Rameau's Imaginary Monsters: Knowledge, Theory, and Chromaticism in Hippolyte et Aricie
C.W. Dill · Journal of the American Musicological Society · 2002
Abstract In recent years, historians have begun studying the compromises and semiotic slippages underlying Enlightenment thought, what writers of the time characterized as, among other things, monstrosities. Monsters failed to conform to a perceived natural order and as such became models for discussing everything from the limits of knowledge to departures from generic practices. Taking advantage of both this critical trope and the presence of monsters in Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), the present essay describes Rameau's struggles with instrumental reason in his theorization of the chromatic genus. The composer marked the climactic moment in act 4 of the opera with what is surely the most striking progression in the performed version, a chromatic modulation that captures the characters' shock and registers the monster's supernatural presence. During the same period, he experimented theoretically with numerous descriptions of the chromatic progression, as both an ordinary and an extraordinary property of music. Working as composer and theorist, then, Rameau let chromaticism occupy varied epistemological positions in his work, which in turn allows us to observe him dealing with the limitations of his theoretical system and musical representation.