Rameau of the cities and Rameau of the fields: itineraries of some melodies, from the sheepfold to the vaudeville

Abstract

The diffusion and the circulation of pieces by Rameau, chosen in the keyboard pieces or the operas (Hyppolyte et Aricie, Dardanus, Les Fêtes d'Hébé), reworked or with new words, are examined in several repertories from the 181h to the 201h centuries (songs, comic opera in vaude­ville, anthologies for amateurs or pedagogical works). Through the examples of the Niais de Sologne, of the Musette en rondeau, the perhaps unintentional quotation of Dodo in Dardanus, of the arrangement of Hyppolite et Aricie under the title La Nuit, the paper envisages the pro­blems of the intertextuality proper to parody and vaudeville, the loss of the notion of authorship in the repertories of tunes, and the fluctuations of the initial meaning (particularly of the pasto­ral imitation) in varying contexts.