ABSTRACT
As the case of the pastoral genre demonstrates, high art has periodically espoused an ideal of primitive simplicity. The primitive however is also at the root of discussants' analogy between Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera and Greek theatre — namely, that the accent of nature is the origin of civilization; in discussions of the Ancients, discussants are using what they know of ancient civilizations in general. Of course, simplicity has long been the watchword for discussions of Alceste in particular, both in terms of the musical practice of the opera and as an aesthetic statement in Gluck's widely circulated preface. As Dominique-Joseph Garat's memoir of Jean-Baptiste Suard indicates, Rousseau's musical theory was of great significance in the ongoing quarrel. Musical theories may be considered from two perspectives: the account they give of the origins of music, and the model they propose for music's development. Francois-Joseph Gossec, although well known as a composer of Revolutionary music, is rarely recognized for his operatic writing.
