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Scan 104
Harvard Dictionary Of Music(1950), 1950
18 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1BOUFFONS
3closed mouth or, at least, closed teeth. This is occasionally used as a special effect of vocal accompaniment, e.g., in Verdi's Rigoletto, last act.
5Bouffons [F., comedians]. (1) In the 15th and 16th centuries bouffons were costumed dancers probably similar to those who performed the *morisca and the *matasin.—(2) In 1752 the Guerre des bouffons (War of the Comedians) was a quarrel between two parties of Parisian musicians and opera-enthusiasts—those favoring the national French serious opera (Lully, Rameau, Destouches) and those preferring the Italian opera buffa (Pergolesi). Pergolesi's famous opera buffa La Serva padrona (The Servant as Mistress), which was composed in 1733, had been given in Paris for the first time in 1752, without arousing more than moderate interest. The second performance, however, given by a troupe of Italian comedians (buffi), led to a quarrel which divided Paris into two halves and became famous in the history of opera. The national party consisted largely of the aristocracy (including the King and Madame de Pompadour) and the plutocracy, while the Italian party numbered among its adherents the intelligentsia and the musical connoisseurs (including the Queen and such outstanding men as Rousseau, d'Alembert, Diderot). The latter considered the Italian opera superior because it had more melody, expression, and naturalness, and had shaken off completely the "useless fetters of counterpoint." Briefly speaking, the guerre des bouffons was a fight of the rising *Rococo against the dying *Baroque. [For a similar movement in Spain, see *Zarzuela.] Rousseau's famous Lettre sur la musique française (1753) was one of the hundreds of pamphlets issued in this controversy. The efforts of French musicians to compete with the popularity of the opera buffa resulted in a new kind of French comic opera known as Comédie mêlée d'ariettes [see *Comic opera II(c)].
7Lit.: G. Cucuel, Les Créateurs de l'opéra-comique français (1914); L. Reichenberg, Contribution à l'histoire de la "Querelle de Bouffons" (1937); E. Hirschberg, Die Encyclopädisten und die französische Oper (1903); L. de la Laurencie, "La grande saison italienne de 1752" (SIM viii).
9Bourdon. The general connotation of this term is that of a low tone of long duration, that is, a *drone or *pedal point. The term was also applied to instrumental devices producing such tones, e.g., to the low-pitched bass-courses of the *viella and the *hurdy-gurdy which could be sounded continuously against a melody played on the higher strings [cf. Petrus Picardus, CS i, 153], to the large pipes of the organ, or to the drones of the bagpipe. In French 17th-century music, the name bourdon is given to pieces in which there is a uniform bass-accompaniment similar to that of the drones of a bagpipe, e.g., C-g-c-g C-g-c-g . . . [cf. F. Couperin's Air des véleux in his harpsichord suite (*ordre) "Les Fastes de la grande Ménestrandise," ed. Augener ii, 209; also the musette in Bach's English Suite, no. 3].
11Bourrée [English borry, borre, etc.]. A French 17th-century dance, probably from the Auvergne, usually in quick duple meter with a single upbeat [Ex. from Bach's French Suite, no. 6]. The dance is mentioned by M. Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, 1615), but does not appear in musical composition prior to Lully's operas and ballets (c. 1670), whence it was transferred to the suites of the late 17th and early 18th centuries (Pachelbel, J. K. F. Fischer, J. S. Bach). See *Dance music III.
13Bout d'archet [F.]. Point of the bow.
15Boutade [F.]. A dance or ballet in a capricious style. The name is also used for 18th-century instrumental pieces of a similar character.
17Bow [F. archet; G. Bogen; It. archetto]. This implement of violin playing takes its
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