7/14 – ELEGANT FRENCH: Music of François Couperin

Considered one of the greatest composers of his era, François Couperin was also a noted organist and harpsichordist. In 1693 he was named one of the four organistes du roi for the royal chapel in Paris, and soon he was tutoring the royal family in harpsichord. He was also chamber musician for the court, and it is likely that works such as his fourteen noted Concerts royaux were first conceived during that time. They were prèmiered at weekly concerts at court. For the next two decades he established himself as one of the leading harpsichordists of the day, and he wrote a good deal of church and chamber music in those years. By 1715 Couperin began to withdraw from court duties, continuing to edit his music for publication. In 1733 he obtained another ten-year printing privilege, but he died before he was able to use it, and none of his family took the initiative to see through to the press his remaining manuscripts. Almost none of his unpublished music survives.

Among his works are some 230 harpsichord pieces, two organ masses (Messe des paroisses and Messe des couvents), as well as both secular and sacred vocal pieces (of which his three Leçons de ténèbres are some of the finest of his church music), chamber music (including trio sonatas and suites), and two major theoretical works he wrote on music.

Couperin was greatly impressed and influenced by the music of the Italian, Arcangelo Corelli, and his fusion of French and Italian styles contributed greatly to his musical style. He introduced Corelli’s trio sonata form to France.

The designation “Le Grand,” so often attached to his name, came not only to distinguish him from his (musical but less talented) uncle and brother, but from the high regard in which his contemporaries held him. J.S Bach and Couperin supposedly had a long correspondence between them, but no letters survive. Couperin, like Bach, came from a musical family and was celebrated throughout Europe. Bach copied some of Couperin’s music for himself and his wife, Anna Magdalena.

Couperin’s most famous book, The Art of Harpsichord Playing, published in 1716, contained suggestions for fingerings, touch, ornamentation, and other features of keyboard technique. They influenced Bach, who adopted Couperin’s fingering system for playing the harpsichord.

Johannes Brahms’s piano music was influenced by Couperin’s keyboard music. Brahms often played Couperin’s music in public, and contributed to the first complete edition of Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin in the 1880’s.

The early music expert Jordi Savall called Couperin “poet musician par excellence.” (He believed in) “the ability of Music (with a capital M) to express itself in prose and poetry.” He believed that if we enter into the poetry of music, we discover that it is “more beautiful than beauty itself.”