Sound, Image, Text was an exhibition of prints from a 19th century edition of Jean Benjamin de Laborde’s illustrated songbook Choix de Chansons (1773), held in the Australian National University Gallery’s Project Space in August 2023. The exhibition was curated by Poppy Thomson, who used this digital publication to inform her selection of the prints. […]
Blogroll
11. Concert: Music for the Dauphine: Laborde’s Choix de Chansons. Australian National University, August, 2023.
This recital was the final event of the Sound, Image, Text symposium, hosted by the Centre for Art History and Theory in the ANU School of Art and Design in August 2023. Below you can view an edited recording of the concert, a concert programme and a transcript of the various introductions to the songs being played. […]
05. Mark Ledbury, “Marie-Charlotte Vendôme, François Moria and Music Engraving in the Choix de Chansons”
One of the remarkable aesthetic features of the Choix de Chansons was that it was entirely engraved, meaning that no moveable type was used. The musical notation, words and images were all created by burin engravers.1 In the case of the text and music, this was achieved by artisans in the very specialized metier of […]
03. Erin Helyard, “Music and Music-making in Laborde’s Chansons pittoresques”
One of the most remarkable publications of the later eighteenth century is the four-volume Choix de chansons compiled by Jean-Benjamin de Laborde (1734–1794), fermier général and premier valet du chambre to Louis XV.1 Published in 1773 and dedicated to the Dauphine, Marie Antoinette, this deluxe set is a multi-authored collection of music, text, and image. […]
02. Robert Wellington, “Chansons Pittoresques: The Subscription Prospectus for Choix de Chansons”
In June 1772, Jean-Benjamin de Laborde published a prospectus announcing ‘an absolutely new kind’ of publication of what he called chansons pittoresques [picturesque songs]. While there seemed to be new collections of songs published all the time, he wrote, Laborde’s Choix de Chansons would differ by presenting a combination of image, music, and text. This […]
01. Glenn Roe and Robert Wellington, “Introduction: Performing Transdisciplinarity”
The Enlightenment was the golden age of book illustration in France. Traditionally, studies of eighteenth-century illustrated books were the province of amateurs and bibliophiles who delighted in deluxe editions and wrote of the engravings they contained as splendid rococo follies, reflecting the decorative impulse of a lost courtly age. This approach, however, has marginalized the […]
