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Between 1752 and 1753 Paris witnessed the Querelle des Bouffons, a polemic involving some of the greatest minds of the time. Supposedly sparked by a troupe of Italian actors performing Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona (1733), the debate at first glance appeared to concern French versus Italian opera. This cannot have been the reason, however, as pamphlets began appearing some six months before the Italians' debut. By 1753, dozens had been published both in support for and often scathing attack on each side, in an artistic and philosophical war. Such writers as Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1723-1807), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), and Denis Diderot (1713-1784) took center stage as they discussed the qualities of music and its substance. Scholarly focus on the Querelle has at times questioned the significance of the event; Jeffrey Pulver, for example, opened his 1916 article on the subject as follows:
There are many matters for which much space cannot be spared in our works of reference and of musical history, but which, nevertheless, are often instructive and sometimes entertaining. One of these subjects is the pamphlet-war that was waged in France at the middle of the 18th century,-a bloodless contest that may serve very well to illustrate the methods of argument and the manner of thought prevailing at the period,- and that shows us something new, too, in the characters of many otherwise well-known personages.1
He goes on to say that as "great wars are often to be traced back to trivial affairs," so the Querelle began with "an innocently-intended writing of Grimm's on a work of the Lully school," concluding that it was "petty."2 On the surface, pamphlets contrasting Italian opera with its French cousin will doubtless appear mundane; the problem with this perspective is that it can overlook underlying currents.
Recent research has corrected much of this inherited underestimation and has shown that the Querelle was in fact a highly significant event. Of note is a study by Elizabeth Cook, in which she shows how many of the pamphlets resonate with the polarized political background at the time, using the musical debate as a subversive cover.3 Supporters of the royal establishment championed French opera, forged on the principles of French classicism and absolutist ideology, while proponents of Enlightenment saw in Italian...