Habe nun ach! Philosophie

Now I have a singing Socrates or a trilling Kant. From Monteverdi to Telemann and Paisiello to Mozart and Lortzing, the philosopher embodies the buffo type of the otherworldly yet greedy, clever yet jaded rhetorician. Alongside this, the thinking hero unfolds as the bearer of ideas in opera, extending to the real existing philosopher as a protagonist in modern musical theater. Although Rousseau is not a performing musician, he manages to influence music significantly. In the so-called Parisian Buffonist dispute over the supremacy of Italian or French opera, he plays a leading role. His Singspiel Le Devin du village delights the court of Versailles and temporarily pushes the tragic lyrical work of his rival Rameau into the background. Finally, his Dictionnaire de musique can be compared in its far-reaching significance to the educational novel Emile.