Article: Tradition renewed in the time of Boëly: the example of Études « à la manière » of ancient masters

Jeanne ROUDET

Maître de conférences à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne

Abstract

In the first decades of the 19th century, the growing pedagogical repertoire establishes a pianistic genealogy by reclaiming works and genres of the past. In this context, one observes the creation of pedagogical works in the style of ancient masters, explicitly conceived as access paths to the original scores. If the usage of these works can easily be understood, it is less easy to measure the distance between the pastiches and their models. It is the register of mimetic fidelity that retained my attention. The observation of these imitations, that could be judged unconvincing today, allows discovering techniques the accumulation of which gives rise to an isotopy that accounts for the efficacy of the representation. These particular productions convey the affective images that the time attaches to the composers of the past, forging a reservoir of topics to be used by contemporary pianists, that says more about the counterfeiters than about the imitated objects.