JEAN BAPTISTE LULLY
Now these were neither ordinary men, nor ordinary musicians, whom Lully was accustomed to strike with their instruments. Some of them were indeed famous in their art and friendships. It only proves how supreme Lully was that they would submit to his temper and rude treatment. Evidently it was a distinction to play in Lully’s Orchestra. So they put up with anything at rehearsals.
Take, for instance, Descoteaux, one of the most famous flute-players of the time. Descoteaux was a great friend of Boileau, Molière and La Fontaine. He lived to be very old, and Marais (the viola da gamba of Lully’s Orchestra) speaks of him in his Journal in 1723 as follows: “During the fêtes I saw Descoteaux, whom I thought was dead. It was he who carried the German flute to its highest point and who brought to perfection the pronunciation of words in singing according to the rules of grammar. The value of literature he understood better than anybody. He sang words very correctly. Descoteaux had the love of flowers to a supreme degree and he was one of the greatest amateur florists in Europe. He lives in the Luxembourg, where they have given him a little garden, which he cultivates himself. La Bruyère has not forgotten to include him in his Caractères and that fad of his for tulips, to which he gave names as he pleased. He wants to be a philosopher now and talk Descartes; but it is quite enough to be such a musician and such a florist.”
Thirty years before, when the tulip mania had spread from Holland throughout Europe, causing people to win and lose large sums—fortunes indeed—upon choice bulbs—and to spend time and money on the production of new species—(a fad so well described in Dumas’s novel of The Black Tulip), La Bruyère wrote of Descoteaux in De la Mode (1691). He did not mention Descoteaux by name; but everybody knew for whom the pen-portrait was intended. Descoteaux had his garden then in the faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Here is La Bruyère’s picture of Lully’s first flute: “The florist has a garden in a faubourg. He runs to it at break of day and he visits it before he goes to bed. We see him as if he were planted and had taken root in the middle of his tulips and before the Solitaire. He opens his eyes wide; he rubs his hands with delight; he goes closer to look at it; he kisses it; his heart swells with joy, for he thinks he has never seen it look so beautiful. Then he leaves it for the Orientale. From the Orientale, he goes to the Veuve (the widow); then he goes to the Drap d’or (Cloth of Gold); then he goes to Agathe; and then he goes back to the Solitaire, where he takes root again. There he stands or sits, rapt, and forgets all about his dinner. How beautiful her shading, her stripes, her satiny, oily skin! How lovely her chalice! He gazes upon her, admiring God and nature in her; and he would not give up that tulip bulb for a thousand écus. But he will be glad to give it away for nothing when tulips go out of fashion and pinks come in. This sensible man, who has a soul and a religion, as well as a fad, returns home fatigued but very contented; for he has seen his tulips!”
Descoteaux was a great virtuoso. So was Philbert, who was also a member of Lully’s Orchestra. Descoteaux and Philbert often played together; and they often played with Vizé, who was just as celebrated on the theorbo and guitar as they were on the flute.
Philbert was famous for his gayety, his wit and his talent for mimicry. He saw the ridiculous in everything and everybody; and he burlesqued everything and everybody to make his friends scream with laughter.
In his chapter on Des Femmes, La Bruyère touches him off under the name of Dracon. Addressing Lélie, he says: “But you have Dracon, the flute-player! No one else in his profession can puff out his cheeks so decently in blowing into an oboe, or a flageolet. The number of instruments that he can make talk is infinite! Pleasanter still, he can make children and young women laugh! Who can eat and drink more than Dracon at a single meal? Dracon enlivens a whole company, and he is always the last to get up!”