Court institutions as enablers of women's entry into French baroque music

This paper picks up where the landmark French Baroque Music by James Anthony, published in 1974 left off.  It presents two prominent fields of studies that have developed since Anthony: social history and sociology of the institutionalization of French Baroque music, and dance.

 The first aim of this paper is to construct a context for the music created amidst major institutional and societal changes propelled by Louis XIV. In order to provide insights into the music and dance background, an institutional account of seventeenth century French culture analyzes the daily life of renowned and unknown musicians, examining the artists in the new academies, from schooling to career, to stardom, to retirement and beyond.

 In this context we examine artistic changes and social events, in particular, the court institutions as enablers of women’s entry into music, obtaining the legal right to perform as professional artists on public stages, and the implication of this opening to the feminization of the stage that reverberated in the arts. We explore the milieus in which the artists evolved: the Court, Versailles, Parisian cenacles and clubs, the ruelles, as well as the convents, and the churches in Paris and the provinces with whom, and for whom these musicians created.

 A second aim is to focus on dance in order to illuminate how music and dance are intertwined in repertories of the Grand Siècle. We examine French 17^th century  dances and choreography in the institutions of the court, in Paris, the theaters, the gardens and salons.

 This interdisciplinary research is at the crossroads of sociology, feminist studies, reception studies, and musicology.