Historical SourcePublic Domain
Des Ballets Anciens et Modernes selon les regles du Theatre (Menestrier, Paris 1682)
Publisher: Claude-Francois Menestrier, S.J. (1631-1705; Jesuit theoretician of court spectacle, ecuyer en titre of Lyon court entertainments) / Chez Rene Guignard, rue Saint Jacques, au grand saint Basile, Paris, MDC.LXXXII (1682). Avec Privilege du Roi. Source: Kichosho scan (DATA/LIBRARY_OF_DANCE/ABBYY TXT/1682-Ballets_(Kichosho).txt, 2,183 lines OCR). Menestrier's FOUNDATIONAL FRENCH-LANGUAGE THEORETICAL TREATISE ON BALLET composition, published at the height of the Lullyan court-ballet era (ten years after the founding of the Academie Royale de Musique 1672, one year after Le Triomphe de l'Amour Saint-Germain-en-Laye 1681). Applies Aristotelian poetics to ballet as a theatrical form: ballets are 'Comedies muettes' structured in Actes and Scenes, with Recits separating the Actes and Entrees des Danseurs functioning as Scenes. The treatise details the theoretical and practical conduct of a ballet: choice of Sujet, division into Actes, number of Entrees, costuming, musical accompaniment, dance-style selection per theatrical purpose. HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Menestrier's *Ballets Anciens et Modernes* is the principal pre-Feuillet theoretical authority on ballet composition — cited explicitly by Pauli 1756 (LOC-1756-PAULI) as 'Menetrier (Histoire des Ballets)' and forming part of the French theoretical canon alongside Cahusac 1754 (LOC-1754-CAHUSAC), Bonnet 1723 (LOC-1723-BONNET), and du Bos. Menestrier ALSO wrote *Des Representations en Musique Anciennes et Modernes* (Paris 1681), a companion volume on opera-theory. The 1682 *Ballets* details two of his own ballet productions as running examples: (1) Ballet de la Prosperite des armes de la France — produced for Louis XIV shortly after his Majorite (1660), depicting France's recent military victories in five Actes of 7+9+7+7+6 Entrees, with sung Recits by Harmonie, Italie, Sirenes, Muses, and Concorde; (2) Ballet de l'Autel de Lyon (1658) — Menestrier's reception spectacle for Louis XIV's visit to Lyon, based on Strabo's account of the 60-Gauls altar consecrated to Augustus at the Rhone-Saone confluence, structured in Entrees of Immortality, the Four Parts of the World, Religion/Nobility/Justice with the Altar, Love, the Provinces of France, Vultures and Lion, Fidelity, etc. Both ballets are allegorical-political, demonstrating Menestrier's theoretical argument that the Sujet of a ballet must be coherent and that the Entrees must logically advance it. Has_Step_Detail=No: the treatise is purely theoretical — no step-tables, no Feuillet-style notation, no individual dance-figure enumeration. Registered for corpus-completeness (matching the pattern of LOC-1712-WEAVER 'An Essay Towards an History of Dancing' and LOC-1721-WEAVER-ANATOMICAL). Four appearances registered for the two running-example ballets plus the ballet-categorical dances.Year: 1682Family: menestrierCatalog: local
Dance manual/reference by Claude-Francois Menestrier, S.J. (1631-1705; Jesuit theoretician of court spectacle, ecuyer en titre of Lyon court entertainments) / Chez Rene Guignard, rue Saint Jacques, au grand saint Basile, Paris, MDC.LXXXII (1682). Avec Privilege du Roi. Source: Kichosho scan (DATA/LIBRARY_OF_DANCE/ABBYY TXT/1682-Ballets_(Kichosho).txt, 2,183 lines OCR). Menestrier's FOUNDATIONAL FRENCH-LANGUAGE THEORETICAL TREATISE ON BALLET composition, published at the height of the Lullyan court-ballet era (ten years after the founding of the Academie Royale de Musique 1672, one year after Le Triomphe de l'Amour Saint-Germain-en-Laye 1681). Applies Aristotelian poetics to ballet as a theatrical form: ballets are 'Comedies muettes' structured in Actes and Scenes, with Recits separating the Actes and Entrees des Danseurs functioning as Scenes. The treatise details the theoretical and practical conduct of a ballet: choice of Sujet, division into Actes, number of Entrees, costuming, musical accompaniment, dance-style selection per theatrical purpose. HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Menestrier's *Ballets Anciens et Modernes* is the principal pre-Feuillet theoretical authority on ballet composition — cited explicitly by Pauli 1756 (LOC-1756-PAULI) as 'Menetrier (Histoire des Ballets)' and forming part of the French theoretical canon alongside Cahusac 1754 (LOC-1754-CAHUSAC), Bonnet 1723 (LOC-1723-BONNET), and du Bos. Menestrier ALSO wrote *Des Representations en Musique Anciennes et Modernes* (Paris 1681), a companion volume on opera-theory. The 1682 *Ballets* details two of his own ballet productions as running examples: (1) Ballet de la Prosperite des armes de la France — produced for Louis XIV shortly after his Majorite (1660), depicting France's recent military victories in five Actes of 7+9+7+7+6 Entrees, with sung Recits by Harmonie, Italie, Sirenes, Muses, and Concorde; (2) Ballet de l'Autel de Lyon (1658) — Menestrier's reception spectacle for Louis XIV's visit to Lyon, based on Strabo's account of the 60-Gauls altar consecrated to Augustus at the Rhone-Saone confluence, structured in Entrees of Immortality, the Four Parts of the World, Religion/Nobility/Justice with the Altar, Love, the Provinces of France, Vultures and Lion, Fidelity, etc. Both ballets are allegorical-political, demonstrating Menestrier's theoretical argument that the Sujet of a ballet must be coherent and that the Entrees must logically advance it. Has_Step_Detail=No: the treatise is purely theoretical — no step-tables, no Feuillet-style notation, no individual dance-figure enumeration. Registered for corpus-completeness (matching the pattern of LOC-1712-WEAVER 'An Essay Towards an History of Dancing' and LOC-1721-WEAVER-ANATOMICAL). Four appearances registered for the two running-example ballets plus the ballet-categorical dances. (1682). Imported from local collection.