquin (son of the composer Louis Claude Daquin) claimed: "If I couldn't be Rameau, there's no one I would rather be than Mondonville".
in Southwest France
to an aristocratic family which had fallen on hard times. In 1733 he moved to Paris
where he gained the patronage of the king's mistress Madame de Pompadour
and won several musical posts, including violinist for the Concert Spirituel
.
His first opus was a volume of violin
sonata
s, published in 1733. He became a violinist of the royal chapel and chamber and performed in some 100 concerts; some of his grands motets were also performed that year receiving considerable acclaim. He was appointed sous-maître in 1740 and then, in 1744, intendant of the Royal Chapel. He produced operas and grands motets for the Opéra and Concert spirituel respectively, and was associated with the Théatre des Petits-Cabinets, all the while maintaining his career as a violinist throughout the 1740s. In 1755, he became director of the Concert Spirituel on the death of Royer. He died in Belleville
near Paris
at the age of sixty.
s, of which only nine have survived. The motet Venite exultemus domino, published in 1740, won him the post of Maître de musique de la Chapelle (Master of Music of the Chapel). Thanks to his mastery of both orchestral and vocal music, Mondonville brought to the grand motet -- the dominant genre of music in the repertory of the Chapelle royale (Royal Chapel) before the Revolution -- an intensity of colour and a dramatic quality hitherto unknown.
and the pastorale héroïque
. His most popular works were Le carnaval de Parnasse, Titon et l'Aurore
and Daphnis et Alcimadure
(for which Mondonville wrote his own libretto
in Languedocien
- his native occitan dialect- ). Titon et l'Aurore played an important role in the Querelle des Bouffons, the controversy between partisans of French and Italian opera which raged in Paris in the early 1750s. Members of the "French party" ensured that Titons premiere was a resounding success (their opponents even alleged they had guaranteed this result by packing the Académie Royale de Musique
, where the staging took place, with royal soldiers). Mondonville's one foray into serious French opera - the genre known as tragédie en musique- was a failure however. He took the unusual step of reusing a libretto, Thésée
, which had originally been set by the "father of French opera", Lully
in 1675. Mondonville's bold move to substitute Lully's much loved music with his own did not pay off. The premiere at the court in 1765 had a mixed reception and a public performance two years later ended with the audience demanding it be replaced by the original. Yet Mondonville was merely slightly ahead of his time; in the 1770s, it became fashionable to reset Lully's tragedies with new music, the most famous example being Armide
by Gluck.
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. He was a younger contemporary of Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...
and enjoyed great success in his day. Pierre-Louis Daquin (son of the composer Louis Claude Daquin) claimed: "If I couldn't be Rameau, there's no one I would rather be than Mondonville".
Life
Mondonville was born in NarbonneNarbonne
Narbonne is a commune in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Once a prosperous port, it is now located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea...
in Southwest France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
to an aristocratic family which had fallen on hard times. In 1733 he moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
where he gained the patronage of the king's mistress Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...
and won several musical posts, including violinist for the Concert Spirituel
Concert Spirituel
The Concert Spirituel was one of the first public concert series in existence. The concerts began in Paris in 1725 and ended in 1790; later, concerts or series of concerts of the same name occurred in Paris, Vienna, London and elsewhere...
.
His first opus was a volume of violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
sonata
Sonata
Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...
s, published in 1733. He became a violinist of the royal chapel and chamber and performed in some 100 concerts; some of his grands motets were also performed that year receiving considerable acclaim. He was appointed sous-maître in 1740 and then, in 1744, intendant of the Royal Chapel. He produced operas and grands motets for the Opéra and Concert spirituel respectively, and was associated with the Théatre des Petits-Cabinets, all the while maintaining his career as a violinist throughout the 1740s. In 1755, he became director of the Concert Spirituel on the death of Royer. He died in Belleville
Belleville (commune)
Belleville was a French commune in the Seine département lying immediately east of Paris, France. It was one of four communes entirely annexed by the city of Paris in 1860. Its territory is now shared by the XIXe arrondissement and XXe arrondissement, but a neighborhood has retained its name: the...
near Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
at the age of sixty.
Sacred music
Between 1734 and 1755 Mondonville composed 17 grands motetMotet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
s, of which only nine have survived. The motet Venite exultemus domino, published in 1740, won him the post of Maître de musique de la Chapelle (Master of Music of the Chapel). Thanks to his mastery of both orchestral and vocal music, Mondonville brought to the grand motet -- the dominant genre of music in the repertory of the Chapelle royale (Royal Chapel) before the Revolution -- an intensity of colour and a dramatic quality hitherto unknown.
Operas
Although Mondonville's first stage work, Isbé, was a failure he enjoyed great success with the lighter forms of French Baroque opera: the opéra-balletOpéra-ballet
Opéra-ballet was a popular genre of French Baroque opera, "that grew out of the ballets à entrées of the early seventeeth century". It differed from the more elevated tragédie en musique as practised by Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways...
and the pastorale héroïque
Pastorale héroïque
Pastorale héroïque was a type of ballet héroïque, a form of the opéra-ballet genre of French Baroque opera. The first work to bear the name was Jean-Baptiste Lully's final completed opera Acis et Galatée , although musical works on pastoral themes had already appeared on the French stage...
. His most popular works were Le carnaval de Parnasse, Titon et l'Aurore
Titon et l'Aurore
Titon et l'Aurore is an opera in three acts and a prologue by the French composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville which was first performed at the Académie royale de musique, Paris on 9 January 1753...
and Daphnis et Alcimadure
Daphnis et Alcimadure
Daphnis et Alcimadure is an opera with a libretto in the Occitan language, composed by baroque violinist, director and composer Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville ....
(for which Mondonville wrote his own libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
in Languedocien
Languedocien
Languedocien or Lengadocian is an Occitan dialect spoken by some people in the part of southern France known as Languedoc, Rouergue, Quercy, Agenais and Southern Périgord....
- his native occitan dialect- ). Titon et l'Aurore played an important role in the Querelle des Bouffons, the controversy between partisans of French and Italian opera which raged in Paris in the early 1750s. Members of the "French party" ensured that Titons premiere was a resounding success (their opponents even alleged they had guaranteed this result by packing the Académie Royale de Musique
Académie Royale de Musique
The Salle Le Peletier was the home of the Paris Opera from 1821 until the building was destroyed by fire in 1873. The theatre was designed and constructed by the architect François Debret on the site of the former Hôtel de Choiseul...
, where the staging took place, with royal soldiers). Mondonville's one foray into serious French opera - the genre known as tragédie en musique- was a failure however. He took the unusual step of reusing a libretto, Thésée
Thésée
Thésée is an opera with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and a libretto by Philippe Quinault based on Ovid's Metamorphoses first performed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 11 January 1675.-Roles:-Synopsis:...
, which had originally been set by the "father of French opera", Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
in 1675. Mondonville's bold move to substitute Lully's much loved music with his own did not pay off. The premiere at the court in 1765 had a mixed reception and a public performance two years later ended with the audience demanding it be replaced by the original. Yet Mondonville was merely slightly ahead of his time; in the 1770s, it became fashionable to reset Lully's tragedies with new music, the most famous example being Armide
Armide (Gluck)
Armide is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck, his fifth for the Parisian stage and the composer's own favourite among his works. It was first performed in Paris at the Académie Royale on 23 September 1777....
by Gluck.
Instrumental
- Sonates pour violon op.1 (1733)
- Sonates en trio op.2
- Pièces de clavecin en sonates op.3 (1734, later orchestrated as Sonates en symphonie)
- The preface of op.4 contains the first evidence of a written text concerning playing with harmonic sounds, "Les sons harmoniques (Paris and Lille, 1738)
- Pièces de clavecin avec voix ou violon op.5 (1748)
Operas
- Isbé (1742)
- Bacchus et Erigone (1747)
- Le carnaval du Parnasse (1749)
- Vénus et Adonis (1752)
- Titon et l'AuroreTiton et l'AuroreTiton et l'Aurore is an opera in three acts and a prologue by the French composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville which was first performed at the Académie royale de musique, Paris on 9 January 1753...
(1753) - Daphnis et AlcimadureDaphnis et AlcimadureDaphnis et Alcimadure is an opera with a libretto in the Occitan language, composed by baroque violinist, director and composer Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville ....
(1754) - Les fêtes de PaphosLes fêtes de PaphosLes fêtes de Paphos is an opéra-ballet in three acts by the French composer Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville. The work was described as a ballet héroïque on the title page of the printed score. Each act had a different librettist...
(1758) - Thésée (1765)
- Les projets de l'Amour (1771)
Grands Motets
Mondonville's nine surviving grands motets are:- Dominus regnavit decorum (Psalm 92) (1734)
- Jubilate Deo (Psalm 99) (1734)
- Magnus Dominus (Psalm 47) (1734)
- Cantate domino (Psalm 149) (1743)
- Venite exultemus Domino (Psalm 94) (1743)
- Nisi Dominus aedficavit (Psalm 126) (1743)
- De profundis (Psalm 129) (1748)
- Coeli enarrant gloria (Psalm 18) (1750)
- In exitu Israel (Psalm 113) (1753)
Recordings of works by Mondonville
- Pieces de clavecin avec voix ou violon Op.5 Judith Nelson, William Christie, Stanley Ritchie (Harmonia Mundi, 1980)
- Titon et l'Aurore Les Musiciens du LouvreLes Musiciens du LouvreLes Musiciens du Louvre is a French period instrument ensemble, formed in 1982. Originally based in Paris, since 1996 it has been based in the Couvent des Minimes in Grenoble. The Guardian considers it one of the best orchestras in the world.- History:Founded by Marc Minkowski in 1982, the...
, Marc MinkowskiMarc MinkowskiMarc Minkowski is a French conductor of classical music, especially known for his interpretations of French Baroque works. His mother is American, and his father was Alexandre Minkowski, a Polish-French professor of pediatrics and one of the founders of neonatology...
(Erato, 1992) - Les fêtes de Paphos Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe RoussetChristophe RoussetChristophe Rousset is a French harpsichordist and conductor, specializing in the performance of baroque music on period instruments.-Biography:...
(Decca L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1997) - Les Grands Motets (Dominus regnavit, In exitu Israel, De profundis) Les Arts Florissants, William ChristieWilliam Christie (musician)William Lincoln Christie is an American-born French conductor and harpsichordist. He is noted as a specialist in baroque repertoire and as the founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants....
(Erato, 1997) - Six sonates Op. 3 Les Musiciens du Louvre, Marc Minkowski (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998)
- Venite Exultemus, De Profundis (Grands Motets) Oxford New College Choir, [Edward Higginbottom] (Helios, 1999)
- The aria "Désirs toujours détruits" from Isbé, sung by Véronique GensVéronique GensVéronique Gens is a French soprano. She has spent much of her career recording and performing Baroque music....
on the collection Tragédiennes (Virgin Classics, 2006)
Sources
- The first draft of this article was based on a translation of an article on Mondonville in the French Wikipedia.
- Brief biographical entry in the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, 1994, published by Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, Inc. on the Gramophone site. - Booklets to the above recordings
- The Viking Opera Guide ed. Amanda Holden (Viking, 1993)