ABSTRACT
The enquiry can begin with Jean August-Dominique Ingres's painting, The Dream of Ossian. It was painted in 1813 on commission from Napoleon for his palace in Rome. It is the record of a specific stylistic problem. Ingres, young, ambitious, and absurdly talented, wanted to be a history painter. James Macpherson's poems of Ossian, and the Enlightenment controversies that surrounded them, begin to make sense as a problem about stylistic transformation, the genesis of a "cultural ridge". Levi-Strauss's meditations on Rebecca at the Well elucidate a key problem in understanding the controversy about Macpherson/Ossian. Ingres painted a history painting to hang over Napoleon's bed. Neither seemed to realize that history painting was seriously going out of fashion as bourgeoisie taste took over. Historically, pibroch is as mysterious as Ossian/Macpherson's poetry. Pibroch is remarkably complex, for it is not called "the big music" for nothing.
