ABSTRACT
Late seventeenth-century French serious airs are love songs that present stereotypical images of males and females in a variety of amorous situations. Whereas a variety of alterations in musical style occurred in the repertory after 1670. The incorporation of new musical language into the serious air was linked to changing attitudes about gender representation that reflected an increasingly masculinized public sphere identified by many scholars with the reign of Louis XIV. In the majority of mid seventeenth-century airs, men are represented as seducers who speak a feminine language and use an effeminate display of emotion and physical weakness to manipulate the beloved and elicit her pity in hopes of breaking down her resistance. The most profound indication of the need to masculinize certain airs during this period, however, is the transference of textual and musical features borrowed from Lully/Quinault tragédies en musique.
