‘The pieces that are in the hands of everyone belong to the public’: Philippe-Emmanuel de Coulanges, Song Games and Operatic Artefacts in Seventeenth-Century Paris

Abstract In seventeenth-century Paris, the performance of an opera or other staged spectacle was an interactive event that engendered countless subsequent performative acts. An operatic premiere infused the Parisian songscape with new musical material that reverberated in various social spheres, from the galant airs performed by mondains at gatherings of literary elites to the ribald songs performed by street singers. The chansons of Philippe-Emmanuel de Coulanges provide a window into the musical games that unfolded across fashionable Paris. These traces of ephemeral song networks illuminate how spectacles had a ripple effect throughout Paris and beyond when individuals performed, manipulated, quoted and parodied operatic artefacts in various social contexts and spaces. The study of the ways in which audiences interacted with operatic music in turn reveals how contemporary spectators understood, listened to and valued a work and its components, as they dissected and reused elements in their quotidian social experiences.