Author: [ESTEVE (Pierre)]:
Title: L'Esprit des Beaux Arts.
Description: A Paris, Quay des Augustins, Chez C. J. Baptiste Bauche Fils..., 1753. FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. 8vo, 180 104 mms., pp. [iv], 252 [253 - 254 contents, 255 errata, 256 blank]; [iv], 229 [230 - 232 contents and errata, 233 - 235 approbation and privilege, 1 - 17 adverts], including half-title in each volume. engraved vignettes on title-pages, with the engraver, Pierre-Alexandre Aveline (1710-1760), identified on the vignette of volume 2, leaves uncut, bound in contemporary limp boards, crudely repaired and slightly soiled. The brief notice in New Grove (1980) of Pierre Estève (1720 - c. 1780) records that he "was involved in the Querelle des Bouffons through a polemic against Rousseau (Justification), and wrote on the aesthetics of music, particularly as it relates to general aesthetics. His ideas only had currency during his lifetime." More recently, Blake Stevens in his long article, "Monologue Conflicts: The Terms of Operatic Criticism in Pierre Estève and Jean Jacques Rousseau (2010)," claims that the core of Estève's theory "is the recognition of a plurality of discourses, such that a careful parsing of vocal idioms is essential to understanding French opera and the shaping of dramatic utterance in the monologue. He emphasized the form's 'brilliance'; his definition, with its focus on passion and movement, links the solitary scene to passionate discourse, as classical poetic theory had done." He is unlikely to be confused with his 20th/21st century namesake, the Frenchman Pierre Estève (born February 11, 1961 in Cahors), an eclectic singer-songwriter and composer with a wide range of styles, a musician, a contemporary artist acclaimed for his digital installations and sound sculptures, as well as a researcher and a journalist writing for the French musical press. See also, Downing A. Thomas, Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime (2009).

Keywords: music aesthetics prose


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