PASTORAL DITTIES

Sheet music for flute and piano

Romances and songs of the eighteenth century with CD

End of Cycle I

Fashion for "pastoral ditties", "brunettes" and other "musettes" has fervent followers who, in the spirit of the paintings of a Watteau, pique rural exoticism at the court of France. The reassuring image of a peasant "good savage" meets a great success with the French aristocracy installed at the court of Versailles, and we witness, at the end of the seventeenth century and during the first half of the eighteenth, a real craze for domesticated songs, music and peasant dances.

This tendency to return to an idealized rural life culminated with Marie-Antoinette who, seeking to flee the Court of Versailles, commissioned in 1783 her Hamlet, developing an aspect already previously sketched by Louis XV at the Menagerie of Trianon: the taste rustic. She regularly finds the charms of the peasant life, surrounded by her ladies companions. The ensemble also became a real farm, led by a farmer, whose products fed the kitchens of the castle.

The "pastoral ditties" is therefore a popular pastoral song and love, strophic form. The simple and singing aspect of the melody seemed to fit particularly well with the flute, to allow everyone to develop a sonority largely inspired by the lyricism contained in these little poems tender and bucolic.

Publisher : YLC Flûte Édition