ROUSSEAU Jean-Jacques (1712 - 1778)

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Lot n° 185
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Estimation :
15000 - 20000 EUR
ROUSSEAU Jean-Jacques (1712 - 1778)
autograph musical manuscript, Armida... oh stelle! non partirò. Scena del Sigr Antonio Sacchini, Milano 1772; oblong notebook in4 with a title leaf and 19 pages bound with a blue ribbon (some ink stains on the first and last pages), in an old water green brocaded silk folder lined with pink moire with old pink satin ribbon; half black morocco case lined with pink suede (Loutrel). Beautiful manuscript of musical copy by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Jean-Jacques Rousseau told in the Confessions (book VIII) how he stopped working for Dupin de Francueil in 1751 and started copying music to earn his living. In September 1770, he resumed his job as a music copyist and continued to do so until 1777, paying ten sols per page. One will read, in his Dictionary of Music, the long article Copist, where Rousseau explains the superiority of the copied music on the engraving, and the care which it is advisable to bring to it: "The most skilful Copist is the one whose Music is carried out with the most facility"; he must for that "to make his Note quite legible and quite clear", by choosing "beautiful strong paper, white, mediocrely fi n [....] The ink must be very black [...]; the Reglure must be fine, even and well marked, but not black like the Note; on the contrary, the lines must be a little pale, so that the Eighth notes, Sixteenth notes, Soupirs, Half-soupirs and other small signs do not blend in with them, and the Note comes out better. [...] if the copyist wants to do himself credit, he must adjust his paper himself". For the Italian music, it is necessary a paper regulated "whose length is in the direction of the Lines. [...] The Italian paper is usually of ten staves, which divides each page into two braces of five staves each for the ordinary airs; namely, two staves for the two violin tops, one for the fifth, one for the song, and one for the bass"... One could not better describe our manuscript, regulated in length, with ten staves drawn by hand in a slightly pale ink, each page being divided into two "braces" of five staves, the fourth being reserved for the song. A few copy errors have been carefully scratched out almost invisibly, and corrected. The scene, sung by Rinaldo, with some brief interventions of Ubaldo, opens with a Recitativo marked Allegro: "Armida Armida Oh Stelle non partiro"... Follows the Cavatina, Andante aff annoso : "Idol moi se più non vivi morirò"... Antonio SACCHINI (1730-1786) was one of the masters of Italian opera in the 18th century. His opera Armida, from which Rousseau copied this scene, was first performed in Milan during the carnival of 1772; Sacchini took it up and gave a new version under the title Rinaldo for London in 1780, then a French version under the title Renaud at the Paris Opera in 1783. In May 1771, Charles Burney sent his book The Present State of Music in France and Italy to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing: "in my opinion there is nothing more beautiful in Music than that elegant Simplicity which reigns in the works of Pergolesi, Hasse and sometimes in those of Buranello [Galuppi] and Sacchini". Rousseau was particularly fond of Italian music.
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