Jean Rousseau

Jean Rousseau (born October 1, 1644 in Moulins , † June 1, 1699 in Paris ) was a French gambist and music theorist .

Rousseau came to Paris around 1676, where he initially lived with the viol maker Michel Collichon (fl. 1666–1693). Like Marin Marais , he became a student of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe and, after that, Nicolas Hotman and André Maugars belonged to the second generation of important French viol players. While Marais and other instrumentalists were in the service of the French royal court before him, Rousseau worked as a teacher in private households. As a teacher and as a theorist, he was highly regarded. His textbooks method claire, certaine et et facile pour apprendre à chanter la musique ( fr. "Illustrative, safe and singing simple method of learning about music", 1678) and Traité de la viole (1687) published in several editions, the method also outside of France. Here Rousseau designed a system of natural and transposing modes . He was the first French music theorist to refer to the major - minor order. The Traité de la viole is one of the first French treatises on the viola da gamba. It appeared around the same time as Le Sieur Danoville's L'Art de toucher le dessus et le basse de violle (1687). The two works divided the French viol playing into two opposing schools. While Danoville's writing was purely a textbook on instrumental playing, Rousseau wrote not only an introduction to playing technique and an overview of the decorations, but also a history of viol playing and described the viola instruments of French Renaissance music . The Traité is therefore one of the most important sources of the 17th century on the history of the viola da gamba. His aesthetic and technical approach to the viol differed significantly from that of his contemporaries. While instrumentalists like Monsieur Demachy kinship to the sounds emphasized and the polyphonic (as well as in the modern era of harmony Game preferring emphasized Rousseau near the gamba sound to the human voice cello sound is compared to her), to singing and melodic, simpler game.

Works

• Method claire, certaine et et facile pour apprendre à chanter la musique . Reprint of the 5th edition (Amsterdam 1720): Geneva 1976
• Traité de la viole . Paris: Ballard 1687. Facsimile reprint ed. von Minkoff: Geneva 1975 and Katzbichler: Munich / Salzburg 1980. ISBN 3-87397-105-4

literature

• Alexandra Lichtenthal:  Rousseau, Jean. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 14 (Riccati - Schönstein). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1134-9 , Sp. 536-537 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)

Web links

• Sheet music and audio files by Jean Rousseau in the International Music Score Library Project
• Robert A. Green:  Rousseau, Jean. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).