A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Pastorale
PASTORALE, 1. A dramatic composition or opera, the subject of which is generally of a legendary and pastoral character. Pastorales had their origin in Italy, where, at the time of the Renaissance, the study of the Eclogues of Theocritus and Virgil led to the stage representation of pastoral dramas such as Politian's 'Favola di Orfeo,' which was played at Mantua in 1472. The popularity of these dramatic pastorales spread from Italy to France and Spain, and eventually to Germany; but it is principally in France that they were set to music, and became of importance as precursors of the opera. In April 1659 'La Pastorale en Musique,' the words by the Abbé Perrin, the music by Cambert, was performed at Issy, at the house of M. de Lahaye, and proved so successful that the same authors wrote another similar work, 'Pomone,' which was played in public with great success in May [App. p.745 "on March 19"] 1671. These two pastorales are generally considered as the earliest French operas. The pastorale, owing to the weakness of its plot, was peculiarly suited for the displays of ballet and spectacle which were so much in vogue at the French court, and examples of this style of composition exist by nearly all the French composers before the Great Revolution. Lully's 'Acis et Galathée' ('Pastorale heroïque mise en musique') is perhaps one of his finest compositions. Matheson ('Vollkommener Kapellmeister'), with his passion for classifying, divides pastorales into the very obvious categories of comic and tragic, and gives some quaint directions for treating subjects in a pastoral manner. The pastorale must not be confounded with the pastourelle, which was an irregular form of poetry popular in France in the 12th and 13th centuries.
2. Any instrumental or vocal composition in 6-8, 9-8, or 12-8 time (whether on a drone bass or not), which assumes a pastoral character by its imitation of the simple sounds and melody of a shepherd's pipe. The Musette and the Siciliana are both 'pastoral' forms; the former is of a slower tempo, and the latter contains fewer dotted quavers. 'He shall feed his flock' and the 'Pastoral Symphony' in the Messiah are both in 12-8, and so is the Pastoral Sinfonia which begins the second part of Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Other examples of this class of composition are the first movement of Bach's Pastorale for organ (Dörffel, 788), and the air 'Pour Bertha moi je soupire' in Meyerbeer's opera 'Le Prophète.' The 'Sonnambula' was originally entitled 'Dramma pastorale.'