Music and the shape of the dialectic: what Hegel’s discussion of Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau shows

Abstract

This paper discusses the prominence given by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit, to Diderot’s Neveu de Rameau. It locates its cause in the dialogue’s account of the quarrel in contemporary French music, between Italian opéra comique and French opera seria, in particular, Rameau. Hegel makes his account of this section of Diderot’s dialogue his first clearly explicit account of a dialectic operating in culture. The French audiences cannot hear the French style of opera with innocent ears, having once taken pleasure in the Italian operas. And movement forward in music, it is implied, will have to go beyond both styles, to please the current audiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Dialectic
• musical tradition
• species
• Opéra Comique
• Rameau

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See the web publication, for OpenBooks, edited by Johanna Raisbeck, with associated materials: https://cdn.openbookpublishs.com/2_Rameaus_Neffe_85926e56c5.pdf.

2 For a textual history, see Satyre seconde: Le Neveu de Rameau, ed. by Hobson, especially pp. 164–6.

3 See Rudolf Schlösser, Rameaus Neffe, Studien und Untersuchungen zur Einführung in Goethe’s Übersetzung des Diderotschen Dialogs (Hamburg: SEVERUS Verlag, 2014, originally published 1900). Schlösser’s excellent book made known much of the early German reception of the dialogue. It would repay revisiting.

4 Subtle differences between various copies of the text have been picked out by critics, which even now to my mind are not well-understood.

5 Hegel’s ‘self description’, written for the Intelligenzblatt der Jenaer Allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung, 28 Oktober 1807, in Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 8 (1973), p. 593. Translation: A. V. Miller, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).

6 J. J. Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiae (‘Critical History of Philosophy’), appeared at Leipzig (originally 5 vols., 1742–1744). Diderot exploited this dictionary in his own philosophy articles written for the Encyclopédie.

7 Über Physiognomik; wider die Physiognomen . […], Göttingen, 1778. Read in Georg-Christoph Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe, ed. by Wolfgang Promies, Band III and Kommentar zu Band III, (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1992). Physiognomical themes are also present in the Satyre seconde as if below the surface, and not fully worked up.

8 Lavater acquired a Europe-wide fame with his work. it was aimed at a popular audience, and conceived as a kind of collective work in progress, sweeping up quotations and contributions from others: Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe, Leipzig, 1775–1778, 4 vols.

9 See Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 191. Lichtenberg and then Hegel consider Lavater’s work to be no science, but a long-winded justification of popular prejudice. As an example of an opinion which elevates casual observation of coincidence into a law of nature, Hegel ironically remarks: ‘The observations are on a par with these: “It always rains when we have our annual fair”, says the dealer; “and every time, too”, says the housewife, “when I am drying my washing”.’ (Hegel, trans. by Miller, p. 193).

10 The musicologist, David Charlton, pointed this out to me in private conversation.

11 The philosopher, Jean-Claude Bourdin, author of several remarkable articles on Rousseau and Diderot, has published recently a collection of articles on Le Neveu de Rameau, held up by COVID: Jean-Claude Bourdin, Le philosophe et le contre philosophe. Études sur Le Neveu de Rameau (Paris: Hermann, 2021).

12 One of the meanings of the Latin word, satira, is mixture, medley.

13 It is noteworthy that this uncommon form is used by several German writers of exactly the same period, two of whom, Herder and Jacobi, had met Diderot, and two of whom, Wieland and Lessing, admired him.

14 The article Prédicable, by Alain de Libéra, is very helpful. See Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, ed. by Barbara Cassin (Paris: Seuil/Le Robert, 2004).

15 Cf. Michael Frede and Lorenz Kruger, ‘Über der Zuordnung des Quantitäten des Urteils und der Kategorien der Grösse bei Kant’, Kantstudien, 61, Berlin, 1970, pp. 28–49.

16 J. J. Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, ed. by M. Raymond and B. Gagnebin (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 4 vols I, 1108; spelling modernized.

17 Droz edition, p. 6.

18 The shadow of Rousseau appears at points throughout Le Neveu de Rameau (cf. Marian Hobson, ‘Diderot et Rousseau par Rameau Interposé’, Recherches sur Diderot et l’Encyclopédie, 2005, 39, pp. 9–18).

19 Droz edition, p. 204.

20 Droz edition, p. 100.

21 Lully, Jean Baptiste (1632–1687), chief composer at the court of Louis XIV, composer of many operas, finally director of the Académie royale de musique, that is, the Opera. Rameau, Jean-Philippe (1683–1764), the major French composer of the eighteenth century, had a position first with a tax farmer, Le Riche de la Poupelinière, and then, from 1745, a position at court. His operas in particular, marked by elaborate and visually striking staging, fell out of favour with the general public with the arrival of an Italian troupe of opera buffa performers in 1752. Their performances, though seen earlier in the period, now gave rise to serious dissension among music lovers, the Guerre des Bouffons. This is a quarrel between supporters of Italian comic opera, opera buffa in the Neapolitan tradition, and the opera seria of traditional French opera. The scandal to contemporary audiences being perhaps not so much the comic tradition of the Italian operas as the fact that they were being played at the stately home of French opera, the Académie royale de musique.

22 Pergolesi (1710–1736), whose comic opera, the Serva padrona, 1733, became the great success of the Bouffons troupe’s second visit to Paris. Jomelli (1714–1774) started by writing comic operas in the Neapolitan tradition, but gradually developed a new style of Italian opera seria; his music was played all over Europe. LUI here is singing from his religious music. Duni (1708–1775), whose roots were in Neapolitan music, moves to Paris for his great success, Le Peintre amoureux de son modèle, 1757. His work was influential in the development of the French comédie mêlée d'ariettes; he and Diderot knew each other.

23 Droz edition, pp. 121–2; Hegel, 318, § 522

24 Droz edition, p. 115.

25 Droz edition, p. 118.

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Notes on contributors

Marian Hobson

Marian Hobson is professor emerita of French at Queen Mary University of London, having been Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College (first woman Fellow). Prior to that, she taught at the University of Geneva and the University of Warwick, and has also been visiting Professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, at the Universities of Harvard, at the University of Johns Hopkins, University of California at Irvine, and Université Denis Diderot (Paris 7). She has given lectures at the University of Bonn, at the Fondazione Cini, Venice; at the RenMin (People's) University, and at the East China Normal School, both in Beijing; and at ShangHai, Jiao Tong University. Her principal interest is in the forms and language in which written philosophy is couched: on the language of aesthetics in the eighteenth-century, in particular in relation to Diderot (The object of art, 1982, 2008; 2007 in French; 2011 in Chinese. She has also written on Diderot's early philosophical writings, in The Cambridge Guide to Diderot, ed. James Fowler, CUP, 2011, (p. 31-45); and a collection of many of her articles on the Eighteenth Century, Rousseau and Diderot: Networks of Enlightenment, was edited by Caroline Warman and Kate Tunstall. Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, 2011; translated into Chinese by HU ZenMing, 2015. She is also the author of numerous articles on Jacques Derrida, and a book on his way of organizing his writing, Jacques Derrida: opening lines, 1997, Turkish 2002.