Title: Mozart, String Quintet in Eb maj. (K. 614, third mvmt). Bust of 18th C French dramatists. The foyer of the French National Theatre. Voltaire, one of the most intelligent men who had ever lived. He�s smiling�the smile of reason. Not a laugh. A smile. It seems to us shallow. We�ve got into deep water the last 50 years. We demand commitment, passion. Belief in natural law, justice, toleration. Not bad. This we owe to the movement known as the Enlightenment, and above all to Voltaire. Although this victory of reason was won in France, it was begun in England. Newton, Locke, and the Bloodless Revolution (1688). Swift, Pope, Addison. Handel, Minuet II from Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749). 1726 Voltaire takes refuge in England.
Blenheim Palace, the Duke of Marlborough. When Voltaire saw it, he remarked "What a great heap of stone without charm or taste." Built as a monument to military glory by Sir John Vanburgh who didn�t care a fig for taste or decorum.
England was a paradise of the 18th C amateur. Vanbrugh wrote plays. Wren began as a brilliant amateur. Lord Burlington�s Chiswick, a small masterpiece of domestic architecture, meant for good society. Mudge, Trumpet Concerto no. 1 in D maj. Inheritors of the Renaissance ideal of the universal man, Alberti, also an architect. 18th C amateurism ran through everything. Sir Joseph Banks�two horn players? Freshness and independence. I recently heard a professor of sociology say on television, "What�s not prohibited must be made compulsory." Not accepted by Voltaire or Rousseau.
The other side of the medal: William Hogarth. John Gay-J. C. Pepusch, Beggars Opera (1728). Drinking, wenching, stealing, coarse life painted with delicacy. The "much cracked-up democracy of 18th C England": The Election. England had created two societies very remote from one another. One was that of the country gentleman and developed in the work of Jane Austen ("deficient in energy"!) or the painter Arthur Devis. The other was the urban society of Hogarth that we could not call by any stretch "civilisation." Comparing two paintings, A midnight modern conversation (Hogarth) with A reading from Moliere (Jean Fran�ois de Troy). Male and female balance is essential to civilisation. The influence of women was benevolent and creative. The salon. French artists have portrayed them with a penetrating eye for their subtly of mind. "How did these ladies do it? By human sympathy...by tact."
Versailles. Lully, Fanfare from Suite Musiciens du roi. Panic and fatigue. But it benefitted the city where Parisian society was free from courtly rituals and politics. No excessive wealth, owing to the Law crash. A margin of wealth is helpful to civilization, but great wealth is destructive. The south front of Versailles is a masterpiece, but it doesn�t touch us. Jean-Baptiste-Sim�on Chardin didn�t depict the upper classes. Upper class scaled back and lived in apartments. Mozart, Piano Quartet in g min. (K. 478, third mvmt).
A complete record of how people lived in 18th C France. There were innumerable minor artists. Fran�ois Boucher. Nobody but a sourpuss or a hypocrite would deny that this is a pleasant way of life. Was it shallow or trivial? Those who experienced it were no fools. Talleyrand. The outstanding scientists and philosophers of the time. They wanted to curtail the power of a lazy king and an irresponsible government. In the end they got rather more of a change then they bargained for. The encyclopedia: Encyclop�die, ou dictionnaire raisonn� des sciences, des arts et des m�tiers. Twenty-four folio volumes. Diderot, novelist, philosopher: the smile of reason. Authoritarian governments don�t like dictionaries. The encyclopedia was twice suppressed. The precursors of revolutionary politics. The illustrated supplements of technical processes. Science was fashionable and romantic. The experiment with the air pump by Joseph Wright of Derby. Such sacrifices must be made in the interests of science?
Scotland and the Enlightenment. Ballad, "Will ye go to Sheriffmuir? Where but in Edinburgh does the romantic landscape come right into town? Adam Smith, David Hume, Joseph Black, James Watt. After 1760 they changed the whole current of European thought and life. The industrial revolution precedes the French revolution. Wealth of Nations (1776) creates a social science. Hume�s Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) makes all philosophers uneasy. Great Scots! Robert Adam�s New Town of Edinburgh. Walter Scott. Arkwright�s mill. The romance of industrialism. Scottish practicality.
On the moral side we must return to France. Voltaire�s home near Switzerland. Ch�teau-Ferme de Liroux, in Lonz�e. Devastating witticisms. On one subject he was serious: justice. Bulldog, patriarch and sage, 1788 return to Paris at age 84.
The Renaissance had taken place in the framework of the Christian church, but by the middle of the 18th century, the church had been exposed as a hypocritical institution. "Crush the vermin." Chapel, "Deo erexit VOLTAIRE" ("Erected to God by VOLTAIRE"). Counter-reaction produces total materialists. The troublesome task of constructing a new morality without revelation or Christian sanctions. Natural law and Stoic republican Rome. David. Lives of Plutarch. The oath of the Horatii (1785). Gone are the sensuous shadows of Fragonard. Even more grimly Plutarchian picture, The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (1789).
The revolution had moved outside Europe to the edge of the civilized world: America. It was in this virgin land and not in the compost heap of Europe that the ideals of the new morality triumphed. Here a young Virginia lawyer elected to build his home in the 1760s. Monticello (the little mountain) of Thomas Jefferson. Palladio and Vitruvius, classical architects. He designed everything with this independent air, universal man of the 18th C. A touch of self-righteousness. Federal style. Tomb. "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia." The establishment of religious freedom at the University of Virginia. Oudon the great sculptor of the Enlightenment. George Washington. No more smiles. Mount Vernon. Yankee Doodle as The Battle of Trenton.
The key of the Bastille given as a gift to Washington by Lafayette. The Palladian architecture and the music have crossed the Atlantic, "God Save the King" has become "My Country �tis of Thee." Charles Ives, Variations on America. The less familiar words spliced from various sources: "[God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?] Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. [Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.]"