FrançoisCouperin

On Sundays in 1714 and 1715, François Couperin played chamber music for the ageing Louis XIV. The violinist François Duval joined him, with wind players and a viol; Couperin played the harpsichord. When he published the Concerts royaux in 1722, he recalled that the king had summoned him “almost every Sunday of the year”. The dances in the collection, among them an allemande, a grave sarabande and a little chaconne, had been played in the king’s rooms. Louis XIV had once danced in his own court ballets.

Paris and VersaillesThe Couperins at Saint-⁠Gervais

Couperin was born in Paris in 1668, into a family already established at the organ of Saint-⁠Gervais. His uncle Louis had held the post before his father Charles, and had died before François was born. When Charles died in 1679, the church kept the succession open for the boy, and Michel-⁠Richard de Lalande covered the duties until he was ready. François studied with Jacques Thomelin and took over in 1685. At twenty-five he won one of the four organists’ places at the royal chapel. He kept his Paris work, travelled to court for his quarter of service and taught the royal children.

The two organ masses of 1690 show what parishioners heard. Sung sections of the Mass alternate with short organ pieces, each calling for a particular combination of stops. In a tierce en taille the melody is in the tenor, below the accompanying upper parts, played on the tierce stop. The offertory of the parish mass is on a larger scale, with a slow opening, a section in imitation and a closing section in gigue rhythm. They are Couperin’s only surviving organ works.

1713–⁠30The four harpsichord books

Couperin was in his mid-forties when his first harpsichord book appeared in 1713. He apologised for the delay, which he put down to court duties, teaching and illness; meanwhile copyists had been spoiling pieces already in circulation. He had taken particular trouble over the engraving. “I have always had an object in composing all these pieces,” he explained in the preface. Their titles followed those occasions and ideas, and some were “a kind of portrait” whose likeness people had recognised under his fingers.

The preface to the first book also contains his statement “I much prefer what moves me to what surprises me.” He had noticed that the strongest hands, capable of the quickest passagework, were not always the best in expressive music. The harpsichord’s strings are plucked, and a finger cannot make a sounding note swell. Couperin looked for expression in the moment before the pluck and in the moment when the finger lets go.

1716–⁠17L’Art de toucher le clavecin

L’Art de toucher le clavecin begins with the pupil’s body. Couperin asked for something under a child’s feet so that they did not dangle, for the wrists to be held level, and for a mirror on the music desk to cure grimaces. He preferred beginners to learn pieces by heart before reading them, and he distrusted unsupervised practice so thoroughly that he took away the key to the instrument after a lesson. Otherwise, he explained, a child might undo in a moment what he had carefully established in three-quarters of an hour.

His book includes an allemande and eight preludes, with fingerings to train the hands. It also gives smaller instructions. The aspiration releases a note early; the suspension puts a short silence before the next attack. In his third harpsichord book he added a comma-like sign for the end of a phrase, and compared its use with pausing at punctuation when reading aloud. He also wrote about players who ignored his ornaments. In the 1722 preface he demanded that everything be observed “without addition or subtraction”.

The reunited tastesCorelli, Les Nations and the apotheoses

Couperin admired Corelli’s sonatas, and his first works in that manner were presented to Parisian society under a false name. He told the story himself in the preface to Les Nations in 1726. He rearranged the letters of his name to make an Italian one and claimed that a relative abroad had sent him a sonata by a new composer. The company received it eagerly. Encouraged by the applause, he wrote more, and eventually he put his own name on the music. For Les Nations he joined those sonatas to substantial French dance suites, making four large groups for two treble instruments and continuo.

In Les Goûts-réunis and the apotheoses of Corelli and Lully, Couperin staged the reconciliation as a small drama. Corelli climbs Parnassus, and Lully arrives to meet him. Apollo persuades the two masters that French and Italian taste together make the perfection of music. The closing trio of L’Apothéose de Lully is called La Paix du Parnasse. One upper part is assigned to Lully and the other to Corelli.