Les Amants magnifiques, Interlude – Lully / Molière
“Dormez, dormez,” is part of an “interlude” in Molière-Lully’s Les Amants magnifiques, a comédie-ballet and divertissement royal. Tirsis, Lycaste and Ménandre sing together while Caliste sleeps.
(Tirsis, Lycaste and Ménandre) Dormez, dormez, beaux yeux, adorables vainqueurs, Et goûtez le repos que vous ôtez aux cœurs, Dormez, dormez, beaux yeux. [Sleep on, sleep on, fair eyes, lovely conquerors; And taste that peace which you wrest from all hearts; Sleep on, sleep on, fair eyes.]
(Tirsis)
Silence, petits oiseaux, Vents, n’agitez nulle chose, Coulez doucement, ruisseaux, C’est Caliste qui repose. Intermède (III. iv, p. 19)
[Now silence keep, ye little birds;/ Ye winds, stir nought around;/ Ye stream, run sweetly on:/ For Caliste is slumbering.]
I thought I would separate this interlude from a post on Les Amants magnifiques. Musical interludes are best heard and seen. This segment is a Pastoral. So, the characters are shepherds and shepherdesses.
Jean-Baptiste Lully – “Les Amants magnifiques” (LWV 42), comédie en cinq actes de Molière, mêlée de musique et d’entrées de ballet, créée à Saint-Germain-en-Laye devant le roi le 4 février 1670 dans le cadre du “Divertissement Royal”. Troisième intermède, scène 4 (Tircis, Lycaste et Ménandre) (YouTube)
Croyez-moi, hâtons-nous, ma Sylvie, Believe me, let us hasten, my Sylvia, Usons bien des moments précieux; and profit well by the precious time ; Contentons ici notre envie, let us here satisfy our desires. De nos ans le feu nous y convie: The passions of our age invite us ; Nous ne saurions, vous et moi, faire mieux you and I could not do better.
Quand l’hiver a glacé nos guérets, Winter has covered our fields with ice, Le printemps vient reprendre sa place, Spring comes to take her place again, Et ramène à nos champs leurs attraits; and to our pastures gives their charms. Mais, hélas! quand l’âge nous glace, But when, alas ! old age has chilled our feelings, Nos beaux jours ne reviennent jamais. our happy days return no more.
Ne cherchons tous les jours qu’à nous plaire, Let us seek all day naught but what pleases us; Soyons-y l’un et l’autre empressés; let us both be earnest about it ; Du plaisir faisons notre affaire, let pleasures be our business ; Des chagrins songeons à nous défaire: let us get rid of all our troubles; Il vient un temps où l’on en prend assez. a time will come when we shall have enough ofthem. Quand l’hiver a glacé nos guérets, … La Pastorale comique, Sc xiii, p. 7. The Comic Pastoral, Sc 15, p. 51. (transl. Henri van Laun)
As you know, I hope to publish a book about Molière. I have not read all of Molière for decades. My PhD thesis was a discussion of six plays. The University of British Columbia’s Library has sent me a PDF copy, which I will convert into text I can edit.
Although I will seldom include the libretto in my little book, I am reading the plays of Molière in their entirety. The carpe diem located above is an “air.”
Mélicerte was the third entrée in Isaac de Benserade‘s Ballet des Muses. It was performed on 2 December 1666. As forLa Pastorale comique, it replaced Mélicerte on 5 January 1667. In both plays, the action takes place at Thessaly, in the Vale of Tempe. Moreover, both Mélicerte and the Pastorale comique are dedicated to Thalia, the muse of comedy. The music was composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Le Sicilien, ou l’Amour peintrewas a bit of an afterthought. It was added to the thirteen entrées of Isaac de Benserade’s Ballet des Muses. It is a fourteenth entrée. So, our pastorals are:
The Ballet des muses had been written to celebrate the end of the period of mourning that followed the death of the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria. It was performed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye from 2 December 1666 to 19 February 1667. Louis and members of his court remained at Saint-Germain during the entire festivity. So did Molière’s troupe, la Troupe du Roi.
These comedies are considered entertainement (divertissement) and have often escaped the scrutiny of scholars. So have Les Amants magnifiques(1670) and Psyché (1671), a play Molière wrote in collaboration with Pierre Corneille.
demons, magicians, peasants, etc., and l’Égyptienne,
Its missing scenes are described.
In Henri van Laun‘s translation,
the Dramatis Personae is:
IN THE PASTORAL, LYCAS, a rich shepherd in love with Iris. PHILENE, a rich shepherd in love with Iris.
CORYDON, a young shepherd, friend of Lycas, in love with Iris.
A HERDSMAN, friend of Philene. A SHEPHERD. IRIS, a young shepherdess.
IN THE BALLET,
DANCING MAGICIANS, SINGING MAGICIANS, DANCING DEMONS, PEASANTS, SINGING AND DANCING GIPSY, DANCING GIPSIES.
IRIS, jeune bergère. Mlle de Brie
LYCAS, riche pasteur (herdsman). Molière
FILÈNE, riche pasteur.le sieur d’Estival (bass)
CORIDON, jeune berger.La Grange
BERGER ENJOUÉ. Blondel (tenor)
UN PÂTRE. (Châteauneuf).
Professional singers played roles: Le sieur d’Estival, or Destival, a prominent bass, Blondel, a tenor (a playful shepherd) and Noblet l’aîné(l’Égyptienne). (See La Pastorale comique, footnote 3 [toutmolière.net].) Moreover, Molière sang and Louis XIV danced.
The Plot
In La Pastorale comique, Lycas and Filène court Iris, but are rejected (rebutés). Iris chooses the shepherd Coridon. Both Lycas and Filène are running to their death, when a playful shepherd sings:
Ha! quelle folie De quitter la vie
Pour une beauté
Dont on est rebuté! On peut, pour un objet aimable Dont le cœur nous est favorable,
Vouloir perdre la clarté; Mais quitter la vie
Pour une beauté
Dont on est rebuté,
Ha! quelle folie! La Pastorale comique, p. 6.
[THE SHEPHERD (sings). What folly to quit life for a fair one who rejects us ! We might wish to quit this life for a lovely object’s sake, whose heart favours us, but to die for the fair one who rejects us, is folly ! ] The Pastoral Comedy, p. 51.
Lycas and Filène will not commit suicide, La Pastorale comique being comique. An aria follows the above, which I am omitting, but I should quote the second aria. It is a carpe diem.
Croyez-moi, hâtons-nous, ma Sylvie, Usons bien des moments précieux; Contentons ici notre envie, De nos ans le feu nous y convie: Nous ne saurions, vous et moi, faire mieux Quand l’hiver a glacé nos guérets, Le printemps vient reprendre sa place, Et ramène à nos champs leurs attraits; Mais, hélas! quand l’âge nous glace, Nos beaux jours ne reviennent jamais.// Ne cherchons tous les jours qu’à nous plaire, Soyons-y l’un et l’autre empressés; Du plaisir faisons notre affaire, Des chagrins songeons à nous défaire: Il vient un temps où l’on en prend assez. (return to Quand l’hiver …) La Pastorale comique, p. 7.
[Believe me, let us hasten, my Sylvia, and profit well by the precious time ; let us here satisfy our desires. The passions of our age invite us ; you and I could not do better. Winterhas covered our fields with ice, Spring comes to take her place again, and to our pastures gives their charms. But when, alas ! old age has chilled us; our happy days return no more. // Let us seek all day naught but what pleases us ; let us both be earnest about it ; let pleasures be our business ; let us get rid of all our troubles; a time will come when we shall have enough of them.] (Return to “Winter has covered”) The Pastoral Comedy, pp. 51-52.
Comments
According to the members of the Molière21 (Sorbonne) research group, whose work is authoritative, we know very little about the Ballet des Muses and Molière’s pastorals. However, as a genre, pastorals are important. In pastorals, “a pastoral lifestyle,” the lifestyle of shepherds, “lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences.” (See Pastoral, Wiki2.org.) Toile de Jouy often uses a pastoral motif. So do tapestries and various ornaments, including dishes. It is innocence versus experience, simplicity in a complex world and a golden age, forever remembered.
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony No 6 is a hymn to nature. Beethoven once heard the many voices of birds as he walked in wooded areas and he undoubtedly experienced nature’s newness following thunderstorms. Wikipedia uses Christopher Marlowe‘s The Passionate Shepherd to His Loveas an example of the pastoral in literature.
“Colin and Colette love one another, yet they suspect each other of being unfaithful — in Colin’s case, with the lady of the manor, and in Colette’s with a courtier. They each seek the advice and support of the village soothsayer in order to reinforce their love. After a series of deceptions, Colin and Colette reconcile and are happily married.” (See Le Devin du village, Wikipedia.)
—ooo—
“J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur”
Colette soupirant et s’essuyant les yeux de son tablier.
(Colette, sighing and drying her eyes with her apron.)
I.
J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur; (I have lost all my happiness;)
J’ai perdu mon serviteur ; (I have lost my servant;)
Colin me délaisse ! (Colin is staying away from me!)
Colin me délaisse !
J’ai perdu mon serviteur ; (I have lost my servant;)
J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur ; (I have lost all my happiness;)
Colin me délaisse ! (Colin is staying away from me!)
Colin me délaisse !
2.
Hélas il a pu changer ! (Alas, he was able to change!)
Je voudrais n’y plus songer: (I would like no longer to think about it;)
Hélas, hélas (Alas)
Hélas,
Hélas, il a pu changer ! (Alas, he was able to change!)
Je voudrais n’y plus songer: (I would like no longer to think about it;
Hélas, Hélas
J’y songe sans cesse ! (I am forever thinking about it!)
J’y songe sans cesse !
3.
J’ai perdu mon serviteur ;
J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur ;
Colin me délaisse !
Colin me délaisse !
J’ai perdu mon serviteur ;
J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur ;
Colin me délaisse !
Colin me délaisse !
4./5.
Il m’aimait autrefois, et ce fut mon malheur. (He loved me in the past, and that was my misfortune.)
Mais quelle est donc celle qu’il me préfère ? (But who is the one he prefers to me?)
Elle est donc bien charmante ! Imprudente Bergère, (She must be very charming! Careless Shepherdess,)
Ne crains-tu point les maux que j’éprouve en ce jour? (Don’t you fear the pain [ills] I feel today?)
Colin m’a pu changer, tu peux avoir ton tour. (Colin was able to replace me, you may have your turn.)
Que me sert d’y rêver sans cesse ? (Of what use is it to meto think about it always?)
Rien ne peut guérir mon amour, (Nothing can cure my love,
Et tout augmente ma tristesse. (And everything increases my sadness.) .
J’ai perdu mon serviteur ;
J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur ;
Colin me délaisse !Colin me délaisse !6.
Je veux le haïr … je le dois … (I want to hate him … I must …)
Peut-être il m’aime encore … pourquoi me fuir sans cesse ? (Perhaps he still loves me … why is he always avoiding [fleeing from] me?)
Il me cherchait tant autrefois ! (He so sought me in the past!)
Le Devin du canton fait ici sa demeure ; The township‘s soothsayer makes his home here)
Il sait tout ; il saura le sort de mon amour. (He knowns everything; he will know the fate of my love.)
Je le vois, et je veux m’éclaircir en ce jour. (I see him, and I want matters clearedup forme today.)
RELATED ARTICLE: my personal favourite post, because of Pergolesi, who died at 26.
Here is a lovely little song. The music is by Italian composerGiovanni Battista Pergolesi (4 January 1710 – 16 March 1736). My translation is mostly literal. So, please do not expect a beautiful poem. I wanted to translate the words. This song is a very simple pastoral.
Why am I not the fern/ Where, towards the end of a beautiful day,/ My shepherdess rests/ And love watches over her?/ Why am I not the gentle breeze,/ That refreshes her charms,/ The air her mouth breathes,/ The flower born under her steps.
Que ne suis-je l’onde pure
Qui la reçoit dans son sein ?
Que ne suis-je la parure
Qui la couvre après le bain ?
Que ne suis-je cette glace,
Où son minois répété
Offre à nos yeux une grâce
Qui sourit à la beauté ?
Why am I not the pure mist/ That receives her into its bosom/ Why am I not the ornament/ That covers her after her bath?/ Why am I not that mirror,/ Where her sweet little face repeats itself/ Offeringto our gaze a grace/ That smiles at beauty?
Why am I not, as in a dream,/ Holding her heart bewitched?/ And why can I not from a lie/ Go on to the truth?/ The gods who gave me life/ Made me too ambitious,/ For I would like to be/ All that pleases her eyes!
Giorgione, Pastoral Concert. Louvre, Paris. A work which the Louvre now attributes to Titian, c. 1509. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Giorgione, born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (c. 1477/8–1510)
Titian, born Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576)
(Italian High Renaissance)
Pan is the “Greek god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs” (Pan, Wikipedia) whose Roman counterpart is Faunus as well as Lupercus, the God of Shepherds.
Pan is also the god of all things “pastoral,” such as pastoral music. The Pastorale is a form of Italian music and the word “pastoral” is also used to describe Beethoven’s 6th symphony. Moreover, there is a pastoral literature.
Pastoral literature is rooted in Greek and Roman Antiquity, as is the Lupercalia. Its two Greek and Roman authors are Theocritus[i] (born c. 300 bc, Syracuse, Sicily [Italy]—died after 260 bc), the creator of pastoral poetry[ii], and Virgil.[iii] Virgil or Vergil wrote not only the Aeneid, but also the Egloges or Bucolics and the Georgics. The Egloges can be read online at Egloges, a Gutenberg publication.
Closer to us pastoral literature begins with Battista Guarini‘s bucolic tragicomedy Il Pastor Fido[iv] (1580 to 1585),The Faithful Shepherd, set in Arcadia, literally, a region of Greece; metaphorically, an idyllic countryside.
Moreover, pastoral, also describes the “perfect” world of 17th-century salonniers and salonnières who made believe they were shepherds and shepherdesses. Préciosité was escapism at its worst or its best, depending on one’s point of view. Seventeenth-century Précieuses (literally, precious) put such a high price on marriage and sexuality, that they often made suitors wait a very long time. French dramatist Molière[v] ridiculed the Précieuses in Les Précieuses ridicules (Théâtre du Petit-Bourbon, 18 November 1659).
Préciosité was a lifestyle. It was courtly love carried to an extreme, i.e. platonic love precluding sexuality. Préciosité is therefore at the opposite end of the Lupercalia which celebrated fertility. Lupercus was god of shepherds, but not the imaginary shepherds and shepherdesses of précieux convention, nor the raucous Luperci of the Lupercalia, but Christopher Marlowe‘s well-mannered yet “passionate” shepherd, associated with courtly love, idyllic love that does not exclude sexuality.
Come live with me and be my Love,And we will all the pleasures proveThat hills and valleys, dale and field,And all the craggy mountains yield.There will we sit upon the rocksAnd see the shepherds feed their flocks,By shallow rivers, to whose fallsMelodious birds sing madrigals.
(Pastoral, Wikipedia)
Earlier in my new career as blogger, I wrote a post about Marie-Antoinette, an accomplished musician who composed a lovely “pastorale” that straddles the less rigid conventions of courtly love and Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.” Courtly love’s masterpiece, sometimes considered too daring, is the Roman de la Rose, The Romaunt of the Rose, an allegory of love translated, though not in its entirety, by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Valentine’s Day
Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) can in fact be credited with the birth of Valentine’s Day as we know it, a matter discussed in my next post. However, Chaucer was influenced by a tapestry, La Dame à la licorne (The Lady and the Unicorn), housed at the Cluny Museum, in Paris. The Unicorn is a mythical animal that can only be captured by a virgin. However, the Unicorn is also a trans–cultural figure, hence multi-faceted.
_________________________[i] “Theocritus”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Feb. 2013 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/590569/Theocritus>.
[ii] “Pastoral literature”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia BritannicaOnline. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Feb. 2013 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/446078/pastoral-literature>.[iii] “Virgil”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Feb. 2013 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/629832/Virgil/24449/Literary-career>.
[iv] Battista Guarini (born 10 Dec. 1538, Ferrara—died 7 Oct. 1612, Venice) and Torquato Tasso (born 11 March 1544, Sorrento, Kingdom of Naples [Italy]—died 25 April 1595, Rome) are “credited with establishing the form of a new literary genre, the pastoral drama.” (See footnote [ii].)[v] born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, baptised 15 January 1622 – 17 February (1673).
composer: Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827)
piece: “Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, “Pastoral,” 4th and 5th movements, “the Storm”
performers: Wiener Philharmoniker
conductor: Karl Böhm (28 August 1894 in Graz – 14 August 1981 in Salzburg)
featured artist: Albert Bierstadt (7 January 1830 – 18 February 1902)
![Giorgione, Pastoral Concert. Louvre, Paris. A work which the Louvre now attributes to Titian, c. 1509.[9]](https://michelinewalker.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/745px-fiesta_campestre1.jpg)
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