Divertissement
The term divertissement (French "pastime") appears from the first half of the 17th century in France as a generic term for aristocratic amusements of all kinds. In the German-speaking area, it has been used since the late 17th century for pleasant entertainment or entertaining events. In the following, the narrower meaning of a musical-dance ensemble associated with opera or spoken theater is dealt with, which is closely related to the musical genre of divertimento .
term
According to today's musicological usage, the divertissement is a series of dances which, according to French custom, formed the end of a theater performance in the 17th and 18th centuries or the conclusion of individual acts and other units of action. Sometimes it is associated with a choir of the characters depicted and incorporated into a scene of the drama. This shows that the dancers also sing, or rather the choir had to dance. Specialization of the ensembles has only been customary since the 19th century. Performances outside of France often did without dance because there was no tradition of integrating song, play and dance.
A divertissement can be associated with both an opera and a drama. Most of the time it corresponds in its character to the previous action or continues it, as is often prescribed in the libretto . The divertissement is differentiated from the intermedium , which usually has no connection with the drama listed, or from the entrée de ballet , a term that is used more for solo dance performances or for the division of a larger ballet into scenes . In practice, the transition is fluid. The term divertissement has only appeared in the scores since around 1700. Today, pieces of music for divertissements are often referred to using the Italian term divertimento and performed without dance.
Manifestations
The tragédie en musique of the 17th century usually required a divertissement per act, alternating between “tension and relaxation”, “dynamics and static” or “individual and collective”. With Philippe Quinault , who wrote numerous libretti for Jean-Baptiste Lully , the divertissements are often firmly linked to the plot: In Armide (1686) there are five divertissements: In the first act (scene 3) the people of Damascus celebrate the victorious Armide, in second act (scene 4) sing and dance demons in the shape of nymphs, shepherds and shepherdesses, in the third act (scene 4) furies appear in the wake of La Haine, in the fourth act (scenes 2, 4) demons appear as rural people, in the fifth act (scene 2) allegories of joy and happy lovers form the entourage of Renaud.
In Molière's comedies, too, both the ornamental divertissements during the plot and the great ballet divertissements at the end are of great importance, such as the Grand divertissement Royal on the occasion of his Comédie-ballet George Dandin (1668) or the Ballet des Nations (“Ballet of the States ”) at the end of Der Bürger als Edelmann (1670).
The transition between a divertissement and a larger, independent ballet is fluid. A divertissement based on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's opera Le devin du village (1752) is already a small narrative ballet with three people.
literature
- Cuthbert Girdlestone: La tragédie en musique (1673-1750) considérée comme genre littéraire, Droz, Geneva 1972.
- Nicole Haitzinger: Forgotten Tracts - Archives of Remembrance: On Concepts of Effect in Dance from the Renaissance to the End of the 18th Century, epodium, Munich 2009. ISBN 978-3940388063
Web links
- Wolfgang Ruf: Divertissement. In: Concise Dictionary of Musical Terminology , 13th delivery, winter 1985/86
Individual evidence
- ^ Girdlestone: La tragédie en musique , p. 43