Philippe Quinault
LC name authority rec. id n82215933
LC Heading: Quinault, Philippe, 1635-1688
Biography:
b Paris, bap. 5 June 1635; d Paris, 26 Nov 1688). French dramatist, librettist and poet. Son of a master baker, he received an excellent literary education from the poet Tristan l'Hermite, through whom he was introduced to Parisian salons précieux. He was only 18 when his first comedy, Les rivales, was performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. He became a jurist at about the same time, having, according to Charles Perrault (Parallèle ... des anciens et des modernes, Paris, 1688–97), studied law for only two or three years. After Tristan's death in 1655, Quinault became private secretary to the Duc de Guise, and on 29 April 1660 marriage to a wealthy widow, Louise Goujon (née Bouvet), brought him a degree of economic independence. In 1668 he composed verses for a court divertissement, La grotte de Versailles, thereby joining the select group of poets chosen to pay continual homage to Louis XIV. In 1670 he was made a member of the Académie Française and in 1674 of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. In 1671, with Molière and Corneille, he was asked to write the text for Lully to set to music in the spectacular court divertissement, Psyché. Thus was inaugurated a 15-year collaboration with Lully in the composition of 11 tragédies en musique and two large-scale ballets (Le tríomphe de l'Amour and Le temple de la paix). The gap of three years between Isis and Proserpine is explained by the temporary eclipse of Quinault at court after Juno in Isis had been interpreted as an unflattering caricature of Mme de Montespan.
By both temperament and artistic inclination, Quinault was ideally suited to collaborate with Lully. His livrets, for each of which he received 4000 livres, were judged first as dramatic poetry, although Quinault was actually a lyric poet. Despite the general agreement that the unities might be overlooked in opera, Quinault was expected to observe unity of action. Sacrificed to this demand were the comic scenes found in Cadmus, Alceste and Thésée, as well as the subplots usually involving persons of lower rank who mirrored the action of the main plot.
Quinault’s subject matter was derived from classical mythology (in his first eight operas) and the familiar legends of chivalry (in the final three). It remains fairly constant: a pair of lovers, a powerful rival and the mingling of gods and goddesses in the affairs of mortals. Although the librettos occasionally treat the Corneillean theme of conflict between ‘glory and duty’ (Roland and Armide), the amorous intrigues of gods and men are generally more galant than heroic and tragic. In fact, with regard to the former, Rosow has observed that both Roland and Renaud are flawed heroes: Roland is so blinded by love that a dea ex machina must point out his duty, and in Armide Renaud’s need to choose between love and duty disappears as soon as his enchantment is broken. Of all Quinault’s livrets, only Atys may be considered genuinely tragic.
Quinault was attacked for his limited vocabulary, especially when contrasted with Racine. There was little understanding of the fact that in opera words must be easily understood when given a musical setting. Perrault came to Quinault’s defence in his Parallèle ... des anciens et des modernes, where he stated that the words in a livret must be ‘very natural, very well known and very much in common use’.
Quinault skilfully varied the length of his lines from two to 12 syllables. To avoid monotony he rarely used more than three alexandrines (the standard line of French tragedy) in a row, reserving their use, rather, for simple recitative or for moments of serious import. He preferred shorter lines and lines with an odd number of syllables for airs and more lyrical passages (see Norman, 1989, p.185).
The galant tone of many of Quinault's lyrics earned him the enmity of the clergy and of the conservative professors of the Sorbonne (Bossuet referred to ‘corruption reduced to maxims’). Quinault, himself in bad health, may have partly succumbed to the repressive moral climate. After Armide he retired from the stage and wrote a long poem on the extinction of heresy which begins:
Je n'ai que trop chanté les jeux et les amours;
Sur un ton plus sublime il faut nous faire entendre.
Je vous dis adieu, muse tendre,
Et vous dis adieu pour toujours.
Besides his opera librettos and the 17 tragedies, tragi-comedies and comedies that he wrote between 1653 and 1671, Quinault left several poems and epigrams and over 60 verses set to music by Lully, Le Camus, Bacilly, Lambert, Charles Mouton and others, all found in collections of airs issued between 1662 and 1700.
(James R. Anthony. "Quinault, Philippe." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed February 22, 2016, http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2344/subscriber/article/grove/music/22706)