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As one reaches the final pages of volume 1 of the Minkoff facsimiles of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Mélanges, one can easily overlook the fact that some pages of the Messe pour plusieurs instruments au lieu des orgues are missing between fol. 77 verso and fol. 78 recto. The lacuna is concealed by the uniformity of the musical hand, which is typical of Charpentier's writing during the mid-1670s. By contrast, opening volume 2, one is struck by the atypical blank pages at the beginning of the volume. (Beware, the facsimile erroneously shows four blank pages, instead of two). Totally blank pages are a rarity in Charpentier's manuscripts for the 1670s. The next six pages are equally surprising, because they are written in a smaller, finer hand. Or rather, in finer hands because the G clefs in the first piece (Pour Ste Anne, H.315) differ from the G clefs in the opening four pages of the next piece, Judith sive Bethulia Liberata (H.391). All these pages clearly were copied out by Charpentier himself, but at different moments in his life. After these atypical pages, the handwriting of the mid-1670s returns for the rest of Judith. Since the first four pages of Judith flow perfectly into the remainder of the oratorio, the more modern pages almost certainly were made as replacements for the original ones. It is clear that something happened to cahier 9; and that, towards the end of his life, Charpentier repaired some, but not all of the damage. Most of Charpentier's notebooks are made of seven or eight folded pieces of paper; but there are only three folded sheets in cahier 9. In other words, it appears that the composer did not replace all the lost pages of cahier 9, and that he concentrated solely on Judith. For years, scholars have been alluding to this discrepancy in the musical hands, and to the striking brevity of cahier 9. It took paragraphs 3.3.1 through 3.3.4 of Jane Gosine's article on Charpentier's handwriting styles set me to musing, and to prompt me to put my observations and thoughts about cahiers 8, 9, and 10 down on paper. After reading Gosine, I began musing: "It must be possible to recreate, if only approximately, the contents of cahier 9 as Charpentier knew them in the mid-1670s." I decided to try. I took the approach of an archeologist, who moves back in time from a few ornate stones that break the surface of the earth, to a the various substrata that lie beneath. As he digs, he uncovers columns that toppled as the building collapsed. Eventually he uncovers the foundation of the house, with the remnants of it walls and the postholes into which these supporting columns had been inserted. By the end of the "dig," the archeologist can not only draw a plan of the house, he can also make a few observations about the people who lived there. My "dig" into the ruins of cahier 9 focused on three periods, each a few decades more remote in time than the previous one:
After going through my notes about the papers used by Charpentier, and after comparing the current organization of the Mélanges with the cahier-by-cahier list of Charpentier's works drawn up in 1726, I began to see a pattern. Or rather, the lack of a pattern. I captured these changes in a primitive version of the three drawings (A, B, and C) that accompany this Musing. In the drawings I showed where specific pages were placed in the 1750s, during the binding process; where they were during the confection of the Mémoire of 1726, which inventoried of Charpentier's compositions; and lastly, I deduced what cahier 9 probably was like in 1674-75, when Charpentier was composing these pieces and copying them in to what today is known as the Mélanges. The results were so intriguing that they compelled me to pursue the "excavation." Even this reduced-size illustration shows clearly that a few "artifacts" ― two folded sheets that I show in red, and a sheet and one-half that I colored blue ― moved about over the decades.
Cahier [9] as bound by the Royal Library in the 1750s What can we deduce about the history of cahiers 8-10 from the volumes bound for the Royal Library in the mid-1750s?
Guided
by the instructions of the librarians who were numbering the folios and
inscribing renvois at the bottom of cahiers to indicate the flow of the
pieces, the bookbinders placed the Messe pour plusieurs instruments au lieu
des
On the verso of folio 78 there is a Laudate dominum omnes gentes followed by a related Gloria patri (H.159) that concludes on folio 79 recto; and, on the two sides of the next folio (which is paginated, "pages" 80-81), is a Sub tuum praesidium (H.20). My drawings represent folio 78 as a double line that is both bright green and bright blue, to show that one side of that folio contains the final measures of the instrumental mass, while the other side contains the beginning of the two vocal pieces. With "page" 81, cahier 8 comes to an end, and so does Volume 1. In Drawing A, the break between the two volumes is indicated by a double line. All of cahier 8 was written on the same paper (E), and the handwriting dates from the mid-1670s. Volume 2 begins with remnants that Wiley Hitchcock calls "cahier [9]." (The brackets around the number indicated that the cahier clearly precedes cahier 10, but that it bears no number.) This cahier contains only 6 pages. It caught Gosine's attention because not only was the handwriting anachronistic for the mid-1670s, it also clearly came from two distinct stages in the evolution of Charpentier's handwriting. As bound for the Royal Library, this thin cahier begins with a work honoring Saint Anne (H.315) that presumably was put there by the binders, acting upon the instructions of the librarians. (It appears that this music was written on the first page of the folded sheet, and that the rest were blank. Therefore, to avoid having three blank pages between Pour ste Anne and Judith, the librarians seem to have folded the sheet the other way, causing the blank pages to appear before the piece, rather than after it.) It so happens that Pour ste Anne, which now occupies the recto of folio 2/3, was in the so-called gros cahier in 1726. Strictly speaking, it therefore was extraneous to the two chronologically-numbered series of cahiers that Charpentier assembled over the decades. This position in the gros cahier strongly suggests that Pour st Anne was commissioned neither by Charpentier's employers nor by an outside patron. (Click here to learn more about the gros cahier and to consult the Mémoire compiled in 1726. After this piece for St. Anne come four opening pages of Judith sive Bethulia Liberata (H.391) that Charpentier copied out circa 1700 (the dating is Gosine's). The two folded sheets of paper that contain these four pages are shown in dark red in Drawings A, B, and C. After this very thin "cahier" which was so slim that the librarians did not bother to write a "9" on its opening page comes cahier 10, made of paper "C" and written in the hand that Charpentier used throughout the 1670s. Cahier 10 is shown in pale red in Drawings A, B, and C. Clearly, something or someone destroyed most of cahier 9, but cahiers 8 and 10 were left intact. And this destruction took place prior to 1750. Which raises the question: Had this destruction already occurred by 1726, when the Mémoire was compiled? Cahier 9, as described in the Mémoire of 1726 The destruction had indeed taken place by that
time. But in 1726 the fragments of cahier 9 were not distributed as they are
today. According to folio 1 of the Mémoire drawn up that year, cahier 8
ended with the Sanctus of the mass for instruments: "idem le
sanctus." Next came cahier 9, which was described as being "at the end of
this cahier," that
In other words, some sort of visual or notational clue very probably a numbered chemise had survived from Charpentier's day, and it informed the inventory-taker that the sheets of paper onto which Charpentier copied the final systems of the mass for instruments, and the entire Laudate and Sub tuum were remnants of cahier 9. (A reminder: these remnants are bright green and bright blue in my three drawings.) Somewhat later, the inventory-taker came upon other papers numbered "9." According to folio 13 of the Mémoire, he found these papers in a hotchpotch of manuscripts that was distinct from the two series of chronologically numbered cahiers into which Charpentier copied his income-producing works. These stray pages were labeled: "Partition 9e chiffre françois." In other words, for some reason or other, Charpentier apparently folded a sheet of spoiled paper and wrote "9" on it. (Hence the term "chiffre françois," as distinct from the roman numeral IX.) Inside that chemise were three items: a Languentibus à 3 voix that cannot possibly be H.328, because the inventory-taker had already noted that H.328 was an integral part of cahier XXXII. In short, this particular Languentibus was either a duplicate copy of H.328 or a different setting of the text. In either event, it apparently has been lost. The next item in the "ninth partition" was Judith sive Bethulia Liberata. The inventory-taker is, of course, referring to the recopied title page of Judith (H.391) and to the second, third, and fourth pages of that oratorio. Copied out in Charpentier's most mature hand circa 1700, these four pages replace the opening pages that had been destroyed. In short, the "9" on the chemise was a reminder to Charpentier himself or to his heirs that these pages were part of the damaged cahier 9. He apparently never got around to putting them with the rest of the oratorio, which fills cahier 10 and continues on into cahier 11. After Judith came a "motet pour st Augustin." This cannot possbily be Pour saint Augustin mourant (H.419), which today forms an integral part of cahier "d" and which could not have been extracted from its surroundings, tucked briefly into this folder, and then returned to its original place once the inventory was completed. In my comments upon Gosine's article I have proposed that this was yet another one of the copies that Jacques Edouard had made in preparation for the book of motets he published in 1709. All these copies apparently were discarded by the royal librarians. (For more on these copies, see my Musing on the gros cahier.) Can it be a coincidence, for example, that H.419 was the ninth motet in that lovely little volume? In other words, someone perhaps the inventory-taker, perhaps Jacques Edouard seems to have tucked a copy of motet 9 into folder 9. In sum, in 1726 the recopied opening pages of Judith were not yet in cahier 9. To keep them clean, Charpentier apparently had put a protective cover around them probably, as with notaries, a piece of spoiled paper that had at least one relatively blank side. We have seen that two other pieces had found their way into this cover, probably not during Charpentier's lifetime, and that the royal librarians ultimately would not consider them worth saving. What, then, might cahier 9 have looked like circa 1675? In Drawing C, where I depict a reconstructed
cahier 9, I had to guess about the number of folded sheets of paper in the
cahier. Over the years, the thickness of the cahiers assembled by Charpentier
varied, but it is likely that five or six folded
sheets would have been required to complete the instrumental mass and bring us
to the green and blue folio
This drawing is based upon a common pattern throughout the Mélanges. Since the mass did not end in cahier 8, it can be expected to have continued into cahier 9. And since Judith fills cahier 10 and much of cahier 11, its opening pages can be expected to have begun somewhere in cahier 9 and to have continued all the way to the very end of the cahier, where the final measures would flow into the opening page of cahier 10. Outer sheets (and sometimes several nested outer sheets) frequently turn out to have been replaced by Charpentier at a later date. The outer sheets of cahier 9 were apparently destroyed at some point. In other words, perhaps five folios of the Messe pour les instruments, with music on both recto and verso, disappeared. So did the opening two folios of Judith, situated at the end of cahier 9. These lost folios are shown in dotted color, to evoke transparent ghosts. It is virtually certain that this destruction occurred prior to 1700, because Charpentier himself recopied the first four pages of Judith around that time. A few pages at the heart of cahier 9 survived, however: the final measures of the Messe pour les instruments (today's fol. 78v), and next two folios bearing Laudate dominum and Sub tuum. These are shown as dense green and blue folded sheets in the middle of the cahier. Three surviving folios. In other words, one folded sheet of paper survived, and one half-sheet survived. I think it most likely that today's fols. 78 and 79 are the folded sheet, and that 80/81 is the half-sheet. A close inspection of the original probably would permit an answer, but whatever that answer might be, it is not likely to prove much about the original contents of the cahier and its destruction. My tentative reconstruction of the original cahier 9 suggests, of course, that we have lost whatever music Charpentier composed between late April 1674 and late September 1675. That music occupied the lost folio or folios between the dense blue ones in my drawing, and the dotted red folios that represent the opening pages of Judith. Charpentier did not reconstruct or recopy the lost portions of the Messe pour instruments, probably because this witty replacement for an undelivered organ might have been of little use to him at the Jesuits or at the Sainte-Chapelle. He saved the surviving central fragments bearing Laudate dominum and Sub tuum, but he decided not to reconstitute the piece or pieces that followed these two works. Judith was another story. He clearly wanted to preserve this oratorio intact. Thus he folded two sheets of paper, and he either re-invented the opening pages or else he referred to another copy. He never got around to putting these fresh pages in their appointed place. Is this to be taken as evidence that his health was beginning to fail by the early 1700s? Or was he simply too busy overseeing the choirboys and satisfying the demands of the canons at the Saint-Chapelle? We shall never know. But we do know that twenty-five years after its creation, Judith sive Bethulia was dear to his heart, and that he wanted it to be preserved as part of the monument to seventeenth-century French music that his Mélanges were fast becoming. |
orgues (H.513) near the end of Volume 1 that is, in its chronological
order. This composition begins in cahier 7 and continues on to fill all of
cahier 8, which is shown in light green
in all three drawings. Between folio 77 and folio 78 of cahier 8, something is
missing, however. That is to say, fol. 77 verso contains the first two systems
of a Sanctus for the instrumental mass, and fol. 78 verso contains the
final three staves of the mass. In short, the rest of the Sanctus,
the entire Benedictus, and all but the final eleven measures of the
Agnus Dei are missing. 
is, at the end of cahier 8: "La 9e est à la fin de
ce cahyer." In other words, the inventory-taker was aware that part of the mass
for instruments was missing, and that the final page of the mass was to be found
in cahier 9. That he was able to give a number to these remnants suggests that
the "9e [partition]" (which is his term for cahier 9) was surrounded
by a piece of paper, a chemise, bearing the number "9." Also in that
slim little cahier were the Laudate dominum and the Sub tuum
praesidium that the binders of the 1750s would append to cahier 8 and that
consequently are found today at the very end of Volume 1, rather than
at the beginning of Volume 2. The difference is evident in Drawing B,
which uses the same color-coding as Drawings A and C. 
that represents the final measures of the mass and
the beginning of the two vocal pieces.