Lois Rosow, professor emerita of musicology, The Ohio State University, presents "Reconsidering the partition réduite."
Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the French music printer Christophe Ballard invented a new type of operatic score: a short score lacking inner string parts. Such scores later came to be known as partitions réduites. Several years ago, a pair of scholars offered a startling hypothesis: that these scores were not in fact reductions of full scores but, rather, the primary means of transmission for the music they contain. This lecture aims to push back, gently, on that notion.
Their arguments against understanding such scores as reductions rely on red herrings: that a printed partition réduite might antedate the first printed full score of the piece in question (they fail to take manuscripts into account); that a partition réduite might differ from the preceding full score in content (even so, a source-copy relationship might still pertain); that French operatic compositional procedures favored the treble-bass duet (true but irrelevant). This lecture will consider the sources needed to produce a work at the Paris Opera at the time in question, as well as the later transmission of such works outside the opera house. It will confirm the place of printed partitions réduites in that continuum, as a practical and comparatively inexpensive way to serve a large and enthusiastic public.
Lois Rosow was an active member of the School of Music faculty from 1985 to 2014; she headed the Musicology Area for eighteen of those years. She is a specialist on French opera of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with publications on text-music relations, allegorical meaning, music printing and engraving, performance-practice issues, and the administrative history and scribal workshop of the Paris Opera. Her critical edition of the opera Armide by Jean-Baptiste Lully underlies several productions released on audio CD and DVD. Dr. Rosow currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music (www.sscm-jscm.org), president of the board of trustees for the Early Music in Columbus concert series, and member of the editorial board for the Œuvres complètes of Lully.
This lecture is free and open to the public. No ticket required.
Lectures in Music Studies is co-sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries.
- Lectures are held Mondays at 4 p.m. in the 18th Avenue Library, 175 W. 18th Ave. (Music/Dance Library, second floor, room 205), unless otherwise noted. These events are free and open to the public. Campus visitors, please use either the Tuttle Park Place Garage or the Ohio Union South Garage. All other garages in the vicinity of the 18th Ave. Library are closed to visitors before 4 p.m.
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