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C. Jane Gosine on Charpentier's handwriting styles Jane Gosine's recent article on Charpentier's handwriting styles and how they can serve to fine-tune the chronology of the Mélanges is most welcome! (Click here for C. Jane Gosine's complete online article on Charpentier's handwriting and clefs) Her concluding paragraphs will henceforth serve as guides for other researchers. I therefore quote them here: A close examination of Charpentier's handwriting in all the cahiers of the Meslanges, together with other pieces of musical and extra-musical evidence, suggests that some of the the cahiers were copied at a much later date than their position in the Meslanges would suggest. In addition, some of the pages within cahiers were, for various reasons, recopied at a later date. In the majority of cases, the most convincing explanation is that these cahiers represent re-workings of earlier works to fit a new style of composition, with new scorings often intended for a new group of performers. If scholars are to undertake a systematic analysis of Charpentier's stylistic development, and if they and performers are to have a better understanding of issues related to performance practices (issues that affect not only Charpentier's music, but also seventeenth-century music generally), we need to establish a more convincing chronology for the copying of Charpentier's music into the Meslanges autographes. Certain, in terms of an understanding of performance practice and stylistic development, it is the chronology of copying that becomes as significant as the date of composition." (paragraphs 6.1 and 6.2) In short, the analysis of the evolution of Charpentier's handwriting presented in this article is an extremely important tool for the study of Charpentier's evolution as an artist, and for the study of performance practices in general. I applaud her for her presentation of these crucial details, and for her insightful observations. Some quibbles What follows are quibbles quibbles that do not affect what Gosine says about Charpentier's handwriting. But because of the words I am quibbling about, Gosine's presentation has the potential to lead readers astray. For example, there is some misleading use of words. The Mélanges their confection, their chronology is such a vast and complex subject that no single scholar can master every aspect. Progress cannot be made if misleading statements go unchallenged. Before commenting upon selected details in Gosine's presentation, I therefore call scholars' attention to two significant problems. ..."out of order" The first confusing usage is Gosine's recurrent use of the expression "out of order." It seems to be a symptom of the way she views the Mélanges. In this very article, she acknowledges that Charpentier filled his cahiers year after year, sorting them into two distinct series. Yet when she finds a piece, a few folios, or an entire cahier with a more modern hand, she inevitably declares that it is "out of order." This, despite that fact that Marc-Antoine Charpentier himself put the piece in that chronological position. An "ordering" by handwriting clearly did not count for Charpentier. For example, Gosine says that Cahier 5 "is almost certainly out of order" (paragraph 1.4). I do not understand how she can say that. Charpentier himself placed cahier 5 in that specific position within the chronologically numbered Mélanges. True, this cahier was recopied at a later date when his hand was more mature. True, he numbered the cahier "V," then corrected it to read "5." (Errare humanum est...) But this insignificant mistake, and the fact that the paper and the handwriting do not match the paper and the handwriting of surrounding notebooks, in no way suggest that Charpentier put cahier 5 in the wrong place, that he somehow got it "out of order." The cahier occupies a specific place in the order that he established. Gosine makes a similar statement about cahier 21, where "the numeral at the beginning ... has been altered. ... This too is a cahier that ... is out of order" (par. 1.4). She is referring to a rubbed-out and rewritten number on the outermost of the three recopied outer folios of this cahier. True, the paper of these three outer folios is more recent than that of the inner folios. And so is the handwriting. But since Charpentier put his repaired cahier 21 back into its original position (messing up the cahier number in the process), it is difficult to see how this cahier can possibly be "out of order." And so forth, over and over again. Is Gosine talking about an out-of-order physical position of a cahier within the continuum of the Mélanges? Or does she mean that the cahier has undergone some recopying, and perhaps some reworking? That the handwriting is therefore anachronistic for the cahier's position in the Mélanges? If she means the latter, rather than the former, she would be advised to adopt a more precise terminology. ... "add," or "an addition" Another misleading usage is "added," "addition," which Gosine employs whenever she discusses the presence of one of Charpentier's more modern hands among cahiers dating from the 1670s. In most cases, it clearly is a question of a recopying (and perhaps a revision) of an earlier work, onto a new sheet of paper that replaces the original sheet. The infinitive to add means "to join or unite so as to increase the number, augment the quantity, or enlarge the magnitude" (my emphasis). Addition denotes the act of "adding" something, that is, "increasing" it in one way or another. (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, but the OED give similar definitions.) Gosine occasionally uses the word in its correct sense. For example, she refers to later "additions" such as performance instructions or brief instrumental music copied out onto staves that had been left blank. But usually she employs add in a very different way. For example, her Fig. 11 is titled: "Added Outer Folios in Cahier 21." The outer folios in question almost certainly were not "added" to an existing cahier, thereby making it fatter. They were replacement sheets. I do not believe that Gosine is implying that these recopied sheets in some way "increased," "augmented," or "expanded" the size of the cahier, but she may be giving that impression to her readers. A typical example of her habit of using "add" as a synonym for "replace" is found in paragraph 3.4.1: "Cahiers 19-22 and Cahiers 25-30 ... reveal a number of changes in handwriting that correspond to later additions of folios ..." (my emphasis). In other words, she is saying that entire folded sheets of paper were added to an extant cahier. Her Table 3 lists some of these "additions," describing replaced folio sheets as "later additions." In all but a few instances, Gosine's "later additions" are replacements. She therefore misleads her readers by implying that those pages contain new material that somehow lengthened these compositions by being added to the existing pieces. ... "Ranum, website" One final comment, this time about an issue unrelated to vocabulary. I am rather familiar with the contents of the Ranum website, were dozens of pages are devoted to Marc-Antoine Charpentier. But Gosine's footnotes which indicate simply "Ranum, website" leave me perplexed about which webpage she could possibly be citing. How can she expect her readers to find the appropriate passage and weigh Ranum's observations with Gosine's? The webpages most
relevant to this Musing on Gosine's article are: But Gosine clearly referred to other webpages too. Some of Gosine's observations are
quoted below and commented upon briefly. To distinguish Gosine's arguments from
Ranum's comments, I am using bold type for the principal quotes or
summaries from Gosine, and non-bold type for my replies. The numbers at the
beginning of some paragraphs refer to the paragraphs in Gosine's article.
Paragraphs indented at the left are Ranum's mini-Musings, which I hope
contribute our understanding of Charpentier and his Mélanges.
1.4 --- Gosine comments about the numbering of the cahiers especially those she describes as "out of order." She points out that the Mémoire drawn up in 1726 "confirmed the strong possibility that some of the cahiers might have become out of order before or during binding, and that some cahiers may have been removed by the composer or a copyist and replace (perhaps after revisions)." PMR: It is difficult to see how Gosine can assert that the Mémoire "confirmed the strong possibility" that the binders could be responsible for getting some of Charpentier's cahiers "out of order": the Mémoire predates the binding process by twenty-five years. As for the composer himself (or one of his helpers), there is little reason to think that he played a role in getting the cahiers of the Mélanges "out of order." The Mémoire reveals that the missing cahiers were already gone by 1726, and that no further numbered cahiers were lost over the next twenty-five years, while the manuscripts gathered dust in the storerooms of the Royal Library. The Mémoire also shows that, as late as 1726, Jacques Edouard was storing the cahiers in the numerical order in which Charpentier himself had organized and numbered them, be they on the paper he had originally used, or be they recopied onto newer paper. In other words, the composer's cahiers can scarcely be described as having been "out of order" in 1726. In fact, the person who took the inventory in 1726 seems to have been able to move through each series of cahiers, from 1 to 75, and from I to LXXV without too much ado. As I have argued elsewhere, many of the cahiers apparently had "chemises" or cover sheets on them, listing the contents, and sometimes bearing a cahier number. (Chemises have survived on cahiers 3 and 4.) Only the "autres cahiers" especially the gros cahier that were not a part of the two chronological series of cahiers, appear to have been in some disarray in 1726. Lastly, the
Mémoire suggests that the binders and librarians who worked on the
Mélanges in the 1750s did a very conscientious job. True, they did not bind
all the arabic-numbered series first, into, say, volumes 1-14, and then
bind all the roman-numbered one into, say, volumes 15-28. True, they
(or, rather, the librarians) put most of cahier 70 after cahier 65, in order to
juxtapose two separate compositions for sacres; they isolated cahier
LXI from its neighbors and put it into a different volume; and the separated the
two parts of cahier 43. But as Wiley Hitchcock demonstrated, a bit of
perspicacity makes it possible to recreate Charpentier's original order. In sum,
the Mémoire scarcely "confirms" that many cahiers were "out of order"
in 1726. 1.7 --- JG: "In a number of instances, various works that are now contained in one cahier were copied at different times so that knowledge of the date of performance of one work does not necessarily prove the date for the contents of the entire cahier." PMR: Gosine seems to be suggesting that a given cahier might contain a work composed, say, in 1670 and a little instrument piece copied out, say, in 1683. That is true; but the later work inevitably is not an independent one: it is a little prelude or ritournelle that was added to an existing work. This of course suggests that the existing work was revived, complete with new embellishments. We can often propose a rather precise date for the initial performance of a work. But, for the moment at least, the date of a revival (if the recopying does in fact imply a revival) cannot be more precise than "the 1680s," "the 1690s," or "after 1700." It is devoutly to be hoped that Jane Gosine can fine-tune the dating of Charpentier's hand! 1.10 --- JG: Citing "questions concerning the validity of such an all-embracing theory," Gosine questions why a work for the Great Guise Music might have been copied out into cahier L, rather than into the arabic-numbered series that is, into the "wrong" set of cahiers. PMR: I have proposed elsewhere that the Abbess of Montmartre, as contrasted with Mlle de Guise, commissioned and paid for this work (H.195) for the splendid service of January 20, 1687, which honored Louis XIV and inaugurated the new abbey church. Charpentier would therefore have copied that commission into the "extraordinary" roman-numbered series of notebooks where he kept his outside commissions. (I have likewise proposed that as a compliment to the Dauphin, Mlle de Guise asked Charpentier to write H.341 for this same event, and engaged the former members of the now-disbanded Dauphin's Music. Charpentier copied H.341 into cahier 50, the series where he kept works requested by the Guises.) 2.2 --- JG: "It should be stressed, however, that the analysis [of handwriting changes] can only suggest dates of copying, not necessarily dates of composition. Conclusions drawn by re-examining the possible dates of copying may, however, reveal important details about Charpentier's mode of composition and his approach to revising works for later performance." PMR: In paragraph 2.3 and in Figure 1, Gosine shows how Charpentier's handwriting changed over the years. The sentences just quoted can serve as guides for all scholars working on the Mélanges. 2.4 --- JG: "A comparison of cahiers from the two series reveals consistencies not only in the watermarks and the identification of performers, but also the style of clef formation. This confirms that the manuscripts represent music that was copied throughout Charpentier's life, rather than compiled at the end, and that the two series were compiled simultaneously rather than successively or randomly." PMR: Bravo! Who, after this, will persist in the old doubts about the existence of a parallel chronology in the two series of notebooks? Who, after this, will argue that Charpentier, the son of a master scribe, kept his archives in a hit-and-miss fashion? 2.4 --- JG: "All the cahiers that use the Jesuit paper share the same style of clef formation and choice of annotation." PMR: Gosine is to be thanked for this extremely strong evidence. It suggests that Charpentier probably did not have access to Jesuit paper until late 1687, when he moved out of the Hôtel de Guise and began to work for the Jesuits. This would not, of course, have precluded commissions from the Jesuits. Indeed, we know that he received commissions prior to the fall of 1687. 2.4 ---JG: During the Jesuit years, "... some of the cahiers were copied out of order or were recopied at a later date." PMR: It is difficult to believe that Charpentier, who as Gosine points out elsewhere in her article filled one cahier after another, month after month and year after year, and kept them in chronological order, would copy an entire notebook "out of order." Recopy the cahiers later? Yes indeed: Charpentier did recopy quite a few older works onto Jesuit paper, and sometimes the work filled an entire cahier. He may well have revised the work in the process. But although he occasionally copied out a work for Pentecost before he got around to copying out a piece he had written for Easter, I am skeptical that he copied entire cahiers "out of order." Or perhaps there is more information on this issue? 2.6 --- JG: "The clef formations highlight instances where music has been copied into the manuscripts at a later date than the surrounding material. ... Rather than understanding these pieces as stylistic exceptions or anomalies, they should be examined alongside works that were copied at approximately the same time and with which they share striking similarities." PMR: We are at the very heart of Jane Gosine's contribution to Charpentier studies. Again, bravo! The Arabic Numeral Series 3.1.1 --- Gosine points out something very important: the very first page of the French series of notebooks was copied out by someone else, someone with a "shaky" hand, someone who was such a classicist that he wrote "Hieremiae," rather than "Jeremiae," as Charpentier was wont to do over the years. In her note 21, Gosine comments that "It would seem unlikely that Charpentier was planning to engage a scribe to copy his music so early in his career." PMR: I overlooked these nuances of spelling and script in my Musing on the three clefs in Charpentier's manuscripts. I have modified that Musing, to take her finding into account. Could it be Monsieur Du Bois' handwriting? In the Manuscript Department of the BnF, ms. fr. 17052, fols. 186 ff, there are some autograph letters of Du Bois, who directed the Guise Music. I hope someone will go and scrutinize those letters! Du Bois was very proud and well-regarded Latinist,; he was also an amateur musician and a composer of sorts. Could this be his musical hand, his handwriting? Did Charpentier honor the founder and director of the Guise Music by asking him to copy out the beginning of the very first piece he had written for the Guises? In other words, should these somewhat awkwardly copied staves been seen a the commemorative cornerstone of what would become one of the great musical monuments of France? 3.1.2 --- JG: "With the exception of the outer folios of Cahiers 2, 3, and 4 which were added [my emphasis] by the composer at a later date cahiers 2-4 date from the early 1670s ..." PMR: Gosine's terminology causes problems here, but the following details do not affect what she says about Charpentier's handwriting. "Added": it is unlikely that any of these changes increased the length of the pieces at the beginning and end of these cahiers. The outer folio of cahier 2 that is, the outer sheet of the nested, folded papers was indeed put there later, to replace a damaged outer sheet. The paper is my paper "a," and the rest of the notebook is made of paper "A," just as cahiers 3 and 4 are. Discussing "why the folios were added" (my emphasis), in par. 3.1.3, Gosine comments: "The most plausible reason is that pages became damaged and were replaced by the composer (perhaps for a later performance)" again, my emphasis. In short, when she says "added," Gosine sometimes means "replaced," but does she always mean that? As far as I can tell, no. Here I must correct Gosine. Cahier 3 is entirely of paper A, so nothing was "added," nor was anything replaced. The outer sheet on which she focuses here was not "added later." It was there from the very beginning, almost certainly 1671. Indeed, the outer sheet could scarcely have been added at a later date, because at the end of the cahier, the inner side (it has a "page" number: 25) bears Charpentier's handwriting of 1671. Revising this mass at a later date, Charpentier added instrumental music to the front cover sheet (chemise), fol. 18; and he likewise added music to the verso of fol. 18. In like manner he copied a new "simphonie" onto the blank back cover ("page" 26). Contrary to Gosine's assertion quoted above, no outside sheet of paper was added to the outside of cahier 4. Like cahier 3, cahier 4 is made entirely of paper A. In other words, like the mass for the Duke of Guise, this funereal music originally had a blank piece of paper, a chemise, as a cover. The front cover was inscribed "Mottet pour les Trepasses à 8"; and the back cover was blank. Much later, Charpentier added some instrumental music to the inner front cover, and glued a little piece of paper with a De Profundis onto the bottom of fol. 32 verso. I am reassured to note that Jane Gosine believes that these later additions may well be contemporary with Mlle de Guise's funeral: "The clef used for the additional material are in the style of those used during the late 1680s" (par. 3.1.4). In passing, Gosine remarks (par. 3.1.4) on the blank areas in cahiers 3 and 4 that were crossed off with large Xs. What might those X's mean? Scribe's son that he was, Charpentier probably used these X's in the way notaries did. For example, in a wedding contract the clerk would draw up the contract, leaving approximately 5 inches blank on the first page, where he could subsequently write the names of the witnesses signing at the end of the document. When there were few witnesses, this left two or three inches of blank paper onto which fraudulent information could later be written. To indicate that the act was complete, before filing it away the notary drew an X across the blank area. It is clear that Charpentier did not make those X's in 1671: otherwise he would have drawn an X through the places on the front and back covers where he eventually added simphonies and so forth. Rather, he made those marks at a moment when he was "closing" these works for good, when he knew that he would have nothing more to add to them. Could these X's be his way of marking a close to his service to the House of Guise? In other words, were these works reused for Mlle de Guise's funeral in 1688? Gosine is skeptical, arguing that the "Guise household" did not use a double orchestra, and the names of the Guise musicians do not appear in the margins of these works (par. 3.1.4). Actually, it is quite unlikely that the Guise Music, exclusively, performed during that funeral mass. The music almost certainly would have been executed by hired musicians. We of course cannot rule out that some of the princess's singers joined these musicians or that, one last time, they sang and played a brief work together. Still, one's householders generally were given the honor of marching or riding in the funeral procession and occupying a prestigious position in the church. 3.2.3 --- Cahier 5 makes Gosine state her belief that, "based on the style of handwriting, it seems more like that [cahier 5] dates from the early 1680s," rather than the late 1680s or the 1690s. PMR: I proposed that date because the central folded sheet of this cahier (fols. 43-44) is Jesuit paper, and I have been hesitating to assert that Charpentier had access to that exclusive paper prior to the late fall of 1687. If I understand Gosine correctly (par. 2.4), her research on handwriting suggests that the writing on every Jesuit sheet of paper dates from 1688 or later (par. 2.4). Still, she suggests the contrary in this paragraph. She implies that Charpentier had access to Jesuit paper in the "early 1680s," while he was still residing at the Hôtel de Guise. This question merits pursuing, because if Charpentier did indeed use Jesuit paper at an earlier date, then we can be virtually sure that he received commissions from the Reverend Fathers of Saint-Louis. (I do not intend to pursue the matter.) Cahier 5 contains a Prose des Morts. Should we speculate that, like the works in the two preceding cahiers, it too was associated with Mlle de Guise's funeral? (I admit to being partial to that hypothesis, because it would suggest an emotional link between the nephew for whom the work was written, and the aunt, a link spanning Charpentier's entire career at the Hôtel de Guise.) If it was not revised for Mlle de Guise's funeral, and if the new copy was in fact made in the "early 1680s," for what Guise-linked event might it have been used? The only explanation I can come up with is that Mme de Guise sponsored an annual messe en musique for her late parents at the convent of Charonne where she had been brought up. Since the original version of this Prose probably was performed during the weeks after her mother's death in 1672, the work conceivably could have had such strong emotional resonances for her that she asked Charpentier to revise it in the early 1680s. As Gosine fine-tunes her analyses of Charpentier's handwriting, perhaps she will be able to answer these questions. 3.3 Cahiers 6-13 Gosine's sections 3.3.1 to 3.3.5 focus on the "oddities" found in cahier 9, as we know it today. PMR: The issue is indeed intriguing. It has just now provoked a Musing about cahiers 8, 9, 10. 3.3.2 --- Gosine points out that the first work in cahier 9, Pour Ste Anne (H.315), "is written using clef G-2, suggesting a date of the late 1680s or 1690s." PMR: I agree: judging from its paper ("c"), this piece almost certainly is not contemporary with surrounding works. The Messe pour plusieurs instruments au lieu des orgues (H.513) that occupies cahiers 7 and 8 was written in the spring of 1674; and Judith, which fills cahier 10 and much of cahier 11, dates from the late summer of 1675. As Gosine observes, the Mémoire of 1726 does not show the motet for St Anne as being part of the "partition 9e chiffre françois." Gosine describes it as being classed among the "autres cahyers de musique du même auteur." That is true, but her statement paints a somewhat deceptive picture. "Partition 9e chiffre françois" and Ste Anne were both part of that hodge-podge of manuscripts that the inventory-taker described as the "autres cahyers de musique du même auteur" a hodge-podge that was presented as being quite distinct from the "French" and "Roman" series of chronologically organized cahiers enumerated earlier in the Mémoire. Still more revealing is the fact that the "partition 9e chiffre françois" was listed separately, as an independent cahier. Ste Anne, by contrast, was merely the final piece in a thick bundle of somewhat disparate works labeled the "gros cahier." In short, Ste Anne seems to have been arbitrarily placed in its current position when the volumes were bound in the 1750s. 3.3.3 --- Gosine next focuses on a work called "Languentibus à 3 voix," which the Mémoire of 1726 lists as being part of the "partition 9e chiffre françois." She asserts that this work is H.328) and "is now in Cahier XXXII." PMR: That cannot be. The Mémoire shows that H.238 was in cahier XXXII at the time. It would have required a magician to insert H. 238 into cahier XXXII, because that piece begins on the verso of another piece, H.327, which the Mémoire also lists as being in cahier 8. In other words, Charpentier wrote more than one three-voice Languentibus, and we seem to have lost the one that had been stashed away with the opening four pages of Judith. 3.3.3 --- Gosine then focuses on another work that was tucked away with Judith: a motet "pour saint Augustin." She concludes that this refers to Pour St Augustin mourant, 'Bonum certamen' (H.419), "which is now in Cahier [d] and appears in the 1709 publication of motets." PMR: Is Gosine correct in identifying the piece in the "partition 9e chiffre françois" with H.419, currently in cahier "d," where it juxtaposes pieces that Charpentier wrote for Port-Royal circa December 1687? This is quite unlikely, because H.419 is part of a cahier where one piece flows into another. That is to say, H.419 begins on folio 1 and ends on folio 3, and the next piece (H.50) begins lower down on fol. 3, and so forth. It is therefore difficult to see how H.419 could have been extracted from the pieces around it and placed after the first pages of Judith, and then reintegrated into cahier "d" twenty-five years later by the binders. Rather, was the motet for St Augustine that in 1726 was found tucked away with the "partition 9e chiffre françois" (that is, with the opening pages of Judith) nothing more than a copy of H.419 that had been made for the engravers of Edouard's book of motets? (See my discussion of the gros cahier and its contents, where I demonstrate that copies made for these engravers seem to have subsequently been discarded by the royal librarians.) That may well be the answer. As H.W. Hitchcock points out in his Catalogue raisonné, in 1709 someone wrote on H.419, "9e motet premier," and marked the score with red crayon. The new inscription was intended to show that this would be the ninth motet in the volume. In other words, as the inventory-taker of 1726 did a preliminary sorting of the somewhat disorganized "other works," he came upon a copy of H.419. Guided by the number "9" near the title, he put it with the two folded sheets onto which Charpentier had recopied the beginning of Judith. This suggests, of course, that Charpentier had put a folded paper cover around this new copy of Judith, and that this cover identified the folded sheets as "9." 3.3.4 --- As for the two folded sheets onto which Charpentier had recopied the start of Judith, Gosine notes that "the clefs used .... are those associated with the end of Charpentier's career. ... He must have rewritten [them] at a much later date in his career, during the late 1690s or early 1700...." PMR: The only watermark I could make out in the paper used for these two folded sheets was one of those ubiquitous bunches of grapes. Circa 1700: why not closer to late 1703, and Charpentier's final illness? That would explain why he never summoned the courage to delve into his 100-odd cahiers and tuck those two folded sheets into the front of cahier 10, which contains the rest of Judith. 3.3.5 --- JG: "It seems clear that Cahier [9] was compiled at a much later date than the surrounding cahiers and that its current contents do not reflect the music originally intended by the composer to form Cahier [9]. It is one of a number of examples that highlight problems with using the sequence of works within the complete Meslanges as the sole means of dating Charpentier's music." PMR: For the first sentence, if there was any "intention" about the organization of cahier 9, it certainly was not Charpentier's, but that of the librarians and bookbinders of the 1750s. Is not the second sentence a bit all-encompassing? The position of cahiers 10-11 (which clearly date from 1675), and the handwriting in those cahiers, permit us to date Judith with considerable precision, even though we cannot get closer than "the late 1690s or early 1700s" for the two recopied folios in cahier 9. Why is Gosine arguing that two folded sheets of paper bearing music that clearly was recopied at a later date, somehow can cause the overall chronology of the Mélanges to tumble like a house of cards? Having made her main points about handwriting, Gosine moves through the cahiers one after another, alluding to a recopying here, a change in clefs there. I agree with most of what she says, and I applaud her insights and her meticulousness. Henceforth I will restrict my comments to quoting Gosine and ti interjecting some of my own thoughts; and I will try to stop or at least limit my quibbling about "out of order" and "added." 3.5.1 --- JG: "Contrary to Ranum's assertion that no copying occured in Cahier 22, it seems clear that the outer folios were added [yet another "addition"] at a later date." PMR: Actually, I stated very clearly that some of the folios of cahier 22 were recopied circa 1680. But I see that I contradicted myself in the the very next sentence, having inadvertently pasted something into the paragraph. On the webpage about the three clefs in Charpentier's manuscripts, the nonsensical sentence is now shown as strikeouts, and in green type I have made the paragraph more explicit. I appreciate having the misstatement called to my attention. 3.5.7 --- JG: "It seems likely that the Leçons de tenebres were performed at a later date by the three nuns [at the Abbaye-aux-Bois] whose names .... appear on the music: the writing used to indicate their names is in the same style and same ink that is found on the added [that misleading word again!] pages." PMR: This is really interesting! Gosine suggests that, in the 1690s, the Abbaye-aux-Bois reused the tenebrae music that had been such a hit in 1680. To this thought-provoking evidence, I will add a few facts about Mère Elisabeth Desnots. She was already a nun at the abbey in October 1672 (AN, MC, CXII, 365, Oct. 5, 1672); and she was still there in July 1685 (AN, MC, CXII, 393, July 25, 1685). In other words, she was a nun at the Abbey on 18-20, 1680, when the Leçons were first performed, and she presumably sang. We can assume Desnots was at least eighteen in 1672, which means that she was at least twenty-six when she participated in the first performance of these lessons. She would have been in her mid- to late thirties when the work was revived in the 1690s. She may, of course, have been 4, 5, or even 10 years older than I estimate, but it's still possible for her to have taken part in a revival of this music. 3.6.1 --- Gosine points out that "Cahier 31 marks a significant change in Charpentier's style of handwriting pattern. ... there is a change in the formation of the G clefs in the later pages of the cahier that represents a transition between two styles of handwriting." In my Musing on the three clefs, I date this change as occurring in late 1680. It took place between the recto and the verso of fol. 109 of cahier 31, and within cahier XXIX, both of which contain works for late 1680. 3.7.1 --- JG: "A problem arises with the ordering of the cahiers at this point because the contents of Cahier 33 were copied (and possibly also composed) at a much later date than the cahiers that precede and follow it." PMR: Shame on Charpentier! Once again he has gotten his cahiers out of order. These pieces for Louis XIV would have been totally appropriate for 1681, which is the time slot into which Charpentier himself placed this cahier. They would, of course, have been equally appropriate for the 1690s, when Charpentier was working for the Jesuits. In short, this cahier may well contain works that one or the other of the Guise women gave as gifts to the Jesuits in 1681, and that the composer revised a decade later. Admittedly, there is no way of proving this. Nonetheless, the very fact that Charpentier put these recopied works between cahier 32 and cahier 33 is a momentous ordering, and it should be given the consideration it deserves. 3.9.7 --- JG: "Ranum suggests [that cahier "II"] may be the missing Cahier 48, includes neither of these works," that is, H.430 and a second part for H.415. PMR: That's really interesting. I based my hypothesis on the paper of cahier "II," which is "L," like cahiers 46, XLIX, L, and LI. Since cahier "II" clearly was a separate cahier, a cahier that appears to have been extraneous to the two chronological series of cahiers, it may well have been a personal gift (and, of course, a gift of the Guises and the Guise Music) to the Dauphin. Remember: marginalia shows that the Dauphin's musicians joined the Guise Music for this performance. The Roman Numeral Series 4.2.2 --- JG: "Ranum (whose chronology is based on the existing order of the cahiers being correct within both series) ... postulates that [Cahier IX] is out of order by two cahiers (and therefore a few months), [but] evidence of clef formation, and annotations suggests that in fact it is probably out of order by approximately 50 cahiers, and that the cahier as it now exists therefore dates from over a decade later than previously believed." PMR: Careless Charpentier, he has once again gotten his notebooks "out of order." Actually, I agree that the works in cahier IX bear "close similiarities" to music composed for the Jesuits during the 1690s. I simply propose that they were composed for the Jesuits in the 1670s and were revived and ameliorated during the 1690s. Isn't that what Charpentier was saying when he put that 1690s-copy back into the place once occupied by a piece composed in 1671? 4.2.2 --- Gosine emphasizes that some of this music that was recopied in the 1690s would be as appropriate for the 1690s as for the 1670s. PMR: I heartily agree: kings periodically won great victories and needed Te Deums and Exaudiats, close relatives died and needed funeral music, abbeys sang tenebrae every year and eventually the old score needed updating. Still, as I have argued elsewhere and I hold fast to the solidity of that argument Charpentier was a very moral person, a person familiar with all the nuances of professional and courtly etiquette. Reusing a work written decades earlier for someone else would have been tantamount to committing a theft or to leaving one's employer without "asking leave." He would have been disgraced. No one would have hired him again. This is why I argue that any reuse, recopying, or refurbishing of a given work had to be predicated upon the "ownership" of that work. If a work was written for the Guises, not until Mlle de Guise's death could Charpentier conceivably have loaned the music to someone else, or performed it for someone else. Idem for the Jesuits, who may well have commissioned works from him in the 1670s. They felt very proprietary about works that belonged to them. Charpentier could subsequently rework or revive that music for the Reverend Fathers, but he would never have thought of offering it to the Theatines. In like manner, the tenebrae music for the Abbaye-aux-Bois belonged to the abbey. If these tenebrae lessons were revived a decade after their creation, it can only have been at the convent where they were first performed. And so forth, work after work. Admittedly, we have little chance of moving from hypothesis to fact on this subject, and some people insist upon facts and evidence that they can see with their own eyes. How easy it is to argue from fact; how difficult to argue from plausibility and probability. 4.2.5 --- JG: "While it is conceivable that Charpentier might have altered his handwriting style in cahiers VI-XI [which are on Jesuit paper] immediately after completing the early cahiers (I-V) it is implausible that he should then revert to the earlier style for another twenty or so cahiers, only to return to the style of Cahier IX for the works of the late 1680s and 1690s. Rather, the evidence strongly suggests that these Cahiers were copied at a much later date." PMR: I don't imagine that anyone would disagree with this statement! The question remains, however: Why did Charpentier place those cahiers copied out during the 1690s, among his earliest outside commissions? 4.2.7 --- JG: It is very important for the history of performance practices that the mention "sourdines" is found a cahier IX. "If Charpentier did compose and copy the works into Cahier IX during the 1670s (which I do not believe), this would be one of the earliest uses of the term "sourdines" in French seventeenth-century music." PMR: I agree completely: this suggests a reworking of the materials in that cahier. Whether Charpentier considered this reworking and up-dating a new "composition" is, however, open to debate. That is to say, if the work was newly "composed," why did he put it in slot number IX? 4.2.8 --- JG: "Works ... in what looks like Cahier X appear to have been copied after Cahier XXIV." PMR: The copying was indeed posterior to the composition of the works in cahier XXIV. But what does Gosine mean by "what looks like Cahier X"? Is she expressing doubts about the number of this cahier? Does she dispute that Charpentier placed it in that position? That it is cahier X? 4.5.5 -- JG: "Probably more than anywhere else in the Meslanges, the handwriting in Cahier XXIV is a mixture of two styles, suggesting that the music was copied at different times." PMR: I agree: cahiers XXIII and XXIV are a collection of preludes composed over quite a few years roughly, from 1677 to 1680. As far as I could discern, cahier XXIV is made of three very thin superimposed cahiers, each made of a different paper. 4.7.1 --- JG: "This cahier reveals a mixture of styles of clefs that can be explained by examining the structure of the cahier and the addition [my emphasis] of the folios: the outer folios appear to have been added at a slightly later date and therefore have the later clefs." PMR: It is difficult to see how the two outer sheets could have been "added" to existing pieces. Rather, were not these outer sheets replacements? 4.7.3 --- JG: Charpentier's G clef changes in cahier XXIX, which can be dated February 1681. PMR:This meshes with the date I proposed in my Musing on the three clefs: late 1680. 4.8.3 --- JG: "As in other instances in the Meslanges, cahiers or folios from cahiers may have been removed from the main body of the collection...." PMR: I would be less tentative. If one assumes that Charpentier did not skip numbers when he numbered his cahiers, then it is indisputable that quite a few cahiers disappeared over the years. Most of cahier 9 was destroyed during his lifetime: that clearly is why he recopied the first four pages of Judith. When he left for the Sainte-Chapelle, the Jesuits may have laid claim to some of the works he had composed for them hence the lacunae for the 1690s. And we know that his compositions for the Sainte-Chapelle were confiscated by the royal authorities after his death hence the almost total loss of his most mature work. 4.11 --- Gosine's proposal (par. 4.11.2) that cahiers LXI-LXIII may be the missing cahiers LXXI-LXXIII may shed light on the chronology of Charpentier's final years at Saint-Louis. PMR: I hope more is forthcoming! It is a question that merits consideration I have never been able to figure out why the papers for those years ("O," "N" and Jesuit) do not appear at the same time in both series of cahiers. Perhaps Jane Gosine will come up with an answer to that conundrum. 5.3.1 --- Gosine proposes that La Descente d'Orphée aux enfers (H.488) was either cahier LII or LIII. PMR: I tried to see things her way; but I failed. The facts pretty much demolish this hypothesis. If we follow a strict chronology, the first piece in cahier LII would have been written for performance during the fall of 1687, and cahier LIII presumably would have been filled with works destined for performance in 1688. We must immediately eliminate cahier LIII as a possibility, because Mlle de Guise died on March 3, 1688, the Guise Music was quickly disbanded, and the performers were dispersed to Normandy, to Champagne, and to other occupations in Paris. Cahier LII poses almost as great a problem: Mlle de Guise was ailing throughout the fall of 1688 and rarely left her couch. And anyway, one would not expect the Dauphin's musicians "Pierrot" (Pierre Pièche) and "Anth" (Antoine Pièche) to be playing alongside Loulié. No, they would have performed at court, not before Mlle de Guise. In other words, the commission would have to have come from Madame de Guise, and she was off in Alençon until mid-November of 1687 and during the months leading up to Mlle de Guise's death, Her Royal Highness was demonstrating the proper concern about Mlle de Guise's health. Then too, at least a year earlier, Mme de Guise had given up the frivolities of the world and had ceased sponsoring "operas." Above all, "Charp" sings in this work, and that is something he stopped doing at the end of 1685. In short, none of the available facts come together to support Gosine's hypothesis. Every bit of evidence that I know about suggests that Orphée was commissioned by Mme de Guise, and not later than the final months of 1685. 5.4.1 --- The Epitaphium Carpentarij (H.474), Gosine observes, is written in a hand from the late 1690s. PMR: This observation meshes with my finding that most of the paper is Jesuit. Gosine's dating explodes once and for all the hypothesis that Charpentier wrote it out of irritation at Chaperon's nomination to the Sainte-Chapelle in 1679. Bravo! 5.7.2 --- Gosine attempts to place caher [d] into the chronology of the Mélanges as a whole. PMR: I look forward to her conclusions on the subject. For me, the important issue is that, as far as we can tell, these works were not an integral part of the Mélanges. Although at one point
I tried to fit the works for Port-Royal into the continuum of the Mélanges,
I now think that the "other" manuscripts described in the Mémoire were
more personal works. In the case of cahier "d," that they were neither
commissioned by outsiders nor by the Guises, nor by Charpentier's new employers,
the Jesuits. Most of the works in the gros cahier appear to have been
personal things: the Epitaph, the music for his sister's convent, and copies
that Jacques Edouard had prepared for the engravers in 1709. In short, I now see
the gros cahier as a fourre-tout, a catchall,
something akin to the drawer into which one tosses miscellaneous things that one
intends to sort later. To conclude: I have said nothing about the cahiers for the Jesuit years, except to say that Jane Gosine's observations about Charpentier's handwriting and notations during this period, and beyond, will be of great usefulness for scholars and admirers of Charpentier's music alike. |