Pièces de clavecin

Historical context

François Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin represent a “highly artistic expression” in the development of instrumental music, as the book notes, with Couperin demonstrating a lively sense of the style best suited to the harpsichord. He developed a knack for writing tuneful, compact movements grouped into ‘Ordres,’ which are similar to later Suites. These collections, likely prototyped by lute pieces such as those by Denis Gaultier, often adopted a basic suite nucleus but added a profusion of rondeaus and other short movements with eccentric names. In one Ordre, the number of pieces reaches twenty-three, suggesting that a sense of complete balance for the whole was likely not the aim; instead, they were strung together in the same key as a series of agreeable ballet pieces.

Couperin catered to the taste of his French audiences by including a long series of lively “picture-tunes” that evoked the theatrical ballet. He developed considerable skill in contriving these descriptive pieces, with titles like ‘La Triomphante’ (also ‘Bruit de Guerre’) and a series in the eleventh Ordre representing ‘Les Fastes de la grande et ancienne Mxnxstrxndxsx’ in five acts. The book suggests that these quaint, theatrical titles, such as ‘La majestueuse’ or ‘La voluptueuse,’ stood in the way of thorough musical development. Couperin’s works had an unmistakable influence on J. S. Bach, who took Couperin as one of his models, focusing on the most artistic aspects of his work and aiming to improve upon them.

Drawn from C. Hubert H. Parry, The Evolution of the Art of Music (1897); George Grove; J. A. Fuller-Maitland (ed.), Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.), Vol. 4 (1908); George Grove (ed.), A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (A.D. 1450-1880), Vol. 1 (1879); George Grove (ed.), A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (A.D. 1450-1880), Vol. 3 (1883) — public domain, archive.org.