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Le Sueur's Musical Aesthetics 621

dramatic vision combines stage action and its orchestral image
in musical pantomime whose tone and gesture strive for a unity of
effect achieved through rhythmic simultaneity. Although Gluck and
Noverre preceded Le Sueur in the realization of aspects of this goal,
the theory appears to stem largely from the composer's own beliefs
concerning musical thought and practice in ancient Greece.
Le Sueur's strong interest in a revitalized French lyric drama
caused him to fight for the inclusion in the Conservatoire curriculum
of disciplines such as history and mythology, lyric poetry, grammar
and rhetoric in relation to music. He believed that instruction in
those fields was essential to the artistic development of young com-
posers. In his pleas that those subjects be taught at the Conservatoire,
Le Sueur reiterated his aim of a simultaneity of action connected to
high pantomime:
It is astonishing that there is not at least one master of the tragic stage and of
high pantomime in relation to music, one who is capable of teaching those grand
effects arising from the action of the actor, from his intensions of accents, and even
from his silence constantly in simultaneous impact with the mimetic effects of the
orchestra.14
The dual aspect implies active synchronization of stage gesture with
orchestral passages. The singer-actor is to coordinate his facial and
bodily responses with the orchestral material even during pauses in
his melodic line so as to parallel the instrumental passages which
interpret and intensify his innermost feelings.
In composing his operas, Le Sueur was evidently fascinated by
this group of related problems. The detailed stage directions in the
scores of the produced operas indicate precise applications of his
ideas. They attest to Le Sueur's effort to achieve an integration of
stage action and orchestral material through a temporal alignment
of music and gesture. Numerous instructions regarding the exact
manner of performance are to be found in his scores. Among these
one instance may be cited from Paul et Virginie in the "mblodrame
hypocritique" of Act II, scene 2:
The two characters, without seeming to turn their attention to it, must never-
theless be careful that the movements and rhythms of their unsteady footsteps, of
their gesture[s] etc. correspond wholly with the movement and rhythms of the or-
chestra in a manner that there results only one and the same impact.15

14 Le Sueur, [autograph] note, n. d. [1801-2]: Archives de l'Opbra / Archives Na-
tionales, AJ-XIII-61 (Folder VII, #173). See the accompanying plate.
15 Le Sueur, Paul et Virginie, p. 168.

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