The Ranums' Panat Times
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The Ranums' Panat Times |
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opening page of Patricia's "Musings" "French" cahiers for 1672 The first months of 1672 saw the princesses not only still in mourning but preoccupied by the failing health of Mme de Guise's mother, "Madame," the dowager Duchess of Orléans (who was Mlle de Guise's cousin and close friend). On April 3, Mme d'Orléans died. The two Guise women promptly withdrew to Montmartre and remained there through Holy Week (which is why the pieces written for the tenebrae of 1672 are bi-color). May 1672 brought Mme d'Orléans's funeral at Saint-Denis and other solemn services (placing her coffin on a bier at Saint-Denis, taking her organs to her favorite chapels, and the funeral at Saint-Denis itself For more, see my Musing on these funerals.) July 30 brought the late Duke of Guise's Bout de l'An (year-end, and end-of-mourning service). Maroon highlighting, below, shows the compositions in cahiers 4 and 5 that were appropriate not only for the services for Mme d'Orléans but also the Bout de l'An of the Duke. During the remaining months of this year, Mme de Guise was busy preparing her move from the Hotel de Guise, and in mid-June and August-December she was at court. Mlle de Guise was busy settling her late nephew's estate. Having completed the funeral music, Charpentier wrote nothing for Their Highnesses for the rest of that year. I suspect he must have been quite worried about his future, now that his two protectresses were about to separate, one living on the Left Bank and the other on the Right Bank. Which is not to say that the "heroines" and "goddesses" and "enraged virgins" who protected him were not doing their best to find outside work for Charpentier In the parlance of the day, these three terms are only applied to female members of the royal family (Mme de Guise, her sister the Grande Mademoiselle, or a royal princess of the House of Orléans) or to other extremely high nobles such as the Condés or a princess of the House of Lorraine (among them, Mlle de Guise.) These heroines not only imposed Charpentier on Molière during the fall of 1672, they clearly also pressured their friends and relatives (the Jesuits, the Theatines, and even the King himself) to employ this otherwise inactive protégé whom they doubtlessly would have been very happy to see working for a chapel other than their own! The success of their pressuring can be seen in the Roman notebooks for 1672. The funeral works are isolated in two separate notebooks, cahiers 4 and 5. The latter notebook has some pages that appear to have been leftover sheets of the black-lined Jesuit paper used in cahier VII (which contains works for early 1672).
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