Enfilade and Variations: Interpreting Salon Music through Residential Architecture in Eighteenth-Century Paris

In eighteenth-century Parisian salons, theme and variations on popular melodies proliferated. Elaine Sisman’s seminal study of variation form provides a foundational approach for understanding variations as rhetorical exercises that persuade through differences in syntax and expression. In this vein, scholars have comprehensively affirmed the ways that salon music reflects the dialogic and sociable practices of Enlightenment receptions (Hanning, Sutcliffe, and Zohn). I suggest that theme and variation form is not only connected to the rhetoric of the salon, but that the concept of sequential elaboration is a principle that was also prized in residential architecture. Drawing from theoretical writings of eighteenth-century architects who designed Parisian hôtels , or urban mansions, I argue that musical variations and salon architecture were designed with the same aesthetic principles. This comparison is warranted since residential architects like Jacques-François Blondel and Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières were designing salons holistically, considering how the floorplan, decorations, scents, and sounds would complement each other. Most Parisian salons of this time featured an enfilade , a sequence of rooms with doors aligned along an axis. Visiting guests were presented with a series of spaces that were carefully curated by the homeowners and treated much like a multi-movement composition. The enfilade successively frames and reframes the character of the household, just like theme and variation form presents a sequential, adaptive examination of a single subject. In a close analysis of Jean-Baptiste Krumpholz’s collection of harp variations Récueil contenant differens petits airs variés , Op. 10 (ca. 1787), I illustrate how enfilades and variations share design features. Both establish a sense of lineage, create the illusion of length, maintain consistent proportions, and reflect the individualism of the salon host. Offering a new framework for interpreting salon repertory, this study contributes to the growing body of scholarship that examines the multi-sensory nature of the salon.