Music, Pantomime & Freedom in Enlightenment France Hedy Law Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020 pp. xx + 265, ISBN 978 1 783 2756 01

Abstract

Music, Pantomime & Freedom in Enlightenment France follows the trajectory of pantomime from the commedia dell ’ arte tradition on Parisian foire stages to its integration into the reform operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck and Antonio Salieri. The status of pantomime rose from the 1730s to the 1750s, particularly through Jean-Jacques Rousseau ’ s Le devin du village (1752 – 1754), and it came to be accepted as a more articulate form of gesture than ‘ decorative ’ dance ( la belle danse ). At times, it was even believed to communicate more effectively than language. As the demand for operatic veri-similitude grew through the 1770s, Gluck drew on both pantomime and pantomime-inspired musical gestures to propel dramatic action forward. By the 1780s, Salieri was using gesture and motion within music not only to articulate conflicting or unspoken thoughts, as Gluck had done, but also to dramatize inaction. Hedy Law emphasizes that pantomime falls within a genealogy of dance as well as an archaeology of communication: through a comprehensive study of pantomime in Paris, she narrates how the significance of physical and musical gesture was honed and refined over the course of the eighteenth century.