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Go to the
opening page of Patricia's "Musings"
Read more about Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Read Patricia on Word-Music Relations
Choose a different year in the "French" Cahiers
"French" cahiers for 1670
The "different pieces" written for this year reveal several
things about how the Guises expected to use the talents of the composer they
were sheltering under their roof. (These Guises included: Mlle
Marie de Lorraine
de Guise, age 55, and her newly married nephew the young Duke of Guise and
his young wife, Mme de
Guise, a royal princess of the House of
Orléans who was the first cousin of both Louis XIV and his brother,
"Monsieur," the Duke of
Orléans.) Charpentier, they seem to
have decided, would work for their chapel — or rather, their several
chapels — not for their drawing rooms. And so, for either the small
household ensemble of the Guises, or the three or four talented musician-nuns
at the abbey of Montmartre, where Mlle de Guise's sister was abbess, Charpentier
first wrote some pieces for
tenebrae
services at
the abbey (shown as bi-color because sponsored by both princesses),
to which the Guises invited the spouse of
the Duke of Orléans. Then
— perhaps at the request of M. Du Bois, who at the time was very
close to the Jansenists of Port-Royal (who,
as a travel account that I am currently editing shows very
eloquently, went to great lengths to celebrate the feast
day of St. Augustine) — Charpentier produced two pieces with a
Jansenist or Port-Royal
orientation (the recorders make it highly
unlikely that these pieces were performed by the cistercian nuns of this
abbey, where Charpentier's sister was a converse nun) plus a piece for feasts
of the
Virgin, who was
Mlle de Guise's patron saint and whose Assumption Feast coincided with Mlle
de Guise's birthday. The works from this year
— contained in cahier 1 and the first portion
of cahier 2 — are on the same paper as cahiers
I-V (which contain works for 1670, and perhaps a few works for late 1669).
Date |
Work |
Performers |
|
Cahiers 1 and 2:
"Pièces différentes" |
|
| April 4 |
H 91 Tenebræ: De lamentatione Jeremiæ
matins of Holy Saturday, sung on Friday |
hd d 2 fl |
April 2
Wednesday |
H 92 Tenebræ: Jod, Jerusalem du Mercredi saint
matins of Holy Thursday, sung on Wednesday |
hd d |
| April 3 |
H 93 Tenebræ: Aleph, Jerusalem du Jeudi saint
matins of Holy Friday, sung on Thursday |
hd d |
| August 20 |
H 306 Pour Saint Bernard
Feast of founder of Cistercians, including
Port-Royal, where Charpentier's sister was
a converse nun |
hd d 2 fl |
|
H 53 Jesu corona virginum
daily vespers and lauds, common of virgins
at vespers: after Lauda Jerusalem (ps. 147) and at Magnificat |
2d 1 fl |
| August 28 |
H 307 O doctor optime
For the feast day of St. Augustin, of whom the Jansenists considered themselves
the "disciples" (M. Du Bois was a close friend of
Port-Royal) |
hd d |
| August 15 to September 15 |
H 426 Quæ est ista quæ ascendit de deserto
matins of octave of the Assumption, matins
of octave of the Nativity of the Virgin,
fetes of Mlle de Guise's patron saint |
hd d |
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