| Jean-Philippe Rameau's stage works are best known for their jarring musical moments---passages where a listener's ear is drawn towards music's harmony. My project considers these moments in light of Enlightenment aesthetics, specifically theories of sensationism and sensibility. During such moments, I show how music leaves behind a seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century aesthetic of imitation in order to enter into the opera as an actor and to change its plot. By emphasizing the role of music and demonstrating its impact on characters on stage, Rameau's operas model an interaction between music and listener wherein a listener responds to the transformative power of music.;The first three chapters focus on how such transformative moments emerge by considering Act IV of Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) and the Prologue and second entree, "Les Incas du Perou," from Les Indes galantes (1735). Music, typically mimetic, at some point draws attention to itself by entering into the diegetic world of the opera (the diegese). Once heard and recognized by characters and audience alike as music, it begins to assume a narrative role (though diegesis). Finally, through its harmony, music can then transform the course of the work by such actions as bringing forth a monster or causing an earthquake. These chapters outline this progression from mimesis to diegesis to transformation, with a particular emphasis on the two different meanings conveyed by diegesis, diegese (stage world) and diegesis (nan-ativity). My discussion of mimesis and diegesis draws upon ancient philosophy, Baroque aesthetics, film studies, and narratology. In the Prologue to Les Indes galantes, I consider the resulting diegetic conventions when music enters into the world of the opera but remains mimetic. In "Les Incas du Perou," I turn to questions of narrativity.;My final two chapters, focusing on Rameau's Pigmalion (1748), demonstrate that music's pivotal role as transformer constitutes Rameau's own contribution to sensationist discourse on the processes of perception and understanding. Situating this work among its literary models (in Ovid, and, more directly, La Motte) and contemporary artistic retellings shows Rameau's unique emphasis on the two-step process through which the statue becomes fully alive. The moment of her initial animation, brought forth by the musical representation of Rameau's theoretical corps sonore, is mimetic, diegetic, and transformative at the same time. The statue has gained sensory powers, but still remains a mirror image of her creator: music has entered the diegese but has not yet become the narrator. The statue's transformation remains incomplete until the second stage of her animation in a divertissement, music guides the statue's dance steps, and she begins to develop into her own self. By demonstrating the statue's sensibility to music---the ways in which her acts of listening lead to her transformation---Rameau asserts the importance of hearing as the fundamental sensory mode not just for the statue but also for the audience. I establish that Pigmalion can be understood as part of an eighteenth-century debate on questions of sensation and sensibility. Through his music, Rameau enters into the contemporary philosophical discourse of his fellow philosophes, including Diderot and Condillac, advocating for the primacy and supremacy of music and sound as the root of all sensory and intellectual development. |
