Patrick Barbier“For Marie-Antoinette, music is necessary like the air we breathe”

Patrick Barbier is an Italianist by training, a music historian, and a professor emeritus at the Catholic University of the West (Angers). A specialist in the links between music and society, he has written around fifteen works, most of which are published by Grasset. His History of the Castrates has been translated into a dozen languages. With his Journey into Baroque Rome, he received the Thiers Prize from the French Academy in 2019, and he obtained the Château de Versailles History Book Prize 2022 for Marie-Antoinette and music.

Comments collected by David Chanteranne, editor-in-chief

After several works relating in particular to music in the Baroque era and Italy, you devoted an essay to Marie-Antoinette and music. Where did the idea for this book come from?

It seemed to me that alongside the numerous biographies devoted to the queen, a work on the strong links she had maintained with the musical field was missing. Often, in the books that talked about it, music was a bit of a poor relation, treated here or there at the turn of a page. Several historians (Emmanuel de Waresquiel, Évelyne Lever, etc.) also encouraged me to continue this research, which was the responsibility of a music historian. I had dealt a lot with the Baroque era in music (History of the Castrati, Farinelli, Vivaldi's Venice, Journey to Baroque Rome, etc.) or the Romantic era (with my biographies of Malibran and Pauline Viardot) but I was missing that intermediate part, between baroque and romanticism, which in music we call “the classical era”. I was all the more happy to tackle it as it in some way completed the study that I had undertaken on the castrati at the French court, from Mazarin to Louis XVI, in my book The House of the Italians.

In your book, you look back on the education of the young Archduchess of Austria, the fifteenth child in a family of sixteen brothers and sisters. What place does music have in his learning and more broadly in his family? Was this the beginning of his passion for music?

It is undeniable that childhood plays a very big role in the course of life. However, on a musical level, everything was done to predispose Marie-Antoinette to be interested in this field. His grandfather Charles VI directed the court orchestra, could accompany an opera on the harpsichord without having rehearsed, and brought to Vienna the elite of Italian composers and singers (Caldara, Porpora, Farinelli, etc.). Marie-Thérèse also plays the harpsichord, sings with a beautiful contralto voice, and involves her children in all the major musical events of the court. Marie-Antoinette, very young, took part in these court entertainments, among others for the two weddings of her brother Joseph. Very quickly she was immersed in theatrical shows, declaiming poetry or doing a few dance steps. She also received harpsichord and pianoforte lessons from Gluck. She attends the recital that the six-year-old Mozart is giving in Schönbrunn (she and Wolfgang are only three months apart in age). She attends all the pantomimes and small shows that her mother, the Empress, organizes. In short, she was introduced throughout her childhood to what could be called “the performing arts”, a passion that she would cultivate throughout her life.

Would you say Marie Antoinette was a good musician?

She is one of those sovereigns who, like much later Queen Elizabeth of Belgium or Emperor Akihito of Japan, devoted a daily passion to musical practice, without ever seeking to reach the level of professional musician. As such, she is not comparable to Louis XIV, nor Maria Barbara of Braganza, even less to Frederick of Prussia or his sister Wilhelmina. She remains an enlightened amateur who above all wants to maintain herself through daily work and have fun. For Marie-Antoinette, music is necessary like the air we breathe. It was in the study of the harp that she showed the most diligence and passion. The pieces she has played, such as the Alceste overture and many others, show that she tackles demanding pieces. The time she devotes to the instrument (two hours a day when she is dauphine, probably an hour, or even less when she is queen), shows a constancy, a regularity in effort, and a desire to progress which breaks a bit of the usual image of lightness, frivolity, inconstancy and “little bird” that we often wanted to attribute to him. In addition, she also plays the harpsichord and the pianoforte, which are a family tradition, and she loves to sing accompanied by the best composers and musicians of her time.

What are the Queen's musical tastes and favorite composers?

One of her preferences is French comic opera, which she has continued to protect and encourage, particularly through her unwavering friendship with Grétry. She also practiced it with talent, if we are to believe the French actor Fleury who served as her “coach” in this area. At ease on the Trianon stage, she seems admired for her ease in performing works such as Le Devin du Village by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, where singing, very simple in truth, is interspersed with spoken dialogue. This is what also pushed her towards the art of romance, very fashionable in her time, which she loved, and interpreted with delight and for which she leaves us two compositions by her hand, including the famous C'est my friend. But, as we have said, Marie-Antoinette loves the performing arts in general. Wherever she can encourage theater, particularly singing theater, she spares no effort. Her best years of reign are what I call "the Gluck years", as she admired and defended the great Parisian creations of the man who had been her piano teacher in Vienna: Iphigénie en Aulide, Armide, and Iphigénie en Tauride. She also loved the tragedies in French by three Italian composers among the greatest names in Europe at the time: Piccinni, Sacchini, and Salieri. All this while listening, in private, to numerous French, German, Italian, and Czech virtuosos, who came to play in front of her, from her arrival at Versailles until the last hours of the Tuileries.

Could music have had a source other than artistic within Court society, whether in Vienna or at Versailles? For what reasons?

When she became queen, in 1774, Louis XVI entrusted her with the role of "minister of culture", leaving her complete freedom to brighten up court life, organize concerts and parties, welcome and encourage musicians, and program shows, notably at Versailles and Fontainebleau. We see, among other things, her role as a patron in the support and accompaniment of numerous children or adolescents who are introduced to her, whom she listens to, and whose studies she sometimes finances in the manner of a “benevolent godmother”. Most of these young talents will make a name for themselves later. Thus Pierre d'Alvimare, whom she supported from the age of fifteen, became a harp teacher at the future Paris Conservatory and then was the teacher of Empress Joséphine and Queen Hortense. By practicing the harp and the pianoforte, Marie-Antoinette made these instruments make considerable progress on a technical level: not because she had any skills in the making of these instruments, but because her bulimia to learn, to understand and to wish the best for musical life, push the great makers of his time (Cousineau, Naderman, Érard, etc.) to constantly propose new improvements to instruments and to create prototypes submitted to the queen; some will be a “flop” and others will be a success, sometimes until the beginning of the 20th century.

Ultimately, to what extent did the Queen influence the musical life of her time?

One of its main successes is to have broadened and internationalized the lyrical repertoire, until then very Franco-French. In Vienna, she was used to listening to Germans, Italians, Czechs, and many others. In Versailles and Paris, it will open a very salutary breach, favoring a kind of cosmopolitanism that will make Paris a magnet and which will give it its role as a hub of music until the Romantic era and beyond. From now on the German Gluck and the Italians will experience triumphs, without relegating French composers to second place. In addition to the progress that she brings about in the making of instruments, as we have said, she has interesting ideas such as the creation of the Royal School of Song and Declamation, which is her work: how to train young talents and lead them to excellence in the field of music and dramatic theater, without this costing these young artists anything. Certainly, his School sank into revolutionary turmoil but the idea was taken up again in 1795 with the creation of the Paris Conservatory of Music, still eminently renowned today. Likewise, by fully supporting the creation of the Théâtre de Monsieur, dedicated to the Italian repertoire, she opened the doors to the future Théâtre-Italien de Paris, which would experience its apotheosis with Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti.

To write this work, what sources did you use? What new light does it shed on the subject?

In addition to the numerous archival documents that I cite, I above all carried out a systematic study of all the memoirs, travel accounts, diaries, and “souvenirs” written by all those, French or foreign, who approached Marie-Antoinette at at one point or another in their lives. It is an inexhaustible source of information, even if one must at all times be wary of flattery or, on the contrary, enmity from one or another towards the queen. All this without neglecting the hundreds of letters written by the queen, but also by her mother the Empress Marie-Thérèse, by her brother Joseph, by the ambassador Mercy-Argenteau, and many others. As I was only interested in the musical details, it was sometimes like looking for a needle in a haystack! With all this, I think I have shown a different face of the queen, once again on an artistic level and not in the political field which was not my subject. A fairly free woman in the end, who often shook the coconut tree of conventions and etiquette to move forward in what seemed important to her. A woman who spared no effort to impose the works and composers she loved, against the opinion of her contemporaries and sometimes the public. A woman who is regular in her practice, obstinate in her choices, passionate, and eager for knowledge and encounters in everything related to the musical field. I think it is this new and unique look at the queen that convinced the jury to award me this prestigious “Château de Versailles History Book Prize” in 2022.

Can you tell us a few words about your next book project?

Twenty years ago I wrote a booklet on Pergolèse, a composer whom I like very much and who we know little about. He is as little known as a man and musician as his Stabat mater is famous throughout the world. This is a paradox that deserves attention. I am resuming this work today in a much more complete way, taking into account all the most recent research and discoveries on it. This will be the subject of a very detailed and illustrated biography in the collection of biographies that “Bleu Nuit publisher” defends. A way for me to return to this city of Naples and this Neapolitan school of music that I particularly love!