The Rhetoric of Mouvement and Passionate Expression in Seventeenth-Century French Harpsichord Music

In seventeenth-century France there was an entire branch of rhetorical theory based upon the non-verbal notion of mouvement, prevalent not only in artistic and intellectual disciplines but also within the musical arts. Modern studies have examined this philosophy with regard to the visual arts and to the vocal art of song, but have not yet explored the relation of this notion to contemporary instrumental music. This article, however, will do just that, illustrating how the rhetoric of mouvement applied to seventeenth-century French harpsichord music. The article discusses the chief concepts of mouvement and its relation to passionate expression, demonstrating how they manifest themselves within different artistic disciplines by citing primary sources on painting, poetry, singing, and ballet. The principles discussed in these writings are echoed in Saint-Lambert's treatise on harpsichord playing, allowing us to apply them to harpsichord music. How mouvement in harpsichord music was engendered by directing the physical/temporal motion of sound on many levels - tempo, meter, melody, rhythm, harmonic rate of change, use of agrements - is examined, illustrating their participation in an intricate declamatory language used to create an expressive rhetorical discourse that reflected contemporary aesthetic values.