MERMET AND MARPURG: AN EXAMPLE OF TRANSLATION AS CULTURAL TRANSFER IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 18TH CENTURY

Abstract

This article presents issues related to the translation carried out by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718-1795) of the treatise De la corruption du goust dans la musique françoise (1746) by Louis Bollioud de Mermet (1709-1794) named in German Versuch über den Verfall des Geschmacks in der Musik, published weekly in parts which were later compiled in the work Der Critische Musicus an der Spree, by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg. Pertaining to a time when constant dialogue and a series of convergences on Music – especially keyboard music - prevailed between France and Germany, Marpurg’s translation was made public during the formation of a musical actio, i.e., a corpus of normative instructions on how to perform music, a device inherited from classical Latin Rhetoric. The similarity of perspectives on matters of music between France and Germany may have allowed the translator, in presenting Bollioud's treatise, to equate Germans and French with regard to musical tradition. From the withdrawal of the expression dans la musique françoise in the title to the expansion of the translation through observations that join it in a natural way, i.e., without any graphic signage that shows what belongs exclusively to the author and what are additions of the translator, this translation is an obvious example of a translation as cultural transfer.