Introduction

Quarrels have tended sometimes to be played down as unfortunate skirmishes which blighted the cultural landscape of early-modern France at certain moments of crisis. Disrupting the otherwise harmonious workings of the Republic of Letters, they set one against another, setting aside reasoned judgement for hot-headed binary exchanges, a sort of printed stichomythia which gives the participants little time to think through their arguments. Looking at musical quarrels places the study of social dynamics — the dissonance just discussed — within the context of cultural evolution, with various advantages. Musical quarrels are particularly important, as they were often considered as musical revolutions, in the non-cyclical, modern sense of that term, M armontel's Essai sur les revolutions de la musique being only the most celebrated examination of the concept. A crucial issue in the 1770s quarrel is the question of who should judge musical works, and according to what criteria.