French keyboard music of the rococo

The Italian harpsichordist Fernando De Luca likes to leave the trodden paths. In the course of his career he has frequently explored unknown harpsichord repertoire from the 18th century. In recent years he has been making recordings for Brilliant Classics. Since 2006 De Luca has made available private recordings of a wide range of repertoire at El Sala del Cembalo. It seems that some of the recordings released by Brilliant Classics were first published on that site, where they have been removed. This way they become available for a wider audience and in a better sound quality (the website offers recordings only in mp3). In 2021 this label released his complete recording of the harpsichord oeuvre of Christoph Graupner, which was followed by recordings of the harpsichord works by Charles Moyreau and Charles-Alexandre Jollage respectively. The latest recordings, which are the subject of this review, are again devoted to little-known French masters of generations after François Couperin. He can be considered the first main representative of what is known as the rococo, which is basically a pejorative term, originating from the late 18th century. The style is close to what is known as the galant style, which conquered most of Europe from the 1730s onwards.

Pierre-Claude Foucquet (1694-1772) [1] was born into a musical family. In New Grove we learn that it was a family of organists, whose members occupied the post of organist at St Eustache in Paris from 1681 to 1783. He himself obtained this post in 1712, and in 1758 he was appointed organist of the royal chapel, as successor to François Dagincourt, and in 1761 he became organist for the fourth quarter of the year at Notre Dame, where his colleagues were Louis-Claude Daquin, Claude-Bénigne Balbastre and Armand-Louis Couperin. As these were all prestigious masters of the organ, Foucquet must have been a man of repute, but today he is nearly forgotten. As far as I know, none of his harpsichord works has been recorded before.

Apart from a single minuet which was included in a German collection published in Berlin in 1763, his complete output was published in three books between 1749 and 1754. The first book includes a preface, a method of learning the keyboard in one lesson, tables of ornaments and scale fingerings. What is notable in all three books is the fact that nearly every piece is either a character piece or a piece of a descriptive nature, and that Foucquet frequently uses the form of the rondeau, which was very popular in France in his time.

As is so often the case, it is mostly impossible to interpret the character pieces. The first book is a suite of connected pieces with the collective title Les Caractères de la Paix. It is a kind of battle scene, which opens with a march, followed by a fanfare, including a depiction of the roaring of cannons. The closing sections are Les Ris and Les Jeux, which may refer to the celebrations after the victory. The second book opens with a march, called Marche des Pèlerins de Cythère. This may well refer to a painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau, Le Pèlerinage à l'île de Cythère. "The painting portrays a "fête galante"; an amorous celebration or party enjoyed by the aristocracy of France after the death of Louis XIV, which is generally seen as a period of dissipation and pleasure, and peace, after the sombre last years of the previous reign." (Wikipedia) In the third book we find some pieces which reflect the idealization of the countryside, a feature of 18th-century France.

In the second production we meet Pierre Thomas Dufour (c1721-1786) [2], who does not have an entry in New Grove. Very little is known about him. Like many French composers of harpsichord music, he was active as an organist: the printed edition of his harpsichord works, dating from around 1770, describes him as organist of the churches Saint-Jean-en-Grève and Saint-Laurent in Paris. The booklet mentions c1750 as the date these pieces have been written.

The book comprises 33 dances and character pieces (32 in the recording, as De Luca plays two of them as one), two concertos and a single piece with the title Carillon. They are divided into groups according to key, but that is ignored in the track-list. The book opens appropriately with a prélude. In the 18th century the higher echelons of society, especially in France, idealized 'natural life' at the countryside. Two instruments were associated with it: the musette and the hurdy-gurdy (vielle). Not surprisingly, Dufour included two pieces referring to them; for the performance De Luca uses the buff stop. Full chords are to be expected in air en choeur as well as in La Majestueuse. De Luca does not make an attempt to explain the titles, so one has to use one's own imagination. One of them is Gigue - Suitte de la Chasse (the original edition includes a separate piece, called La Chasse). The runs may be an illustration of the hunt; there is a sudden descending figure which could be interpreted as the falling of the prey. And then we have Les Matelots, meaning "sailors". It includes a passage with octave jumps the right hand, resulting in a sequence of high notes. Could that be a depiction of a ship's bell? The left hand plays Alberti basses, a feature of music in the galant idiom. Badine means "riding whip"; this piece includes a fast legato episode, which may depict a gallop. Notable is the very free treatment of the dance rhythm in the petitte sarabande.

In the first half of the 18th century the Italian style had grown in popularity. In the oeuvre of Moyreau we encountered several pieces entitled concerto, and in Dufour's oeuvre we find also two, both in three movements. The two middle movements are rondeaus; like Foucquet, Dufour uses it frequently: apart from these two, twelve pieces are in rondeau form (again, not indicated in the track-list). The Carillon, which closes the book, is another specimen of a popular genre at the time.

Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier (1734-1794) [3] enjoys a certain reputation among organists and lovers of organ music. He was active as organist in Lyon and also played the organ at the Concert Spirituel in Paris. Organ pieces by him have been recorded and are included in organ recitals and recorded anthologies. He has also left some instrumental music, especially pieces for harpsichord and violin. His Livre de Pièces de Clavecin was published around 1770, but has remained largely unknown. In the work-list in New Grove it is not even mentioned.

"Towards the end of his stay in Lyons the programmes grew increasingly trivial, and Jean-Jacques played chiefly comic-opera tunes and overtures", writes New Grove, and those who know something about organists and composers of organ music in 18th-century France may now immediately think of one of his contemporaries, Claude-Bénigne Balbastre. He did the same, and his harpsichord music - which is far better-known than Beauvarlet-Charpentier's - is often considered a token of the demise of keyboard music in France in the second half of the 18th century. Some of his harpsichord works are rather trivial indeed, and that also goes for the pieces by Beauvarlet-Charpentier.

The book includes sixteen pieces; all but one have titles, which seem to refer to personalities, concrete or imaginary, like La Cécile and La Suzanne, but also La Redmond, La Bressol and La Motet. One won't find any of the titles in a dictionary. The exception is a pair of minuets. Eleven of the pieces have a tempo indication: nine are marked allegro, one presto and one andante. "[A] salient feature of this music is the use of textures and progressions typical of orchestral writing", Fernando De Luca writes in his liner-notes. As a result many pieces are quite noisy, and full of effects. It is fair to say that subtlety is not one of the features of Beauvarlet-Charpentier's harpsichord music. The pieces that - as far as I am concerned - are the most enjoyable are those that have the addition aria: La Siran and La Bressol. Given the nature of the book as a whole, one won't probably be surprised that the last piece, La Delarouë, is marked La Chasse.

Those who don't appreciate Balbastre, do better to stay away from this recording. Those who do enjoy his oeuvre may also like these pieces by Beauvarlet-Charpentier. And for those who are interested in the development of keyboard music in France this release is certainly one to investigate, as it is such a perfect illustration of what indeed may be considered the demise of the French harpsichord school.

A sceptical reader may think that music that seemingly never has attracted the attention of today's performers must be of mediocre quality. That is questionable. History is not always fair, and too many performers confine themselves to the standard repertoire. Fortunately, there are artists who look beyond the obvious, and Fernando De Luca is one of them. We should be thankful for him and performers like him. Obviously, the appreciation of music is partly a matter of taste. I certainly was not enthusiastic about every piece by the above-mentioned Moyreau. Overall I rate the music of Fouquet and Dufour higher than his. I am less enthusiastic about Beauvarlet-Charpentier: like the oeuvre of Balbastre, it moves between good and trivial.

De Luca does not give much away about his assessment of the music he has recorded. I don't know if he sometimes decides to ignore certain repertoire because a lack of quality, and in his liner-notes he quotes the rather negative assessment of Beauvarlet-Charpentier's organ music in New Grove without comment. It seems to me that it is a good thing that he just brings this repertoire to the attention of lovers of keyboard music. Let them judge for themselves. From a historical point of view these recordings are certainly interesting: they give the listener a good insight into the development of French keyboard music in the course of the 18th century, and De Luca is the perfect advocate of these composers. In these recordings he shows his great skills, both technically and stylistically. He does more than just play the notes; his performances are imaginative, for instance in the addition of ornamentation, and he is not afraid to display the eccentricities. At the same time, the lyrical pieces also come off very nicely. If there are some dull moments in these recordings, that is not his fault.

With Jean-Baptiste Parant (c1730-c1780) [4] we meet another unknown quantity: he has no entry in New Grove, and very little is known about him. Like the composers discussed so far, he was active as organist. It seems very likely that he was blind, as he was organist at the Quinze-Vingts, a hospital established by Louis IX in Paris in the mid-13th century with beds for 300 of the city's needy blind. "Those members of the community who had rudiments of music were assigned to play the church organ", we read in the booklet; Parant was likely the resident who in 1760 applied for the post. His Premier Livre de Pièces de Clavecin, published in Paris around 1762, was dedicated to Louise Angélique d'Harcourt, daughter of the fourth duke of the Harcourt dynasty and later to become the mother superior at the Convent of the Visitation in Bayeux. Several of the 16 pieces in the book refer to her, such as thr first, La d'Harcourt.

With this collection of pieces we take a step back, so to speak, not so much chronologically, but stylistically, coming from Beauvarlet-Charpentier. The effects we find in the latter's oeuvre (and that of Balbastre) are not entirely absent here; especially the last two, La De Beuvron and La Lionoise, include some percussionistic effects that would not be out of place in the oeuvre of the two just mentioned, but overall Parant's music is closer to that of Fouquet and Dufour. Given the popularity of the form of the rondeau it does not surprise that Parant uses it frequently. Character pieces are dominating, but there are also four dances: three minuets and a pair of gavottes.

Given the nature and the quality of this book it is surprising that it has never been recorded before. Fernando De Luca did record it, and one can find the entire book on his site, but it is the Spanish harpsichordist Eva del Campo who recorded it for Brilliant Classics. She delivers a very good and enjoyable performance, with nice ornamentation and a good use of the various registration options of her harpsichord, a copy of a Ruckers in a ravalement of Taskin. This is an excellent addition to the impressive collection of harpsichord recordings released by Brilliant Classics.

[1] Pierre-Claude Foucquet: Pièces de clavecin
Fernando De Luca, harpsichord
Brilliant Classics 96772 (© 2024) details

[2] Pierre Thomas Dufour: Pièces de clavecin
Fernando De Luca, harpsichord
Brilliant Classics 96771 (© 2024) details

[3] Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier: 1er livre de Pièces de Clavecin
Fernando De Luca, harpsichord
Brilliant Classics 96774 (© 2024) details

[4] Jean Baptiste Parant: Premier Livre de Pièces de Clavecin
Eva del Campo, harpsichord
Brilliant Classics 96854 (© 2024) details