Abstracts - American Musicological Society

BORROWINGS, "AIR PARLANTS", AND
LEITMOTIFS IN PARIS , ].825.1850
Marian Srnith, yale University
Friday afternoon
During the second quarter of the nineteenth
century, the p!actice of borrowing pre-existent
rnelodies vras commonplace in parisian rnusical circles,
Pianists and publishers adopted opera nelodies as
themes for variations; entrepreneurs took over arias
and choruses, wholesale, for use in their popular
pastiches; staff composers at the Op6ra, when charged
with the task of providing accompaniments for ba1lets,
appropriated rnelodies fron well-known instrumental
music. Perhaps the most interesting forn of nusical
borrowing practiced in Paris at this time hras the air
parlant: a snippet of a well-known texted melody (frorn
folksong or opera) inserted- - sans text- - into ballet
scores, in order to help the audience understand the
plot. The rise and fa11 of the air parlant is
welI-chronicled in the Parisian press of the era, and
in the long-forgotten ba11et scores now housed in the
Bibliothdque de 1'Op6ra
But of equal interest is the fact that certain
ba11et composers, eschewing the technique of airs
parlants , turned increas ingly, in the 1830s and 1840s ,
to the device known today as the Leicmotif. A study of
the air parlant, of some composers' dissatisfaction
with it, and of Parisian audiences' dependence upon it,
contributes to a better understanding both of
nineteenth-century Parisian nusical life and of the
pre-Wagnerian Leitnotif as it r{as used in perforrnances
at the Paris Op6ra.