The French Leçons de Ténèbres and the Foundation of the Jansenist Music Criticism

Abstract The spread of the Leçons de ténèbres in the French capital and later in large provincial cities contributed to the evolution of musical practices and the listeners’ sensibilities and favored the incorporation of religious music into secular musical calendars. This explains why, from the end of the seventeenth century, the genre has been the focus of criticism from clerics and lay people of different persuasions, who denounced the contamination of the church by opera, using the conventional argument of antitheatricality. Initially focused on the Lessons, the criticism’s terms and arguments used against the Lessons became instrumental in the Jansenist’s critique of modern music throughout the eighteenth century, particularly to contest Jesuit musical patronage and Jesuits’ sensualist conception of music for religious services. While Jansenist criticism portrays an irreducible opposition between opponents and supporters of modern music, the latter being equated with the Jesuits, the article highlights the ambiguities of Jansenist positions. An analysis of these criticisms reveals a double reference to the Augustinian tradition, on the one hand concerning the opposition between musica luxuriantis and musica sapientis and, on the other, a moral reflection on musical pleasure’s legitimacy based on individual introspection. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the condemnation of all modern forms of religious music appeared to contradict the claim to a part of this Augustinian heritage.