Abstract

More than once Jean-Jacques Rousseau distinguished philosopher’s and musician’s tasks, between theory and practice: he entrusted the former with judgment and guidance, the latter with action. Rousseau, the musician, however, didn’t seem to care much about the opinion of Rousseau, the philosopher, when he composed Le Devin du village (1752), using that French language that he declared unsuitable for music, and alternating the conventions of the Italian theater with those of the French theater, a «dégoûtant assemblage», as he wrote in his Lettre sur la musique française. But, ten years later, he devised a new dramatic genre, the melodrama, which abolished singing and committed the dramatic and expressive roles to instrumenta music. He resolved so the modern conflict between music and language on the path traced in his theoretical writings