ABSTRACT
Three individuals from the period—two foreign and the third a Parisian of the next generation—offer pertinent observations about the Christoph Willibald Gluck/Niccolò Piccinni controversy. In 1789 Johann Nicolaus Forkel used François-Louis-Gand Leblanc Du Roullet’s 1772 letter in the Mercure de France (which offered his and Gluck’s work to the Paris Opéra) to illustrate the deception employed. Forkel also raised the question of whether music composition deliberately eschewing melody almost throughout in favour of declamation is a valid musical form—the chief criticism in Paris about Gluck’s music. In 1811, François-Louis d’Escherny, brother-in-law of Gluck’s banker, included a 1777 letter to his sister from Gluck in which the composer comments on the controversy surrounding his operas, the coverage in the Journal de Paris, and the large sums it was earning for its publisher. D’Escherny’s portrait of Gluck and his music differs from that of his Paris advocates. In 1802, the theatre critic Julien-Louis Geoffroy reviewed a revival of Gluck’s Armide, raising similar questions about the viability of a form that stresses declamation over melody.
