Musique of the Ages

"Sweet sounds, oh beautiful music, do not cease
Reject me not into the world again.
With you alone is excellence and peace
Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain."
--Edna St. Vincent Millay (via my fallible memory)

We spent Sunday evening bathed in the glow of the setting sun on the cream colored walls of the 17th century Chateau de Pellonniere, gazing up at massive rough hewn beams, enveloped in the resonating harmonies of the clavichord. The occasion was a recital of music by Jacques Duphly (1715-1789), a noted composer who was a native of La Perche and a contemporary of Mozart.

There was a full house in the music room at the Chateau, and Elisabeth Joye, an intense young Frenchwoman with snowy skin, henna hair and the eyes of another century, performed admirably. Most of us were transported by the music, with the exception of (or maybe including)the tiny old lady next to me, who slept soundly through the first half of the program, leaning heavily against me and smiling in her sleep like some ancient powdery angel. During the second half, she awoke and chatted in an animated fashion with the ladies around her, to the consternation of some of the prissier audience members.

As the breeze carried bits of birdsong throught the windows at intermission, I thought about the fact that this music, though it seems genteel to us now, was revolutionary for its time - breaking out of the strict rules of the Baroque, led by that wild child Wolfgang Amadeus. In fact, those were revolutionary times; the French people were fomenting their own rebellion and the British were dealing with their feisty colonies. Perhaps Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, those old Francophiles, had the opportunity to hear M. Duphly's music in a setting such as this on one of their missions to France... and perhaps somehow the music helped to make their cause more plausible, their purpose plain.