The Ranums' Panat Times

... or read more about Charpentier's autograph manuscripts

Read my comments about another article in the Actes, 2007

May 2008

It is a very complex thing, describing the interaction between the 17 PAP formes identified in Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Mélanges and the watermarks that permit us to identify two dozen different types of paper.

An early attempt to pull this evidence together was the concordance I drew up in the summer of 2007, when Laurent Guillo's list of all the PAP's became available. Since then, I have tried another approach, which I hope will be useful to others. I made a table that not only shows the PAP number, watermark, and cahiers, but that also shows a revised dating of each paper.⁽¹⁾ Note: The point of departure for the table is Guillo's list, pp. 52-54. (From that list, I deleted repeat citations of a given paper that refer to the two halves of a single sheet.)

At the far right, the "paper" code I have taken to using for each of the 45 distinct printed papers. Forty-five "papers"? Yes indeed, because there are 45 different combinations of PAP's and watermarks, each combination associated with a relatively brief moment in Charpentier's career.

I want to emphasize that the chart is not definitive. In fact, I expect that it will be necessary to modify it as new evidence is available. These modifications will be added in color and footnoted. (Please do not wonder why there are a few blank squares in the left-hand column, the PAP's: the blank squares mean nothing, they are freaks of the internet publishing process!)

A few comments about how to use this table

•     The PAP numbers tell us a great deal about the music-printing business. That is, we can literally to see the different papers on which the print-shop used that forme. In addition, the dates permit us to date the use of that form. It turns out that several forms were used for at least a decade.
•     However, since a specific PAP form sometimes appears sporadically in the Mélanges for a full decade, by itself the PAP-number provides only a very general dating for a specific cahier.
•     By contrast, the different brands of paper in the Mélanges rarely continue for more than a year or two; and they often appear in both series of notebooks for that relatively short time, thereby permitting us to assert that cahiers in one series are contemporary with cahiers in the other.. When combined with internal evidence in the cahier itself, the brand of paper can therefore permit rather close dating of a work, a cahier, or even a group of cahiers. That said, relying on watermarks alone, as we have done for several decades, produced some odd results. Take paper I: it appears in cahiers dating from 1683-84, but it also turns up in notebooks copied out in Charpentier's youthful hand in 1672-73! Did the paper lie on a shelf somewhere, for a decade? Or take all that Jesuit paper (†), especially the scattered sheets that Charpentier used to repair earlier notebooks: does it all date from the period 1688-1698?
•     When PAPs and watermarks are linked (as in the right-hand column), it becomes clear that all paper I is not the same. The paper I of the early 1670s was printed with form PAP-84, but the paper I of the 1680s was printed with PAP-26. In sort, although these sheets were produced by the same paper mill and bear the same watermarks, they are for all intents and purposes different papers! As for the Jesuit paper that we once treated monolithically, it now can be subdivided into several datable groups: papers †/25 (1684), †/39 (1682) and †/70 (circa 1690) ­ plus the hand-ruled sheets that predominate in the 1690s.
•     The dates proposed in the right-hand column reflect the most recent evidence, especially the printer's forms identified by Laurent Guillo and the handwriting changes presented by C. Jane Gosine. It is essential to remember that these dates do not reflect the date of composition. They show the date when Charpentier used that specific paper, sometimes to make a new cahier but sometimes to repair, recopy, or rework an existing cahier.
  

Notes

1. Guillo relied on dating worked out in the 1980s and 1990s. Thanks chiefly to his data about PAP's, this crude dating can be refined. The Musings cited in subsequent notes show how these new dates were determined.

2. Paper 6 bears Jean-Baptiste Colbert's coat of arms; see my "Jean-Baptiste Colbert: un protecteur de Marc-Antoine Charpentier?" Marc-Antoine Charpentier, un musicien retrouvé (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2005), ed. C. Cessac, p. 117-20,

3. The watermarks on fols. 20-21 and 24-26 were to dim to permit identification.

4. See my Musing on this Jesuit paper and its probable date.

5. See my Musing about "red flags," and also the Musing about some doubts about paper G/26

6. See my Musing on Musing on this Jesuit paper and its probable date.

7. The watermarks were illegible on this isolated sheet printed with PAP-76.

8. In cahier 5 this paper is used with paper †/25, which can be dated as 1684.

9. See my comments about paper G/82 and G/26 in cahier 22.

10. Paper printed with PAP-83 first appears in the Mélanges in 1674 and the form was still being used by the printer in 1684. During that decade 5 different papers were printed by this form.

11. The watermark on fols. 76-77 was too faint to read.

12. Note how long a printer's forme could last: PAP-84 first turns up in the Mélanges in 1672, and it was still in use in 1682. Over the course of that decade, it was used to print staves on 5 different papers.

13. Form PAP-85 appears in the Mélanges for only 2 years, but it was used for 2 different papers.

14. Note how long PAP-86 was in service: from 1679 to the late 1680's, during which time it was used to print staves on 5 different brands of paper.