The Choix de chansons of 1773 is a fascinatingly multi-faceted work allowing multiple points of access. For each song or set of two songs, a full-page engraved illustration depicting a scene associated with the song is followed by a title page, and then the song complete with the full engraved score on three pages. Where, as is […]
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06. Mark Ledbury, “In the Wake of Moreau:The Other Artists and Engravers of the Choix de Chansons”
One of the many stories wrapped up in the Choix de Chansons is the abrupt and perhaps unhappy separation from the project of the great artist-engraver of the age, Jean-Michel Moreau Le Jeune, from the project after only one volume was completed. Figure 1. A de Saint Aubin after C-N Cochin, Portrait of Jean-Michel Moreau, etching and Engraving, 1787, New York, Metropolitan […]
07. Mark Ledbury “Le Merle Blanc: The Choix de Chansons as an Object of Bibliophile Desire”
Figure 1 J-M Moreau, Le Printems, engraving for vol.1 of the Choix de Chansons, (Library of Congress, Rosenwald collection) “It gave to the voices of the lovers, in the pastoral of Longus, murmurs of rivulets; to their lips blushes of roses; to their kisses the chastity of angels. In their eyes are their souls reflected, filled with Heaven. They […]
08. Christina Clarke, “Appendix of Choix de Chansons Metadata”
Christina Clarke The Choix de chansons digital critical edition has come together gradually over a number of years and several phases. I joined the project as a research assistant tasked with the first phase of the project: developing a database that would be the foundation for the digital edition. The second phase, undertaken by Pia Van Gelder, […]
12. Concert: Music for the dauphine: Laborde’s Choix de Chansons. State Library of New South Wales, March 2024.
This concert presents a selection of some of the songs published in a unique illustrated songbook compiled by the composer and theorist Jean-Benjamin de la Borde. Published in 1773 and dedicated to Marie Antoinette, the Dauphine of France, this extraordinary song book is adorned with beautiful images from some of France’s leading master printmakers. This […]
09. Symposium: Sound, Image, Text. Australian National University, August, 2023.
The Sound, Image, Text symposium, held from August 25th to 26th 2023 in Canberra, brought together a range of art historians, musicologists and literary scholars to speak on Jean-Benjamin de Laborde’s long-forgotten illustrated songbook Choix de Chansons (1773) and other related topics. Here, you can browse the recordings of these lectures. Associate Professor Erin Helyard Music […]
