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François Couperin

January 07, 2023

François Couperin (French: [fʁɑ̃swa kupʁɛ̃]; 10 November 1668 – 11 September 1733[1]) was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand ("Couperin the Great") to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.

Couperin (anon.), collection of the Château de Versailles.

Life

 
Couperin, engraving by Jean Jacques Flipart, 1735, after André Bouys.

Couperin was born in Paris, into a prominent musical family.[2] His father Charles was organist at the Church of Saint-Gervais in the city, a position previously held by Charles's brother Louis Couperin, the esteemed keyboard virtuoso and composer whose career was cut short by an early death. As a boy François must have received his first music lessons from his father, but Charles died in 1679 leaving the position at Saint-Gervais to his son, a common practice known as survivance that few churches ignored. With their hands tied, the churchwardens at Saint-Gervais hired Michel Richard Delalande to serve as new organist on the understanding that François would replace him at age 18. However, it is likely Couperin began these duties much earlier: a stipend of 100 livres per year, which had been provided the Couperin on Charles's death slowly increased to 400 livres, suggesting that Couperin had gradually begun to take on the mantle as his studies progressed.

The 11-year-old was taken care of and taught, meanwhile, by organist Jacques-Denis Thomelin, who served both at court and at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. Biographer Évrard Titon du Tillet wrote that Thomelin treated the boy extremely well, becoming a second father to him. François' talent must have shown itself early on because by 1685 the church council began providing him a salary, although he had no contract.

At twenty-one Couperin also lost his mother, Marie (née Guérin), but otherwise his life and career were accompanied by good fortune. In 1689 he married Marie-Anne Ansault, daughter of a prosperous family. The next year saw the publication of his Pièces d'orgue, a collection of organ masses praised by Delalande, who may have assisted with the project. In three more years Couperin succeeded Thomelin at Louis XIV's court. The appointment brought him in touch with some of the finest composers of the day as well as the aristocracy. His earliest chamber music dates from this time. Couperin met his court duties in tandem with those he now had as organist at Saint-Gervais, while also composing.

Royal assent to publish

He applied for a blanket privilège du Roy in 1713 to allow him to publish 'plusiers pieces de musique de sa composition, tant pour la vocale que l'instrumental, conjointement ou séparément'[3] and used it immediately to issue the first volume (out of four) of his harpsichord works, Pieces de clavecin. A harpsichord playing manual l'Art de toucher le clavecin followed in 1716 (though this was immediately recalled and republished the following year), as well as other collections of keyboard and chamber music. In 1717 Couperin became ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du roi pour le clavecin––one of the highest possible appointments for a court musician, and a position once held by Jean-Henri d'Anglebert. However, his involvement in the musical activities at the court may have lessened after Louis XIV's death in 1715.

Couperin's health declined steadily throughout the 1720s. The services of a cousin were required by 1723 at Saint Gervais, and in 1730 Couperin's position as court harpsichordist was taken up by his daughter Marguerite-Antoinette. Couperin's final publications were Pièces de violes (1728) and the fourth volume of harpsichord pieces (1730). The composer died in 1733. The building where Couperin and his family lived since 1724 still stands and is located at the corner of the rue Radziwill and the rue des Petits Champs. The composer was survived by at least three of his children: Marguerite-Antoinette, who continued working as court harpsichordist until 1741, Marie-Madeleine (Marie-Cécile), who became a nun and may have worked as organist at the Maubuisson Abbey, and François-Laurent, who according to contemporary sources left the family after François died.

Works

See also: List of compositions by François Couperin
 
Cinquième prelude
from L'art de toucher le clavecin, performed by Robert Schröter on a harpsichord tuned in equal temperament
Cinquième prelude
The same work performed in a reconstructed tuning of "temperament ordinaire", which could have been used in France at Couperin's time
Sonade from Quatrième Ordre: La Piémontaise “L'Astrée” from Les Nations: Sonades et Suites de Simphonies en Trio (Paris, 1726)
Performed by New Comma Baroque
Pièces en concert – prelude, la tromba et air de diable
Performed by the Advent Chamber Orchestra with Stephen Balderston, cello solo
Plein jeu de la messe à l'usage des couvents
Premier couplet du Kyrie
Petit plein jeu de la messe à l'usage des couvents
Deo Gratias
Récit de cornet de la messe à l'usage des couvents
Premier couplet du Sanctus
Le réveille-matin (The Alarm Clock)
MIDI file
Problems playing these files? See media help.

Couperin acknowledged his debt to the Italian composer Corelli. He introduced Corelli's trio sonata form to France. Couperin wrote two grand trio sonatas. The first, Le Parnasse, ou L'Apothéose de Corelli ("Parnassus, or the Apotheosis of Corelli"), was written to show his great debt to Corelli and published in 1724. The other, L'Apothéose de Lully, was published a year later and composed in honor of Jean-Baptiste Lully. It used both French and Italian styles of Baroque music, to reconcile the very different styles in what Couperin called a réunion des goûts (a reunion of tastes). The same year as L'Apothéose de Corelli was published, Couperin published a set of ten pieces, "Nouveaux concerts, ou Les goûts réunis", that also combined these two different styles of Baroque music.

His most famous book, L'art de toucher le clavecin ("The Art of Harpsichord Playing", published in 1716), contains suggestions for fingerings, touch, ornamentation and other features of keyboard technique, as well as eight preludes in the keys of the pieces in his first two books of harpsichord music and an Allemande to illustrate the Italianate style.

Couperin's four volumes of harpsichord music, published in Paris in 1713, 1717, 1722, and 1730, contain over 230 individual pieces, and he also published a book of Concerts Royaux which can be played as solo harpsichord pieces or as small chamber works. The four collections for harpsichord alone are grouped into ordres, a synonym of suites, containing traditional dances as well as pieces with descriptive titles. They are notable for Couperin's detailed indication of ornaments, which in most harpsichord music of the period was left to the discretion of the player. The first and last pieces in an ordre were of the same tonality, but the middle pieces could be in other closely related tonalities. These volumes were admired by Johann Sebastian Bach, who exchanged letters with Couperin, and later by Brahms and by Ravel, the latter of whom memorialized the composer in Le Tombeau de Couperin (Couperin's Memorial).

Many of Couperin's keyboard pieces have evocative, picturesque titles (such as "The little windmills" and "The mysterious barricades") and express a mood through key choices, adventurous harmonies and (resolved) discords. They have been likened to miniature tone poems. These features attracted Richard Strauss, who orchestrated some of them.

Johannes Brahms's piano music was influenced by the keyboard music of Couperin. Brahms performed Couperin's music in public and contributed to an edition of Couperin's Pièces de clavecin by Friedrich Chrysander in the 1880s.

Modern English composer Thomas Adès took three pieces from different sets of Couperin suites and orchestrated them in his work "Three Studies from Couperin".

The early-music expert Jordi Savall has written that Couperin was the "poet musician par excellence", who believed in "the ability of Music [with a capital M] to express itself in prose and poetry", and that "if we enter into the poetry of music we discover that it carries grace that is more beautiful than beauty itself".[4]

Organ

Only one collection of organ music by Couperin survives, the Pièces d'orgue consistantes en deux messes ("Pieces for Organ Consisting of Two Masses"), which were published in November 1690.[5][6] At the age of 21, Couperin probably had neither the funds nor the reputation to obtain widespread publication and the masses were released as manuscripts, with a printed title page and approbation by his teacher, Michel Richard Delalande, who wrote that the music was "very beautiful and worthy of being given to the public."[7] The two masses were intended for different audiences: the first for parishes or secular churches ("paroisses pour les fêtes solemnelles"), and the second for convents or abbey churches ("couvents de religieux et religieuses"). These masses are divided into many movements in accordance with the traditional structure of the Latin Mass: Kyrie (5 movements), Gloria (9), Sanctus (3), Agnus (2), and an additional Offertoire and Deo gratias to conclude each mass.

Couperin followed techniques used in masses by Nivers, Lebègue, and Boyvin, as well as other predecessors of the French Baroque era. In the paroisses Mass, he uses plainchant from the Missa cunctipotens genitor Deus as a cantus firmus in two Kyrie movements and in the first Sanctus movement; the Kyrie Fugue subject is also derived from a chant incipit. The Mass for couvents contains no plainchant, as each convent and monastery maintained its own, non-standard body of chant. Couperin departs from his predecessors in many ways. For example, the melodies of the Récits are strictly rhythmic and more directional than previous examples of the genre. Willi Apel wrote, "this music shows a sense of natural order, a vitality, and an immediacy of feeling that breaks into French organ music like a fresh wind."[8]

The longest piece in the collection is the Offertoire sur les grands jeux of the first Mass, which is akin to an expanded French overture in three large sections: a prelude, a chromatic fugue in minor, and a gigue-like fugue. Bruce Gustafson has called the movement a "stunning masterpiece of the French classic repertory."[9] The second Mass also contains an Offertoire with a similar form, but this Mass is not considered as masterly as the first: Apel wrote, "In general, [Couperin] did not expend the same care for this Mass, which was written for modest abbey churches, as for the other one, which he himself certainly presented on important holidays on the organ of Saint-Gervais."[10]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Beaussant 1990, p. 348.
  2. ^ "François Couperin | French composer [1668-1733] | Britannica".
  3. ^ F-Pn, Ms Fr. 21590
  4. ^ Savall 2005.
  5. ^ Gustafson 2004, p. 115ff.
  6. ^ Apel 1972, p. 736ff.
  7. ^ Gustafson 2004, p. 115.
  8. ^ Apel 1972, p. 737.
  9. ^ Gustafson 2004, p. 116.
  10. ^ Apel 1972, p. 738.

References

  • Apel, Willi (1972). The History of Keyboard Music to 1700. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 736–738.
  • Beaussant, Philippe (1990). François Couperin; translated from the French by Alexandra Land. Amadeus Press. ISBN 0-931340-27-6.
  • Gauthier, Laure (2008). Mélodies urbaines: la musique dans les villes d'Europe (XVIe-XIXe siécles) (in French). Presses Paris Sorbonne. p. 256. ISBN 978-2-84050-563-1. Retrieved 2013-05-27.
  • Gillespie, John: Five Centuries of Keyboard Music: An historical survey of music for harpsichord and piano, New York NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1965. ISBN 0-486-22855-X
  • Gustafson, Bruce (2004). "France". In Alexander Silbiger (ed.). Keyboard Music Before 1700. New York: Routledge. pp. 115–116. ISBN 9780415968911.
  • Higginbottom, Edward (2001). "Couperin: (4) François Couperin (ii) [le grand]". In Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.‎
  • Mellers, Wilfrid: Francois Couperin and the French Classical Tradition, London UK: Faber & Faber; 1950, 2nd edition October 1987 ISBN 978-0-571-13983-5
  • Savall, Jordi (2005), François Couperin: Les Concerts Royaux (CD liner notes), Alia Vox, AV9840, Couperin est le musicien-poète par excellence, qui croit en la capacité de la Musique à s'exprimer avec «sa prose et ses vers»...si on entre dans sa profonde dimension poétique, on découvre qu'ils [referring to the occasional pieces such as Les Concerts Royaux] sont porteurs d’une grâce qui est, «plus belle encore que la beauté...».
  • Tunley, David: Couperin, London UK: BBC Music Guides, 1982 ISBN 978-0-563-17851-4

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to François Couperin.

January 07, 2023
françois, couperin, french, fʁɑ, kupʁɛ, november, 1668, september, 1733, french, baroque, composer, organist, harpsichordist, known, couperin, grand, couperin, great, distinguish, from, other, members, musically, talented, couperin, family, couperin, anon, col. Francois Couperin French fʁɑ swa kupʁɛ 10 November 1668 11 September 1733 1 was a French Baroque composer organist and harpsichordist He was known as Couperin le Grand Couperin the Great to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family Couperin anon collection of the Chateau de Versailles Contents 1 Life 1 1 Royal assent to publish 2 Works 2 1 Organ 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 External linksLife Edit Couperin engraving by Jean Jacques Flipart 1735 after Andre Bouys Couperin was born in Paris into a prominent musical family 2 His father Charles was organist at the Church of Saint Gervais in the city a position previously held by Charles s brother Louis Couperin the esteemed keyboard virtuoso and composer whose career was cut short by an early death As a boy Francois must have received his first music lessons from his father but Charles died in 1679 leaving the position at Saint Gervais to his son a common practice known as survivance that few churches ignored With their hands tied the churchwardens at Saint Gervais hired Michel Richard Delalande to serve as new organist on the understanding that Francois would replace him at age 18 However it is likely Couperin began these duties much earlier a stipend of 100 livres per year which had been provided the Couperin on Charles s death slowly increased to 400 livres suggesting that Couperin had gradually begun to take on the mantle as his studies progressed The 11 year old was taken care of and taught meanwhile by organist Jacques Denis Thomelin who served both at court and at the church of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie Biographer Evrard Titon du Tillet wrote that Thomelin treated the boy extremely well becoming a second father to him Francois talent must have shown itself early on because by 1685 the church council began providing him a salary although he had no contract At twenty one Couperin also lost his mother Marie nee Guerin but otherwise his life and career were accompanied by good fortune In 1689 he married Marie Anne Ansault daughter of a prosperous family The next year saw the publication of his Pieces d orgue a collection of organ masses praised by Delalande who may have assisted with the project In three more years Couperin succeeded Thomelin at Louis XIV s court The appointment brought him in touch with some of the finest composers of the day as well as the aristocracy His earliest chamber music dates from this time Couperin met his court duties in tandem with those he now had as organist at Saint Gervais while also composing Royal assent to publish Edit He applied for a blanket privilege du Roy in 1713 to allow him to publish plusiers pieces de musique de sa composition tant pour la vocale que l instrumental conjointement ou separement 3 and used it immediately to issue the first volume out of four of his harpsichord works Pieces de clavecin A harpsichord playing manual l Art de toucher le clavecin followed in 1716 though this was immediately recalled and republished the following year as well as other collections of keyboard and chamber music In 1717 Couperin became ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du roi pour le clavecin one of the highest possible appointments for a court musician and a position once held by Jean Henri d Anglebert However his involvement in the musical activities at the court may have lessened after Louis XIV s death in 1715 Couperin s health declined steadily throughout the 1720s The services of a cousin were required by 1723 at Saint Gervais and in 1730 Couperin s position as court harpsichordist was taken up by his daughter Marguerite Antoinette Couperin s final publications were Pieces de violes 1728 and the fourth volume of harpsichord pieces 1730 The composer died in 1733 The building where Couperin and his family lived since 1724 still stands and is located at the corner of the rue Radziwill and the rue des Petits Champs The composer was survived by at least three of his children Marguerite Antoinette who continued working as court harpsichordist until 1741 Marie Madeleine Marie Cecile who became a nun and may have worked as organist at the Maubuisson Abbey and Francois Laurent who according to contemporary sources left the family after Francois died Works EditSee also List of compositions by Francois Couperin Cinquieme prelude source source from L art de toucher le clavecin performed by Robert Schroter on a harpsichord tuned in equal temperamentCinquieme prelude source source The same work performed in a reconstructed tuning of temperament ordinaire which could have been used in France at Couperin s timeSonade from Quatrieme Ordre La Piemontaise L Astree from Les Nations Sonades et Suites de Simphonies en Trio Paris 1726 source source Performed by New Comma BaroquePieces en concert prelude la tromba et air de diable source source Performed by the Advent Chamber Orchestra with Stephen Balderston cello soloPlein jeu de la messe a l usage des couvents source source Premier couplet du KyriePetit plein jeu de la messe a l usage des couvents source source Deo GratiasRecit de cornet de la messe a l usage des couvents source source Premier couplet du SanctusLe reveille matin The Alarm Clock source source MIDI file Problems playing these files See media help Couperin acknowledged his debt to the Italian composer Corelli He introduced Corelli s trio sonata form to France Couperin wrote two grand trio sonatas The first Le Parnasse ou L Apotheose de Corelli Parnassus or the Apotheosis of Corelli was written to show his great debt to Corelli and published in 1724 The other L Apotheose de Lully was published a year later and composed in honor of Jean Baptiste Lully It used both French and Italian styles of Baroque music to reconcile the very different styles in what Couperin called a reunion des gouts a reunion of tastes The same year as L Apotheose de Corelli was published Couperin published a set of ten pieces Nouveaux concerts ou Les gouts reunis that also combined these two different styles of Baroque music His most famous book L art de toucher le clavecin The Art of Harpsichord Playing published in 1716 contains suggestions for fingerings touch ornamentation and other features of keyboard technique as well as eight preludes in the keys of the pieces in his first two books of harpsichord music and an Allemande to illustrate the Italianate style Couperin s four volumes of harpsichord music published in Paris in 1713 1717 1722 and 1730 contain over 230 individual pieces and he also published a book of Concerts Royaux which can be played as solo harpsichord pieces or as small chamber works The four collections for harpsichord alone are grouped into ordres a synonym of suites containing traditional dances as well as pieces with descriptive titles They are notable for Couperin s detailed indication of ornaments which in most harpsichord music of the period was left to the discretion of the player The first and last pieces in an ordre were of the same tonality but the middle pieces could be in other closely related tonalities These volumes were admired by Johann Sebastian Bach who exchanged letters with Couperin and later by Brahms and by Ravel the latter of whom memorialized the composer in Le Tombeau de Couperin Couperin s Memorial Many of Couperin s keyboard pieces have evocative picturesque titles such as The little windmills and The mysterious barricades and express a mood through key choices adventurous harmonies and resolved discords They have been likened to miniature tone poems These features attracted Richard Strauss who orchestrated some of them Johannes Brahms s piano music was influenced by the keyboard music of Couperin Brahms performed Couperin s music in public and contributed to an edition of Couperin s Pieces de clavecin by Friedrich Chrysander in the 1880s Modern English composer Thomas Ades took three pieces from different sets of Couperin suites and orchestrated them in his work Three Studies from Couperin The early music expert Jordi Savall has written that Couperin was the poet musician par excellence who believed in the ability of Music with a capital M to express itself in prose and poetry and that if we enter into the poetry of music we discover that it carries grace that is more beautiful than beauty itself 4 Organ Edit Only one collection of organ music by Couperin survives the Pieces d orgue consistantes en deux messes Pieces for Organ Consisting of Two Masses which were published in November 1690 5 6 At the age of 21 Couperin probably had neither the funds nor the reputation to obtain widespread publication and the masses were released as manuscripts with a printed title page and approbation by his teacher Michel Richard Delalande who wrote that the music was very beautiful and worthy of being given to the public 7 The two masses were intended for different audiences the first for parishes or secular churches paroisses pour les fetes solemnelles and the second for convents or abbey churches couvents de religieux et religieuses These masses are divided into many movements in accordance with the traditional structure of the Latin Mass Kyrie 5 movements Gloria 9 Sanctus 3 Agnus 2 and an additional Offertoire and Deo gratias to conclude each mass Couperin followed techniques used in masses by Nivers Lebegue and Boyvin as well as other predecessors of the French Baroque era In the paroisses Mass he uses plainchant from the Missa cunctipotens genitor Deus as a cantus firmus in two Kyrie movements and in the first Sanctus movement the Kyrie Fugue subject is also derived from a chant incipit The Mass for couvents contains no plainchant as each convent and monastery maintained its own non standard body of chant Couperin departs from his predecessors in many ways For example the melodies of the Recits are strictly rhythmic and more directional than previous examples of the genre Willi Apel wrote this music shows a sense of natural order a vitality and an immediacy of feeling that breaks into French organ music like a fresh wind 8 The longest piece in the collection is the Offertoire sur les grands jeux of the first Mass which is akin to an expanded French overture in three large sections a prelude a chromatic fugue in minor and a gigue like fugue Bruce Gustafson has called the movement a stunning masterpiece of the French classic repertory 9 The second Mass also contains an Offertoire with a similar form but this Mass is not considered as masterly as the first Apel wrote In general Couperin did not expend the same care for this Mass which was written for modest abbey churches as for the other one which he himself certainly presented on important holidays on the organ of Saint Gervais 10 See also EditFrench organ school Marguerite Antoinette Couperin 1705 1778 Francois Couperin s daughterNotes Edit Beaussant 1990 p 348 Francois Couperin French composer 1668 1733 Britannica F Pn Ms Fr 21590 Savall 2005 Gustafson 2004 p 115ff Apel 1972 p 736ff Gustafson 2004 p 115 Apel 1972 p 737 Gustafson 2004 p 116 Apel 1972 p 738 References EditApel Willi 1972 The History of Keyboard Music to 1700 Bloomington Indiana University Press pp 736 738 Beaussant Philippe 1990 Francois Couperin translated from the French by Alexandra Land Amadeus Press ISBN 0 931340 27 6 Gauthier Laure 2008 Melodies urbaines la musique dans les villes d Europe XVIe XIXe siecles in French Presses Paris Sorbonne p 256 ISBN 978 2 84050 563 1 Retrieved 2013 05 27 Gillespie John Five Centuries of Keyboard Music An historical survey of music for harpsichord and piano New York NY Dover Publications Inc 1965 ISBN 0 486 22855 X Gustafson Bruce 2004 France In Alexander Silbiger ed Keyboard Music Before 1700 New York Routledge pp 115 116 ISBN 9780415968911 Higginbottom Edward 2001 Couperin 4 Francois Couperin ii le grand In Sadie Stanley Tyrrell John eds The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2nd ed London Macmillan ISBN 978 1 56159 239 5 Mellers Wilfrid Francois Couperin and the French Classical Tradition London UK Faber amp Faber 1950 2nd edition October 1987 ISBN 978 0 571 13983 5 Savall Jordi 2005 Francois Couperin Les Concerts Royaux CD liner notes Alia Vox AV9840 Couperin est le musicien poete par excellence qui croit en la capacite de la Musique a s exprimer avec sa prose et ses vers si on entre dans sa profonde dimension poetique on decouvre qu ils referring to the occasional pieces such as Les Concerts Royaux sont porteurs d une grace qui est plus belle encore que la beaute Tunley David Couperin London UK BBC Music Guides 1982 ISBN 978 0 563 17851 4External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francois Couperin Free scores by Francois Couperin at the International Music Score Library Project IMSLP Free scores by Francois Couperin in the Choral Public Domain Library ChoralWiki The Mutopia Project has compositions by Francois Couperin Kunst der Fuge Francois Couperin MIDI files MP3 files of Kyrie movements of Mass for the Convents Kyrie 1 Plein jeu 1 4 MB Kyrie 2 Fugue 2 2 MB Kyrie 5 Dialogue 2 6 MB Portals Classical music Biography Music Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Francois Couperin amp oldid 1129280759, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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